Bill had told me that when he was a boy, becoming a father wasn’t something he dreamed of or planned for. This didn’t change as he got older.
Now I sorted the stories he’d told me, things I’d seen. I searched for reasons and clues, a door ajar, a place to slip through.
Maybe to change his mind.
Maybe to change my mind.
A few summers after we met, Bill and I went on a beach vacation with his family. One afternoon, I was downstairs playing cards with Bill’s sister and brother and Mom. Bill was upstairs being wild-fun uncle with his nieces and nephews like I was silly-fun aunt with mine. The difference with Bill was that he enjoyed the kids when they could talk and tease and play. He never showed an interest in babies.
Shouts and jumping and kid laughs broke through the serious business of dealing cards and making bids. Bill yelled, “Leaping Lizards!” A thump and thud followed by kid screams and shouts.
I looked up at the ceiling, for the plaster that might fall on us. “The kids sure are having fun up there.”
“Uh-huh,” Bill’s mother said with a loving eye roll. “Especially the biggest one.” The curve of her mouth held love for her son.
She was eighteen when she had Bill. He was her second child. By the time her third baby came a year and a half later, her husband, their father, had left. Left her. Left them. Bill didn’t know the reason. It was possible his dad was overwhelmed by all those kids. A man who didn’t like to share his wife, his time, the quiet.
Bill’s mom had told me that Bill raised her as much as she raised him. She was almost sixty, but she still needed him. Bill and his brother took her wherever she needed to go because she didn’t drive, and they helped out when money was tight for her and Bill’s stepfather.
His mother had never asked us if we were going to have kids, even though it was clear we were making a life together.
Maybe she didn’t think it was her business.
Maybe she was fine with not having to share.
Maybe she was the kind of mom who didn’t place her worries and disappointments on her child.