“You think?”
There. Her mom’s praise for the baby immediately soothed Kasey like salve for a burn. She wanted to shake herself. She’d never been the high-strung type; she’d always easily gone with the flow and tended to be a hard-core life-lover. It was just…Tess was her miracle baby. And she was a lot older than the usual first-time mom. Maybe her worries were crazy, but she just couldn’t seem to feel confident in this new-mom job.
Everything about the working-class neighborhood was as familiar as an old slipper. The houses were older, all with front porches and huge shade trees, but the edges showed signs of financial struggling. A dead car sat in one backyard; the sidewalks had weedy cracks; the curtains sagged in Mr. Harwoljj’s front window.
Inside her mom’s house, it was too hot. Whether summer or winter, Ellen liked her house five degrees cozier than anyone else. This year, the living room walls were a dark aqua, the couch and carpet a neutral taupe. Ellen had read all about color coordinating. The curtains had a strip of aqua, the couch pillows were a taupe and aqua print; and the orange throw that everyone used to curl up with was banished to an upstairs closet because it didn’t go with the current décor.
Kasey tiptoed behind her mother—and was hit with déjà vu. She remembered tiptoeing past the den when her dad had been sick before. In the narrow hall, the smell of Charlie perfume wafted from the bathroom, strong enough to bring on a sneeze. The kitchen was the long, skinny room at the back of the house—the only room that really mattered, because it was where the family had always eaten, fought, argued, and through thick and thin, come together.
“You’re making the tea,” Ellen ordered.
Like this needed saying? Kasey watched her mom shed Tess’s blankets, coo and tickle and examine the baby. Ellen never changed. In an era when women didn’t do middle age anymore, Ellen had embraced getting older as if she’d won a prize. She always looked tired, always reported a new ache. As a child, Kasey had no way to understand that martyrdom was a kind of comfort to her mother—even if it wasn’t a healthy one.
“So…how are the hemorrhoids?”
Kasey blinked. “Somehow I thought we might start out with ‘Hi, how are you,’ before we got into the prying questions.”
“You had a baby. You have hemorrhoids. One follows the other like night follows day, but all right, we won’t talk about anything that isn’t nice-nice. You always were a happy-go-lucky dreamer, wanting pies in the sky that could never be. I’d lost hope you’d ever marry. You were so lucky to find Graham.”
“Mom.” Kasey didn’t have to struggle for patience. No matter what she’d done as a daughter, to Ellen, it was never enough. Sometimes her mother’s belittling criticism hurt, but today was the opposite. If she could count on anyone in the universe to point out a problem or a fault, it was her mom. “I have to give a dinner party tonight, so I can’t stay more than an hour, and there are some things I need to talk to you about—”
“So go on, make the tea and talk. But at least give me enough time to rock my baby.”
The white rocker had been set up in the kitchen clearly for this visit. Kasey’s gaze softened as she watched the two. She’d nursed Tess before coming over, so the baby was likely to be good for a couple more hours. Soft eyelashes lay on the baby’s cheek like silken threads. There was a small tuft of blond hair on the top of her head now—not enough to put a bow—but enough to make her look like a miniature punk rocker.
“Kasey…” For one brief moment, her mother forgot to be critical. “She really is beautiful. Like a Gerber baby. Beyond beautiful. She takes my breath.”
“Mine, too.” Kasey knew where everything was. Tea was in the white cupboard over the stove, sugar in her great-grandma’s porcelain bowl, and the half-and-half stored in the second shelf of the old fridge.
“All your friends from the neighborhood come to see her? Your friends from work? Everybody see how nice you’re living in Grosse Pointe, the house and everything?”
“Well…they’ve all called.” Kasey knew what her mom wanted to hear. That all her friends were envious—especially those from the old neighborhood. “Very few have stopped over, but it’s a long drive. And I think they may be a little uncomfortable—”
“Well, of course they are. They’re jealous of how lucky you are,” Ellen said complacently.
Kasey didn’t buy jealousy as the reason, but the truth was, she’d felt confused when her friends started severing contact. She’d never thought marrying someone of a “different class” would matter—not to real friends—yet the old habits of doing lunch and girl-shopping had disappeared. At first Kasey had been so busy preparing for the baby that it didn’t matter, yet it was disconcerting to go from a gaggle of friends to such sudden isolation. That wasn’t, though, what her mother wanted to hear. “Lots of people sent presents for the baby.”
“I’m sure they did. Your Aunt Lorna send something good?”
“Yeah, something wonderful.” Kasey couldn’t remember what, but she wasn’t about to get her Aunt Lorna in trouble. Finally, she had the tea steeped and poured and could sit down. She motioned to Tess. “Mom, do you think she looks fat enough?”
“You still breast-feeding her?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then it’s always hard to be sure she’s getting enough milk. But for now, she couldn’t look healthier. You should be giving her a supplemental bottle now and then, though, so if you get sick, she won’t be so dependent on you. Is she sleeping all night?”
“No. But three nights ago, she went six hours.” Six blissful, uninterrupted hours. Maybe that’s why she’d been so oddly fearful and worried about the baby. Because too little sleep was making her batty.
Ellen adjusted the baby on her shoulder. “Bring me a cookie, Kase. The gingersnaps. Maybe you could try her with a little rice cereal. Like at dinner. See if that’ll hold her, make her sleep longer at night.”
“Mom…”
Ellen heard the start of the next question, and cocked her head impatiently when Kasey didn’t immediately follow through. But it was as if the fear and worries of the last weeks were suddenly bubbling to the surface like trapped air in a giant ocean. She’d loved being a mom every second since the baby was born—even the tired, cranky parts. But she felt so constantly unsure. Nothing she’d done in her life had prepared her for this level of terror. And it was as if, finally being in her mom’s kitchen, under her mom’s critical scrutiny, Kasey could finally let the fear seep out that had been prowling in the closet of her heart for weeks now. “Does she seem…normal…to you?”
Ellen’s jaw dropped. “You’re worried Tess isn’t normal? What are you, blind?”
“But she’s so good.”
“You’re lucky beyond belief, yet you’re complaining?”
“Not complaining. At all. It’s just…” All the rest of her screwy worries came out in a gush. “She barely seems to cry. When she’s awake, she just lays in my arms like an angel, or in the baby carrier, happy. I put her in one of the cribs, she’s happy there. Wherever I put her, she doesn’t seem to move.”
“So where is the bad news in this? She’s just a month old, you thought she would be doing cartwheels by now?”
There. She was finally able to laugh. “I guess I just thought she’d move around a little more. I was afraid I was doing something wrong.”
“Well, of course you’re doing things wrong. You know nothing. I don’t care how old you are, you’re still a new mother,