Sunday, December 7, 2008
Riverside, California
A week had passed since Paul’s funeral. Jack had gone back to work the day after, and Rose was planning to resume her work soon as well, wanting something to take her mind off the tragedy. Their bodies were healing from the trauma, but it would take much longer for their emotions to heal, too.
Life in the small apartment was unusually quiet and strained. In contrast to the usual conversation and laughter from the adults and childish antics from Lizzy, everyone was quiet, not knowing quite what to do or say. Lizzy played quietly, not trying to sing in imitation of her mother, and when she sat down to color, she used dark crayons and often drew stick figures of a mourning family and a baby going to heaven. She was more irritable, too, throwing tantrums over things she had long since learned she couldn’t have, or simply refusing to do what she was told and then crying when her parents forced the issue.
Things were strained for Jack and Rose, too. Just after Paul had died, they had clung together, trying to comfort each other, but now neither was sure how to handle the other’s grief, or how to express their own. Rose often awoke in tears after dreaming about the baby, and would fall apart when she found some object laying around the apartment that reminded her of Paul. Her body had to adjust, too—it was still producing milk to feed a baby that no longer existed, and it would be several weeks before it stopped.
Jack wanted to be there for his wife and daughter, but he was grieving, too, and didn’t know quite what to say or do to help them. Rose, in turn, wanted to help him, but he had put on a stoic expression soon after the funeral and she didn’t know how to break through the self-protective mask. She knew that he cried quietly at night after he thought she was asleep, but the one time she had reached out to him, he had stopped and pretended to be sleeping. He had boxed up Paul’s belongings and put them in storage, but a few things remained to remind them of what had happened.
The tension was wearing on all of them, and things finally came to a head on Sunday afternoon, while Rose was in the kitchen making snacks while Lizzy picked out a movie to watch—the usual Sunday afternoon ritual.
Rose was rummaging through the refrigerator for ingredients for her homemade vegetable dip when she came across a baby bottle at the back. Though she had breast-fed Paul, there were times when she wasn’t available to feed him, so she had pumped her milk and saved it for him so that whoever was taking care of him could feed him. A lone, forgotten bottle sat at the back, the contents long since spoiled.
With shaking hands, Rose removed the bottle, biting her lip as tears filled her eyes. How many times had she filled bottles with milk to make sure her baby had food? And now he was gone.
Jack turned from where he had been watching a bag of microwave popcorn slowly expand, hearing Rose’s muffled sob. He saw her holding the bottle of spoiled milk, wiping away the tears that ran down her face.
Not knowing what else to do, he walked over and took the bottle from her, dumping the contents down the sink—and that was enough for Rose to blow up at him.
"What are you doing?" she shouted, snatching the empty bottle away from him. "I wasn’t done with that!"
"Rose…it was a bottle of spoiled milk. What did you expect me to do?"
"I would have taken care of it! I know you can’t keep spoiled milk around. But just grabbing it from me was uncalled for."
"I didn’t just grab it from you."
"Yes, you did! You’ve been doing your best over the past week to erase every sign that Paul was ever here, and I’m sick of it! Did you ever stop to think about how I feel?"
"I thought about it all the time! What do you want me to do?"
"Stop trying to erase his existence!"
"I’m not! I put everything in storage, since we might have need of it in the future."
"Oh, no. No, no, no. Don’t you dare say that we can replace him with another baby. We can’t."
"I wasn’t saying that."
"Yes, you were."
"Mommy? Daddy?" Lizzy stood in the dining area of the kitchen, looking worried. Her parents didn’t usually fight like this.
They looked over at her, but instead of calming down, her presence only served to inflame them more.
"You see?" Rose shouted. "You’re upsetting Lizzy!"
"I’m upsetting Lizzy? Who started this fight?"
"You did, when you took that bottle away from me!"
"You’re the one who threw a tantrum over it!"
"Oh, so now I’m a child, am I? And you expect me to have another baby? Well, let me tell you something. I’m not having anymore babies. Not ever. I cannot—will not—go through that again. I lost two children in one night, and I don’t ever want to lose another."
"Rose…" Jack’s voice held a warning tone.
"Don’t talk to me like that, Jack. You don’t own me. I mean what I say. No more children, and there’s nothing you can do about it."
"We’ll see about that."
"And what are you going to do? Find another woman to bear them for you? That’ll be the end for us, I can assure you. And don’t think you can force me to have children against my will. If you lay one hand on me when I don’t want you to, I will make you very, very sorry."
"I don’t know what you’re talking about!"
"The hell you don’t! Get out of my sight. I don’t want to be around you right now."
"Fine." Jack grabbed his coat from where it hung over a chair and headed for the door. "See you later."
Rose’s mouth dropped open as he slammed the door. She hadn’t actually expected him to walk out. Throwing open the door, she went after him.
"Jack, wait! I’m sorry!"
Jack just waved her off and kept going, heading for the car. Rose started after him again, but a little voice from the doorway stopped her.
"Mommy?"
Rose turned and went back to her daughter, picking her up. When she turned back toward the street, she saw Jack drive away with a screech of tires.
"Mommy, where’s Daddy going?"
"I don’t know, Lizzy."
"When will he be back?"
"I don’t know that, either."