Chapter 25

25

Her hair came in thick and beautiful and people often stopped to tell us what a gorgeous little girl she was. She would smile coyly and say thank you, and for a split second I could see this tiny, remarkable, civilized person who couldn’t possibly have the capacity to drag me by the ears to the edge of insanity. Those dark moments had become fewer and other parts of her personality were emerging. She was obsessed with her baby doll and brought it everywhere she went. She knew her colors by the time she was sixteen months old. She insisted on wearing tights with Christmas trees under her pants for most months of the year. She ate scrambled eggs for nearly every meal and called them yellow clouds. Chipmunks scared her and squirrels thrilled her. She loved the woman from the flower shop on the corner where we went for a stem every Saturday morning. She kept the flower beside her potty to hold while she peed. She made no sense at all, and yet all the sense in the world.

She gave me just enough space to hang from, to convince myself I could wrestle back onto the ledge. For a while, anyway, until I was reminded once again of where I belonged in her small but orderly world.

When she was three, after we came home from a weekend away at your friend’s wedding, I had snuck into her room without taking off my coat.

It was after midnight. I had wanted to smell her. I had felt an unfamiliar panic on the plane that something was wrong, that she would choke in her sleep and your mother wouldn’t hear her like I would, that the carbon monoxide detectors weren’t working, that the plane would hit the runway in the wrong kind of way and blow us both up. I needed her. I rarely felt this yearning for her, especially when I should have, but when I did, I couldn’t remember what it was like not to want her. Who was that other mother? The one who brought me so much shame?

The face of a sleeping child. She fluttered her eyes and saw me hovering above. Her lids fell down, disappointed. Her sadness was genuine. She rolled over and pulled the periwinkle duvet to her chin and looked out the dark window. I leaned to kiss her and felt her muscles tighten beneath my hand.

I left the room and saw you in the hallway. I told you she was asleep. You walked in anyway and I heard smacking noises on your cheek. She told you your mother had let her watch a movie with a mermaid. She asked you to lie down with her. She had been waiting for you.

I felt like I would never have with her what you had.

“It’s all in your head,” you said to me whenever I brought it up. “You’ve created this story about the two of you, and you can’t let it go.”

“She should want me. I’m her mother. She should need me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with her.”

Her. There was nothing wrong with her, you said.

In the morning, over breakfast, your mother recounted the lovely weekend they’d had. You beamed, being back with your daughter, bouncing her on your knee.

“So everything was fine?” I asked your mother quietly afterward, as we filled the dishwasher together.

“She was an angel. She really was.” She rubbed the small of my back for a moment, as if to soothe an ache she knew I carried. “I think she missed you both.”