“So do I, but…”
“Laurie needs a little brother.”
“Or sister. And no, she doesn’t.” I didn’t sound convinced, even to myself.
Christy sensed her advantage and pressed it ruthlessly. She was her mother’s daughter, all right. Her father’s too.
“You know I love Wren,” she said, “but she was an only child. I don’t want Laurie to grow up alone.”
“Neither do I.”
We fell silent, and I thought about what she was asking. Then I had a thought, one of my own weird leaps of logic.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t get your nipples pierced.”
Christy frowned. “What?”
“You wouldn’t be able to breastfeed.”
“Of course I would! What makes you—?” Her expression changed as she realized what it meant. “We can have another baby? Thank you, thank you. You’ll love it. I promise! Oh my gosh, we’d better get started!”
I didn’t stop her when she reached for my penis again.
* * *
To this day, Christy swears she gave me two gifts on my twenty-eighth birthday.
She unveiled the first at a cookout with family and friends. The mounting block was a vertical slab of rose-colored granite, thirty inches on a side and six inches thick, with a polished face and rough edges. I did the math in my head and realized it weighed more than six hundred pounds. My pint-sized princess did not think small.
The sculpture itself was bronze, a bas-relief of a man’s muscular torso, mine. Personally, I wasn’t sure I’d ever looked that good, but I wasn’t about to quibble. My bronze self cradled my infant daughter in one arm while I held the other above her. She gripped my index finger with her tiny hand. It was a private moment, and Christy had captured both the tenderness and the strength in our touch.
“It’s beautiful,” someone said, maybe me. “What’s it called?”
“Sleep, darling.”
People around me started talking, in murmurs at first, but louder as their confidence grew. They thought they knew what the title meant, although none of them did, not for real.
It was from a poem by Sappho, one of my favorites. I thought of it often when I held Laurie, my golden flower. I even called her “Flower” because of it, and I should’ve known that Christy would understand why.
Do you like it? she asked hopefully.
Like it? I love it. And I especially love the artist.
Friends and family complimented her and wished me a happy birthday. Then my golden flower toddled up, and I swept her into my arms.
“Bir’day, Daddy!”
“Thank you, sweetie.” I pointed at the sculpture. “Do you know who that is? It’s you and Daddy.”
“Flower?”
“That’s right, Flower and Daddy.”
“No,” she said with a toddler’s seriousness, “Daddy and Flower.”
I slid my other arm around Christy and kissed the top of her head.
“Look, Mommy,” Laurie said. “Daddy and Flower.”
“I know, darling. Mommy made it for you and Daddy.”
“No,” the little girl grumped. “Daddy and Flower!”
I chuckled. “She’s your daughter, all right.”
“And whose fault is that?” Christy asked sweetly.
* * *
My second birthday gift arrived nine months later. Emily Anne Hughes joined us on a cold Thursday in February. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, even red-faced and suspicious. She wasn’t grumpy like her sister had been. Instead, she thought I might be up to something, that I might’ve been the reason she’d been evicted from her nice warm home. Then she pursed her tiny lips, sighed, and went to sleep, just like that. I couldn’t help but laugh.
A little while later we introduced her to Laurie, who was curious and affectionate. She snuggled beside Christy in the hospital bed and watched seriously as Emily had her first meal. My little family was growing, and I thought my heart might burst. Christy and I had brought another life into the world. I was twice the dad I’d been only a few hours earlier.
We brought Emily home a couple of days later. Once again, Christy’s mother stayed with us, and my mother came to visit every day or so. At first we thought Christy would be fine. She suffered the normal baby blues but seemed to recover. Anne returned to San Diego, and I went back to work.
* * *
Christy started losing weight, more than the normal baby weight. She didn’t sleep at night, and sometimes she was confused in the evening when I came home, like I’d just left and had returned because I’d forgotten something. The doctor said it was from lack of sleep and prescribed sleeping pills. They knocked her out, especially after she’d had a couple of drinks, so she stopped taking them.
She started drinking more without the pills, and she bought random things from QVC in the middle of the night. She sobbed when I called the credit card company and told them to block any charges from home shopping networks.
“But… you don’t understand!” Christy pleaded. “I need my things!”
“What, kitschy art? Ugly porcelain dogs? Sports equipment? No! And that’s final!”
Things grew progressively worse over the next couple of months. We didn’t have sex, of course, and we fought more often. Her sketchbook sat untouched, and she stopped going to church. She couldn’t sit still, yet she never seemed to accomplish anything. The house was a mess, and I took care of the girls when I was home.
I called her doctor, but he was no help. Christy’s mother talked to her, and things improved for a little while before they went right back to where they’d been. I even called Leah and begged her to help.
“Let me call Gina.”
“No! You can’t. What if Christy finds out?”
“Let me worry about that,” Leah said patiently.
I waited by the phone and snatched it out of the charging cradle the moment it rang.
“She said it sounds like postpartum depression.”
“What do I do?”
“She has to see her doctor. He can prescribe antidepressants—”
“You mean, like, Prozac?”
“That. Or something else,” Leah said. “And… um… I don’t know how to put this…”
“Just say it,” I snapped, although I immediately felt guilty. “Sorry. I’m not getting any sleep either. And I’m watching my wife slowly disintegrate.”
“I know,” Leah said. “I don’t want to scare you, but Gina said to take her to the emergency room if you think she might… harm herself or the girls.”
I went very still. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. She said it can turn into…” Paper rasped in the background as she flipped a page in her notebook. “Postpartum psychosis.”
“Psychosis,” I said slowly. “Like… she’s crazy? Fucking for real? She might hurt—? I have to get them out of here!”
“Don’t do anything,” Leah said. “I’ll be right there.”
The line clicked.
Leah lived thirty minutes away, even at night and without traffic. She made it in twenty.
“Where is she?” she asked.
“In the bedroom.”
“Where are the girls?”
“Asleep.”
“Check on them.”
“I already did. They’re fine.”
She nodded. Then she looked at her watch and scowled. “I called Kara. She should’ve been here by now.”
“I didn’t even think of Kara!” I said in despair.
“That’s okay. Lack of sleep’ll do that. Besides, Gina’s the real expert. You did right.” She paused and shook her head in dismay. “What happened? I talked to her last week, but she only sounded tired. Wren said she had a cold, so I didn’t think anything of it.”
“A cold? That was… a month ago!”
“Don’t blame Wren,” Leah soothed. “She has her hands full.”