“You know, you’re not the first woman to have gone through something like this.” The older woman shifted into the seat by her daughter and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “It happened to your father and I, many years ago.”
Nicole looked at her more closely. It seemed that for the first time, she saw how her mother’s face truly looked—not just the way she imagined her to be. And she saw that her mother had gotten old without Nicole really noticing. Her eyes had large, deep bags beneath them, and her chin was fleshy and sagging. The skin on her neck was loose and wrinkled.
Mom, you’re old! She wanted to say. When did this happen to you? When did you become this jaded, old lady with rarely a kind word for anyone—including your only daughter?
But just as the urge to slap her had come and gone, so too did this strange feeling of seeing her mother’s age for the first time.
“You never told me that you had a miscarriage,” Nicole said, finally.
Her mother just nodded, as if proud of the fact that she’d had one and also had the guts to keep the pain of it to herself all these years. “Well, you don’t know everything there is to know about me, honey.”
“I’m aware of that, Mom.”
“We were very disappointed when it happened. But I told myself—I said, Barb, it will happen when it’s meant to happen and not a moment sooner. There’s a plan for you and this just wasn’t your time.”
Nicole raised her eyebrows. “That simple, huh?”
“It wasn’t simple, it was just the truth. There’s no use wringing your hands about it. Sometimes these things happen.”
“I don’t know,” Nicole said, quietly. She didn’t want to have such a clinical attitude about the death of her unborn baby. She couldn’t have that attitude—it would be like a second death of sorts, to put the baby out of her mind forever. Didn’t that sweet little child deserve to at least have someone remember she had been growing and striving to be born, and that she’d never even had a chance to live? Didn’t she deserve to at least have someone think of her from time to time and love her in spite of it all?
“Trust me, Nicole. I’m a lot older than you and perhaps I’ve learned a thing or two about being a mother.”
Nicole nodded her head and tried to accept her mother’s words at face value, while still allowing herself to feel what she felt. She didn’t want to start feeling guilty about being sad on top of everything else she was going through.
And then Red stepped in. “Barb, I think I can speak for both of us when I tell you that we truly appreciate your wisdom. I respect the fact that you went through your own difficult moment, and you came through it stronger than before.”
“I just did what had to be done. I still got up and went about my life. I had to work full-time, even back then. I went to work and did my job and nobody would have known that I’d been through a miscarriage.”
Red smiled with patient understanding. “At the same time, Nicole is a different person and she’s sad right now. It’s okay with me if she’s sad for as long as she needs to be.”
“I never said she shouldn’t be sad.”
“Okay, then,” Red smiled. “So we all agree. Nicole’s going to take whatever time she needs to recover from this. We’re all sad, and we support Nicole one hundred percent.”
“I never said anything to the contrary.”
Nicole took a deep breath. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
“I’m being supportive of you and Red. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Yes, and it means a lot to me.”
“Well, I just don’t see why everyone is so doom and gloom around here. It’s not healthy.”
“Nobody’s doom and gloom. We just need a little time.”
“Well you’ve got only so much time. I thought you were planning a wedding.”
“I was, and I will be again. When I feel up to it.”
“Maybe it’s not always the best thing to have so much time and money that you can afford to be depressed. I couldn’t afford to be depressed.”
Red clapped his hands. “What say I have Chef Roland wrangle us up something to eat, huh?”
Nicole’s mother nodded unhappily and Nicole took a deep breath. She didn’t know if she’d ever make it through her mother’s visit. She wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and close her eyes—make everything go away.
But she pushed through the way her mother would have wanted her to.
Chef Roland was at the ready, and he came to the kitchen and cooked them a wonderful lunch of lemon chicken over linguine. Nicole mostly picked at her food, but Red and Barb ate every last bite of theirs.
Despite her protests to the contrary, Barb seemed to love being waited on and catered to, as if it were her secret birthright to have been a queen or a member of the aristocracy. By the end of the day she was drinking wine and talking about art and laughing at every word that came out of Red’s mouth.