“Explain to me what happened.”
I look away. She won’t understand. Not this woman, who is always so in control of everything. The woman who has never erred in her motherly duties, never skipped a beat over handling things, without the assistance of a man.
Meanwhile, I’ve fallen apart because of baby formula. Clumping baby formula. I’d moved it to a bowl, had gotten out the smallest whisk we had, and had beaten the mixture until my palms blistered. Still, clumps. Clumps and I DIDN’T HAVE TIME FOR THEM. When I’d tried to pour the formula into the bottle, it had clung to the lip of the bowl and dripped back, getting all over the counter, another waste of time. I’d taken out my frustration on my cell phone first, a forceful and intentional slam of iPhone against the kitchen floor, the job finished by the heel of my shoe. I’d stared down at the cracked screen and felt no relief. I’d gone for the glass bowl next—its crash much more satisfying, the noise delightfully loud until Bethany had reacted, her eyes pinching shut, her mouth opening, a shrill scream pealing out. I eyed her, her feet kicking, one sock missing, her body bucking against the high chair. Gripping the bottle of formula in my hand, I’d attempted to take a deep, uninterrupted breath.
It was clear what should be done. Crying babies should be picked up and soothed, rocked and fed and burped. The issue was that I wasn’t the woman to do that job. I was a woman who hadn’t written in four days, with a deadline looming, who had barely slept in the last forty-eight hours. And Bethany NEVER SLEEPS. She NEVER STOPS. She CONSTANTLY NEEDS, NEEDS, NEEDS. And I couldn’t deal with it. Not when I had another family that needed me. John and Maria and their special-needs daughter, a beautiful autistic girl who hides a secret from them. Their story was waiting on me, needing a conclusion, one built from words that WOULDN’T COME because of my stupid pregnancy and screwed-up hormones and why did I do this for him? Why did I ruin everything for a man who waltzes off to a job that doesn’t even cover our car payments? He doesn’t even think about my work. My worlds. My sanity. And this—she—wouldn’t stop crying, wouldn’t stop chipping away at all of that.
“Bethany was fine.” I don’t want to explain myself to my mother. I should be able to run my own house without being questioned and judged. “Simon overreacted.”
“She went to the hospital, Helena.”
Frustration bulges at my seams. “He overreacted. She didn’t need to go to the hospital.” She hadn’t. Even the doctor said so, though he’d couched it in the most evasive way possible. Bethany had been dehydrated. She had thrown the bottle of formula down on the floor and screamed out the moisture in her body. If she had just held the bottle, or stopped screaming—it would have all been fine. Instead, in those hours I had left her alone, she’d worked herself into a fit.
“How many words did you write?” The question is a cold accusation, spoken by a woman who knows me well. 3,008. The most in months. I couldn’t stop once that started. It was impossible.
“I don’t know,” I lie, turning away, my eyes catching on the clock. An hour we’ve wasted on this discussion. An hour of piling blame, worsening my guilt, a waste of precious time I could have spent writing. This evening is a rare opportunity for productivity, Simon carting Bethany away with a glare, his face haughty, as if he is punishing me, as if this would teach me. HA. Please don’t throw me in the briar patch, Briar Rabbit. Pretty, pretty, pretty please.
“It was four hours, Helena. Four. Hours.” She sticks the final words as if she’s a gymnast nailing a landing, as if those two syllables prove anything. She doesn’t understand I was doing Bethany a favor, leaving her down in the kitchen while I went upstairs, my office door shut, music turned up to drown out her screams. I left so I wouldn’t pick her up. I left so I wouldn’t break her, like I had the phone, like I had the bowl. I left her to protect her.
“Helena.” Something in her voice makes me turn back. “I think you need some time away.”
Mark looks up from the laptop, his body relaxed in the kitchen chair, some of Debbie’s chicken and rice ignored beside him. His face is calm, as if he didn’t just read something painful, something that stamps UNFIT MOTHER in giant font across my forehead. “Some time away?” he asks.
I pull my hair up, twisting it into a knot, the skin on the back of my neck damp with sweat. “She meant a mental institution.” Mother hadn’t called it that, of course. She’d proposed it as a postpartum treatment center, the sleek brochure touting massage therapists, group classes, and non-stop counseling.
“Did you go?” Mark reaches forward, picking up a fork and casually scooping up a bit of rice, his face almost bored in its serenity. If he hadn’t found success as a writer, he could have been a therapist. The calm tone, the lack of judgment… he’s better than Mother ever was.
“I didn’t fight her. I wanted to go. The idea of weeks away from Simon and Bethany—with no distractions—it sounded like heaven. And I thought…” My words drop off for a beat, and I try to find the right words. “I thought that maybe Simon would understand, once he had to deal with her all of the time.” But he hadn’t. Not perfect Simon. I came back eight weeks later to find a happy baby and husband, both of them working in seamless concert—no need for me at all. In those two months, my mother had also wormed herself into my home—her grocery lists tacked to the fridge, her magazines on my coffee table, new post-natal vitamins and organic foods stocked in our pantry.
In those eight weeks away, I finished my novel, but I lost them both. The next five years were a battle to regain my footing, my marriage, and our family.
A battle I lost.
MARK
She looks good, almost better than she did two weeks ago, when she’d first swung open her door and scowled at him. Part of it is the sun. Just those two days in Memphis, and she’s got a bit of a tan, freckles dotting the surface of that pale skin, her nose a little pink. He hadn’t thought to give her sunscreen, hadn’t thought about the disease and how it changes your skin’s fragility. But sunburnt or not, she looks better. Her shoulders have lost their hunch, her eyes burn with attitude, and she even—on rare occasions—laughs. With Ellen, he used to get a laugh just from smirking at her. But with Helena, each laugh is like the final line of a difficult chapter. Exhausting to get to, but worth the hours of headache when it finally comes.
They are so different, Ellen and Helena. Not only in their personalities, but in how they handled their prognosis. Ellen had fought it in every way she could. Helena… Helena doesn’t seem to care that she is going to die. She doesn’t seem to have fear, or dread, or any emotion whatsoever. The cancer, the medicine—it is all an annoyance to her, something to step over in her path to get to the next page, the next chapter, the next scene. Everything in her is focused on this book.
Her head droops against the office couch, and he considers the pillow, which has shifted out of place underneath her neck. She hadn’t wanted a pillow. She had told him, in the sort of tone you’d use on a disobeying dog, that she wouldn’t be sleeping. “We need to work,” she had chided, shoving her laptop open, her settle into the couch almost defiant. “We have to catch up from this weekend. I’m not going to be sleeping.”