The Baby Wait

His words struck a sensitive spot in the soft underbelly of my self-doubt. I tried to ignore them, tried to tell myself Joe was just frustrated by Cherie’s mooching call and didn’t mean any malice. It didn’t work. Just because I’d convinced the social worker who’d done our home study that I was grade-A, blue-ribbon mom-material didn’t make it so.

While I busily failed at propping up my ego, I changed the subject. “So, you’re going to get home early, then?”

“I don’t think so. I have that final inspection for the Walker house. Ought not to be too bad, but the Walkers can’t do it until after they get off. It’ll be seven before I get done, most likely. What? You got plans?”

“No, I just had crab legs in the freezer. Thought I might cook those.”

We stood there, a little awkward, neither one of us knowing what to say to fill up the silence. I loved Joe, had since high school, but sometimes his uncommunicative ways drove me crazy.

“Uh, don’t be surprised if Ma calls you looking for me,” I told him. “She’s already hit me up to bring her groceries.”

“Not unusual. Just like Cherie begging money. I told her if she wanted money, she could work for it, same as me. I’m not a finance company, and one day my little sister will realize that.”

I’d heard the angry conversation the night before, heard Joe slam down the phone. I knew the score. They wouldn’t speak to each other for two, maybe three weeks.

Not having to deal with Cherie might be a relief for me, but Joe would worry and sulk and not talk about it until the two of them finally got past that famous Tennyson pride to mumble sorry to one another. And then, out of sheer guilt, Joe would give her whatever it was she’d wanted in the first place.

Cherie brought out the absolute worst in Joe. True, Cherie brought out the worst in almost everybody. Right now, though, with the adoption making Joe so tense and with his obvious discontent at work, he didn’t need Cherie to worry about. Couldn’t she just grow up and stop her female version of the Peter Pan syndrome? Or did she think being twenty-eight too much of a drag? Couldn’t she, for once, pretend to be her real age?

Right. That had about as much chance happening as Ma becoming a teetotaler.

I put out a tentative feeler, a figurative finger in the wind to see which way Joe’s feelings were going. “So…Cherie’s in a tight spot? A little short?” Again.

The corners of Joe’s mouth tugged down and he looked back at the construction in progress.

No, Joe. Don’t bury yourself in work. Talk to me. Talk to me like you used to. Share things. Share—

But I didn’t say that aloud. No point in it. I’d been saying it for months, and every time he just shrugged it off.

“What else is new with Cherie?”

“Have you tried…talking to her? I mean, about college or tech school or—”

“Right, Sara. She’s a high school dropout. What school’s going to want her?”

I stepped back, startled by the ferocity of his tone. “I was just thinking—”

“How about you leave Cherie to me, and you worry about Ma? Huh? That a fair trade?”

Now it was me who looked away. I tried to get my emotions under control so that I wouldn’t say anything I’d regret.

“I’m sorry, Joe. I didn’t mean to— I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Something softened in his face, and he shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I’m just…I’ve just been worried out of my head about you, and you wouldn’t let me go with you this morning, and I didn’t sleep too good last night, what with Cherie and…you. And then you didn’t call. I was sure…”

I reached up and touched his cheek. “I’m okay, Joe.”

He cleared his throat, his not-so-subtle signal that I was straying toward the mushy subjects he’d rather avoid. Sure enough, he ignored my reply. Instead, he asked, “I wondered what you were doing about lunch. Did you go by the house and get something?”

“No. What with Ma, I didn’t have time.”

“She doesn’t give a damn about you.”

The bald observation was laced with a considerable amount of bitterness.

“It’s not like she’s up for Mother of the Year,” I said. “She’s just Ma. That’s all there is to it. Can’t expect anything more than she can give.”

Joe pulled out a tape measure from his tool belt and fiddled with it, his features darkened by a frown. “How can you do it, Sara? How can you say, ‘Sure, Ma, I’ll go get groceries at the last minute, do without lunch,’ when she doesn’t care enough about you to think about what today’s doctor appointment means?”

I worked my mouth around a variety of answers, all of them some variation of, The same reason you keep extending Cherie second and third and fourth chances. Certain Joe wouldn’t find that a satisfactory answer, I just shook my head. “It’s okay. Really. It doesn’t bother me.”

Much.

“It damn well ought to bother her. She could have lost you. We all could have lost you. Bet she never thought about that.”

“Joe…” He’d been descending into these moods more and more lately. I tried hard to keep the Ma problem as separate as I could. Most times Joe dealt with her and her escapades with wry humor, but others, he was just angry. Sometimes he seemed angry that I wasn’t angry enough.

That you don’t show how angry you really are.

I ignored that inner whisper. “You haven’t lost me. You’re stuck with me for a long, long time, Joe. I promise. Really, truly. We’re going to be fine.”

But as I walked toward the car a few minutes later, I could feel his eyes on me. I could feel his doubt, as heavy as a hand on my back.

For all my cheerful optimistic reassurances to Joe, I wasn’t at all sure we’d be fine. I wouldn’t feel that way until Joe told me we’d be fine.

And for that to happen, he’d have to start talking about whatever was going on behind that carefully controlled mask of his.

MY CELL PHONE rang again as I zipped along the two-lane road to Campbell, which was replete with hand-painted signs that exhorted, Repent: The End Is Nigh.

Sure feels that way to me, I thought, as I flipped the phone open and ground out a, “Ma, I’m—”

“Whoa, girl. You sound like you’ve been on twenty miles of bad road.”

Warmth flooded me. Maggie, my best friend, my partner-in-crime.

“I have at that. The boss looking for me?”

“Not yet. How did the doctor’s appointment go?”

Leave it to Maggie to ask and Ma to completely forget the significance of today. “Fine,” I told her. “I’ll fill you in on everything when I get there, but first I’ve got to make a milk run by Ma’s. Can you cover for me at work?”

“You’re in luck. Mr. Eeyore’s gone to a meeting over at the elementary school, and he’s having lunch over there.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. Mr. Eeyore—Daryl Morris, the Bryce County school superintendent—could never be mistaken for a happy camper. Maggie worked as his assistant superintendent, so she caught the brunt of all his delegating and gloomy predictions. I, a truancy officer with a fancy title, mostly had to deal with him when we met at the coffee machine.

“Maybe that means I can get a bite to eat after all.”

“Not with Ma on your case,” Maggie told me in an all-knowing voice. “I’ll handle lunch. You handle Ma.”