In Spite of Everything (31 page)

What was I doing?
How could I answer that? How could I?

I heard myself saying this: Daddy and I are best friends, but we do not have a husband and wife relationship. And if you do not have a husband and wife relationship, you cannot be married—that’s just how it works.

Zanny thought about this. If we didn’t have a husband and wife relationship, she asked, then why had we gotten married in the first
place? We had thought, I replied, that we did. So, she said, how do you know whether someone is your best friend or your husband?

It’s very tricky because they can seem kind of the same, I said—sometimes you just don’t know for a long time. I looked at her. But let me tell you something, my bunny, I said. Just because we cannot be married does not mean that Daddy and I don’t love each other; we always have and we always will. And I think Daddy is the most perfect father there is, and I always will. And we love being your parents, and we always will. It is hard now, but it won’t always be so hard. Zanny’s brow relaxed, and she unfolded her arms.

“It still doesn’t feel like Christmas,” she said. I agreed. “But you know what? I bet it didn’t feel like Christmas on the first Christmas either,” I thought aloud. “Mary was poor and young and she wasn’t married and she didn’t know what was going to happen to her. And then she had to have her baby all alone in a barn surrounded by animals. Think about that—how scary and hard that would be. But Mary found a way to be happy at the same time.”

“Yeah, but at least
she
had something to look forward to,” said Zanny. “She had all those wise men coming with all those presents.” I laughed, though it wasn’t funny because she hadn’t meant it to be funny. I hugged my little Zanny.

“You know what? I hate to say it, but I don’t think all that stuff actually happened,” I said, surprising myself. “I don’t think there were any wise men or shepherds or presents—I think it was just Mary alone in the barn, delivering her first baby, and realizing that her little schmushkie coming into the world was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened.
That
was Christmas.” Zanny considered, turning her head around in my lap.

“But the star was definitely there,” she said. Then all of a sudden I remembered something that had happened when Cal and I first learned that I was pregnant with Zanny. After the doctor’s appointment in which we had seen our fishy baby girl darting around in utero via the ultrasound screen, Cal and I had played hooky and gone to the Hayden Planetarium. Dwarfed under the giant dome,
looking up into the eternal night of space, I had listened to Tom Hanks narrating the story of red giants and black holes and had been filled with dread and sadness: It would all come to nothing. But then a frothy, light cloud appeared, filled with cheerful-looking little fluff-balls: a star nursery! Millions of new stars were born in celestial birthplaces like this, said Tom Hanks—it was happening all the time, all over the universe. When we walked out of the planetarium, I was beaming. I had a star
inside
.

When I told her this, Zanny smiled. We walked downstairs. Pru was festooning the tree with red baubles.
Look!
she crowed.
Isn’t it pretty?

I
met my boyfriend after Cal and I split, during the worst of the worst, Kevin’s and mine. It was tough, but now it isn’t, even though we can barely afford to heat the house. “You know who we are?” he said to me this Christmas. “We’re the Whos in Whoville—we have Christmas anyway.” Kevin does antiques restoration and upscale woodworking, and he works in the garage of the house, which he refurbished as a shop. He is funny, tall, and huge-hearted, and his family background is remarkably similar to mine. Sometimes that can look like a problem, but I don’t feel it as a problem because I understand it. I’m the same way. God, what a jerk he can be. What a jerk I can be. He’s wonderful with my children. The night before last, they went out into the backyard and made ice cream in the snow.
Even though he is from Los Angeles, he has raised chickens his entire life. In the spring, he’s building a chicken coop in the backyard, and he has approved Zanny’s and Pru’s bid for two hens that lay blue eggs. I’m okay with it, so long as the three of them are in charge. Plus,
blue
eggs!

My hair has finally grown out.

By accident, last year, I became pregnant. Everything got dark again. I could not do this to Zanny and Pru. I could not put them through
one more thing
. So I waited, prayed, waited. Every time I considered ending the pregnancy, something hard and deep pushed up against the thought. But how could I
do
this—how could I have a
baby
? Then an answer alighted: Because you are its mother. You are your babies’ mother. And they are your soul’s delight.

I had to tell Cal. I thought I would die, that it would hurt him more than almost anything else. I dreamed about it. It was always hovering over me when I was awake. Finally, I just did it, sobbing and frantic. He asked first if I had been to a doctor. Then he said: “That’s going to be a lucky baby, Susie.”

It is really snowing for the first time this year. Next week, it’s Christmas. We are having a boy.

Telling my girls was the hardest thing I have ever done. Their response was riven into two distinct halves. First, they were thrilled, jumping up and down, at the news that they were going to have a baby brother. Second, they were devastated that their dad was not the father. They did not understand why I couldn’t choose. Without getting into the mechanics of the thing, I said that while families are all different, the one thing that is the same is that to make a baby, a man has to give a woman a special seed, which implants inside her. This is just how it is. Nothing in the world can change that Daddy is your father; he just is. Many times, I’ve wished that my stepfather (whom my children consider their grandfather) was my father, but he isn’t; my dad is my father. You can’t change who your father is any more than you can change a hamster into a dog. But it’s not this
baby’s fault. He loves us even though he hasn’t even seen us yet. We all hugged on the creaky old settee for a long time.

The girls’ main concern became that he not think of himself as a “half” brother. “He’ll find out when he’s older anyway, but I don’t think we should tell him when he’s little,” Zanny said. “It will hurt his feelings, and plus, he
is
our real brother anyway.” Months later, Pru had an oddly understandable question: If Daddy got married again, would you still be my mother? Of course, I said. Nothing in this world could make me not your mother. Even if you died? she asked. My dad died, I said, but he’s still my dad. Well, said Pru, if Daddy ever had a new wife, and she stuffed me inside her uterus and gave birth to me again, would you still be my mother? I howled. Listen, rabbit face, I said, the whole world could blow up—the whole universe could blow up—and I would still be your mother. Good, she said. Because I don’t want anyone else to be my mama. Well, you could not
possibly
have another mama, so don’t worry about it, I said.

Money is terrifyingly scarce. The questions keep coming up; we keep talking them out. But I never say to Zanny and Pru that while divorce is difficult, everyone is happier in the end, and I will never say it. Because it isn’t true. It is a horror. What we say is: Life is hard, and life is sweet. It is both things at once. Sometimes it is one more than the other, but it is always both. There is one thing that is immutable: love.

I wanted them to have something tangible to represent this reality. I struck a bargain with a jewelry maker to make the three of us necklaces with pendants of very tiny uncut diamonds. Do you know how these are made in nature? I said, holding them up in the sun one afternoon as we sat on the shore of the East River near our house. They start out as a yucky lump of charcoal, and then they are scorched by the hottest possible molten lava, and after they are burned and burned, they cool into diamonds. They are brilliant and beautiful and the toughest surface of all. So look at that: sweet and
hard. Right, guys? They spent the rest of the afternoon scratching rocks on the beach with their little diamonds. Of course.

M
y boyfriend and I went in for the big twenty-week sonogram at the hospital, two weeks late. In the darkened delivery room, a grandmotherly technician smoothed the device over my belly, whose mysteries were revealed on a big screen on the wall. Shadowy, three-dimensional images of our son rippled by: a kicking little leg; two tiny feet; a bum. My boyfriend and I laughed and squeezed hands.

Intent on getting a closer look at his head and face, the technician suddenly stopped and punched a key on the computer to freeze the image on the screen.

“Look!” she said. “Look at him!”

Panicked, we froze, too. What, what—was there something wrong?
No
, she said,
look at his face
. We looked.

He was smiling.

Limitations of space and memory often conspire to make it difficult to thank everyone you want to thank for supporting the effort of writing a book. With a book like this, however, it’s flat-out impossible: If I had my way, the thanks would be longer than my kooky life story itself (they won’t let me do that).

With that in mind, I am particularly grateful to my beloved friend and agent, Tina Bennett; Millicent Bennett, this book’s first editor; and Svetlana Katz (Tina’s right arm) for their devotion, careful thinking, and brilliance. Kate Medina, Random House’s executive editorial director and associate publisher, called when I was seven months pregnant and had less than one hundred dollars in the bank to say that she loved this book; I’ll never forget it. And thanks to my editor, Lindsey Schwoeri, for valiantly seeing this through to the end.

I’m damned lucky to have good friends. Say what you will about Facebook, but the comfort that friends (and “friends”) sent over that mojo wire was often life-saving. My thanks especially to foxhole vets: Aunt Heather; Masha; Yuko, Jude; Barbara; the core crew at the Brooklyn Writers Space; Natileh; Anita; Colin; Jeff; Peg; Ben; Aunt Joanie; Aunt Hannah; and Howard and Linda Moss. Miss Russell—no words.

I’d have sunk were it not for my mother and stepfather. I still love my dad anyway.

T: Thank you for the days.

Mostly, I am grateful for my little crew of five: J and the schmushkies. My beautiful babies. I love you with all my heart—and even more than that.

S
USAN
G
REGORY
T
HOMAS
is a writer, journalist, and author of
Buy
,
Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds
. Formerly senior editor of
US News & World Report
, Thomas has written for
The Washington Post
,
Time
,
Babble.com
,
MSNBC.com
,
Glamour
, and more. She lives in Brooklyn with her three children (and chickens, dog, and parrot).