Hush Little Baby (33 page)
I suck in a breath as I look at the empty bassinet, then wrench myself from the bed, grab the backpack I brought with me, and stumble after him screaming, “Call security. Stop him.”
The elevator door closes, and I run to the stairs. Obstetrics is on the third floor. I feel blood dripping down my legs, and I know I’ve ruptured my stitches. My mind spins with wooziness, and I will my shaking legs to hold me, gritting my teeth and concentrating on moving forward, praying my body won’t abandon me completely.
Jeffrey.
The thought propels me forward.
I reach the first floor and run toward the exit.
A security guard faces off against Gordon; both have guns drawn.
“Set it down,” Gordon says. “Put it on the ground and let me walk out the door.”
The man’s maybe twenty-five and probably just got out of the army. Chances are he was a cook or a mechanic; he doesn’t look like a fighter. He begins to crouch, his weapon lowering.
“No,” I yell, my momentum hurling toward them. Gordon turns, and everything moves in slow motion—my finger on the trigger, the blue blanket turning toward me. I’m aiming low. The bullet will hit high.
I want to stop it, but like so many things, it’s too late. I can only regret the decision I’ve made.
The sound is instant and deafening, ricocheting and resonating and stopping time. Gordon turns, surprise then fear on his face as he twists sideways, not to avoid the shot, but to take it, to cover Jeffrey. He stumbles with the impact and lurches again as he turns back toward me, the gun in his hand rising then falling as he crumbles to his knees. His mouth opens, but no words come out. Then the gun clunks to the floor, and he topples sideways, his shoulder cradling the baby’s delicate head.
Jeffrey tumbles from Gordon’s arm and begins to cry. Gordon blinks once, reaches for him, then his eyes settle on me and he dies, his eyes open, a vacant stare on his face like Jeffrey’s, but not. Gordon is not in pain, not tormented or concerned with saving himself, his expression peaceful and so full of devotion that, despite my hate, it wrenches my heart.
He would die for them, would kill for them…turns out, I was willing to do the same.
A nurse holds me as I slump against her and the gun is being taken from my hand by the security guard. Another nurse lifts Jeffrey from the floor. Already he’s stopped crying and contentedly sleeps swaddled in a safe embrace, blissfully unaware of his role in saving me, of saving Addie and Drew, of destroying the man who would have loved him and raised him as his own.
I’m helped into a wheelchair, and as I’m pushed toward the elevator, the security guard talks rapidly into his phone. “No, I don’t think she planned it. Yes sir, he had a gun…”
Did I plan it?
I knew Gordon would come for Jeffrey. I packed the gun. I knew killing him was the only way. Every night since he took Addie and Drew, I lifted that gun in my mind; most of the time it was in the chapel of the hospital, regret lacing my envisagement, the blast echoing in the hollow, holy chamber as Jesus watched.
“My children?” I mumble numbly as I’m wheeled forward.
“Your baby is here,” the nurse says.
“My other children, Addie and Drew. He had them.”
The nurse kneels. She’s an older woman with kind eyes. “How old? What do they look like?”
I give the description, and she conveys it to the security guard, and a moment later, as she helps me back into my bed, the man appears and tells us Addie and Drew were found in a car in the parking lot. They’re fine, and my parents are on their way to get them.
“Rest now,” the nurse says.
Rest now.
It’s been ten years since I’ve rested without fear. I’ve forgotten what it feels like. I lift Jeffrey from his bassinet and cradle him in the rook’s nest of my arm. His tiny lips latch on to my breast, and I close my eyes.
I’m here, little man—you, me, your sister, and brother—we’re all here.
And I rest.
T
oday’s my birthday. I’m forty-one.
The celebration is a quiet one with my parents, Addie, Drew, and Jeffrey, and it’s the happiest and the saddest one I’ve had in ten years. So much has happened.
My dad and I have begun to rebuild our collection of statues. We have five now, and my gift from him today was the sixth, my favorite, the one with the singing man with the Fu Manchu.
Addie and my mom baked a carrot cake using carrots from our garden, and Drew gave me a bouquet of sunflowers and a book by Stephen King. He remembered me talking to Fred about these things.
Jeffrey looks like his father and not so much like his brother and sister, who both grow to look more like Gordon every day. Addie’s smile is his smile, and sometimes Drew will do the most ordinary thing, tilt his head, fold his hands in church, and it’s as though his father never died.
Gordon’s been gone almost three months, but he’s still always on my mind.
I haven’t learned to think of him as dead yet. Like an amputee, I feel him all the time. I still jump at the sound of footsteps when I’m asleep, and my heart skips when the scent of a particular deodorant or soap crosses my path.
The gunshot blasting through the fluorescent hallway of the hospital toward Jeffrey resonates so often in my mind that it’s part of the rhythm of my life, another tattoo etched on my soul that molds and shapes me.
My conscience is haunted. I know now that in all of us exists a lion and a lamb. My violence is deeply buried, hidden beneath strata of fear, morals, and compassion, but it exists. And with absolute certainty—a clarity not blurred by time or altered by yearning—I know, at the moment I pulled the trigger, my hatred was more than my love.
I knew Gordon held Jeffrey. Gordon knew it as well. One of us pulled the trigger, the other sacrificed himself.
I look around me. I owe him so much. He died for Jeffrey. He saved my dad. He’s the reason I have Addie and Drew.
Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright; In the forests of the night.
What immortal hand or eye, dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
In all of us, there is evil, and in some of us, there is good.
Dear Reader,
What if…?
The two most provocative words in the English language, cause for endless contemplation and reflection, and the inspiration for
Hush Little Baby
. I’d like to start by saying that I am married to a wonderful, kind, not-abusive-in-any-way man. Like Jillian and Gordon, we have two children, a boy and a girl, and we live in the beautiful town of Laguna Beach, California. My life is good. But…
what if?
What if my husband wasn’t as wonderful as he appeared? This exact real-life scenario provided the premise of the novel. A friend of mine was going through a divorce. Until she separated from her husband, the two seemed like the picture of happiness, not too dissimilar from me and my husband. But the story she told over drinks one night of the abuse and cruelty she endured behind closed doors was so frightening it made me wonder how many other marriages are not what they appear.
The curveball came about a month later when we went out again and my friend’s story had changed, the tale altered and now with glaring inconsistencies from the earlier version that caused an alarm to blare in my brain.
What if she was making it up?
Custody of the kids was at stake. Could she be setting her husband up? For over ten years, I’d known her husband as a stand-up guy, the baseball coach who never yelled, the neighbor who happily carted your Christmas tree home in his truck, the kind of guy who always showed up and did his part. Yet, how quickly I dismissed all that based on a story over drinks; how quickly everyone dismissed it, so easily accepting that he was abusive and dangerous.
So I got to thinking how easy it is to sabotage a life, that if my husband set out to destroy me, to preemptively strike before I realized what was going on, he could do it. He knows my weaknesses, my failings, my vulnerabilities. If he had the inclination, he could easily undermine my reputation and portray me as unstable or a bad mother, ensuring that if we divorced, he’d get custody of the kids.
My friend loves her children above all else, three beautiful boys. At the time they were four, nine, and twelve, and their futures, as well as her own, hung in the balance. To this day, nearly three years later, I don’t know if she was telling the truth or manufacturing lies. Either way, her story was a captivating cautionary tale that made me wonder how far someone might go to keep their spouse from getting custody of their kids, and then, if the kids were in danger, real danger, how far the other spouse might go to get them back.
My life is good. My husband’s a good father. I’m a good mother. Our universe orbits around our son and our daughter, and either of us would do anything…
anything…
to protect them.
What if…?
The words are chilling, don’t you think?
I hope you enjoy reading the novel as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Sincerely,
Suzanne
- Consider Jillian as a mother. Do you think she’s a good mother? Do you sympathize with her? How about at the start of the story? At what point do your sympathies begin to change (if they do)? Do you think most mothers compare themselves to other mothers and worry about inadequacy? Is this more common among working mothers?
- How do you think the marriage appears from the outside? How do you think the world perceives Jillian? Gordon? Do you think all of us portray an external image different from the reality behind closed doors? If so, how did this story make you feel about that?
- What do you think would have happened had Jillian stayed in the marriage? Do you think she left primarily because she was scared, because he destroyed the statues, because of the kids becoming aware of the abuse, or because Gordon wanted to borrow money from her retirement fund?
- Do you sympathize with Gordon at all? Had he married a different woman, do you think he might have been different?
- How did you feel about the incident of Drew torturing the toad? Why do you think he did it? Do you sympathize with him? Do you think he did it to test Jillian as a mother to see if she’d protect him, or because he’s like his father? Do you think Jillian handled it correctly?
- Jillian has an affair with Jeffrey. Do you sympathize with this or find it reprehensible?
- Do you believe Gordon killed Jeffrey based on the circumstantial evidence (“Shotgun deaths are brutal,” and Gordon using Jillian’s name when she confronts him with the accusation)? What if it turns out Gordon didn’t actually kill Jeffrey? How does that change your perception of everything that happened after?
- Do you blame Jillian for Jeffrey’s death? Do you think she irresponsibly put him in danger? How do you feel about her not reporting his death or telling the police her suspicions?
- The wedding ring Gordon gave Jillian turns out to be a fake. Do you think his love was as well? Always? Why do you think they got married in the first place?
- Gordon and Paul were opposing forces, one a cop, the other a convicted criminal; one controlling, the other not. How did Jillian’s time with Paul change her and make her more capable of dealing with her issues?
- When Jillian was at the Flying Goat, she was a fish out of water. Do you think she could have ultimately been happy there?
- How do you feel about Jillian getting pregnant by Jeffrey, then keeping the baby to protect herself, knowing she couldn’t provide a good life for it? How do you feel about her not telling Gordon the baby was not his, knowing the baby was in danger and that Gordon was going to come for it?
- Had Addie not gotten sick, how do you think the story might have played out?
- In what way do Jillian’s parents contribute to her staying in her marriage? Do you think she made the right choice returning to Gordon after she left the first time? Do you think she should have returned to live with her parents when she came back from Washington, knowing this put them in danger?
- Sherman McGregor was a mentor to Jillian. Do you think his story was a cautionary tale that relates to Jillian’s choices? If so, how?
- How do you feel about Claudia? Did you have sympathy for her? Do you think Jillian should have sympathy for her?
- William Blake’s poem, “The Tyger” was mentioned in the story as well as an Aesop’s fable. How do you think these stories foreshadowed Jillian’s own fate?
- An underlying theme of the story is whether good and evil exist in each of us. Do you believe evil exists only in some or that it exists in everyone and is exposed based on circumstance?
- Jillian decided not to kill Gordon in the hospital, realizing that was not the way to fix things, but ultimately she shot him in the end. Does this mean evil prevailed or was she justified in killing him? Would your opinion change had Gordon not shielded the baby and the baby died instead of Gordon?
- How did Jillian’s character evolve throughout the story? Do you think her values or perspective changed?
- Who was your favorite character? Why?
- Movie time: Who would you like to see play each part?
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