When John and Keisha got home at 4:00 a.m., I hopped off the couch and fussed over my stepdaughter, who looked horrible. She was a tiny little thing, like her mother—just over five foot two, and a hundred pounds, if that. Without her makeup on, she looked about fourteen years old. She was usually fastidious about her appearance, but clearly she hadn’t showered or brushed her hair in days. She smelled like a bar, and my stomach sank. I hoped she’d at least stayed away from anything stronger than alcohol. She was obviously exhausted and in no condition to talk, so I helped her to the shower, gave her a clean nightgown of mine, then tucked her into the guest room bed and told her we’d talk tomorrow.
“Thanks, Shannon,” she whispered, closing her eyes and pulling the blanket up to her chin.
“You’re welcome,” I said. At the doorway I paused and looked back at her, my heart both heavy and light at the same time. I’d wanted more children of my own—well, sort of. I’d been pregnant before Landon. I had been a new wife of just a year at the time, establishing a relationship with my husband’s six-year-old daughter, and I was both excited and nervous about becoming a mom.
At the twenty-week ultrasound appointment, however, the doctors couldn’t find a heartbeat. Because of the gestation, it was a toss-up as to whether it was considered a miscarriage or a stillborn, but either way it was a difficult experience for John and me. I tried to be pragmatic about it; after all, my job as a pharmacist—a scientist—meant that I understood biological processes. I knew it was illogical to expect that every meeting of a sperm and an egg would result in a fetus and that every fetus would be viable.
But the reality was hard, and I mourned what could have been. I thought I’d handled it reasonably well . . . until I got pregnant with Landon a year later—then all my female emotion erupted.
I was constantly afraid my baby would die inside of me again. I couldn’t sleep at night; I had nightmares that—even now—made me break out in a cold sweat when I thought about them. I wouldn’t eat red meat for fear I would get E. coli. When the news reported a shipment of strawberries had been contaminated with salmonella, I gave up fresh fruit and vegetables altogether and only ate frozen foods.
On a psychological level, I knew it was completely unhealthy to be that obsessed, but at the time it simply felt like I was doing what was best for my unborn child. When Landon was born, I cried with relief and joy; I’d delivered a healthy baby boy: seven pounds, nine ounces, and twenty-three inches long. John and I both hoped that my panic would pass with Landon’s safe arrival, but it didn’t.
I insisted Landon sleep with me in the bed because I was terrified he would stop breathing, and I made John sleep in the guest room because I worried he might accidentally smother our baby due to how deeply he slept. After ten months, John sat me down and shared his concerns that I was unhinged, though he used nicer terminology.
At first, I went to counseling just to make John feel better, but once I began participating in the process, I was able to realign my thoughts and reactions, which I’d realized were based on unrealistic fears that were deeply rooted in that first pregnancy. By the time Landon turned two years old, I was off my meds and doing much better. I could let Landon sit alone in a grocery cart, and John had replaced him in our bed—though Landon’s crib stayed in our room until he was nearly three.
After the drama and trauma of Landon’s early years, John and I never talked about having another baby, both of us afraid to repeat my struggles. Instead of risking another pregnancy, we devoted ourselves to our son and to Keisha, who’d moved back to California with her mother. I didn’t necessarily regret our decision not to have more children, but there were times that I missed the children we didn’t have.
Looking at Keisha now and knowing she was safe was a powerful balm to my mother’s heart. I pulled the door closed, then headed to our room, where John was under the covers but not asleep, his clothes discarded on the floor for the second time tonight.
We’d been out of bed for so long that the sheets had grown cold, and I shivered slightly as I slid in beside him. “Did she tell you anything? Did she say why she didn’t call before now?” I whispered.
He was quiet for so long that I was trying to think of another lead-in when he spoke.
“I don’t think I can do this again.”
I took note of the discouraged tone of his voice more than I did the actual words and snuggled in closer so I could look into his face, which was heavily shadowed in the dark room. If not for the glowing numbers of the alarm clock informing me that I had to be to work in four hours, the room would be pitch-black. I reached out and traced the lines in his forehead. Life lines, I called them. He was eleven years older than I was—pushing fifty—and handsome in that rugged “man’s man” kind of way.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered to him. “We did the right thing letting her come home. What else could we have done?”
He let out a tortured breath. “She’s been so high since leaving Dani’s, she doesn’t remember days at a time. It’s been a bad binge, Shan. She says she hasn’t used in a few days, but I’m not sure we can believe her. I’m not sure it’s safe for her to detox here.”
“I’ll take tomorrow off and keep an eye on her,” I said. “If things look bad, I’ll call Transitions.” Transitions was the rehab clinic where Keisha had gone last fall. They had a detox program, though I didn’t know where we’d get the money to pay for it. Keisha’s last stay had pretty much wiped out our savings, and we’d only recently begun to build it back up.
John groaned, surely thinking the same things I was, so I hurried to offer some reassurance. “If she can keep her brain chemistries balanced, then she wouldn’t need to use,” I told him.
It was all based on science for me. Keisha had been diagnosed with depression when she was fifteen, and she had really struggled to feel good about herself and life in general since then. It had always been my belief that she’d started using drugs to numb the bad feelings, and then she’d gotten hooked. Because of the drug use, she didn’t talk or act like a typical twenty-one-year-old young woman, but was more like the sixteen-year-old kid she’d been when she first started using. But I still had high hopes for her. If she could get well—really well—she wouldn’t need to self-medicate. I had hoped Transitions had finally helped her find her balance this last time, but maybe the ninety-day program hadn’t been a long enough stay.
I snuggled into John, and he rolled onto his back to accommodate me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. “I think we can help her, John,” I said, thinking of Keisha asleep down the hall. “I can find her a therapist and a good doctor, get her on her meds, supervise her behaviors, and she can create a new social group, find a job, and go to school.” I’d said all of this six months ago when I’d wanted her to come stay with us, but both John and Dani, Keisha’s mom, had chosen rehab. Now we had another chance, and who better to help lead Keisha to wellness than two of the people who loved her the most?
“I don’t want her here with Landon,” he whispered as though the words were hard to say. They were certainly hard to hear. “It kills me to say that, but he has to be our priority.”
I agreed with him, and yet . . . “Where else can she go, John?” I said. “Dani’s not a good fit—we both know that—but the only other resources Keisha has are those same druggy friends you just got her away from.”
“When she’s here, the whole atmosphere of our home changes. She becomes the focus, and I just don’t know how many more times we can bail her out.”
“She’s had a hard road,” I reminded him. It was difficult to say because I knew he felt guilty for the life his little girl had been exposed to after the divorce. Dani had dragged Keisha through a lot of her own dysfunctional problems: substance abuse issues, lousy boyfriends, and bouts of unemployment. Dani and Keisha had been out of state until Keisha was almost ten, far enough away that John didn’t know the full extent of what was happening until years later when Keisha started telling us of the experiences she’d had when she was young. In hindsight, he wished he’d fought harder for custody. But he hadn’t, and so Keisha had gone through a lot of garbage—too much. I wished his guilt would prompt him to want to go the extra mile now, but instead he seemed insecure about his ability to help her at all. He often kept her at a distance—emotionally as well as physically.
“She can get well, John, but she needs support, and we are the best people to give it.”
“At what cost?” he asked, his voice still low. “Are we okay with having Landon exposed to her lifestyle?”
“She knows our standards, and she wouldn’t have called unless she was ready to change.” I knew that was the reason she hadn’t stayed with us long-term in the past—because she couldn’t use here. “She called us for help.”
“Or, like you said before, maybe she called because she had nowhere else to go.”
I couldn’t help feeling disappointed in him for not opening himself up to what I was saying. “She’s sick, John. She needs you; she needs us. We’re her family, and we can give her a foundation to build on.”
He said nothing, and after a few seconds had passed, he rolled onto his side, his back to me. I did the same, and we both lay there in the dark, defending our positions to ourselves. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but the heaviness of the discussion wouldn’t allow it. I stewed and stressed and wondered what do to. How could I make this work? How could I convince John that having Keisha here was the right choice? The only choice. Could he really say no when she was so vulnerable?
Neither sleep nor answers came, but when the alarm went off, I was at least able to rise from bed more committed than I’d been when I’d lain down. When I looked into Keisha’s future, I saw how it could play out. She could get well, go to college, get a good job, and look back on this time in her life with the knowledge that her dad and her stepmom loved her enough to give her another chance. She could be a success story—an inspiration to other people dealing with the same struggles she’d faced. I just had to convince John of that while assuring him that I wasn’t putting our son at risk in the process.