If Only I Had Told Her(79)

“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.”