Beauty from Ashes

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 22

“Did you have a good day?” Jake asks.

I’m curled up against him, nestled beneath my electric blanket. Patricia’s out watching some cooking show, so Jake and I went to bed early.

“It wasn’t bad.” I’ve been thinking about that granny lady in church now that everything’s quiet and there’s nothing to do. Patricia will sleep in Natalie’s room, so she’ll cover the night feeding and the suctioning, and she’ll take care of the apnea monitor if it goes off.

“I’m opening tomorrow, so I’ve got to get up early.”

I hate it when Jake works days.

Jake must sense that I’m upset, because he snuggles up a little closer. “Sorry I won’t be here to help out.”

It’s sweet of him to say, even though he never helps with the baby anyway. I swear, that boy can go three or four days without even touching his own daughter. I think he’s afraid, actually. Afraid that he’ll make a mistake. Part of me thinks he still feels guilty for what happened in the delivery room, like he should have noticed sooner something was wrong. Really, if he hadn’t been there, I probably would have gone on sleeping. I wouldn’t have woken up at all. I’ve never told him this. We haven’t ever talked about that day, truth be told. I think eventually we will, and I’ll be sure to tell him it’s not his fault. But if I were to bring it up now, it would make things worse. Open old wounds that should probably be left alone. What are adults always telling kids?

Don’t pick your scabs.

I like this, though, this closeness and warmth. Of course, a lot of that’s from the electric blanket, but some of it — that sense of security — comes right from him. I nestle my head into that spot between his shoulder and chin, that soft place that feels as warm and inviting as the smell of Sandy baking her famous homemade cookies. It’s warmth and security and peace all wrapped up with something else. Something I don’t necessarily want to put a name to. Because if I’m wrong ...

“Did you and Abby have a good talk?” His voice is distant, like he’s asking me about his sister but he’s thinking about something else. Heaven knows what. Maybe what time he has to wake up tomorrow. Or how long until his mother turns off the TV and stops polluting our home with that ridiculous, canned noise. Or a pouty-lipped, busty co-worker named Charlene he slept with while I was stuck in a hospital waiting to deliver his baby.

“Yeah,” I tell him, but my mind’s somewhere else, too. Shame in the pit of my core. Terror that one day I’ll let it slip and he’ll find out what I’ve done.

He kisses me on the cheek. It’s soft. Friendly. Like we’re a married couple sleeping side by side in a nursing home, all romance and passion distant memories in the past.

I hate that I’m thinking about him right now. Hate that I’m thinking about him that way. Because I’ve resigned myself to the fact that nothing’s going to happen as long as his mother is staying here. The funny thing is I feel more prudish around his non-religious mother than I ever did around Sandy, and she’s the picture-perfect pastor’s wife who probably didn’t even kiss a boy until the day she and her husband got married.

Back when I lived with Sandy, I went to one of those girls-only lock-ins at her church. You know, the kind where they get these cute, perky college-aged women to tell you why you’ve got to save s*x for marriage. The pathetic part was they acted like we were so pure to start with. Like we weren’t the kind of girls passed around from foster home to foster home where some of the guys we met were ok and some weren’t. And these abstinence cheerleaders kept going on and on about not wanting to give your husband hand-me-downs on your wedding night, and I signed the abstinence pledges, and I wore the purity rings, and all the while I was sneaking Lincoln Grant in through the bedroom window. Because those twenty-year-old virgins didn’t understand girls like me. Girls who would give up their breasts and fallopian tubes to know what it felt like to be clean. Pure.

Whole.

Hand-me-downs on your wedding night. It’s a dumb phrase for me to be thinking about right now, but some things are harder to forget than others.

“What time do you have to get up in the morning?” I ask Jake, but he doesn’t answer. He’s already asleep.