63. Mother
"I don't mean to imply it was intentional," Rosa continued. "We were on vacation in a tropical paradise, and threw caution to the ocean breeze one time too many. When the pregnancy test turned out positive, we were stunned and not immediately sure how to feel about it. We both wanted children, but not for several years. We'd been talking about junior college for me, and a second honeymoon, possibly in Europe, for our first anniversary. A baby meant rethinking all our plans for the future, short-term and long.
"It wasn't so much the thought of lost opportunities that bothered us, though, as the awareness that we weren't ready to welcome a child. Or, at least, that one of us wasn't. Karl had confided in me that he'd grown up lonely, and was looking forward to starting a family of his own; the first shock over, he'd've been thrilled with the news, if not for his concern about me. At eighteen, and raised the way I'd been, I was woefully unprepared for motherhood. My immaturity aside, I had no experience with infants to fall back on — not even as a babysitter — and I couldn't rely on a loving mother's example and advice to guide me. The prospect of being responsible for a tiny, helpless being made me horribly anxious. Karl understood all this, and, though I knew it cost him dearly, he left the decision to continue or terminate the pregnancy entirely to me. There would never be any reproaches, he assured me. I would have his full support either way.
"But, ready or not, what was there to decide? We'd created an innocent life together, and I couldn't destroy it because the timing was bad, or I was afraid. Karl couldn't hide his relief when I told him we were keeping the baby. I remember him asking, 'Are you sure? Really sure?' and I was, completely. My only doubt was whether I could be the kind of mother our baby deserved.
"It was Karl's idea to say nothing about expecting until we'd seen our obstetrician for the first time, at about the ten-week mark. Unfortunately, when I was about eight weeks along, Estelle let herself in one morning, and found me lying limply on the couch, a half-empty sleeve of Saltines beside me. When I suddenly jumped up and, racing past her, proceeded to vomit noisily in the bathroom, she unerringly put two and two together. She flew into a rage, accusing me of being 'sneaky' and 'selfish,' of depriving her of her grandparental rights, of scheming to exclude her out of wickedness and spite. She was so focused on attacking me, she didn't hear Karl come up behind her. He'd just run out to the store to get me something I might hold down for breakfast — applesauce, I think it was. In any case, Karl was in a cold fury. He told Estelle it'd been his choice not to tell her, that he'd done it to protect her from the grief she might suffer if, as she herself had done twice before he was born, I miscarried in the first trimester. She was struck dumb with dismay, and, when he demanded it, apologized to me with every appearance of sincerity. That was insufficient amends for Karl, though, and he informed her she was to leave, and not return until she could be caring and supportive. That was the only time I ever saw Estelle retreat with her tail between her legs.
"Several days later, she phoned to ask, almost meekly, if she could stop by, a courtesy I accepted as the olive branch it was. In those early weeks of helping me weather morning sickness and fatigue, she proved she'd taken Karl's rebuke to heart, and was making a real effort to turn over a new leaf. She still tended to want to bully me, but as she was badgering me to nap in the afternoon, eat smart, put my feet up, and take my vitamins, I didn't really mind. Ironically, it wasn't long before I came to wish she'd treat me with a little less solicitude; her fussing over me rather heightened my fear of something going wrong than relieved it. Given the chance, she'd've accompanied me to all my check-ups and screenings, but she refrained from pushing to be included, and settled for attending only a few. Fortunately, I was able to reassure her after every appointment that the doctor was satisfied with my progress, and that all signs pointed to a healthy, thriving baby.
"As I moved into my last trimester, the restraint Estelle had shown so admirably for months began to slip, and she lapsed increasingly into her overbearing ways. She expected to have a say in how the nursery was decorated, and was incensed when we didn't go with the color scheme she'd preferred. She picked out and purchased a car seat and a stroller after Karl specifically told her we wanted to shop for them ourselves. Although she had nothing more to go on other than I was 'carrying low,' she threw us a boy-themed baby shower, with the result that all the clothes and blankets we received were in some shade of blue. Worst of all, she took to referring to the baby as 'Rudy,' a name I, personally, loathed. 'Nonsense,' she said, when I told her we were talking about 'Finn' for a boy. 'You'll honor Karl's late father's memory, as is only fitting. Anything else is unacceptable.'
"Of course, she had her own ideas about where and how I should deliver, and, as my due date approached, it became all too clear she saw herself with us in the birthing room, acting as my doula or Karl's assistant coach. The thought of having this woman who was back to ignoring my feelings and overriding my wishes 'support' me through labor was unendurable, and I told Karl, a bit hysterically, that I didn't want Estelle anywhere near me when my time came. He promised that, on the day, everything would be just as I wanted it. My comfort and peace of mind would be priority one.
"We both knew there was a slim chance he'd be unable to keep his promise. A short while before and with some misgivings, Karl had accepted a promotion at work that came with a substantial raise in pay but, on the downside, required a certain amount of travel. He didn't foresee having to go out of town in the final weeks of my pregnancy, but, if the baby was at all premature, it was possible he might be away from home. There were no guarantees.
"I did go into labor about ten days early, but, as it happened, the timing couldn't've been better. The pains started very early on a Saturday, so Karl was home from work, but, on top of that, Estelle had left the previous evening to attend a favorite aunt's funeral in Pennsylvania, and wasn't expected back until Sunday. We thought for sure that, even with a first-time mother's protracted labor, the baby would be born by the next morning, but thirty hours later, wrung out with pain, lack of sleep and desperation, I was still trying to push the baby out. At that point, our doctor strongly recommended an emergency C-section, but I clung a while longer to the dream of giving birth naturally. We'd prepared for labor so diligently, and for so many weeks, accepting the surgery felt like a huge failure, as if we'd studied extra hard for a crucial exam, and still hadn't been able to pass. Since my body was to blame, I felt the disappointment more keenly than Karl; for his part, he assured me, he didn't care how our baby was born, as long as we both came through the ordeal safely. The baby's heart rate started dropping soon after, and there was nothing for it, then, but to have the operation. Mid-afternoon on a late-September Sunday, our son — all eight pounds, plus, of him — was brought into the world, his poor little head cone-shaped from having been wedged in the birth canal. Without medical intervention, he very likely would've died, and me along with him.
"When the nurse placed Rudolph — Finn, to me — in Karl's arms, he was so tightly swaddled, all we could see of him was his teeny-tiny face. I waited for the overwhelming love I expected to feel to wash over me, but all I felt was strangely empty and numb. Karl's joy in Finn was, by contrast, immediate and exuberant; his face was alight with pride and wonder as he angled our son up in the crook of his arm for me to admire. Finn seemed equally taken with Karl, and listened to his cooing and praises with round-eyed rapture. We weren't allowed to keep him long; he was whisked away to the nursery, and I was wheeled to recovery. I didn't see him again until late that evening when he was brought to me to nurse.
"I was in considerable discomfort, but managed, somewhat awkwardly, to hold him to my breast. Finn, though, refused to latch on, and grew only more upset with each attempt to coax him into taking the nipple. Finally, the nurse took him away, saying it was a good first try, and not to be discouraged, but, as time went on, it didn't get any easier, and many sessions ended with Finn howling in frustration, and me fighting back tears. That beatific gazing into each other's eyes you see pictured in so many childrearing books was not for Finn and me. Nursing was a constant battle that left me feeling downcast and inadequate.
"Karl was my rock through it all, both at the hospital and when we brought Finn home. While his paternity leave lasted, he did all the cooking and cleaning, and, to the extent that he was able, looked after Finn so that I could rest and recuperate. Of all the many thoughtful things he did for me over the course of those early weeks, I was most grateful for his refusing to hear of Estelle's coming to stay with us in order to 'help out' with the baby. Despite her vigorous protests, he held firm about our needing time alone as a family, and so, though I still had trouble getting Finn to nurse, at least I didn't have the added stress of Estelle watching me struggle.
"By his first check-up, Finn had lost some of his birth weight, but, that being typical of newborns, it wasn't until his next weigh-in showed he was down more than a pound that his pediatrician became concerned. She advised supplementing my breast milk with formula —just while Finn and I worked through our nursing problems — but once Finn had his first bottle, he resisted my efforts to breastfeed more than ever. I didn't give up right away, but it was plain from the way Finn sucked down his formula and spurned my breast that he had a decided preference. He was about two months old when I stopped trying altogether.
"That was a second defeat, as I saw it, in my efforts to be a good mom. Karl commiserated with my disappointment — again — but didn't see any reason for me to get down on myself. What did it matter how Finn was fed, he argued, as long as he was well-nourished? I might've been comforted if I'd been connecting with Finn in other ways, but, weeks into caring for him, I still wasn't feeling in synch with him. Karl had learned to distinguish among his various cries, but I couldn't tell if he was hungry, wet or tired, and would feed, change, or rock him until, finally, something worked. All too often, nothing I did soothed him, and he'd wail for what seemed like hours, his little face scrunched up tight and beet-red with misery. One particularly bad night, frazzled from lack of sleep and on my last nerve, I had the sudden impulse to fling him violently away from me, across the room and into the wall. I didn't, of course, but just having the urge filled me with incredible guilt, and gave rise to fears that I might harm my son.
"Once Karl returned to work, Estelle wouldn't be kept from her grandson any longer, and resumed dropping in unannounced several times a week. This was a mixed blessing, as, on the one hand, her looking after Finn afforded me the breaks I desperately needed, while, on the other, her ease in handling him aggravated my feelings of inadequacy. She would often happen upon me pacing the floor with a screaming Finn in my arms, and, taking him from me, would calmly dispatch me to shower or lie down. A short while later, a blessed silence would descend on the house. Like Karl, she had the quasi-magical ability to make Finn gurgle with pleasure, or wriggle in delight, a talent I notably lacked. All in all, I felt like Finn's least favorite person, a distant third-place finisher behind Karl and Estelle. Stories of my own infancy came back to haunt me, and I found myself unexpectedly empathizing with Maud. Had she, I wondered, experienced my open preference for my grandmother as a kind of rejection? That's certainly how I felt with Finn.
"I tried to have reasonable expectations for myself, to remember I was still learning the ropes but, as weeks turned into months, I didn't feel I was coping any more successfully, and the old self-doubts about being good-enough returned with a vengeance. It didn't help that all the other young mothers I'd see at the market or the playground seemed to have everything perfectly under control. To my eyes, they looked, to a woman, neat as pins, relaxed and brimming with confidence. Their blissful smiles and high spirits were a constant reproach to me. How did they manage so well when I was barely holding it together? Was I deficient in some fundamental way? With each passing day, I grew more afraid I was no more cut out to be a mother than Maud, and that Finn would suffer as a result.
"Painful as these feelings were to bear, I was too ashamed to confide them in such kindly strangers as my doctor, or the women, usually middle-aged or older, who'd approach me in the park or grocery store, and ask me gently if I was all right. I always forced a smile for them, and answered that yes, I was just fine, thanks. I kept up my best cheery facade at home, too; not because I feared Karl would think less of me, but because he already had enough on his plate, what with the added responsibilities of his promotion, and dealing with an important new client who was making impossible demands. He was having to put in extra hours, and travel frequently as well, so he was no less exhausted, mentally and physically, than I was. I didn't want to add worry for me to his other burdens.
"I was careful, too, not to cry in front of Finn, and would never, willingly, have let Estelle see me unhappy, but, since she stopped by whenever it suited her and with no more advance warning than the sound of her key in the lock, she sometimes came upon me before I could wipe away all evidence of my tears. She'd been prepared to tolerate a period of 'baby blues,' but, with Finn about to celebrate his first birthday, her patience with my 'moping' was at an end. 'What's wrong with you?' she snapped, on a day when I wasn't quick enough to hide my tears. 'What could you possibly have to cry about? You have a beautiful baby, a devoted husband who gives you everything, and all the domestic help — unpaid for, I might add — you could ask for. What more could you want?'
"In that moment, what I wanted most was to curl up and die. How could I explain what I didn't understand, myself? I knew only too well that I should be happy, that any other girl would've thanked her lucky stars to be standing in my shoes. There was nothing I could point to outside myself to account for my misery, so it could only mean the fault was in me. I had to be broken inside, or deeply flawed in some way. That being the case, it was futile to think I could shake off my funk, and feel joyful again. The future stretched before me, endlessly bleak.
"Days later, with these dark thoughts swirling through my head, I was driving down our country lane when I had a powerful urge to floor the accelerator and smash our car, and myself with it, against a massive oak that grew just off the road…"
"Rosa," Bonnie ventured, when her friend paused to compose herself, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but… Did you ever think you might have postpartum depression?"
The ghost of a smile lit Rosa's face. "Clever girl! How did you know? It was years before I figured it out."
"My aunt Annalise suffered through it with both of her boys. She said it was pure hell."
"I couldn't agree more."
"You didn't actually try to… kill yourself?"
"Well, now, that's a subject for debate. You see, one day — it was in January — Finn was seriously overtired, but still fighting me about taking a nap, so, at the end of my tether, I bundled him up, strapped him into his car seat, and took him for a drive. Within five minutes, he was out like a light, and, a quarter hour later, not liking the condition of the roads, I drove home and pulled into our small, attached garage. Finn was sleeping so soundly, and I was so grateful for the unaccustomed peace and quiet, I crossed my arms over the steering wheel, and leaned wearily into them, thinking just to rest my eyes for a few minutes. I'd closed the garage door against the cold, and, in my utter exhaustion, didn't think to shut off the engine.
"I must have nodded off, because the next thing I knew the garage door was rumbling up, and Estelle, her mouth and nose wrapped in a scarf, was frantically snatching Finn out of his car seat, and rushing him into the open air. Seeing her panic, I stumbled out after them, alarmed and unclear what the danger might be. When I came up to her, Estelle turned a look of such pure hatred on me, I froze in my tracks, staggered. 'You crazy bitch,' she hissed at me, her whole body shaking with fury. 'You want to take your life, have at it! You'd be no loss to anyone. But you leave my grandson out of it, damn you. He doesn't deserve to die.'
"I couldn't've been more stunned if she'd slapped me. I stammered out that it wasn't what it looked like, that I hadn't meant to harm myself, that I'd never intentionally hurt Finn. I was so obviously distraught, she seemed almost to reconsider, but, in the end, whether I'd endangered Finn's life by accident or on purpose was all one to her; either way, he'd've been no less dead of carbon monoxide poisoning if she hadn't intervened."
"But, Rosa," Bonnie interrupted again, "all you did was make a mistake. A terrible mistake that might've ended in tragedy, it's true, but a very human slip-up, just the same. Fortunately, you were spared the worst possible consequences. Not everyone is so lucky."
"That was how Karl saw it, too, when he'd heard both Estelle's version of events and mine. He thanked Estelle for her quick thinking and action, but wouldn't agree with her that I'd proven myself unfit to have unsupervised charge of our son. He acknowledged that I'd foolishly overextended myself, and would have to guard against that going forward, but added that he still had complete faith in me, and knew he could trust me with Finn's care."
"Well, there! What did I tell you?"
"Yes, but his actions didn't back up his words, you see. Whereas, before the incident, he might've phoned me from the office once or twice a week and always with good reason, after it, he began calling two or three times a day, sometimes with only the lamest excuse. When he had to go out of town, he asked me to let Estelle come stay 'for the company,' and that, too, was new. Despite his best efforts to hide it, he was worried for Finn, and that made me worry, too.
"I was sure I hadn't been thinking about suicide that day in the garage, but I couldn't deny that, at times, I still had the urge to drive full tilt into that oak, or to load down my pockets with stones and walk out into the middle of the small pond nearby. What if, on a day I couldn't resist the impulse, I had Finn with me? I told myself I could never hurt Finn, but it'd been all I could do that time not to throw him across the room, and I'd come close to shaking him violently and slamming him down in his chair or bed on several occasions. What if I lost control some day, and did him serious injury? Could I really trust myself to have his best interests always at heart when I sometimes found myself wishing I'd never gotten pregnant, or that he and I had died on the operating table? To my mind, there had to be, in Estelle's words, something seriously 'wrong' with me, a something missing in me, as there had been in Maud. I couldn't take the chance of damaging Finn as I'd been damaged. I knew I had to leave him, for his own good.
"I chose a morning when Karl was away on business. I left him a note saying that I loved him and Finn too much to risk ruining their lives, that they'd be better off without me, that they should think of me as dead. It was just after dawn; there was a taxi on the way. I stood in the nursery one last time, and watched my beautiful boy sleep. I felt my all-too-shaky resolve begin to weaken, and was picking up my bag and fighting the temptation to creep back to my room, when I saw Estelle standing in the doorway.
"She nodded approvingly. 'You're doing the right thing,' she said. 'I didn't think you had it in you to put someone else's happiness ahead of your own, but I see now I misjudged you. I'm sorry.' She studied me a long moment, then asked, almost reluctantly, 'Do you know where you'll go?'
I told her I had a flight booked to Germany, an uncle in Stuttgart. She asked if I needed money; I said, no, I had a small inheritance from my grandparents. There came a honk from outside the house. She made way for me, and I walked quickly past her, hoping she didn't see my tears. She called, 'Good luck to you!' after me, but I didn't answer. I couldn't." She shook her head, as unable to speak in reliving the moment, Bonnie guessed, as she had been at the time.
"And, did you?" she couldn't stop herself from asking. "Go to Germany, I mean?"
Rosa discreetly brushed away a tear, and mustered her best roguish smile. "Ah, my dear, as to the rest of the story, I fear you will have to wait for my memoirs! I have already imposed on your good nature far too long as it is, and have made you unpardonably late into the bargain. And, to think, all this dredging up of the distant past was simply in aid of explaining why I feel I must do what I can for Valeria! Do you see, now?"
"I think so. You want to be the kind of mother-in-law to Val you wish you could've had."
Rosa's face brightened noticeably. "You really are the most perceptive girl! Tell me, honestly, though, chérie: do you think it arrogant of me to imagine I can do better than Estelle?"
"I think you've already got her beaten, hands down, Rosa. Val's lucky to have you for a mother-in-law, however belatedly. Any girl would be."