It’s London-cold and windy when we come out of Gatwick Airport and find our way to the pickup area. I’m pretty sure this is the place where Alan said Jan would meet us.
Their babies are ten weeks old.
We’ve come from Switzerland, where it was sunny and we witnessed the marriage of Raphael, the son of our Swiss friends, and stood with the parents for pictures.
Now in London, the wind picks up and blows a sideways mist at us. Bill keeps looking at me and I keep looking at him. We speak a whole conversation, shaped by our years together, translated with raised eyebrows and tight smiles:
Where the hell are they?
Fuck it’s cold.
Are you sure this is the place they said they’d meet us?
Why didn’t you make the arrangements if you don’t trust me?
Do something.
I check my notes about the pickup plans. None of the cars lined up by the curb have Jan in them.
Bill says, “Maybe we should call.”
“Let’s wait.” I’m an expert on this. All the years with my friends, my sisters, me waiting by the door with the diaper bag, while the mom talks the kid into shoes they don’t want to wear or out of too-hot galoshes they do want to wear; or me holding the baby while the mom grabs one more blanket, one more toy, one more something just in case.
Bill’s eyes are on me again, question eyebrows.
Babies. Babies make you late.
We already met the babies, Dylan and Poppy, on Skype, just a few days after their birth. Alan called us from the pale green room that had been empty the last time we visited London.
Poppy was awake, her new baby eyes unfocused and dark. Dylan was asleep in his crib. Jan and Alan had just brought Dylan home from the hospital because he’d needed extra care. He was underweight and having trouble keeping food down.
Alan turned the camera to himself and Jan. They both had dark circles under their eyes. “The babies aren’t sleeping well,” Alan said. “A lot of whingeing.”
Back when they were waiting for the babies to be born, Jan and Alan said we should come to see them in the first few months after. I thought that might be too soon. Shouldn’t it be the new grandmother coming to stay? But Alan’s mother had died many years ago. Jan’s mother would help with these babies, but she had other demands she couldn’t turn away from.
“Really think about it,” I’d said. “Make sure it’s the right time for us to come.”
On the Skype call, when the babies were here for real, I checked in again. “Are you sure you want us to come now?”
“Yes,” they said. “We need help, whenever you can come.”
After we hung up Bill said, “I can’t wait to meet them.” He had a smile and his voice had a lift to it.
I’d never seen him like that, excited about babies.
“Jan and Alan are exhausted,” I said.
I’d only ever been with new babies for a few hours. I’d never been asked to come stay. I’d never been asked to help.
Now I turn in one direction and Bill turns in the other direction, hoping to see their car.
Finally he calls out behind me, “Jackie, look.” Jan is next to him, smiling.
“Hey!” I say. “You’re here.” I go in for a hug. I stop. That’s no purse in her hand. It’s a baby carrier. A baby in that baby carrier. “Oh! You brought—”
“Poppy,” Jan says. “This is Poppy.”
Round ball of a head, red tint to the barely-there hair.
“She’s beautiful,” I say.
“Isn’t she?” Jan’s eyes are soft with tired, and something else. Love, I guess. “Alan’s with Dylan, getting him ready for the next feed.” She looks at her watch. “Which we need to get home for, before this one wakes up, screaming for hers.”
All the way from the airport, we talk about schedules and feeds and them not coming together to the airport because of schedules and feeds and baby seats and a car not big enough for all of us. We talk about Dylan’s problems with keeping formula down. Poppy begins to cry and then to scream. I’m next to her in the back seat and I try to soothe her, which only works for a moment.
Here we are. Babyland.
The dining table has been pushed against the wall and is now a place for baby carriers, diaper bag, diapers, wipes, changes of clothes. Dylan is in his carrier. I have Poppy in her carrier and I set her next to him. Bill and I stand side by side in front of Dylan. He’s awake. He holds one fisted hand near his chin.
Alan is behind us, hands on our shoulders. “It’s really good to have you here.”
“They’re beautiful,” I say. The thing you say.
Poppy is beautiful. The flush of her skin. But Dylan. “He’s so tiny,” I say.
Dylan’s unfocused, dark blue eyes move toward the sound of us. Beneath smooth baby skin, his pallor is gray. His forehead is creased, three lines across, two tiny lines between his eyes. Where Poppy is full cheeks and round belly, Dylan is angles and wrinkles, dark hair and worried frown. They’d told us he was underweight, but seeing him, I feel scared for him.
Bill leans in over Dylan and speaks in a low voice, “Hi Dylan. Yeah. There’s the boy. Hey, there. Hey buddy.” Bill is so present with this baby. His voice is gentle. Maybe he feels scared for Dylan, too. I think he’s glad to be here meeting these babies. I’m used to him being playful and interested in kids. But this is new to me, to see him so interested in such new babies.
Alan tells us how they’ve started Dylan on a medicine and a new way of feeding him that should help him keep a high-calorie formula down.
I step closer. Dylan’s eyebrows are small arches like worry. This new world is light and noise, and the pain in his stomach.
Poppy wakes, fists and arms, her face goes to pink, to red. Her mouth opens into a tiny circle. She cries.
“Sorry, guys.” Alan moves to her. We step aside. “They’ll be whingeing and we won’t get ahead of it if we don’t do it now.”
Time to change them. Time to feed them.
My stomach growls. Usually, when we arrive, we have a glass of champagne right off. Dinner would be ready. Now the kitchen is filled with washed bottles and nipples, formula and bibs, dark bottles of dropper medicine.
I sit on the bar stool next to Bill. We watch Alan and Jan feed the babies they’ve waited so long for, like we’re watching a movie. Bill reaches over and takes my hand. He looks at me like he’s checking to see how this is for me. Maybe this is a look of worry. Maybe it’s a look like, Ta-da! Here are some babies for you.
Alan feeds Dylan and explains the process. Twenty milliliters, then take the bottle from his hungry mouth, lean him forward with his knees bent up to help him release trapped air. This is a special way of burping. Or winding, as Alan calls it. I imagine gusts of air, trees bent, not a tiny bubble trapped in a baby’s belly. Alan rubs his hand in circles on Dylan’s small back. “Don’t pat. He has to wind at least once before he can have more. He hates this first part because he wants to eat.” To prove it, Dylan begins to cry. “You can imagine,” Alan says. “He must be so hungry.”
I can imagine. My own empty own stomach makes noise again.
Feed and wind. Feed and wind. For an hour.
Finally, Alan mentions champagne. Dinner.
Thank god.
Alan looks at me. “Will you hold Dylan while I start things?”
I move to the sofa and Alan passes him to me. “You’ll have to hold him up,” Alan says. “He has to stay upright to keep the formula down.” This is a different way to hold a tiny baby. I want to show Jan and Alan that this is natural for me. I want them to know I can help.
I cup Dylan’s tiny foot in the palm of my hand. Baby toes. I put my little finger in his hand. His fingers wrap my finger.
Alan pours champagne and hands me a glass. We toast. Jan and I hold our glasses out and away from the babies in our laps.
“To babies.” I sip, hold the sparkles in my mouth, swallow. I like champagne. I like holding this baby. I set the glass down.
Bill watches me, and I feel it in a spotlight way. His smile seems almost proud, pleased, like he thinks this is helping me have what I never had. I don’t want him to watch me. I want to hold this baby and not think of what might have been.
Bill and I are in bed. My book is propped on my chest; my book-light makes a circled glow on the page. Jan and Alan have finished the late-night feed. I hear them in the pale green bedroom next to us, the murmur of their voices as they settle the babies. Love is in this house.
Bill’s breath deepens, lengthens toward sleep.
“What were you thinking when you were watching me hold Dylan?” I say.
There’s a long quiet space. I don’t know if he heard me, if he’s even still awake.
“I was thinking what a good mother you would’ve been.”
Him saying it plain like that. It hurts a little. Here in my belly. A sliver, a shard of my stone of resentment still holding. And in my head, You have no right to say this now that it’s too late.
“I know,” I say. “I would have been.”
In the night, I hear a baby cry. Dylan, maybe. Alan’s whisper. The lighter whisper of Jan. They talk to their babies. I wonder if I should get up to help. I stay in bed. They are with their babies. This is private.
Later, the house is quiet again. I get up and go to the bathroom. The clouded moon sends thin light through the window. In the mirror, my face looks younger. Smooth skin, hair loose and messy. Like in a picture from ten years ago, twenty years. I didn’t know how young I was or that time would pass this quickly.
At our bedroom door, I stop and look to the open door of the babies’ room. I try to hear their breath, to see their shapes. The nightlight only reveals the white slats of cribs and the turning shadows of the mobiles hanging above.
Poppy snuffles at the bottle when I feed her. Breathe and drink, breathe and drink, like grateful applause. When she’s done, I ask Bill, “Ready to hold her?” He’s always been good with kids as long as they are at least two years old. Not babies. He never showed an interest. The only infant I ever saw him hold was M’ari on the day I witnessed her birth. Even then, he held her for less than a minute.
But now, right away, he says yes to holding Poppy. He doesn’t have to be talked into it.
He settles back on the sofa, and I put her in his arms. I show him how. “Support her neck in the crook of your elbow, or up this way, on your chest.”
His shoulders hunch; he moves slowly, that tiniest tremble he gets in his cheek when he’s nervous.
Poppy’s legs stiffen. “Relax your shoulders,” I say. I reach with my free arm. Touch one of his shoulders. He relaxes. She relaxes into him.
Alan puts Dylan in my arms. Little bird legs, soft crown of head.
Bill tilts his head down to Poppy. “Yes,” he whispers. “Yeah. That’s right. I’ve got you.” He cups the crown of her head. Her eyes go sleepy. Bill looks over at me, and he has the baby-drunk look people get when a child lets go into your arms. The muscles in his face relaxed, the corners of his mouth turned up in a completely unconscious way.
He might fall in love. I might fall in love.
I shift Dylan in my arms, move away from Bill, just a little, to make room for the catch of my breath.
Alan watches us the same way Bill watched me last night. That spotlight shining on a woman with no children holding a child, next to a man with no children holding a child.
The heat of it burns. What we could have had.
The days go by. We hold babies and feed babies and talk about babies and try to help around the house. One day is like the next. It’s all babies all the time, and Jan and Alan are lost to it. I begin to feel tired, restless. When we finally go out on the third day, I’m happy to be doing something different.
Going out is a production of stroller and carriers and bags and diapers and finding a space in a restaurant or store big enough for all the stuff of babies. On the street, Bill pushes the stroller. I wish he’d let Alan push the stroller. I wish he’d come take my hand. But he’s happy being with the babies.
I walk fast in front of him to look in the window of another store, a blue dress. I can go fast; the stroller can’t go fast. I tick off each thing. I can go into a café for coffee. I can sleep through the night. Go out on a whim to a movie, all alone or with Bill or with a friend. I can read a book whenever I want. Spend the whole morning in my garden. Go to yoga. Write for long, uninterrupted days. I can make loud noisy love and never be too tired.
Upstairs, in the afternoon, I lie down on the bed. Bill says, “You okay?”
“I’m tired,” I say. “Really tired.”
He puts his hand on my hand. Wraps my fingers. He’s worried that I’m so quiet.
“Does being here make you regret it? Not having kids?”
“No,” I say. “It’s fun, but. I don’t know. I miss being home. The babies are so much work. It exhausts me. And it’s kind of boring. One-dimensional. I’m glad it’s not me.” The words are chalky, dry in my mouth.
Had I become the woman Mom worried I’d turn into? Old and bitter? The one people speak of? She never had children. Didn’t want them. Selfish.
Alan pushes me to start feeding Dylan. “Really, it gives us a break,” he says.
I hold Dylan’s head in my palm, his body along my forearm. It’s a long, slow process and, in that long, slow process, I watch Dylan’s face. The crease between his eyes is like worry. His eyes stare at me. Feed and wind, feed and wind. There’s something about this baby. So hungry. So relieved to have the bottle.
I offer to feed him the next time, and the next.
Bill sits beside me every time. When I pull the bottle from Dylan’s mouth and rub the circles on his back, we whisper to him. “That’s a big strong boy. You’re getting bigger and stronger every minute. Such a healthy boy.” I want our words to make it so. He drinks more. Bill cups his hand over the top of Dylan’s head. He puts his thumb lightly on the crease between Dylan’s eyes. Dylan eases and drinks. Bill keeps his arm around my shoulder, his hand on Dylan’s head. And we go on that way.
This is what we are here for.
Sometimes Bill sits on the stool and watches me. I still feel the spotlight of his eyes, the heat going deep in me. I let it in.
Bill pushes the stroller around a big store. I walk beside him. A woman stops us and says, “Oh, congratulations! You’re lucky.” I grin and feel proud. I point at Jan and Alan. “We are lucky that their parents let us spend so much time with them.”
We stop for coffee in the crowded café of the big store. A woman, somewhere past forty with long dark hair and tap-tapping high heels, slows by the stroller. She takes in both babies, looks at Jan. “I wouldn’t want to be you,” she says with a horrible snort of a laugh. She moves off so quickly I have no time to grab her, jerk her by her long dark hair, take one of those high heels and tap it on her head. Tell her to get some sense, tell her she has no idea what she’s talking about, tell her to shut her pie-hole. How fast I’ve gone from baby-bored to baby-love. Right now, in this moment, I would want to be Jan. I’d take either or both of these babies in a heartbeat. I am too old and it’s too late, but I would.
On the night before we leave, I’m holding Dylan, as I have for so much of the past week. Earlier, when he threw up his formula because I moved him too suddenly, I felt it like a personal loss. “I’m sorry,” I whispered in his tiny ear. “I’ll do better next time.”
Bill and Jan and Alan are talking. Poppy is asleep in Jan’s arms. I touch Dylan’s forehead, like I’ve seen Bill do. Maybe Dylan’s frown is less worried than it was when we came. His cheeks. I’m sure they are more full.
My chest aches like a hand is pressed so hard it might knock me from this place. The ache moves to my throat, that hand clenching it now. It grows.
Tears come. A surprise and no surprise at all.
Here, I let myself feel everything. What I missed and what I have. Right here, right now.
I look up, let the tears run.
“I’ve always heard women say that the love for their baby is like nothing they’ve felt before. I never got to spend this much time with a baby this new. To hold him for hours. For days. To be a part of his survival.” I look at Alan, at Jan. “Thank you for sharing them.”
Bill comes to sit beside me. He touches Dylan’s head, and our hands meet there. “It’s going to be hard to leave,” he says.
Once the tears have started, they keep coming. Quiet. It’s an opening to a place I didn’t know I had. As though someone came and found another chamber in my heart. Said, You didn’t have to have a child of your own to know this. It is safe here. Love comes in, just by being open.
We’re both on our backs in bed, looking up into the dark. Our arms touch; our feet touch.
Jan and Alan are in the next room putting Dylan and Poppy in their cribs, saying good night to their children.
Now it is me who asks Bill. “Do you regret it?” I say. “Do you wish we’d had kids?”
Bill shifts so that the full length of our legs touch. “I never understood what you went through before now,” he says. His hand covers mine. “Wanting to have children. How hard it was. I didn’t realize.”
“You didn’t see it?” My voice holds the surprise. “How hard it was?”
“I knew what you said,” Bill says. “But I couldn’t know what it felt like. I never felt anything like that. Never. Not until now.”
One of the babies, Poppy, lets out a small cry. Bill stops, and we are both still. Then the room next door is quiet.
Bill says, “I didn’t know what it feels like to hold a baby. To just hold them. It’s powerful.”
Somewhere, sometime long ago, he shut himself off from the possibility. Never opened his arms.
What is worse? To want something and decide not to have it, or to suddenly wake up to the might-have-been that you didn’t even know about?
He says, “Being with them. Holding them. To have someone need you so much. To be able to help him. I’m sorry I kept us from it.”
We breathe into the dark. Our hands tighten on each other.
Maybe true understanding comes only from having a loss close enough to another’s to recognize it.
Bill didn’t keep me from having a child. I chose. I didn’t keep myself from anything. My world opened up and I took hold of it.
I say, “I’m not sorry.”
It’s a beautiful ache, this kind of love.