The Winters in Bloom (5 page)

“Sometimes I hate this baby,” Courtney said, slumping back into her side of the booth. Her face was pale. Her hands were trembling.

“I think that’s normal with your condition,” Sandra said. She’d looked it up, and it was, actually. “Once the baby is born, you’ll feel—”

“Like I’m trapped with a screaming baby, in a town where I know no one, with a husband who doesn’t care.”

“David cares about you,” she said, maybe a bit too firmly. She wanted Courtney to feel she could talk to her, but there were limits. And David had been killing himself to provide for her and the baby. He also told her she was beautiful all the time; he brought her flowers he’d picked by the side of the road; he cooked dinner whenever he was home. What more could she want?

When Courtney grew silent, Sandra said, “I know you’re in a tough spot right now. What can I do to help?”

Courtney was twirling her straw in her water. She looked up and laughed, but it was a little bitter. “Let me go back in time to seven months ago?”

“I wish I could,” Sandra said. Truer words had never been spoken. She would have given pretty much anything to get these kids out of this situation. Maybe David was ready to be a father—Sandra wasn’t sure about that—but Courtney was so obviously not ready to be a mother. She worried about her son, but she’d also started to worry about the baby, her
grandchild
. It kept surprising Sandra: she was only forty-six and about to be a grandmother.

A song came on that Courtney liked and she cheered up, or at least, she changed the subject to something cheerier: David was taking her out to some fancy restaurant next week, for the anniversary of their first date. One of her new maternity dresses had been chosen specifically for the occasion. She also talked about something she was writing, a story about a woman who gives her uterus to a gay man, so that he can have a child. Sandra thought she meant the woman agreed to give birth to a child for the gay man, but no. “She hands the uterus to him,” Courtney said. “Just like handing over a loaf of bread.”

“But what does he do with it?”

“He puts it inside of himself, so he can get pregnant.” Courtney’s voice sounded a little annoyed, as if she were thinking: what else would he do with it?

Sandra was stuck on the basic facts of anatomy. There was no place inside a man where a uterus could go. And what would it be attached to? But all she said was “That’s different,” and Courtney took it as a compliment. She always wanted to be original. In fact, she gave up on this story a few months later, when, as she told Sandra, she discovered that someone had beaten her to it and written an entire novel about a woman who loses a uterus. “That one is lost, and mine is given away, but it’s close enough,” Courtney said, sighing. “It’s like somebody else always gets my ideas first.”

When they left the restaurant, Courtney was still in a good mood. Sandra drove carefully, hoping to avoid any bumps that might make her daughter-in-law nauseous. They got back to the apartment and David was there and happy to go on and on about how beautiful Courtney looked, from hair to eyes, from face to dress. He even mentioned her shoes, which, as Courtney pointed out, were the same brown Mary Janes she’d been wearing for months. David laughed and kissed Courtney’s hand. “Well,” he said, “apparently I’ve always loved those shoes.”

The couple ended up on the couch together: Courtney resting her head on Sandra’s bed pillow, David slouching on the other end, rubbing her feet. Sandra was sitting on a hard kitchen chair that she’d pulled into the living room. But she was feeling pretty good, seeing her son and his wife relaxing together and, best of all, watching TV. It was Courtney’s idea to turn it on, and even though they didn’t have cable, they got
Murphy Brown
, which was one of Sandra’s weekly shows.

Over time, the visits to David and Courtney would become one big clump—Sandra couldn’t remember if something happened in the winter or the spring, the sixth visit or the ninth, the flat-tire drive or the ice-storm drive, a weekend she called a “short vacation” or a midweek trip using her personal days—but she was positive that there were a lot of moments like this when everything seemed good. And when she added up all these positive times, she rested easier, convinced that her son’s new family would be all right.

Later, she couldn’t believe that she’d let herself forget what she’d learned in her marriage: it’s not the happy parts that will tell you what will happen next. No matter how much you want them to, the happy parts—as long as they’re only
parts
, and easy to recognize precisely because they’re not the normal state of things—can only give you heartache. Even the good memories they provide aren’t really good, because every one just reminds you of what you were too dumb to see at the time.

Sandra refused to believe that it was David’s fault, what Courtney did. But she had no problem blaming herself for not figuring out what was going to happen and stepping in to stop it. Courtney was a twenty-three-year-old kid. Her parents were always too busy to visit. So the only adult around was Sandra, and her failure to save her son’s first family would always be like a weight she carried on her back. And it literally aged her. She got arthritis by fifty, her hair turned gray, and her energy level dipped, never to come back.

Fifteen years later, she still hadn’t cut back her schedule as a geriatric nurse, though she felt older than some of her patients, and much older that her sixty-one years. Luckily, her eyes were fine and she had no problem negotiating the traffic as she made her way to the quaint little suburb where Courtney lived. She knew David was wrong to suspect Courtney of taking his son—because she knew Courtney. It was the only secret she’d kept from David, who had changed so much over the years, sometimes she barely recognized the boy he’d been in the man he’d become.

Sandra didn’t plan to deceive him, but someone had to take care of Courtney when she got out of the hospital. Her parents had essentially disowned her: what she’d done was a stain on their ordered life with their fancy friends. So Sandra found her an apartment in Philadelphia, nursed her back to something like sanity, and even helped her find a job as a technical writer. She saw her less often in the last few years, but they still kept in touch. Courtney never stopped being grateful for what Sandra had done, and for her forgiveness.

The row house where she lived had a heavy iron door knocker. Sandra picked it up and dropped it twice before she accepted that Courtney wasn’t home. It was a nice day, cooler after yesterday’s rain, so she decided to wait on the porch swing. It was only two o’clock. Courtney usually got off early on Tuesday, but maybe she’d had to run some errands. She’d never remarried; she had no roommates. She lived alone, in a life not that different from Sandra’s.

A breeze blew up and the wind chimes on the porch were singing. Courtney had planted a little garden in the front yard: pink dahlias surrounding a white hibiscus, with yellow roses on the vine that climbed on the porch rail. It was a peaceful place to wait, but Sandra’s hands were throbbing from her arthritis, which was always worse when she was nervous. Her stomach hurt, too; she wished she hadn’t eaten lunch, though of course at lunchtime, she hadn’t known what had happened yet.

She closed her eyes and thought of her grandson, Michael. He barely knew her, because David wouldn’t let Sandra take the boy anywhere unless he was also with them. Sometimes she got confused, trying to remember what Michael was like when he was little. She’d stare at a picture of him, but in her mind, she’d see the other baby, the one she knew so well that she could quiet him with just a coo and a touch.

She had so many regrets. What if she’d told Courtney the truth that day in the restaurant? Sometimes you won’t understand your child. Maybe you’ll wish—just for a moment—that you’d never had them. But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t die for them in a second. They become everything to you; of course that hurts sometimes. And even when they leave, they’re always there, inside your mind, imprinted on your body: the arms that held them, the voice that sang to them, the eyes that cried for all their heartbreaks, from skinned knees to lost loves. So sure, I guess it’s a hard truth, when you get right down to it. There is no you anymore without them.

FIVE

A
s hard
as it was for Kyra to believe now, she couldn’t deny that back in college, Zachary Barnes had been the kind of boy that attracted girls. He had long black hair and a stubble beard that made him seem cool, especially as he was from Seattle, which seemed strange and exotic even before the city became the cool center of the world thanks to grunge bands. He also seemed more grown up than other college boys because, in fact, he was. He’d spent six years in the army before he’d started at UMKC. He’d been out of the country, the first person she’d ever met who had.

Zach was often quiet, making him seem mysterious, like he knew things that other people didn’t. Kyra thought he was wiser than every other boy at school—but he wasn’t wise enough not to fall in love with Amy. It was almost the first thing he did at college, right after he signed up for his premed courses: he started dating the pretty girl in line behind him at the registrar’s office. He wasn’t deterred when he found out that pretty girl wasn’t in line to sign up for classes but to withdraw from school. He didn’t tell her it was a mistake, because Amy could still make anything sound like a good idea, even quitting college after only one year to follow her dream (when did this become her dream?) of becoming a singer.

If only someone had thought to get Amy to a psychologist when she started having problems during freshman year. It was obvious even at the time that Amy seemed hell-bent on reenacting their mother’s life, but Kyra didn’t know why and she didn’t know any psychologists. When Amy told Kyra that their mother had wanted to be a singer, too, and this was why she’d left them, it was news to Kyra, and she was mystified how her sister could know this when she didn’t. Amy wouldn’t say, but she glowed as she talked about their mother’s voice. “It was so beautiful. I only hope I can sound half as good as she did.”

Kyra didn’t remember her mother singing, not once. Though she must have sung hymns at church and carols at Christmas and “Happy Birthday” at least a few times a year, her voice hadn’t stood out at all. Sometimes Kyra thought Amy was making all this up, creating a better, glamorous, version of their mother. But the strange part was that Amy didn’t need their mother to be talented, because Amy’s own voice had
always
stood out. Even when the two girls sang along with “We Are Family,” Amy sounded as good as the famous sisters who’d recorded the song. She’d been picked for every solo in grade school, and her high school chorus teacher had begged her, each year, to try out for the musical, but she was working and saving money for college and she didn’t have time.

Zachary Barnes wanted to help Amy, and Kyra had given up trying to argue her sister out of her “dream.” He knew a guitar player, a guy who called himself Peanut. Peanut’s band was doing gigs in town, nowhere fancy, but they were making a living doing cover tunes. When Zach brought Amy to one of their rehearsals, Peanut decided they could use a “chick talent.” And just like that, Amy wasn’t a student anymore; she was a singer in a band.

Zach and Amy had been dating for nearly a year when Amy broke his heart. The first time. It was at a bar on the Country Club Plaza, the most upscale place Amy and the band had ever played. Kyra had just finished the last finals of her sophomore year, and she was only at the bar reluctantly, because Amy had begged her to come to the gig. She was sitting at a table by herself, as far away from the music as possible. The waitress was already annoyed that she was only sipping a Coke. If she’d been closer to the stage, the waitress might have carded her and thrown her out.

As always, she was impressed by how good her sister sounded, belting out pop songs like “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and “Right Here Waiting.” But the song that moved Kyra the most was Amy’s cover of George Michael’s “Faith.” The song wasn’t actually about religion, but the happy, up-tempo chorus line about having faith made her feel lonelier and strangely lost, like she wasn’t sure where she belonged. It was partly because she and Amy hadn’t been to Mass since they moved to Kansas City, but it was also because she felt like she didn’t even know her sister anymore. Who was this girl standing in front of these four men Kyra had barely spoken to? Amy called the guys in the band her “mates.” Kyra was almost positive she’d slept with Peanut, and she suspected she’d slept with Tim, the drummer, too. Amy rehearsed with them at a run-down house in the suburbs, and often, she was gone all night. She said they were “jamming,” but she came home smelling of weed and sex. When she woke Kyra to tell her how well it had gone, she seemed drunk or high or both. Kyra tried locking her bedroom door, but it didn’t work. Amy would knock and beg, “Hey. Let me in, okay? I have to tell you about the coolest thing! I want to give you a morning hug, too, you goofball!”

No wonder Zach loved Amy. Although she was no longer the good girl she’d been, she was still so sweet and affectionate. Whenever Kyra was unhappy—at least on the rare occasions when she couldn’t hide it—her sister worked so hard to cheer her up. She went to the bakery and got a half dozen of the giant cinnamon rolls Kyra loved; she spent hours straightening up her room and the rest of the apartment, knowing that Kyra got depressed when things weren’t put away; she gently brushed Kyra’s hair and worked it into braids. Kyra suspected that even her sleeping around was mostly driven by her desire to make the guys happy, to give them what they wanted, especially since, as she said, shocking Kyra, sex was “such an easy thing to do for someone.” Everyone loved Kyra’s sister, even the girls who otherwise would have called her a slut. Kyra did, too, though Kyra’s love had become stern and unforgiving. She truly believed Amy was in danger of ruining her life. And then Amy announced that she was going to do another stupid thing, something almost as bad as quitting school: she was going to break up with the one boy who really cared about her.