For almost a year I couldn’t even look at her, much less touch her. We’d go over to my brother’s house and I’d sit by the door, still wearing my coat, and I could feel the sweat pooling under my arms and the blood pulsing in my cheeks when they brought her out, wrapped in the yellow blanket Matt gave them from the wreckage of my own baby shower. When I saw her round, pink face, smooth in sleep or puckered in the throes of a tantrum, I wanted to run away, slam the door behind me, hide in the bushes outside and roll myself into a quivering ball.
It was like the feeling I got when Peter took me up to the top of the Foshay Tower, and we could see down onto the roofs and streets below us. I’m terrified of heights—I had to call my brother to paint my kitchen ceiling for me, I couldn’t even get up the first step of the ladder—but I was drawn over the railing and into the air and down to the sidewalk in a glorious arc. When I grabbed onto Peter’s elbow to steady myself, he looked at me and smiled and threw his arm over my shoulder and squeezed. He thought he was comforting me, or sharing some thrilling moment above the Minneapolis skyline, but it was all I could do to keep from dragging us both over the edge to find out if we could really fly. That was when I kissed him, roughly, like a man would kiss a woman he’s taking by surprise, all teeth and tongue, and that was all that kept us from spinning into the void.
When I looked at Melissa that first year, at her flat little face and puffy fingers, I got the horrible feeling that I was capable of doing something terrible. Maybe I would snatch her up, rush out of the house, disappear into the night with that priceless yellow bundle tucked under my arm. Or I might suddenly smash her eggshell skull against the brick fireplace, take her by her fat feet and swing her with all my might until we both were reduced to a pulpy mess. Or, worse, I would hold her to my breasts, still tender and soft, and sob and sob and sob.
But instead I sat by the door, still wearing my coat even into summer, and I made all the appropriate ooh-ing and ah-ing and gurgling noises. I listened politely to my brother’s wife complain about Melissa’s late-night feedings and soiled diapers. I beamed proudly when my brother showed how she could smile, or stand, or take a few hesitant steps from the coffee table before landing on her padded butt. And when I got home I locked myself in the bathroom and screamed with a knotted towel in my mouth while the faucets poured into the sink until the steam fogged the mirror and Matt pounded on the door for me to come out and go to bed.
For almost a year I couldn’t touch her, until one February night I stopped at my brother’s house to give him a check for my share of Mom’s birthday present. His wife, Donna, was gone, I don’t know where, and he was under the sink fixing the garbage disposer while Melissa cooed and giggled in her playpen. The smell coming out of the kitchen was not from the clogged drain pipes, and I couldn’t stop myself from making a gagging noise.
“Hey, Steph!” my brother called from under the sink. “Do you think you could help me out with Missy’s pants?”
I covered my nose and mouth and stood by the baby bouncing in the playpen, oblivious to her own stink, ringlets of golden brown hair quivering around her face. And when I picked her up—so much heavier than I had expected!—I was able to walk safely past the fireplace, past the front door, and into the back bedroom with the crib and changing table and soft yellow blanket. And when I had finished, had bagged up the dirty diaper and cleaned all those fat folds of baby flesh and snapped her little pink jumper shut, I was more completely in love than I ever had been before.
And it’s because I love her so fiercely, and because she loves me back, and because her mother has been gone for almost two years, that my brother Kevin called me tonight. There’s a lot that a father can do, like secure a bedroom against monsters and get you rolling on your first two wheel bike and tell you you’re beautiful with braces gleaming in your mouth and really mean it. But he can’t hold a girl when her stomach and back are twisted in cramps from her first period and run his fingers through her hair and make her believe everything will be alright.
“Is it always this bad?” Kevin asks. He’s in the kitchen making coffee, even though it’s almost ten o’clock at night. Melissa is asleep upstairs under her purple comforter, wrapped in the loving arms of the Pamprin I pulled from my purse.
“Sometimes. The first ones are really bad, at least mine were. I don’t know if it gets better or if you just get used to it.”
“Before I called you, I was thinking I should take her to the hospital.”
“I could barely walk when I had my first period. I had to sleep on the couch because it hurt so bad to climb the stairs.”
“Really?”
He pulls two mugs out of the cupboard and fills them. Then he takes down a bottle of whiskey and pours a little into one, and cocks his head at me. I nod and hold up my thumb and finger—just a touch. He measures two capfuls into my mug and hands it to me.
“I guess I never noticed,” he says after he takes a sip.
“You were too busy washing your sheets every morning before Mom got up. I’m surprised they didn’t disintegrate.”
His ears glow red. “I didn’t think anyone knew about that.”
“You weren’t all that subtle, tramping down the stairs with them all balled up. Puberty’s a lot more fun for boys than girls.”
“Not that much fun. I thought my head would explode every time I saw Julie Newton in home room.”
I laugh; I haven’t thought of Julie, prematurely busty and fond of miniskirts, for years. She’s probably occupying a prestigious corner office downtown now, or holding down a street corner on West Broadway. Either way, I’m sure she’s still exploiting her best assets.
“We all knew about that, too,” I say. “But it wasn’t your head we thought would explode.”
“God, you’re mean. Why are you so mean?”
“Because I’m your sister.”
What I don’t tell Kevin—what I never told Matt, or Mom, or even Peter—is that, bad as that first period was, it was a gentle massage compared to my first period after I lost Trevor. For almost three months after the miscarriage I was begging for my period, pleading with God and the Devil and all the deities I could remember from mythology class to send the dreaded monthly visitor. I thought that my period would cleanse the dull ache in my gut, the metallic taste in my mouth, the puffy bloat that made it impossible for me to wear slacks or sometimes even underwear. And I thought it would clear my mind, too, bathe in blood my black torpor punctuated by blinding panics and drag me back into the light.
But when it finally came, two weeks before Melissa was born, it slammed into me like an out-of-control Mack truck and then backed over me just to be sure the job was done. My head was full of dwarves armed with sledge hammers and hot tongs prying at my brain; snakes churned up and down my throat and twisted in my stomach, making me kneel in front of the toilet even though nothing came up; my back was stretched on a rack until it was on the verge of snapping, and then stretched a little more. Needless to say, this did nothing positive for my mood.
By then, Matt was gone—not officially, that wouldn’t happen for another year, but in soul if not in body he was already packed. He was coming home later and later every night, and when he spoke to me all he could do was complain that dinner was never ready and wonder when I would be going back to work. I’m sure the prospect of coming home to a wife who could only lie on the couch and moan with an ice pack on her head didn’t make our marriage very appealing.
When it was all over, I did feel cleansed, as if shedding that useless, sterile egg had completed my body’s eviction of Trevor. I went into a cleaning frenzy, evicting Trevor from the house as well. I painted the walls of the second bedroom yellow and ripped down the teddy-bears-and-ducklings wallpaper border. I put the ultrasound pictures of his round head and spindly fingers into a box and crammed it into the back of the closet. I sorted the crate of baby shower gifts into three piles—return, toss, and give away—and sent Matt to dispose of them. When Melissa was born, late on an April night, I was arranging furniture in the room that was supposed to be Trevor’s and refused to come to the phone.
“Are you still seeing Peter?” Kevin asks.
“I don’t know as I’ve ever been ‘seeing’ him. But we get together sometimes.”
“Melissa really liked him that time you brought him over.”
I laugh. When I brought Peter to Kevin’s for a Memorial Day cookout last year, Melissa latched onto him like he was Frankie Sinatra and she was a swooning bobbysoxer. She brought him beer and potato chips, talked his ear off about her English teacher, and insisted on sitting next to him with her plate of hot dogs and pretzels. And Peter gave her his undivided attention, hanging on her circuitous summary of “Harriet the Spy” and complimenting her on her new pink tank top. When we left, he blew her a kiss, and I thought she would melt right there in her yellow plastic flip-flops. I have to admit, I was a little jealous.
“He’s really good with kids,” Kevin says.
“Oh, don’t I know it. He’s a kid magnet—no matter where we go, kids come up to him and just start babbling away. And he never talks down to them; he’s kind of a kid himself.”
Kevin takes a gulp of his whiskey-and-coffee.
“He’d make a good dad,” he says. “I mean—well, if you were looking for that, I mean.”
“Yeah, he’d make a good dad.”
And he would. Peter would be the kind of father who would have his children’s complete faith and trust from start to finish. They would worship him through the early years, and respect him as they grew up. He would never have to pry into their personal lives, because they would naturally share everything with him. And when they grew up and moved away, they would never forget to call him; they would want to call him, just to hear him say, “I’m so glad you called; how was your day?”
Peter would make a good dad, but not for my children. Maybe I’m selfish; maybe I wouldn’t want the competition, because I could never compete with him for a child’s affection. With Matt, who was completely flummoxed by his young nephews’ repetitive questions and kinetic wildness, there would have been no competition; Trevor would have been mine alone. But when I see Peter with a child, I feel old and slow and on the sidelines.
Even without children around, I sometimes feel old with Peter, even though he’s actually a little older than me. He’s boyish and charming and sweet, and I love him for the same reasons children do: he listens, he laughs easily, he takes me on adventures. Though he’s lived in Minneapolis for ten years, he still has a tourist’s exuberance for the Twin Cities. Without him, I might never have danced in the Wabasha Caves, picnicked at Minnehaha Falls, or had my picture taken in front of the spoon-and-cherry sculpture at the Walker Center, though those places have been in my back yard all my life. I certainly would not have ridden the elevator to the observation deck at the top of the Foshay Tower.
“How about you?” I ask. “Are you seeing anyone?”
“Me? God, no. I’m done with all that. At least until Missy’s grown.”
“Well, she’s just about grown. She’s a woman now.”
“Damn, she is, isn’t she?” Kevin can’t hide his smile; he takes another sip of his coffee. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Steph. I can’t raise a daughter.”
“You’re doing fine. Probably better on your own.” I swallow a mouthful of coffee; it’s lukewarm now, and the whiskey makes it bitter. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
From the start I tried to like Donna, despite her aggressive unlikeableness. The first time she visited my house, she stood in the middle of the living room and pronounced my furniture, thrift store and garage sale pieces Matt and I had spent the summer collecting just to fill up the empty spaces, unfit for human use. She was right—the sun-bleached sofa was impossible to sit on, it sagged so low, and the coffee table had so many cup rings on it they seemed almost like an intentional pattern. But I didn’t need a stranger to announce it, even if she was my brother’s fiancée. Kevin, who stood behind her holding Donna’s purse and coat, just rolled his eyes at me and made silent shushing face.
At the family suppers my mother insisted on every Sunday, Donna always brought her own food—plain and carefully portioned steamed vegetables most weeks, or a dry and skinless chicken breast—and never touched my mother’s gravy-drenched roast or butter-laden potatoes. If my mother put a vegetable dish on the table, Donna would grudgingly take a small spoonful, then proclaim it oddly spiced or overcooked and scrape it to the edge of her plate. Through it all, Kevin would smile with shell-shocked eyes, eat a double helping of everything himself, and praise Mom’s cooking while Donna huffed sullenly beside him. They stopped coming soon after Melissa was born.
The winter we were both pregnant, I thought I could finally connect with Donna. I was a little further along, and I thought I could amuse her with warnings about the bloated feet and aching teeth that hit me just after the morning sickness passed.
“You’re eating too much salt,” she said, nibbling at the rye crackers Kevin carried around in a baggie for her. “You need more protein.”
After I lost Trevor, I sometimes worried that it was because I hadn’t been strict enough in my diet, had been lax in my prenatal exercises, had skipped the protein shakes after the first gritty, pulpy glassful of gray sludge. I worried it was karmic revenge for hating Donna and wishing her the most colossal back spasms and joint aches. They assured me at the hospital it had nothing to do with diet and exercise, but they could never have dismissed the karma if I’d dared to tell them about it.
“Have you called her?” I ask.
“Who, Mom?”
“No, Donna. Have you told Donna about Missy’s period?”
“Of course not. Not yet.”
Kevin has poured himself a tumbler full of whiskey, giving up the charade of coffee. He offers it to me; I shake my head, then take it and sip. The whiskey burns my throat, and I cough a little when I hand it back.
“I’ll call her tomorrow, maybe,” he says. “She’ll have Missy next month, so I guess she should know. For practical considerations.” He takes a swallow and smiles; I suppose whiskey is something that takes getting used to, too. “I don’t miss her.”
“Me neither.”
“Do you miss Matt?”
“After—what?—ten years? Not particularly. I haven’t seen him since I can’t remember when.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it? You live with someone, share a bed and a life and—well, when they’re gone, you can’t even remember what they look like.”
“Amnesia,” I say. “That’s what gets us through. If we couldn’t forget things, we’d never repeat the same mistakes, and the species would die out in a generation or two.”
“That’s a pretty grim assessment.”
“It is, isn’t it?” I snatch the tumbler from him, spilling a little, and take a bigger swallow. It still burns, but I can understand how it could be a pleasant burn given enough time and forgetting.
“I heard someplace,” he says, “that women are programmed to forget the pain of childbirth. So they’re willing to do it again.”
“I’ve heard that, too.” I take another sip. “Backs up my theory.”
“Sorry—“
“For what?”
He takes the glass back from me. “For being an inconsiderate cad and a lousy big brother. I’m really glad you were here for Missy.”
“Me too.” The clock on the stove reads quarter past eleven. “But I should get home now—work tomorrow.”
“You can crash here if you like.”
I shake my head. “I can’t sleep in a strange bed anymore. I’m old. Let me check in on Missy and I’ll be gone.”
While Kevin swallows the last of his drink and loads the dishwasher, I climb the stairs to Missy’s room. She’s still smooth-faced in sleep, with those beautiful brown ringlets on her pillow, but she’s kicked her covers off and has a hand splayed across her belly. I pull the comforter back over her and put the box of Pamprin on her nightstand where she’ll find it in the morning. Maybe by then she’ll have forgotten tonight’s cramps, or at least have edited them down to something manageable like a stubbed toe or a sprained ankle.
My own amnesia is imperfect, selective, smoothing some things soft but leaving others jagged and sharp. Maybe women forget childbirth, but I’ve never forgotten the miscarriage, never forgotten the white hot spike in my belly or the blood on my nightgown or the drive to the hospital, Matt hunched over the wheel while I bit my arm until I broke the skin then bit some more. I can replay every stop-frame second, back it up and play it again, and every time it ends the same way. I can forget Matt to the point I wouldn’t recognize him in a crowd. But I cannot forget Trevor, the boy I never met.
Melissa starts to shrug the covers off again, and I tuck them in a little tighter. Until a few years ago she still had Trevor’s yellow blanket, reduced to a tattered rag; she wrapped her dolls in it when I took her to the park. I’m sure Kevin and Donna had forgotten where it came from; I’m sure if I searched, I’d find it abandoned in a box with the rest of her discarded childhood.
It’s late, and I want to lie down beside Missy and sleep with her hand in mine. But if I leave now, I can be home before midnight. Late, but not too late to call Peter. I’ll apologize for getting him up, I’ll tell him I was up all night talking with Kevin but I’ll be evasive when he asks what we were talking about. And I’ll ask him to play hooky tomorrow, meet me downtown for an ice cream lunch, and ride the elevator with me to the top of Minneapolis.