As much as it hurts to admit that to myself, it’s been better to face the truth than let it stalk me during the middle of the night.
Mel had been a difficult baby, crying for hours at a time the way colicky babies do for no apparent reason. Though her pediatrician assured us it would probably pass by the six-week mark, it lasted far longer.
The situation was made worse by my low-grade postpartum depression. I wanted so desperately to be a good mother, and my failure to comfort her left me glum and exhausted. I seemed so klutzy at mothering in general, awkward at handling both her and the endless equipment that came with the job (grade for collapsing a stroller easily: D; grade for strapping on a snuggly: C+; grade for using a breast pump: C-). Once, when she was a few weeks old, I took her to the park, holding her for a while in my arms. As I was struggling to place herback in the stroller, a drunken derelict sitting on another bench yelled out, “Hold herneckup.” Even he knew what to do better than I did.
The clouds finally lifted when she was about four months. Her colic abated, and I began to find her staring at me in utter fascination with those lovely blue-green eyes, the same shade as Logan’s and so much more arresting than my pale-blue ones. At last, we were deliriously in love. And I felt a million times more competent.
But around the age of three, things went to hell again. She developed, of all things, a phobia of buttons. Known as koumpounophobia, it’s extremely rare, and, like my childhood fear of the dark, there’s not always a clear reason.
The child psychologist we consulted suggested she might have become fearful of swallowing one or worried they were germy, but, regardless, she insisted on wearing only pants and skirts with elasticized waists, pullover tops, and jackets with zippers. She even refused to look at picture books in which buttons were drawn on the characters’ clothing (yes toGoodnight Moonbecause you can’t see the buttons on the bunny’s pajamas, but “No, no, no!” toCorduroybecause the darn bear was actuallysearchingfor a button). Her preschool teachers had to work around it, and playdates were loaded with land mines.
That’s not to say she couldn’t be wonderfully affectionate, but there were other times when she acted sullen and disinterested. I only made it worse by pushing and prodding—“Sweetheart, come sit with Mommy” or “Look what Mommy has for you.” The therapist I saw encouraged me to back off a little, and I tried, but it did little good.
And then, when she was around seven, she grew less agitated and seemed to fall in love with me again. She’d become a voracious reader by that point, but also adored being read to, and we spent hours on the couch or in bed devouring children’s novels as well as poetry, both the kind of poems that kids her age found fun—like “Paul Revere’s Ride”—and more sophisticated fare.
I loved seeing how curious certain poems made her. After we’d read Robert Frost’s “Birches” for the first time, she’d wanted to know ifIhadbeen a swinger of birches as a girl, and did I dream of going back to be one again, like the poet did. (“No, we never had birches in our yard,” I told her, “but I so wish we had.”). She’d also asked why Frost said life could feel too much like a “pathless wood.”
I giddily thought this was it, that we’d found our groove as mother and daughter, but that period was over in five or so years. The teen years arrived—erupted, really—and next to them, the button-bashing phase seemed like a breeze. Logan wasn’t spared, but I got the brunt of it, with her finding fault over the simplest things I said and did. Once, when I told her, “Have a good day,” she responded with, “Nevertell me what to do.”
Things finally started to improve slightly during her sophomore year at Carter, perhaps because she was coming into her own. She was more civil to me suddenly, and when she was home for breaks, she made Logan and me laugh with her wry observations about both campus life and the world at large. She was editing the campus literary magazine, just as I’d done in college, and once or twice, she asked for my opinion. At moments here and there, she even seemed to appreciate me again.
But then, before I could begin to relish the change, she was gone.
Sitting quietly at the desk, I copy four of the haikus and paste them into a fresh document. Then I compose a short email to Logan:
Not sure how many you have room for in the program, but if it’s only one, please let it be this one:
Will you welcome me?
As I leave a pathless wood
Returning to birch.
I don’t explain why to him, but there’s a specific reason for my request. Maybe I’ve been grasping at straws all these years, but since the haiku—one of those we found on her desk—has a clear reference to the Frost poem Mel and I read so many times together, I’ve told myself thatin the last days of her life, she was hoping for us to really connect like we had when she was a child.
A soft knock at the door tears me from my thoughts.
“Come in,” I call out.
I twist around in the desk chair as Sebastian enters the room. He’s wearing his brown suede jacket with the sherpa collar and lining, and his cheeks are ruddy from the wind. Though Bas has an MBA and sees himself as both book lover and businessman, he really enjoys working on the property—mowing, doing repairs, tending the vegetable garden, even helping Jorge with his cows and the goats that he and Maitena keep for making cheese to sell.
“You’ve been outside all this time?” I ask.
“Yeah, walking around with Poco, trying to figure out what he ate out there, but so far, no clue.” He smiles. “Though we had a heart-to-heart, and he’s assured me he’s done blaming you for the stomach purge.”
I smile back. “Good, because he’s breaking my heart ... What are you up to now?”
“I thought I’d make a fire and do some paperwork on the couch. Want to join me?”
“Love to.”
“Were you able to reach the lawyer?”
I let out a gust of air. “Yeah, just a minute ago.”
“And?”
Lifting my head, I raise my eyes to the white plaster ceiling, with its beautiful old wooden beams. I try to gather the thoughts that have been swimming in the back of my mind since Schmidt uttered that grim explanation—about Ruck wanting credit where it was due and not where it wasn’t. An explanation that has the horrible ring of truth. It feels suddenly as if I’m standing on a frozen lake and have just heard the faint crack of ice beneath my feet.
