The Winters in Bloom (30 page)

Just getting through each hour was so challenging that he had no time to reflect, no time to see how bad everything was becoming until Labor Day weekend, when his mother came for a visit and Courtney fell apart. It was Sunday morning, and Sandra had kept the baby in the living room with her the night before. Somehow his mother had gotten Courtney to agree to express milk and to let Joshie have water if the milk ran out before morning. “He’s not going to starve,” Sandra said, which seemed true. He was almost two months old and still quite small, but the pediatrician said he was healthy and gaining weight on schedule. Courtney even called him “chubby” sometimes, though she frowned when Sandra cooed over his “fat little toes.” To play it safe, David stuck to calling the baby “my little guy” or just “Joshie.”

Sandra had managed to keep the baby from crying and waking them until nearly seven in the morning, meaning Courtney should have been more rested than she’d been in weeks. But when Sandra was out getting bagels, after Joshua went down for his morning nap, Courtney slumped down on a bar stool and said, “I think I hate your mother.”

He sensed that she wanted to fight with him, but he was in such a good mood he refused to take the bait. He took Courtney’s hand and kissed it. “I know,” he said, lightly, teasingly. “How dare she think if she lets us sleep and buys us bagels, we’ll forget what a villain she is?”

When Courtney grabbed her hand back, he knew the fight was inevitable, but he was still stunned when she screamed that he never listened and picked up his coffee cup and threw it against the kitchen wall. Of course the crash woke Joshua, and she shot David a look full of resentment before she stomped off to pick up the baby. He managed to get the coffee off the wall before Sandra came home from the store, but the cup had broken into too many shards to salvage. It was his favorite mug, given to him by his mentor, Professor Vinton:
History does not repeat itself, historians merely repeat each other.

Sandra had to leave that afternoon. Courtney held herself together until his mother drove off, but then she started pacing around the apartment, talking about the impossibility of love, the “philosophical hopelessness” of love, the stupidity of believing in love—and how he didn’t love her, how he’d never loved her, how no one did. He told her over and over it wasn’t true, but he knew he wasn’t as convincing as usual. He didn’t even feel like himself now that he knew she was capable of throwing a coffee cup. This new version of Courtney bore too much resemblance to the angry father he’d spent his childhood placating. He was counting the hours until Tuesday, when the fall semester would begin and he could escape from the whole mess.

The first day of grad school was long, with an afternoon department meeting he couldn’t miss, but he rushed home as soon as it was over, surprised by how much he missed Joshua. Courtney seemed fine, though she wasn’t talking very much. She didn’t call him on the cell on Wednesday, and he was grateful for the calm, but then he came home to find her scrubbing the cabinet over the oven, where they stored their spices. In and of itself, this was strange—as his mother’s raised eyebrows made clear every time she visited, Courtney and David weren’t very motivated house cleaners—but what alarmed him was the condition of their baby. Joshua was sitting in his bouncy chair with a diaper that clearly hadn’t been changed all day. He was screaming his head off, and Courtney was acting like she couldn’t hear it. When he asked her what she was doing, she shook her head and babbled something about spilling the basil.

He changed Joshua’s diaper and dragged them both to the emergency room, where the doctors gave Joshua a bottle of formula and pronounced Courtney “a little dehydrated” and “obviously sleep deprived.” For that, they charged him over a thousand dollars, but at least they gave her a prescription for a strong sedative that enabled her to sleep through the night. Of course that meant David had to get up with Joshua and give him formula when necessary, but it was worth it when Courtney woke up the next morning more like her old self than she’d been in a very long time. She finally told him what had happened over the weekend. Even though Sandra was there, taking care of Joshua, she hadn’t been able to sleep all night. In fact, she hadn’t slept at all for the last
four days.
But now she was fine, and very apologetic. She decided to keep taking the sedatives, though it meant she had to wean Joshua. David would handle all the nightly feedings, which sounded worse than it turned out to be. Within just a few nights, Joshua had moved from waking up every hour and a half to every four hours. Courtney joked that their baby knew better than to lose sleep for a mere bottle.

For a while after that, nearly a month, their lives were almost like he’d hoped they’d be when Courtney first told him she was pregnant. While he was studying and teaching, she was taking care of the baby, and in the evening, they had dinner together, nothing elaborate, usually rice or beans with a little cheese or chicken, whatever they could make quickly. As Joshua started crying less, they started talking again: mostly about the state of affairs in Babyville, but also about history and poetry and interesting (or stupid) things that had happened during the day. They found themselves holding hands again, while Joshua was in his swing or on a blanket under his jungle gym. If they still went to sleep on opposite sides of the bed, by morning they were usually curled up against each other. They even had sex a few times, and at the beginning of October, they spent a whole, crazy day in a cheap motel while Sandra was taking care of Joshua. They felt a little guilty for telling David’s mother that they were going to a history conference, but even the guilt was kind of fun. It made them feel like they were mischievous kids getting away with something, instead of what they were: the only two people from their college graduating class—according to the alumni newsletter anyway—who’d already started a family.

When things started to go badly again, David initially blamed himself. The semester wasn’t going very well. Professor Vinton was unhappy with the revisions David had done over the summer to the paper they both hoped could be published. The disapproval of his mentor made him deeply insecure about his ability to do scholarship; still, when he realized his mood was bringing down Courtney’s, he worked hard to get over it, or at least hide it. He tried so hard to make her happy again, but it didn’t make any difference. Within days, they were right back to where they’d been. His wife was utterly miserable and he had no idea what to do for her.

At some point he did think to ask if she was still taking her sedatives, though he wasn’t surprised that the question irritated her. “You heard the doctor say they’re addictive,” she said. “I can’t keep taking them forever.”

They were picking up the dishes from the table. Courtney was upset that Joshua had gone to sleep later than usual. David was tired, but she looked exhausted. She had deep circles under her eyes and her normally pink face looked wan and depleted. He felt his heart clutch when he noticed she was wearing his college sweatshirt, the one he’d given her junior year, when they realized they were in love and she wanted to have it to sleep in when he couldn’t be there. “I’m just worried, Court,” he said softly. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Really? It seems like the main thing you want is for me to keep my mouth shut.”

And just like that, his warm feeling for her disappeared. This had happened so often he was no longer surprised. He stared at her blankly, thinking
if only you would.

By three and a half months, Joshie’s colic and constant crying had become a thing of the past. He was still underweight, in the bottom ten percent on the pediatrician’s growth chart, but he continued to be healthy and he seemed so happy. His days were spent rolling on the floor, sucking his toes, raising his big head, cooing and gurgling and giggling and laughing. David’s love for him was so natural and uncomplicated. If Courtney had done anything to indicate that she couldn’t take care of him, anything even vaguely reminiscent of that night when she was cleaning out the spices, he would have stepped in. But every night when he got home, the baby was well fed, dressed neatly, and blissfully unaware that his mother was revving herself up to bitch about something else.

Of course David never said that she was bitching. That he’d allowed himself to even think the word disturbed him, but what else could you call her aimless complaining that seemed to be a gross overreaction to everything from their next-door neighbor’s daughter, a cute kid who had apparently made an innocent remark about the short-lived rash on Joshua’s cheeks, to Courtney’s brother, who had given them an expensive high chair, not to be nice, according to Courtney, but to “throw his success in my face.” Absolutely anyone was capable of upsetting her: David of course, but also her mother, his mother, his friends from grad school, their friends from college, the editors of every literary magazine to whom she submitted her writing, the clerk at the post office, even a newscaster on television. The sole exception was Joshua, whom she always saw as perfect, if slightly pitiable, because, according to her, “He was born to a mess of a mother and a father who doesn’t care.”

David really did try. He even pushed her to go to a therapist, though he’d hated his own brief experience with a psychologist when his parents were divorcing, which was supposed to help him deal with his feelings but instead had merely confirmed his teenage belief that the best way to handle an emotional problem was to think about something else. Predictably, Courtney refused to consider seeing someone, but she also accused him of having turned into the very thing he hated. “So you think I need a shrink now, David? What are you going to do next time I cry? Call me a crazy bitch?”

He felt deeply betrayed that she’d used his memory of his father against him. Though he didn’t argue with her, he wondered how much more of this he could take. He thought of himself as the kind of guy who would never leave his wife, but he didn’t see how he could keep letting her treat him like this, day after day. He was determined not to be his father, but he also didn’t want to be in the position of his mother, who’d taken far too much abuse in her marriage. There was such a thing as too much patience.

But still, he kept on trying for another miserable week. She was always angry when he was home, which was bad enough, but the phone calls were becoming intolerable. He was back to tutoring again, gone a lot more than he wanted to be, but he had no choice: they were out of money. She interrupted him at least two or three times a day to tell him about some problem. Most of them didn’t seem serious, and the ones that did only served to remind him how manipulative Courtney could be. On Thursday night, when he was leading a study group, she told him the rain was coming through the ceiling and flooding the apartment. He’d rushed home to find a small wet spot, not even a puddle. On Sunday, while he was helping a high school student with grammar, she told him that something was wrong with the oven, something dangerous. He’d rushed home to find she just needed to light the pilot. And then on Tuesday evening, after he’d decided he was not going to rush home, no matter what (even though he wished he could be there because it was Joshie’s four-month birthday), she told him the baby was sick. He’d hurried back faster than usual only to discover that his son was fine. No fever, no vomiting, not even a runny nose. When he confronted her, she said, “He seemed like he was getting sick.” She didn’t even apologize.

Unfortunately, on that Tuesday evening, he’d rushed out of the seminar taught by Professor Vinton. Though he’d been deeply apologetic the next day, he wasn’t entirely surprised when the professor suggested they meet at a local pizza parlor that night, to discuss “your progress in the program.” It was an ominous request, as two of his friends in the department confirmed. Professor Vinton was notorious for using off-campus locations for delivering bad news. Supposedly, the professor thought it made it easier for the student to hear bad news away from school; it undoubtedly made it easier for him to escape if the student reacted badly.

David called Courtney around noon to tell her he was having dinner with his advisor. She said, “Fine,” and she really did seem fine about it. But around five o’clock, she called to say that she needed him to come home early tonight. “I’m not feeling very well,” she said.

“Do you seriously expect me to believe you’re sick? After what you—”

“Okay, I’m not sick,” she began. “It’s just—”

“I don’t have a choice. I have to go to this dinner. It will probably determine my future in the program.”

“And of course your future is more important than me,” she said—and hung up.

He hoped that was the last of it. He was nervous enough about this meeting without adding unnecessary stress. But when she called again, at 6:52, he’d just arrived at the restaurant. He was outside, rubbing his hands together because he’d forgotten his gloves, planning how to defend the latest version of his paper and make the case that he had the ability and commitment to cut it in the profession. He was so tense that he answered the phone without thinking.

“You have to come home,” she said. No
hello
, no
I hope you’re all right
, no
I understand how important this is.

“I told you, I can’t.”

“But I really need your help.”

“I’ll leave as early as I can. That’s all I can promise.”

“I’m not doing very well, David. I’m serious.”

“Well neither am I.” He exhaled. “I wish you could see that this is our future, too. I have to support our family.”