A young couple walking in the opposite direction stopped to admire Gracie. “Your baby is a cutie,” the woman said. She was talking to us both, assuming, as anyone would, that she was ours. Not mine and sort of his. But ours. Neither of us said anything. Who would impose on strangers with a long, painful explanation of their relationship history? Um, actually he left when I was pregnant, and he just met this baby the day before yesterday or the day before that. We smiled stiffly, walked on; the spell was broken. We were semi-strangers living on separate coasts who happened to have a baby in common.
The next day we drove to the airport making halting small talk. We’d left the baby, loather of long car rides, at home with my mom. Alone together we were awkward. Without her burbling in the backseat, our whole premise for being in the same car was questionable.
“You did great with her,” I said, to say something.
It was true. Brian had made it successfully through the entire visit, despite his worries or because of his caution, without injurious incident. Saying good-bye, he’d told Gracie, “I’m so glad I didn’t drop you,” and kissed the top of her head.
I thought that leaving her again, to fly back across the country, was a form of dropping. But I certainly wasn’t prepared to ask him to stay. I was confused about what kind of time I wanted to spend with Brian, if any. Still, this visit was an unmitigated good for Gracie; she officially knew her father. And he knew her.
Standing beside the curb at departures, I felt as though anything were possible, as if Brian might fling himself back in the car and beg to stay; or get on the plane and lift out of sight for all time. Or that, lacking the courage to move definitively in either direction, we might grow old loitering, staring at the ground. We hugged briefly. Mumbled our good-byes.
Brian looked up. “Thank you for making room for me with her.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. A traffic cop swooshed her hand through the air. Time’s up. I got back in the car, Brian walked into the terminal. Everyone back to their corner.
By the time I arrived home, there was a message on my machine, left from the gate before he boarded. “Hi.” Long pause. “I’m just calling because…” Dead air, followed by muffled airport sounds. “The last few days have been the happiest of my life.”
10
In the days that followed, I pictured Gracie as a balloon and below her, holding the string, hand over hand, were Brian and I. We would tether her here, the two of us. But beside my hope was a destructive impulse of unsettling proportions. If I let the image linger, I could see myself stamping on Brian’s feet, kicking out his knees, biting his face, scratching him off the string. This girl is mine. Back, the fuck, up.
Five pregnant months of falling asleep alone except for Lulu, four months of caring for Gracie solo, transfusion by transfusion. My one-handed life. The way he’d left without a clear plan of when he might return. Or even if. Fuck him, fuck him for saying such a thing. Only bless him too.
I didn’t share that message with anyone. Not my mom, not Cassie, not Suzi, not even with my therapist, Virginia.
I’d known Virginia since I was five years old. She was my mom’s therapist before she was mine. Fairly common in the ’70s and ’80s when there was a more gestalt approach. Frowned on today. But it worked for us.
My mom found her during a tumultuous time: she was in her midtwenties with a young daughter to support, a drug-addicted boyfriend, marginal work, and overbearing parents who wanted, above all, for my mom to look, act, and be uncontroversial, which was the one thing my mom could not do, even if she’d wanted to, which she didn’t. Enter Virginia, with her warmth, humor, tolerance for untidiness. She was the calmest, sanest person in my world by a wide margin but also antic, playful.
In the beginning my mom would drag me along to her sessions to be babysat by one of Virginia’s teenage daughters or to linger at the pasture fence, chatting with her horses. My favorite was an obstinate pony named Loggermoss. Who would name their pony Loggermoss? I’d thought. What did that even mean? I asked Virginia once, and she’d said, “Oh, I can’t remember, but isn’t it fun to say?”
Virginia was often late, fluttering into her office with a coterie of bags clinging to one wrist, trying to fluff her wispy hair, apologizing. But when she sat down, you had her undivided attention. It was like sitting in direct sunlight. She illuminated whatever was in the room—the crux of your problem or apex of your potential.
As a rule, I told Virginia everything. But during my first session after Brian’s visit I did not tell her The last few days have been the happiest of my life. I wanted to hold on to those words, to turn over the obscure promise in them, a stone in the palm, casting off heat. I wanted to think about what they meant without anyone else’s voice in my head.
I did tell Virginia that Brian had spent every minute of his visit fretting about dropping the baby. Wasn’t that courting disaster?
“I think that’s called being Jewish,” Virginia responded.
“Fine,” I said, “if he cares so much, how can he tolerate being away from us now, again, even for a minute?”
“Are you asking why he can’t turn on a dime?” Virginia said. “Do people operate that way?”
“I don’t care how people operate,” I said. “Why would I even consider taking a risk with someone who has already hurt me more than I even knew I could be hurt?”
“I don’t know,” Virginia said. “Why would you?”
I scanned her long, thoughtful face. I knew that Virginia had raised her (surprise) fourth daughter, alone. She’d gotten unexpectedly pregnant very late in life, and the father had opted out. Given her own history, I kept expecting Virginia to advocate for single parenthood over the more messy enterprise of partnership. Maybe even advocate against men altogether. But that didn’t seem to be her drift. She seemed to be alert, as ever, for the possibility of growth.
In the 1980s, in the wake of Pol Pot, Virginia had traveled to the Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand. While there, she sponsored several Cambodian families for relocation in the Bay Area, where, ultimately, she helped them find work and settle into new lives. If people could lose everything—country, livelihood, identity, beloved family—and still find a way forward, however tentative, then surely there was hope for someone with problems as modest as mine.