Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [43]
Once outside in the sharp glare of the midday sun, I squint to adjust my eyes and, for a second, am struck with a sharp pang of vertigo, which leaves as quickly as it comes.
“Hey, Allie,” I say to her back, as she heads toward the polar bears. “Did you know that penguins mate for life? That makes them pretty unusual for animals.”
She stops and turns my way. “So you mean that it’s like they get married? Like Mommy and Daddy?”
“Something like that,” Leigh answers.
“Though I don’t know if there are actually weddings!” I grin. I find myself unconsciously playing with the bare space on my ring finger. Though it has been empty for two months, I’m still always surprised when my thumb reaches over and finds the rings gone.
“Well, they’re already wearing tuxedos if they need them!” Allie says, and we all laugh, though I pause before doing so, so astonished at what a little person she has evolved into. Katie. The pang lingers this time rather than fleeing my body like an unwanted chill. I watch Allie rush toward the polar bears, and I’m nearly drowned in nostalgia of my own precious girl.
“They grow up fast,” I hear Leigh saying, as if she had a map of my brain. “Sometimes I can’t believe that she’s as wise as she is. I mean, shouldn’t she still be in diapers?” She sighs, but it’s not a sigh of lament or remorse. Just a sigh of a mother who can’t pin down time, who can’t shake it to a stop and say, Don’t let my baby get old, don’t let it all get away from me before I have a chance to inhale it all in.
“Thanks for inviting me today,” I say, trying to dust off the memory of Katie. “It was a welcome surprise.” I pause, unsure of what else to add. Jack’s family had excavated such an emotional moat that I find myself off balance when a bridge has finally been lowered.
“Well, Allie fell a little bit in love with you at her birthday,” Leigh says. “And Jack mentioned that he left you halfway through your weekend, so . . .” She stops, too. New territory for both of us, I suppose, as I watch her consider how to continue. “Look, Jill, I know that my family isn’t always the easiest lot. My mother alone is enough to make you bananas . . .”
“So you see that, right? It’s not just me?” I hear the relief flood my voice, in the knowledge that finally, someone, anyone, might be an ally.
“No, it’s not just you,” Leigh laughs. “She never quite learned how to find the balance between being a mother and having her own life outside of us. I was the youngest of the girls, so I got the least attention, which, I suppose, was a blessing—I survived the smothering. But Jack, well . . .”
“Behold the prodigal son,” I inject.
“Something like that,” she answers, as we sit on a bench and watch Allie stand rapt at the polar bears who remind me of oversized marshmallows.
“Do you ever worry? You know, that you’ll turn into her?” My breath accelerates, and I hope that I haven’t crossed the line, cracking the new, fragile foundation that we’re tenuously erecting.
“Sometimes, I guess, sure,” Leigh answers, unfazed. “You know, motherhood is the best thing that can happen to you, but it can also be the thing that can drain you completely. I mean, I know that sounds weird, and I hope it doesn’t sound awful, especially to someone who doesn’t have kids, but it’s the truth.”
“It doesn’t sound weird to me at all,” I say, and I think of how many pieces of myself I lost when Katie was born, how much I missed having a purpose other than pressing my breast into her mouth and singing her to sleep and swapping out dirty diapers for new ones. All of which were wonderful, truly wonderful, but there were other pieces I left behind that were abandoned too quickly and too thoroughly; it almost felt like they had been physically cut from my being.
Six months after Katie was born, Henry, who perhaps sensed my listlessness, or perhaps had just grown bored with a wife who had nothing