We recently had a baby girl, Ava, and I’m incredibly happy, but at the same time, I’m exhausted.
I do everything myself — get up when she cries at night, change her diapers, feed her, clean the entire house, do the laundry, cook, take her for walks, and so on.
Sometimes I don’t even have any time for myself.
My husband, Glen, barely helps me with the baby. Even though we both really wanted a child, as soon as Ava was born, he said he worked and got tired too, so he wasn’t going to take care of her.
Even when he comes home and I ask him to stay with Ava for just an hour so I can at least take a bath, he shrugs and says:
“How about I watch her for five minutes while you take a quick shower? That’s enough. Why do you need a bath?”
You get the idea.
At first, I thought maybe he just hadn’t gotten used to being a father yet and needed some time.
But then something completely ridiculous happened.
You know that feeling when your friends invite you out for coffee and you just dream of getting out of the house, sitting somewhere in peace, and chatting with your girlfriends for even an hour or two?
I asked Glen to stay with Ava while I was out. He was home anyway because it was his day off.
I got ready and started looking for my car keys. I swear I’d left them on the table, but they were nowhere to be found.
Then Glen held up the keys in his hand and said:
“Honey, you’re not going anywhere. What friends are you even talking about? You need to stay home with Ava.”
I froze.
“But Glen, I’ve already made plans. And this is one of the only breaks I get. Please, stay with Ava for a couple of hours. I changed her diaper, fed her, and put her down for a nap.”
He shrugged and said:
“Moms don’t get free time. You wanted a baby, so you have to stay home with her.”
He turned around and went to relax in the living room without giving me my car keys back.
I was completely stunned.
I’d already made plans with my friends, and I really didn’t want to miss the get-together, so I called Glen’s mother, Ellen, and asked if she could come over and watch Ava. I apologized for the last-minute request and explained exactly what had happened.
She happily agreed to come over.
When she arrived, she smiled and told me to wait inside.
Then she walked over to Glen and asked him to come outside with her.
A moment later, I heard Glen shouting:
“No, Mom, please! Why are you doing this to me?”
Oh, when I walked outside, even I gasped.
PART 2
A flatbed tow truck was sitting in our driveway with its yellow lights turning slowly, and a man in gray coveralls was cranking a winch cable toward the front bumper of Glen’s brand-new black pickup.
Glen was standing on the lawn in his socks, with both hands in his hair.
“Mom, please!” he shouted. “That’s my truck!”
Ellen, in her blue cardigan and sensible shoes, with her reading glasses on a beaded chain, did not look up from her phone. She was sixty-four, silver-haired, short and straight-backed, and in the three years I had known her I had never seen her raise her voice.
“Actually, sweetheart,” she said, “the title has my name on it.”
I stood on the porch with my mouth open.
“I bought it for your thirtieth birthday,” said Ellen. “I put it in my name for the insurance discount. We discussed it at the time. You said, ‘Thanks, Mom, that’s fine.'” She tapped her screen. “I have the paperwork here, if you’d like to see it.”
“You can’t just take it!”
“It’s a loan, darling. I’m lending it to myself.” She smiled, pleasantly, at the tow truck driver. “Charlie, go ahead.”
The winch groaned. The truck lurched, very slightly, onto the ramp.
“But what am I supposed to drive?” Glen’s voice cracked. “I need it for work!”
“You have a perfectly good bicycle in the garage,” said Ellen. “I saw it. It’s covered in dust. A little exercise will do you good.”
I put my hand over my mouth. I wasn’t sure whether I was going to laugh or cry.
Ellen turned, at last, to look at me. Her gray eyes were warm and shrewd and entirely clear. She reached into the pocket of her cardigan, and drew out a small silver ring with a rubber duck on it.
My car keys.
“I took them out of his pocket while he was shouting,” she said. “He wasn’t paying attention.”
She pressed them into my palm. “Go,” she said. “Have coffee. Have two. Ava and I will be fine.”
“Ellen,” I whispered. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll be back by four.” She smiled. “I’m told that’s when the baby gets hungry, and we’ll see how Glen manages.”
Glen made a strangled sound.
“Mom,” he said. “You’re being ridiculous.”
Ellen laid her hand against his cheek, for just a moment, with a gentleness that startled me.
“Glen,” she said, quietly. “I raised you in a house where a woman wasn’t allowed to leave. I watched your father hide my keys for thirty-one years. I told myself I’d never let it happen to someone else.” Her voice shook, very slightly. “I’m so sorry I didn’t say it sooner.”
Glen stared at her.
The tow truck pulled slowly out of the driveway, with the shining black pickup riding like a captured whale on its flatbed.
I drove to the café with the windows down and my hands shaking on the wheel.
PART 3
I want to describe the next two hours, because I have thought about them often since.
The café was a small, bright place called Honey & Rye, on Main Street, with white subway tile and hanging ferns and a long, sunlit table by the window. My friends were already there. Danielle, in a denim jacket, with her curly hair in a bun. Marisol, with a notebook and a tin of her grandmother’s shortbread. They stood up when I came in. They hugged me, both at once, in a tangle of arms.
“You look terrible,” said Danielle, kindly. “Sit.”
I sat. I did not cry. I ordered a latte, a real one, with a heart in the foam, and I drank it slowly, with my eyes closed.
For the first fifteen minutes, nobody said anything. They let me sit. Marisol slid a piece of shortbread across the table. I ate it. It tasted like butter and sugar and a small, forgotten freedom.
Then I told them.
When I finished, Danielle set down her cup. “He took your keys.“
“He said moms don’t get free time.”
“I’d like to introduce him,” said Marisol, with great calm, “to my grandmother’s rolling pin.”
I laughed so hard that my coffee sloshed. It was the first real laugh I’d had in four months, a loud, unladylike snort, and the couple at the next table looked over, and I didn’t care.
My phone buzzed on the table. I glanced down.
Glen: Where are you???
Glen: Mom is making me change a diaper. Is this a joke??
Glen: She won’t let me use my phone. She says it’s “baby time.”
Glen: Rachel, it’s a lot of poop.
I laughed again.
An hour later, a text arrived from a different number.
Ellen: He has changed three diapers, burped her, and rocked her for forty minutes. He is currently sitting in the nursery in the dark, looking at her face. I think he’s crying. Take your time.
I read it three times.
I thought of my husband, who had spent four months telling me he was too tired. Who had stood in the kitchen doorway, with his arms crossed, watching me wash bottles at midnight. Who had said, Why do you need a bath? I thought of him in the dark nursery, on the old rocking chair, with our daughter against his shoulder.
When I came home at four o’clock, the house was very quiet.
Ellen was on the sofa, with her shoes off and a crossword in her lap. She looked up, smiled, and pointed with her pen.
I walked down the hall to the nursery.
Glen was in the rocking chair, in the half-dark, with Ava asleep against his chest, her tiny fist curled in his T-shirt. His hair was standing up. There was a burp cloth over his shoulder. When he heard me at the door, he looked up.
His eyes were red.
“I didn’t know,” he whispered. “Rachel. I didn’t know it was like this.”
PART 4
We talked until midnight.
Glen sat at the kitchen table, in his rumpled T-shirt, with Ava in her bouncer at his feet and a mug of untouched tea in front of him. He didn’t look at me. He looked at his hands.
“My dad used to say it,” he said. “‘Moms don’t get free time.’ I was seven. He said it to my mom, in the kitchen, when she asked if she could go see her sister.” He swallowed. “I remember thinking it was just how it was.”
“Glen.”
“I told myself I was tired because I worked. That’s true. But it’s not why.” His voice cracked. “I was scared. I’d never held a baby before Ava. I didn’t know how. And every time I tried, she cried, and I thought, I’m doing it wrong. And it was easier to say I was too busy than to admit I didn’t know what I was doing.”
I had not expected that.
“You could have told me.”
“I know.” He wiped his eyes. “I think I thought if I made it your job, I’d never have to fail at it.”
I looked at my husband, the broad, stubborn, frightened man who had hidden my keys, and felt something in my chest begin, slowly, to unclench.
“I’m not going to pretend it’s okay,” I said. “What you did was wrong.”
“I know.”
“If you ever do it again, I’m leaving. I’ll take Ava, and I’ll go to my mother’s.” I kept my voice level. “I want you to understand that.”
“I understand.”
“But I want to try.”
He looked up. His face, in the lamplight, was raw and hopeful and ashamed.
We made a chart. It hangs on the refrigerator now, a big white sheet of paper, in two colors of marker. Glen takes the 2 a.m. feeding on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I sleep through. On Saturdays, he takes Ava for three hours, and I do whatever I want. Ellen watches her on Wednesday nights, so that we can go to dinner.
For three weeks, it worked.
Then, on a Saturday in early November, I came downstairs at ten o’clock, dressed for a pottery class I’d been meaning to take for a year, and found my husband in the kitchen, with a tall, white-haired man I didn’t recognize, drinking coffee at our table.
“Rachel,” said Glen, uneasily. “This is my dad.”
Ray Whitaker was seventy, broad-shouldered, in a plaid jacket, with a deep, leathery tan and a smile that did not reach his eyes. He stood. He did not offer his hand.
“Heard you’ve been giving my boy a hard time,” he said.
On the counter, between the coffee maker and the bread box, lay a small, silver ring with a rubber duck on it.
My car keys.
PART 5
“Dad stopped by,” said Glen, in a thin, unsteady voice. “He was in town.”
“I’ve been hearing things,” Ray said. He sat back down, with his big, scarred hands wrapped around the mug, and looked at me, mildly. “My boy tells me you’ve got him on a schedule. Changing diapers. A chart.” He chuckled. “Son, I never changed a diaper in my life. Didn’t hurt your mother a bit.”
“Ray,” said a voice from the hallway.
Ellen stood in the doorway, in her blue cardigan, with a dish towel over one arm. She had come, I realized, to bring a casserole. She looked, in the gray November light, small and straight and entirely unafraid.
“Hello, Ellen,” said Ray, with a thin smile. “You’re looking well.”
“Get out of my daughter-in-law’s kitchen.”
“It’s my son’s kitchen.”
“It’s theirs.“
For a long, tight moment, nobody moved. I stood by the counter, with my hand pressed against my heart, and Ava, in her bouncer, gurgled and kicked at a plastic giraffe. Ray stared at his ex-wife. His face, for an instant, flickered with something old and bitter.
“I told you,” he said, to Glen, “she’d turn you against your own father.”
“Dad,” said Glen.
He had risen. He stood with his hands at his sides, tall and rumpled, in his Saturday sweatshirt, looking from his father to his mother to me. I watched him, and I did not breathe. I saw the boy of seven in the kitchen doorway. I saw the man of thirty-one, with a baby asleep on his chest.
“Dad,” said Glen, again. His voice did not shake. “I’d like you to leave.”
Ray stared at him.
“You don’t understand how it works, son,” he said, gently, almost kindly. “A man has to keep control. Otherwise they walk all over you.”
“I took Rachel’s keys,” said Glen. “Four weeks ago. I told her moms don’t get free time. I said it exactly the way you did.” He drew a long breath. “I’d just like you to know that it was the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
Ray’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.
“I’m not going to be you,” said my husband. “I’m sorry. But I’m not.”
I do not know what Ray Whitaker saw in his son’s face, in that small, bright, ordinary kitchen. But he stood there, for a very long moment, with the coffee mug in his hand, and then he set it down, carefully, on the table, and picked up his jacket, and walked out without a word.
The front door closed. We listened to his car back out of the driveway.
Glen sat down hard in the nearest chair. He put his face in his hands, and his shoulders shook, and I crossed the kitchen and put my arms around him, and he held on to me like a drowning man.
“I’m sorry,” he said, into my sweater. “I’m so sorry. I’ll be better.”
“I know you will,” I said.
Ellen quietly put the casserole in the oven. She did not say a word.
Glen got his truck back in December. His mother returned it in person, in the driveway, with a bow on the hood and a hand-lettered card. Drive it responsibly. — Mom. He laughed until he cried.
On a bright Saturday in January, I took a bath.
An actual bath. I filled the tub with hot water and lavender salts, and I lit a candle, and I lay there, with a book and a cup of tea, for sixty full minutes. Through the door, I could hear my husband singing, off-key, a lullaby about a very large moose.
He knocked, twice, to ask where the diapers were.
I did not answer.
I just closed my eyes, and smiled, and let him figure it out.
