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And like a boat out on the ocean
I'm rocking you to sleep
The water's dark
And deep inside this ancient heart
No one tells you about high fevers, or coughs that won’t stop, or how they'll shake a baby’s entire body. No one tells you about three week hospital stays or how much losing ten pounds looks like on an eighteen month old, or that she’ll be too exhausted and medicated to even try to babble, too tired to reach for you, too tired to fight the IVs in her arms. No one tells you that the adhesive the hospital uses to hold down IV lines and oxygen masks will leave rashes, or that your baby will be too sick to cry or keep her arms around your neck. No one tells you that you can’t throw money at the problem, or kiss it away, or strong-arm someone into fixing it. No one tells you it’ll make you feel as helpless as you did when you were a boy, hiding your little brother and sisters from dad and this time your wife is leaning on you too, looking just as helpless as you.
No one tells you that your baby can get pneumonia in May, or that you’ll spend every moment you’re not trying to keep your careers together in the hospital because the only way she can sleep is on your or your wife’s shoulder. No one tells you that you’ll sleep less that month than the first weeks of her life, than the last few months of law school, the first few months of the Dantana suit.
No one tells you that when the best pediatrician in the city clears her to be discharged the day before Father’s Day, you’ll breathe and breathe and breathe until you cry, because your baby will stop smelling like antiseptic and start smelling like baby powder and the dye-free laundry detergent that Mac buys and the lavender shampoo that makes her hair curl.
Neither him nor Mac sleep Charlotte’s first night home from the pediatric ward. Neither does Charlotte, until they wrap her in her favorite blanket and move out onto the couch, rearrange the cushions so that he can lie back enough to keep Charlotte at the right angle on his chest, so that the couch is wide enough that Mac can lie next to him.
Remembering how they celebrated every inch and every pound, she feels far too light against him. Will and Mac spend the entire night checking her temperature and wiping her nose and rubbing circles into her back, late-night television painting the living room a muted blue.
At some point Mac falls into an uneasy sleep, her head pillowed low on his stomach, her fingers curled loosely around Charlotte’s sock-clad foot. He sings Billy Joel and Leonard Cohen while watching the sky turn a feeble grey, hint at the whitewash of dawn.
Charlotte’s breathing is still mostly a wheeze, and there’s a line of medicine bottles on the kitchen counter that Will knows she’s going to hate.
His left leg is pins and needles, but when Mac shifts off him to curve herself along his side, he regains enough feeling in all his extremities that he finally feels like he might be falling asleep. Charlotte’s breathing hitches, and he jerks awake, lifting his head to see her face pressed against his neck.. But she puts herself back to sleep, blinking blearily up at him for a few moments before dragging her arms up over his shoulders and with a sniffling sort of sigh, relaxing again. He rocks her for a minute, until he’s sure she’s out, and then settles down again.
Last year was brunch and a walk through Central Park and then naptime for Charlie (and round one of very, very good sex) and then the Yankees on the television and a quiet day at home (they don’t have enough of those) and dinner from the place on West 42nd followed by putting the baby to bed and round two of very, very good sex and MacKenzie’s general naked happiness and gratitude at his contributions to the creation of and the raising of the child.
And somehow he hadn’t thought of his dad at all, until the very end of the day, watching MacKenzie sleep sprawled out across his chest.
And Will tries to figure out what he’s learned in a year, like teaching Charlie to walk and how to let her fall down and pick herself up again. That no one will get mad if she breaks things, and if she knocks things over he can just pick them up again. That she trusts him to do it, which was a harder lesson. That it’s okay that she trusts him.
And so he thinks of his dad much earlier in the day this year, his old anger shaping itself into something more and more like pity every day, thinking on Charlie knocking down her blocks and shrieking with glee before peering up at him and expecting him to set them up for her again. Thinking on Charlie always asking him to pick her up, the silent language between parent and child he’s certain his dad never wanted to learn, even though Mickey took the longest to realize that dad wasn’t excited to see him after coming in from the fields, even though Fi had it the hardest because of the hip dysplasia that kept her legs in braces.
They tell you that you’ll love your child.
But no one tells you about fatherhood’s own savage laws, that you are responsible for someone who trusts you implicitly. No one had to tell him, just like no one tells you it’s a choice, because Will learned that far too young.
He doesn’t want Charlotte to know it’s a choice.
And maybe it isn’t, not really. For him. Because he’s good at this, because now decades down the line he has Charlie and he can’t understand how his father made the choice, if the drinking made it for him or the drinking was the result. He’s good at this. There’s no defect in him; every time he looks at Charlotte it feels like his chest is about to explode, and it’s been that way since the moment he first felt her kick against Mac’s stomach.
(No one tells you about that, either, and with his parents as they were he couldn’t even begin to fathom how it would knock him to his knees.
Some days he feels deficient, until Mac puts her in his arms and he remembers that he loves her so much that he can’t breathe, sometimes, holding his breath over her crib and watching the soft rise and fall of her chest, brushing the backs of his fingers over soft onesies and even softer hair.)
“How is she?”
Mac rubs her hands over her eyes before inching her way up his body, dragging the microfleece blanket up with her, arranging it over the three of them.
His kisses her forehead. Smiling in a small way, Mac leans up enough to press her lips against his before letting her head fall onto his shoulder so she can properly examine Charlie’s sleeping face.
“She’s managed to get a few hours.” Their hands meet on Charlotte’s back. “Can’t say quite the same for us. You looked like you were out, though.”
She snorts, albeit tiredly. “Well, as you know, she and I find you quite comfortable.”
“Glad to be of service,” he says, watching her carefully slide out from next to him, sit up, and climb off the couch.
Gingerly, she scoops Charlie up off his chest. Swathed in a blanket Maggie made for her back when they first announced Mac was pregnant, all he can see of her is the top of her blonde hair and the pink socks on her feet. Mac adjusts her against her shoulder, swaying her weight between her feet and humming tunelessly.
“Get some sleep, honey,” she whispers, catching his hand when he lifts it out to her, squeezing his fingers before letting go and walking towards the kitchen.
No one tells you that it’s all a matter of trust, which you’ve never had in much of anyone, before Mac, and Charlie. Your wife and your father of another sort. And your staff, who are still too young, despite whatever Mac protests, despite the fact that they’re all getting married and starting to have babies themselves.
You worried a lot about yourself, because your dad called you weak and useless and irresponsible.
He watches Mac round the corner into kitchen, pressing kisses to the top of Charlotte’s head. Once she disappears from view, he draws the blanket up over his shoulders and rolls onto his side, trying to ignore his protesting back and elbow.
No one tells you that it’s about trusting yourself, but you figure it out eventually.
Three hours later Will is woken up by a cup of coffee and a plate of bacon and eggs and a smiling baby on Mac’s hip.
(No one tells you that sometimes that’s all you really need to make everything else go away.)