“Oh, so he’s my kid all of a sudden.”
“Not all of a sudden,” said Katie.
“I’ll take him,” I said, coming in, realizing that waiting out in the driveway for them to stop yelling at each other was going to take too long.
Katie shot Jill a nasty look.
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” I said. “I’d be glad to take him. I missed him.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Jill cooed, and Katie rolled her eyes, and Jill was out the door almost immediately.
I looked at Katie. “I was only gone a week.”
She shook her head. “The first night they went out was the night you left—I told you about that. He called late and she left and called in the middle of the night and asked if I could hang on to Atlas the next day, but when I went to bed that night, she still wasn’t back yet. And it’s been pretty much like that all week. She checks in; she comes back briefly, but then she leaves again. She never takes Atlas with her. She hasn’t really even seen him all week. She barely asks if it’s okay with me, and then she stays out well beyond the hours I agree to anyway. She just expects me to pick up all your hours too. I had to call Jason twice this week to come up when I had to go teach your class. And I’m getting married in less than two weeks.”
“What’s going on with them?”
“I don’t know. She won’t talk about it. I ask and she blows me off. Sunday-night dinner was the first time I’d seen her for more than five minutes all week. And she’d only come home a little bit before you did. And she left after you went to bed.”
As always, I spent less time considering my actual reaction than what I thought it should be. Or maybe I was just too tired to feel anything as exhausting as righteous indignation. It was unfair to expect Katie to do everything, unfair to discount the import of her wedding just because Jill thought it was too fast, unfair to foist Atlas on me when I had so much work to do, unfair to sideline Atlas’s needs for Daniel’s, and unfair to be so rude and selfish about the whole thing. On the other hand, this was momentous too. If Daniel wanted to see about being in our lives again, I guess she had to find out. She had to hear his story and tell him hers. They had a lot of catching up to do. So we’d just have to try and not kill her.
Jill didn’t come home that night, and she didn’t call. Katie and Atlas and I all went to bed early and without eating anything, all totally wiped out and cranky and feeling borderline coming down with something. In the morning, we had a text message from Jill that she would be home by noon, but I had to go teach, and Katie and Peter were driving to Portland to meet with caterers. Jill wasn’t answering her phone. We called Jason, profusely apologetic, and he canceled a meeting with his advisor to come over and stay with Atlas for a few hours until Jill came home. I taught more about movies then spent the afternoon in the library catching up on grading and prep.
It is sometimes true that trauma at home, stress in one’s personal life, sick relatives, annoying roommates, weddings to plan, and sunshine to sit out in prevent academic productivity of all kinds. And it is sometimes the only thing for it. Buried in the stacks, typing by backlight, I read about film theory, took notes, wrote outlines, and generally forgot about anything else. There is something too to this feeling of control. Some people clean the house (I wish); some plan parties or fund-raisers or church events; some people stop eating. It’s the same motivation. I may not be able to control anything else, but if I want to know more about something, I can find out. It’s very empowering. It is also like after exercise. I walked home feeling absolved and slightly high. I had learned something new, made productive use of my afternoon, prepped the rest of my film unit, caught up a bit. It’s a different kind of endorphin rush, but it’s there all the same.
On my way up the driveway, my phone rang. And that’s when my life became truly filmic.
Thirty-one
It was Jason, sobbing. Choking sobbing so he couldn’t talk. I answered the phone to silence. If it hadn’t displayed his name, I wouldn’t have known who I was listening to on the other end. My heart sank and then my knees did, and kneeling in the grass outside my house what I thought was this: isn’t it sweet for Jason to be so sad that my grandmother died? And already, already living without her, I started to comfort him. It’s okay, it’s okay, or something like that; she liked you so much; she lived a good life; thank you for loving her. Mindless, pointless, and not really listening because he had said no no no no many times before I finally heard him. And then, suddenly, in a rush of, I’m ashamed to say, relief, I realized it wasn’t my grandmother he was weeping for at all. These weren’t friend-sobs; they were parent-sobs. “Your baby?” I gasped, sorry immediately not to have put it more gently. “No,” he finally managed. “Yours.”
I don’t remember driving to the hospital, but I must have. And when I got there, I couldn’t remember ever having left. It felt exactly like that night sitting with my grandmother all tucked in, holding her hand. It felt like waiting in the ER after she fell. It felt like waiting with Jill in labor, waiting to take Atlas home, waiting for Daniel to return. But it felt like nothing so much as my own cancer, my own heart attack, my own heartbreaking labor, my own heartbreaking homecoming. I felt like I had always been in that hospital. I felt like a lifetime happened in those searing moments of searching the emergency room for faces I knew. And fleetingly, only fleetingly, came into my mind the cold comfort that this was the best place in the world to feel so entirely like I couldn’t draw breath.
I found Jason, wet faced and wild eyed and shaking so violently I could see his shimmer from across the room, wedged into a corner as if for the protection afforded by the walls.
“He was still asleep when I got there at ten, and I was working all morning. I checked on him around noon, but I just thought he was sleeping, and then Lucas called, and then I got caught up in Kant, and I just didn’t think to check on him again—”
“Why were you still there all afternoon?” Like that was the significant detail here. “Where was Jill?”
“She called and asked if I could stay longer. She said she and Dan had to talk some more.”
“She’s still with Dan?”
“I can’t get her. I think her phone’s off. I finally checked on him at like two, and there was vomit all over the crib. He looked all sweaty but he was still sleeping, so I rattled him just a little bit, and when I touched him, he was burning up and totally drenched. And then he started shaking all over. I think he had a seizure.”
More crying. And seeing it in person, I realized what I couldn’t on the phone. It wasn’t friend-weeping or parent-weeping—it was blind-fear-weeping, total, all-encompassing, every toe, every hair, every day and tomorrow fear and horror. I could feel it coming on like a storm, and I struggled to keep it together long enough to get all the information I could out of Jason before it took me over too.
“I called 911. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t even put him in the car because I don’t have a car seat. Was I just supposed to lay him on the floor in the back like groceries and hope he didn’t roll around too much?”