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I stared at her in disbelief. “So you’re saying I have to go to church to get my son back?”
“No, of course not. But it’s important that you don’t continue to be isolated.”
“So I need to make friends.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Do you have friends?”
What a question. “A few.” I thought of Mike, and maybe Angela. Wow. “Actually,” I told her, “I’m friendly with my upstairs neighbor. I’m helping her write a letter to her daughter this afternoon.” I said this a bit belligerently, even though I didn’t mean to. It was just so hard not to sound defensive when someone was analyzing your every move.
“That’s great,” Susan enthused. “I’m so pleased.”
Now, as the bus trundles down the highway to Wethersfield, past a monochrome near-winter landscape, I let my mind drift. I have no idea what to expect from this parenting class, and it makes me think about when I first became a parent.
I didn’t even realize I was pregnant for a little while, because I was that naïve. Marco had been using protection but not reliably and I hadn’t let myself think that way—that I could have a baby. It just didn’t seem possible. I had only just turned nineteen; a few months before, I’d been in high school.
And then my period was late, and I started feeling tired and achy and nauseous, and I’d been watching some stupid romcom, I can’t remember the name, but the main character had all the classic symptoms and had a well-duh moment and then I did too.
I didn’t say anything to Marco; by that time I’d finished my community service at the nursing home and I’d got a job working at Michaels Crafts in Farmington. I just restocked shelves and mopped the floors, but I loved the atmosphere—the reels of bright ribbon, the swatches of fabric, the Styrofoam shapes and fake flowers and jars full of beads and crystals.
After my shift one evening, I walked to the nearest CVS and bought a pregnancy test. The cashier was a guy my age, the kind of guy who probably played football and dated a cheerleader, and I went crimson with mortification as he searched the slim white box for a barcode. It seemed to take ages, and when I accidentally met his eye, he gave me a little smirk.
Funnily enough, it was that smirk that made me realize I wasn’t actually worried or scared about being pregnant. I was excited. I met his smirking expression with a proud one of my own, and then I put the test in my bag and took the bus home, feeling as if everyone must be able to see it even though it was safely tucked away.
Marco wasn’t home yet, which was just as well. I took the test and stared at that magic little window and even though the instructions had said to wait for three minutes, it only took about ten seconds before two blazing pink lines showed up—and I laughed out loud.
I’ll never forget the feeling I had just then—of joy, and excitement, and hope, all untainted by any fear or uncertainty. It felt so clear to me then. I wasn’t alone. I had someone to love, someone who would love me. I wasn’t just Beth McBride, drifting through life. I was Mommy. Or I would be soon. I didn’t even think about Marco—not as a father or a husband or anything at all. I just thought about me and my baby. Which, I suppose, was pretty indicative of the problems between Marco and me.
In any case, he was shocked, and then he was worried, and then he decided to embrace it all and talked about getting married, although he never actually asked me or bought me a ring.
I read everything I could online about pregnancy, and sometimes I would tell Marco things—when the baby was the size of an egg, or a lemon, or a pear, but after that first dazzling display of solidarity, he wasn’t really interested. In fact, as my lovely bump grew so did his discontent. I was tired; I was fat; I was boring. He never said as much, but I could feel it emanating from him like something toxic and I didn’t care. I think, in some dark corner of my heart, I was actually glad. Some part of me just wanted it to be my baby and me.
When the birth came, it was actually easy. My OB had warned me I could have a hard time because I was small and slender, but Dylan was born in less than two hours, which the nurse said had to be a record for a first baby. I didn’t even have to have any pain relief. I didn’t want any; I didn’t want anything to dull my senses or take away from the perfect clarity of the experience.
And then the nurse put Dylan on my chest, all red and squalling, his face scrunched up and his fists bunched by his chin waving furiously, and I fell in love.
I’d thought I loved my baby before, with the swelling of my bump and every precious kick, but I didn’t even know the half of it then. When I looked into Dylan’s deep blue eyes, his little reddened, wizened face, it was like my heart tipped right over and fell into his. I knew I’d never know what it was to be separate again.
I try to remember now how those first few weeks and months of Dylan’s life were—a blur of sleepless nights and endless feeds, and Marco stomping around, annoyed that life wasn’t as easy as it had once been. Looking back, I know I was a bit too indifferent to him; I was entirely wrapped up in Dylan; I couldn’t have cared less about his father. But now, as the bus takes the exit for Wethersfield, I do my best to recall when Dylan started having challenges. When was his first tantrum? When did I realize he wasn’t speaking, that he was scared of so much?
I’m not sure I can pinpoint a time or even a year. I suppose I thought all babies needed to be held all the time, and fed almost as much. I thought all mothers watched their babies sleep and made sure they were breathing. I didn’t think I was different, because I didn’t know what same looked like. If normal has a definition, I never knew what it was.
And in any case, I didn’t mind any of it. I wasn’t looking for a break from Dylan; I was never annoyed that he took so much of my time. I remember stan
ding in a checkout line at the supermarket behind a woman who had a baby the same age as Dylan—about a year old, then. Her little boy was plopped in the front seat of the shopping cart, sticky hands reaching for everything, bright button eyes alight with interest.
“What a cutie,” the checkout lady said, and the woman rolled her eyes.
“He never sleeps. Never stops moving. I can’t get a second’s peace, honestly.” She let out a heavy sigh and shook her head, as if in regret.
I remember watching her with a sort of repulsed curiosity. What kind of mother talked that way about her baby? Of course, I knew what kind of mother did something like that. What kind of mother chose her own comfort over her child’s. Mine.
But I was never, ever going to be like my mother. And in any case, I was happy. Sometimes I think that was the happiest I’ve ever been, when Dylan was small and utterly dependent on me, when every young mother was stuck at home, attached to her child, and neither my son nor I felt like a freak.
The bus rumbles down Wethersfield’s main street, which is as quaint as a postcard, all painted wooden buildings and the typical New England white spire. The Positive Parenting Program (Triple P, as Susan called it) meets in the town’s community center, which is only a few minutes’ walk from the bus stop.
It’s a huge building, as big as a school, with a fitness center, a banqueting room, and several other spacious meeting rooms. A woman at the front desk raises her eyebrows inquiringly and I tell her I’m here for the Triple P course, because I don’t want to say out loud that I need to take a parenting course, but it doesn’t matter because she knows exactly what I’m talking about.
When I approach the function room at the end of a long, carpeted hallway, I see there are two women already there, sitting at a conference table, looking uncertain and out of place.
