To the Child We Might Have Had - L.W.I. assignment 1

To the child we might have had,

You would have been a girl.

********

We were floating; rolling over waves in the blue-green Caribbean the night she told me she wanted a baby. I looked at the steeply-pitched red roofs dotting the St. Croix hillside, watched the palm trees dance in the breeze to the rhythm of the sea, then reached over and placed a hand on her suntanned belly.

“Really?” I asked. “Do you think we’re ready?”

“It seems like the right time. Good jobs, good house. If I get pregnant soon, I would have three months of summer off as soon as my maternity leave was over.”

We dried ourselves while sitting on the narrow rocky shore.

“What do you think about Willis Boykin if it’s a boy?” she asked. “We could call him Boykin.

I thought about her father, who had died five years earlier in a farming accident. It was still easy to picture him sitting in his blue chair, watching the History Channel after sharing a family meal. Boykin.

“What if it’s a girl?” I asked.

“How about Julia Claire, after your sister?”

“I like it. Or… and just hear me out… we could name her ‘The Baby to be Named Later’. She can choose her name at her Sweet Sixteen, with all her friends there, and a camera crew from a Reality Show filming.”

She pushed me backwards onto the beach and put her arms on both sides of my chest. “I know one thing,” she said. Her espresso colored hair framed her sky-blue eyes and tickled my face, and I acted like I couldn’t move. “She’ll be born more mature than you.”

We walked across the grass, still damp from a late-afternoon rain, and climbed the stairs to our room, the same room we had shared on our honeymoon. It was our fourth anniversary, and our last night on the island.

We turned off the lights.

Later that night, I sat in bed beneath the open window and watched her sleep, lying on her side, her head heavy on the pillow, hands clasped between her knees as if she were praying.

I tried to picture our daughter’s face, I know it will be a girl, I’ve always known, I’ve always known, wondering if it would be like her mothers: slightly round, tanned, with delicate ears. I fell in love with her before she existed, fell in love with the thought of her, with the anticipation of her becoming.

Julia Claire.

********

When I was a child, I sat on the edge of the green bathtub in my parents’ bathroom and watched my father’s reflection in the foggy mirror as he shaved thick cream that smelled nothing like the cool whip I assumed it to be away from his face. He was always humming, always making music as he stretched his face this way and that while swirling his razor in the sink full of water.

“How do I look?” he asked, putting the smallest bit of cream under my nose and pretending to shave it off with his finger.

We walked to the living room and sat on the couch, me in shorts and cowboy boots, him in a coat and tie with a bouquet of flowers on his lap. Soon, my mother escorted my eight-year-old sister into the room. She was wearing a white dress and stockings, black shoes, and a bow in her hair.

“Daddy, see my makeup?” she asked. “Mommy put it on me.”

“And you just look beautiful!” he said, bending down to kiss her head before giving her the flowers. “I’ll have her home by eight,” he told my mother. I watched as he put her arm in his and walked her to the car.

********

I fell asleep our anniversary night with the sound of the water playing on the shore and the touch of my wife’s warm breath mixing in my ear.

Once home, we painted one of the guest bedrooms dark blue in case we had a boy. I could stand in it and transport back to 1985, and watch myself building a fort around my wooden bunk beds using blankets, blocks, and dart guns.

Caroline painted the room next to it pink, a horrible, nauseating pink. She walked me in, with her hand over my eyes. When she uncovered them, I was swimming in Pepto-Bismol. She tried to cover her smile with her hand.

“Christen and Catherine are coming over later. We’re going to try to fix it,” she laughed.

“Maybe we’ll just have a boy.”

For twelve months, we tried to get pregnant. We paid attention to the days on the calendar, planning special dates on nights she was more likely to conceive. We bookmarked sites on the internet with conception tips. She told me, “As a sophomore in high school I lived in fear of getting pregnant. Now I’m afraid I never will.”

We tried on days neither of us wanted to.

“If we don’t try now, it might not happen this month.”

“If we start now, we might be able to watch the Simpson’s at 10”

“Maybe this is the night.”

But it wasn’t.

“Maybe we should see a doctor,” I said.

“Not yet. If it doesn’t happen next month.”

December.

January.

February.

Why can’t we just go see a doctor?

********

I wanted us to go on dates like my dad and my sister. I would treat you like a princess, and would teach you to expect the guys that would one day chase you to treat you the same. And you just look beautiful.

You would learn to be a lady, learn to be picky, learn to never settle for something that wasn’t the best.

I would have worn a suit and tie. Would have shaved, too. I think I look like I’m twelve when I shave, but if you wanted me to, I would have.

I have a Mustang. Had a Mustang. It was a ’65. We could have put the top down. Or left it up. Whatever you wanted. I know I would have kissed your cheek after I opened your door and helped you with the seatbelt, and held your hand after we took it off.

Oh my God. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I am so so sorry.

********

I thought she was scared it might be her. She had battled bulimia for eleven years. No wonder she’s scared to go to a doctor. God, what would that be like for a woman to find out that in trying to make herself into someone else’s definition of beauty she had robbed herself of the ability to make the most beautiful thing of all?

I was scared it was me.

“Maybe you ride your bike too much,” she told me.

I rode seventeen miles round trip to work each day, another fifty miles a week through the pine-covered forests of Harbison State Park. I was addicted to the feeling I got on top of a hard fought hill, to hearing the river on my left rushing over rocks, sounding like a distant train as I sped by on the off camber trail.

Maybe she was right.

I bought a special saddle- one that was guaranteed to “alleviate pressure leading to impotence.” I quit riding to work.

She didn’t get pregnant in March. Or in April.

I quit riding my bike.

********

I am so so sorry. I am so so sorry. Oh myGodIamsososorry. She sent me a text message. That’s how I found out. In a text message. I’m telling you in a letter. How could I not have known? How could I not have known she was taking the pill? How could I not have known that the only thing she wanted more than having a baby with me was not having one with him?

You would have just looked beautiful.

I love you,
Your daddy