The Memory Child (6 page)

“Have you looked at yourself lately? Maybe I should be the one worrying.” I tried to keep my mouth shut, but she honestly looked horrible. Dark circles beneath her eyes, hair pulled back in a tattered ponytail, a shirt that looked like it needed to be thrown out. “When was the last time you had a
shower?”

“I was in the Congo, Diane. Not a spa. And you know I never sleep well on th
e plane.”

“Then go upstairs, take a shower, and have a nap. I need to put Grace to bed anyway. You’ll need to sleep in the loft, though; is that okay? Nina sleeps in the spare bedroom.” I made a mental note to talk to Nina about setting up a bed in Grace’s room for Charlie. It wasn’t like we used her room a lo
t anyway.

“Nina?”

“Our nanny. You’ll like her; she’s also
a nurse.”

Charlie gripped the edge of the table to stand but
hesitated.

“Listen, Diane. There’s another reason why I’m here.” She glanced over at the playpen where Grace slept with a sad smile on
her face.

I knew right away what she was goin
g to say.

“Charlie! I’m so happy for you!” I rushed over and enveloped her in a large hug and was shocked when she pushe
d me away.

“What?” Her brows knitted in
confusion.

“Oh…I…I just thought.” I stumbled over my words, embarrassed that I’d read her
so wrong.

Charlie twirled the end of her long ponytail in her
fingers.

“You thought I was pregnant?” She blew a puff of air out of her mouth and stared at the ceiling. “No, but that’s what I wanted us to ta
lk about.”

Grace started to whine and I knew it was only a matter of time before she’d start to cry. That was one sound I hated more than anything else in the world, her cries. It broke my heart e
ach time.

“Listen, go have a shower.” I squeezed her hand. “We can talk afte
r, okay?”

“I won’t be long, okay? I’ll be back before you know it.” There was a look in Charlie’s eyes that I didn’t like to se
e. Worry.

“Of course you won’t be long. You’re only going upstairs.” I picked up Grace from where she lay and the moment she saw my face her eyes lit up. I held her close, smoothed her hair, and straightened the cute little outfit I dressed her in today, and almost didn’t notice Charlie’s retreat from the kitchen. I caught a brief glimpse of her as she hoisted her bags over her shoulder. I was about to call out to her, to remind her where the bath towels were or just to tell her how happy I was to have her here, but the slight echo of her words in the hall s
topped me.

“Is this what happened to our
mother?”

I froze as I heard those words. How could she say that? Our mother…oh God, our mother had been crazy. She was psychotic and unbalanced, and it killed me to hear Charlie
say that.

All my life, my greatest fear has been that I would turn out like our mother once I had a child. But I hadn’t. Far from it. Grace had changed me in more ways than I could ever imagine. She’d made me into a bett
er person.

So, why would Charlie
say that?

CHAPTER SIX

I
curled up on the couch in the loft area and waited for Charlie. I tried to sit still, to pretend that her comment earlier didn’t bother me. It was hard
, though.

The loft area had recently been cleaned and purged, I think. Nina must have been in a decluttering mood, because all the blankets and books I had left on the couch and coffee table had been replaced with m
agazines.

“Sorry I took so long. The hot water felt so good.” Charlie set a large box down beside the couch and plopped down
beside me.

“What’s that?” I couldn’t take my eyes off the old cardboard box. In thick black marker were the words
Old Stuff–Don’t Throw Away
written on both the top and side of the box that I
could see.

Charlie shrugged. She settled on the couch, curling her legs beneath her. “Just some stuff I thought you might like to go through later. Did you ha
ve lunch?”

“Just some toast. I wasn’t too hungry.” I was really curious about what was inside the box. What kind of old stuff would Charlie want to look through? “Did you let Marcus know you were here, safe and sound?” I caught the way she hardly spoke about him earlier. Another thing that was…off. Charlie and Marcus first met in South America more than three years ago and had been inseparable since then. It had been a foregone conclusion that they’d get married, and frankly, I was surprised they weren’
t by now.

She twisted her engagement ring around her finger before she gave a little shrug of her
shoulders.

“We’re kind of…taking
a break.”

I didn’t say anything, but the questions I wanted to ask her swirled in my head. A break? What kind of break? She was still wearing her ring, so it must not be a perma
nent one.

“He gave me an ultimatum and, well, we both know how I respond to those.” She rolled
her eyes.

“Shut up.” Charlie was known for her stu
bbornness.

Charlie shrugged before picking up an
Oprah
magazine and leafing t
hrough it.

“What did he want?” I couldn’t believe I had to drag this o
ut of her.

“A baby.”

The way she said it made it sound like the world was going to end, like it was the worst thing that ever could have happened to her. And I understood; I really did. I once thought the same thing, until I held Grace i
n my arms.

“It’s not as bad as we thought, Charlie. It’s really not.” It was better. Heaven instead of the hell we’d e
nvisioned.

“You don’t know that.” Her lips tightened in
defiance.

“I do. Look at me. I’m fine.” I leaned forward and gently touched
her knee.

She jerked it awa
y from me.

“Diane, we made a pact with Mags, remember? That if we were ever to have children, we would only adopt. R
emember?”

“We were kids. We had no idea what we were promising.” I leaned back and prepared myself for this conversation. I knew where it was leading, and as much as I hated it, my little sister needed it. I somehow needed to show her that things were
different.

“Maybe I didn’t. But you did. And Mags. Mags knew. She lived through it with us.” Charlie sighed. “I thought Marcus understood that. He said he did. He said he was okay with adoption and he still is, but…he wants his own natural child too. And I can’t. You know that, I know that. I thought he did as well.” She played with the ring on her finger again. “I thought we could have it all. Like you and Br
ian did.”

“Have.”

“What?” She glanced up and looked at me in
confusion.

“Have. You said ‘did.’ You want what Brian and I have,” I corre
cted her.

“Diane—”

“No. I get it,” I interrupted. “Trust me. I thought what we had was enough. But with Grace, so much has changed. For the better. When I was pregnant, I thought my world had ended. I even thought about abortion. But Brian convinced me to let go of the past and to give our future a chance, and I’m so glad I did. Just because our mother could
n’t cope—”

“Couldn’t cope?” This time it was Charlie’s turn to interrupt me. “She had postpartum psychosis, Diane. It was more than just not coping. She didn’t smother our brother and then kill herself just because she couldn’t cope. Are you kidding me?” She jumped up from the couch and paced the floor of the loft. “No, don’t answer that. You’re kidding yourself if you think that
’s true.”

Her hands clenched at her sides while I just sat there, unable to reply. I didn’t want to go there. She knew that. We didn’t talk about what our mother did. It was how we coped. How I sti
ll coped.

“Charlie.” I licked my dry lips and tried to think of something reassuring to say. “Charlie, things are different now. Back then, there was no help for Mom, but there is now. If, God forbid, this were to happen to us, that we would…you know, that we couldn’t…” I couldn’t say
the words.

“Go crazy? Lose our minds? Experience not just depression but a life-altering disease that could have us killing our child? Is that what you’re trying to say?” Charlie spat out the words, her face an ugly mask of anger an
d disdain.

“I will not kill Grace!” Anger bubbled up inside at the idea that I would do anything as horri
d as that.

Charlie stopped her pacing and dropped to her knees. Her shoulders sagged as she star
ed at me.

“Of course you wouldn’t. But what about me? What if I killed my child? Christopher was her third child, our baby brother. What if we were the ones to drive Mom over the edge? What if it was too much for her to take care of all of us? God knows she had enough on her hands with an alcoholic husband. Maybe we were too much?” Charlie bowed her head. “If I have Marcus’s baby, I wouldn’t be with Doctors Without Borders anymore. I’d be home, alone, raising our child. What if it’s too much
for me?”

I dropped down to the floor beside her and grabbed hold of
her hand.

“We are not our mother. Just because it happened to her doesn’t mean it will happen to us. It doesn’t. Mags was wrong.” I gripped her hand hard while my body shook. From anger or fear, I was
n’t sure.

Charlie lifted her head and stared at me. I could see the words forming on her lips, as if she had something she wanted to say, but she stopped herself. Her body deflated and I knew, in that instant, that something drastically had changed between us. She pulled her hand away from mine and gripped
her knees.

“I don’t think she was. I’ve seen a lot of cases of postpartum depression and psychosis. There’s so much the medical community doesn’t know about this disease. They don’t know if it’s hereditary, in the genes, or just a hormonal imbalance. But I’m not willing to risk my child’s life. I’m just not.” She stared at me, tears glistening in her eyes. I saw the questions there; I knew what she w
as asking.

“You know better than anyone that I didn’t want to ever have children. And I’ll be the first to admit that I fought it every step of the way until the end. But, Charlie, those last few weeks while I was on bed rest, something changed inside of me. There was only her and me, no other distractions, no matter how hard I tried to find some. She was always there, inside of me. I started to long to feel her move; I tried to see if I could feel the outline of her hands or her feet.” I covered my stomach with my hand and spread my fingers, recalling the memory of those flutters I’d felt. “I know this sounds…not like me, but there was one moment, just one, when I swear there was a connection between us. “Her hand had pushed up on my belly and I could see,” my eyes closed as I remembered, “the imprint so clearly, that I knew, the moment I laid my hand on top of hers, that I would do anything to not risk
her life.”

I eased back to lean against the couch. “I knew right from the beginning I would need a nanny.” Even if I never told Brian that, it was as if he knew somehow. “Someone to help me with Grace, someone who could see…the signs, you know? Just
in case.”

Charlie leaned toward me. The baby monitor on the coffee table crackled and then I heard Grace’s tiny whimpers. When I went to reach for it, Charlie grabbe
d my hand.

“Would you know the signs of postpartum psychosis if your nanny wasn’
t around?”

I shook Charlie’s hand off as
I stood.

“Of course I would. Trust me, I’ve got my doctor on speed dial. But I’m fine.” I wrapped my arms around my sister and pulled her close. “Grace is everything I don’t deserve. She’s my little angel, my world. I would do anything to keep her safe. Anything. That’s what being a mother is all about. Keeping our child
ren safe.”

I let go and stepped back. Grace’s whimpers stopped and the only sound I heard was the soft cadence of her b
reathing.

“You know”—I stared at Charlie—“Mags once told me that’s what our mother did. She was protecting us the only way she knew how. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I do now. She killed herself to keep
us safe.”

I wrinkled my nose in disgust at the musty smell as I opened the box Charlie had brought for me to look at. I rubbed my fingers on my pants to clean the film of dust that came from the cardboard. Where had she kept this thing? It must have been at the back of a storage locker, long forgot
ten about.

I turned the box around and saw more writing:
Diane’s Journals/Childhood Items
. My hands shook as I pushed the box away from me. Where had she gotten this? I hadn’t seen it
in years.

Our talk earlier today all made sense now. Charlie brought this over because she needed reassurance. I could give her that with what was inside
this box.

Shortly after we moved in with Aunt Mags, she’d taken us to see a counselor. We didn’t really say much at the time; Charlie literally didn’t say anything at all. Not for six months. She’d been the one to find our mot
her first.

God, I hated thinking about that time. I’d worked so hard to forget about it, to lock it away in a tiny box within my mind. Dredging it up now hurt. But inside this box were the answers, for myself and for
Charlie.

I pulled the box closer and opened it. The first item on top was an old pink sweater my mom used to wear around the house, a cardigan she’d knitted while she was pregnant with me. I remembered her telling me she used to sing to me while she knitted the sweater, and then when I was older and would wake in the middle of the night from bad dreams, she’d wrap me up in it and rub my back until I fell asl
eep again.

Even though I knew any smell that I’d hoped would have lingered from my mom would be gone by now, I rubbed the wool between my fingers and brought it up t
o my nose.

There were other things inside the box, hidden beneath this sweater. My journals, the pipe my father used to keep on a shelf in our living room, and the baby blanket I’d found discarded beneath Christopher’s crib the day he died. Things I knew I needed to keep but never really wanted to s
ee again.

I picked up the soft baby-blue blanket that my mom used to wrap Christopher in. I remembered him being a small baby who cried a lot. Mom used to bundle him up tight in the blanket and rock him to sleep. His bedroom had been on the other side of Charlie’s and mine and I could still hear the creak of the old rocking chair in my dreams, along with
his cries.

It was why I hated to hear
Grace cry.

I used to wonder whether our lives would have been different if our father had stuck around after everything happened. Days after my mother killed herself, he dropped Charlie and me off at Aunt Mags’s with a suitcase full of our stuff. We sat in the car while he knocked on her door. I remember him pointing at us and then at himself. I have no idea what he said, but he handed her keys and then came back to us. He opened our door, got our suitcase out of the trunk, and then before we even had the chance to walk into the house, he
was gone.

We never heard from h
im again.

It was Aunt Mags who cleaned out the apartment before the landlord confiscated all our stuff. She let us pick out the things we wanted to keep the most while she packed our clothes and the rest of our toys. I chose my mother’s sweater, my dad’s pipe, and Christopher’s blanket. Charlie took a picture of all of us after Christopher had b
een born.