The Holding Place

Chapter Fourteen

I finger the small stuffed bear that I bought for Norah at the hospital gift shop nervously as I wait for my daughter to be brought into the visiting area by a nurse. This is the first time since my attempted suicide that I have seen her. I have gone over every possible scenario in group and in my private sessions with Dr. Leahy how this visit can go. I want it to go well, I need it to, but I have no way of knowing what my daughter has been told about me in the weeks that I have been away from her.


I know nothing about the woman who has been taking care of her for the past few weeks and I can only go on the little that Abby told me about her. The little I ever did manage to get out of her came at the end of much arguing and prying. My wife never had any desire to ever talk about her past or the people who comprised it. I know that Catherine, Abby’s mother, will be the one bringing Norah to the visit today. Claire has been becoming increasingly more tired since her chemotherapy treatments started a few weeks ago. 


The helplessness I have been trying to keep at bay for the past weeks is creeping back up on me as my mind takes me through the mess my life has become for the infinite time. Claire, the person who has always picked up the shattered pieces that I have left in my wake is no longer able to do it anymore. The future is bleak when it comes to what will happen to my daughter. Dr. Leahy has been honest with me in her professional opinion that I’m not ready to become a full time father. The hearing about what will decide the fate of my relationship with her is only a short month away.


It was very reluctantly that I signed the paper’s awarding temporary custody to Catherine when Claire begged me, her eyes full of heartbreak and tears, to consider that she is sick now and can barely take care of her own family. It would be selfish of me to expect her to continue to care for a child as complicated and fragile as Norah. The moment the pen touched paper I knew that Claire would no longer be in my corner when it came to helping me scramble through life anymore.


I’m terrified to think what type of person Catherine might be. There are secrets hidden beneath that immaculate appearance and those secrets are what drove Abby away from her home at a tender and young age. When I think of the relationship I had with my own parents I can’t imagine the type of secrets that can cut so deep that it would make a child want to live their life as if their parents never existed at all.


It has been a long time since I have visited the memory of my parents. There are more good memories than there are bad. I’m not sure why I never think about them. I have a box of my mother’s things packed up somewhere in my attic. It is filled with all of the knick knacks Claire and I made when we were growing up. My mother loved the drawings her children made more than the expensive paintings that hung on the wall in our dining room. Nothing ever made her happier than the smile on her children’s faces.


My father was much more reserved than my mother, spending long hours at the office and leaving the rearing of the children to his wife. He showed affection when it was due but he was never a man for giving hugs good-night or kisses goodbye. He preferred to avoid the awkwardness of my sister’s love for affection and was glad that I never asked for it. He wasn’t a cruel man. He loved my mother in a quiet way, giving her everything she ever wanted. He loved Claire and me too, that is something I have never doubted. My mother taught me how a woman likes to be loved and my father taught me how to love a woman like her.


I always thought that I would have met someone who reminded me of my mother and wanted to be loved and cared for in a quiet, gentle way. The jolting reaction I had when I first saw Abby surprised the hell out of me. My first assessment was that she was a pampered mean girl from some upper class suburb with parents who taught her no respect. The way she was acting that night at the restaurant and the conversation she loudly directed to my sister certainly made her deserving of those thoughts.


While my father taught me to be reserved he also taught me to protect the integrity of the ones that I loved and my sister and her young child were undeserving of such harsh words and the looks that were directed at her from the patrons in the restaurant that were the result of the conversation that took place at the table directly behind us.  Never in my entire life had I ever come across a girl as crass as Abby appeared to be that night and the rare tears of my usually perfectly composed and calm sister drove my protective instincts to the edge.


It became evident to me rather quickly that this leader of the pack was a misplaced one indeed. It was the initial wavering of eye contact and slight stumble backwards that my keen eye as a business man honed in on and took advantage of.  I never admitted it to her but right at that moment I felt the tug of cupid and gave her the opportunity for her to regain her composure and control of my confrontation.  She must have felt something for me too as I allowed her to fish, albeit adorably, for my phone number. To myself I gave her the credit that she proved to be quite resourceful when backed into an uncomfortable corner.


There couldn’t have been two more mismatched people in the world than Abby and I. I met her at a point in her life where she was desperate to break out of this protective shell she had built for herself and live in the world out loud. Nobody could ever deny that we were not enamored and in love with each other, the way that we looked at each other gave it away every time. She brought out the best in me and the change could be noticed by anybody who knew even a little bit about me.


Abby challenged the quiet way that I loved her at every opportunity, desperately trying to show me that the way my father loved my mother was not the way that I should love her.  I thought a new piece of jewelry or a generous allowance to go shopping was the best way to help speed up the healing of a tender heart. I shied away from her attempted declarations of love whenever we were in front of associates, friends or family. I attempted to quell her rebellious attitude towards the quiet and the calm.


What Abby wanted in her life was much different from what I wanted in her life. Where she wanted to speed up I wanted her to slow down. It took only a matter of months for me to realize that Abby wasn’t the type of woman to be swayed with flowers or expensive gifts when I failed to keep my word to her. I worked the long and grueling hours at the office so that she didn’t have to. I wanted to provide the best life for Abby and wanted to give her the freedom to enjoy a side of life she never had before.


I wanted to believe that her dreams of saving and making her mark in the world would be satisfied with local charities and fundraisers.  She snubbed my efforts to introduce her to local philanthropists who were known to me through my company contacts and she became intensely interested in disadvantaged children in urban areas. She made sure to make it clear to me that she was not a housewife and that she wouldn’t let her college education collect dust and much against my wishes she took a job as a mental health counselor with an urban school district about an hour and a half away from where we lived.


Norah was supposed to be the breath of fresh air our marriage desperately needed when we were approaching our three year anniversary. She had told me over and over again that she wasn’t ready for a child. She said that in a way she was still a child herself, still undergoing a metamorphosis from her youth. I refused to listen to her words, using the excuse that my father was gone and my mother dying to give her to final push in agreeing to have a child only if I would agree that she wouldn’t be required to put her career to the side.


Abby made no secret as we approached our third year of marriage that she was on the edge of letting go. We still loved each other but in all of the wrong way. Lovemaking came only after arguments. The glitter that once lit up her beautiful green eyes whenever she looked at me only came to her when she spoke about her job. She had her group of friends and I had mine, three years and we were virtually strangers.


A baby did nothing but widen the canyon that ran deep between us. Abby unwillingly fell in love with our daughter. She wouldn’t have given her up for anything in the world but the few moments I stole to peer in on her holding our daughter as she looked longingly out the second story window of our old Victorian that she loved gave away what her words could not. It tugged at my heart more than I thought it would to know that motherhood was not what she wanted. I did nothing to make it easier on her, doing what my father taught me how to do and deferring most of the parental duties to her.


The very thing I promised to give to my wife was what I had taken from her. Slowly but surely we grew from lost in each to lost in ourselves never knowing the right words to break the tense silence that settled between us during the last year of our marriage. Spoken words turned into notes left for each other and instructions on what to wear and where to meet. In public and at parties she adorned beautiful pearls and her perfect, white smile, laughing at the unfunny jokes of my colleagues while at my side. Nobody was ever able to tell how quickly the spirit inside of my wife was dying.


I was lost when I was with her and when I was without her. I tried every which way I knew how to in an effort to bring my wife back to me. Nothing I did spoke to her and it dampened my soul as much as it did hers. She knew how much I loved her. I told her every day that I couldn’t imagine my life without her. To those words she would always say, “You are already living this life without me.”


Abby would never explain to me what she meant when she uttered that statement to me. She wanted more emotions from me and I gave them to her. Arguments turned into the passionate exchange of words read in romance novels. She wanted me to show her that I felt as strongly as she did. I did exactly what she asked and it caused her to shrink even further away from me.


The night of the accident was the first time I had yelled at Abby in such a way, blaming who she was and not what she wore to the party as the reason why I was so angry at her. I left her no option to defend her actions and at that moment in time I didn’t care. All I cared about was the promotion that I was sure I would be recommended for in the following days. I wanted my wife to be as excited about my career as I was. I was a hypocrite to ask of such a thing from her when I had made no effort myself to take an interest in hers. The day she quit her job, three months after Norah was born, I brought home an extravagant bouquet of flowers and took her to dinner to what I thought was a celebration. Towards the end there was hardly any fight left in her at all.


After Norah was born every look she gave me burned a hole right through me. I would watch her get down on the ground to play with our daughter and the embers of jealousy would rear its ugly head inside of me when her emerald eyes would light up with the joy that our daughter gave to her. I wanted her to look at me like that, with tender love and joy.


I continue to absently run my finger across the soft fur of the stuffed bear in my hands. I want to give it to her and see her green eyes illuminate with delight, just the way her mother’s used to when she genuinely loved something that I had given her. I want to pull her into my arms and hold her tightly to the point where she has to ask me to let go because she is having trouble breathing. I want to give her love she hasn’t felt since she was six months old.


Floodgates have opened and the remaining time that I must wait for visiting hours to begin suddenly seems endless. I glance at the sterile clock on the wall and see that I have five more minutes to go. My hearing is hypersensitive and I hear every individual tick of the second hand on that blasted clock. My mind is wrapped around the last five years and the only feelings I can conjure up about them are those of loss and waste.


Five years of my precious daughter’s life I have allowed lying in neglect because of resentment as ludicrous as it is juvenile. My pounding heart pumps the burn of shame through my veins. I cannot even begin to count the people I have let down or the hearts I have broken.  In my wake there lies years of anguish and darkness, my selfishness allowing my loved ones to pay the price of pain that has been my own doing and undoing.


The door to the small visiting room I am sitting in swings open cautiously and I catch the dark flash of Norah’s hair tied up in a pink ribbon. She is holding on tightly to the hand of a woman who is no other than her grandmother. My heart squeezes tightly for a quick moment as the hand I am watching her hold is of the only grandparent she has ever met. It is just another thing I have taken away from my daughter.


“Go on, honey,” I hear Catherine urge to her gently. “He can’t wait to see you.”


It is far from the response I was expecting to hear from the older woman. I release a breath that I didn’t know I was holding when Norah comes fully through the door. For a split second I don’t know how to approach her but I quickly drop to my knee and hold out my arms to her.  My composure is almost lost when I see her eyes light up.


I say no words to her as I envelope her into my arms and squeeze tightly. I pull her slightly from me after a few moments of holding her and press a kiss to her small forehead. She is still bewildered and her eyes are clouded with uncertainty. My own eyes begin to water.


“Daddy, don’t cry,” Norah whispers in a small voice as she raises a tiny hand to wipe away a tear that is making its way down my cheek, “I love you.”