The Marriage Wish

She nodded her agreement, because there was going to be no way to dissuade him and walked with him to her car. He followed immediately behind her as she drove to her house. Scott got out and came up to the front door with her.

  “Will you call me when you have news?” Jennifer asked him. She hated the fact she wasn’t going to be there with him.

  “I’ll call you.” Scott gently kissed her. “Please, don’t think about kids tonight. Don’t beat yourself up. Promise me?”

  There were tears in her eyes as she nodded. “I promise,” she whispered.

  The phone rang at 9:00 p.m. Jennifer had gone to bed but was awake, snuggled under the covers, thinking. Her eyes were dry. She had checked the tears by force of will. She didn’t know how to process what had happened, and the intense sadness was overwhelming. She’d had no idea that the fear had burned so deep inside, until she’d tried to walk past it.

  “Heather had a baby girl. Mary Elizabeth. Seven pounds. Both of them are doing fine.”

  Jennifer squeezed her eyes shut and let out a deep sigh of relief. “Thank you, Scott. That’s the best news you could have told me.”

  “How are you doing, Jen?” She could hear the controlled pain in his voice, the fact he wasn’t coping with what had happened any better than she was.

  “I’ll be okay, Scott.” She struggled to put some confidence in the words that she didn’t feel.

  “Can I come by?” She heard the plea and closed her eyes. She had heard that plea before on the beach the first morning, and she had pushed him away then, and she was going to be forced to do it again and it was killing her. She couldn’t talk right now, not until she dealt with the churn inside and could talk from some sort of level perspective.

  “I’ve already turned in for the night. Could we get together tomorrow?”

  His silence was so pain filled. Why did things have to be like this? Why did she have to hurt him like this? It was going to get worse, not better, and it was killing her. “I’ll call you. We can go out for dinner and a movie,” Scott offered.

  “I’ll look forward to it, Scott.”

  She hung up the phone after they said goodbye. Rubbed her eyes. It was there, staring them both in the face. The uncertainty of whether the relationship was going to survive. Prayer. She needed to pray.

  Lord, I panicked. Deep inside, I panicked. And I couldn’t control it. And I wanted out. And if I’d had to abandon Scott to get away I would have done it. What am I suppose to do now? It’s there. It’s not moving. I felt death tonight, felt the same icy chill of death I felt as I sat beside Colleen’s incubator and realized she had not taken another breath. I can’t fight death. I don’t have that kind of courage. If it’s going to stay there, sitting inside, cold and unyielding, I’ve got no choice but to tell Scott goodbye.

  Scott walked the beach with Quigley late that night. If a few tears slipped that no one could see, they went unnoticed. Jennifer was hurting so badly. And he so badly wanted them to be able to have children.

  Chapter Eleven

  It was late when Scott arrived at Jennifer’s to pick her up for dinner. He’d been forced to call her from work and move the time, when a late crisis in the day had necessitated another meeting. Andrew had been there at the meeting, and Scott knew his presence had saved him. He’d just about blown his temper at a line supervisor, and Andrew had stepped in and prevented it from happening. The guy had been wrong, but it had only been a mistake, not malicious, and blowing his temper would have been a lousy way to present himself.

  He needed a break from this. He needed the pain to go away.

  Lord, don’t let the anger blow toward Jennifer. It’s the situation that’s triggering the anger, the fear inside, but she’ll see it as her fault. I’m frustrated that there is so much left to do for Jennifer to heal. So much more time needed, so much fear inside me that we won’t have children. What if it doesn’t work out? What if Jennifer can’t heal? What do we do then?

  Scott parked the car and turned off the ignition and deliberately rested his hands across the steering wheel.

  Lord, it’s not going inside the house with me, this emotion. We both need a break. So take it, Lord, and help me give her what we both need, faith that You’ll take care of this. Please.

  Jen opened the front door when he knocked, and Scott was grateful to see the calmness in her brown eyes. She was in better shape than he had expected. He stepped inside and hugged her, and she hugged him back.

  “I went ahead and fixed us dinner since I didn’t know what time you might get free. I really would prefer to stay in tonight,” she said as she took his coat.

  “You can cook?” he teased, and she swatted his arm. “Well I didn’t know. Not everyone can.” He tugged her back into his arms as an apology. “What did you fix?”

  “Pizza. And yes, I made it from the crust up. It’s good.”

  “It smells delicious.” He meant it. He could smell the yeast in the dough rising as the crust cooked, the cheese melting.

  She leaned back in his arms. “Let’s not talk about it tonight, okay? Not kids, not the panic, not Colleen. Not any of it.”

  His eyes closed when she made the request, and he rested his forehead against her hair. The sigh came from deep inside. Thank you, Lord. They needed time more than they needed words. “You have a deal.” He smiled, not moving his head from where it rested against her hair. “But only if I get control of the TV remote.” He’d known it would get a smile, but he hadn’t counted on the gentle elbow in his ribs.

  “Hey.”

  “At least Jerry would flip me for it.”

  He picked her up.

  “A quarter, Scott, not literally.” She was laughing, and it was the first time he’d heard the sound in a long time. It was a beautiful sound. Scott lowered her feet back to the floor and gently kissed her.

  “Check the pizza and let’s go surf the channels for something funny to watch.”

  They said nothing profound the whole evening, just sat on the floor in front of the couch and ate great pizza and laughed at old episodes of “Coach,” and “Murphy Brown,” and watched Doris Day and Cary Grant fall in love, and occasionally Scott would lean over and kiss Jennifer just for the pleasure of the contact.

  Scott was traveling to San Francisco for a conference. The plane was somewhere over the Rockies and the view out the window was breathtaking, but he wasn’t enjoying it. A folder was open in his lap and yet to be read; his mind wasn’t on work, even though he was presenting a session.

  The stress he had seen in her eyes was killing him. Jennifer was in so much pain. If only he could truthfully tell her he didn’t want children. All this pain would go away. But he couldn’t tell her that. He really wanted a family.

  He needed to call her, just to hear her voice. Make sure she hadn’t run. She was feeling so guilty, feeling like the fear was her fault. But it wasn’t. Scott could see in her pain how badly the trauma of Colleen’s death had affected her. The fear was a natural protective measure against the pain, and it was the pain that was the enemy.

  He thought about three dates swiftly approaching, Thanksgiving, the anniversary of Colleen’s death—he winced at that one—and Christmas. And he knew all of them were going to be hard on Jennifer. He couldn’t keep hurting her. He had to let the pain go and give her the time she needed to heal. He had to keep the faith that she would be able to heal.

  He was gone four days, and when he returned, it was to find Jennifer’s message on his machine saying she was going to need to cancel their dinner date for the next night, that her editor needed her to turn around some revisions to the last Thomas Bradford book overnight. He listened to the message and rubbed his hand over his face and wished he could call her and be the lighthearted friend she so badly needed. Whenever he called her now he seemed to only add to the pain she felt; he was the reminder now of her fear and it haunted him.

  Scott reluctantly didn’t call her. They needed to be married. He needed to be able to hold her and not let her go,
and if they couldn’t talk, at least they could share the silence.

  The house was empty and lonely. Knowing the pile of work at the office after four days of being gone was going to be steep, Scott decided he might as well spend two hours at the office getting started on the work he had to do. Work didn’t take his mind off the problems, but it at least forced him to keep moving.

  She couldn’t put off talking to Scott about children any longer.

  Jennifer sat beside him at the Thanksgiving table, watched him with his family and knew she couldn’t put off talking to him any longer. She loved him, and he wanted a family, and she knew the reality. He thought time was helping. It was going to kill her to admit the reality to him. She hid her troubled thoughts as best she could. Scott was relaxed, and she didn’t want to rob him of that today.

  The guys went out back to play some basketball after dinner, and Jennifer smiled as she watched them. Heather joined her, carrying a now-awake Mary Elizabeth. She was just finishing a bottle.

  “How’s she doing?” Jennifer asked, envious.

  “Quite well. She is a very even-tempered baby. She only gets me up twice during the night,” Heather replied with a smile, turning down the blanket so Jennifer could see her little hands.

  “Could I hold her?” Jennifer asked, surprising herself.

  “Sure,” Heather replied. She slid the bottle to one side and handed Jennifer the second cloth diaper she was carrying. “She needs to burp.”

  Very carefully, Jennifer took the infant. The infant was waving her arms, trying to smile, with bright blue eyes and full cheeks, there was nothing frail or premature about her. She weighed double what Colleen had ever weighed. Jennifer eased the infant onto her shoulder and gently patted her back.

  Jennifer grinned when the baby took a fistful of her hair and started to tug. “You find this very tempting, don’t you, honey?” She gently loosened the baby’s grip. It felt so wonderful to be holding a baby again. Jennifer blinked away tears that threatened to fall. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t.

  She tried to think about what it would be like to be pregnant again, have her own baby, and the joy she felt turned to almost panic. Mary Elizabeth suddenly looked like Colleen. Jennifer blinked hard and forced herself to take a deep breath. “Thank you, Heather.” Jennifer handed Mary Elizabeth back carefully, grateful for the chance to hold her, her smile sad, knowing what she had just learned was going to change things for the worst.

  “Jennifer, I’m sorry.”

  Heather did understand the tears that threatened to fall, and Jennifer gave her a tremulous smile. “You have a beautiful baby, Heather,” she said, fighting for her composure.

  The game outside began to break up. Jennifer forced the sadness away.

  Scott came in with a smile, tugged Jennifer down beside him on the couch in the living room to watch the football game with him, kept her tucked firmly under his arm for the rest of the day. Jennifer loved him for it, for the comfort his presence brought.

  They left his parents’ house early in the evening. Scott took Jennifer home, and at her request came in for coffee. He leaned down to kiss her as they entered the house, and she tipped her head back and let the kiss deepen, feeling desperate. She loved him so much. She would give anything not to have to say what she had to say.

  She was going to be breaking his heart and be breaking hers, and she dreaded what the next year was going to be like without him, and she wanted to cry and plead with God to change this, but the pleading was done, and the crying was done, and this was the reality she was going to have to live with. Holding Mary Elizabeth had forced her to face the irrevocable truth. She was afraid to have children again. Too afraid to ever change.

  He knew something was wrong. His face was serious, his hands gentle on her waist. “Would you fix the coffee? I need to find something,” she asked. He hesitated, then nodded.

  Jennifer looked through the video tapes she had collected over the years, bit her lip as she found the tapes tied together with a blue ribbon. God, I need some courage, she said silently, opening the ribbon. She found the first tape she wanted and slid it into the machine, picked up the remote.

  Scott came in with the coffee, and Jennifer nodded toward the couch. “Old movie night?” he asked quietly. Jennifer curled up beside him.

  “I thought you might like to meet Jerry and Colleen,” she replied. She felt Scott’s sudden look of surprise, but she didn’t look over at him. She turned on the tape.

  Scott didn’t say a word; he did put his arm around her.

  Nervous was not a good enough term to describe how Jennifer was feeling. “The sound is not very good on this first part. It was taken at his bachelor party.”

  “There’s Jerry on the couch.” Jennifer indicated as the camera panned across the living room packed with people. “The man on his left is his best man. This was taken about a week before our wedding. Finals had just gotten over the day before. It’s a Friday night, most of his college buddies stayed around to help him celebrate. They did a great job setting Jerry up. He thought we were going out to dinner and came over to the dorm to pick me up. Instead, he walked into four of his buddies who escorted him to the party.”

  Scott, watching the man on the screen, laughing with his friends, felt real envy. The man was a gifted speaker. Watching him, after catcalls of “speech,” get up and off-the-cuff do a five-minute talk on why he was forsaking bachelorhood for marriage, made Scott realize just how much Jerry had loved Jennifer.

  Jerry returned puns with his friends as he unwrapped the gifts. Items wrapped in the best bachelor fashion: brown paper bags. Tape was the first gift. “To ensure I keep my mouth shut at all appropriate times.” Glue; a waste can. “If I can’t fix it, I can always throw it away.” Antacids. “No comment. Jennifer is bound to see this movie one day.” A plunger. Jerry had dissolved into laughter when he saw that one. “Cute, guys. Real cute.” A spade. “For shoveling out the dirt Jennifer likes to brush under the rug.”

  The last package was actually wrapped in real blue and gold wrapping paper. Jerry opened it, obviously puzzled. He turned deep red. A pair of blue boxer shorts.

  “My gift,” Jennifer admitted to Scott, her own face feeling hot.

  Scott squeezed her arm, having heard the admission.

  The next part of the video was from the wedding reception. Watching Jennifer and her new husband, Jerry, greeting friends, sharing cake, opening gifts, made Scott grow more and more silent. He was becoming more and more aware of just how much Jennifer had lost.

  Jennifer changed the tape. “This is at the hospital with Colleen.” Scott realized suddenly that in the past few months with Jennifer she had never shown him Colleen’s picture. He leaned forward as the tape showed the hospital nursery. “Peter was taking the pictures?” he asked quietly. Jennifer nodded.

  Colleen was a pretty baby, small, fragile, but all the more beautiful because of it. She had such tiny hands. Watching Jennifer hold her daughter made Scott feel like crying. He could see the bond between them. No wonder Jennifer had not shown him this tape before. He looked over, saw that Jennifer was silently crying. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

  The tape eventually ended.

  “That’s Colleen.”

  He reached over and gently kissed her wet cheek. “Thanks for sharing her, Jen,” he whispered softly.

  She nodded. She took a deep breath. “We need to talk.” She looked at him, looked away. “I don’t want to have any more children. I can’t do it.”

  She felt him freeze. She went on before her courage failed her. “I’ve tried my best. I even managed to hold Mary Elizabeth today. But I can’t do it. I can’t have children again. I can’t risk going through the loss of a child again.”

  “Jen, the odds of that happening again…”

  She shook her head. “To live with that kind of fear is something I can’t do.”

  He hugged her toward him, rested his chin on the top of her head. “I know you’v
e been thinking about this for some time. Is this definite? Will more time help?”

  “It’s definite, Scott.” She was crying. “I am so sorry.”

  He brushed back the tears. He was silent for some time. “I really want to have children with you, Jen.”

  “I can’t take that risk again, Scott. I just can’t,” she whispered brokenly.

  The hard part was, he did understand.

  Chapter Twelve

  She wasn’t going to answer the phone.

  The machine picked up after four rings, and Scott left Jennifer another message for her to call him. She didn’t want to talk to him. She was trying to put distance between them, and it was killing him to realize that was what she was doing.

  What was he going to do?

  Since that night three days ago, when she had said she couldn’t risk having children again, his thoughts, his emotions, had swung in all directions. He wanted children. He wanted to have a family. She knew it, and in her own way she was trying to say goodbye.

  Anger driving him to his feet, Scott left his office and paced through his house. Why did this have to happen? Why? It made no sense. God was supposed to be able to heal grief, give courage, but Jennifer had not healed. And his hope, his optimism which had been that time would heal the trauma and Jennifer would eventually accept the idea of having a child again, was up against a brick wall. Scott knew Jennifer’s decision wasn’t going to change. She couldn’t risk losing a child again. It wasn’t a matter of giving her another year, the trauma had irreversibly set her decision.

  He honestly did understand. She couldn’t risk losing a child again. But understanding did not lessen his own pain. He wanted children. He wanted a family. And he was now facing the loss of his own dream. No children. He was feeling the pain Jennifer must have felt when she lost Colleen. It felt like his heart was breaking.

  Needing the space, Scott called for Quigley and headed for the beach.