Blue Lambs

Some say I was a good mother. I was.

I took care of you when you had those awful chicken pox, remember? Big red welts rising across your shoulders, down your arms. And you, just a baby.

Even then you knew I would take care of you. Your momma knew what was right for you. I bathed you every other hour in the kitchen sink. Put Epsom salts in the warm water to draw out the itch. You loved those baths. I always said you were at home in the water. I’d lift you out so carefully, not letting my hands slip, and lay you out in the sun on the living room floor. I rubbed you dry and let you stay there in the warmth without your diaper on. You studied the dust specks hanging above you in the afternoon light, the fat joints of your little fingers opening and closing as if you might grab hold of the sunshine. Then you hoisted your pudgy belly across the blanket grandma made, the one with those thick blue lambs jumping over the white picket fences, the one they told me they tucked around you and little Sean when they laid you in the ground.

It was nice of them to bury you together. I can just feature you holding each other’s hands, long brown lashes curled over your soft cheeks. I’m sure it wasn’t your daddy’s idea. He never had an original thought when it came to taking care of you babies. There was one thing and one thing only driving his selfish mind and it had nothing to do with changing diapers or heating up formula.

It’s time you knew this about your daddy. I know you’ll understand why then. Once, he and I were happy together. It was mostly before you were born. There was money then to go to Portsmouth if we wanted for the weekend and time to sleep in late on Sunday mornings. It is long ago now. We weren’t married six months before I got myself pregnant. When you were born he used to crow and strut all over the place about his boy, his son. Your arrival changed things for us, for me, in a big way. Later, when Sean came along your daddy thought to take credit for inventing the wheel the way he had the knack of getting his wife with boy babies. At the playground he used to make quite a show for people, tossing you up to awful heights till you screamed and cried, your arms and legs spread wide grabbing the emptiness for support. He’d catch you without looking and hold you away, not letting you hide your scared face in his shoulder. He’d laugh in his gruff way, upbraiding you for the fear he gave you. All the mothers and children watched as he plunked you in a swing and sent you flying up again, bellowing for all to hear, “Higher? Did you say you want to go higher?”

What they didn’t know was how much he didn’t do. How he’d bring you home with a reeking diaper and hand you over to me like you were a disease he didn’t want to catch. How he’d stop in after work and wolf down the chicken I’d been preparing all day and ask me couldn’t I shut your crying up and then take all my grocery money to spend on beers down at the corner bar.

I wasn’t surprised when I found out about him and Tiffany Johansson having their meetings at the Bear Tree Motel on his lunch hour. I knew Tiffany had her eyes on him since senior prom. I’m sure she’s just the same as she was then, snapping her Juicy Fruit gum and wearing those awful tube tops of hers. Wonder how she’d look in a tube top after two babies in two years. I’d just like to know if she’d still be up to winking and cooing at other people’s husbands after she stayed up all night with a howling baby.

I remember the night you were cutting your first molar, walking you up and down the hallway rubbing your gums with a washcloth wrapped in ice. You were fussy and feverish and you wouldn’t let me put you down. Your daddy came stumbling in. It was past two. He tripped over my exercise step in the middle of the living room floor. He got up and looked at you and me and said, “What’dya think you’re looking at?” When we didn’t answer he picked up the step and hurled it through the bay window. He started hollering about how we’re dragging him down, spending all his money, how he can’t take it anymore. A week later he moved out.

It was hard on me then. You understand? It’s important to me. I was left with few alternatives. I found a babysitter for you and Sean alright, and then the receptionist job at Greeley’s. I did my best to care for you.

I got tired.

You and Sean never got second best. Don’t forget. I kept you both fed and clean. I even got you those Aladdin underwear you wanted when you stayed dry all night, remember?

I guess it really started for me when I signed up for aerobics class after work on Tuesdays. It was just an extra hour for you at the babysitter and I wanted to get in shape since I was back on the market. My old friends from high school were there, Alice Collins and Tracy Cooper. Alice with that enormous engagement ring she was constantly waving at me. And Tracy, with her fancy job off in Keene, showing up each week in another new outfit. They were nice enough I guess, asking me about how you were doing and when I was going to bring you and Sean to class. We’d run across the street for a soda sometimes and they’d tell me about their plans. That’s what they had: big plans for their lives. It was all out in front of them for the asking: time, money, freedom. They could get anything they wanted and I, well I was just getting by, living from one paycheck to the next. They made me feel a lot more grown-up than I was and, at the same time, as if I’d missed something important those years I spent with you babies.

Don’t get me wrong. You boys were happy. I made sure that was true. But I got to thinking it was going to be impossible to keep you happy if I couldn’t have a little piece of happiness for myself.

And then came Brian. He was sweet to me right away, taking me out to the steak house for dinner and paying for your babysitter afterwards. He was already meat department manager at the Safeway after working only three years straight out of high school. We’d sit across from each other at Arby’s and I’d listen to him describe the rules the state inspectors made him enforce before they could butcher the meat. He kept a watchful eye on his workers, making sure they wore their hairnets and scrubbed their hands before they handled the food. He’d spread his hands out for me to examine, to show me what a good example he was, his nails always clean and trimmed. The fingers were strong from his work. I’d take his hand as I listened and turn it over in my own to trace the life line on his wide palm. It felt nice to hold it, warm and roughened from steady work. His hand could easily enclose all of mine. Brian’s mind was set on being store manager one day. Every Tuesday night he took an accounting course at the community college. Another year and he’d have his Chevy paid off and he might be able to take two courses at once.

Those days when I was with Brian, I started to think about the future. You see, he was so confiding to me, sharing his dreams, letting me know he held a firm control on what lay ahead. I got to thinking I was somewhere in the picture, he was someone I could count on to keep me safe, to care for me. It was something I hadn’t felt since I heard the crash of that exercise step going through the living room window. Please, please understand. There was one thing Brian gave to me I never thought I’d feel again: hope.

It seemed natural enough for him not to want to go out much with you babies. You remember the time we all tried to go to the petting zoo on Route 46? I thought Sean was never going to stop screaming after the goat snatched the cracker out of his hand. And when you wouldn’t stop whining for another ice cream cone after you dropped your first one in the parking lot, I knew the trip was a bad idea. Brian was quiet on the way home. I saw his knuckles turn pale on the steering wheel as he listened to you asking me over and over could we stop at the playground. And you, insisting on macaroni and cheese again for dinner. My hands were full trying to keep Sean from getting his sticky fingers all over the Chevy’s upholstery.

When I invited him in, he leaned over and snapped the radio off. It wasn’t playing any louder than a whisper. I tried to joke with him. I smiled and said you kids weren’t really mine, I only borrowed you from someone else and I’d be returning you right after dinner. Brian said there was work he needed to do. I watched the muscles in his cheeks working and I knew he was making up an excuse. I thought I might never see him again.

I waited two weeks for him to call. After that he preferred to go out at night. I counted myself lucky you two didn’t scare him away for good. There aren’t many choices for a mother with two young babies. I was so lonely. Brian was the only man who paid attention to me, the only one who treated me kindly. I looked forward to my times with him. I pretended I didn’t have a care in the world. For once I felt my life spread before me like Alice’s or Tracy’s, like I might have a chance to make it right.

I was devastated that Saturday night when Brian told me he didn’t think there was a future for us. My mind reels now just thinking about it. He said he didn’t want to lead me on; he wasn’t ready to take on children. I stood in the darkness of your room that night, alone, watching you sleep with your thumb stuck in your mouth, my tears falling like black raindrops across the quilt.

Then the lake came into my mind.

It’s a lonely place. Nobody goes there much anymore. The dock juts out into the water and you can look down into it and see nothing but the blue sky behind your head. Your granddad called it a sediment problem. The water there is black as pitch. The game warden used to stock it with fingerlings each spring. My momma didn’t like cooking the trout he caught there, said they were rescued from death’s grip.

When I was a little girl, not much older than you, my daddy used to drive up there on Saturday afternoons every summer to teach me to swim. He used to scare the bejesus out of me with his stories about the place, told me to watch out for the hands of the steam shovel driver, the one at the bottom of the lake.

It used to be a quarry. That’s why it’s so deep. When it panned out of granite, my daddy said they decided to fill it with water for a swimming hole. The story is they couldn’t manage to get the big old steam shovel out because the sides were too steep. They stopped up the gap down at Perkin’s Gorge and let the water rise. The workmen didn’t tell the shovel operator. They were playing a joke on him. He climbed up to the top of the boom calling out for help, the water rushing in all around him. The men were going to take a boat out and pick him up but the water was coming too fast, they couldn’t. Daddy said he drowned there, wedged between the fat teeth of the bucket, waving his arms above his head. He said they never found the body.

He used to tease me when he picked me up and threw me off the dock, “Watch out for those fingers grabbing at you!”

Why did he try to frighten me so? I hated to think of those cold arms reaching up from the black lake to pull me down.

I thought of the lake in the night as I stood by your crib. I thought of the secrets it held and the dark water. I kept turning it over in my mind, wondering what the future held for me, wishing for all the things I lost, and knowing I couldn’t keep up. I felt like the steam shovel driver, caught in the dark rushing water and no one to help me.

Tuesday morning I got a call from your babysitter while I was at work. Sean was fussing and pulling at his ear again and it looked like an infection. I took him over to the walk-in clinic during my lunch hour but then I got caught up in the line at Pearlman’s Drugstore getting his prescription filled. Sean was so cranky; he wouldn’t stay still in my arms. The lady in front of me with pointy glasses and thick ankles kept turning and looking at me like maybe I should stick a rag down his throat. I spent my last twenty dollars for the week on Sean’s medicine.

I got back to the office and Mr. Greeley was watching for me from behind the glass door to his office, looking at his watch. He came up to my desk and drummed his fingers on my in-box while he gave me a speech about how they are trying to allow for me, how I must focus on my work and get rid of distractions. I stared down at my desktop, clenching my teeth and feeling a red flush creep around my neck.

It was one of those days when I really needed aerobics class. I rushed out of work like I was getting out of jail. Alice and Tracy were already there by the time I came in. I hurried in and slipped into my tights and sneakers while the class warmed up. There was only one open space left up in front of the group when I finally joined in. Halfway through the workout, I looked behind me and saw Alice and Tracy exchanging glances and looking at me funny. Something was up. I felt their eyes on me, like there was a story they wanted to tell me they couldn’t keep to themselves.

“How was your weekend? We haven’t heard from you,” Tracy was fishing for information when she came up to me later in the locker room.

I told her everything was fine, nothing was new.

“I was just wondering. I got a call from Brian last night.”

“Oh?” I was packing up my t-shirt and sneakers. Alice watched me from the door of her locker.

“Yes,” Tracy’s words were gushing out of her mouth, “Brian wanted to know if I could go to the movies with him on Friday.” She smiled and looked at me with her Barbie Doll face. “I knew you two were seeing each other. Since Brian knows you and I are friends, I figured he told you all about it?”

She said it like a question, like maybe I might break in at any moment and start finishing her sentences for her, spilling my guts for the two of them to see, for them to laugh about after I’d left. Right then, I knew. There wasn’t anything I could do to change things. I’d lost all control and my life was no longer my own. I looked her straight in the eye and said, “Yes, I know all about Brian calling you.”

“Then it’s all right with you if I see Brian?”

“Brian can do what pleases him.”

I smiled and looked over at Alice who got busy looking at herself in the mirror. Tracy went on chattering about Brian and the movies and how maybe someday we could all double-date.

By the time I said my goodnights and headed out to collect you and Sean, I was convinced I’d known it all along. Brian was going to call Tracy. Tracy would buy herself a new blouse and have her nails painted and go out with Brian. Alice was going to get married with five attendants and a white limo and a honeymoon on Paradise Island. And I would spend my last twenty dollars with a screaming baby on line at Pearlman’s Drugstore. I’d go home to an empty house and mix up a box of macaroni and cheese and fall asleep in front of the TV with my clothes on.

You were quiet. Sean was tired and grouchy and, when I strapped him into his car seat, he put up a fight. I drove home and parked in the driveway looking at the blank windows of the empty house. The radio was playing the new Bonnie Raitt song, “Storm Warning.”

I couldn’t go in. I slipped the car in reverse and drove on.

You remember how I hummed the song to you? After a while Sean fell asleep. I could see you in the rearview mirror looking out at the dark shapes on the roadway. You were listening to me. You could hear me cry. We drove a long time, past the high school and the petting zoo.

I don’t know how much time passed when we ended up at the dock by the lake. Seemed like we just happened to come across it but when we got there I knew I was heading there all along, as if any road I chose would bring us to the lake.

I left the engine running, got out and walked to the edge of the water. Even in the night breezes, the surface was undisturbed, flat and dark and secret. I thought how funny it was, how any other place would be packed with parked cars on such a pretty night, cars filled with pawing couples and foggy windows. But that night it was so empty, so alone I could scream and no one at all would hear me.

I walked back to the car, got in, and rolled down all the windows. I got out and carefully cracked open your door. You were drowsy, but you smiled when I took your hand and pressed it to my cheek. Those fingers of yours were so chubby and cute. I kissed each one before I folded them in your lap so they wouldn’t get pinched when I closed the door. I reached in my window and slid the gear down to first.

When the lake was flat again, when there were no more bubbles breaking the surface, I screamed. The echoes glanced off the pines on the far side of the lake and rang in my ears.