Wally Lamb - We Are Water

Orion never did. But then again, why would he have? I’d been so guarded all those years. A twenty-seven-year marriage of guardedness, based on nothing more than the fact that he was a man and, therefore, not to be trusted with the worst of my secrets.

But come on, Annie. You haven’t told Viveca your secrets either. Why is that? Because you’re afraid she might change her mind? Stop taking care of you? Be honest. Your own mother dies in the flood that night. Then your father drinks himself out of your life. And your foster parents were just stop-gaps. They fed you, clothed you, but never loved you. You wanted the real thing. Do you think it’s a coincidence that Orion and Viveca are the same age? That both your ex-husband and your wife-to-be are seven years older than you?

No, that’s irrelevant … Or is it? Is that the real reason why you married him? Why you’re marrying her? Because Little Orphan Annie still needs someone to take care of her?

I need to stop this. Stop being so hard on myself. I love Viveca. And I loved Orion, too … But why? Because he had taken me under his wing? Because for the first time in my life, intimacy with a man was enjoyable? Safe? Maybe not as safe as it feels with Viveca, or as wild as it had been with Priscilla. But pleasurable enough. And very pleasurable for him. It made me a little envious, sometimes. The intensity of his …

No. I wanted to give him pleasure. But his pleasure had a price.

No, that’s not fair. It had been a joint decision. I had stopped using my diaphragm because we both wanted a child. But when my pregnancy became a fact instead of a desire, I was suddenly seized with fear. What if I wasn’t up to the job of motherhood? What if I miscarried again like I had that time when I was seventeen? I had never told Orion about my first pregnancy, and I held off for a week or more before I told him about this one. The night I finally did tell him, Orion promised me that he was going to be the best father he could—the opposite of his own absentee father. We cried together, and I let him assume that mine were happy tears, the same as his. They weren’t. But little by little my fear subsided, and I began to feel happy. Excited. Until I had that ultrasound. When I learned we were having twins, I got scared all over again. And when, in the delivery room, it looked like we might lose Andrew, I was terrified …

Still, I loved being a mother. Loved them both as soon as I laid eyes on them, and more and more in the weeks that followed. Until then, I hadn’t understood how profound love could be.

Not that having two of them wasn’t challenging. Demanding of everything I had to give and then some. While Orion was away at work all day, I was home changing diapers, feeding them, grabbing ten-minute naps whenever—miraculously, rarely—their sleeping schedules coincided. And true to his word, Orion was a devoted father. When he’d get home from the college and see them, his face would light up. He’d bathe them, walk with one of them in each of his arms, rock them until they’d both gone down for the night. Part of the night, anyway. Andrew was a colicky baby, and it would drive me crazy when he’d cry and wake up his sister. And then Ariane would start crying, too. Our marriage suffered for that first year or so. Orion would come home tired from dealing with his patients and give whatever energy he had left to the twins. I resented that he didn’t have much left for me. But I didn’t have much left for him, either. Double the work, double the mess. Carting both of them to the pediatrician’s when one of them was sick. And then going back there the following week when Andrew came down with what Ariane was just getting over. Sitting in that waiting room with those other mothers—the ones with singletons who were always making lunch dates. Playdates. They’d ooh and ah over my two but never invite me to join them . Not that I even wanted to, but why hadn’t they ever asked? They always acted so confident, those moms. It was as if everyone but me had read some book about how to be a good mother …

But I had read the books. Consulted Dr. Spock so often that the binding cracked in half and the pages started falling out. But I had no mother of my own to rely on the way those other women did. Those grandmothers who could spell their daughters. Babysit for them, advise them …

Still, I could have had that kind of help. How many times had Orion’s mother volunteered to drive up from Pennsylvania and help out? Maria was retired by then, available. She kept offering. It’s just that she acted so goddamned superior! Made me feel even more insecure. When I got that breast infection? Said I was thinking of bottle-feeding the babies because I was in such pain? She just looked at me— stared at me like how could I be so selfish? And then, without even asking me, she had that woman from the La Leche League call and talk me out of it.

Because she wanted what was best for her grandchildren …

And she always knew what was best. Right? Not me, their own mother. She never said as much, but I got the message. Her son had made a mistake, had married beneath himself. He should have stayed with what’s-her-name.

You remember her name, Annie. How could you forget when Maria was always bringing her up to him? “Thea’s gotten a fellowship, Thea’s gotten her book taken.” Thea this, Thea that, like I wasn’t even standing there. So no, I didn’t want her help or her advice. Who was she to pity me ?

But you showed her, didn’t you? Didn’t even go to her funeral. Hey, I couldn’t go. Both of the twins had come down with the chicken pox. What was I supposed to do—leave them with a sitter?

Except I did leave them with one. I had just started making my art. I wanted to be down there working on it, not upstairs with two sick kids. So I hired that Mrs. Dunkel to watch them … He was down there in Pennsylvania for almost three weeks! Sitting with Maria at the hospital. Calling me with the daily reports. “I don’t think it’s going to be long now. She seems to be going downhill fast.” And then, in the next phone call, it would be, “She was better today. Awake, alert. I fed her some pudding, and she managed to eat about half of it.” The twins were running fevers, crying, clinging to me. But I was supposed to celebrate because she had had a few bites of pudding? And okay, Maria was his mother. But I was his wife, the mother of his kids. We needed him, too. I was going out of my mind.

But that was no excuse. I shouldn’t have hit him even if he wouldn’t stop scratching his chicken pox. I’d tell Ariane to stop, and she would. But not Andrew. So I slapped him on his tush, harder than I meant to. At first he just looked at me, shocked, and then he cried and cried. I was so scared. What kind of a mother hit her child that hard? It left a mark. But by the next day, it faded. If I had let him keep scratching, he would have had scars for the rest of his life.

And what was Orion supposed to do? He couldn’t abandon his mother, no matter how long she lingered. But when she finally did die, there were the arrangements to make, the funeral, cleaning out her condo for resale … And that babysitter hadn’t worked out anyway. How could I concentrate on my work when they were up there crying, calling for me, banging on the basement door?

But I did not boycott Maria’s funeral. I stayed home with our sick kids. And then he tells me that Thea flew in to pay her respects. That the two of them went out to dinner after the services. And I started wondering about how else she might have comforted him …

Okay, Annie, you were insecure, even if, deep down, you knew he wouldn’t cheat on you. But then when he finally gets everything squared away down there in Harrisburg, he pulls into the driveway and walks in the door like the returning hero. “Daddy! Daddy’s home! Give us a pony ride, Daddy. Read us a bedtime story.” He shows up again, they’re over the worst of their chicken pox, and suddenly I’m irrelevant. The fun parent was back. The good cop. Who cares about Mommy now that Daddy’s back? And I resented that. Held on to that resentment until we landed in couples counseling.