“You think so?” I ask, a bit surprised by the assumption, adding, “I don’t have many people to shop for. Just James and Grace and—” I hesitate “—Mia.”
He pauses and between us a moment of silence passes in respect for Mia. It could be uncomfortable and yet it’s happened nearly a million times in the past few months, anytime her name is so much as mentioned. “You don’t seem like a procrastinator,” the detective says after a moment.
I laugh. “I have too much time on my hands to procrastinate,” I say and it’s true. With James at work all day, what else do I have to do besides shop for holiday gifts?
“Have you always been a homemaker?” he asks then and, sitting up straighter, uncomfortable, I have to wonder, how did we get from Christmas décor and the weather to this? I hate the word homemaker. It’s very 1950s and outdated. It has a negative connotation now, something that it didn’t necessarily have fifty-some years ago.
“And by homemaker you mean?” I ask, adding, “We have a cleaning lady, you know. And I cook, sometimes, but usually James is late and I end up eating by myself. So I don’t think you can really say I make the home. If you mean have I always been unemployed—”
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” he interrupts. He looks embarrassed, sitting beside me on the floor, prying the lights apart. He is making significant headway, much better than me. A strand of lights lies nearly untangled before him and as he leans over to test them in the socket, I’m astonished that they all work.
“Bravo,” I say, and then a lie: “I’m not offended.” I pat his hand, which is something I’ve never done before, any sort of gesture that intruded upon our three feet of physical space.
“I worked in interior design for a while,” I say.
He eyes the room, taking in the details. I did decorate our home myself, one of the few things I’m proud of, my job as a mother falling short. It was something that made me feel accomplished, something I hadn’t experienced in a long, long time, since before the girls were born and my life became equated with changing soaked diapers and wiping tossed mashed potatoes off my hardwood floors.
“You didn’t like it?” Detective Hoffman asks.
“Oh, no. I loved it.”
“What happened? If you don’t mind me prying...” I think to myself: he has a handsome smile. It’s sweet, juvenile.
“Children happened, Detective,” I say casually. “They change everything.”
“Did you always want kids?”
“I guess so. I dreamed of children since I was a child—it’s something every woman thinks about.”
“Is motherhood a calling, as they say? Something a woman is instinctively programmed to do?”
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ecstatic when I found out I was carrying Grace. I loved being pregnant, feeling her move inside me.” He blushes, embarrassed with this sudden personal revelation.
“When she was born, it was a wake-up call. I had dreamed of rocking my child to sleep, soothing her with the sound of my voice. What I faced was sleepless nights, utter delirium from lack of sleep, intense crying that couldn’t be soothed by anything. There were food fights and temper tantrums and for years I didn’t have the time to file my own nails or wear makeup. James stayed at the office late and when he did come home, he wanted little to do with Grace anyway—he wiped his hands of any child-rearing. That was my job—the all-day, all-night, exhausting, thankless job, and at the end of the day he always seemed confused when I didn’t have time to pick up his dry cleaning or fold a load of laundry.”
There’s silence. This time, uncomfortable silence. I’ve said too much, been too candid. I stand from my perch, begin poking Christmas-tree branches into their place on the center pole. The detective attempts to ignore my admission, laying the finished strands of lights in parallel rows. There’s more than enough to decorate the tree and so he asks if I’d like a hand and I say sure.
We’re nearly halfway finished with the tree when he says to me, “But then you had Mia. You must have got the knack of motherhood somewhere along the way.”
I know he means well, a compliment, but I’m struck by the fact that what he’s taken from my earlier admission was not that motherhood is a tough job, but that I didn’t have what it took to be a good mother.
“We tried for years to conceive Grace. We nearly gave up. Afterwards, well, I guess we were naive. We thought Grace was our miracle baby. Certainly it wouldn’t happen again. And so we weren’t cautious with Mia. And then, one day it happened—the morning sickness, the fatigue. I knew right away that I was pregnant. I didn’t tell James for days. I wasn’t sure how he’d react.”
“How did he react?”
I take the next branch from the detective’s hand, thrust it into the tree. “Denial, I suppose. He thought I was wrong, that I misread the signs.”
“He didn’t want another child?”