The Way It Should Have Been

It’s T minus 15 minutes until party time and the birthday boy is passed out hard, face down on the living room floor.

“Well this certainly looks familiar,” Melissa says drily.

She feels Steven’s chuckle against her neck, his hand rubbing gentle circles across her hip. Her husband is warmth at her back while she looks down at their boy.

“Like father, like son,” she murmurs.

Her mother-in-law, emerging from Petey’s room with a tiny, ridiculous suit in her hands, catches the remark.

“Oh?” Sandy asks, following Melissa’s gaze to Petey, who has splayed his small body so wide against the carpet he looks like Wile. E Coyote splatted by an anvil.

Don’t try to explain, just leave it. Her husband’s wise words in her ear, but Melissa ignores them.

“Steven spent the majority of his 19th birthday in pretty much this exact position,” she tells Sandy. “Only that was in Marshall Simon’s backyard. Combination of pulling an all-nighter for a chem exam and then letting Jack talk him into a birthday brunch right after. He completely missed the bonfire, the cake, presents, all of it. The rest of us had a great time though.”

She’s giggling now, thinking about it. Remembering the album she’s got tucked away on her phone from that night, full of all of Steven’s friends gleefully posing with his limp, snoring body. Eventually they’d swapped his t-shirt for a lacy bra and left him to sleep it off. Melissa had only been dating him two weeks at that point, but she vividly remembers how that night had been the first time she’d looked at someone and thought, “Yep. Could be the one.”

She doesn’t tell Sandy any of this though, because Sandy isn’t laughing at the story. Melissa had known she wouldn’t, doesn’t know why she told the story except that she thought maybe Steven’s mother might like to know these things about him.

But Sandy’s lips are just pressing together, pinching her face in an expression Melissa knows all too well and really doesn’t need to see today of all days, right before her son’s first birthday party. Not that she’s ever wanted to see it on any occasion - not when Steven first introduced her as his official girlfriend, then as his fiance. Or when Steven had announced that he was suspending his plan to go to medical school in favor of joining his best friend Jack in becoming a paramedic.

“He learned his lesson,” she tells Sandy, almost succeeding in keeping the exasperation out of her voice. “Those were definitely our stupid years, but we made it out okay. No huge deal.”

“I guess you’ll feel differently in 18 years when it’s your son out there making his own poor decisions,” Sandy says briskly, and clearly means to put the conversation to rest with this, the last word. She brandishes the suit. “We’ve got to get him up and get this on him before everyone starts arriving.”

The suit. Melissa closes her eyes briefly and feels Steven at her back again, giving her strength. Petey hates the suit. He fought Melissa and Sandy tooth and nail the first time they tried to put it on him, and he’s already going to be cranky when his nap is interrupted. She wants to put her foot down and say that he can celebrate his first birthday just fine in his Peppa Pig t-shirt, but she’s already batting zero with her mother-in-law today and Sandy had made up her mind weeks ago that Petey was going to wear the same suit Steven had worn for his first birthday, no matter that it pinched Petey under the arms and made him itch. Melissa could fight it and possibly win, but with Sandy, these would always be a pyrrhic victories, with guilt and tension the only spoils. So she kneels obligingly, gentling a hand across Petey’s back and prodding him from dreamland.

Fifteen minutes later, the doorbell heralds the arrival of the first guests and Petey is still squalling in Sandy’s arms, writhing against the fabric of the suit and tugging at the sleeves. Melissa permits herself a moment of smug vindication at the flustered expression on her mother-in-law’s face.

Fortunately for everyone, it’s her husband’s best friend Jack Harrington and his wife Sara at the door. Jack’s meaty arms bulging with brightly wrapped presents that he immediately dumps on the kitchen table in favor of plucking Petey from Sandy’s arms. Petey’s wails fade instantly, his eyes growing round with shock as his vision is suddenly filled with the sight of Jack’s enormous bristly beard. Jack starts singing in a broken falsetto, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to!” whirling Petey around the living room, dipping the boy low and then swinging him high. Before Petey’s tears have even dried on his cheeks, he is shrieking with laughter instead.

Melissa feels Steve at her back stronger than ever, arms circling her waist and squeezing, as she watches her son’s delight. She laughs, and Sara joins her, slinging an arm across her shoulder.

“Christ, does she ever just unclench?” Sara whispers in her ear, nodding at Sandy, whose face is pinched as ever watching Jack and Petey whip around. Sandy keeps making aborted little motions with her arms, as if preparing to catch her grandson, should Jack abruptly decide to fling him across the room.

“Nope. Never.”

Sara, who met Jack while she was in her second year of residency at Jacobson Memorial Hospital, says “Maybe if we slipped her a Valium.”

“Probably not even then,” Melissa says. “Better give it to me instead.” Sara grins.

The doorbell chimes again and Melissa decides to welcome the distraction from Sandy as guests continue to arrive. She hasn’t invited many - just her and Steven’s nearest and dearest, and particularly those who have stepped up in the months since the accident. The ones Melissa feels comfortable showing her true feelings to, rather than the mask she plasters on for the rest of the world. Low-key is the order of the day. No cutesy decorations, no games. Just a few pizzas, a few beers, and exclaiming about just how big her baby boy has gotten.

The cake she did make herself. No one would call it fancy, even to flatter her. Steven had always lovingly called it “the chocolate monstrosity.” A three-layer mountain of devil’s food cake, slathered in glistening chocolate ganache, and strewn with chocolate sprinkles. Melissa had made it once a year ever since that 19th birthday party, when she’d had to resort to threatening bodily harm to several of Steven’s friends if they didn’t leave him a piece to eat once he’d woken up.

Petey had never had it, had been far too young during Steven’s last birthday. Petey’s current favorite food was strained plums and honestly he’d never shown any strong feelings towards chocolate one way or another, but his blue eyes nearly bug out of his skull when Melissa presented him with this one. Of course, it could have been the bright blue teddy bear candle on top, or the fact that he was being (badly) serenaded by a rather tipsy crowd.

The slice Melissa cuts for him was easily four times bigger than what Petey could eat in a sitting, but Melissa knows very little of it will end up in his mouth. Sure enough, Petey plants his chubby fists into the cake and leisurely paints his cheeks and the top of his head before shoving his fingers into his mouth. His eyes bulge again as the sugar races to his brain and he pounds his hands down onto the tray of his high chair that his bottom rises inches into the air before thudding down again. This is great fun apparently, because he does it again and again, spraying bits of chocolate cake all over his mother sitting next to him. Melissa squeals and laughs, showering his sticky face in kisses and letting him paint her own cheeks with chocolate. Jack and the others encourage this to no end, snapping pictures of the filthy pair of them.

Throughout, Melissa can feel Steven at her back again, holding her to his warmth, laughing into her neck over their son’s antics.

You should be here, she thinks, You should be seeing him grow up. We miss having you here.

She meets Jack’s eyes when she thinks this. When his answering smile dims, grows softer, she feels he has read the thought in her eyes like a book. He’d known Steven far longer than she had, and his loss was as great as her own.

And then of course there’d Sandy. With Petey still smearing frosting fingers down her neck, Melissa scans the rest of the room for her mother-in-law, finally spotting her ducked into the alcove separating the kitchen from the living room. She isn’t watching the demolishment of the cake anymore. Her eyes are fixed on the wall, and Melissa knows she’s looking at the portrait of her son. Sandy had painted the portrait herself. It was one of several she’d completed shortly after his death, working through grief for her only son through her art.

Gently detaching Petey’s sticky hands from her, Melissa gives her hands and face a cursory wipe with a paper towel and steals over to where Sandy gazes at the painting. Sandy had painted it from a photo taken just after Petey was born. In it, Steven was cradling his new son in his arms and beaming at whoever was taking the picture.

Sandy looks at Melissa as she approached. Gone is the tight-lipped disapproval. Right now her mother-in-law just looks weary. Melissa smiles at her.

“I was thinking - we should get a picture of Petey next to his dad. I thought we could use the portrait. Prop it up next to him.” Sandy considers the idea and it puts some light into her eyes.

“We should get some of the four of us. You, me, Petey and Steven.” She stops, choking back the sudden sob that rose in her throat. “The way it should have been.”

“The way it should have been,” Sandy echoes, smiling softly.

She and Melissa work together to gently lift the painting off it’s hooks and carry it to the table. They prop it against the back of a chair, next to Petey’s high chair. A hush falls over the party guests as they watch, gazing at the grinning Steven in the portrait. The Steven they all knew and loved. Even Petey quiets down, his round blue eyes watching his mother and grandmother in their rare moment of companionable unity.

When the painting is displayed to their liking, Melissa and Sandy arrange themselves around Petey, Melissa on one side, Sandy on the other, nestled against the painting of her son. Jack takes the photo. When he tells them all to say “Cake!” to the camera, Petey goes for it, managing a crisp sounding “Kay!” sound.

Then, before either Melissa or Sandy can stop him, Petey grabs another fistful of said cake, reaches over and smears it right onto the painting, right over Steven’s grinning mouth. Melissa gasps, hand flying to her mouth.

“Oh my God, I should have seen that coming. Oh no.” She reaches for a napkin, a washcloth, anything, and then stops.

Sandy is laughing. Softly, but it’s definitely laughter, something Melissa has only ever heard from her mother-in-law on a handful of occasions. Sandy stifles it with her hand, but her eyes are shining with mirth, and possibly tears as well.

“Kay!” Petey babbles again, “Kay!”

“That’s right,” Sandy chuckles. “Some “kay” for daddy as well. Just as it should be.” She turns to Melissa. “I think you should leave it like that. Let Steven have celebrated his son’s first birthday.”

Melissa smiles at her through her own brimming tears, and behind her, she feels Steven press a smile to the back of her neck.