The Color of Joy (5 page)

No one had ever spoken to me like that before. There was a quiet charm about him that didn’t come across as flirty at all. This was a good thing because, as a rule, I didn’t go for the flirty types. I found that kind of behavior superficial and untrustworthy.

But not Jake. He was courteous, reserved, and a little on the shy side. Except when it came time for him to walk out of my cubicle. That’s when he stopped, turned around and said, “Would you like to come to my going away party tonight? The staff is taking me out for drinks at the Covered Bridge. You could bring a friend if you want.”

I almost swallowed my gum because the corporate office staff rarely socialized with the retail employees—especially those of us in HR.

Trying not to fall off my chair onto the floor, I managed to say: “That sounds like fun. I’d love to come.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

When you know, you know
.

Things moved quickly after that. We tied the knot a few months after Jake finished boot camp.

The first four years of our marriage were idyllic and lovely. I loved my husband with all my heart and everything was perfect—but then something unexpected happened, and my world began to change.

July 30

“I’m surprised,” I said as I rose from the supper table to carry my empty plate to the counter. “I actually thought you might be happy about this.”

Jake set down his fork and sat back. “Why would you think that? You know how I feel, and the timing couldn’t be worse.”

“Is there
ever
a good time to have a baby?” I couldn’t even look at my husband. All I could do was stand over the sink and stare down at the drain. “Tell me one person who actually felt ready to be a parent. All parents are scared. Especially the first time.”

With a flash of regret, I immediately recognized my blunder because I knew this wasn’t the first time—not for
him
, anyway.

Jake’s chair scraped across the floor as he stood. “Did you really just say that?”

I sighed heavily and turned to face him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see the point in having this conversation—
again
—when the horse has already left the barn.”

There could be no more deliberating, no more discussions about why Jake didn’t want a child and how I thought he needed to let go of the past. Whether he liked it or not, I was pregnant and due to deliver in seven and a half months. Besides, I was tired of arguing about it. I’d been pleading my case for two years, working tirelessly to convince him that it would be different this time—that the future could be amazing if he would give it a chance.

Jake regarded me with frustration in the early evening light beaming in through the kitchen windows. “I don’t understand how this could have happened,” he said. “I thought you were on the pill.”

“I am—I
was—
and I don’t know how it happened either.”

He was quiet for a long moment, and I was relieved he didn’t accuse me of getting pregnant on purpose.

“You knew how I felt about this,” he said. “You knew it when we got married and you accepted it, for better or worse.”

“Yes,” I replied, “but I didn’t think you’d feel that way forever.” I sounded childish, even to my own ears. “I thought you’d change your mind eventually.”

He drew back and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You agreed you didn’t want kids.”

“I never said that,” I replied, wagging a finger. “I only said I understood how you felt, that it was okay, and that I wasn’t ready either. And I wasn’t—not at the time—but I honestly believed you’d feel differently by now.”

Jake strode into the living room where he began to pace.

I followed him in. “You’re angry.”

His eyes lifted to meet mine. “Yes.”

“Everything will be fine,” I tried to convince him. “I can handle this.
We
can handle this.”

“You don’t know that,” he said with a frown. “And Christ, I’m not even going to be here! I’ll be halfway across the world!”

We’d known for weeks about his deployment to Afghanistan. He was leaving at the end of the month and would be gone for nine months. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d lived apart. He was a soldier and it came with the territory. I’d never complained about it before and I certainly didn’t intend to start then.

“I’ll have lots of support,” I told him. “Mom is less than an hour away and Sylvie is just across town.”

He gave me a look. “You think Sylvie will be helpful?”

“Maybe.” I hesitated. “I don’t know…”

Jake sat down on the sofa and cupped his forehead in a hand. “God, I thought we were on the same page.”

“We are. And I didn’t do this on purpose. It just happened. I don’t know how, but here we are.”

He raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t want to do this again, Jenn. I
can’t
do it again.”

I sat down beside him and laid my hand on his back.

*

Jake and I began dating five years ago, and early on he took me out to dinner, ordered a bottle of wine and told me he’d been married once before. I was shocked to hear it because he seemed too young to be divorced. Naturally I wanted to know what happened.

He explained that he’d married his high school sweetheart at the age of twenty-one and everything was fine until she got pregnant.

“All I ever wanted was to be a dad,” he told me as he poured us each a second glass of wine. “Then Chelsea had a rough pregnancy with terrible morning sickness. It put a strain on our relationship because she was always irritable and I was doing shift work, so I wasn’t much better. After the baby was born she started acting differently. At first it made no sense to me because all of a sudden, she’s was nothing like the girl I knew. She stopped taking showers and she was crying all the time. She always seemed angry with me, like I couldn’t do anything right. She blamed me for the smallest things—like if the corner of the carpet was curled up and she tripped on it, it was all my fault. How could I let that happen? Didn’t I care that she might get hurt? Didn’t I love her? That kind of thing. I figured out pretty quickly that it was postpartum depression. At least she went to see her doctor about it.”

He stopped talking for a moment, fingered the stem of his wine glass and seemed lost in thought.

“I’m sorry you went through all that,” I gently said.

He nodded. “Thanks. Anyway…things just went downhill from there.”

“How?”

He took another sip of his wine and kept his eyes on the table as he spoke. “One night we went to bed exhausted, which was pretty typical because one of us was always up every couple of hours for bottle feedings—”

“She didn’t breast feed?”

“No,” he replied, shaking his head, “which was a good thing for me because I got to feed Ava, too, and that was great. I loved doing it. Anyway, we slept like the dead, both of us, all night long. Chelsea woke up when the sun came in the window. She asked if I’d gotten up to feed Ava, but I hadn’t, and somehow we both just knew. Don’t ask me how. You’d think we’d be happy that our child had slept through the night for the first time, but we both knew that wasn’t what happened.”

He swallowed hard and sipped his wine again.

“It was SIDS,” he added. “We found her…in her crib.”

I sat back in my chair. “Oh, God, Jake, I’m so sorry.” Neither of us spoke for a moment. “How old was she?”

“Four months.”

Taking a deep breath and letting it out, I leaned forward and covered his hand with mine. “I don’t know what to say.”

He waved a dismissive hand, as if it wasn’t necessary for me to say anything because it wouldn’t make any difference anyway.

“You didn’t want to try to have more children?” I asked after a time.

“Not after living through that nightmare. As for Chelsea, she just wanted out of the marriage. She wouldn’t even talk to me. It was like she hated my guts. I think she hated herself, too.” He paused. “The guilt… You can’t imagine it. You can’t help but blame yourself and in your mind you go over and over all the things you could have done differently. Everything you did wrong. You just feel so much anger over how things worked out. What I really wish is that we could have leaned on each other more instead of feeling bitter toward each other.”

“You were young,” I said.

He nodded and took a breath. “Everything just got so screwed up. I couldn’t stop any of it from happening. That was the worst part. I had no control over anything.”

*

As I sat on the sofa rubbing Jake’s back, I recalled our conversation from five years earlier and understood completely why he was so frightened about this.

But that was a long time ago—
and I’m not Chelsea
.

“It won’t be like before,” I assured him. “I promise I’ll be able to handle this. And it’s highly unlikely that something like that would happen twice to the same family. Think about it this way: The odds are in our favor. But even if it did happen, I’m strong and so are you. I love you more than anything in the world, and no matter what happens, we’ll get through it, together.”

Jake leaned forward, rapped his knuckles on the coffee table and gave me an anxious warning look. “Please knock on wood when you say things like that.”

I immediately leaned forward and knocked.

Later that night

It was sometime after 10:00 p.m. when I knocked hard on my sister’s apartment door. “Sylvie! Let me in!”

Jazz music was blaring inside so I knew she was there, but I’d been knocking for the past five minutes and she hadn’t answered.

Her hysterical phone call earlier had sent me into a panic and my blood pressure was surely skyrocketing by now. Jake had been called in to work so I had no choice but to hop in the car and drive over there as fast as I could.

Just then, the door across the hall opened and a thin, elderly woman with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth peered out at me. “She’s been playing that music for an hour. I called the super but he’s not answering either. That girl’s going to get herself kicked out of here if she keeps that up.”

“I know, I’m very sorry,” I replied. “I’m her sister. I’ll talk to her.”

“If she ever opens the door.”

At long last, the safety chain jangled across the track and the door opened. “I was taking a shower,” Sylvie explained defensively before I could say a word.

I took in her overall appearance. She wore a blue terrycloth bathrobe and had wrapped a pink towel around her head. Her mascara was smudged sloppily under her eyes.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Do I
look
okay?” she testily replied as she opened the door wider and invited me in. Behind me, the neighbor across the hall shut her door.

A moment later, I stood in the tiny kitchen of Sylvie’s one-bedroom apartment, watching her pour herself a glass of white wine, full to the brim.

She tossed the empty bottle into a recycling bin with a clatter. “Another dead soldier,” she said flippantly.

I bowed my head and took a deep breath, for I was never fond of that expression.

“Want some?” Sylvie asked. “I can open another bottle.”

“No, thanks. I’m driving.”
Among other reasons
.

I glanced around and took note of the empty Chinese food boxes on the kitchen table—not the kind you order from a restaurant, but the kind you buy frozen at the supermarket and heat up in the microwave.

“I should have seen the signs,” Sylvie said, fretfully pacing around the kitchen while she gulped down her wine. “Damn him!”

“How did you find out?”

“Oh, you know…” She casually waved a hand through the air. “He just started acting all antsy and uncomfortable. He said he never meant to hurt me, but I know he didn’t care about that. He just wanted to have a good time. At least he took me out for dinner before he dropped the bomb.”

She guzzled half the glass of wine.

“So, he never wore a ring?” I asked.

She scoffed at me. “Am I stupid? I wouldn’t have gone out with him in the first place if I’d known he was married. He must have taken it off every time he came into the club.”

Sylvie was a waitress at a chic dance bar downtown. While we were in college, it was a dream job for her because all her friends went there on weekends and the tips were fantastic. But now she was thirty-two years old and her friends were all married and starting families. It wasn’t exactly a healthy environment for someone like her.

“You need to find another job,” I said, leaning back on the counter. “A day job where you can meet people who aren’t just out looking for a party. Take a course or something.”

She shifted her weight and raised an eyebrow. “Really, Jenn? You’re going to kick me when I’m down? Start judging me?”

“I’m not judging you. I just think you’re in a rut, that’s all. A change would be good.”

She rolled her eyes, pulled the towel off her head, and flung it onto the back of a kitchen chair. Her long wet hair fell down her back in tangled blond waves.