Stay, Stay, Stay

It took months for us to regain our rhythm. After being disconnected for so long we were forced to learn how to communicate properly again and we didn’t do it alone. In fact it sometimes felt like we had a team of people holding us together. True to his word, Sid started talking to a professional about all the things he couldn’t quite explain to me. He was still spending time with Mario, trying to sort out his plan for the future, but not with the same secrecy or frequency. In turn, we decided to see a professional together. As badly as I wanted to be able to fix our marriage on my own, it wasn’t possible. We were so alike and so different at the same time. There were still days we barely spoke, because we both knew that silence was better than the alternative. Those were the days that it scared me how much I could truly dislike someone I loved so much. Overall the focus was always the same, keep the kids out of it. I could hate him as much as I wanted and he could think I was the biggest bitch in the world, but we did everything in our power to keep those temporary feelings from impacting our children. Fortunately they were just that, temporary, arguments had in the bathroom with the shower on to muffle the noise only lasted a couple of minutes, and instead of blowing up we’d write things on a portable whiteboard, thrusting it at each other when they weren’t looking. It was usually little things scrawled in black marker like;


Pretty shitty of you to walk out of the room while I was talking earlier,


or, 


Why have a cellphone if you aren’t going to take it with you? I don’t care if you’re only going down the block, take your damn phone!


It was our version of passive aggressive post it notes and on more than one occasion had been tossed across the room in frustration. Our coping mechanisms weren’t the most orthodox, but then again, nothing about our lives seemed to be average. 



Lachlan started kindergarten that year and I was thrown for a loop trying to adjust to a new schedule with only one little person to keep track of most of the day. While I spent countless nights worrying about him entering the big world of public education, Lachlan loved every minute of his new routine. To him, it was an adventure, to me it felt like I was losing my baby. By November he was reading simple sentences and could spell all the basic colours, and by February he had thirty-something new friends to invite to his birthday party. 



“What do you mean you won’t be at his birthday party?” I hissed, the sound of the washing machine loud enough to cover my voice in the event that one of the kids were near. I’d pulled him into the laundry room the second I heard him telling someone over the phone that he was free the day of the big party.

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t be at his party, I said I was free that morning. Why are you listening in on my conversations anyway?” he spat back at me, irritated and wrinkling his brow. 



“I wasn’t listening in,” I rolled my eyes in a huff, insulted that he would even suggest that. “When you’re having a conversation in the middle of the kitchen while I’m making dinner it’s pretty hard not to hear you. But that isn’t even the point. You’re not free that morning! We sat down with your schedule and purposely picked that day because you would be home and claimed to have the whole day free. I wrote it in your calendar, Sidney. I flagged it as an all day event,” I was almost in tears, stomping my foot in frustration and gritting my teeth. I didn’t want to be having this conversation with him. Despite being an amazing dad, he really wasn’t demonstrating that as he rubbed his forehead and groaned. 



“It’s a meeting, Beatrice. It will take two hours maximum and I can be home before the first kid arrives,” he argued, but I wasn’t having it. 



“No. He’s not a little kid anymore, he notices when you’re not here. We promised him you would be here for his birthday party, and you’re not going to back out of it now. Whatever it is can wait. I do enough of the parenting on my own, Sid, and I do my best not to hold that against you, but I’m putting my foot down. I can’t set up for this on my own, I can’t manage all of it, and I sure as hell cannot… no I will not, explain to our son why you’re not helping him hang streamers.” 



He stared at me, jaw set and lips pursed. I could see the anger growing inside of him but I wasn’t willing to back down. Not this time, not after years of compromising. I stood facing him head on, feet flat on the ground and one hand on the top of the washing machine. It was hard to keep my composure when I knew it would have been easier to relent and tell him to do what he needed to do. That’s what usually happened, something would come up in his schedule and I’d pretend it didn’t hurt me when he dashed out the door, leaving whatever plans we had in favour of the hockey world that beckoned outside our front door. I considered telling him to have the meeting at our house, at least then I would be able to ensure he’d be home in time, but I wasn’t in the mood to compromise. 



“What about after?” he asked, as if it were a completely rational proposal. 


“While I clean up after a bunch of kids and ride out Lachlan’s sugar high?” I glared at him, unamused. The hardest part was knowing how busy his schedule was. If anyone understood the demands of being in the spotlight, I did. But at the same time I understood the demands of being part of a family, and while I was usually okay with picking up the slack when it came to Sidney’s career, I couldn’t fill his shoes when it came to being around for milestones. 

 In the end I won that debate, and when Lachlan asked why were were hiding in the laundry room I told him I was teaching his dad how to sew buttons onto his own shirts. This seemed to satisfy his five year old curiosity, and he told me I should teach Uncle Boo next.

The regular season went by before we knew it and the team returned to their rightful spot in the playoffs. Now six, this was the first playoff run where Lachlan could fully understand what was happening, and dare I say he was more excited about it than Sidney was. Every game day he was decked out in Penguins apparel and his bedroom wall featured a chart that was almost taller than him tracking all the scores and rankings. The late night matches and away games filled our DVR and Lachlan woke up early the next morning to revel in the action. If Sidney was home they’d sit together and discuss the details of it all, if it was a win Lachlan wanted to know exactly how they knew what to do, and if it was a loss he wanted to hear about every mistake. He’d already started playing and while he wasn’t the boy wonder on ice that everyone claimed Sid was at that age, he loved every minute of it. I’d never tell Sidney, but I secretly hoped that hockey would remain a part of Lachlan’s childhood and not become a career goal. I’d heard too many times how hard it had been for Sidney, how he felt like hockey was the only way to earn his father’s affection, and he wasn’t entirely sure who he was without it. The last thing I wanted for our son was to feel the pressure his father had described to me on a number of occasions. Besides, I had enough to worry about with my husband on the ice, I wasn’t sure I could handle watching my own son get knocked around. 



We went home that summer without the cup, and unlike the summer before, Sidney seemed perfectly okay with it. There had been tears from Lachlan when we explained that the playoffs were over for his dad, but the news of going to see Grammy and Grampy quickly replaced his sorrow with excitement. My husband was a different person that summer, especially compared to the one before it. He was relaxed, sociable, and even affectionate, content to sit with us on the beach while the kids made sand castles and played in the waves as they broke on the shoreline. That summer Lachlan learned how to ride a two wheeler, and Piper fearlessly mastered the art of floating on her back in the kiddie pool without her water wings. 


That was the summer Big Bea was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. For three days I sat in the hospital room convinced I was going to lose her, as she lay in a bed looking frail and breathing with the help of an oxygen machine. On the third day, she woke up, look straight at me and told me to go home. 
 


“You can’t just tell me to leave!” I cried, pouting at her as she tried to take bites of the Jello she’d been served. 
 


“You’re damn right I can, Beatrice Keller,” she huffed back and me, placing her spoon carefully on the tray in front of her. “You’ve been moping by my bedside for way too long, it’s starting to get depressing. Go home, see those babies, kiss your husband. I’m going to be fine, I promise.” She reached for my hand and I sniffled, swallowing a sob. 



“But what if you’re not?” I asked honestly, my voice was shaking and I could hardly see through the tears that spilled out of my eyes. 



“There’s no what if,” she said sternly, with the same compassion in her eyes that I’d seen my whole life. “You think I’m going to croak before my next great-grand baby is born?” She smiled so widely the tubes of her nasal cannula slipped up her cheeks.



 Wiping at my eyes I chuckled at her unexpected statement. “What are you talking about?” I tried to wrack my brain for any pregnancy announcements my cousins had made recently that I might have forgotten about. 



“Honey, you’re falling out of that shirt and I know you haven’t been drinking ginger ale because you like the taste of it.” My grandmother gave my hand a gentle squeeze and I sat staring at her in horror. 

 “I’m just stressed out, you know how my stomach gets,” I brushed off her suggestion with a roll of my eyes. 

 “And what? Those boobs are just inflating in case of a flood?” she teased and I tried to think back to the last time I’d bought a box of tampons. 



“Son of a bitch,” I groaned, my head fell onto her bed and I let out a sigh. 



We hadn’t been doing a whole lot to prevent getting pregnant, but we certainly hadn’t been trying. I called it natural family planning, but really neither of us had really thought about another kid as a good or bad thing. Still, I wasn’t exactly thrilled to have my grandmother and her sixth sense break the news to me. 

 I drove around Charlottetown with a white paper bag from the drugstore hidden in the glove box. Sidney and my brothers were entertaining the kids at my parents’ house and I wasn’t about to take a pregnancy test with a handful of little kids running around and little to no privacy. I could have gone to a gas station or a tourist centre, but instead I turned down a residential road and parked in front of a familiar house in the newer part of the city. I’d been there a dozen or so times in the past few years, usually spending evenings away from the kids, reliving my younger years with the friends who had kept me sane, filling Sidney in on the stories as we told them. 



“Beast?” Mitch greeted me with a boyish grin that transported me right back to my teen years, the exact smile he’d given me so many times before. “What’s going on?” he asked casually, opening the door wider to let me in.



“Can I use your bathroom?” I asked with an apologetic smile, stepping inside the home he shared with his fiancée, a stunning Korean woman he’d met while touring in Finland. I didn’t feel the need to explain, and with the bag tucked in my purse I headed down the hall as he laughed and gave me a nod. 


So maybe taking a pregnancy test in the bathroom of the house that belonged to a guy I’d slept with over a decade ago wasn’t the most conventional way to do things. Realistically I could have gone home and waited until the kids were asleep, because even if my grandmother turned out to be right, it wasn’t like a pregnancy would be some kind of tragedy. I wasn’t a teenager and I didn’t have to question the paternity, but with everything that had happened in our lives the past two years, I felt like I needed some kind of control over the situation, whatever it my be. Bringing the uncertainty home meant adding more unknowns to our marriage, even if it would only be temporary. Seeing Big Bea in the hospital made me long for the days of my youth, when time seemed to move differently and all I cared about was getting off the island and fighting every expectation people had of me. Back then, we’d go to shows and drink until the sun came up, ten years later, the most punk rock thing I did as the mother of two kids was go to sleep without brushing my teeth. 



The lines showed up before my timer went off and I shoved the test back in the box and stowed the evidence in my purse. After washing my hands, I looked at my reflection in the mirror and took a deep breath.


 “I heard about Big Bea,” Mitch said as I sat down in the kitchen. He placed a glass of water in front of me and offered a sad smile. “How’s she doing?”



 “She claims she’s going to be alright,” I replied, then took a long drink, trying to fight my hotter than average body temperature. Mitch, along with the other guys, had spent a fair chunk of time with her over the years, drinking tea and talking about whatever she decided needed discussing that particular day. “She kicked me out of the hospital.” 



“Were you moping?” he asked with a smirk, already knowing the answer. I gave him a dirty look that faded into a smile and shrugged, sipping at my water. 



“Does it ever freak you out? Like how quickly time passes?” I asked, resting my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand with a defeated sigh. “I mean, seven years ago I was introducing you to Sidney, and fifteen years ago I graduated from high school and we…” I paused, wondering if I should even bring up the night we awkwardly slept together. 



“You mean the summer you managed to blow through Smack, Travis, and me in the span of a month? I’m still convinced you were trying to complete some kind of trifecta.” he teased reassuring me that it wasn’t a taboo topic.



 “We all have our phases,” I blushed, avoiding his gaze smiling shyly. Truth be told I didn’t regret that summer, not for one minute, and even into our thirties, he was still one of the best looking get I’d ever been with, next to Sidney that is. “Besides, I like to think of it as more of a post Jack pallet cleanser.” 



Mitch snorted, knowing first hand just how disastrous my first serious relationship had been, having been the one who helped talk me through the process of breaking up with the poor sonofabitch. He’d always been a good logical sounding board for me when Serena wasn’t around. I could have called her that day, instead of showing up unannounced on his doorstep, but the last time I’d talked to her she’d been booking a ticket to Russia because she and Geno were back on, and considering I hadn’t heard from her since, I figured it was safe to assume she was on the other side of the world trying yet again to make something work with my husband’s teammate. 



“So,” I mused, biting at the dry skin on my lip. “I’m totally pregnant,” I said unexpectedly, the statement sounding unusually casual. I hadn’t planned on telling him, especially not before telling Sidney, but the words had been itching to escape since I sat down and saying them aloud was as much of a relief as peeing on the stick after drinking a litre of water had been. 

 “Really?” his eyes lit up and he grinned excitedly. “That’s so awesome!” our hands met as he high-fived me in celebration. 



“Yeah,” I chuckled. “I found out like ten minutes ago.” 



“Wait, you’re telling me that news of the third Crosby child originated in my very own bathroom?” he beamed comedically. “Should I be saving my toilet for some kind of Canadian history museum?”

“Probably,” I joked. “You might even get something for it on eBay.” 



I went home an hour later, after catching up on what little gossip Mitch had to offer, which compared to Serena was nothing. Neither of us really kept up with the people we went to high school with, aside from the group we talked to on a semi-regular basis. I drove out of the city anxious with anticipation. I had no idea of predicting how Sidney was going to react. I knew realistically that he wasn’t going to be angry, but whether he was going to be excited or not was beyond me.



 I could have told him in some kind of creative way, like cooking dinner made up of only foods that contained the word baby, or buying some kind of baby outfit that would indicate we were about to be the parents of three, but instead I waited until we were lying in bed that night. His lips were on my neck and his hand shoved lazily down the front of my shorts as I lay on my back staring up at the ceiling and desperate to get into the feeling of my husband trying to seduce me. For obvious reasons I was struggling to keep my focus on his hand rubbing against me, and instead of telling him to stop, I just blurted it out. 



“What?” he choked on his words, his hand still under the fabric of my underwear. “What did you just say?” 



“I’m pregnant,” I repeated, slowly turning my head to look at him. He didn’t say anything, just lay there, frozen while I studied his face for an indication of what he was feeling. “Surprise!” I added after a few moments of silence. 



“Shit,” he finally said, still an air of disbelief in his voice. “I wasn’t expecting that,” I felt his hand move above the covers and he shifted, propping himself up on his elbow. 



“No kidding, me neither,” I replied blankly. It wasn’t entirely true, I had noticed my period being MIA, but had written it off as a combination of stress and the fact that although she was too old by societies standards, I had still been breastfeeding Piper on occasion until a month or so prior.



 “This is a good thing, right?” he asked hesitantly. I could almost feel the gears in his mind moving, trying to figure out exactly how we were going to balance three kids when I was the only one home for the majority of the year. In terms of unexpected events, this was nothing compared to learning I was pregnant with Lachlan, but nevertheless we were still taken aback by the news of a third. Three kids hadn’t seemed like a lot when we were discussing our hopes for the future all those years ago, but faced with the reality, I realized the logistics of it were far more complicated. Three kids meant two car seats, which meant they wouldn’t all fit into my small SUV. Three babies meant three little lives to keep track of at all times, three individual personalities to juggle, and four other people I had to worry about every second of everyday.



 “I guess,” I chuckled nervously, rolling onto my side and resting my head against his chest, already wondering how I was going to keep up with all of them while Sidney was off playing the game that our world seemed to revolve around. Just when things were starting to feel manageable again, I was going to be forced to redefine our concept of normal.

Notes

Finally! My goodness that absence was painful. I hope it has made the heart grow fonder and you aren't all terribly upset with me. These last few months have been a bit of a whirl wind for me. I'm expected to graduate next May so I spent the last semester really buckling down in order to improve my GPA (It worked, I got an A+ on a major term paper on sociological deviance in hockey) and I'm moving out of my parents' house next weekend! Needless to say I am terrified, but I got my driver licence last weekend and I'm back working for the government until school starts up again, so things are finally looking up a bit.

How about that Stanley Cup?? I admit I didn't watch any of the games (I've got beef with the NHL right now but that's another story) but I'm quietly pleased to see Sid and company hoisting the cup again. Beatrice of course had some tweets to say about it ;) If you're not following her on Twitter I really suggest it. I'm hoping to get on more now that I'm back in action. @BeaKeller87 (And yes all replies will be done in character!)

I hope every single one of you is doing well and I am so incredibly grateful for your comments and notes of encouragement. It was always a nice little glimmer of light in the dark tunnel of my winter when I'd get a notification.

As always, please tell me what you think! And stay tuned, the end is near but not quite yet!

xxxx-T