Pity was my favorite. Pity had a calm, soothing voice. She made me rest in bed, and she never stopped talking about how unfair this all was. She patted my back and rubbed my arm, and she smelled like the kind of cinnamon toast my mother used to make for me when I was small and tired and out of sorts. The kind that’s crispy on the edge, soft and gooey in the middle with swirls of butter, sugar, and cinnamon seeped deep into the belly. Pity knew I didn’t deserve this fate. She repeated again and again how unfair it was that this happened to me, when mothers all over the world gave up their children willingly. Some neglected or abused them. Pity was compassionate; pity understood; pity knew I could not just get on with life.
Anger was the opposite. He was needy and smelled like air the hour before a hurricane struck, and I was left cold and empty after his visits. He didn’t speak to me; he screamed in my ear that I was robbed. He was enormous with piercing eyes and a viselike grip that grabbed hold of my arms and shook me when I didn’t respond. He wasn’t happy with simple tears; he wanted action, repayment, retribution. Somebody was to blame for this, he said. Don’t give me that healing crap. Anger wasn’t satisfied until I was angry. He giggled when I lashed out at Jack, chortled when I threw my pocketbook with the diaper across the room and followed to stomp and tear at it.
This grief had softened in the last month or so. A better word surely applied, yet this was how it felt. A dulling of the sharp edges. An imperceptible shift inside of me. Simple things—a morning two weeks ago when the clock struck noon before I thought of her—a night when Jack and the girls were at the table, and he made them laugh. He looked at me and winked. I smiled and left the table to wash the dishes. But my hands trembled as I washed the silverware. I saw the hollow space at the base of his throat. I imagined the skin against my lips.
But later in the evening, Jack fell asleep in front of the television, and when I woke up, there was crying throughout the house.
I’d been dreaming about Maddie, and now there was crying and maybe it was all a bad dream. The bedroom was dark. The sheets tangled around my legs. I kicked them off, stumbled to the door, and yanked it open.
Then I was racing around the corner to the sound, to Maddie, and there was Jack, sitting up slowly on the couch, dazed, his eyes trying to focus through the haze of sleep.
And there was Tom Selleck on the television screen, holding a howling baby.
Jack said, “Babe?” and my open palm slammed down on the remote so hard, the battery cover popped off, and I yelled, “Goddammit, Jack!”
And then there was silence. Jack was wide-eyed. When he came over and put his arms around me, I leaned into him and found the hollow space at the base of his throat and pressed my lips against it.
But all I felt was the pounding of my own heart, and all I heard was a crying baby that did not belong to me.
This was the thing not just threatening to destroy us—it was destroying us.
I climbed out of bed, careful not to wake Kat, and tiptoed into Jessica’s room.
She was normally a deep sleeper, and I was thankful when I found her snoring lightly. One less casualty of tonight’s war.
I sat on her bed and stared into the darkness of the doorway across the room, empty of her things now: the changing table replaced with a file cabinet; the crib packed away in the basement; a desk with a calendar hanging above it in its place. As if to say, Look, see? Time goes on.
I drove Kat to school the other day, and as I pulled out of the drop-off area, I saw a class of preschoolers gathered around a teacher. I circled around and parked in the visitor space and studied each one of the girls, wondering if Maddie’s hair would have been long like the girl with the polka-dot raincoat. What sneakers would she have liked? Would her eyes have stayed the same deep blue? Would the birthmark on her tummy have faded? I sat in the car, paralyzed. Not able to move. Sometime later, I drove away. This was my life now. Time unaccounted for. Days lost.
I used to write. It was what I was doing when she died. We’d gone to the grocery store. By the time we got home, she was cranky and hungry. I settled her in the high chair and she pushed macaroni around on the tray, every third one making its way to her mouth, while I put the groceries away. Jack called at lunchtime, and I put the phone to her ear and watched a gummy smile spread across her face at the sound of Daddy’s voice.
We cleaned up, and after I changed her diaper, I gave her a kiss and hugged her tight. I remember thinking I could just sleep with her in the rocking chair, but my column was due and her nap was my only writing time. I put her in the crib, under the small soft blankets. There were more than usual, but she started to fuss when I tried to take some of them out, so I let her be. Kat had climbed in the crib that morning and let Maddie cover her with stuffed animals and blankets. I didn’t see the harm in letting her nap among the extra baby blankets.
I remember making a cup of tea and settling at the kitchen table. I’d joined Parent Talk magazine more than a decade ago as a staff writer after doing freelance work for years. Jess had just started full-day kindergarten, and the local office in Portsmouth was full of women, mostly my age, balancing work with raising children—just what I was looking for after the solitude of freelance work.
But even after ten years, my bad habit of finishing my column at the deadline hadn’t changed.
After fifteen or so minutes of writing, I went to her doorway and looked around the corner. She was busy pushing blankets around the crib, babbling to herself. She was making a racket when her chubby hands hit the crib bars, but she was content, so I moved out of her line of sight. If she saw me, the crying would start for certain.
My memory blurred from there on. I don’t know how much time passed before I went to wake her. I wouldn’t have wanted her to sleep past two o’clock, so maybe another half hour, but I don’t recall the exact time.
I also don’t know if it was the color of her face or the lack of movement when I picked her up that made me scream. I’ve gone over it in my head more times than I can count, and all I remember is the metallic taste in my mouth and the sound of a train thundering in my head. I don’t remember the ambulance ride or the room where we waited or the hospital chaplain who held my hand.
They found a quarter-size heart locket lodged in her throat. Jack and I had given the necklace to Kat for her birthday two weeks before. She hadn’t taken it off since.
They’d jumped and played in the crib that morning. Kat’s necklace fell off and slipped in the folds of the blankets. It was Maddie who found it. I imagined the delight on her face when she found it. I pictured her sitting on her small bottom, her plump legs crossed in front of her and the necklace draped over her chubby hands, her fingers settling on the locket, a shiny heart of sparkling silver. She knew it was Kat’s.
Had she brought the locket to her nose to smell it and give it a taste and it slipped down her throat by accident or did she get right to it, slamming the necklace in her mouth with both fists? Was she scared? How long had she struggled before she lost consciousness? What went through her mind in her last moments? These were only some of the questions I would never be able to answer.