The Me You See Read online

  The hard stuff comes after the birth. Most women don’t want to hear about that while they’re trying to push their baby out, but I think on some level they know it’s true. The hard stuff comes later. But it’s not even the stuff that new parents think is going to be hard. Not all the stuff that people talk about or read about or research while they’re decorating the nursery or deciding whether or not to vaccinate. It’s the stuff that no one is brave enough to talk about.

  I contemplate what kind of parent Miss Ice Chip would be. She’s a total flake. To be honest, I’m not even sure how she got hired except for maybe her sparkling bedside manner. She makes most patients smile, and she’s calm and peaceful—perfect for those new age hippy mothers who come in and think that low lighting and soft music will change anything about how their babies come into the world. But as a nurse, as someone who needs brains to complete a task, she’s a shame to the department.

  Amanda as a parent would be hilarious.

  Except that’s the thing people don’t get. I’ve watched hundreds of women walk out of the hospital with babies, bringing them home to raise them up the right way. They’ve all got different ideas about what that is, though. They’ve all read different books, followed different baby gurus on Twitter, and liked a multitude of conflicting baby-raising things on Facebook. But what they don’t get is that it doesn’t matter.

  It really doesn’t.

  Or I should say it has no bearing on how your kid turns out. It has no bearing on how their life ends up. And no one wants to talk about that because it makes parenting seem worthless. If a child’s life is going to turn out how it turns out, why do we all try so hard? Why do we debate babywearing and vaccination and whether or not a child should be breastfed for five weeks or five years?

  Does it matter?

  No one wants to contemplate the answers to these questions because if there’s any truth to them, then a parent’s job is pretty worthless. And who wants to be the bearer of that message? Who wants to be the one to point out that if you offer a golden platter of Everything Perfect to two different kids, they might each take that platter in opposite directions? One might cure cancer while the other invents a new kind of atomic bomb and purposely blows up three quarters of the world.

  How much of what we do even matters?

  I don’t know if any of it does.

  And neither did Stefia.

  **

  I talked to Stefia for the last time a little over a month ago. Of course I didn’t know it would be the last time. It’s funny, I always think if I would have known it was the last time I was going to talk to someone, I would have said something different—awe inspiring or infinitely humorous. But we can’t ever know it’s the last time. That’s the way it works.

  And maybe it’s better that way.

  I had walked into the coffee shop for my Americano before my Tuesday shift (like always) and she was there (like always). She asked if I wanted room for cream, and like always, I refused.

  Stefia was one of those beautiful and friendly and smart people, a mix of things that everyone would write down on their Personality Wish List if ever they were given the option. She could hold her own in conversation on just about every topic I’d ever brought up, which was quite a few, since my visits usually fell smack in the middle of the dead time at the coffee shop.

  “What’s on your mind today?” she asked, as she pressed the lid over the to-go cup and handed it across the counter to me.

  I took the cup, removed the lid (like always), and blew gently into the glorious bean water that would fuel my ten hour shift.

  “I’m thinking about parents,” I answered.

  “New parents? Old parents?” she asked. “Are you having another baby?”

  I laughed. “God, no. My two are finally grown up and moved away. I’d die if I had to go through labor at my age.”

  “You’re not that old,” Stefia said.

  “Seriously, 42 is too old for labor,” I said, putting a definite punctuation mark on the entire idea.

  Stefia came around the counter and joined me on the customer side of the shop, filling her own mustard colored mug from the air pot on the center island. She leaned against the granite slab, sipping her dark hazelnut blend (like always) and waited for me to speak.

  “Do you think parents matter?” I asked her.

  She looked down at her feet and I could tell she was wiggling her toes around in the fronts of the moccasins she wore around the shop.

  “That’s kind of a loaded question,” she answered.

  “Do you think how a parent raises their child makes any difference in a child’s life?”

  “There are a lot of things that make a difference in a child’s life,” Stefia said. “Not just the parents. Maybe not the parents at all.”

  “It has to make some difference, doesn’t it?”

  “Why? Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with how you were raised.”

  “It has to play some part,” I said.

  “Not always. Why do some kids play violent video games and not go crazy, but others play the same game and shoot up their school?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. And then with a sigh that spoke more than my words, added, “I just don’t know anymore.”

  “What’s really going on?” she asked. “What are you actually talking about?”

  All I needed was an invitation and it came spewing out of my mouth. I told her about the phone call I’d received two nights earlier and how my 19 year old son was in jail for possession for the third time. And his girlfriend was pregnant but she’d lost the baby when he pushed her down the stairs.

  “He wasn’t raised that way,” I said. “I mean, my husband and I are so far from that world…it’s like, how did he end up there? You believe me, right?”

  “People always want to blame the parents,” she said, without skipping a beat.

  “Well, what else is there?”

  She took a chair at the table I was at, her thin and toned body like a trophy of youth she wouldn’t appreciate until she was older. And I wondered suddenly why I was discussing any of my issues with her. A solid twenty years—at least—separated us. Why did her opinion even matter to me?

  “Parents aren’t the be-all, end-all of influence,” she continued with a shrug. “Sometimes, what influences someone is just random.”

  “Random,” I repeated, practically choking on the word. “What about your parents? They’ve influenced you, right?”

  Stefia sat with her elbows resting on the table, hands holding her cup just under chin, but she didn’t drink.

  “My mom isn’t around. Hasn’t been for several years. My dad is just barely getting by with mom gone, even all this time later. He’s like some corn husk that was tossed on the ground to wither away.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know she had died.”

  “She didn’t. She left.”

  Stefia wound her right foot around the leg of her chair, slipping her moccasin off and on, off and on.

  “Where do you get your support?” I asked. “I mean, if your mom is gone and your dad is…”

  “…completely detached?”

  “Yeah. Where was your support? Who raised you up?”

  Stefia set her mug down and pushed her thumb back and forth across the side of it like she was trying to rub off a stain.

  “The theater,” she said.

  She kept rubbing at that spot on her mug. I was pretty sure it was a flaw in the ceramic but she was determined to rub it out.

  “So…you’ve been raised and had all your support from…a stage?”

  “Not just the stage,” she said, giving up on the spot and picking up the mug to take a short but thoughtful sip. “The theater isn’t just a stage. It’s people and…an energy. I’ve been raised by those who have watched me. And by people I’ve watched. I see a lot from up on stage. The audience speaks volumes without saying a word.”

  Then she smiled at me.

  “Don’t let
your son get you down,” she continued. “Kids screw up. It’s what we do.”

  I let out a sarcastic snort and picked up my mug.

  “I don’t believe that you, Stefia, even possess the capability to screw up.”

  She looked at me with a slightly crooked smile that I didn’t think could possibly show up on her pretty face.

  “Oh, Heidi,” she said, taking a slow sip of what was left in her mug. “You would be surprised.”

  **

  A week later, after talking a teen mom-to-be through an epidural, Amanda caught me in the hallway by the arm.

  “Oh my god, did you hear?”

  She pulled me into an alcove, twisting my arm as she yanked me further into the corner. I opened my mouth to yell at her but when our eyes met, I realized her face had lost all color except for a mascara streak on her cheek.

  “There was a shooting…at the theater…just twenty minutes ago. Oh my god…”

  It spilled out of her mouth in between gasps that got more shallow every time she tried to speak.

  “Amanda, slow down. Take a breath.”

  “There was a goddamn shooting!” she yelled. “At the theater!”

  “What theater?” I yelled back, assuming she meant one of the three movie theaters near the hospital.

  “The Crystal Plains Theater.”

  Amanda leaned against the wall and then slumped down until she sat on the floor. Immediately the questions spun through my head: how many people were dead? Was the shooting inside? Outside? Did the shooter aim at the audience? The actors on stage?

  Oh. God.

  Maryanne stuck her head around the corner of the alcove. She looked at Amanda, who stared blankly at the carpet with tears dripping off her chin.

  “Pull yourself together,” Maryann hissed at Amanda. “If you’re going to freak out, do it in the nurse’s lounge.”

  Then Maryanne looked to me.

  “Room 317 is ready to deliver. I need you.”

  I nodded on complete autopilot, following Maryanne and passing through the door of 317 to assist with the chaos of birth. I encouraged and instructed and as I did my job, realized there was something uncomfortably disjointed about helping to deliver a baby and, at the same time, waiting on the names of the dead.

  Life is kind of strange that way.

  Eight hours later as the sun was just coming up, I walked out of the hospital. I stood on the sidewalk, using my phone to stream live video of the press conference about the shooting. My hands shook as I waited. The police chief wasn’t talking fast enough. They weren’t…

  When they read Stefia’s name, my cell phone dropped from my hand and hit the sidewalk, the screen shattering.

  It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.

  I collapsed to my knees, the cold of the sidewalk biting through my scrubs. A guy in a puffy orange jacket who was walking past stopped and bent down to help me up.

  “Hey lady, lady…are you okay?” he said. “Did you fall? Do you need help?”

  I shook my head, staring at the concrete I was kneeling on.

  “Lady, are you okay?”

  I was not okay.

  I was not okay.

  **

  Amanda grabs Ice Cup Number Twenty-Six for room 310.

  “This woman is going to be in labor forever,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Why doesn’t she just let the doctor break her water?”

  I don’t answer. I don’t look at her. I just stare at the computer screen and pretend I’m entering chart information.

  “Listen,” she continues, quieter. “I know you’re having a rough day. I know this day sucks for you.”

  Amanda touches my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry you had to work.”

  I look up at her to see a hesitant smile, like she almost thinks I’m going to smack her for touching me.

  “You should probably go deliver that ice before it melts,” I say.

  She turns to head to room 310 and I’m positive that any personality flaw that irks me about her has little, if anything, to do with how she was raised. Annoying is just what Amanda is—maybe for some completely random reason that will never be known.

  I think about all those people that died. Did any of their parents look into their future and see it coming?

  Of course not.

  I wanted to bust in on all the laboring women and tell them to stop the bickering back and forth about vaccinations and babywearing and breastfeeding and whether a kid should sleep on their stomach or back or side or hanging from their feet because it doesn’t really matter in the end, does it? We deliver all these babies into sterile, crisp white rooms only to release them into a world of piled up shit.

  It really doesn’t matter what we do.

  You don’t plan in the end that your kids’ dreams are going to get cut short. You don’t plan your kid is going to end up lying dead on the stage of a theater in a small town.

  All those parents of the young people who died… did they know that when they were discussing the differences on the pros and cons of circumcision or whether or not the mom should work outside the home that their kid was going to end up shot on some random Thursday?

  Of course not.

  I keep thinking about that. I keep thinking on all the new parents and middle aged parents and older parents who walk around saying not my kid. That will never happen to my kid. As in just by saying that, you have some kind of guarantee that your kid will turn out perfect.

  Saying it is true does not make it true. Why don’t they get it?

  There are jails full of people’s kids to prove it. My kid is one of them. You can’t tell me that every cell is taken up by someone whose parents were complete screw ups. Because I’m not a screw up.

  Birth is a predictable process. Sperm meets egg. Egg divides a bazillion times. Fetus matures. If there are no complications, birth happens and the proud parents take home their latest tax deduction.

  Parenting, however, is not predictable. Parenting is not a mathematical equation. You can do A plus B and think you’re going to get C, but you might actually end up with the equivalent of Z in a completely different language. You can give your kids everything the latest child psychologist guru says they should have and serve it up to them in a sparkling bucket of happy, and your kid might take the bucket, tip it over, set it on fire, and walk the other way.

  And no one knows why.

  Anyone’s kid could have been at that theater in that mess that happened. Anyone’s kid could have been in the audience, hiding and screaming or trying to run. Anyone’s kid could have been on stage getting shot at.

  You don’t think so? How in the world can any honest parent answer no?

  So. Does it really matter how you are raised?

  I just don’t know anymore.

  Lullaby, and good night…

  I love that sound. I love when that lullaby plays over the loudspeaker. Because with another new life, there is the hope of a bright spot on the pockmarked face of humanity.

  There is hope, but no guarantee.

  -Niles-

  Their house was the same shade of blue as my first wife’s eyes; almost one of those colors you shouldn’t paint the exterior of a house. That piercing shade of blue was the entire reason I initially looked across the street and stared at Stefia.

  I moved into the Dutch Colonial across from Stefia four years ago. It had been vacant for a year before I took it over, so there was work to be done. I got it for a steal and immediately went to work, first repairing, and then molding it into the spot of refuge I’d bought it to be.

  I had assumed that shortly after my work began, the neighborhood welcome wagon would show up. I imagined there would be plates of cookies and offers to help with whatever was needed. That’s how we would have done it where I grew up. But that wasn’t how they did it in Minnesota. Oh, sure, I knew neighbors were peeking from behind curtains, wondering who the late 40ish guy was who had taken up residence in that Dutch Colonial with the peeling white pain
t. And admittedly, there were a few that were brave enough to walk by and wave. But as far as being neighborly, as far as offering help…well, that whole Minnesota Nice thing seemed to be a thing made of fairy tales, or at the very least, greatly exaggerated.

  I didn’t really know much about small towns in Minnesota. And they didn’t know much about me. And maybe that was the whole problem.

  Two weeks after I had moved in, I thought I might make a good impression by being my own reverse welcome wagon. I baked a plate of cookies and planned to walk right over to that house that was the same shade of blue as my first wife’s eyes.

  Why that house? Why not any of the others on the street?

  It had as much to do with the shade of the paint that stuck to its walls as it did with the beautiful girl who often sat under the tree in its front yard.

  I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: Niles, stop it. I don’t want to hear it. You have to know it was wrong.

  I know you’re thinking I’m a bad person, but I couldn’t stop. And you wouldn’t think it was wrong if you understood what was happening.

  I arranged two dozen Russian teacakes on a beautiful burnt orange platter and carried it across the street. Stefia was sitting at the base of the tree, like she’d done most days since I’d moved in. She was pawing slowly through the leaves on the ground like she was searching for something lost.

  She was so beautiful. Long and thin like a stick of taffy you’d held in one hand and stretched out with your teeth. Her skin was creamy and white like a vanilla pudding pop.

  Oh. God.

  “Hello,” I said.

  I figured she would have heard my footsteps crunching into the leaves, but she was so engrossed in her search that she jumped when I spoke.

  “I’m sorry to frighten you,” I said, putting my hand out to calm her frantic stare. “I was on my way over here to introduce myself and deliver these cookies. I noticed you seem to be looking for something. Do you need help?”

  When I really looked, I saw tears in her eyes. She wiped them away, embarrassed to have a stranger see her crying.

  “No, that’s okay,” she said, remaining seated in the leaves. “I’m okay. I found what I was looking for.”