Quiet Desperation

I awoke to find myself sitting bolt upright, pulse racing, without the faintest idea why.

"Martin, are you alright?" Louisa sat up beside me and took my hand.

"Yes, of course I am, why wouldn't I be?" It seemed odd she would be asking me such a question.

"Martin, you were crying and shouting Joan's name. It doesn't sound to me like you're alright."

"I was doing no such thing." I simply didn't remember doing such a thing.

"Yes, you were." She let go of my hand and looked at me indignantly. "Why would I make up something like that?"

She wouldn't and I knew she wouldn't, but the thought of doing something as intimate as crying in front of Louisa embarrassed me. My hands went to my face and I found the proof dampening my cheeks. This explained the pounding heart and the heavy breathing; however it didn't explain why I was doing it.

"Yes, well, it appears that might have been the case. I seem to be fine now. No need to worry." I used the heels of my hands to wipe away what remained of my embarrassment.

Across the room I could hear my son howling from his cot, confirming that I had been shouting, just as she said. Having been the one to wake him; it was only fair I should be the one to woo him back to sleep. I threw the covers back and left the warm sentiment of bed, headed toward his cot.

"I'll tend to him." The lamp on Louisa's side of the bed switched on just as I stumbled into the boy's clothes hamper. "I don't mind."

"Bloody hell!" came from my mouth in a whispered expletive. I rubbed the toe I'd caught on the corner of the hamper and checked for the possibility of a missing toenail. "No, you stay put. No need for the both of us to be up. I'll walk him around downstairs until he falls to sleep again. It shouldn't take long."

"Martin, it's alright, really." She opened her arms for the bundle I'd taken from the baby bed.

"Bring him to me and I'll nurse him back to sleep."

She smiled warmly at me, causing me to momentarily forget the deep ache I woke with in my chest.

"Besides, you need to put on a dry shirt. The one you're wearing you've sweated through, in case you haven't noticed."

I looked down at the powder blue shirt I wore and did indeed find it soaked through. "Yes of course, I'll change immediately." I sat down next to her on the edge of the bed, suddenly possessed by an unwillingness to hand over one of the two people left in my life I didn't regret loving. The other, of the two, gently took him from me and held him to her breast.

I watched as his face bounced against his mother until he found what he was looking for. She winced when he latched on. Once he finally settled in, she began rubbing his back to sooth his crying while he suckled.

Louisa's ease with our son astounded me. From the very beginning she managed to make motherhood look as natural as breathing. I found myself envying him the mother he would grow up with. The kind of mother I longed for, but never had. He would go through his life feeling he was worthy of everything life had to offer him because of her dedication to his physical and emotional well being. But most importantly, James Henry would know love, real love, the whole of his life.

The want to touch my son overwhelmed me. I reached out and ran my fingers down his pudgy arm to the hand he pressed against his mother. "Does it hurt when he kneads your breast like that?"

"It did at first, but not so much anymore." She adjusted his head so it lay better in the crook of her arm. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. It just looks as though it would be terribly uncomfortable." His tiny hand moved from beneath mine and took hold of the end of my finger. He brought his hand back to the same place he was squeezing a few seconds earlier. Instinctively I caressed the reddened area of her breast, using the back of the finger he held onto. Her skin was as warm and soft as I remembered it being. The sensation of touching her was as comforting to me as it was meant to be to her. In that sliver of a moment, that nano of time, the world which dictated every moment of my life since my birth, disappeared. What remained was the woman I loved and the child she loved me enough to keep. There was no abandoned wedding day to feel guilt over. No position awaiting me in London, and no funeral to arrange for the woman I had come to think of as my mother. There was only the three of us, together, within the same moment in time and I was deeply happy. I savored the feeling until I felt Louisa lightly shake my leg, nudging me back into the reality I had momentarily escaped.

"Martin, you should change before you catch a chill."

"Yes, you're right." Louisa helped with James Henry's hand while I leaned over to kiss him, lingering over the scent of baby powder in his hair. "I don't think…"

"You don't think what?"

She was so close I could feel the warmth of her breath on my skin."I don't think I was prepared for how much I would love him. How much his being here would mean to me."

The eyes which had always looked at me with such forgiveness and love began to tear. "I know." She said softly. "I know."

I stroked her cheek and went to the suitcase I was living out of while we sorted our housing arrangements. "I'm going to shower. I'll be back soon to put him to bed for you." She nodded as I closed the bedroom door. Once I'd stepped to the other side of the threshold, I stood in the chill of the hall, unable to move any further down the passageway than the wall opposite her door. The emotions I managed to control for the majority of my adult life, I neither had the strength nor the will to control any longer. I was distraught beyond word or action. My Auntie Joan was dead, leaving without my ever having told her how much she meant to me. Never having seen the child she waited all these months to meet. Worse than this was the fact that I pushed the woman I love more than my own life, beyond the end of my reach. My only saving grace was that our child, my child, opened a world to me I didn't know existed until I saw his face. Lending credence to my hope that I wasn't the unfeeling monster I had come to believe myself to be. How could I feel what I feel for the two of them and be a monster?

Sliding down the wall to my feet, I grabbed my head in an attempted to make what involuntarily poured from me, stop. Guttural noises seeped from my soul as I cried tears of loss, despair and hopelessness. How was I going to live through this? With my life lying in what seemed like ruins, was there any real reason left to try?

Hope to have more soon!