Because this man with the too-big suit and the kind eyes treats me like I hung the moon.
He comes home every single evening at 6:15, kisses my cheek, and asks about my day before he touches the newspaper.
We buy a house.
Two bedrooms.
Yellow siding.
Ranch style.
The roof leaks when it rains hard.
Harold promises to fix it next weekend.
Then next month.
Then next summer.
He never does fix it, but he tries.
That matters.
Three years pass.
We’re happy in a quiet way that doesn’t make good stories.
No drama.
No excitement.
Just Harold humming while he reads the paper and me learning to cook the meatloaf he loves, even though I burn it half the time.
And then Derek happens.
Three in the morning.
February, 1980.
I haven’t slept more than forty minutes straight in six weeks.
Derek screams.
Not cries.
Screams.
The pediatrician calls it colic.
I call it torture.
My beautiful miracle baby, who we tried for three years to conceive, will not stop crying.
Nothing helps.
Not rocking.
Not singing.
Not feeding.
Not changing.
Nothing.
Harold appears in the nursery doorway.
His hair sticks up on one side. He’s wearing the pajama pants I bought him for Christmas and no shirt because Derek spit up on it an hour ago.
“Give him here.”
His voice is rough with exhaustion.
“You have work in four hours.”
“Give him here, Maggie.”
I hand over our son.
Our screaming, red-faced, impossibly tiny son.
The doctor said there wouldn’t be more children after Derek.
Something about my uterus.
Medical terms I didn’t fully understand.
All I knew was this baby, this angry little human, was our only shot.
Harold walks up and down the hallway, around the living room, through the kitchen.
He hums.
Off-key.
Some song I don’t recognize.
Maybe he’s making it up.
Derek’s screams fade to whimpers.
Then silence.
I stand in the doorway watching my husband save my sanity one lap around the house at a time.
“I love you,” I whisper.
Harold looks at me, smiles that crooked smile.
“I know.”
When Harold’s father dies two years later, we inherit $35,000.
It’s 1982.
That money could change everything.
New car.
Bigger house.
Maybe even a real vacation somewhere neither of us has to wear a uniform or punch a clock.
We’re sitting at the kitchen table, the yellow Formica one that came with the house.
Derek is four, coloring at the other end with crayons that are more wax than paper by now.
“What do you want to do with it?” Harold asks.
I look at Derek, at his dark hair that curls like Harold’s, at his small hands gripping the blue crayon, at his tongue poking out in concentration.
“College fund,” I say.
Harold’s shoulders relax like I’ve given the right answer to a test I didn’t know I was taking.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I reach across the table and take his hand.
“We can make our life work, but Derek, he should have every chance we didn’t.”
The next week, I take a part-time job at the county library.
Shelving books.
Minimum wage.
My back aches after the first shift.
It doesn’t stop aching for the next fifteen years.
Harold picks up weekend work doing tax preparation during filing season. He comes home Saturday nights with ink stains on his fingers and exhaustion carved into his face.
We eat Hamburger Helper four nights a week.
We wear the same clothes until they’re practically transparent.
Our car, the sedan with rust eating through the wheel wells, makes terrible sounds but keeps running through sheer force of Harold’s will and duct tape.
But Derek has new shoes when he needs them.
Derek gets the school supplies the teacher requests.
Derek goes on the class field trip to the science museum while Harold and I split a can of soup for dinner.
I tell myself it’s temporary.
I tell myself he’ll understand someday.
I tell myself sacrifice is what parents do.
Derek turns twelve.
Then fifteen.
Then seventeen.
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