A New Life (3 page)

Zach and I exchanged glances. Was it possible to have hope? Dr. Wilson took Hamlet’s temperature—rectally—and he strongly objected, wriggling to get away. “It’s a little low, but he is definitely not placid,” she said. “We’ll put him on the warming table.” She wrapped Hamlet in his towel and moved him to a small table. “Do you want my opinion?”

We both nodded. Henry stirred in his carriage and I pushed it back and forth while I listened to Dr. Wilson. “I wouldn’t put him to sleep right away. We’ve successfully removed cysts from hundreds of hamsters. It’s a very common procedure. I suggest you leave him here and we can run some tests, do an ultrasound and an x-ray.”

“Wouldn’t that make him uncomfortable?” I asked.

“Oh no, he’ll be in a warm cage, hand fed lettuce and apples and given an under the skin IV to hydrate him and plump him back up a bit. The ultrasound and x-ray are painless and the blood test is done in a flap of skin. I really think he can make it, he has spunk.”

I held this hope to my heart, but I also knew how old he was. “He’s over two and a half,” I mentioned.

“Well, some hamsters live to three or more,” she said. “Of course you don’t have to do any of this, but it seems like you really love him.”

We did, so we said yes. Yes to everything, whatever lifesaving methods were needed. We kissed Hamlet goodbye and let him lick a bit of peanut butter that we brought with us off of our fingers.

I nursed Henry on the right side again when we returned to the car. Tears streamed down my face, but neither of us said a word. It was too late to go to the emergency room. We had to get on the road to make it to my parents by dinner. While we were driving, I attempted to pump my left breast that was the size of a football. After I gave up on the pump, I took two Tylenol to keep my fever down.

In synagogue the next day, Zach and I prayed for Hamlet. I was sure we were the only ones praying for a hamster and wondered what people around us would have said if they knew. I called the hospital when we returned. “Hamlet is stable, he’s eaten apple slices and lettuce and is hydrated,” I was told. “He’ll have an x-ray in a bit and an ultrasound in the morning.”

“He’s stable! He’s stable!” I shouted to Zach.

After, I finally went to my sister’s obstetrician for the mastitis. My breast was streaked red top to bottom and I nearly jumped off the table when he examined it.

“You’re lucky you came in now,” he said. “This is a nasty case. Just keep nursing or pumping.” I left with a prescription for antibiotics in-hand and raced home to my parents’ house to call the vet. Hamlet was still stable.

The report was the same in the morning. They told me to call back in the afternoon to find out the results of all the tests. Zach packed the car to leave while I nursed Henry. Hot compresses and massages plus the antibiotics helped a bit and Henry finally emptied the left side, though I still winced as he latched on.

My mother slid next to me on the couch and whispered, “You’re a wreck. You need to come back here. Have they given you any help at all?”

By
they
, I knew she meant Zach’s parents. “Not much, but that’s okay,” I answered.

“So have you said anything to them about their skipping town?”

“No. Zach forgave them. He said they just wanted to give us our space, that’s why they didn’t call.”

“That’s a crock of shit,” she said, just as Zach walked in.

“What are you talking about?” Zach asked. His jaw tightened.

“Nothing, sweetie.”

When I called for the update on Hamlet while we drove through Connecticut, the vet simply said, “I’m sorry, but he’s one sick little hamster. There’s nothing we can do.” Everything else she said was kind of muddled in my mind. I think it had something to do with too many cysts and that he stopped breathing once. I made arrangements for us to put him to sleep the moment we returned to Boston. I knew we needed to say one last goodbye.

When I hung up, I sobbed uncontrollably and thought,
I must be totally insane
. Henry was asleep, peacefully. I put my finger under his nose. Yes, he was breathing.

Zach cried too, I wasn’t used to hearing it. I stopped when he started. “He’ll be at peace soon,” I told him. But we both knew that Hamlet represented something really wonderful about us, and that everything was changing.

“I took care of him,” Zach said, wiping his nose with the napkin I handed him out of the glove compartment. “The past month, you’ve had Henry. I can’t nurse him. It’s like you two have this circle and I’m an outsider, but Hamlet needed me.”

“I’m sorry,” is all I said.

After Hamlet died, everything did change. I thought the night we buried him in his little red sleeping bag in Zach’s parents’ backyard was the bottom, but it just kept going down. It seemed like Zach and I fought about everything: laundry (he did more), cooking (we kept the pizza place on the corner in business), the stack of dishes from breakfast still in the sink, but mostly we fought about his parents.

Even though Zach forgave his parents for skipping out for a tropical vacation just before their first grandson was born and the transgression of not calling us in the hospital, I did not have an easy time. At Henry’s bris, Zach accused me of being cold for not offering Henry to his parents the moment they walked in the door. I calmly explained that this was a very stressful day for Henry and he was not being passed from relative to relative. I was either holding him, nursing him, or he was in the bassinet. “If they wanted one on one time, they shouldn’t have waited until their grandson was eight days old to come see him. They could have held him the day he was born if they hadn’t left,” I whispered.

I felt better after saying that and the fights probably wouldn’t have escalated had it not been for the repeated disappointments Zach endured at his parents’ hands. I watched him hang up the phone, eyes downcast the week after Hamlet died.

“Are they coming before Henry goes to sleep?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“My Dad says he just has to clean off the porch and rake the leaves. They’ll be here around 7:30. They really want to see him. I told him he might be sleeping then, not to expect too much,” he said, quietly.

“They don’t even deserve to have a grandchild if they can’t make time for him,” I snapped, startling Henry who was napping on my shoulder. “Shh,” I whispered. “It’s okay.” I turned back to Zach, “I’m sorry, but you have to call them back and tell them to be here earlier or don’t bother coming at all. I’m not keeping Henry up so he can entertain them. And I’m certainly not going to stay awake past 8:00 myself. He wakes at midnight, and I’m exhausted.”

“That’s not fair,” Zach answered. “I haven’t seen them in a week. They want to see Henry. They’re just busy. You treat them like second class citizens.”

I collapsed into the recliner and put my feet up. Henry sighed in his sleep. “I guess we just grew up differently. In my house you put family first, menial chores second. You know what would really be shocking—if your parents arrived at 5:30 with a plate of sandwiches and a bag of chips.” My mother had stocked our freezer with vats of homemade meatballs, chicken soup and loaves of banana bread the last time they visited. We finished it all the first week. Maybe I just expected too much. I waved my hand. “Forget it. Let them come over whenever. But, if your father asks, ‘Doesn’t he do anything but sleep?’ again, I’m gonna lose it.”

Zach’s parents continued to work visits into their schedule, I continued my lukewarm reception, and Zach continued lashing out at me after they left. “How come you asked my mother to wash her hands when she came in? You know she’ll do it anyway…” or some variant on the theme.

The arguments about household duties kept cropping back up again too. “If you put your dish in the sink, how difficult is it to take the extra thirty seconds to put it in the dishwasher?” Zach asked. Or, “I don’t mind doing the laundry, if you’d just put it away instead of letting it pile up in the laundry basket until it falls over on the floor. You obviously need help around here, Grace. Have my mom come over to watch Henry so you can get some stuff around the house done.”

“I’ll tell you what, if your mom can work it into her schedule, I’ll take a nap when she comes over,” I answered.

The more Zach nagged me, the less I wanted to do, but inside I felt like the worst wife in the world. Every ounce of my energy went to keeping Henry fed, clothed, dry and happy. There was just nothing left to give. One day I found Zach in the basement of our apartment sitting cross-legged in front of Hamlet’s cage. Inside was Hamlet’s food dish and exercise ball, but it seemed so empty.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go upstairs.” Henry was sleeping, the monitor on my hip was quiet, just the slightest rise and fall of his breath was heard. I knew that if I took Zach by the hand and led him upstairs to our bedroom, all would be forgiven. I could use my mouth, my hands—I could remind him of why he loved me. I could slip from being Henry’s mommy into Zach’s wife so seamlessly, weaving it right into our day, but the phone rang, the monitor screeched with wails and the moment was lost before we even made it up the stairs.

Three months later, I still hadn’t found a way to slip back into being Zach’s wife. Henry was five months old and the haze of the early days lifted a bit. I knew his different cries and he did more than nurse all day. In fact, he nursed for only ten minutes at a time and hours passed between feedings, though my mother still insisted nursing was too much work. He rolled over, ate cereal, cooed and said, “Mama” much earlier than I ever expected. Although I knew he was just making sounds, every time I heard that one I wanted to whoop with joy. Shout it from the rooftops.

Nights were a different story. I wanted to jump off of a rooftop after five months with no sleep. I was a walking zombie—the more tired I was and the more Henry showed it was only me he wanted, the more I lost track of myself and the more I lost touch with Zach. The fights moved from his parents (whenever I got pissed off, I did my labor breathing and whispered my mantra,
forgiveness
) and housework (I at least got my dishes into the dishwasher and the laundry out of the basket) to the bedroom.

On our Saturday trip to the mall Zach leaned over my shoulder, his face in my hair. I thought he was going to kiss me, instead he said, “I feel like we’re roommates.”

We were by the jeans display at Baby Gap. I held up a tiny pair then put it back. We couldn’t afford anything at full price. “Why are you bringing this up here?” I whispered. “We can’t really talk.” Henry slept soundly in his carriage. I pushed it back and forth.

“We can’t really talk at home either,” Zach whispered back. “You’re always preoccupied. At least Henry is asleep. The phone isn’t ringing. I know I have your attention.”

I silently pushed the carriage to the sales rack. Zach followed. I knew why he brought it up. We’d had sex once in five months. On our second anniversary—when Henry was three months old—Zach led me upstairs to the turned down bed. He had left a chocolate on the pillow, the same kind the hotel had on our wedding night. Making love again was tender and sweet and it hurt like hell. Although my stitches were gone, the spot they closed back up was still on fire. And somehow, even after childbirth, I was still tight as I was when I had sex the first time as a seventeen-year-old virgin and it was equally painful. Plus the mastitis had returned with a vengeance late that afternoon so even hugging was too much contact for my tender breast. Zach’s touch nearly sent me flying off the bed. Only double doses of Tylenol had brought my fever down.

When I went to the doctor for the infection the next day, she asked what kind of birth control I was using. “Condoms, I guess, though I haven’t really needed them much—just once,” I answered. “Is that normal at three months?”

She reassured me that it was, especially with no sleep, and as a bonus fitted me for a diaphragm. “Just try to do it once a week,” she advised. “Make a date. You’ll see—even if you don’t feel like it at first, the desire will return.”

The diaphragm was still sitting in the closet unopened when we left for the mall that morning. Maybe its presence was a cruel reminder to Zach. “Remember the prescription we were supposed to fill—our ‘date’ once a week?” Zach asked. I rifled through the sales rack looking for bargains, barely glancing up at him. He was excited when I told him the doctor’s advice to have sex once a week. “I like her prescription. The pharmacist is in, baby,” he said seductively when I collapsed into bed that night.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, inspecting a red sweatshirt marked down to $6.99. “Really. It’s just tough after a whole day taking care of the baby.”

“How tough can once a week be, Grace? I’m just getting really frustrated. I come home from work, do a load of laundry, empty the sink, take out the garbage, waste a couple of hours online and go to sleep. Just to do it all over again the next day.”

My head throbbed. I turned back to Zach. “What do you want me to do greet you at the door in a French maid’s uniform?” A grandmotherly type sorting through the rack looked up at me. Zach started to walk away, but I put my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry,” I said again. I was.

He turned back to me. “Stop saying you’re sorry if nothing’s going to change.”

The next night I planned a romantic interlude. Zach had called to say he would be working late; he’d be home around 7:30. Henry was bathed and ready for bed at 7:00. I lit French vanilla candles and changed into the ivory silk and lace nightgown Zach bought me for our anniversary. I snapped open the pink case my diaphragm came in and examined the flesh colored dome, praying I could get it in right. I read all the instructions and placed it on my night table, along with the spermicide. I was on the bed by 7:20, waiting. I slipped one spaghetti strap off my shoulder and ran my tongue over my lips for practice. “I’m ready,” I whispered into the air.

I had it all planned out. When Zach came upstairs to change after work, I’d push him on the bed and slowly unbuckle his belt, undo his pants, take my time unbuttoning each button on his starched pale pink dress shirt and stop for a moment to admire his muscles rippling under his white ribbed tank. By then he’d be straining against his gray boxer briefs. I’d pull them off slowly, lowering my mouth on each inch as it’s liberated. I could hear him moaning in my head. When he couldn’t take anymore, I’d slide onto him and we’d melt together, sweat and skin.