I<\/span> was still fat from pregnancy. Though I felt slim, my pants reflected the truth. And the sweating, my God. However relieved I was to be unpregnant at the nadir of summer, the constant dampness under my breasts\u2014even rivulets down my stomach\u2014was irritating. This was a Paxil thing, as well as hormones and damn August. The drug had allowed me to survive terrors like morning sickness, giving birth, and sitting with my clients at work, but it had some unfortunate side effects. Right now the epic perspiration was a headline. I longed for the times when I could take off my shirt altogether and simply unhook my nursing bra for the baby.<\/p>\n

Side-effects notwithstanding, I was grateful for the drug. Nothing got too sharp for me: I glided along. I had needed something to quell the anxiety I felt at work, and especially to numb the panic triggered by facing another pregnancy. In 2001, doctors weren\u2019t so concerned about prescribing it during pregnancy, and I was consumed with dread about the ravages of morning sickness, the violence of childbirth. I began the medication just before 9\/11. The TV blared reports all that day. Just barely two, Helen caught footage of the jet approaching a tower in slow-motion, and she pointed and proudly announced, \u201cairplane!\u201d Though I knew the whole country was on high alert and this was Real Danger, I calmly went about my routine. Paxil, my savior.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, on an August morning exactly four weeks after Lucy\u2019s birth, I sat folding laundry, one foot extended to bounce the baby\u2019s seat. She hadn\u2019t settled in yet, hadn\u2019t decided to relax into the nest of the world. The bouncy seat didn\u2019t comfort her the way it had her sister. She wanted to be held, but often I had to set her down to scurry after Helen (help her with a puzzle, search piles of video tapes, open a yogurt). Lucy protested in grunts and squirms, red-faced, winding herself up for a full-on wail.<\/p>\n

Helen was changing her doll\u2019s diaper. The doll, a cheap bald floppy thing from Helen\u2019s first birthday, was named \u201cMmpsy.\u201d As soon as the diaper was on, Helen would hold the doll up high to show me.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, she looks nice and fresh,\u201d I\u2019d say.<\/p>\n

Then Helen would frown again and say, \u201cMmpsy has a poop.\u201d And she\u2019d kneel back down to the rug.<\/p>\n

I bounced the seat. Toppling piles of infant clothes dotted the couch. The phone rang, and I knew that as soon as I stopped working my foot Lucy would release the yowl that had been gathering force inside her.<\/p>\n

It was Mom. \u201cHoney,\u201d she started, then hesitated.<\/p>\n

This exact type of pause portended information that I didn\u2019t want. I was instantly irritated; she was always the one who called with bad news, and the way she shared it was always halting, conspiratorial, like a teenager trying not to smile as she confesses that she saw your boyfriend kissing someone else in the cafeteria. I suppose it wasn\u2019t actually Mom\u2019s fault\u2014why wouldn\u2019t one\u2019s mother be the messenger\u2014but too many instances like this had occurred, and now all I needed was to know that it was her on the phone and I\u2019d get pissed off and terrified.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUm\u2026 Daddy\u2019s gone missing.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was surreal to hear her refer to \u201cDaddy,\u201d this man who had divorced her fifteen years ago. She hadn\u2019t called him that since we all lived together.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

She explained that last night my brother, Chris, went to meet my father at the airport in Vermont\u2014he was coming East from his home in California. He planned to come my way, too, and see Lucy. But Dad hadn\u2019t gotten off the plane. Now my family in Vermont, all my siblings and my mother, were making phone calls to track him down.<\/p>\n

\u201cChris called the police in Santa Barbara,\u201d she told me. \u201cSo soon they\u2019ll be at his apartment and can let us know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mean, if they find him dead?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then she had to hang up. I was cut loose into the grotesquely sunny day, left to wait. My husband was at his office. Lucy was mewling \u2014 I didn\u2019t feel any pull toward her now. Helen was standing at a safe distance from me, clutching her doll and watching my face.<\/p>\n

My sister blessedly called then, sharing my need to make speculations. Dad must have had an accident and was lying by the road. He was in a hospital. He\u2019d had a cognitive misfire and forgot, went to a conference and was unreachable.<\/p>\n

This, of course, was all bargaining against my instinct: he\u2019d been murdered.<\/p>\n

It was my way to expect the worst.<\/p>\n

My father, too, had been a hypochondriac and a general worrier. He liked to list his symptoms whenever he didn\u2019t feel tip-top. And intermittently in his life, he submitted to phases of paralyzing anxiety. When he was a young man, I\u2019m told that he used to take to his bed for stretches between his teaching engagements. He\u2019d call to my mother, who was always busy with the kids and house chores, and ask her to bring him cinnamon toast and hot chocolate. He believed these to be curative.<\/p>\n

As he moved into his fifties and became a single man, he amassed a store of medications. Besides those for his heart disease and diabetes and high blood pressure, he took something for anxiety. He must have wished that one were available to him years and years back.<\/p>\n

At some point in the day, between nursing sessions, still calm, I noticed that I was hungry. It seemed unnatural to eat but I allowed myself fortification against the approaching devastation. I decided on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and I also made one for Helen. It was beautifully simple, just eating, just enjoying and being filled.<\/p>\n

When my mother\u2019s definitive phone call came, my husband was home and holding the baby. I answered, knowing it would be her.<\/p>\n

\u201cHoney,\u201d she said again, smally.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs he dead?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d Her voice crumpled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWas he murdered?\u201d<\/p>\n

I had interrupted her quiet weeping with this question. \u201cThat\u2019s weird,\u201d she sniffed.<\/p>\n

\u201cChris wondered the same thing. But I don\u2019t think so. The police didn\u2019t say anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, she couldn\u2019t talk long; there were many more phone calls to make. Before hanging up, we urgently told each other I love you.<\/em> Helen, having been held at bay for a while by her father, arrived at my side where I sat on the stairs. I let the phone clatter on the wooden step, then leaned my head down onto my lap. Helen put a tentative hand on my back.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou sad, Mommy?\u201d<\/p>\n

I had never cried this openly in front of her.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I said, head still down.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want your Daddy?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

This triggered a burst of sobbing. Helen, not yet three, was cool. She seemed to know that she couldn\u2019t need me right now. She turned and carefully navigated back down the few steps to the floor, then ran over to her toy box. I forgot her for several seconds, returned to thoughts of my father, the trip to Vermont we\u2019d have to take.<\/p>\n

Helen reappeared at my knees and bumped something hard against them. \u201cHere, Mommy.\u201d<\/p>\n

I picked up my head, knowing it might scare her to see how red and puffy my face was.<\/p>\n

\u201cMmpsy wants to snuggle you,\u201d she said, and lay the grimy doll on my lap.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, thank you, Mmpsy.\u201d I gathered the doll against my chest; my chemical armor cracked, briefly. I truly felt love coming from that toy.<\/p>\n

A few days after his death, we learned that my father had had a heart attack. We heard details like what the police officers found in his toilet, and about the splotch of vomit that was under his face where he lay on the carpet. It wasn\u2019t murder. No evil force had stolen my dad; it was just that his body\u2019s timer tripped while he packed to come and see his family.<\/p>\n

In my mind I observed him as his death approached: first there was concern, then nausea and alarm, then his fall \u2014 a great tree of a man. No time to tell anyone his symptoms.<\/p>\n

I spent several days lying on the futon in my \u201csick room\u201d (the room we\u2019d set up for me when I was miserable with morning sickness). I did not feel like grieving. I was too tired and fat, and still sore from the c-section. My husband brought Lucy to me frequently to nurse. The baby and I were still wrangling about a feeding schedule. I said every three hours was appropriate, like the first baby. She wailed that she needed milk after two. Now that my father was dead I supposed she could have her way. I could just latch her and gaze out the window. And it felt lovely to be milked, after all. Draining what was full, drawing out the pressure. Then, when I looked down at her face, she had that particular set of her eyebrows, angled with relaxation and relief. When I finally rolled her away she was passed out, her chin glistening and slack. Her eyes fluttered and squinted with newborn spasms.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s okay that he\u2019s dead<\/em>, I thought. Between nursings I put Lucy in her car seat on the floor. Outside the window the maple and oak were in full crazy green, happy with summer. I pretended I was sitting in the branches. A great wind had swept into the region. It sifted through the leaves and through my head, which was empty, because none of it mattered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I let the phone clatter on the wooden step…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2470"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2675,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2470\/revisions\/2675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ducts.sundresspublications.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}