Free I'll Be Seeing You by Suzanne Hayes Page A

“Mr. False Alarm,” which is why I waited so long when I finally did go into labor.
    Mrs. Vincenzo delivered Toby on our kitchen table. “It will be quick,” she said. “Ten minutes.” And it was. By most standards I had an easy birth. But my pelvic bones—the ones my mother lovingly guided to health so many years before—cracked along those old fault lines.
    The pain...it was like a couple of wild dogs tearing at each hip. Mrs. Vincenzo put the baby to my bosom, but I could only stare at a crack in the wall, a fixed point to hypnotize myself into oblivion. Sal whispered loving words in my ear, telling me how beautiful I was and how perfect the baby looked, but I could barely breathe, let alone talk.
    Mrs. Vincenzo said I just needed rest, and Sal agreed with her until three days passed and I still could not get out of bed.
    He sent word to a doctor friend at Cook County, who showed up after his shift. I blacked out during the exam. When I came to, Sal knelt at my bed, saying over and over, “What’s wrong with us that we didn’t notice?” He never once said, “What’s wrong with you that you didn’t say anything?”
    I withdrew from everyone, even Toby. Mrs. Vincenzo said all women had “the darkness” after childbirth, to varying degrees, and since I’d broken my bones I needed extra time. But my darkness came from guilt—I felt like all the things I’d kept from Sal had weakened my insides, each lie causing a small fracture. All my goodness came out with the baby, and my body, with nothing to stabilize it, shattered.
    Sal brought Toby to me for feedings, carefully drawing my breast to the baby’s small mouth. He changed him and cleaned his pink body. He sang operettas and patted his tushy with powder. Sal mothered.
    Eventually Sal had to return to the hospital, and Toby failed to thrive. His skin took on a yellow hue and he lost interest in nursing.
    On the day he refused my breast entirely, Mrs. Vincenzo came into my room with a bottle of sugar water and a pair of crutches. She pushed me to sitting, grabbed one foot and planted it on the floor, then the other, and shoved the bottle in my hand.
    “I can’t,” I said.
    “He’s dying,” she said.
    Then she brought her round face right up to mine, looked me in the eye and whispered, “Whatever it is, he’ll understand. Don’t you know that?”
    I did. Sal would understand. Why didn’t I trust his love for me? I was punishing my child for my own stubbornness, my despicable insecurity.
    I stared into Mrs. Vincenzo’s deep brown eyes for a few seconds. And then I shoved those crutches under my arms and started mothering my son.
    But I continued to let fear guide my actions. I never told Sal.
    One day, while he was eating breakfast, I blurted, “I’m sorry I failed you and Toby.”
    He left his oatmeal on the table and came to my side. “You’ve never failed us,” he assured me. “And you never will.”
    He was wrong.
    When Toby was seven he ran around with a pack of boys from the block. They were a little mean and a lot rough, and Toby was neither. I always watched from the back porch, pretending to knit while I kept an eye on their shenanigans.
    One evening the Mirro Cooking Class came on the radio, and I got caught up listening to a recipe for roast duck. I didn’t hear Toby scream. I didn’t hear anything until little Giuseppe from across the hall came running into the kitchen shouting, “Signora! Vieni! Vieni!”
    They’d been playing cowboys and Indians. Chief Toby was tied to a tree, the rope snaking around his neck pulled over a high branch. His feet swung a few inches above the ground and the blood had already drained from his lips. My negligence had brought him to death’s door again.
    I lifted him and yanked on the rope until the knot loosened. I gave him my breath and rubbed his limbs. He came to.
    After church the following Sunday, Mrs. Vincenzo said she wanted to take Toby and me out. I assumed for lunch, but instead she