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“No,” he agreed. “He wouldn’t. Because he takes care of people when he cares for them. Regardless of what sacrifice that means making on his end. Turns out you can’t ever get away from him once he’s decided he cares about you,” he said and laughed. “But he means well in his own fucked up way.”
The most accurate way to describe Jersey that I’d ever heard.
“Bad time?” Utah asked from the side entry to the garage behind both of us. I panicked a little when I realized I was still squeezing Kyle’s hand nearly as hard as I could, but his presence brought me a sense of comfort that no one else around here did, even if I couldn’t prevent myself from giggling like a psycho every time someone said his name. He knew the Jersey who none of us knew. The one who existed before he became Jersey. Talking to him wasn’t anything at all like talking to Jersey, but he was giving me the tiniest glimpses into what existed behind those icy blue eyes. I could feel like there was a piece of Jersey here between us when Kyle talked about him.
“Indy just got here,” Utah said. “And Memphis has something else to show us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
jersey
THEN
We’d only had the baby home for a few days. Faith Elizabeth. She was perfect in every way. Healthy and full of chubby, little baby rolls. Somehow, also the single most frightening thing I’d ever experienced in my life. And that was saying something coming from a man like me. We’d gone to the baby class, the one that was supposed to tell men how to behave during delivery. I knew where to put pressure on Liz’s hips, how to rub her back, to let her try to break the bones in my hand when it was time to push. But for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why there hadn’t been a class dedicated entirely to surviving the first week with a new baby. I would’ve paid any amount of money just to have had someone tell me how the fuck I was supposed to drive the twenty minutes from the hospital back to the house with a brand new, totally defenseless human, who I created, strapped into the car seat behind me. There was absolutely no way that contraption could keep her alive if someone drove right into the side of my car. And then I’d have to kill everyone involved. What a shitty way to start parenthood that would be.
As far as what I was supposed to be doing once we did make it to the house — a twenty-minute drive that turned into an hour because nothing in this fucking world could force me to move that car over 20mph — where were the instructions that told me how to help my wife? Anything at all would’ve been appreciated. The nurses explained that Faith would need to eat at least every three hours, maybe even more often since Liz wanted to breastfeed exclusively and something about babies burning through breast milk faster than formula. They explained that her diapers were going to be horrendous for a few days but that it would get better; that she’d need changed very frequently in the beginning months. Sometimes it might take as little as holding her directly against my skin to calm her down, and sometimes she’d scream and cry for no apparent reason and there would be nothing we could do to stop it.
That was it.
That was the entirety of the fucking lesson.
Welcome to being a dad.
Good luck, keep her alive, bye.
We were okay for three whole days. Or maybe it had actually been closer to seven months. Fuck if I knew. Time was the most foreign concept I’d ever known in that first week. Liz said from the very beginning of her pregnancy that she always wanted to breastfeed. I never understood why, but she talked about it endlessly. The benefits for both of them, the bonding, that she’d be able to continue caring for our baby beyond keeping her inside. It mattered to Liz, so it mattered to me; even if I didn’t fully understand why bottles and formula were the enemy in my wife’s mind. But postpartum depression hit Liz like a fucking freight train.
At some point during the fourth night, Liz stopped getting out of bed when Faith would cry. I touched her arm, thinking maybe she was just exhausted enough to sleep right through the wailing. But she was wide awake. She shoved my hand off and rolled away. I did the only thing I could think of doing, as a male with perfectly sculpted but completely useless nipples. I changed Faith’s diaper, took my shirt off, and paced the halls of our house holding her against me as tightly as I could without feeling like I was squishing her soft, little body. She fell back asleep in the middle of me telling her that Mommy just needed a break for a minute, and I’d never felt more successful in my life. I went back into her room to lay her into her crib – because I remembered the safe sleep speech like it had been driven into my brain with a hammer. She had to be by herself in a crib. Except she was awake and screaming at me again the moment my hands were off of her. Scared the fuck out of me so I picked her right back up and went to the doorway of our bedroom.
“Liz,” I said quietly. “She’s going to need to eat soon, honey.”
She didn’t move. She didn’t say anything.
So, I went back to pacing around the house. Talking about everything and nothing.
This is a picture of your grandparents.
Do you hate the color of your bedroom? Because I do. Nobody likes yellow. Well, I guess Mama does, and we’re not really allowed to argue with her.
Maybe we can convince her to change it to orange someday, huh? We’ll say it’s for Tigger rather than Pooh Bear. He’s better anyway.
But she didn’t fall back asleep this time. She continued to cry, and it only got louder with every hour that passed. I couldn’t get Liz out of bed. Nothing I said or did got her up, no matter the noise that Faith made. Liz started crying too at some point, but she wouldn’t even say anything.
My parents only lived ten minutes away. They managed to get me through the first week of being a baby without letting me starve to death. My mom would know what to do. I tucked Faith back into the car seat of my nightmares and put her back in the car to try to mentally prepare myself to drive again with her in the vehicle. Ten minutes. We could make that drive.
The sun was barely starting to come up and my parents liked their sleep. There was no way they’d already just be awake this time of day. I probably should’ve called them first, but my frantic pounding on their front door along with the sounds of a screaming infant brought my mom to the door quickly enough. I told her what the night had been like and she just fucking left the house. Told me to keep rocking Faith, told me to hold her close and tight. That if I needed a minute, to give the baby to my dad, who also looked horrified by that idea. Then she was gone, in her car, driving away.
She was back in record time with a small grocery bag though. She had me hand Faith off to my dad and she showed me how to prepare a bottle with the formula she’d also bought. She showed me how to warm it since Faith was used to breast milk that was also warm. She told me over and over again that Faith wouldn’t know what to do because she’d never used a bottle either, but that I could make it easier by holding it at a certain angle, by feeding her while I held her against me with my shirt off. She said that when Faith had her fill of the bottle, to hold her up on my shoulder and pat her back until she burped, to change her diaper again, and then she’d be back asleep in no time. I tried desperately to absorb everything that she was firing into my brain. But as soon as she had me set up in my dad’s rocking chair next to their fireplace, baby tucked in close and both of us trying to learn how to use that bottle, my mom was headed back for the door. She had to have seen the absolute panic on my face when I asked where she was going because she actually laughed out loud at it.
“I’m going back to your house to be with your wife, Vance,” she said, like it should’ve been obvious. “Sometimes people get so caught up in loving the new baby that they seem to forget the mother still needs love and care too. Especially the mothers who struggled emotionally before the baby.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
jersey
“Look alive, pretty boy.”
Intense pin prickles in the hair on the back of my head told me someone was grabbing it, and then blinding white light in front of my eyes suggested someone had slammed my forehead against something solid. I tried to blink myself back into reality, but all I wanted to do was sleep. I was surprised to find that I could move my arms. I thought I’d been strapped back into the weird table handcuffs.
