If Only I Had Told Her

“Oh, this would have been nice to have.” Angie eyes the poopsleepplay, which is standing next to the couch in my mother’s immaculately decorated living room. She sits down next to it and nods. “You’ll barely have to move. Change the diaper, put the baby back down…”

“I’ll read to it too,” I say. “And play? You’re supposed to do that even in the early weeks, right?”

I’ve been doing my research. I conquered my fear of judgmental looks from the staff that had watched me grow up checking out stacks of books each visit and made my way to the library. In addition to a book on French parenting and another on baby development, my bravery was rewarded by excitement from the librarians and flyers about story time and pre-K reading clubs.

“Yeah, you will,” Angie says. “Mostly you’ll…rest.” She says “rest” like a gentle euphemism for something more grim. “Guinnie is starting to get really fun to play with though.” She laughs in an odd way. “It’s so weird not to have her with me.”

“It was nice of Dave to offer to spend the afternoon with her so we could hang.” I sit next to her on the couch and groan a little bit. For being so small, my bump now stops me from closing my jeans, and I’m running out of dresses and baggy shirts. My mother wants me to go maternity clothes shopping with her. She hasn’t mentioned bringing Aunt Angelina with us.

“Dave owed me,” Angie says, and I raise my eyebrows. “We had a big fight because he had the fucking gall to tell me that all I ever talk about is the baby.”

“Ooh.” I know how this comment would have stung. I’ve started to realize how difficult it will be to be a mother and a writer. Just one of those feels impossible some days.

“Autumn, the way I burst into tears…” She grimaces. “We ended up better for it. We understand what each other’s going through more, you know? But he still owed me.”

I’m quiet because I don’t know. When Jamie and I fought, even if we both apologized for the things we said, nothing was ever resolved, and we certainly never ended up understanding each other better for it.

It wouldn’t have been like that with Finny when we eventually found something to fight about if he’d lived. I know we had learned our lesson about making feelings known.

“Hey, I promise this whole hangout won’t be baby related, but can I show you upstairs?”

“Yeah,” Angie says as she stands. “Did you get a crib?”

I lead the way to the stairs. “I haven’t decided what sort of, uh, sleeping method I believe in.”

“What do you mean? You put them on their backs to sleep. That’s the only thing. People argue about everything having to do with parenting.”

We reach the top of the stairs, and I open the door to my room. “Yeah, I’m learning that.”

It isn’t about having a modern baby or a hippie baby; I have to choose whether I’m a Montessori mom, an attachment parent, or one of the many other theories or combinations I could ascribe to in my pursuit of a more perfect child. It’s like suddenly being asked to choose a religion when it never occurred to me there may be a God.

“I was told we had to let her cry it out. We live in one room with the baby, so that didn’t happen. No matter what you chose or do, someone is going to tell you that you are wrong, as if it were their business.”

“Well, of course. I’m already an unfit mother because I got pregnant as a teenager in the first place, right?” I snort. “Here, this is what I wanted to show you.”

At the resale shop, Mom found a dresser to double as a changing table that matches the wood tones already in my room. She was so pleased that I said yes, even though it felt, at the time, like it was all happening too fast.

But now, having it feels like proof, proof that Finny’s baby is real.

“I have all the drawers sorted.” I open the second from the top. “Look at this one,” I say, and we paw through together, unfolding each onesie to exclaim over it and therefore undoing all the meticulous work I had done.

The feeling remains. I’ve proved something to myself or Angie.

This is real.

Really real.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe.

Usually, it’s hard to believe, actually, and the rare times that it does feel real, it’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced. And then I wish Finny was with me to make me less afraid, and the grief takes over.

Without my asking, Angie helps me fold everything again. She suggests a different drawer for pajamas that makes sense. I try to ignore the part about how I won’t want to have to root around in a lower drawer “while covered in something or other.”

“I promise that was the last mom thing we talk about today,” I tell her as I close the last drawer. “We should watch a movie.”

“I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk about mom stuff with me,” Angie sighs. “It’s an impossible balance. On one hand, Guinevere is everything to me, and on the other, I’m still me.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I think I get that.” Hoping that she understands my line of thinking, I add, “I finished my novel over the summer.”

“Autumn, that’s amazing,” Angie says as we descend the stairs.

“That is not the word for it,” I say. We stop together at the bottom of the stairs. “I mean, everyone knows someone who’s written a novel.”

“I don’t!” Angie says.

I try to suppress my smile and fail.

“I mean, I didn’t until now!”

“It’s great that I finished it,” I say. “Hopefully it will be amazing someday.” I’d tried to begin edits last week, but I had to stop to cry, and I haven’t been able to look at it again.

When I’d first written it, my novel felt like a place to put all the secret feelings I carried for Finny. But now that I know I could have told him, that I didn’t have to hide in my writing, it makes the manuscript impossible to read.

“Can I read it?” Angie asks. We’re heading back to the living room couch.

“Um—” I try to think as we sit down.

“Has anyone read it?”

“I thought you’d recorded my devotion in perfect detail and then dropped it in my lap without considering my feelings.”

I freeze, but since I was about to sit down, I sort of fall on the couch. I close my eyes.

“And I still loved it as a story.”

“Autumn?”

I open my eyes. Angie is leaning toward me, frowning in that concerned way I’m used to from The Mothers.

I take a deep breath. “Finny read it. That was part of our last day together.”

“I bet he said it was incredible.”

“You’re a good writer, Autumn. You’ve always been good.”

If only he could tell me that I’ll be a good mother.

I know I’m a good writer. Now I want to be both a good writer and a good mother.

“Autumn? You okay?”

“Sorry, I was thinking…” I trail off.

“It’s fine, Autumn. We’ve been friends long enough for me to know you get weird sometimes.”

“That’s offensive, Angie. I’m always weird, and you know it,” I tease, trying to shift the mood. “So how are other things with Dave?”

Angie sighs. “I took your advice. I told him I appreciated his not making a big deal about the sex thing. It meant a lot to him, and we had this great conversation about how I want to get back to having sex regularly, which actually turned into us fooling around a bit.”

“That sounds good—”

“For a couple of days, things were so much better. Then yesterday he hit me with the ‘all you talk about is the baby’ comment—”

“But you said that it led to a good conversation too?”

“It did!” Angie leans back against the couch. “But I can’t shake it. I hate that he even thought it.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” I say.

“I know he didn’t.” Angie scrunches up her face. “It’s just—I’m glad you have your writing, Autumn. It’s good to have a life and a purpose outside being a mother.” She sighs and rests her head on the back of the couch.

“What do you mean? Do you not have that?” It hadn’t occurred to me that being a writer, spending time on myself, could help me as a mother. I curl my feet under me, adjusting for the strange new ache that I’ve been feeling in my hips.

“I guess I thought that Dave or our love and the life we were building together would be enough. I knew it would be hard, but I thought that while we were working and saving money for the future together, we’d be more together? Maybe doing better than we are now?”

“Do you mean financially or in your relationship? It sounds like you aren’t doing too badly.”

“Financially, we’re always trying to save, and whenever we make a little progress, something happens. Last month, it was the car, and two months ago, we had the bill from taking Guinnie to urgent care for her ear infection. There’s always something.”

“But you’re saving money and working things out as they come up,” I remind her. It feels so strange to be talking about such adult problems with her.

“Yeah,” Angie agrees. “Yeah, we are. There’s still always something.”

There’s a beat of silence, and I find myself saying, “Do you have any regrets?”

“I don’t. I’m exactly where I want to be. It’s just so much harder than I thought, at least for now.”

“Eventually you’ll be able to move out of Dave’s parents’ basement,” I say.

“And eventually Guinevere will be potty trained or starting kindergarten. But that doesn’t feel real. It’s not that I don’t believe that Dave and I can’t beat the odds,” Angie says, meeting my eyes again. “But some days, it is a lot more conscious choice than belief.”

“I think that’s the difference between the people who get out of the basements and those who don’t,” I say. “You’re choosing to believe.”

Angie shrugs, but she’s listening to what I’m saying, so maybe it’s helping.

“Maybe you’re right. I hope you are.” She laughs. “Listen to me. Complaining because choosing to do the hard thing turned out to be hard.”

I’m in the position that she and The Mothers have found themselves in when they’re talking to me. There’s nothing more to say to make it better, because it is hard, and it’s going to be hard for a while.

“Just because something seems impossible doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying,” I say, because it’s something I’ve said to myself before.

“I need to find something to make me feel like I’m still me outside being a mom,” Angie says. “It’s not like I can watch horror movies with Guinevere asleep in the same room.”

“Well, we can watch one together,” I suggest. “And afterward, we can go to the library, and I’ll help you find some horror novels to read when you’re home alone with the baby.”

“Yeah, okay.”

This time, I can tell that I’ve definitely helped, and I’m glad. Because she released me from a worry that I hadn’t fully articulated; that it was selfish of me to keep my dream of publication when I’m about to become a mother.

Angie winks at me. “Oh, you just want a ride to the library.”

“I actually haven’t been reading much for myself lately,” I confess. “Only a few parenting books.” Angie mimes being physically bowled over by my words.

“Who are you, and what have you done with Autumn Rose Davis?” She jumps off the couch and grabs my hand. “That’s it, we’re going to the library right now. Movie later. You need this more than I do.”

“I won’t say no to that.” I let her help me off the couch. Everyone knows voracious reading is the best way to improve your writing, well except for actually writing. So until I can hold myself together enough to edit the novel inspired by Finny, I need to be reading.

“We’re going to be okay,” Angie says to me.

Today, I choose to believe it.