Cookies

He had always loved my cookies.

As I stood in our kitchen, lovingly measuring out the oatmeal, chocolate chips, and butter, I remembered that these cookies were probably the reason he married me in the first place.

Five years ago, my college roommates convinced me to go to a party with them. My roommate/best friend, Lacy, was madly in love with a guy named Dillan, and she knew he would be at this party. She begged and pleaded for me to go, but I was very reluctant. I had just gotten out of a relationship that I was convinced would be “the one”, and I was still in that foggy grey area where I preferred to sit home and sulk.

But, Lacy was persistent. She had always been persistent. After a lot of sighing and complaining, I finally agreed to be her “wingman”. I was so reluctant, I didn’t even put on makeup. I just threw on some clothes that were not sweatpants and did some minor tweaking with my hair.

That's the funny thing about life. It turned out, Dillan had a brother. A slightly younger brother. His name was Derrick. I’d never been a believer of love at first sight, but the first time I laid eyes on Derrick, I was in love. What can I say? He was tall, 6’2”, and beautiful. Blond hair, crisp green eyes, and the most beautiful smile I have ever seen. When he smiled, his eyes crinkled up adorably. He had a deep, bubbly laugh that floated effortlessly over the crowd.

As Lacy and Dillan snuck away into their own little corner, I found myself doing the same with Derrick. We talked all night long.

The next night he called.

Then the next.

That Friday we went out on our first date.

A few weeks into our relationship, I invited Derrick over to my apartment for a homemade meal. I’ve always been a very good cook. I made him chicken parmesan, with lemon pepper broccoli and piles of angel hair pasta. He devoured every drop. For dessert, I made lemon shortbread cookies and served them with blackberry gelato. He licked the bowl.

For a picnic date, I made us sandwiches with roasted turkey, cranberries, and pesto on slices of homemade whole wheat bread, and strawberries cut into slices and lightly dusted with powdered sugar. The sandwich and strawberries were gone in a trice. For dessert, big, tender sugar cookies thickly covered in bright pink buttercream icing. He moaned with pleasure as he licked the rose colored frosting from his fingers.

And then, the day I discovered his favorite cookies of all: buttery, melty oatmeal chocolate chip. The first time I made them for him, he ate six. And took ten more home. And came back the next day asking if I would cook up another batch just for him.

His favorite thing was to eat one hot off the pan. The melted chocolate would burn his fingers and his tongue, but he didn’t care. Then, he would come up to me, kiss me with his chocolaty mouth, and nimbly reach around my back to untie my apron.

That’s how I found myself sitting in my bathroom at home one day, almost a year after our first date, holding a positive pregnancy test with a shaky hand and trying to remind myself to breathe. For two.

Derrick was surprised, but happy, with the news. And, a few weeks later he came to my apartment just as I was pulling a rack of hot oatmeal chocolate chip cookies out of the oven (those pregnancy cravings were strong) and surprised me with a glittering diamond ring.

I remembered how Derrick’s hand shook and his voice cracked saying his vows at our wedding, how handsome and scared he looked in his tuxedo, how my growing little belly was so much tighter in the frilly white dress my mother so disapproved of me wearing than it had been just a couple weeks before. Darrick had only one request for the wedding, our unusual break from tradition. Instead of a towering cake topped with an ugly statue of a couple who looked nothing like us, we had platters and piles and plates of cookies. Peanut butter, shortbread, red velvet with cream cheese icing, chocolate with mint chips, and, of course, oatmeal chocolate chip.

A few months later, I cried, screamed, sweated my way through 20 hours of labor. After two hours with my legs in those awful stirrups pushing so hard I thought my bottom was going to explode, I gave birth to my beautiful, sweet, perfect baby girl. Derrick was so proud. You could not find a prouder father in the world. He counted out ten fingers and ten toes, I think he kissed each one of them. He kept saying, “I’m a daddy, look! Look at my beautiful baby girl! Look at my beautiful wife! I’m a daddy, I’m a daddy!”

The doctors, on the other hand, were not so happy. They kept muttering to each other with furrowed brows as they hovered anxiously over my still exposed lady parts. Nurses fluttered around me, injecting things into my IV, watching my vitals on the screen. I felt dizzy and disoriented, but I kept hearing the word, “Bleeding,” and, “...won’t stop. Maybe a balloon tamponade...”

“I don’t feel so good,” I remember saying weakly before I vomited on my lap. Then the world faded to black…

I woke up to find my mother and Derrick hovering over me, faces crumpled with fatigue and worry. My mom had dirty greyish streaks where she had cried her mascara.

“You hemorrhaged,” Derrick explained quietly. “The doctors tried to do a D&C, but it just wouldn’t stop. They tried everything, but you lost so much blood. They had to do it, to save your life. I couldn’t lose you, not now...”

“What are you saying?” I murmured.

“Honey,” my mom brushed the hair from my eyes, “They had to take your uterus out.”

“But…” I felt like I was choking on the words, “What does that mean? Derrick, what are you saying to me?”

“Well, it means...” Derrick took a deep, shuddering breath as though he was drowning.

“Derrick?”

“Oh, sweetie,” his eyes filled with tears that spilled unheeded onto his cheeks as he whispered, “It means you can’t have any more babies.”

I remember holding my daughter, Emma, for the first time. That overwhelming feeling of being head over heels in love didn’t overwhelm me. I cried, but not because of everything I had gained. I cried over everything I had lost. That numbness didn’t go away, and days and weeks after I gave birth I still found myself looking at my daughter and feeling nothing for her. I felt like a total failure as a mother. As a wife, even. Derrick would come home to find me sitting on the couch staring at the wall. I stopped cooking and baking.

Even cookies.

Then one day, I came downstairs to a surprise. As I turned the corner into our kitchen I found Derrick, wearing my pink apron. He had flour in his hair, on his face. Emma, from her perch in her high chair cooed excitedly, just as covered as her father. They were a pair of white dusted angels. A heavenly smell wafted through the house; oatmeal chocolate chip cookies! Derrick had pulled out my grease stained, flour coated recipe cards and had made up a batch, his very first. Some were burned, still others raw in the middle, but to this day, they were the best cookies I’ve ever had.

It was like I was drowning in the undertow, and he threw me a lifeline. I could breathe for the first time in months. Derrick took his hand and placed it on my cheek, leaving a huge white smudge, and gently tipped my head up to meet his beautiful green eyes. In an instant, I felt his strength and love flow from him, and I finally broke down and told him how I felt. He said that he thought I probably had postpartum depression and that I should see a doctor. And a counselor.

So, I did. And slowly but surely, I began to feel better. I fell in love with my daughter, and I found that overwhelming sense of love that I had been waiting for. I even fell more in love with Derrick. He was so patient, so kind and loving. The doctors were so attentive, so thoughtful and caring.

As we celebrated my daughter’s first birthday, the doctors had given me a green light to continue my life without their care. I felt like a new person, with my new beautiful life, and I couldn’t have been happier.

And then, Emma got sick.

A few months after I finished therapy, Emma awoke in the middle of the night vomiting. Panicked, Derrick and I rushed her to the hospital and held each other while the doctors and nurses poked, prodded, and fretted over my precious girl. My only child. The nurses were comforting, carefully explaining everything to Derrick and I and gently assuring us that they would take good care of Emma.

But a few hours later, we were home with a clear bill of health. Derrick seemed relieved, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong with my child.

However, I did not feel vindicated when, three weeks later, another midnight found us rushing our vomiting daughter to the Emergency Room again.

More tests, more blood, more tears. And more of the same, “Your daughter is fine.”

This went on for about 6 months; every few weeks we would return. Every few weeks, we were sent home. The doctors and nurses who were initially so attentive, became cold and dismissive.

And, as suddenly as it started, it all stopped.

The toll, however, didn’t cease. Our marriage was strained. Derrick was frustrated, he was not as sure as I was that there was a huge problem. He accused me of overreacting, being overprotective, even going so far as to say that he was never around when Emma got sick. This made me furious; it wasn’t MY fault that I was the only one to get up in the middle of the night with her. I found I often instinctively woke up when Emma was in distress, while Derrick continued to snore away. It wasn’t MY fault that I was around Emma more. I was a stay at home mom, after all. And while I appreciated Derrick’s job and the income that supported us -- we lived very comfortably on his income alone, after all -- I was resentful that he spent so much time away from home. From us.

Unfortunately, his resentments meant that, rather than spending more time with us, he spent less and less. Our sex life was practically non-existent, where before Emma was born we could barely keep our hands off of each other. I struggled with both the lack of support, and the fact that Emma was quickly growing older.

The breaking point came around Emma’s second birthday. Derrick came home from work. He was silent, his face was cloudy. He ate dinner without saying a word. It wasn’t until after I put Emma down and crawled into bed next to him to read that he finally said something. And it hurt to hear.

Her name was Caitlin. She was a secretary at his office. She was 19. She was young, and beautiful.

And she could have babies.

I cried as Derrick packed a bag and left. I cried myself to sleep. I cried all day, every day. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. I barely managed to keep Emma fed and in clean clothes.

Derrick was gone for three weeks. During that time, he came to visit Emma every Saturday. The first visit, was like torture. I felt like my soul was being hung up on a rack and pulled to its limit. I hated him, but I loved him dearly. The second visit, I was numb. I felt like I was moving through a fog, watching my life from the outside.

The third Sunday, he was late. To try and ease my anxiety, I found myself strapping Emma to her high chair and pulling out the ingredients for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. When Derrick walked through the door, the house was fragranced with chocolate and vanilla. He walked into the kitchen as I pulled a tray of cookies out of the oven. I looked at him, and the moment our eyes met the tension melted. I was overwhelmed with how much I loved this man. With tears springing into my eyes, I pulled a hot cookie off of the pan, broke off a piece, and stretched my shaking hand out to him. He took it tenderly, ate the bite of cookie, licked the melted chocolate off of my floury fingers. Then, without a word, he pulled me in close, and gently, gently kissed me.

What's-her-name vanished the instant our lips met.

Derrick moved back home, and we spent a few weeks in couples counseling, but although our lives returned to normal like the affair and separation never happened, a part of me struggled with this nagging insecurity. I loved Derrick so much, many nights I'd watch him sleep and think about how much I truly loved him, how lost I would be without him.

Which is why, when he got sick, I was practically inconsolable.

Much like with Emma, his illness was sudden and severe. And, like with Emma, there were no answers from the doctors. They would throw their hands up, and offer me yet another useless script for Zofran as I dabbed the vomit from Derrick's sweaty, pale face. One look into his glazed eyes, and I knew something was horribly wrong. ER after ER, specialist after specialist. The bills began to pile up, unpaid, overdue.

Even when he wasn't acutely ill, Derrick was still plagued by achy joints, headaches, and some memory loss. His hands and feet would go numb, sometimes he would run his fingers through his hair to find large clumps coming out.

On the days he felt good enough to go to work, he would come home and immediately crawl into bed. On other days, he literally crawled, like a baby, because his body was wracked with so much pain.

One night, about a year after he first started showing symptoms, things took a turn for the worst. I bundled up my sick, weak husband and my sleeping child and rushed to the Emergency Room, again. As we walked through the door, Derrick suddenly began having a seizure.

I screamed at the top of my lungs as he dropped to the floor, stiff and quivering, face white as a sheet. A horrifying stifled choking noise produced foamy white discharge from his lips, which were rapidly turning blue.

That was the last thing I remember.

I finally came to and found myself in a hospital bed. I had passed out during Derrick’s seizure. I was quickly declared healthy and released, but Derrick was admitted.

Shortly thereafter, I received the news that Derrick’s grandfather, who he had been very close to, had passed away.

“You have to go to the funeral for me,” Derrick’s voice was so weak, “I would never forgive myself if we didn’t go. I can’t, or I would. Take Emma, pay my respects. Please.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” I sighed, “The funeral is in Florida, we would have to fly, and I can’t just leave you here in the hospital.”

“There are so many wonderful doctors and nurses here taking care of me. I will be fine.”

“I’ll miss you. Emma will miss you.”

“I know. I love you both so much.”

And with that, I packed our bags, and Emma and I flew to Florida for the funeral.

I spoke to Derrick every single day when we were gone. He described all of the testing they were doing on him, and how he was starting to actually feel a little better every day. They still wanted to watch him, to make sure he wasn’t having any more seizures, but he was starting to think that he might be coming home shortly after Emma and I came back from the funeral.

The day before we flew home, I made one last call to Derrick’s boss. I asked about his company life insurance policy, double checked the claim amounts and that the entire amount would come to me. Then I called the other insurance company where I had taken out a second policy that Derrick wasn’t aware of, and made sure everything was in order there as well. Then right before we boarded our flight back home, Derrick called and told me that the doctors expected that he would only be in the hospital for a day or two after we got back, and asked that I bring Emma straight to the hospital to see him. “I’ll do you one better,” I told him, “I will even sneak you in some of your favorite cookies!”

After we landed and got back to our house, I put Emma down for a nap and immediately started baking. Flour, butter, chocolate chips, and one more thing…

I pulled a little baggie of white powder from my hiding spot. The same powder I had been sprinkling into Derrick’s food for months now - arsenic. I dumped a generous amount into the mix - doubling what I had given him the night before his seizure - and stirred it up. I plopped the mix onto the pan and slid them into the oven until they were perfect. Golden brown and melty.

I dropped Emma off with my mom, and gave her a big, lingering kiss. A shudder went through my body when I imagined how close I came to losing her. In my agony, in my madness, I had hurt my own child. My only child. In some respects, I’m grateful that Derrick cheated on me with that nasty woman because it snapped me out of my insanity. I quickly realized that Derrick was the one who truly needed to suffer, and if I was going to give in to my worst impulses why not do it on a man who was weak and pathetic, the kind of man who would cheat on the love of his life, the mother of his child?

As I pulled into the hospital parking lot, I looked down at my wedding ring. It still had some flour on it from earlier. I gently picked it off, admiring the glittering diamond. I remembered what it was like when he loved me, and only me. When I had so much to give him. And he took it all.

I felt the smooth bottom of the plate of cookies, still warm, and walked through the door to his hospital room. He smiled warmly, happy to see me, and I smiled back. I sat on the edge of his bed, pulled back the tin foil, and handed him a cookie. He devoured it, and then another, and then another, smiling and talking happily to me the entire time.

He had always loved my cookies.