The next morning I park my car in Chiara and Wallace’s driveway on Yarrow Point. A few years ago they sold the family home in Bellevue where Hunter and his brother, Rowan, grew up, and we all thought the plan was to downsize. Instead, they bought this place—two magnificent, opulent stories on the shores of Lake Washington.
I have no idea how long they’ll live here—it’s hardly the most practical house for an aging couple. The house is beautiful and glamorous, but it’s certainly not child friendly. Rowan’s girls are old enough to navigate the various hazards, old enough to stay away from the unfenced waterfront when they play in the backyard. It’ll be years before Noah reaches that level of maturity—how will we keep him safe?
This is one of the many things I’ve been worrying about that I didn’t yet need to worry about, and also, one of the many things I’ve been worrying about over the past few months that might just be worked out in a two-minute conversation—if I could only motivate myself to start it.
“Good morning, you two!” Chiara calls as I let myself in with my key. Chiara’s house always smells amazing—there’s a lingering scent of vanilla and coffee in the air. She rises from her overstuffed leather chair to greet us, and my gaze skims over the roaring fire on the open hearth, and the steaming cup that sits on the edge of her coffee table.
Yep. Babyproofing this house is definitely going to be impossible.
“Hi, Chiara,” I say as I sit the diaper bag down by the hall table. “Thanks again for doing this.”
“It’s nothing,” she says, waving a hand toward me. Chiara retired a few years back and sold her restaurant, but Wallace will have left for work hours ago. He’s a lawyer who works in Seattle just like Hunter, except Hunter works in family law at a very small firm, and Wallace is a partner at one of the big commercial firms...hence the multimillion-dollar home. “I love spending time with our little man. Did you bring milk?”
“There’s enough for the whole day,” I say, motioning toward the baby bag. Chiara looks from the bag to Noah in my arms, then offers a cautious smile.
“Beth, I just have to ask you. How on earth will you keep up with pumping milk if you’re busy at your father’s place all day?”
“I’ve managed fine so far when you’ve babysat in the past.” I shrug.
“Yes, but that was only here and there... Hunter said you’re planning on spending a lot of time at your dad’s over the next few weeks. I’m just worried about you, sweetheart. You’re making all of this so much harder than it has to be.”
“It’s just better this way. I’ve got the pump in the car. I’ll just stop to express the milk while I’m at Dad’s, then bring it here for you for the next day. It’ll be easy.”
“Not nearly as easy as just weaning him. He’s five months old now. That’s plenty long enough. No one breastfed back in my day, and look, your generation turned out just fine.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say, even though I’ve already made up my mind. The only part of parenting I’ve mastered so far is breastfeeding. It’s the one thing that’s working, the only way to get Noah to sleep sometimes...the only reason I remember to hold him some days. The reality is, breastfeeding is providing all the structure to my parenting at the moment and I’m pretty sure if I remove that, the entire operation is going to collapse.
“But we could pick up a can of formula at the supermarket, and it will just make your life so much easier—”
“I said I’d think about it, Chiara. That’s the best I can do.” I cut her off, and her face falls. She closes her mouth delicately, then offers me a weak smile and motions to take Noah from my arms. I hand him over, then turn to leave.
“Aren’t you going to say goodbye to your son?” Chiara prompts me, pointedly but not unkindly. I squeeze my eyes closed, take a deep breath, then turn back to her, smile fixed in place.
“Of course. Silly me. Goodbye, Noah,” I say, then I brush a quick kiss on his forehead before I escape out the front door, into the safe silence of my car. As I reverse into the street, I don’t look back. I know Chiara will be sitting by that fire, toasty and warm with Noah on her lap, staring down at him with adoration, cooing and talking and generally just loving on him.
When my friends meet Chiara, they inevitably tell me I’ve hit the mother-in-law jackpot. She’s caught up in a passionate love affair with cooking so she’s constantly preparing the most amazing food. Even so, she’s humble about her culinary skills and is always enthusiastic at my own cooking attempts, even when I inevitably under or overcook the dish. Chiara is generous and gentle and kind, even if she can be just a little overbearing sometimes. She’s patient and sweet, and she seems to genuinely like me, which I find to be very strange, considering I’m still not sure how I’m supposed to relate to the woman. Is your mother-in-law supposed to be a friend? Like a close aunt, if your aunts had a vested interest in your spouse? A parental figure...a second mother?
I think that last one is why I’m still so confused. While I hold a handful of precious memories of Grace Walsh, I hardly had the chance to know her. I do have a few memories of Dad’s aunt Nina, who helped care for us for a few years after Grace died, but she was old and frail and distant—often caring for us with the help of one of the babysitters Dad hired.
I’ve never really had a mother figure, and if the dynamic that exists between Chiara and me is what a motherly relationship should feel like, it’s bewilderingly alien to me, even after a decade.
In all those years Hunter and I spent desperately trying to achieve parenthood, I just wish we’d stopped even once to consider the possibility that a motherless woman might not know how to be a mother.
I stop off for some packing and cleaning supplies, then head straight to the house. I park in the drive, and as I begin to walk toward the front door, I take a trip down memory lane. I remember the way that Tim and Jeremy dumped their bikes on the path as they ran. I remember sitting on the steps with Ruth eating Popcicles late on hot July nights. I remember kissing Jason White, right on the stoop after our first date.
I remember opening the front door after that kiss, and finding Dad standing in the hallway, lurking just where he thought I wouldn’t notice him. And when I ran to the toilet and threw up, he was right on my heels, making sure I was okay. I’ve always been a nervous vomiter. That night with Jason was probably one of the most terrifying nights of my life—he was the student council president, popular and handsome, creative and clever... And there I was—pale, quiet, way out of my depth. It was a great kiss as far as first kisses go, but it’s not all that surprising that I lost my dinner afterward.
Dad and I sat in the kitchen after I emerged from the bathroom. He’d perfected a recipe for apple cake that summer, and every time we ate our way through a cake, he’d immediately whip up another. That was one of Dad’s quirks—he wasn’t the world’s greatest cook, so when he got the hang of a dish, we’d eat it ad nauseam until he found a new recipe. That night he’d just finished baking, so the kitchen air was heavy with cinnamon and apple and I perched beside Dad at the breakfast bar for a talk. I nibbled at my cake and sipped the overly sweet tea he liked to make in times of crisis, and in his subtle way, Dad made sure I was okay. He was a man ahead of his time when it came to parenting. He made sure that Ruth and I understood that we were our own people—he taught us to stand up for ourselves and to make decisions that we could be proud of.
As I step into the house now, I open my mouth to call out to greet him—then I remember that he’s gone. I feel that knowledge right in my chest—a dull ache that I know I’ll have to adjust to because Dad isn’t coming home, and the pain is going to get much, much worse before it gets better.
I walk along the hallway, peering into the rec room on the left, the study on the right, and then the massive, window-lined living area at the back of the house looms before me. It’s as tidy as it always is. I can’t ever remember seeing this space messy, except on Christmas mornings. Especially since Dad retired, he liked to run a tight ship. He baked his own bread, made his own beer, grew an extensive garden in the backyard...and everything always had a place, and everything was always in its place. Even this past year when language began to deteriorate, he only became more regimented—almost compulsive. On the one hand, that was going to make packing up the house a lot easier.
On the other hand, moving those things from their special place, putting them into boxes and giving them to charity or distributing them to my siblings...that is going to feel all kinds of wrong.
But it has to be done. So I make myself a hot cocoa, I set up some boxes and then begin the task of dismantling my childhood home.
It’s not long before I have a plan in place to pack up Dad’s house. I’ll work through the bedrooms and the attic over the next few days, then deal with the living areas after Christmas.
I start with the main bathroom because it’s the least nostalgic place in the house. I imagine the real estate listing as I clear out the extra shelves Dad installed over the years. Unique and much loved family home on a quiet, leafy street. Five generously sized bedrooms and three large living areas. Generous storage. Actually, so much storage, it’s bordering on ludicrous.
In the end, I pack every movable item in that bathroom into boxes, and then marker in hand, I take a deep breath and write Trash on every single one. I have to be ruthless with this process, or my siblings and I are going to drown in needless memorabilia and maybe nostalgia, too.
One room down already, I decide I’ll reward myself by wandering through the rest of the house and daydreaming a little. My bedroom was the closest to Dad’s, probably because I was the youngest and likely still waking up at night when we moved in. There are posters of The Monkees curled and yellowed but still fixed to the wall, and the duvet cover on the bed is a ghastly orange, green and aqua pattern that I remember falling headlong in love with when I was fifteen. My shelves are all full of what I suspect will be intensely dusty books.
I wander into Ruth’s old bedroom next. Her walls are bare—she was never one for obsessing over bands or movie stars. There aren’t any books in Ruth’s room—instead, there are half-finished wooden creations. Dad was nervous about a teenage girl taking on a carpentry apprenticeship in the seventies, but Ruth being Ruth there was no deterring her, and it turned out she didn’t care one bit about being the only woman on the team for most of her career.
Jeremy’s bedroom is by far the most chaotic. His shelves are lined with rocks and gemstones, and even a few vials of dust he’d deemed necessary to keep after research trips. Jeremy lived at home far longer than any of the rest of us because he commuted right up until he finished his undergraduate degree. He had no interest in supporting himself with a part-time job as the rest of us did during college. Instead, he was content to live with Dad for free and use the hour-long commute each way for reading time. Dad always said that if Jeremy hadn’t fallen in love with science, he’d probably have wound up in jail. Jez had made something of a career of mischief until he belatedly found some ambition when he reached his sophomore year of high school. It’s fair to say that the only discipline my brother has ever taken to is of the academic variety.
Tim’s bedroom is going to be the easiest to clean out. Much like Tim himself, it’s orderly and neat. He’s the oldest, and he’s always taken a somewhat parental role over the rest of us. I can remember him threatening to ground me when I was nine or ten because I hadn’t taken my dirty clothes to the laundry room so he could wash them. My parents had us in quick succession, and Tim is only three years older than I am, but he always related to us as if he were the adult in the group.
I don’t go into Dad’s bedroom. I’m not ready to think about that room being empty. Instead, I head to the stairs that lead to the attic.
The massive attic was one of the most unique features of our family home. It was unfinished storage space when we moved in, but Dad converted it into a huge, usable room that runs the entire length and breadth of the house. There are peaked windows all along the walls, a high cathedral ceiling, and highly polished floorboards on the floor, dotted with several mismatched rugs that had been purchased over time in attempts to reduce the echo in the room. When he retired, Dad converted this space into his art studio, but as his heart function faded, so did his ability to walk up the stairs, and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t painted in over a year. As I mount the final steps, I wonder if I should take some brushes and paints with me when I visit him tomorrow.
I put my hand on the doorknob and turn it, then bump into the door—completely caught off guard when it doesn’t budge at all. I twist the handle hard, and push my shoulder against the door, but when this makes absolutely no difference, I look down at the lock and frown. This is a new handle—and it sports a seriously heavy-duty deadlock.
But why would he need to lock the attic? Dad must have installed this lock when he lived alone—otherwise we would have noticed. Was he locking himself in, or locking the world out? It was almost certainly during the period when we didn’t realize he was developing dementia. I can’t stand the thought that Dad might have been afraid of something and completely alone with that fear.
There’s no avoiding Dad’s bedroom now—it’s the logical place to find the key. I wander back down the stairs to his room but I pause at the door, then take a deep breath and force myself to go inside.
Here, more than anywhere, I feel his absence. The room smells like Dad—his aftershave and deodorant linger in the air. This scent is warm hugs on sad days, and laughter over the breakfast bar, and suffering through the sheer boredom of the old black-and-white movie marathons he so loved to inflict upon us on rainy weekends.
Dad. Oh, God, Dad, how am I ever going to survive without you?
My sadness swells again, but I can’t let it distract me—I have to focus on finding the key. Dad’s furnishings have always been about function and comfort, with no consideration for style, and that’s never been more evident than when I consider his bedroom. The dresser doesn’t match the bed frame; the curtains are the tattered remains of a coarse, cream-and-brown gauze.
I pull the curtains open to let some sunshine in and turn to survey the room. Every surface is pristine; not a speck of dust can be found. I open drawers and find perfectly folded clothes, exactly in the right place, but I looked through these same drawers last week when I was packing for Dad and I didn’t notice any loose keys. Then again, I wasn’t actually looking for a key, so I’ll have to search again.
My efforts become steadily more vigorous, but I’m trying not to make a mess, as if Dad might find me rifling through his things. After a while, though, the reality sinks in that Dad is likely never coming back to this room, and I begin to take clothes and objects out of drawers and shelves and to rest them haphazardly on his bed. When I’ve searched his entire room, I shift my attentions to the rest of the house.
Another hour passes, and now I’ve given up on keeping the place pristine and I’ve made a huge mess. I’ve tipped out drawers and dumped the contents of shelves onto the floor and benches. I’m frustrated, and when I finally concede defeat, I belatedly realize that I’m sweaty, dusty and exhausted. I pour a glass of water and walk to the phone to dial the first number I ever learned by heart.
“Walsh Homes,” a chirpy voice on the other end says.
“Hello there, Janet, it’s Beth. Is Ruth available?”
Predictably, I wait almost ten minutes for my sister to pick up. I’m important to Ruth...but everything is important to Ruth. She’s become the kind of woman who habitually juggles an improbable number of balls, makes it look easy, and then unwittingly shames everyone who can’t quite manage the same feats of endurance. School wasn’t Ruth’s forte, but everything else in life seems to be. Ruth is the perfect mother to three unruly sons, but to hear her speak about them, you’d think she was purposefully crafting them that way. Ruth has the world’s most perfect husband in Ellis—a man who genuinely seems to live and breathe to make her dreams come true. Ruth has a magnificent family home, one that she designed herself, and then of course, she managed the building herself, too.
Even now, at almost forty, I sometimes feel like a miserable failure compared to Ruth. She has shiny, chestnut hair, beautiful amber eyes and a figure most women would die for. I’ve been breastfeeding for five months but I’m still somehow flat-chested, and my frizzy, dark brown hair has been even harder to tame since pregnancy. I have the most ordinary set of blue eyes that you’ve ever seen and my skin tone is either porcelain white or sunburned—there is no in-between. There isn’t enough mascara in the world to give me decent eyelashes, while Ruth’s have always seemed unnaturally thick, unnaturally long. Despite years of working on building sites with teams of less-than-sophisticated tradesmen, Ruth is still so elegant and capable. Worst of all, she has the audacity to be funny and kind, too. Except when she’s reminding me how utterly busy she always is—and when she finally answers the call, that’s exactly where the conversation begins.
“Beth, I’m so sorry it took me so long to get off that other call. It was a supplier who’s been messing us around on roofing gear and honest to God, I just tore him a new one, so hopefully that’s the end of that for now. Things are crazy here. Crazy! But seriously, I’m so glad you called. I’ve been trying to—”
“Ruth, take a breath, for goodness’ sake...” I sigh, already exhausted by the call. I hear the sound of her sharp inhalation as if I’d deeply offended her, and I groan inwardly. Ruth and I have always been close and I love her more than just about anyone. At the moment, though, there’s something about her too-perfect life that grates on me. It’s possible that I’ve been avoiding her a little lately...but I really need help today, and Ruth has access to the resources I need.
“Of course, I’m sorry. What did you want?” She’s speaking too slowly now. I appreciate the effort.
“Did you know Dad installed a lock on the attic door?” I ask quietly.
There is a pause, and then Ruth murmurs, “No, that’s awfully strange.”
“He must have done it ages ago, but we haven’t had cause to go up there since he got sick.”
“Are you sure it’s a lock? The door’s probably just jammed.”
I stifle my impatience but can’t quite manage to swallow my sarcasm.
“I’m not a carpenter, Ruth, but I do know what a lock looks like. Someone has installed a new doorknob and I can’t find the key anywhere. Can someone come help me get in there?”
“I’ll send some of the boys around tomorrow morning. That’s really odd. How’s the rest of the house? Have you got much packing done? Is everything else normal?”
“As normal as it could be, given the heart of the house is dying.”
We sigh at the same time, and I know that at least when it comes to Dad, we feel exactly the same way.
At three o’clock the next morning, I find myself awake, sitting in the rocking chair in Noah’s room. He’s been up and down all night tonight. I know that my best shot at getting him back to sleep is a tummy full of milk, so as he fusses at my breast, I keep placing my nipple back in his mouth, hoping to convince him to drink. When he finally makes a halfhearted effort at latching on, I let my mind wander. The television is on but the sound is muted. Scenes from a romantic comedy play out before my eyes, but for the first time in a long time, my thoughts travel back in time.
I’ve long wished I could have known Grace Walsh. I’ve sometimes felt uncomfortable thinking of her as Mom, maybe because I never got to call her that. And for most of my life Dad fulfilled the role of Mom for me. I don’t ever remember him being a stereotypically clueless single father. Perhaps the one exception was when Ruth got her first period, and the school called him to ask him to bring supplies. He panicked and instead he picked her up and took her to our family doctor, so that she could explain what was happening. He did much the same thing when I got my first serious boyfriend—leaving it to Dr. Lisa to talk to me about birth control.
Even so, my father did an excellent job of parenting us. As a result, until this year, I’ve been an exceedingly confident woman, never doubting my ability to navigate my world.
In fact, the only real struggle I’ve ever faced has been motherhood. It was a struggle to achieve, and now it’s a struggle to master and in these small, dangerous hours when I’m alone with my thoughts, I can’t help but wonder if any of this would have been easier if Grace Walsh were here to guide me. I hold a handful of precious memories of her—and particularly over the past few months since Noah was born, I replay them. Even the thought of those moments with her brings me comfort, and that’s something I sorely need. I’m utterly exhausted, physically and mentally, yet I’m here, wide awake at 3:15 a.m. My failure to master this role feels so obvious and shameful that I’m sometimes confused why Hunter trusts me to care for Noah at all.
Right now I’m nursing a son that I can’t even convince myself to look down at. I’m pretty sure no one has noticed that when I feed Noah, I shove my nipple into his little mouth and look away as quickly as I can.
It’s so much easier to look away than to gaze down at him and come face-to-face with all of the ways my feelings for him just don’t add up.