Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [39]
Meg turns to me, her face a mix of hope and astonishment but also, because she knows the details that Jack doesn’t, and that maybe, even later, Henry doesn’t either, that I’ve never regurgitated wholly to him, I see pity. Meg was there at my high-school graduation, when my father sat by himself amid all the couples who, even if divorced, came to support their graduates. She was there on my twenty-first birthday when, because I was so drunk at a bar, I announced that earlier in the day, I’d trotted to my mailbox in hopes of a card from my mother, but got, I said at the time, “Shit, nada, zilch, zero from that bitch!” She knows the wounds my mother carved into me that have taken years to heal, and how hard I worked at healing them.
“Oh Jesus, Jill, I’m sorry.” She reaches over and holds my hand. “You okay?”
I nod and, for the first time since receiving the letter, find tears slowly leaking out. I wipe away a drop that’s weaseled its way down to my chin.
“I just don’t know what to do. Call her. Not call her. I’ve asked Jack but he’s not much help—”
“Well, who cares what Jack would do,” Megan interrupts.
“Oh, well, I mean, I guess I do.” I surprise myself in saying it.
“Aw, Jill, this has nothing to do with Jack and what he would do.” Meg stands and kisses the top of my head. “This has to do with you and what you need. Don’t confuse the two.” She pauses to nurse out the last sip of her lemonade. “If you do decide to call her—which you might—then let it be because it’s your needs, not because of what he thinks . . . or doesn’t think,” she adds in.
She walks into the kitchen, and I hear the screen door slam.
“So let me ask you,” I call over my shoulder. “Do you still think that a mother’s love trumps all?” I think of Katie, and how, though I love her enough to make my heart explode, splattering out of my chest like a smashed pumpkin, sometimes the burden of it, of motherhood, felt too much.
“I do,” Meg says, returning with a fresh beer and a refilled glass of lemonade. “Call me an eternal optimist, but I do.”
IN MY OLD LIFE, I often dreamed of Jack. He’d intrude at unsuspecting times—popping in occasionally to remind me of the life I’d left behind, or perhaps more honestly, the life I was leading now, the one plagued with what-ifs and self-doubt and festering resentment and sippy cups and bald-headed dolls and spoiled milk dumped in the back of my Range Rover. Invariably, in these dreams, Jack and I were always happy, with no gnawing, looming concerns that would eat us from the inside out.
These dreams were set against backdrops of fictitious realities—trips we’d never taken, stories we’d never told. I’d wake up and feel haunted from my very core, like a tick had wheedled its way into the pit of my stomach and was spreading a virus on out, and I would inevitably spend the rest of the day lingering in memories of our burned relationship, wondering where he was, how he was, and if he ever dreamed of me in return.
Tonight, wrapped beneath a quilted blanket at Megan and Tyler’s beach house, with the lapping sounds of the ocean filtering through the open window, and with Jack’s measured breath beside me, I am dreaming of Henry.
It is an early Saturday morning, no Saturday morning in particular, and Henry is still flooded with sleep, whimpering to himself every few minutes as he slumbers. We appear to be on a ship, and I peer out of a tiny sliver of a porthole to see dark blue, nearly black, water, and a cloudless crisp sky. I slip out of the bed, steadying myself under the rocking floor, and retreat to the bathroom, then emerge to shake him awake.
“I’m pregnant,” I whisper, my lips pressed to his ear. He grunts and snorts but doesn’t move. “Hen, I’m pregnant.”
His eyes whip open and in one quick movement, he pulls me down to him, throwing me over the bed, then looping on top of me. The boat rolls beneath us, and we’re nearly tossed onto the slats of stained oak beneath us. Quick as lightning, we both reach for the headboard like a life vest, until the crest below