Tied in Knots: A Tied Together Novella (3 page)

I
clicked
the key fob to my car and heard the lock disengage. I slid my heavy work bag over my shoulder, which was just a reminder of the mountain of paperwork I needed to get through. I vowed to myself I would try to work on it at home instead of in the office because I was tired of looking at my office walls. My heart ached because I had to leave Ryan and Ethan this morning. The forecast called for a beautiful spring day, and my intentions were to take my husband and son to the zoo so we could spend some quality time together. But time didn’t seem to be on my side as I was either constantly at the hospital, or I was constantly on call.

Ryan and I discussed the different options regarding who would care for Ethan after he was born if both of us returned to work. We agreed that we didn’t like the idea of daycare, so we interviewed several nannies. I thought we had three great applicants. However, Ryan had an issue with all of them. He claimed one smelled of raw hamburger meat, with another one he was worried her teeth would fall out into the formula, and he was positive the third one practiced voodoo and would offer up our child as a sacrifice because she couldn’t find a goat.

It became clear Ryan felt no one was good enough to be with Ethan except one of us. The choice of who would stay home didn’t come easily. I didn’t want Ryan to feel his work meant any less than mine just because I was a doctor and made more money. He laughed at that, saying he loved the idea of me becoming his sugar daddy. After my paternity leave from the hospital was up and Ryan had his first few days home along with Ethan, I thought I was going to have to admit him into the mental ward. Sleepless nights, days of not showering, and listening to endless nursery rhymes CDs led to an unrecognizable Ryan.

Ryan had finally gotten into a routine with Ethan. It was fascinating to watch my husband execute his day down to the very last detail. One day when I was standing by the breakfast bar and Ethan was in his highchair wanting to be fed, I had warmed up his oatmeal and was about to give it to him when Ryan came running up to me and stole the bowl from my hands.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Did you give him the heavily processed, sugary death oatmeal?” he asked, looking down at the bowl and mushing the contents around with the spoon.

“Umm, it was the stuff in the panty.” I pointed my thumb behind me.

Ryan let out a groan. “I need to replace the Gerber Baby stuff. Annie said there’s been a recall, and I didn’t get to check the date of what we had yet.”

Ethan’s tiny hands reached outward, knowing there was something inside the bowl Ryan was holding. The baby was like Pavlov’s dog. Seeing bowl equaled getting food. Since he thought we were ignoring him, Ethan added a little whine to his gestures. Ryan went around the breakfast bar and threw the bowl into the sink. Ethan’s little whimpers turned into a full-blown wail.

“Who’s Annie?” I asked as I released the tray to the highchair and picked up a very annoyed child in my arms.

“Annie is one of the other moms in our playgroup. She does the all-natural shit: cloth diapers, makes her own food from the vegetables they plant in their backyard, co-sleeps, breastfeeds, only dresses her kids in organic hemp clothes.”

“Wow, that’s dedication,” I said, bouncing Ethan on my hip. He seemed appeased until Ryan pulled out the box of his favorite O’s from the cabinet. Both of Ethan’s chubby arms stuck straight out as if a magnet were pulling Ethan and the O’s together. I put him back in the chair and snapped the tray in place. Ryan handed me the box and I poured some of the crispy O’s down onto the tray. Ethan went after them, taking several into his tiny fist and stuffing them into his mouth.

I smiled at my son and took a mental snapshot of the moment so when he got older, I would be able to tell him how he would wolf down Cheerios like they were the last things on earth.

I didn’t have any of those memories of my own. My parents couldn’t have cared less to share any special memories with me. I’m sure they fed me and changed my clothes and diapers out of necessity, but there were certainly no loving moments we could reflect back on as a family when I grew older.

Another aspect I wanted for Ethan that I didn’t have for myself was to have a sibling. Ryan grew up with a sister, but I was an only child. My siblings were the characters in the books I read. I would have imaginary moments were I would go play for hours on the outskirts of the trailer park where I grew up. Huckleberry Finn was my brother, and we would go on wild adventures and fight off villains from outer space. I wanted more for my son, more than I’d had when I was a child.

When I got into the house, I was met with quiet. Usually there was some type of music playing or the sound of the television in the background. I placed my bag down on the kitchen table and peeked out the French doors that connected to our patio. Ryan sat on the patio with a glass of wine in his hand. He was reading something on his iPad while Ethan was busy in the sandbox. I’d come to loathe the sandbox because I would end up finding clumps of sand where sand shouldn’t be all over Ethan’s body.

I opened the door, and the cool afternoon breeze swept through my hair. Buds were starting to appear on the trees and our tulips and daffodils were peeking through the soil. I said hello to Ethan, blowing him a kiss, and he held his sand-covered hand to catch the pretend kiss out of the air. I walked up to Ryan, placed a kiss on the top of his head to greet him, and then pulled out one of the wooden chairs to join him at the table. I crossed my legs, my right foot starting to shake back and forth. Ryan’s hazel eyes lifted from the screen to look at me, narrowing as the seconds went by.

“What bomb are you about to drop?”

“What makes you think I have a bomb?”

“Because you’re doing that thing with your foot you do only when you get extremely anxious.”

“My foot does that all the time.” I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose.

“Now I know something is really wrong because that right there”—he pointed to the bridge of his own nose—“is your tell.”

“I want another baby,” I blurted out. There went the entire speech I’d planned out for the past two days. Usually, it was Ryan who had to work on his tact skills. Maybe being together with him this long had rubbed off on me.

I looked at Ryan. His eyes were about to pop out of his head, and his mouth hung open. I was pretty positive this wasn’t what he expected me to say. I waited as the words I had just uttered twisted and turned inside Ryan’s brain.

“Excuse me?” he finally said.

“You know, a baby… another one of those.” I pointed to Ethan, who had a handful of sand in his fist and was aiming it toward his mouth.

“Ethan! Don’t eat the sand!” I called to him.

“Why, Papa?”

“Because it has parasites that can make you sick.”

He wrinkled his nose and turned to Ryan for a more kid friendly explanation.

“Because it’s yucky,” he said, but his eyes were still trained on me.

“I could have said yucky.”

“You don’t know how to kid speak.”

“I do, too,” I said.

“What’s this?” He held up his glass of wine.

I lifted one of my eyebrows. “That’s wine.”

“No.” Ryan shook his head. “This is Daddy’s nighttime juice.”

“Oh my God,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Brandon, how can we have another when you obviously don’t understand the child terminology that happens in this house?” Ryan knew how important having more than one child was to me, even though I couldn’t be with both of them as much as I truly wanted to be. I also understood the sacrifice I asked of Ryan since he was the primary stay-at-home parent.

“Maybe I’m being too selfish about all this. I just want to give Ethan what I didn’t have, and one of those things is a sibling. A brother or sister to confide in, tell secrets to, wake up together on Christmas morning—”

“Beat each other senseless and make fun of each other at every turn.”

I laughed because as much as Ryan loved his sister, they were always at each other’s throats growing up. That could very well be the case here, as well, but I wanted to take that chance, and I wanted Ryan to agree to continue our family journey together.

He looked at me for several long seconds. I got up from my chair and slowly walked to where he was sitting. He put his tablet down on the table and patted his knee. I smiled and lowered myself to sit on his knees as he let out an
oof
sound.

“Putting on a few pounds there, big guy,” he said, pretending I was squishing him.

“All muscle, baby.” I flexed my arm to show off. Then I bent down and snuggled my way into the crook of Ryan’s neck. I took a deep breath in, savoring the smell that was uniquely his. It wasn’t a specific scent, but I just called it perfection. He wrapped his arms around my waist and turned his head to kiss my check.

He hummed words onto my skin. “I love you. You know that, right?”

I pulled back and looked him in the eye. “And I love you and that little dude.” I twisted around to point to Ethan. “With every fiber of my being.”

Ryan nodded slowly. “Then let’s do this.”

I turned back to look at my husband and crashed my lips onto his. In that moment it felt like we kissed forever until we heard, “Daddy, I pooped in box!” We both looked over at Ethan, who had dropped trou right there in the sandbox and pooped.

Ryan snickered. “Well, the good news is he’s grasping the concept of not shitting in his Pull-Ups. The bad news is that he said he saw his friend Cassey’s cat pooping in the litter box and he wanted to try it out. I guess I should have seen that one coming.”

I went to the sandbox and picked Ethan up, keeping him at arm’s length. I playfully shook my head while scrunching my nose. Ethan giggled.

“I got this. Relax here and we’ll be back. How about we call for some Chinese takeout tonight?”

“Great, but I’ll skip the Pu Pu platter.” He laughed, and I rolled my eyes at his sad attempt at a joke.

I knelt by the bathtub and scrubbed out the sand Ethan had managed to embed in this hair. I seriously considered trashing that entire sand pit and telling Ethan an evil Power Ranger had come in the middle of the night and stolen it away. I was counting on the fact that he was still young enough that I could get away with it.

“Ethan?”

“Papa?”

“Do you want a baby sister or baby brother?” I had been so excited about expanding our family that I hadn’t worried about how Ethan would feel with a new baby. He might be young, but it was still important to me for him to have a voice. I never had a voice growing up. I was always told to “shut my trap” and “I don’t care want you think.” Even though Ryan and I were the parents, my child’s voice would always be heard.

“I want a puppy.” He popped the bubbles in the water as they floated by.

“Maybe one day we’ll have a dog.” I thought how I could rephrase it better. “I mean someone like you—that you can love and play with. A new baby.”

He considered it for a minute. “Where’s the baby going to sleep?”

“The baby would have their own room, just like you.”

“Will the baby have Bun Bun, too?”

“No, Bun Bun is all yours. Maybe it will be a sister, and she will like horses or tigers.”

“Papa, I have junk!” Ethan stood in the tub and proudly pointed to his penis. That’s when I knew the serious discussion I was trying to have with my son was over. I unlatched the drain, lifted my little man out of the tub, and dried him off with an oversized bath towel. I bent down and gave him kisses on his check.

After getting him dressed in his pajamas, we went back downstairs and I turned on a kid’s show for him to watch. Ryan was in the kitchen, standing in front of the open refrigerator. I came up behind him and circled my arms around his waist. He leaned his head back onto my shoulder, and I kissed his cheek. He sighed contently, and the sound made my cock stir.

“I thought we were getting takeout?”

“I already called. I just want to nibble on something while we wait.”

I nibbled on his ear and slid my hands up his torso. “I have something I want to nibble.”

Ryan closed the refrigerator and turned around in my arms. “If you keep doing that, you can have a whole house full of kids.”

I chuckled. “I can’t help but feel like I’m being selfish. You do so much for this family, and I feel like I’m only adding to the chaos. Are you sure you’re ready to do this again?”

“Brandon, we always agreed Ethan wouldn’t be our only. And you do a lot for us; you work your tail off so I can stay home. But Ethan is starting preschool, so this might be the perfect time to expand our family.”

I couldn’t help but smile. The love I had for this man expanded larger than I thought possible. “Okay, then I will call Quinn and set up a time for all of us to meet and talk.”

“Okay, but first, there is shit with your name on it out there waiting for you to deal with it.” Ryan patted my chest and kissed the tip of my nose.

“Fine,” I groaned. “But if he asks, you saw a giant, evil Power Ranger.”

A
fter three vaginal deliveries
, two C-sections, and a handful of office appointments, I was officially done with this day. I stopped by my office to grab my mail and a few other documents I needed to look at when I got home. I’d been working so much lately that I felt like a stranger in my own home. There had been too many nights Ryan had already fed Ethan, given him his bath, and put him to bed before I got home. Ryan was sometimes in bed, as well, and wanted nothing more than to get some sleep after being with our rambunctious four-year-old all day.

I craved our family movie nights when we’d pop in some animated movie for Ethan to watch and I would slyly move my hand from Ryan’s thigh to his dick under the blanket while we cuddled on the couch. Or when we would take early evening walks in Lincoln Park, toting Ethan behind us in his Radio Flyer wagon. Instead, my days and nights were filled with paperwork, meetings, and the everyday dealings of owning my own practice. I wanted to make this work, to prove to myself that I could handle a career, a marriage, and kids. I wanted everything my parents were never able to achieve, and I just wished Ryan would understand that.

I fell into my desk chair, my feet begging for a much-needed rest and my muscles aching. I didn’t want to get too comfortable for fear of actually falling asleep at my desk. I grabbed the files I needed, put them in my briefcase, and then shuffled through the mail my office assistant, Kelsie, had put on my desk.

Most of the letters were related to the hospital, but one hand-written envelope caught my attention. My stomach dropped when I saw the return address. I didn’t recognize the last name Peterson, but I did know the small town of Claymont, Iowa that it came from. It wasn’t far from the city I was raised in, the one I thought I left far behind the day I left for college. The only positive things that came from where I lived in Iowa were Ryan and Ryan’s family. Since they moved to Chicago to be closer to us, there was no reason for me to have any more ties there. I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the letter opener Ryan had gotten me one year for Christmas. He said he was sick of me bitching about all the paper cuts I got opening the mail. My hands shook as I sliced through the envelope. My mind raced in a thousand different directions. What could this be? Was someone from school trying to reach me?

I took the piece of stationery out and unfolded it. I noticed the loops of cursive handwriting. It was handwriting I knew oh so well. Memories of notes sent to school explaining to my teachers how I got the bruises on my arm, legs, or face. My mother did what she had to do to make sure the Department of Family Services didn’t show up at our door because then she would have had to confront her own guilt. So she made excuses of how I fell somewhere or what a clumsy kid I was. It was my mother who tried to hide the truth of the abuse that was happening at home.

I hadn’t spoken to my mother since the day I left for college. It wasn’t until my father found me living in Chicago during my time in premed that he told me she finally left him. He never said where she went, just that she’d had enough of his drunken tirades and lack of financial security. I didn’t have time to ask questions before he beat me up for not giving him money. I never looked for her after that point—didn’t even consider getting in touch with her. I did everything in my power to bury my past, but it seemed to have risen up from the ashes. I took a deep breath and started to read.

Dear Brandon,

It has been a long time since we have communicated with each other, about twenty-three years, I suspect. I did some research to find you. I knew that you went to Chicago for college and I Googled your name and the city. I can’t say I was surprised to see that you’re a successful doctor there. You always had your nose in a book and worked hard to make a better life for yourself. I can’t say I blame you as the life you had here was nothing short of hell.

I’m writing to you because I want to apologize. I can’t say that I was a real mother to you. I mean, you came from me, but I wasn’t a mother in the ways that counted. I let your father put his hands on you when I should have been protecting you. But I was angry and scared. There are things you don’t know about your father and me. I did meet him in high school and I told him I wasn’t interested in dating him. One night I was walking home from my job and he followed me. He was drunk and refused to accept that I didn’t want to see him again. I told him to leave me alone, but he was persistent. He kept calling me, showing up to my job after school and eventually he wore me down until I had sex with him.

That’s when I became pregnant with you. My parents were very religious and said that they would not be shamed by having a grandchild out of wedlock. They forced me to marry your father, which was exactly what he wanted. I dropped out of school to raise you and take care of the man who made me miserable every day.

Every time I looked at you, I became angry. I blamed you for the life I had. Now I know it wasn’t fair. You were innocent in all of it, but I was young at the time and couldn’t see past my own selfishness. I felt like I had to stay with your father because that’s what my parents told me I had to do. There were days I considered killing myself just to escape the hell I was living. As you grew, I saw how smart you were becoming, and I knew you would get out of town and make something out of your life. But I felt nothing but stuck.

After you left, I met a nice man named Eric. He worked as a mechanic, and I got to know him after taking my car to be fixed. He would come to the diner after his work hours, and we would talk well into the night. We fell in love, and he finally convinced me to leave your father. So one night I packed a suitcase and left. At that point, your father didn’t even try to fight the divorce. Eric helped me with the cost of the lawyer for the divorce, and I left everything else at the trailer.

Eric has a daughter, Rebecca. She was ten when we finally got together. It’s as if I was given a second chance to become the mother I should have been with you. It was my redemption. Rebecca is now married with two daughters of her own, and I can call myself a grandma.

There is another reason that I needed to find you. Last month I was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. Unfortunately, the cancer has spread to other parts of my body and my doctor feels that I wouldn’t respond well to any of the treatments.

I know you have every right to hate me, but it can’t be any more than me hating myself for what I did to you. I should have searched you out years ago, but I was too ashamed and afraid. Now that I have a limited time left to live, I want to try to bring closure to the parts of my life that I sorely regret. You have every right to say no. In fact, I wouldn’t blame you if you said it. But if there’s a time we could meet, I would love to see the man you have worked so hard to become.

A
ll my best
,

Mom

I
sat frozen
in my chair and stared at the letter. The black ink swirled together as I tried to process everything I just read. I couldn’t even name the emotion I was feeling. Anger? Relief? Sadness? I never knew the truth about how she and my father ended up together; I’d always heard the story differently. I did know she was unhappy and blamed me because she felt that she could have had a different life if she hadn’t gotten pregnant with me. That part had been blatantly obvious when she did nothing to stop my father’s attacks.

And she felt she made up for it somehow with this girl named Rebecca? My mother felt it was okay to let years of destruction fall to the wayside so she could raise someone else’s child. How did that make up for the years of pain she caused me? What made this girl so lucky to receive a mother’s love when she didn’t give a fucking damn about her own flesh and blood?

Now she was sick and wanted to make up for lost time. She’d been given the prognosis to live for six months, and she wanted to squeeze twenty-three years into that time. The fury started down in the pit of my stomach, and I wanted nothing more than to hit something. The ringing of my cell phone brought me back from my murderous thoughts. I answered it without looking at who was calling.

“Hey.”

“Hello to you, too, sunshine.” Ryan’s voice on the other end brought me calmness.

“Hi.” I rubbed my eyes. “Sorry, didn’t mean to answer in such a rush.”

“That’s fine. Everything okay? I just wanted to know if you could pick up some Thai on the way home. Ethan and I went to the the park, and I didn’t get a chance to make dinner. I had to hose him down outside because he found a puddle and decided to turn it into a luxury mud bath.”

I smiled thinking of my son running around at the park. He loved the slides and would make Ryan or me push him endlessly on the swing. I looked at the letter sitting on top of my desk. Ethan and Ryan were my family, not the woman who wrote that letter. She never took me to the park to push me on the swings. Never took me to museums or the zoo. These were all things that we loved to do with Ethan because we were his dads and we wanted to give him the best life possible.

“Brandon?”

“Sorry. I had a long day; I’m zoning out.”

“I think we have a frozen pizza I can heat up if Thai is too much.”

“No, Thai would be great. I’ll get our usual.”

“Great, see you when you get home. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I hung up the phone and stuck it in my pants pocket. I put the rest of the mail in my briefcase and glanced at the letter again. I took it in my hands, ready to crumple it up and throw it into the trashcan. But instead, I folded the paper back up, put it into the envelope, and added it to the things I was bringing home.

As I was getting ready to leave, there was a knock at my office door. I opened my door and smiled.

“Dr. Ford?” Sean Collins, a nurse in the labor and delivery unit, stood in the hallway. Sean had recently joined the staff after he left Rush University Hospital. He’d been a nurse there since he graduated nursing school three years ago. He was young and nice-looking with chin-length blond hair he always tucked behind his ears. We had exchanged a few small conversations over time, and he seemed like a genuinely nice guy.

“Hey, Sean, what are you doing in my neck of the woods?

His green eyes brightened as he stuck out the papers he had in his hands. “Dr. Phillips had some papers for you, and I thought I’d bring them down on my way to the cafeteria.”

Fantastic, more paperwork. “Thanks. You didn’t have to do that. I would have gotten them tomorrow.”

His smile faltered as he walked into my office and placed the papers on my desk. “It wasn’t a big deal. Like I said, I was headed downstairs anyway.”

He stood there for a moment, and I wondered if he was waiting for me to excuse him from his duties. “Was there something else, Sean?”

“Sorry if this seems a bit forward, but you look a bit overwhelmed.” Sean rocked back on his heels and bit down on his lip.

Shit. If this kid could spot my attitude in the thirty seconds he’d been there, Ryan would sense it the second I got home. I wasn’t ready to talk to him about the letter.

“I just received some bad news, that’s all.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve been dealing with a lot of shit, too.” He looked at his feet. “My boyfriend just broke up with me,” he said, tucking the hair that had escaped from behind his ear back into place.

“Wow, sorry to hear that, Sean. Breakups are hard. How long were you together?”

“Just a year, but he found someone else, and you know how that story goes.”

I didn’t know because I couldn’t imagine life without Ryan in it. But I simply nodded to make Sean feel more comfortable.

“I was just going to get a cup of coffee; would you like to join me?”

“I don’t think so, but thanks,” I said, hoisting my work bag over my shoulder.

“Come on, one cup. I make a fantastic listener, and I offer what could possibly be pathetic advice.”

I laughed and looked at Sean. He crossed his arms over his chest and a sweet smile spread on his face. Maybe I did need an unbiased ear to bounce my stress off before I talked to Ryan about my mom.

“Okay, sure. One cup and then I need to get home.” I headed toward the door, and Sean patted my shoulder. I turned around to see the picture of Ryan and Ethan on my desk. There was no way I was going to let the poison of my past seep into my present and future. I turned off the lights in my office and closed the door.