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Ruby blinked at me. "That's exactly what I'm proposing. I need to do this. I think it will be a re-set for me, and I could use the extra set of hands. My mother would love to help."
"I'd love to help too. Just tell me what to do. I've offered to hire you a night nurse, I've offered to get someone to do the cooking and the cleaning, I'll do anything--"
Ruby held up a hand. "That's not what I need. This is. I want a month in California to get myself together."
"No." I couldn't even stomach the thought. "You cannot take Athena across country for a month."
Ruby looked around, leaning forward on her elbows and then focusing her gaze on me. Her voice was measured, steady. "You either let me go, Jack, or I leave. And I think the optics of you letting me go are more along the lines of what you want."
So I let her go. It was the worst Mother's Day I could have imagined, but for her, it ended up being the best. I won't write here--again--all that happened during her time away or after she came back, but suffice it to say that things changed, and now here we are four years later, and I've learned what Ruby needs from me. Do I wish it had never happened? Of course. I would have loved it if having our first child had been more like it is in the movies: a loving, bonding, natural progression of a happy marriage. But in truth, having children together is a contract; an agreement. I agree to provide food and shelter and be the bad guy who has taken my wife's freedom, and she agrees to give up that freedom in order to raise two healthy, well-adjusted children. Bingo: parenthood.
Today we took the girls to the park, had a picnic, gave Ruby a bunch of flowers, and no one said a word about living across country for a month. All in all, it was a decent Mother's Day, at least from my perspective.
Ruby sits up under the umbrella and squints in the sunlight. Reading Jack's version of that first Mother's Day brings back a flood of feelings and memories. God, it had been hard, havingAthena. For as much as a child is a natural progression in life and in a loving relationship, it certainly upends every singe thing you know. She remembers now the way this tiny, toothless human would wail night and day, always hungry for more than her sore breasts could offer.
Ruby also remembers the sinking feeling she'd gotten the first time Jack kissed her on the cheek, ran a hand softly over Athena’s small head, and walked out the door as if his life hadn't changed a bit. She'd watched him leave, the door closing behind him, all the while thinking: "Wait...what about me? What if I want to leave for the day and just do whatever I want to do?" It had been a naive, childish thought, but she'd truthfully never realized that in gestating and birthing a whole person, she was in essence creating a heavy anchor that she alone had to carry. It had been maddening. And the exhaustion, the sadness, the feelings of being alone--they'd all been relentless. Remembering it now takes Ruby back to a place that was supposed to be the happiest time of her life, but which instead had been the hardest.
She puts a bookmark in the journal and sets it on the blanket, wrapping her arms around her knees as she watches Dexter pacing along the water’s edge, still talking on the phone.
Going to her mother's house had been the best decision she could have made; it was the only thing for her to do. Had she not gone to Patty's house in Santa Barbara for a month, she would have left Jack--she's sure of that now. And if she'd left Jack, she never would have had Harlow, never would have been his First Lady, and would now, in fact, be an entirely different woman. How strange to think: those little forks in the road, those seemingly small decisions all lead down a very particular path. Without taking those same roads, and going over those same speed bumps, Ruby would be somewhere else, living some other life.
At the time, Patty had been somewhat hesitant to help her escape from the trappings of her own making, but she'd welcomed Ruby and Athena with open arms because she wanted to help her daughter, wanted to hold her grandbaby. She'd cautioned Ruby against running away from her marriage, and had felt strongly that Ruby should stay and see a doctor, but in the end, she'd relented and told Ruby to come. To bring Athena. To stay.
Without even knowing it, Patty had saved them all.
Santa Barbara was an oasis for Ruby. Landing at LAX with a squalling infant in her arms, she'd felt her shoulders relax instantly at the sight of blue skies and palm trees.
"Well," Patty had said, greeting her at Baggage Claim with outstretched arms so that Ruby could deposit Athena into the warm embrace of her grandmother, "let's get you back on your feet, shall we?"
For the first three nights, Ruby had slept soundly in the guest room at her mother's house with the windows open to let in the late spring breeze. Patty had taken over the nights with Athena, feeding her the milk that Ruby had pumped, and changing her diapers while Ruby slept away the dark circles under her eyes. On the fourth night, she'd sat across from her daughter at the dinner table and sipped a glass of red wine.
"You look more rested, honey," Patty said, eyeing her over the rim of the wine glass. "So now you need to get into a routine here. Athena will start to shift her sleeping and waking hours to adjust to the time difference on this coast, and you can get up at night with her again."
Ruby swallowed hard; sleeping through the night since arriving in California had been a beautiful gift, and she wasn't entirely ready to give up her eight-hour stretches of shut eye again. "You're right," she admitted, feeling sheepish about asking her mom to take over the parenting duties for her, even for a few days.
"I love that you two are here," Patty said, pushing her salad plate aside and picking up a stray piece of spinach that had fallen on the tablecloth. She set it on the edge of her plate and put her elbows on the table casually. "And I want to offer you the kind of respite you need to start feeling good again. But I have to ask a few questions." From the bedroom, Athena started to cry, but just little discontented mewls, not a full-bodied scream. "She's okay for the moment," Patty assured her daughter. "Trust me."
"Okay, shoot," Ruby said. In response to Athena's cries, her breasts began to tingle with the letdown of milk.
"We haven't really talked about how Jack feels about you decamping to this side of the country. Is there something I need to know about your marriage?"
Patty was too wise for Ruby to try to pull the wool over her eyes, so Ruby sighed, letting her head fall forward as she looked down at the table.
"He's not happy about it, but I basically told him that if he didn't let me come here, I was leaving him."
Patty was silent for a long moment. When Ruby looked up and met her mother's eye, she saw curiosity there, but also understanding.
"Have you talked to your doctor?" Patty asked, lifting her wine glass. "I would say most women feel some anxiety and depression after giving birth. I'm not going to go all out and say you're suffering from postpartum depression, but honey, you could be." Her eyes were filled with maternal concern. "If you're going to stay here, then I want you to see someone."
"Why? Just because I'm realizing what a fallacy it is to ever think that two people actually raise a childtogether? Because I got hit in the face with the reality of motherhood?" Ruby stood up and paced the dining room, wanting to go to Athena, whose cries had become more insistent. "I'm wild about Athena, and I love being a mother, but I didn't know that giving birth meant that I was never going to be me again."
"You'll be you again," Patty said calmly. "It'll just take a while."
"I thought recovering from birth was just getting back into shape."
"Ha," Patty said without mirth. "If only."
"But instead, I'm solely responsible for caring for a newborn, getting my body back into shape, acting mentally competent on very little sleep, organizing all of the household and family things, and oh, hey, rekindling our sex life."
