Daisy (4 page)

“Hey, Amy,” I said, scanning the paper I’d just printed as I let myself into her office. “I was looking over this addendum for the Clark Construction policy, and did you ask them about—” I looked up and took in her red eyes and splotchy complexion. She wiped quickly at her eyes and ducked her head as though maybe she could hide from me. After pausing a moment, I shut the door to her office and turned the wand to close the vertical blinds on the interior window of her office, enclosing us in the privacy we needed.

“What happened?” I asked, sliding into the seat across from her desk. The policy was forgotten as I watched her face. She shook her head and looked as though she might speak before dropping her head into her hands.

“It didn’t take,” she said in a throaty whisper. My heart sank for her; she and her husband had been trying to get pregnant for three years. I moved around the desk and put my arms around her shoulders, giving her permission to let down her attempted façade. She leaned into me and began to sob into the sleeve of my jacket. I rubbed her back and ached with her while she let it all out.

Amy and I had worked together for almost four years, ever since she’d transferred from the Sacramento office. She was almost ten years younger than I was, but as the only two female commercial agents in the office, we tended to stick together. Paul and I had attended her wedding just two months after returning home from our own honeymoon. A year later, she’d confessed her fears to me that something was wrong. She’d expected to be pregnant by now. I’d assured her that these things took time—though they never had with me—and she began to see me as someone she could talk to.

Her mother was too sympathetic, which Amy said made her feel like a little girl. Amy’s older sister already had two young children and little time to commiserate. Amy’s friends were either handing their babies off to their nannies in the morning, had already decided not to reproduce, or were always offering her unwanted advice. I was none of those people. I was just Daisy, the gal at work who would cheer her on or cheer her up, depending on the circumstances. But it was getting harder to fill that role. This was Amy’s fourth round of in vitro. The hormones and expectations were wearing her out. And now this one hadn’t worked either. What do you say in a situation like that?

I didn’t know. So I continued to hold her and, for a minute, I even let myself reflect on my own loss—the closest I could come to truly relating to how she felt right now. December had been twelve, Stormy was two, and I was pregnant, which was the only reason Jared had agreed to go to marriage counseling in a final effort to save our family. Fifteen years later, I couldn’t remember if I had been excited about the pregnancy. Did I see it as the possible link that would keep us together? Did I hope it would guilt-trip him into staying? I didn’t know. I
did
know that I was overwhelmed by everything that was happening to us at the time. I was desperate to hang on to my marriage, though my motives were shaky. If we could have loved that baby, could we maybe, possibly, have loved each other enough to make our marriage work?

We’d never know.

At thirteen weeks I started cramping—bad. I ended up hemorrhaging with the miscarriage and staying at the hospital overnight after getting a D and C. I can still remember staring up at the ceiling that night, alone, exhausted, emotionally vacant, and realizing that without this baby, Jared and I had nothing else to build on. My baby was gone. My marriage was over. I had failed, again.

We stopped going to counseling. Jared stopped trying to hide the phone calls he got from a girl named Jenna, and I finally gave up. There was really nothing left to save other than the accomplishment of being married and that wasn’t a good enough reason anymore. For the second time in my life, I became a single mother, only this time I had a preteen and a toddler to feel insufficient for. I had felt like a failed woman in every sense of the word, and losing that baby had been devastating on so many levels.

Amy wasn’t in my same situation, however. She had an adoring husband and a solid career, and if her lifelong dream of motherhood was just out of reach, it still wasn’t impossible. There was hope for her; she was not at a dead end, but that didn’t mean it didn’t feel that way for her right now.

Finally, once she wasn’t clinging to me so tightly and could take a full breath, I pulled back and wiped a few strands of hair from her wet face. “What on earth are you doing in the office today?”

Amy looked at her desk; folders and paperwork covered almost every surface. “The Trodin account is past due, and Lenny needed me to train him on the new umbrella package and . . .” She wasn’t convinced by her own excuses and let out a staggered breath. “I didn’t want to be home alone.” Her chin quivered but she tried to straighten in her chair. She looked up at me and asked, “Why doesn’t God want me to be a mother?”

“Oh, sweetie,” I said, smoothing her hair again. “This isn’t about God.”

“Then why doesn’t my uterus want me to be a mother?”

I thought about that, and suddenly had a mental image of a cartoon uterus running down the street, pushing a stroller. I cracked a smile, and apparently Amy must have been desperate for a laugh because she smiled too. Before we knew it, we were both laughing, but pretty soon the laughter had turned to crying all over again.

“Mick knows, right?” I finally asked when we got control of ourselves for the second time. Why had he
let
her come in today?

She looked away, and it all made a little more sense.

“Amy, you need to tell him,” I said sternly.

“I can’t,” she said, a definite whine in her voice. “He’ll be so . . . sad. I’ve already had to tell him this three times before.
Three.
I can’t even imagine forming the words.” New tears rose in her eyes as she began grabbing handfuls of Mick’s disappointment to add to her own.

“Do you want me to do it?” I asked. I knew it was presumptuous, but my sisters and I used to quit jobs for each other over the phone when we were in high school because we couldn’t stand hearing someone else’s disappointment toward us. This was kind of like that, right?

Amy’s eyes went wide with hope. “Would you?” She scrambled for her purse. She pulled out her purple cell phone, toggled to a dial pad, and pressed speed dial two.

I accepted the phone and stepped out into the hall. Mick answered with a “Hello, sugar-bottom.”

“It’s Daisy,” I said. “From Amy’s office.”

“Oh,” he said, and though I couldn’t see it, I knew his cheeks were bright red. “Is . . . everything okay?”

“Not really.” I relayed to him what had happened. He was silent. Then he cursed under his breath. “I’m sorry, Mick.” Though I didn’t know him well, I knew he was heavily invested in the pursuit of children. “Amy couldn’t bring herself to tell you; she’s having a really hard time.”

“Thank you for being there,” Mick said. “Can I talk to her?”

I opened the door to Amy’s office and covered the mouthpiece. Amy was trying to work on the computer, but I could see that her head and her heart weren’t in it. She wiped at her eyes when she turned to me.

“Mick wants to talk to you,” I said.

“Okay,” Amy said quietly. “Thanks for breaking the news.”

“You bet,” I said as I handed her the phone. I was tempted to tell her to go home, but it wasn’t my place. Amy was a big girl. Instead I let myself out of her office, making a mental note to check in with her in half an hour.

As I headed back to my office, I saw Lenny walking toward me. “Are you on your way to talk to Amy, by chance?” I asked; Amy’s office was the only one past mine.

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. Lenny was twenty-two if he was a day, tall, thin, and ill at ease in a suit. He was the newest member of the sales staff and was trying to act and look the part, but it didn’t fit just yet. I wasn’t worried; none of us fit the part when we started. He’d grow into it.

“I’d give her a little time, if I were you,” I said.

“Why?” he asked, looking toward her office. I could read the anxiety on his face of not being able to get the training he’d been planning on.

“Girl stuff,” I said.

His head snapped back to face me, his expression fearful. “Really?” His feet started moving him back to his cubical likely before he realized what he was doing.

Before I stepped into my office, I looked over my shoulder toward Amy’s office and hoped she’d be okay. I wanted to give her all kinds of comfort and assure her that one of these days, one of the procedures would work. But how did I know? I’d always felt embarrassed and guilty that I’d found myself unexpectedly in “the family way” twice whereas good, centered women like Amy had to work so hard for what came so easy to me. But then, while infertility might not have been my cross to bear, I’d had my fair share of other Goliaths.

I settled in at my desk and turned to my computer before I remembered that I’d left the Clark addendum, and the questions I had wanted to ask, in Amy’s office. That, coupled with the unsettled feeling in my stomach likely triggered by my own nostalgic memories, had me feeling eager for distraction. I glanced at my door before going to Amazon.com. I hadn’t managed to get to the bookstore to pick up a copy of the book for next month’s book group—
The
Poisonwood Bible
by Barbara Kingsolver—and there were four holds ahead of me at the library. Amazon to the rescue.

I’d never read the book, but Athena, the Greek goddess with those beautiful eyes, had recently bought it, and Ruby had read it several years ago. The landing page came up on Amazon’s website and I skimmed the contents. “Five hundred and forty-six pages?” I read. “Seriously?”

I took a breath—I couldn’t remember the last book I’d read that was that long. I’d even resorted to CDs from the library for the last couple Harry Potter books. “I can do this,” I told myself. But I would need the book sooner than next week. I closed Amazon and looked up the Barnes and Noble where I’d met Ruby a couple of weeks ago. They had two copies in stock and agreed to hold one for me until six o’clock. I thanked them and hung up. Five hundred and forty-six pages? Beyond the ability to finish it, I hoped I would like it. I didn’t have enough reading time to waste it frivolously. But then, Athena and Ruby were both poised and educated women. If they could make time for it, so could I.

Amy walked past my office a few minutes later, her purse and jacket over her arm as she looked at the floor. I was glad she was going home. After retrieving my paperwork from her now-empty office, I was back to work proofreading the latest policy when my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello, this is Daisy,” I said, holding the phone against my shoulder while I corrected an error on the page.

“This is Mary Dean, one of the secretaries from Lake Forest High.”

“Hello,” I said, finishing up my correction as I tried to think of what this call could be about. Had I ever had a call from the high school? I marked where I’d stopped reading on the document and gave Mary Dean my full attention.

“Vice Principal Keets would like to set up a meeting with you.”

“Okay,” I said carefully. “In regards to what?”

“I don’t really know,” Mary Dean said, sounding a little sheepish. “I just schedule his appointments. He’s got a ten thirty spot open tomorrow morning. Could you come in at that time?”

Right smack-dab in the middle of the workday. How convenient. “Yes,” I said, scrambling for a pen so I could write down the meeting in my planner. I knew my morning was free because I always set aside Wednesday mornings to catch up on policy changes and overall file organization, but I didn’t have too much of that to work on tomorrow. In that sense, the timing was good. That said, it was never good to have a meeting with your child’s vice principal.

“Excellent,” Mary Dean said. “I’ve got you down. Just come to the main office.”

I finished the call and stared at the note in my planner as I tapped my pen. Stormy wasn’t a troublemaker. She got decent grades. So why would the vice principal want to meet with me? The unsettled feeling in my stomach got worse. I did not have time for this! And yet, I was Mom—hooray, hooray—which meant I would have to
make
time.

I put down my pen and went back to my corrections, but my mind was rolling over possible reasons for the meeting. Truancy? Talking back to teachers? Failing classes? These were the parts of motherhood that no one had told Amy about—the moments when you felt like you’d failed somewhere but didn’t know how, which meant you’d probably keep on making the same mistake. Ignorance really was bliss. I knew Amy’s heart was broken, but I couldn’t help wondering if she’d be quite so devastated if she knew about the not-so-bright-and-shiny moments of motherhood.