Arlene Reinhart was cooking when Becca staggered into the house. Without a word her mother rushed to embrace her in the warm, fleshy arms that Becca had to lean down to in order to meet, and tugged her into the kitchen for some food.
With a soft dishcloth she wiped Becca’s tear-stained face, poured her coffee without asking, and turned a chair from the small, round dinette table for Becca to sit in. In a flood of emotion, without logic or order, Becca told her mother what had happened to Amy, about Emily, and what it meant for her. She was a mother. She was terrified.
Arlene brushed Becca’s loose hair back, cupped her daughter’s face in her soft hands, and kissed her on the cheek.
“Becca,” she said. “I’m so sorry about Amy. She was a great friend.”
Arlene’s tears met Becca’s in a moment of silence.
“But don’t worry about being a mother,” Arlene said, rising from her chair to rub Becca on the head. “You’re a natural.”
“Mom, how can you say that?” The color rose in Becca’s white cheeks. “All I’ve ever managed is money.”
“You’ll do fine. Trust me,” she said, turning from the pot where she was stirring a warm, fat chicken in heavy broth. It smelled delicious. “There is no such thing as a bad mother.”
Becca smiled to herself.
“Mom, really,” she protested, nodding her thanks at the plate of food her mother plunked in the center of the table. Brown bread, sour pickles, cold veal chops, and honey cake.
“Eat,” her mother directed.
Becca felt hungry and ate a little of the cake, but her frustration returned when she thought about how little sympathy she was getting in this, what should be the most supportive quarter of the universe.
“You can’t believe the week I have,” she said, “the month, the year! Meetings, more meetings, and travel, and in between I’m on the phone. I hardly have time to shower! When will I have time for a four-year-old?”
Arlene finished chewing her pickle. She was on a diet, consisting mainly of choosing pickles over honey cake when she nibbled, drinking Diet Coke by the case, and ordering salad dressing on the side. Her cooking—her mainstay—was unaffected. Who could change what is?
“Make time,” she said simply.
“Mom!” Becca complained. “You don’t understand. It’s not like with you. This just happened to me. I’m not ready!”
“Ha!” laughed Arlene, standing to retrieve a Diet Coke from the refrigerator.
She turned an aggrieved face to Becca. “Do you know how long I was in labor with you?”
“I know, Mom,” Becca said, nodding her head impatiently. “Thirteen hours. The most difficult thirteen hours—”
“Of my life,” Arlene finished, smiling with satisfaction. Becca was a good kid. She would never forget how her mother suffered. “How I suffered!” she added, mopping her forehead at the thought of it. “And even though I was at Beth Israel…”
“Where they will always choose the mother over the baby if the choice has to be made,” Becca chimed in with her mother, knowing this story by heart.
Her mother nodded. “Even so—what suffering! And then! It was a year before I was sure you were all right in the head. You just don’t know, with the little ones. Oh, how a mother’s heart grieves!”
She began to describe Becca’s first fever, her first visit to the emergency room—the suffering!—the first food she refused, the color she always looked best in—the whole life epic for which Becca had to thank her struggling, suffering, giving mother, the rock of every family, who ought to be thanked every day, such a heart!
Becca, warmed by the cadence of these old familiar stories, began to smile.
“Mom,” she said, grinning. “You don’t cut me any slack.”
“Why should I?” Arlene returned vigorously, slapping the table in front of her. “Thirteen hours I labor, a year I worry, my heart grieving over every cough, every fever—just to get you on your feet. And you—you wake up one day with a beautiful little girl—such hair! Such golden hair!—healthy as a cow, a little overdressed, I recall—but she has her health! You’re as lucky as Abraham!”
Becca laughed out loud. “Well, when you put it that way,” she said, “it sounds great. But I have a job, don’t forget.”
“Take a few months off. You can live! You can kill yourself with that job later. It will be there.”
The support, if you could call it that, from her mother, combined with Becca’s natural and reviving confidence, had begun to develop in her the appetite for taking control.
“Maybe I could get my analysts on it,” Becca thought out loud. “Cover the current press on four-year-olds, the parent magazines and stuff. Do a little executive summary for this afternoon.”
“What are they there for, if not to help you?” Arlene said, throwing her arms into a shrug. She paused, her eyes resting on Becca with affection.
“Get up to speed if it helps you, honey,” she said, stroking Becca’s hair, “but let me tell you the truth: You have it all inside. Go with your instinct.” She patted Becca on the back as if that were the end of it.
Becca sighed, shaking her head.
“I don’t know, Mom. It’s a big change for me,” she said. She looked up at her mother’s face, and her gaze melted in the adoration that lit her mother’s eyes so tenderly. Becca smiled, her shoulders relaxing as she let out her breath.
“You’ll be a great mom,” her mother said fondly.
Becca blushed and smiled. “How do you know?”
Arlene parked her hands on her hips and laughed. That was an easy one. “Because you’re just like me, Becca.”
Becca returned her mother’s grin, happy to share the compliment.
“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Arlene told her, tapping the back of Becca’s chair as she hurried behind it, “I have to make a few phone calls. Who would believe it? I’m a Bubbe now!”
Hastening to spread her joy, Arlene walked out to the phone, which she kept on a small table by the front window, where she could see what everybody was up to.
“Bubbe,” Becca repeated. She smiled, seeing her mom for the first time as a grandmother. She took a deep breath, comforted by the familiar kitchen. She could do this. Her mother was always straight with her. If this were something to reconsider, she would have heard it from Arlene.
From Bubbe, Becca corrected herself, grinning.
Becca did not have a clue what she would do about making arrangements for Emily while she went off to Hong Kong. She certainly wasn’t leaving her with her “coguardian,” a man she didn’t know. Edward Kirkland to her knowledge still had not been located. Great—a coguardian who as far as she could tell was footloose and irresponsible.
She had asked her mother, who came up with the obvious answer.
“Mom—my first weekend as a mother and I’m already in crisis mode. How am I going to do this?”
“It’s simple—one crisis at a time. This one is easy. Take her with you.”
“To Hong Kong?”
“Why not?”
Why not? Good question. Becca’s ability to analyze options kicked in. She had none—except to take Emily with her.
But first, she’d have to see Emily and give her the news that would rock her world.
From her phone in the cab on her way back to midtown, Becca started her analysts on a high-priority research project. She intended to be an expert on child-raising by close of business.
The nanny brought Emily home from her playdate. Becca noticed Emily had replaced the tutu with a Tartine et Chocolate delicate smocked dress. This child of hers was a clotheshorse at four. What would she be like at thirteen?
This child of hers. The concept produced less fear every time she thought it—and more anticipation.
The children’s grief psychologist her analysts had consulted had written a sample script for Becca to follow and prepared her with possible opportunities that might present themselves as an opening.
Becca had read the script and dismissed it. Emily was too bright to be fed serious information using canned dialogue. The right time would present itself.
Becca, on automatic pilot, had stopped by her own apartment to grab the suitcase tagged “Asia, Autumn.” She looked around at the sleek furniture, sisal carpet, white on white décor, and realized the place was childproof because no child had ever been there! How quick her perspective had changed.
Once in the Fifth Avenue building, Emily’s home, she headed toward the kitchen where Emily sat with her sour-faced nanny.
“Where’s the prima ballerina?”
“Aunt Becca!” Cookie crumbs decorated Emily’s clothes and her milk moustache made it difficult to imagine her as a dancer. “Are you here to visit Mommy? Because she and Daddy are in…”
“Alaska, I know, sweetheart. But I’m here to visit you.”
“Wow!” Emily clapped her hands together, standing, whirling around and managing to grab Becca’s hand at the same time, pulling her into the playroom. The room was decorated with red carpet and white walls—these made from a washable material designed for crayon scribbles. For that purpose a humongus box of Crayolas stood atop a white metal table, where a puzzle game lay half finished—a puzzle Arthur had started with Emily, Becca was sure, and it looked to her like a life stopped midsentence.
Becca and Emily built a structure out of a futuristic Legos kit Becca had never seen. An hour or more went by.
“I’m hungry.” Emily had fallen into a pouty mood as though she knew what was coming.
“Let’s go eat, then.”
“We call Thai.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“I want to be able to say exactly what I want all the time and then it magically appears!”
“That’s asking for a lot of magic.”
“My mommy says my life will be filled with magic.” They both were now sitting on the floor so Emily’s face was just a little lower than Becca’s. Which is how Becca managed to catch the shift in the child’s expression. Emily wasn’t thinking about magic.
“When is Mommy coming home?”
Becca didn’t answer at once. Instead she drew the child to her.
Becca looked down into blue eyes, dyed nearly navy by sadness, which shifted to study her face.
“Momma’s gone for a long time?”
How did she know? How could she not? There had been comings and goings and phone calls. Who knows what Emily overheard.
Becca nodded. That was all.
“And Daddy too, I bet. He’d want to be with Mommy.” When Becca nodded, Emily shuffled on unsteady feet out of the playroom.
Becca stayed stupidly on the playroom floor. Maybe she should bring Emily a little brandy in the glass of water like her mother used to do for her. No—go to her. Becca could hear her mother’s voice egging her on, guiding her.
Emily was face down on the bed. Her little arms were by her sides and she sobbed, taking in gasps of air. She wasn’t shrieking, as Becca would have done in her place, nor was she banging her fists or stomping on the floor in a tantrum. These sobs were from a broken heart. Becca’s own heart shattered in that moment and she reached out for Emily, pulling her to her and rocking her, humming a tune from she didn’t know where, perhaps her own childhood. Eventually the sobs turned into quiet weeping. Becca placed one hand on Emily’s head. With the other arm she held her close. Emily would never know a greater pain than this. And here she was, responsible for helping her heal. The thought strengthened her, knowing Emily would help her get over her own hurt.
“Mommy’s left you and me to take care of each other.”
This seemed to intrigue Emily as a concept because she stopped crying, sat up, legs dangling. “Where did they go? Where did Mommy and Daddy go?”
Becca told her the truth. Brushing and braiding the child’s golden hair, Becca told her that her parents had flown into the sky and had flown away together forever. Emily would live with Becca and her daddy’s friend, Edward, and together they would always remember her mom and dad.
The child had clung to her, crying and afraid. They spent hours upon hours remembering all the wonderful things about her mother, which Emily wrote on special paper with the fanciest letters she could make. The paper that so impressed Emily was nothing but graph paper, and the child’s fancy was delighted by nothing more than a pack of four highlighting pens that Becca gave her to decorate the pages. Together they made a special memory book for her mom and dad that flew away, and Becca, in one sitting, learned as much as she could tastefully manage about how to go about her new life as a parent.
It was a book they could add to forever, Becca thought, wondering all of a sudden what she should do with the rooms full of Amy’s things. But necessity and instinct together told her to leave things as they lay, and Emily seemed a little bit sunnier after Becca told her about the adventure they were going on in the morning. She packed the fanciest dresses she could find, and was excited about the exotic dress-ups Becca described they would find.