Happy Place(70)

But then the pictures get more sporadic—a couple of birthdays and Christmases, a trip with my aunt and her first husband—and my parents’ tiredness has transformed.

Not staying-up-all-night-with-a-crying-baby exhausted, but bored-beyond-belief-chafing-at-their-new-roles fatigued. You can practically see their deferred dreams reflected back in their eyes.

There’s a fairly large gap in time where there are no pictures at all, and then I’m born. And my parents do look happy again, in love again, cradling my wrinkly little baby body in my much-too-large pink onesie. Maybe not quite as overjoyed as the first time around. In six years, Mom’s transformed from a cherub-cheeked near teenager to a full-fledged and stern-jawed adult. Dad’s gained some weight, along with a vague terseness in the corners of his mouth. Even when he’s holding me on his hip at the zoo, Eloise dangling from his other hand, smiling in front of the giraffes, he looks distracted.

Not miserable. Just like it’s not enough. Like he and Mom both know there are other universes where they’re more, bigger, happier.

As we flip forward through pages and times, Eloise becomes increasingly sulky, always standing a ways off, whereas I start to smile like my life depends on how visible my teeth are.

Wyn pauses on a picture of me with my first-place science fair trophy, grinning despite my missing front tooth. “My little genius.” He touches the edge of the picture. “I hope our kids have your hair.”

Kids, I think. It knocks the wind out of me. The way he says it—so easily, so lovingly. That familiar homesickness, that longing, roars awake. But what my mom said sneaks in too, a quiet whisper at the fringes of my mind.

“What if I’m bad at it?” I ask. “Being a parent.”

He sweeps my hair back from my neck. “You won’t be.”

“You don’t know that,” I say.

“I do,” he says.

“How?” I say.

“Because you’re good at loving,” he says. “And that’s all you have to do.”

My throat tightens. My eyes burn.

“When I was a kid,” I say, “I always felt like I was balanced on the edge of something. Like everything was so . . . tenuous, and it could all crumble at any second.”

“What could?” he asks softly.

“Everything,” I say. “My family.”

His hand runs down my spine, turning soothing circles at the curve at its base.

“There was never enough money,” I say. “And my parents were always exhausted from their jobs. I mean, tonight was the most positive I’ve ever heard them be about their work. And then when Eloise got older, they’d get into these huge fights with her, and they’d tell her she had no idea what they’d sacrificed for her, and how she was throwing it all away. And then she’d storm out, and they’d go to separate rooms, and I would be so sure that was it. That Eloise wouldn’t come back. Or my parents would split up. I was always waiting for something terrible to happen.”

Wyn’s fingers graze back up my spine, settling at the base of my neck. He listens, waits, and like it always has, his presence pulls the truth out of me. Like whispering secrets into a box and shutting it tight, I used to think.

“I used to make these bargains with the universe,” I say, smiling a little at the ridiculousness of it. “Like if I got straight As, then everything would be okay. Or if I won the science fair a second time. Or if I was never late to school, or if I always did the dishes before Mom got home from work, or I got her the perfect birthday gift, or whatever. And I know my parents love me. I’ve always known that,” I say tightly. “But the truth is . . .”

Wyn squeezes the back of my neck: I’ve got you.

“I’ve spent my whole life trying to make it up to them.”

Wyn tucks a curl behind my ear, ever patient and calm, warm and safe.

“That we cost them so much,” I go on. “That they didn’t get the lives they wanted, because of us. But if I could be good enough . . .”

“Harriet,” he says, crushing me in against his chest, tightening his arms against me, a human barricade. “No.”

His voice takes on a throatiness. “Sometimes when things go wrong, it’s easy to blame someone else. Because it simplifies things. It takes any responsibility out of your hands. And I don’t know if your parents did that to you and your sister or if somewhere along the way you took that blame on yourself, but it’s not your fault. None of it. Your parents made their decisions, and I’m not saying their situation was easy, or that they didn’t do the best they could. But it wasn’t enough, Harriet. If you could even think that, if you could ever even fucking wonder if they regretted you, then they didn’t do enough.”

But he doesn’t understand. They’ve done everything. Shelled out for tutors, paid the fees for every club I signed up for, chauffeured me back and forth, helped me study when they were dead tired from work, cosigned my med school loans.

My parents aren’t people of words, but they sacrificed so much. That’s love, and I hate that I want more from them. That I can’t just feel grateful for all they’ve given me, because at all times I’m aware of what it cost them.

“You,” Wyn says roughly, “are the very best thing that’s ever happened to me. And they were lucky to have you as their kid. Even if you hadn’t bent over backward to make them proud, they still would have been lucky, because you’re smart and you’re funny and you care about the people around you, and you make everything better, okay?”