Page 54 of Counting the Days

“Rhea?”

“Huh?” Rhea said, looking up from her trance.

“Give her to my mom.”

Zoe’s sister gave a furtive glance at Zoe’s IV, as if she might just yank it out.

“Oh…okay.” Rhea reluctantly released the baby to Zoe’s mother. “She really is such a…precious baby,” Rhea said softly.

But no one heard her, and that did not matter since she was talking only to herself.

—

In the backseat of anUber, Rhea received a text from Danny:How’s the baby? Does she like you?

Rhea smiled, then sighed. She hated how much she adored this man.

Rhea:God I hope so. She’s v cool

Danny:Are you still there?

Rhea:In an Uber

Rhea’s phone rang, and Danny’s name on the screen gave her a rush of excitement. Even with this new batch of conflicted emotions, his calls always made her feel adolescent and giggly. Her new favorite activity was telling Danny about her day, sharing an experience she had at Topanga General or an odd interaction with a grocery store cashier. Danny always offered insight and opinions that made her think differently about every situation, and he was forthcoming when she did the same for him.

As a woman, she had not often heard men say things like “You’re right” or “That’s a good point.” Danny frequently said those exact phrases, and once she began hearing them regularly from the mouth of a man, she realized it was an entirely new experience.

She filled him in on her Trinity adventure, obviously leaving out her brush with kidnapping. She got to the part when Zoe was defensive about her baby’s manly features and Danny said,“See, this is another reason why I don’t want kids—eh, never mind.” He had veered onto their only sensitive topic and was trying to bail.

“No, go on….” Rhea was determined to seem like she was still the carefree, child-free woman of his dreams.

“It’s just…I don’t like the way people’s kids become an extension of their ego. It shouldn’t matter if the baby looks like her dad, she’s a living, breathing miracle, and yet, shealreadyhas to be her mom’s idea of pretty or she’s embarrassing?”

“Well, not all moms are like Zoe; some are more accepting.”

“Can you honestly say you’d feel different than Zoe? With a room full of people judging your baby? I know I wouldn’t.”

Rhea remained silent. She had always brutalized her own looks; why would her child get off scot-free? She tried to imagine herself carting around a baby with conventionally unattractive features.

She sighed, “No, you’re probably right. I think I’d feel the same way if I had an…ugly child. Ugh, that’s so awful to hear myself say.”

“You’re just being honest. And it doesn’t stop at looks. Everyone also needs their kid to be exceptionally intelligent, and I can always feel their shame when their kid doesn’t quite measure up.”

Rhea thought about Marcus’s compulsive need to impress Rhea whenever Chichi learned how to spell a new word: “Show Ahree how you spell ‘elephant.’ ”

“E—L—E—F—”

“No, remember what we talked about?” Marcus would say through a flash of humiliation. “She just did it this morning,” he would anxiously explain, as if Rhea were the committee deciding whether or not his four-year-old would be granted attendance to an Ivy League school.

Rhea thought about the number of times she had sat as an audience member while her friends tried to convince her of their child’s exceptional nature or, even worse, apologized for their child’s imperfections. When she was an infant, Zoe’s first daughter had oddly spiky hair, and Zoe would comment on that hair every time Rhea saw them.

“I’m told the crazy Einstein hair will go away when it gets longer.”

“She looks like she just came out of the freakin’ dryer.”

Zoe talked about this openly in front of her daughter as if she were deaf. But Rhea wondered if maybe those comments seeped in; maybe Zoe’s daughter did not totally understand the reference to “Einstein hair,” but, on some level, did she feel her mother’s shame in her appearance?

Rhea wondered if her own mother had perhaps apologized for Rhea’s nose when she was a toddler, and if she had, did the comments nestle snugly in Rhea’s subconscious forever?I’m not good enough. I’ll never be good enough.