Read Online Breakdown Lane, The by Jacquelyn Mitchard - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jacquelyn Mitchard
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that—forty-two-year-olds had to have amnio—we couldn’t believe the tiny splendor of our daughter. Nothing had ever been so…perfect in miniature. I had forgotten. The idea that I had created this little life to stall my husband gripped me with remorse. I kissed a blessing on her head, whispering, “I wanted you, personally. You’re my honeycake.”
Leo and I clasped arms to hold her on the bed in the birthing room. Gabe and Caroline came in, horrified with embarrassment at the evidence of their parents’ physiology, and held her awkwardly, their natural graceful stances transformed into grasshopper elbows by unaccustomed awe.
“Way, Mom,” Gabe said.
“She’s pretty,” said Caro. “She has hair.”
Kodak moment.
Then Leo announced her name, and we all looked at him as if he’d dropped his transmission.
If the impending arrival of Aurora was the domestic equivalent of my leg tingling, her actual arrival opened the door for Leo’s departure. Leo had been sliding and, perhaps by force of will or lifelong restraint, holding himself back. Overnight, he was a downhill racer. I’d been okay with the free-range chicken and even philosophical about the garden o’ tubs. We’d always both been good, green liberals. Never cared much what anyone thought of our choices, really. But Aurora Borealis Steiner?
It was Caroline who said it. “What’s with her name?”
“It’s a mythic, and scientific, term for the northern lights, what we see in Door County,” Leo said.
“Oh,” Caroline said.
“It’s Latin,” Gabe said, “Like Ursus arctos horribilis .”
“What’s that mean?”
“Grizzly bear,” Gabe said.
“What’ll we call her?” Caro asked.
I said, “Probably Rory.”
Gabe said, “Probably Shorty.”
Leo spent the entire night of her birth slumped over his laptop in the recliner at the hospital sending out bulletins to who knows whom. I tossed and nursed and worried.
But why was I worried? Leo was still wry, smart, cute as a hoodlum, just a little more habitual a complainer than he always had been. He would cope with this new child, as he did with everything, by coming around slowly. And as he did, the nuttiness would evaporate, like sweat after a steam. He’d turned forty-nine and realized he was going to die, I decided, and had wanted to try to litigate with the universe. People often went through stretches of grazing the loco weeds before settling into the back forty. That was the simple version. The one I gave Gabe at first. And I had no real reason to think otherwise. Leo was my husband and college sweetheart. My best friend of the other gender. We had a history as old as Moses. I don’t think husbands and wives remain the soul mates they were at twenty for all their lives. Especially if they have families. That doesn’t mean they don’t have good marriages. I figured I’d ride it out and we’d have a cute kid, who, when she turned sixteen, would change her middle name to Jane.
Seventeen months after Aurora’s birth, Leo announced he was taking a “mini-sabbatical.”
“You’re taking a semester off?” I asked, astounded. “Now? What for? It’s not a great time for this, Lee.”
I gestured at the room around us. Despite the intervention of a cleaning team (Leo hadn’t objected) our living room looked like an abandoned base camp on Everest. Unfolded clothes, identifiable as clean or dirty only by smell. Empty juice boxes, collapsed at the waist. Game pieces that crunched like ice cubes under my feet when I went to the bathroom, which wasn’t often, since I hadn’t bounced back from Aurora’s birth the way I had from the other kids’. That concerned me, and it wasn’t only my age. I was having trouble reading my mail, even with my new prescription reading glasses. I heard funny things, like little flute solos, that no one else could hear. It was getting harder to ignore everything.
Just the week before, I’d thrown a little shower for Cathy and turned it into
Leo and I clasped arms to hold her on the bed in the birthing room. Gabe and Caroline came in, horrified with embarrassment at the evidence of their parents’ physiology, and held her awkwardly, their natural graceful stances transformed into grasshopper elbows by unaccustomed awe.
“Way, Mom,” Gabe said.
“She’s pretty,” said Caro. “She has hair.”
Kodak moment.
Then Leo announced her name, and we all looked at him as if he’d dropped his transmission.
If the impending arrival of Aurora was the domestic equivalent of my leg tingling, her actual arrival opened the door for Leo’s departure. Leo had been sliding and, perhaps by force of will or lifelong restraint, holding himself back. Overnight, he was a downhill racer. I’d been okay with the free-range chicken and even philosophical about the garden o’ tubs. We’d always both been good, green liberals. Never cared much what anyone thought of our choices, really. But Aurora Borealis Steiner?
It was Caroline who said it. “What’s with her name?”
“It’s a mythic, and scientific, term for the northern lights, what we see in Door County,” Leo said.
“Oh,” Caroline said.
“It’s Latin,” Gabe said, “Like Ursus arctos horribilis .”
“What’s that mean?”
“Grizzly bear,” Gabe said.
“What’ll we call her?” Caro asked.
I said, “Probably Rory.”
Gabe said, “Probably Shorty.”
Leo spent the entire night of her birth slumped over his laptop in the recliner at the hospital sending out bulletins to who knows whom. I tossed and nursed and worried.
But why was I worried? Leo was still wry, smart, cute as a hoodlum, just a little more habitual a complainer than he always had been. He would cope with this new child, as he did with everything, by coming around slowly. And as he did, the nuttiness would evaporate, like sweat after a steam. He’d turned forty-nine and realized he was going to die, I decided, and had wanted to try to litigate with the universe. People often went through stretches of grazing the loco weeds before settling into the back forty. That was the simple version. The one I gave Gabe at first. And I had no real reason to think otherwise. Leo was my husband and college sweetheart. My best friend of the other gender. We had a history as old as Moses. I don’t think husbands and wives remain the soul mates they were at twenty for all their lives. Especially if they have families. That doesn’t mean they don’t have good marriages. I figured I’d ride it out and we’d have a cute kid, who, when she turned sixteen, would change her middle name to Jane.
Seventeen months after Aurora’s birth, Leo announced he was taking a “mini-sabbatical.”
“You’re taking a semester off?” I asked, astounded. “Now? What for? It’s not a great time for this, Lee.”
I gestured at the room around us. Despite the intervention of a cleaning team (Leo hadn’t objected) our living room looked like an abandoned base camp on Everest. Unfolded clothes, identifiable as clean or dirty only by smell. Empty juice boxes, collapsed at the waist. Game pieces that crunched like ice cubes under my feet when I went to the bathroom, which wasn’t often, since I hadn’t bounced back from Aurora’s birth the way I had from the other kids’. That concerned me, and it wasn’t only my age. I was having trouble reading my mail, even with my new prescription reading glasses. I heard funny things, like little flute solos, that no one else could hear. It was getting harder to ignore everything.
Just the week before, I’d thrown a little shower for Cathy and turned it into
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