The Dark Side - Danielle Steel Page 0,33
hurt as he said it, and Constance’s internal yellow flags went up, to advance with great delicacy.
“I don’t know what I’m saying, or seeing, except what I said, that Jaime gets hurt a lot and it worries me.”
“It worries me too. And maybe I’m the guilty party here,” he said valiantly. “Maybe I’m not as careful as I should be.” But she hadn’t gotten hurt with him. She had only gotten injured with Zoe, in the bath, in the park, the gate she wouldn’t let him put up because of her crazy theories about “respecting Jaime,” the febrile seizure when he was away on business. But he didn’t like what his mother was intimating. “Zoe loves Jaime more than anything in the world, even more than she loves me sometimes. She wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.” He sounded defensive and Constance knew she’d lost the battle, but at least she had planted a seed in his mind. She hoped he’d think about it. Someone had to.
“Of course not,” Constance said innocently. “I can see how much she loves her. Maybe the rules just have to be a little tighter, or the boundaries,” she suggested, and Austin relaxed when she said it.
“That’s a whole other story. She believes in freedom and respect, even for babies. She thinks rules are abusive, and gates are for dogs. She thinks Jaime should have the freedom to go where she wants and do what she wants. I don’t agree with her, but Zoe is adamant about it,” and then he admitted something to his mother. “We fight a lot on the subject. I don’t want Jaime to get hurt either, even if Zoe thinks rules are disrespectful to her at eighteen months. It’s a philosophical issue, and I strongly disagree with her.” Constance was relieved to hear it.
“I hope she gives it some thought, before Jaime gets injured more seriously.” They both knew it was not an easy subject to bring up with Zoe. She was very touchy about her theories on child rearing, and rigid about them.
“I hope so too, Mom,” he said sincerely. “Thank you for worrying about it. Everyone in the ER knows us by our first names. That tells me something too. Maybe things will get regulated better when Jaime starts preschool,” but that was a year and a half away, a long time to wait, and expect someone else to lay down rules for Jaime, because her mother refused to. And yet she had been so heartbroken and remorseful when Jaime broke her arm, because Zoe wouldn’t let him put up a gate on the stairs. She knew she had been wrong, but only after Jaime got hurt. “Anyway, just know that it’s a work in progress but it’s not an easy negotiation, with someone with ideas as strong as Zoe’s.”
“Her ideas are too modern for me,” Constance said simply.
“For me too sometimes,” he admitted. Zoe came home a short time later, and after a few minutes of polite chitchat, Constance left. It hadn’t been a bad conversation with her son, but she didn’t know if it would be fruitful, or if he had any influence over Zoe. It didn’t sound like it.
Constance brought it up to her husband that night but as always, he was skeptical about Constance’s psychological theories. He saw things more pragmatically, without looking deeper.
“I don’t think lack of supervision is the issue,” he said simply. “Every time I see her with Jaime, she’s on top of her, she hardly lets the poor kid breathe.”
“She’s very attached to her,” Constance conceded, “and appears to be a doting mother. But that doesn’t mean she’s careful enough. There’s some reason why that child keeps getting hurt, and sick. Think about it, not one of our other grandchildren has had everything happen that she has, and she’s only eighteen months old, and a girl, and girls are usually less active. Think of your own sons, they never had constant injuries, broken bones and stitches, or had to go to the hospital. None of them has ever had a seizure.”
“Maybe she’s just fragile,” he said, which wasn’t impossible either. But in that case, she was very fragile to an alarming degree. “What are you thinking, really?” he asked his wife and she hesitated. She knew he would pooh-pooh it, and Austin would too, for different reasons.
“If I told you what I’m thinking, you’d say I’m crazy,” she said hesitantly, and he nodded.
“You’re probably right,” he admitted,