The Winters in Bloom (11 page)

They still had the long drive back to the city. They were about forty-five minutes away from home when David turned down the radio and said, “I keep thinking how cool this is.”

“What?”

“That my wife can wrestle a German shepherd and win.” He grinned. “It’s like discovering I’m married to Superwoman.”

The pain pill the ER nurse had given her made her woozy and tired and overly emotional. It must have. Otherwise, why would this remark have made her feel so bad?

When she didn’t say anything, David reached for her hand. “They’re not going to put the dog down, honey. I told you before, the owner agreed to keep him inside or on a leash. And Quon and Li like the old guy. It’s going to be all right.”

Kyra had been worried about this earlier. She didn’t want the dog to die for simply doing what dogs were designed to do: fight back when someone they don’t know seems to be attacking them. But David was right; the dog would be okay. She wasn’t upset about that.

“Even if I really was Superwoman,” she said. And stopped. Could she really be about to say this?

“What?” David said.

She glanced at him. “It wouldn’t matter, would it?”

“Matter how?” He waited. And smiled. “Come on, you know I can’t stand it when you don’t finish your thought.”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “I was just thinking that even if I really was Superwoman, you still wouldn’t trust me enough to have a baby with me.”

“Whoa . . . wait a minute.” He let go of her hand. He sounded shocked and even a little frightened. “Where did that come from?”

“I’m just saying I’m not your ex, David.” She looked out the window, and of course some happy-looking woman was pushing a double stroller down the block. “I just saved Hurricane Baby, and I don’t even really like him. I mean, he’s cute. But even if he looked like a toad, I would have saved him.”

“I know you would have.” David’s voice was quiet. He didn’t talk for a few minutes while he drove to the exit ramp, merged onto the highway, and settled in the middle lane. “What’s this about?”

“I’d be a good mom.” She thought back to that hot July day when her own mom left. “I mean, I might be. It’s possible.”

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I didn’t know you wanted children, Kyra.”

“I just wish you believed that I
could
have kids and not destroy them. That I’m a good person who would do anything to keep a child from being hurt.”

Including losing Amy?
Wasn’t that why Kyra had done what she did? Or was it something else, something ugly and unforgivable? If she could go back in time, she wouldn’t do it again. Didn’t that have to mean, on some level, that it was wrong?

David was sputtering something to the effect that he didn’t understand what was happening. Unfortunately, neither did Kyra.

“Look,” she finally said, “I don’t want kids. Not really.” She sighed and took back his hand. “I’m sorry. It must be the pain pill.”

He let out a long breath. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “But I don’t think I want a dog, either. Maybe a cat?”

“Good idea.” He waited a moment and said cautiously, “Any cat would be lucky to have you taking care of it.”

The words flew out of her mouth before she could stop herself: “Is that supposed to be the same as being a good mom? Because there is a difference between a cat and a baby, you know. A big difference.” She sounded so angry. God, what was wrong with her? Could a pain pill really do this?

“No, of course not,” he said quietly, and squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

Kyra could tell the argument was over. No matter what she said, now that her husband knew she was not herself, he would be unfailingly gentle, kind, and nonconfrontational. She appreciated this about him, but she was also inexplicably sorry that the strange discussion had ended, even though she was the one who changed the topic to the boring problem of their leaky dishwasher.

She had no idea that this conversation had made an impression on her husband until a few weeks later. She was in their bedroom, about to put the sheets on the bed, when he told her, “You know, you really would be a good mother, honey.” Kyra was surprised how happy this made her. She billowed the ivory sheet in the air and asked him to tuck in the other side. After he helped her with the pillowcases, she reassured him that she didn’t want kids. That was the end of that, until another week had passed and he said the same thing again. Maybe Kyra smiled this time? In any case, before long, it had become a kind of routine with them, like “you hang up first” when they were dating. David would say, “Another reason you’d be a good mother,” after Kyra had cooked a good meal or taken care of their bills or done basically anything that was mildly nurturing, and she would reply, “If I wanted to be a mother, which I don’t.”

Her journal backed her up on that. Indeed, the total was −92 on the night when she and David were in bed, kissing, and, after she rolled over to stand up, he reached for her and asked her to stay.

“But I need to put in my diaphragm,” she whispered.

“Leave it,” he said, touching her breasts.

“What?”

“You don’t need it.”

She could feel him pushing against her. She wanted him badly, too, but she forced herself to move away.

“Do you realize what you’re saying?”

“I think so.” He laughed softly. “Birth control prevents pregnancy. Ergo, if we don’t use it, we could get pregnant.”

She swallowed, trying to digest this news. After a moment, she said, “Aren’t you afraid something will go wrong?” She was thinking: this can’t be true. David is always afraid.

“Something could go wrong if we don’t have a baby, too. And believe it or not, I believe everything is going to be all right.” He kissed her neck. “Now can we please go back to—”

“But why did you change your mind?”

“I think I’m ready to have a family. And I realized if I want to really know you, I need to know you as more than my wife and my best friend and a logic genius.” He brushed his lips against her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks, and her chin before leaning up on his elbows and smiling gently. “I can’t wait to meet you as a mother, honey.”

At that, Kyra began to cry. It was the first time in the three and a half years they’d known each other that she let herself cry in front of David. Of course he was surprised, but he assured her that she did not look even slightly hideous and that he still viewed her as a calm, reasonable person who was just as strong. “Even Superwoman cried occasionally,” he said, but Kyra knew he was making that part up. David was not the comic-book-reader type.

A few weeks later, Kyra opened her
Pro and Con
file for the last time. She wrote a short note on the last page:
When the baby grows up, I’ll let him or her read this file and know how hard I struggled with this decision.
But when she was seven and a half months pregnant, she got up one night and deleted the file from both her computer and her backup disk. She did not want her child, a boy, according to the ultrasound, to find this and wonder if his mother had really wanted him. And God/the universe/whatever needed to know that all those negative numbers hadn’t actually meant anything to Kyra. She didn’t want to be punished for her doubts, and so the universe needed to understand that she was absolutely, unambiguously in favor of having this child.

David was constantly nervous that something would go wrong with the pregnancy (of course), but even as Kyra tried to reassure him, she had a terrible fear of her own that she never talked about. She remembered when Amy told her that a pregnant woman wants her baby more than she’s ever wanted anything. Now she knew how true that was—meaning if karma existed, she was in big trouble. Maybe she deserved to be punished, but her son didn’t. “Just let him be all right,” she told God. She was still in her office; her hands were resting on her abdomen, where she could feel her baby kicking. She wasn’t sure why he always kicked more at night. It was almost as if he wanted her to wake up and think about all this.

After a few minutes, she escaped into the comfort of her logic puzzles, like she always did. She figured it couldn’t be good for her baby to feel her stress or hear her cry. Better to talk to the little kicker about the proper order of spaceships organized on their launchpads by color. “If the first spaceship lands on a red launchpad,” she said to her stomach, “the second spaceship must land on the green launchpad or the purple one.”

Another kick.

“I think you’re right.” She smiled. “Let’s try purple.”

TEN

T
he afternoon
traffic was getting heavy, and Sandra pulled off the highway to get a coffee at a fast-food place and use the bathroom. Back in her car, she swallowed her arthritis medicine down with the bitter-tasting brew, and realized she wasn’t sure where to go. If she went to David and Kyra’s house, she might just add to the stress and chaos. Surely the police were still there, questioning the neighbors, tapping the phone—whatever it was they did in a case like this. And her son hadn’t asked her to come, had he? When she’d asked what she could do to help, he’d said he’d let her know if he thought of anything and hung up quickly, like she was a nosy neighbor offering him an unappetizing casserole.

In college, David used to brag that Sandra was not only a good mom but also a good
friend
. Of course every child’s relationship to his mother has to change over time. Sandra knew that, and she tried hard not to feel bad when David pushed her away. It was part of motherhood, or so she’d heard: resigning yourself to whatever role your grown-up child decides to give you in his life. Her grandmother had had a saying about the need to let go of your kids, something about a mother only being a river for her children to bloom in the future. Since her grandmother had grown up on the Susquehanna, a lot of her sayings involved water.

Still, sometimes Sandra couldn’t help wondering if she was making a mistake just accepting the wall David had put up between them, especially as the wall had never been there until what had happened with Courtney. If her son was hurting on the other side of a wall, she couldn’t do anything to help him. She wouldn’t even know. And he’d changed so much after the baby died. Certainly it was a devastating loss, but there was something about his reaction, even at the time . . . well, it wasn’t exactly normal, was it?

She was back on the highway, sitting in the slow lane behind an eighteen-wheeler that wasn’t bothering to inch up; the traffic was that bad. So there was nothing to do, nothing to distract her mind from the memory she’d been fighting since David’s first phone call today. It was by far the worst moment of her life, when her son had called that morning fifteen years ago to tell her that her grandson had died.

Though she’d been sound asleep, she’d managed to get dressed and on the road in twenty minutes. The thought of her son dealing with such a tragedy by himself, surrounded by strangers in the garish light of an unfamiliar hospital, had made her put one foot in front of the other. Somehow she made it to New Haven without running off the road or into a truck. By the time she arrived, the lawyer Courtney’s parents hired had arranged to have her moved from the police station to a psychiatric hospital. Which left David alone in the apartment—except he wasn’t at the apartment. In just a few hours, he’d already moved his books and clothes and essentials to a two-bedroom place rented by another grad student. A guy named Brennan. That was all Sandra knew about him, but she was glad David would have somebody with him for the next few days and weeks, and possibly longer.

David wanted to talk to his mother alone, but he didn’t want to go back to the old apartment. They ended up meeting at the same “hip” restaurant where Sandra had taken Courtney when the girl was pregnant and depressed. It was close to Brennan’s house. David was waiting at a table when Sandra arrived. He stood up, as always, to give her a hug, yet it wasn’t their usual long, warm embrace. He felt oddly stiff in her arms, but she assumed he was holding himself back so he wouldn’t cry in public.

He admitted he hadn’t slept or eaten since it happened. Sandra suspected he hadn’t showered or changed clothes, either. He was wearing navy pants and a rumpled white shirt with what appeared to be a pizza stain on the cuff. He clearly hadn’t shaved or combed his hair.

For the first fifteen minutes or so, his comments seemed random. He mentioned that he felt cold, and wondered if the restaurant was actually cold. He said it might rain later. He said his advisor had called him, a sympathy call. “Apparently everyone in the department already knows.” His voice was so far away and tentative, Sandra wondered if he was on something, and then she realized he probably was. The hospital would have given him a tranquilizer of some kind.

The only time he sounded more focused and sure of himself was when he said that he was going to divorce Courtney.

“Don’t decide anything right now,” she said. She was picking at her salad, trying not to scream at the perky waitress who kept interrupting them to ask if David had changed his mind about ordering some food. He was drinking lemonade, which had been his favorite drink since he was just a little boy. She felt her chest tighten.

“I don’t need to wait,” he said. “I know I will never be able to live with her again.”