10. Jori (III)
It
was never quiet inside Vintaj, where classic rock was played on a constant
rotation. But in the month since Lucy
McLean had been born, the record store’s customers had shopped to a different
tune: the sound of a colicky baby
crying, on a seemingly endless loop.
That
morning was much the same, though the muffled cries were accompanied by the
clomping footsteps of a frazzled new mother who was frantically searching for
her keys. “C’mon, c’mon, keys… where are
you?” Jori muttered to herself, raking a hand through her hair as she paced the
kitchen floor. Lucy was strapped into
her car seat on the table, screaming her head off. “Shh, Lucy, please,” Jori begged. “Mama can’t think.” She closed her eyes, trying to
concentrate. Where could she have left
her keys? They weren’t on the hook by
the door, where she usually kept them.
They weren’t in her purse, though maybe she should check again…
Lucy
cried louder as Jori turned her bag upside down, shaking its contents out onto
the kitchen counter. She rifled through
everything – wallet, cell phone, mp3 player, lip gloss, lotion, hand sanitizer,
tissues, tampons, painkillers, coupons, and gum. No keys.
She wedged her hand into all of the pockets, turning them inside
out. Still no keys.
She
did the same to the diaper bag, poking through the extra diapers and wipes,
bottles and formula, pacifiers and toys, and a change of clothes. The only keys she found were the set of
colorful plastic ones Lucy liked. She
tried shaking them in front of Lucy’s face now, but they did nothing to calm
the baby. Lucy screamed on, and Jori
sighed, resigning herself to face reality.
“We’re
gonna be so late.”
She
should have been on her way to the pediatrician’s office, where Lucy was
scheduled for her one-month check-up, but the morning had only gone from bad to
worse. First Jori had overslept, after
being up most of the night with her newborn.
When she’d gone in to get Lucy for her morning feeding, she’d found that
the baby had blown out her diaper since the last one, which meant not only a
diaper change, but an impromptu bath before she could get Lucy dressed for the
day. Once the crib sheet was in the washer
and the baby was in her carrier – clean, fed, and fully-clothed – Jori had
scrambled to get herself ready, only to discover, on her way out the door, that
she’d somehow managed to misplace the keys to her truck.
“Maybe
Daddy’s seen Mama’s keys…” Still
thinking out loud, Jori hitched the diaper bag up higher onto her shoulder,
hooked her purse over her forearm, and hoisted Lucy’s carrier off the table
with her free hand. “If not, we’ll just
have to take his car instead.” She
struggled out the door, down the stairs, and into the store, in search of
AJ. Instead, she found Howie behind the
counter.
“Hey,
Jor – everything okay?” he asked, when he looked up and saw her.
“Where’s
AJ?” she demanded. “I’ve gotta take Lucy
to the doctor, and I can’t find my fucking keys.”
Howie
frowned, his eyes full of concern. “AJ’s
out for the day. What’s wrong with
Lucy?”
“What? Nothing’s wrong with Lucy; it’s just a
check-up, but – what do you mean, AJ’s out for the day? Out where?”
“He
went to see a seller about buying an old jukebox,” said Howie, sounding
surprised by her question. “He didn’t
tell you?”
“No!”
spat Jori, although maybe he had. In the
back of her mind, she tried to remember what she and AJ had talked about before
they’d gone to bed the previous night, but she was drawing a blank. It was possible that he had mentioned going
out of town and she hadn’t bothered to pay attention.
“I’m
pretty sure he took your truck,” Howie added.
“I don’t think a jukebox would fit in his car.”
“Then
he took my keys too! Damn him,” Jori
cursed, as she realized how much time she’d wasted searching for something
she’d had no chance of finding. She
didn’t have a spare key for her truck, so of course AJ would have taken hers
and left her the keys to his car. With a
sigh of exasperation, she set Lucy’s carrier down on the counter. “Watch her a sec, will you?”
Before
Howie could sputter a response, she sprinted back upstairs, cursing her own
stupidity with every step. She let
herself into the apartment, and sure enough, AJ’s keys were right where he
always left them, on his dresser, in an antique ashtray shaped like a bathtub
with a ceramic nude woman sitting inside it.
Jori rolled her eyes at it, snatched the keys, and raced back downstairs
to relieve Howie. “Thank you,” she
panted, lifting the car seat off the counter.
“See ya later.” She could feel
Howie’s eyes on her back as she rushed out the back door.
She
knew what he must have been thinking, and he had every right to think it: she was a total idiot. Jori had thought the so-called “pregnancy
brain” would go away once she had the baby, but although she wasn’t pregnant
anymore, she felt just as scattered. She
blamed it on a lack of sleep; she hadn’t gotten a full night’s rest since Lucy
was born. Every few hours, the baby
woke, crying, for a feeding, and every few hours, it was Jori who had to drag
herself out of bed. She tried to make up
for it by napping while Lucy slept during the day, but it didn’t seem to help
much. For the past few weeks, she’d felt
like she was walking through a fog.
Jori
stepped out into the sunlight and blinked, temporarily blinded by the
brightness. When her eyes adjusted, she
saw AJ’s car sitting in its usual spot in the parking lot, next to the empty
space her truck usually occupied. She
was rather attached to the truck, an ancient Ford she’d inherited from her
grandfather and detailed herself with spray paint, but even she had to admit,
AJ’s car was more practical for running errands with a newborn.
She
slid her bags across the back seat before she put Lucy in. The baby was still crying, and Jori’s hands
shook as they fumbled with the base of her car seat. “Shhh…” she repeated again and again. “Shhh…”
She’d read that this sort of “white noise” soothed colicky babies, but
with Lucy, nothing seemed to work. Even
a ride in the car, which was supposed to be calming, had no effect. Lucy screamed the whole way to the doctor’s
office. The other mothers in the waiting
room looked at Jori when she walked in, judging her with their eyes. None of their kids were crying.
Jori
swung her hair over her shoulder and held her head high as she crossed the room
to check in at the front desk, but inside, she felt ashamed and
embarrassed. She managed to hold herself
together until she was in the privacy of an exam room, and then she broke
down. “I just don’t know how to get her
to stop crying,” she sobbed to the pediatrician, burying her face in her hands
and rubbing her tired eyes. “No matter
what I try, she just cries and cries. I
don’t know what I’m doing wrong!”
She
felt a light hand on her shoulder and looked up to see a sympathetic smile on
the doctor’s face. Dr. Nancy Magill had
been a pediatrician for twenty-some years, and Jori supposed she had seen and
heard it all. “You’re not doing anything
wrong,” she assured her. “Having a
colicky baby can be stressful, and many new mothers feel overwhelmed. Have you tried any of these techniques?” She went over some tips, everything from
burping the baby more frequently during feedings to eliminating certain foods
from Jori’s own diet. “Some mothers have
found that cutting back on caffeine helps,” she suggested.
Jori
sighed and wiped her eyes with her sleeve.
She wasn’t a coffee drinker, but she depended on Mountain Dew to keep
her functioning after a long night with little sleep. “I’ll try to cut back,” she promised,
reminding herself that if it got Lucy to stop crying, she wouldn’t need the
caffeine anyway.
Dr.
Magill nodded encouragingly. There was
still the ghost of a smile on her face, but behind it was a more serious
expression. “Whatever you do, don’t
forget to take care of yourself, too,” she told Jori, offering her a tissue. “Is there someone who can take the baby while
you take a break?”
Jori
shrugged. She took another swipe at her
eyes with the tissue, then crumpled it in her fist. “My boyfriend, AJ, takes care of her in the
evening, once his store is closed.”
“And
what about during the day?”
With
a sniffle of self-pity, Jori shook her head.
She had no real friends in Lockland; for the two years she’d lived
there, her whole world had revolved around AJ.
Now she regretted not making more of an effort to make connections in
the community.
Dr.
Magill was still studying her with a look of concern. “You know, it’s not a sign of weakness to ask
for help…”
“Like
what, a nanny?” Jori let out a humorless
laugh and looked down at her lap, picking at the soggy tissue. “Like we could afford one.”
“That’s
not necessarily what I meant,” said Dr. Magill gently. “Sometimes it helps just to have someone to
talk to during the day, especially when you start feeling down.”
Something
about her tone of voice cause Jori’s head to shoot up. She eyed the doctor suspiciously. “You mean like a shrink?”
Dr.
Magill didn’t bat an eyelash. “Do you
think it would be helpful to talk to someone like that?”
Jori
held her gaze. “Do you think I need to
talk to someone like that?”
“I
think you might find it beneficial. A
lot of mothers experience the same kind of emotions you’re feeling, Ms. Wilder. It may just be the stress and fatigue getting
to you, it may be hormones, or it may be the ‘baby blues,’ but true postpartum
depression is not uncommon among mothers of colicky babies, and it’s not
something to take lightly, either. If
you’d like, I can refer you to a therapist who specializes in women’s health
issues.”
Jori
frowned as she considered the offer, remembering her resentment of the
psychiatrist who had diagnosed her bipolar disorder and drugged her with
antidepressants and mood-stabilizers until she couldn’t tell how she felt
anymore. She didn’t want to fall back
into that spiral. But out of love for
Lucy, she accepted the referral, tucking the small slip of paper into her
pocket with the promise that she would look into it if she didn’t start feeling
better soon.
Things will get better, Jori told herself as
she drove home from the pediatrician’s office that day. It was quiet in the car, an oldies station
playing softly in the background as Lucy snoozed in the back seat. She had fussed through her check-up, but
finally crashed at the end. At least she
wasn’t crying anymore. Despite the
colic, she’d been given a clean bill of health, and although Jori was relieved,
the thought lingered in the back of her mind:
But if there’s nothing wrong with
her… then maybe there’s something wrong with me.
The
road blurred before her eyes as they filled with fresh tears. She reached for the sunglasses she kept in
the glove box, only to realize she was in AJ’s car. She fumbled through the compartment, anyway,
but found only a pack of cigarettes. The
mere sight of them was enough to make her start craving the nicotine
again. She’d stopped smoking when she’d
found out she was pregnant, and AJ only smoked in the car, never around Lucy. Jori shoved the pack back into the glove
compartment and slammed it shut.
Sniffling,
she returned her eyes to the road, just in time to see a massive pothole
looming ahead. There was no time to
swerve around it. She struck it with a
sickening thunk that sent the whole
car bouncing on its shocks. The bump was
big enough to jostle Lucy, who woke, startled, and began to cry. “No…” Jori moaned, gripping the steering
wheel. “No, no, no…” She eased the car to the shoulder of the road
and put it in park, switching on her hazard lights. Worried about a flat, she jumped out to check
the front tire and was relieved to find that it still looked full, with no
obvious signs of damage. But when she
climbed back into the car, Lucy was still crying.
“Shh…”
Jori whispered, turning around in her seat so that Lucy could see her
face. She tried smiling, though she felt
like bursting into tears and crying right along with Lucy. “It’s okay, baby girl,” she said. “We’re okay.
We’re okay.”
It
was the mantra she kept chanting to herself as she put the car in gear and
pulled back onto the road. But later,
after she’d finished breastfeeding and lain Lucy down for a nap, Jori found the
doctor’s referral in her pocket as she was changing her clothes. The piece of paper fluttered to the floor,
and she stooped to pick it up, sinking down on the edge of the bed to read the
name and number of the therapist Dr. Magill had recommended. She hesitated, stewing over it for a few
minutes, before she finally reached for her cell phone and dialed.
***