“Do you promise?” she’d asked, and he’d said that yes, of course, he did. “You have my word.”
Seven and a half months later, she’d given birth to a tiny, squalling, red-faced baby girl. They’d cut Annette open, after a day and a half of labor. She’d been half-dead from exhaustion, still shivering from the shock of the surgery, when they put Ruby in her arms. Annette had cradled her daughter. She’d gazed down at Ruby’s tiny face. She’d caressed the downy curve of her skull with one fingertip; she’d held the baby to her breast. And she’d felt nothing.
Five days later, they went home to a new apartment, a spacious two-bedroom place on the Upper West Side that Eli’s parents had been more than happy to pay for, as soon as Eli had enrolled at the Columbia dental school. Eli was enthralled with their new baby, instantly besotted. He had been the model of a solicitous husband and proud new dad, installing the car seat in the sedan his parents had bought them, putting together the crib and the changing table and the bookcase full of brightly colored board books. Except Eli wasn’t playing a part. He wasn’t pretending. He’d happily hold Ruby for hours, rocking her, singing to her, gazing into her eyes. He’d bathe her, tenderly sponging her dimpled limbs, sudsing each minuscule finger and toe, carefully clipping her teensy fingernails, so she wouldn’t scratch herself. When Ruby cried in the middle of the night, Eli would spring out of bed, instantly awake, with Annette trailing blearily after him, groggy and disoriented. What does my princess need? Eli would croon, scooping Ruby into his arms. What can we do for you, little miss?
He wasn’t pretending. Neither was Eli’s mother, who’d walk into their apartment with her arms extended, like she couldn’t wait an extra second for the feel of her granddaughter. They all felt it, whatever it was that new parents and grandparents were meant to feel. And Annette felt nothing, nothing but an arid annoyance, permanent exhaustion, and a growing sense that she’d made a wrong turn, that this was not what her life was supposed to be. She was failing this child—and, just as important, she was failing herself.
She’d hung in for months, trying her hardest, waiting to feel what mothers were supposed to feel. Once she’d realized that those maternal instincts weren’t there, she would scan the parks and the playgrounds, looking for kinship, for some other new mother with circles under her eyes collapsed on a bench, pushing a stroller back and forth with her foot and trying to finish reading a single page of a book or make a phone call or just drink her coffee in peace. She found other exhausted mothers, women who were overwhelmed and physically depleted. She found angry, frustrated mothers, upset by the lack of support from their spouses or their families. But, at some point in every conversation, each of those mothers would send a fond gaze toward the baby in the stroller, or curl her hand tenderly against the head of the baby strapped against her chest. But I wouldn’t have it any other way, the other woman would say, just look at her, and her voice would get softer; the furrows in her forehead would smooth themselves out. She would smile, and her expression would resolve itself into a look of pure and tender adoration. Even the most unshowered, unhappy, exhausted of the mothers, holding the most unattractive baby, would look, for a moment, like a pietà, a Madonna gazing down at the baby Jesus, in awe of her own creation. Annette scoured her heart for that feeling. She waited for it to come. Eventually, she realized that love couldn’t be forced, and maternal instincts didn’t develop over time. Either you had them or you didn’t; just like either you loved someone or you didn’t.
Annette held out for as long as she could, until she’d finally came to the end of her reserves; when she felt she wouldn’t make it one more day. She went to Eli, who’d looked furious and bewildered, as if they’d never had any of the prebirth discussions, as if he could not remember her objections and had never imagined that her departure was an actual possibility. Which, Annette realized, was probably true.
“You’re leaving?”
“I tried,” Annette said steadily, with her eyes on the bag that she was packing. She felt like Lot’s wife, knowing that if she looked back, at Eli or at Ruby, she would change her mind. Not because she’d be overwhelmed with love, but because she’d be overcome by fear. The easy thing, she knew, would be to stay, to keep faking what she didn’t feel. If she hung in there, no one would judge her, and no one would condemn her, and Annette knew that leaving would set her up for a lifetime of judgment and condemnation. She’d be marked as a transgressor; a woman who’d slipped the bonds of matrimony and motherhood, a prisoner who’d crawled through the tunnels and the muck to breathe the sweet air of freedom, the maternal version of Andy Dufresne. She’d be a target, all her life, for the rage and scorn of a world that hated women already, a world that didn’t see them as entirely human, or truly worthy of respect. She’d be a screen upon which people would project their own issues with their mothers or their wives. And, she supposed, some women would look at her and see a door they could have opened. Those women would hate her more than anyone, because she’d done what they hadn’t, because she was free and they were not. They would think it their job, even their holy obligation, to punish her, to make her pay.