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She made it all seem so simple. Want a fresh start? Make the decision. Get a simpler life. A smaller life. One that was manageable, controllable even. It lured me even as it occurred to me that I had already done that. All these years, I had done that. I allowed room for my sister, Zale and Olivia, Bex, Junie, and Minty. A few temporary romantic relationships here and there, strictly surface relationships with the people at the shelter, I hadn’t even allowed myself to adopt a pet, not trusting myself to commit and fearing the pain of loss that love would one day bring.
I had been right about that. Still, I wouldn’t have given up the opportunity to bond with Muffin.
When Bex met Rhys, I made room for him and the twins. That was an easy decision, Rhys was no threat to me. But with Rhys came Barrett, and for the first time since I had moved out of my parents’ home, my small, controlled, peaceful life had been threatened.
I had no regrets. That surprised me and it didn’t. No matter what happened between him and me, there would be a child, one for whom I would give everything.
My mother was wrong about me. Even if I acted selfishly in the future, there were checks and balances I’d built into my life in the shape of friends and family. I was not selfish like my mother claimed, in fact, I’d never been selfish. Her accusing me of selfishness was a classic case of projection. I hoped.
I turned and started heading back. I untied my hoodie from around my waist and pulled it over my head. The beach dwellers were changing. The moms with their young kids were packing up to go home to make dinner, and the teens who had just gotten out of school were taking their place. The sound of their laughter struck me. I didn’t remember laughing much when I was a teen. Even before that, I had learned to make no demands, to lean away from the light, to avoid attracting attention.
These kids had no such compulsion to curb their joy. They whooped it up, chasing each other, teasing, laughing uproariously as the boys picked up the girls and threatened to throw them into the icy water.
My mind skipped along from one topic to the next, like a rock skipping across a pond, stopping on the last time I was here with Barrett back in May. Fucking May. One month a year. One month where I was tormented by my memory and my pain and by all that was taken from me.
I stopped walking and stared at the horizon, caught up in that last thought. Not once had I ever considered my tragedy in terms of something that was taken from me, as something that happened to me, or as something that had been done to me. I’d always looked back on that day as something I had brought upon myself, did to myself, and did to my baby.
I didn’t know what decision I would have made back then if someone gave me the support I’d needed. Maybe I would have made the same decision. Maybe I would have put the child up for adoption. Either way, guilt, shame, and pain would cling to me afterwards.
Maybe I would have tried to be a mother, but I would not have been a good one. Raising my child in that house would have been disastrous for both of us. With the benefit of age, and about a hundred years of therapy, I knew that the child would have been used as another tool to control me.
I had no resources back then. My parents forbade me to tell the few resources I had, namely my friends, teachers, and the parents of my friends. The only other possible source of support might have been the doctors, doctors who had pledged to do no harm, doctors who had failed me.
I watched the kids playing on the beach. They were close to the same age I was, maybe even older. Seeing them, I realized what having no resources truly meant. There were millions of truths and events that led to that day, one of which was the fact that I was not much more than a baby myself, and I had not one person to help me.
I was not a baby now, but when I saw those two pink lines flying into the trash can, I reverted right back into the headspace of that young girl inside me who was trapped, scared, and yearning for an escape, and I took it.
Now that I’d gotten away, I questioned what it was that I was trying to escape. Not the baby, I wanted it, desperately. Certainly not Barrett, I loved him. It was no more than a knee jerk reaction by the woman-child within me who hadn’t healed and whose fear and anger drove her to do things differently.
The truth was that I could raise this child alone, although, with my girls I knew I’d never be alone. I didn’t need to run. I was strong enough to stand on my own, if I had to, but I knew well that I would be standing beside Barrett. Not because of the child, but because he loved me. I didn’t deserve this child, not after what I’d done to the first one, but Barrett did.
I smiled to myself.
My Viking would be an excellent father. I could give him that. I would give him that, I corrected myself with a smile. I thought with a sense of wonder that I would be the one to give that glorious man a child, a curly-haired Viking with kaleidoscope eyes. For the first time a ribbon of happy excitement unfurled in my belly at the thought of giving him the news of the family we had unwittingly created.
I walked until I reached the area of the beach where Barrett and I sat together on the anniversary of the most terrible of days and I stared out over the water. I waited for my thoughts to unravel enough that I could know what to feel.
I didn’t want my mother to find out I was pregnant. I could hear her voice in my head already, ‘What do you mean I can’t see my grandchild? You’re going to take another grandchild away from me?’
The thought was suffocating. I tipped my head back, elongating my neck to alleviate the tightness in my throat. I forced myself to breathe in the fresh air. I was afraid, afraid she’d pick the scabs off my wounds. Afraid she’d twist the proverbial knife. Afraid that her words would replay in my mind, accusing me. I felt helpless to escape her and feeling helpless was the one thing that left me positively enraged.
Rage suffused my whole being at the thought of how she twisted things, how she turned everything around to make herself the victim. Even this horrendous grief, this holy ground, she would not hesitate to desecrate. If she ever uttered those words, there would never again be a way forward for her and I.
My brain short-circuited as I realized that I still held out a flicker of hope that my mother would one day be a mother to me.
Anger: pure, undiluted anger burned through me at the remembrance of her abandonment, her ridicule, her callous dismissal of my feelings, always.
I could accept that the yearning for a mother might never entirely fade, but I would no longer put myself in the path of her abuse. I would, once and for all, cut all ties.
Filled with that heavy sense of loss, I stood, brushed the sand off my bottom and made my way back to the hotel.
Friday night at the hotel restaurant was booming for such a small town. It wasn’t like there were a ton of options here, but it was still busier than I thought it would be. I thought about turning on my phone while I waited for a table, but I wasn’t ready. There were things I needed to face tonight so I could give Barrett what he deserved.
I opened the menu instead.
Every combination of diners occupied the tables. There were men who came together straight from work, couples out for an early date, young families with babies and toddlers in highchairs, older families with kids chattering away to their tired looking parents, and even older families with teens tapping away on their cell phones, their parents looking at them and each other in dismay. Finally, there was a family that was older, yet. A set of elderly grandparents, a middle-aged couple, their children with their significant others, and a toddler in a highchair. Every possible combination that I could look forward to, presented itself to me.
I looked at my little table, with the empty chair in front of me. He would have been sixteen had I let him live. I was sitting at that table with the empty seat across from me, looking forward to all the stages of family life Barrett and I were heading into, while simultaneously stuck in my grief for the child that was missing, burdened with guilt over my happiness for the baby that I would allow to grow inside me.
