Heart Like Mine: A Novel

After Victor went to comfort Ava and Max, I sat on the couch, staring at the wall above the fireplace, waiting. Waiting for what, I wasn’t sure. Maybe to see if he asked me for help, though I didn’t know what kind of help I might be. Clearly Ava wanted nothing to do with me, and on some level, I couldn’t blame her. She’d just suffered the biggest loss of her life; a woman she only saw a couple of times a month certainly wouldn’t be who she’d run to in search of emotional reassurance.

“Ava’s always been a little hard to reach,” Victor had told me one evening back in January. He’d just dropped the kids at their mother’s house and I’d voiced my feeling that no matter what I did, Ava seemed determined not to like me.

“It takes time for her to warm up,” Victor explained. He set his hand on top of mine. “Don’t take it personally. It’s about her, not you, okay? She’ll get there.”

I’d nodded, but really, it was impossible not to take it personally. Even though I reminded myself that she’d likely have treated any woman who dated her father this way, part of me worried that she sensed my trepidation around getting to know them and was simply keeping her distance. Maybe I just needed to give her more time.

Now I lay on the couch while Victor went back and forth between his children’s rooms, trying to comfort them as they both cried, and thought about the part I might play in their lives. My body tensed at the idea of being thrown into the daily demands of having them live with us—the homework, the meals, the inevitable fighting. I wasn’t sure I could do this, but I couldn’t imagine running away, leaving my fiancé and his children to manage on their own in the midst of their grief. Maybe more importantly, I didn’t want to. I wanted to be better than that.

I suddenly remembered a conversation I had with a woman I worked with in my late twenties. Her name was Barb, and she had just come back from maternity leave for her fourth child. She couldn’t stop gushing about how much she loved having those three months off to be with her children.

“It doesn’t overwhelm you?” I asked her. “Having four of them?” I thought about how hard it had been for me to help take care of just Sam by himself and I couldn’t fathom doing it with three other children to worry about. In fact, the idea made me slightly queasy. I pictured babies rolling off the edge of couches, food splatters against the walls, toddlers racing out the front door and into the street before I could stop them.

Barb laughed at my question. “Sure it does. When they’re all screeching and demanding something from me and I feel like I might explode if one more of them makes a sound.” She paused and gave me a dreamy smile. “But you really don’t know what love is until you’re a mother. You can’t understand it until you’ve had a baby yourself, but it’s the most intense feeling in the world. It makes every minute of the hard parts worth it.”

I winced a little when she said this, as though she meant that a heart like mine was somehow defective because I hadn’t had children. I didn’t think of myself as less able to feel love. But her comments made me question myself and wonder if by missing out on motherhood, I was missing out on something that would make me a better person. Barb worked full-time and had four kids, so it wasn’t as though she had to sacrifice her career just because she was a mother. I worked with countless women who managed their careers along with their families—it wasn’t that it wasn’t possible to do both; it was that I didn’t think I could.

Melody seemed like the only person who really understood how I felt. “I think you either have the mommy gene or you don’t,” she told me once when we were discussing the loud ticking of her own biological clock. “It’s probably like knowing if you’re gay or not. You just know.”

“Great,” I said, laughing. “My brother got the gay gene and I didn’t get the maternal one. My poor mother.” I knew my mom struggled with the idea that she likely was never going to be a grandmother, and ultimately, I felt responsible for depriving her of the experience. But even a severe case of daughter guilt wasn’t enough to convince me I’d make a good mother. I’d also decided to try to work through my fears when I met Victor. And now that he was the only parent to Max and Ava, it wouldn’t be fair for me to walk away. Not to me, not to Victor, and definitely not to the kids.

I glanced at the clock on the wall next to the bookcase. It was already ten; the hours had melted away. Victor was still with the kids—their cries were so raw, the sound reached in and squeezed the muscles in my chest. It made me think of my clients when they first came to Second Chances, grief wrenching them wide open. It was impossible to fathom the depths of their pain, and now it felt impossible to know Max and Ava’s.

I rose from the couch and made my way to our bed, my body aching with fatigue. I took a long, hot shower, climbed beneath the covers, and tried to distract myself with some Jon Stewart while I waited for Victor. I didn’t think I could sleep, but a while later, I woke to his gently shaking my shoulder, the television still on. “Do you mind moving to one of their rooms or on the couch?” he whispered. “I’m sorry, but I think they might sleep if they can be in bed with me.”

I blinked a few times and glanced at the clock. Midnight. I nodded. “Of course,” I said, my voice coming out like bits of gravel. I fumbled for the remote and turned off the TV. “Are you holding up okay?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.” His voice was ragged. He’d been crying, too. “I’m just trying to be there for them. There’s really nothing else I can do.”

I righted myself on the edge of the bed and put my arms around him, resting my cheek on his shoulder. “I love you.” I didn’t know what else to say.

He pulled back and gave me a soft kiss. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” I said, cringing a bit as I stood and made my way back to the couch, wondering if uttering those two tiny words had just turned me into a liar.