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.
***
