When You Least Expect It (33 page)

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello,” Georgia replied. “I let myself in. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Who minds having their mother-in-law let herself into the house at will?” I replied.

“Don’t be a smart-ass. You’ve been standing there for a full thirty seconds and haven’t yet offered me a drink.”

“Why didn’t you help yourself?” I asked, turning for the kitchen.

“There weren’t any bottles open,” Georgia called out. “I thought it would be rude to open one without permission.”

I put the perishables away, then grabbed a bottle of wine from the rack and opened it. I poured a glass and brought it back to the living room.

“Thank you,” Georgia said, gratefully accepting the glass. “How’s India?”

“You haven’t seen her?”

“I went up to check on her, but she was asleep,” Georgia said.

I wondered if India really was asleep, or if she was just pretending to be. “She’s not good. If this keeps up for much longer, I’m going to have to call our doctor. Maybe she needs to be on an antidepressant.”

“I think she just needs to process her grief. She shouldn’t smother her feelings with pharmaceuticals,” Georgia said.

“She’s hasn’t left the house in three weeks. She barely eats, sleeps, or showers.” I looked up at the ceiling, as though I could sense the pain vibes emanating down. “I’ve let this go on for too long. It’s time to get her some help.”

“Tosh. We can help her. In fact, I brought something for her,”
Georgia said. She reached into her oversized faux-leather bag and pulled out a spiral-bound notebook. “It’s a poem I wrote about the failed adoption. As soon as India wakes up, I’m going to read it to her. I think she’ll find it cathartic.”

I stared at my mother-in-law. “You can’t be serious.”

“What do you mean?”

“Georgia. You can’t read her that poem.”

“Why not?”

“Isn’t it obvious? India’s not up to hearing something like that.”

“What better way to express your sadness, your grief, your desolation than with poetry? As Voltaire said, ‘Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls.’”

Georgia beamed at me, clearly pleased with her quotation.

“I don’t care what Voltaire said,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, although the eye twitch had returned. “I’m thinking of India’s feelings.”

Georgia stood, bristling. “I always respect my daughter’s feelings.”

“If that was true, you wouldn’t be writing poetry about her grief.”

“What’s going on?” India asked.

Georgia and I both turned, startled at the interruption. India was standing in the doorway to the living room. We’d been so immersed in our argument we hadn’t heard her approach. I realized, with a gut-wrenching twist, that India looked awful. She’d lost a lot of weight over the past few weeks, giving her a gaunt, haunted appearance.

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “Georgia and I were just talking. I didn’t know you were up.”

“I was hungry,” India said. She wrapped her arms around herself, as though she were cold.

“Good girl,” Georgia said approvingly. “Come into the kitchen. I’ll make you something to eat.”

“You were fighting,” India said accusingly.

Georgia and I exchanged guilty looks, like a pair of schoolchildren facing a disapproving teacher. So we did what any kid would do: We lied.

“It wasn’t a fight,” Georgia said. “We were discussing literature.”

India turned pale eyes to me. I nodded vigorously. “That’s right. Literature.”

“You’re lying to me. Both of you.” She folded her arms. “Tell me the truth. I want to know what’s going on.”

“I wrote a poem for you,” Georgia said.

“Georgia,” I said warningly.

Georgia set her lips in a stubborn line. “Jeremy doesn’t want me to give it to you.”

“Let me see,” India said, holding out her hand.

“No,” I said.

“Actually, it’s meant to be read aloud,” Georgia explained.

“Except that you’re not going to read it aloud to her. I won’t allow it.” I looked at India. “Just trust me. You don’t want to hear it.”

“I abhor censorship in all forms,” Georgia said.

“Let her read it,” India said. She gave me a look that I knew all too well:
Just let her do it. It’s not worth getting her upset
.

But she was wrong. This was worth fighting for. I hadn’t been able to protect India from Lainey. I hadn’t been able to prevent her heart from breaking. But by God, I would keep her from listening to an atrocious poem that was written about her pain.

Georgia, delighted at the permission, put the notebook down on the coffee table and turned to fumble about in her insanely oversized handbag for her reading glasses. I took the opportunity to grab the notebook up and ripped out the top page, where the poem was written.

“Jeremy!” Georgia was scandalized. “Give that back to me this instant.”

“Sure,” I said. I tossed her the notebook, but kept a tight grip on the page with the poem. I glanced down at it, skimming over the words. It was exactly what I’d feared—overwrought prose detailing India’s grief over losing the baby. Even the title—“Empty Cradle”—was cringe-worthy.

“Give that to me!” Georgia said again. She stepped forward and tried to tear the poem out of my hands. With lightning-fast ninja reflexes, I whipped it out of her reach and held it up over my head. As I was tall and Georgia very short, she’d never be able to reach it.

“No way,” I said as she hopped ineffectively, trying to grab it out of my hand. “I’ve already told you, you’re not reading it to her.”

“Jeremy!” India said, staring at me openmouthed. “What are you doing?”

Georgia made another sudden jump for the poem, this time leaping surprisingly high. I backed away and then dashed toward the kitchen. Otis bounded off the couch and followed me, ears pricked up and tongue lolling happily, clearly thinking that this was all a fun new game. Once in the kitchen, I looked around desperately. Where should I put it? If I threw it out, Georgia would just fish it out of the garbage. It was a pity we didn’t have a wood-burning oven. Seized by a sudden idea, I leapt toward the garbage disposal. I crumpled up the poem, and was just shoving it into the disposal when Georgia and India reached the kitchen.

“Stop him!” Georgia shrieked. “That’s the only copy I have.”

I turned on the water and held up the spray nozzle. “Stay back,” I warned, with a threatening wave of the nozzle. Georgia hesitated just long enough for me to reach back and flip the switch on. The garbage disposal roared to life, chewing the poem up in its metal jaws.

“My poem!” Georgia cried, covering her mouth with cupped hands.

“I’m sorry it had to come to this,” I said. “But I did warn you.”

Just then, I heard an odd sound coming from India’s direction. Georgia and I turned to look at her. India was laughing. It wasn’t just a chuckle, either. She was laughing so hard, she was struggling to breathe. India clutched at her sides as though they were cramping.

“So ridiculous … poem … garbage disposal …,” India gasped. And then she laughed and laughed, while Georgia and I just stood there staring at her. Otis was clearly concerned, too. He went to India’s side and licked her hand.

“Oh, my God, she’s having a fit,” Georgia said worriedly. “Do you think we pushed her over the edge?”

“I’m fine,” India bleated, petting Otis to reassure him. But she leaned against the wall, presumably to stay upright, and kept laughing. I started to laugh, too. It was impossible not to. Even Georgia started to giggle, the fury receding from her face.

“It’s official: This family is certifiable,” India said, when she was finally able to catch her breath.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said, looking at India. She needed to shower and wash her hair, to eat a good meal and get out into the sunshine. But to see her laughing—even if it was semi-hysterical—filled me with relief. If we could still laugh, even about something so stupid, well, maybe we would get past this after all. Eventually.

“We’re not crazy. We’re unique and comfortable with self-expression,” Georgia said. She gave me a censorious look. “Although I will never forgive you for destroying my poem.”

“I can live with that,” I said. “Did you say you were hungry?”

I looked hopefully at India, who was now wiping her eyes with the cuff of her rumpled pajama top.

“Actually, I am sort of hungry,” she said, sounding surprised. “I’m craving baked ziti. Do we have the stuff to make it?”

“Let’s get takeout,” I said. I reached into the drawer where we stored the takeout menus. “Mario’s? Or Pasta Pasta?”

“Mario’s,” Georgia said definitively. “Pasta Pasta always gives me gas.”

“Thanks for sharing, Mom,” India said, rolling her eyes at me.

I just smiled.

For a while, everything just unraveled. The smallest tasks—running an errand, doing the dishes, taking Otis for a walk—exhausted me. Work was out of the question. Jeremy called a photographer in town who owed me a favor, and she agreed to cover the two weddings looming on my schedule. Everything else on my calendar was postponed.

But finally, nearly a month after the adoption fell through, I knew it was time to get back to work. As little as I felt like working, I also didn’t want my business to go under. It might even be a relief, I thought, to get away from my grief and to focus on something other than my own pain.

Jeremy had already broken down the show of maternity portraits. He’d arranged for the pictures that had sold to be delivered, and stored the rest in the back room, so I wasn’t assaulted by a roomful of pregnant bellies and newborn babies as soon as I walked in the front door. But there were all the small reminders that he couldn’t possibly have known to remove. The box of instant cocoa and bag of stale marshmallows—one of Lainey’s many pregnancy cravings—stashed next to the coffeepot. A set of candid photographs Lainey had taken at a wedding stacked up on my table, ready to be added to the newlyweds’ album. A bottle of
prenatal vitamins. Feeling numb, I swept everything but the photographs into the garbage.

But even with my newly scrubbed space, I still couldn’t escape the constant reminders of what I had lost. On my third day back, I had two studio sessions scheduled—one of a baby girl nearing her first birthday and a second of a pregnant woman who had read about my show in the paper and fallen in love with the idea of having a maternity portrait.

Somehow I got through it. I didn’t burst into tears when the little girl held her arms open to her mother and, in a sweet, breathy voice, demanded, “Up,” nor when the pregnant woman showed me her stretch marks. I just forced my lips up into a smile and filtered it all through the lens of my camera.

I’d set that afternoon aside to go through the large box of developed film that had come back from the printer. Most of my work—and all of my study portraits—were done with digital cameras these days. But lately—ever since I started teaching the basics of photography to Lainey—I’d been working with film more.

I began to open up every envelope, trying to remember which photographs went to which client. I wasn’t prepared for the moment when I slit open a cardboard envelope, dumped out the photographs onto my worktable, and found myself staring down at Liam’s exquisite little face, captured forever in black and white. It was one of the rolls I’d taken at the hospital, and it had somehow gotten mixed up with the outgoing film. Only he wasn’t Liam anymore, I remembered with a fresh jolt of pain. Lainey had renamed him. Griffin. I stared down at the photo, mesmerized by the soft curves of his rounded face, unaware that I was crying until several teardrops landed on the photograph.

“Shit,” I said, wiping my tears off his face.

I scanned every last photo of him into the computer and
then saved them onto my backup drive. I spent the next hour examining the prints on the monitor, blowing them up so I could see every last eyelash, every knuckle, every wisp of hair in detail. I stared and stared, in a trance of sorts. The studio phone rang.

“How’s your day going?” Jeremy asked when I answered.

“Not good,” I said softly.

“What happened?”

“The photos … from the hospital …”

“I’ll be right there.”

“No, don’t. I’m leaving anyway. I need to get out of here.” I was struggling to breathe, and my skin felt hot and tight.

“I don’t think you should be driving,” Jeremy said. “Just wait there. I’ll pick you up and bring you home.”

But I didn’t wait. Instead, I climbed into my old truck and drove to the beach. It was a hot, stifling July day, and the beach was crowded. There were the usual packs of surfers—all with long hair and floral board shorts—and sun-baked retirees basking on folding chairs. And, of course, there were the families, complete with small children brandishing plastic shovels and wearing floppy sun hats. I kicked off my shoes at the bottom of the boardwalk and walked past them all across the hot sand to the cooler, wet ground by the water’s edge. I stood there for a long time, staring out at the water. Kids bobbed around in the waves like seals, while the adults waded in slowly so they could gradually adjust to the chilly water. Farther out, expensive boats motored by, their drivers red-faced and clutching bottles of beer.

For once, I wasn’t thinking about the baby, or Lainey, or my childless future. I wasn’t really thinking anything at all. Somehow, between the hot sun and the hypnotic roar of the ocean, my mind had gone mercifully blank. I wished I’d worn my bathing suit—the cool blue of the ocean was irresistible.

“Hi,” a familiar voice said from behind me.

I started and spun around. Jeremy was standing there.

“How did you know where I was?”

“Lucky guess,” he said. “And I know you like to come here to think.”

“That’s just it. I’m not thinking. I can’t think about any of it anymore.”

Jeremy wrapped an arm around me and pulled me close. We’d always fit well together, my curves lining up against the planes of his body. He kissed the top of my head.

“It’s going to get better,” he said, his voice soft but fierce.

“I’m not so sure. Does anyone ever get over something like this?”