I only could encourage him to go on with my silence and attention, because I had no idea where he was going with this.
“You said we weren’t ready to let go,” Doug looked into my eyes and slowly said, “so let’s not let go!”
“Doug, I think I know a little bit what you’re saying, but we have to move on and know out there—”
“No, Mom, not out there. You said that little soul … that you felt that little soul would find another home, find a way to walk the earth again. You said it was tied to you and tied to me.”
“What are you saying, Doug?” This was scaring me a little, especially the growing zeal and animation in my son’s manner—and the wild look in his eyes.
“You said that very soul would find another home, find another way to come to life. The perfect home.”
I shook my head. All his words were what I believed because they had somehow been made true that afternoon by my extraordinary experience, but Doug was recounting them, reinterpreting them in a totally different way.
“I think that what happened this afternoon was the right thing to happen. It HAD to happen. Don’t you see? Aunt Gail wasn’t the right home, the perfect home. Don’t you see, Mom? Don’t you feel that now?”
“Doug …” I didn’t know where he was going with this and didn’t know what to say.
“Mom, there’s a way, the perfect way for that baby to find its perfect home. It’s so clear. It’s so easy to correct the mistake. The only mistake was Aunt Gail. She didn’t want a baby.”
“Doug, your aunt was in no position to have another child. She and Uncle Vance were perfectly happy with the twins.”
“I know. All those years she didn’t want another baby. But Mom, YOU DID! Don’t you see?”
“Doug, your father and I just never—”
“Mom, don’t you get it? YOU’RE the perfect place, the perfect home.”
“Doug, talk some sense, please!”
“Okay, so here it is plain and simple: we correct the mistake!” He held his hands palms up in front of him with a big smile on his face like he had obviously just solved the problem.
“Doug?”
“Mom, I want that baby, my baby, to have the perfect home.”
“Doug—what are you saying? You don’t mean—”
“Mom, I want to make love to you! I want to get you pregnant!”
************************
Sleep? What’s that? I tossed and turned all night while Ned barely registered with his breathing. I envied him with blissful—I won’t say ignorance like the old saying, because Ned was a good, if clueless husband—unknowing of the problems swirling around our family.
His son had sex with our oldest friend, my best friend, got her pregnant, and that baby, his grandchild had been aborted, and then his son proposes that he make the situation right by again having sex—but this time with his own mother!
And Ned slept on. I wanted to shake him awake and have him take this problem away from me. But then I’d not only have this problem—I’d have Ned awake, problem number two with his overreactions.
This should have been so easy to solve. A firm and final “NO!” and that’s the end of it. So uncomplicated.
But—it WASN’T uncomplicated. My experience at the clinic, whether it was my imagination or something real outside the comprehension of my human mind made a lot of what Doug had said make sense. Especially since he threw my actual words back at me. But, when he did it, he took all the generalities out of it and made it laser-specific.