Chapter 3 - A Child is Born
It was almost Christmas, and I was busy with my plotting and planning…anything to keep my mind off of the pending birth of my child…A birth I would have to endure alone. I was more than a little afraid. I wondered, if something were to happen, some trifling complication, where my child would end up…There was no way to contact Woody now…I couldn't risk that yet. I was so bent on my revenge that I would rather not bring him into his child's life just yet -- not when she was still around. I wanted her to be farther than a memory to him first, so that we would be his family and he would have no thoughts of her at all. But for now, I was sitting outside on a porch swing, watching snowflakes tumble and fall from the sky like confetti. The glow from the hastily strewn lights shone red and green and blue and yellow over the clean, fresh palette of snow on the ground. I loved Christmas.
I remembered a lot about my childhood, my adulthood. But my favorite memory of all time was a Christmas memory. We were certainly not poor, but for some reason on Christmas, we pretended we were a close-knit family who had time for each other. Our gifts were selected with the greatest care, as if we only had the money for one thing and that one thing must be precious. It reminded me often of the stories where the girl sells her hair for a chain for a pocket watch that was, in turn, sold for a hair comb. We were thoughtful and polite, not cold and distant as usual. It was the only day my parents did not push for my perfection, and it was the only day I actually gave it whole-heartedly. My father would come home early - a rarity - and we would eat TV dinners in front of a large screen TV and watch Dr. Seuss' classic tale "How The Grinch Stole Christmas"…Not the movie makeover with Jim Carey -- not that I minded him so much, he's a great actor…But you should never, ever mess with a classic. What would "It's A Wonderful Life" be without Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed…And how could you ever replace Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable in "Gone With the Wind"? Anyway, what I remember was the Grinch, his heart as tight as his shoes, standing high above Who-ville and thinking of some way to end the over-rated happiness the Whos found in celebrating Christmas. It was just kinda' how I felt then, when my parents were always fighting…Then later, when I fought with my ex-fiance. And now, when I was fighting back, for the poor child within me who might never know his or her father…
Because I couldn't help but feel that as much as I desired Woody, as much as I thought about him, as much as I wanted to try to fix everything broken between us….She would always be in the way. Dead, alive, running away. Her presence was just there - a big invisible barrier that they'd both put up to shut me out of his life completely. The child within me could possibly be a slight barrier in their relationship, but nothing compared to the wall she was to me. I needed to find a way to surmount the wall. To push past every single sensory and intellectual and emotional feeling he had for her. It sounded impossible.
But in the back of my mind I recalled something Jordan had mentioned, back when we were somewhat friendly with one another, back before I fell for the blue-eyed detective. She'd told me - probably after one too many drinks, the only way I thought she'd ever confide such a thing - that her mother had been crazy. At first, I thought she meant wild, unpredictable, fun and full of life, with that vibrant "devil-may-care" energy Jordan had - daring, without caring about the consequences. But I later learned that she meant it in the mental sense. And I thought that was my ace. I could literally drive Jordan insane.
And the insanity of my plans kept me on the verge of madness. When my son was born on Christmas, I refused drugs and focused all my physical efforts on pushing -- but mentally, I was pushing Jordan over the edge, pushing her out of Woody's life, pushing myself and our son into his life. Pushing - pushing - pushing…The lusty cries of my son were the only thing that brought my mind back to reality, back to my loneliness. Back to myself. And I temporarily brushed the thought of Jordan out of my mind to celebrate the love I had for my son and his father. For that one moment - and only that moment - Jordan was as invisible to me as the snowflakes that had melted away outside my window pane to become vapor in the atmosphere.