Zoe
It didn’t take long for me to realize the upside of waiting so long to become a mother. My friends had learned from their mistakes and couldn’t wait to fill me in on the basics—what car seat was the best for infants, what formula to use, what diaper service was the best deal. For another thing, I’d had plenty of time to observe and figure out how Spence and I would do things differently.
Of course we failed to count on the fact that Cami might have her own ideas about how this relationship was going to work. I should have suspected that she had her own agenda when she hit every baby milestone—crawling, solid food, walking, talking—well ahead of schedule. She redefined the concept of “terrible twos,” stubbornly refusing to even consider the logic or reason behind a normal routine of eating and sleeping. At three she did an abrupt about-face, becoming such a sweetheart that at one point I asked Spence, “Who is this child and what has she done with Cami?” In fact, she was so well-adjusted that I was able to return to work full-time. Then six months after that she morphed into Daddy’s little tomboy—fearless and oblivious to the possibility that she might be hurt.
“Camilla Louise Andersen,” I said, and Cami froze, her back to me, her feet dangling from the low willow tree branch she’d managed to inch her way onto. Now that she was four she was well aware that anyone who used her entire name meant business.
Spence had persuaded me that spending an unexpectedly mild winter weekend on the farm was a good idea. Never mind that I had cases up the wazoo at Legal Aid. Never mind that caring for Cami was a full-time job when she wasn’t in preschool or being watched by one of the college students we used as sitters. Never mind that Spence seemed to just assume that the house would get cleaned at least semiannually and the food would appear in the cupboards and refrigerator. Never mind that…
“Where’s your father?” I asked as I strode across the lawn, my leather briefcase with its full load of homework smacking at my side with each step. And where’s your coat? I wanted to add.
“He went to help Grandpa.”
She nodded toward the field beyond the house. Hal was sitting on the ground leaning against a fence post. Spence was kneeling next to him. I turned back to Cami, torn between my daughter in a tree and my father-in-law on the ground.
“I’m okay, Mama,” she insisted as she leaned forward and wrapped her short stubby arms around the branch. “See?” she shouted down at me as she swung one leg over the branch.
“Wait,” I cried, dropping the briefcase and running toward her.
In true Hollywood slow motion, the weight of her swinging round the limb broke her hold and she was falling. My feet seemed set in concrete and in the background I could hear Spence yelling. Just before I reached for her, my shoe caught on a rock hidden in a pile of frozen leaves and I fell forward, landing on my chest, the wind knocked out of me. A split second later I felt Cami land on top of me and in that second there was the most astonishing silence, broken only by the lazy drone of a distant tractor.
Then Cami wailed and Spence shouted for his mother to hurry, and suddenly I was surrounded.
“I broke…” Cami bawled as she lay on top of me and clung to me, sobbing.
“Come on, honey,” Marie said. “Let Grandma have a look.”
“No!” Cami screamed, and clung tighter to me. “I broke Mommy.”
My chest hurt and I felt as though my breathing would never again be normal, but of course I knew better. “I’m fine, Cami,” I managed as I attempted to roll over.
“Lie still,” Spence ordered before focusing his attention on our daughter. “Cami, Mommy is going to be fine. Let Daddy check her for owies, okay?”
I both heard and felt through the light fabric of my jacket a noisy, wet sniffle, then I felt the weight of her lifted away from me.
“Can you turn over?” Spence asked, his fingers already gently probing here and there, checking for broken or dislocated bones.
I eased onto my side and saw Hal standing next to Marie.
“See?” Marie told Cami. “There’s Mommy. You didn’t break her at all.”
Cami swiped at her eyes with the back of one small fist and stared down at me, frowning. “I’m sorry, Mommy,” she said. “I’m sorry I made you fall down.”
“I’m fine, Cami. Are you fine, too?”
She nodded.
Spence helped me sit up. “Just stay put,” he ordered, and continued his examination. “Mom, would you and Cami get the car keys? I think we should all take a little trip here.”
“Ice cream?” Cami guessed, her smile and eyes widening in equal delight.
“Maybe,” Marie replied after looking from Spence to me to Hal and back again. “Let’s hurry and find the keys.”
“Get in the car, Dad,” Spence said as he helped me to my feet.
“There’s no reason for all of us—” Hal began.
“Get in the car,” Spence repeated, and Hal headed back toward the house.
“What happened out there?” I asked as Spence wrapped his arm around me for support.
“He went out to check the field and got dizzy…damn near fainted. Fortunately, he’d stopped for a minute near the fence. Cami saw him sitting on the ground.”
“What is it?”
“That’s what we’re going to the hospital to find out.” His face was set in what I referred to as his “doctor-mode”—that serious but noncommittal expression he used with patients. Hal and Marie were already in back, with Cami between them, when we got to the car. Spence half lifted me onto the passenger seat and I couldn’t help remembering the night that Cami was born.
Cami’s presence in the car made conversation unnecessary. She told every horse, cow and sheep she spotted in the fields along the road that we were on our way for ice cream, that her favorite was peach but Grandma thought they might not have that so she was going to have strawberry, instead. The glances that passed among the four grown-ups spoke volumes. Marie’s worried sidelong glances at Hal. Hal watching Spence as he passed a slow-moving hay wagon on a double line. And Spence splitting his time between me to his right and Cami and his dad in the rearview mirror.
Spence looked tired and older. When had those lines around his mouth deepened? Where was the sparkle of intelligence and curiosity with which he viewed the most ordinary everyday events? And why had I failed to notice?
I placed my hand on his thigh, startling him, so that he actually jumped and then glanced at me. “It’s okay,” I said softly. “We’re all okay.”
Spence
Maybe and maybe not, I thought. Under other circumstances I would have called for an ambulance, but by the time one could arrive at the farm, I could be halfway to the hospital. Also, I hadn’t wanted to alarm any of them, but the facts were that by any standards Dad’s heart rate had been off the charts, while his hands and face had been clammy and cold. He had recovered quickly, but still…. Cami had a bump on her forehead that was probably no more than a nasty bruise, but still…. The scariest thing of all, though, was that Zoe was bleeding—possibly internally.
When she’d fallen her skirt had bunched beneath her, and when I turned her over and was examining her for signs of broken bones, I’d seen a couple of spots of blood on her inner thigh. Not a lot of blood, but unmistakably fresh. All I could think of as I raced blindly for the emergency room was, What if? What if Dad had suffered a heart attack or small stroke? What if Cami was hurt worse than she appeared? What if Zoe…? I couldn’t—wouldn’t—think about Zoe incapacitated in any way.
Mom had alerted the hospital when she went to get the car keys, so they were ready for us when we arrived.
“Mom, take Cami inside, okay?” I saw Cami’s eyes fill again. “Daddy just wants to be sure Grandpa and Mommy are okay,” I assured her, and Mom hustled her off. “Possible heart attack,” I barked, nodding toward Dad as he got out of the car on his own. “And a room for my wife,” I added as I helped Zoe into the wheelchair the aide had brought to her side of the car.
“Curtain three,” the aide said as he pushed Zoe through the automatic doors.
“Go check on your kid,” Mark Torres directed as he pushed back the curtain and prepared to examine Zoe. “Go on, Andersen. You’re way too stressed out to do this.”
“Go,” Zoe agreed. “I’m fine, really. Just tape up the ankle and I’ll be good as new, right, Mark?” She pressed her hand to my chest and added, “Check on Hal, honey. Marie’s really scared.”
I kissed her, then gave Mark a flick of my eyes to let him know we needed to talk outside. “Don’t go away,” Mark told Zoe, and I saw that she wasn’t fooled.
Mark listened as I described what had happened, made a couple of notes, then grabbed one of the floor nurses and returned to Zoe. I stayed just outside the curtain and listened.
“We’re going to run a few tests just to appease the old man, okay?” Mark told her.
Zoe laughed. “He can be such a baby when it comes to any of us. Sorry to put you through this.”
“Hey, you know what they say about us docs loving to run up those insurance charges.” Then his tone changed to business mode as he dictated orders to the nurse. Satisfied that Mark was taking this seriously and not just doing me a favor, I went across the hall to check on Dad.
By the time Dad’s condition had been diagnosed as dehydration and he’d had a couple of liters of fluids pumped into him, Cami was sound asleep in the tiny waiting room. Her head was resting on Mom’s lap. I gave Mom the good news about Dad and her face went from delight to consternation in the space of ten seconds.
“I have told that man a thousand times,” she muttered as she eased herself free of Cami and stood up. “Where is he?”
I pointed her in the right direction and returned to my daughter, who was sitting up now, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“I thought we were going for ice cream,” she muttered irritably when she realized we were still at the hospital.
“We did. You slept through the whole thing,” I replied, sitting next to her and gathering her onto my lap.
She giggled. “Daddy, that’s a fib,” she said.
I chuckled and hugged her a little closer. “Yep, you caught me. We had to wait for the doctors to fix up Grandpa.”
She squirmed free and looked around. “Where’s Mommy?” Her voice bordered on panic, so I reached for her. She scooted away from me, and in that moment her expression was one I knew all too well. Whenever Zoe wanted an answer and was not getting the answer she wanted, she had that very same expression.
“Mommy’s here,” Zoe announced from the doorway. She smiled weakly and held out her arms.
Cami shrieked and ran for the wheelchair where Zoe sat, one leg extended with the ankle wrapped. Mark was acting as her driver.
I shot him a look and he grinned. I glanced at Zoe as she held Cami against her.
“How’s Hal?” she asked.
“Dehydration,” I said. “What’s the story?”
“She’ll need to stay off her feet for a while,” Mark said.
“Is it broken?” What about the bleeding, I wanted to say but wasn’t sure what Zoe knew and didn’t know at this point. I resisted the urge to strangle the guy for being so damn cheerful in the face of my wife’s pain.
“It’s a sprain. I have to stay off my feet for another—unrelated—reason,” Zoe said. She glanced back at Mark.
Now I was fully capable of strangling both of them.
Zoe
I was pregnant. Mark obviously assumed I was aware of that fact as he completed his examination and read through the lab results he’d pushed through.
When he dropped it into the conversation, I smiled, not yet ready to reveal my shock at the news.
“You’ve had a little spotting, but everything seems to be okay for now. I’ve ordered an ultrasound. They should be here any minute.” He touched my hand. “Does Spence know?”
“Not yet,” I replied. I didn’t know so how could I tell Spence?
“Want me to get him?” Mark asked as the tech arrived to perform the ultrasound.
“No. He’s got enough to deal with. He’s very worried about Hal—and Cami.”
“And you,” Mark added. “Okay, I’ll go check on Hal and Cami and be back in a minute. You stay put.”
He returned with the news that Cami would have a bump and bruise for a couple of days. “She probably cracked heads with you as she landed,” Mark said. “She’ll be fine,” he added with a reassuring squeeze of my hand. “She’s out in the waiting room with your mother-in-law.”
I exhaled my relief. “Two hardheaded women. And Hal?”
“They’re still running some tests, but it appears that he’s going to be fine, as well. Spence, on the other hand, looks like hell. I passed him in the hall as he was running between Hal and Cami. Pretty clear that he wants to be here with you, but Spence can’t help himself. He always has to be where the need is greatest.”
I thought about all the nights I’d held dinner because a student needed him or a journal article needed a rewrite that couldn’t wait or…And I hated myself for wondering, But what about me? What about what I need? Now we were going to have more children. It was what we had dreamed of in the early days of our marriage, but over the past four years I had gotten used to having just Cami. Truth was I couldn’t imagine caring for multiple children, when it seemed every waking moment was spent meeting Cami’s needs—or Spence’s. And yet I wanted this child. I just wanted Spence to want it as much—enough to step away from some of the demands of his career and be there more—for this child, for Cami and for me.
“Spence is going to be thrilled about this news,” Mark said, now examining the printout from the ultrasound. “He’s been talking about having more kids ever since Cami arrived.”
He has? Sure, he’d mentioned the idea once or twice but not in the way Mark saw it—not as if this was something he’d been really wanting.
“I didn’t know that,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t.
Mark studied me for a long minute. “Well, you’ve been pretty busy yourself, from what Spence tells me. Working long hours and then managing the house and Cami. Spence talks like there’s nothing you can’t do.” He waited a beat and added, “You know, Zoe, after my divorce the one thing I realized is how little I paid attention—to Carol, to what she said, to what she thought….”
We are not you and Carol, I wanted to shout, but his words had touched a nerve. The truth was that lately a big part of my frustration and irritability with Spence had to do with fear. All around us couples who had seemed joined for life were coming apart at the seams, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it could happen to us.
“What does that thing tell you?” I asked, changing the subject by pointing at the ultrasound printout.
Mark grinned. “It tells me that you’d better be everything Spence says you are and more because, superlady, in about six months you are going to have twins.”
“Twins?” I gulped. “You’re sure?”
Mark laughed. “See for yourself.” He handed me the ultrasound printout.
Twins. I felt a twinge of delight—or was that panic?
Mark commandeered a wheelchair from the hallway and helped me into it. “I want you to spend the rest of this weekend on total bed rest,” he instructed. “I’ll call Liz and be sure she can see you on Monday—if not in the office, then at home—and we’ll let her take it from there, okay?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not really. Not if you want to hang on to those babies.”
And suddenly I knew that I did—more than anything I could have imagined. I hadn’t known I was pregnant, and yet now the news held such promise, such joy, such hope. I heard Cami asking—no, demanding—to see me, and then we turned a corner and there was Spence. He was tired and scared, and all I wanted to do was hold him and tell him everything was going to be all right—we were going to be all right.
“When did you know?” he asked as he held me that night. We had done the calendar thing and figured out that conception had occurred on a combined holiday and medical meeting in Rome. My purse—with birth control pills—had been stolen the day before. On our last night there the medical society surprised Spence by presenting him their prestigious Healer of the Year award. No stolen purse could take the glow off that for either of us. I was so proud of him. Pills or no pills, we made love.
“I found out about twenty minutes before you did,” I admitted. “And yes, I was just as surprised as you were.”
He laughed and the warmth of his breath on my nape told me that the news of the babies was indeed good news. “I’ve been trying to put it together,” I said. “I mean, how could I miss it? Three months?”
“You’ve been busy,” he said, and we both laughed at the absurdity of the idea that even at her busiest, a woman wouldn’t notice three missed periods. Then Spence sat up. “Unless you’ve been spotting all along?”
“A couple of times,” I admitted, “but they were about when I would have had my period, and I thought that because of the stress at work and everything…”
Spence lay down and wrapped his arms around me. “At least we know now,” he said. “We’ll just have to be very very careful.”
“Meaning no sex?” I asked, teasing him out of this overprotective mood that could become smothering if left unchecked.
He kissed me. “Meaning,” he whispered, “no intercourse, but finding new and innovative ways to make love should keep us busy until these guys get here.” He lifted my nightgown and tenderly planted kisses over my stomach and hipbones before moving up to my breasts, easing my gown higher and finally off completely.
Spence
“Daddy, what are fireworks?”
“You’ve seen fireworks before, Cami. They’re those bright colors in the sky that make the booms and the crackling sounds.”
“I know that, Daddy. I want to know what they are.”
We were decorating her tricycle for the annual neighborhood Independence Day parade. I looked at my daughter, at the intensity of expression so like Zoe’s, and understood that this wasn’t just about fireworks. “Well,” I began, choosing each word.
“Because Ben says that they’re made out of bullets and that they could kill somebody who just happens to get in the way and…”
Ben Fields and Cami had been friends since Zoe had formed a play group with several other mothers when the kids were two. “Well, Ben’s only partly right, honey,” I said. “You see—”
“And then I heard Grandma talking to Grandpa and I know I’m not s’posed to eardrop, but I couldn’t help it….”
“Eavesdrop,” I corrected automatically. “What did Grandma say?”
“She told Poppa that she always worries about how you’ll do with all these fireworks going off. She said that it had to sound like the war all over again for you. Is that true, Daddy? I thought you liked the fireworks. Mommy loves them and I thought…”
“I like fireworks just fine,” I told her. “Not as much as Mommy does, but just fine.” Should I bring the conversation back to her friend Ben or leave it at this?
“Well, that’s what I thought, too,” she said, turning her attention back to wrapping crepe paper streamers through the wheels of her tricycle. “But Ben says that this time the fireworks are going to be bigger than ever because of the bikesentinel and—”
“Bicentennial,” I corrected while mentally wanting to take Ben Fields aside and give him a piece of my mind.
“Yeah, and Ben says there are gonna be explosions—like bombs. Did you hear bombs when you were in the war, Daddy?”
Almost two years had passed since I’d had a flashback, and yet it hit me with the vividness of yesterday. The noise, the confusion, the yelling, the night sky lit, the smoke that settled over camp like a thick fog, the men staggering out of the jungle—limping, screaming, bleeding….
“Daddy?”
Cami’s face was close and her eyes were wide with fear.
I hugged her and held on. “Now you listen to me,” I said softly. “Ben Fields is mixed up about some things. He’s right that they use a kind of explosive to make fireworks—that’s why they make those noises. And he’s right that they can hurt someone who doesn’t know how to light them properly. But fireworks are about joy and celebration, Cami. They have nothing to do with war, okay? When we watch them tonight, we’ll be celebrating the birthday of America—our country is two hundred years old. Can you imagine that?”
“That’s older than Poppa,” Cami said, her voice muffled against my shirt.
I laughed and loosened my hold on her. “That’s more than Poppa and Grandma put together and then some,” I assured her.
Cami scrambled down and started back to work on her bike. “I’m going to tell that Ben Fields that he doesn’t know everything about fireworks,” she announced. “His daddy didn’t even go to the war, so what does he know?” she muttered.
An unexpected conversation with my innocent daughter influenced everything I saw that night as Zoe, Cami and I lay on our blanket in the backyard while the fireworks soared above the skyline and the dome of the Capitol building across the lake. For the first time since returning from ’Nam I felt as though I might finally have turned a corner and started to put the horror I’d witnessed there in perspective.
“Spence?” Zoe squeezed my hand and I assumed that as usual somehow she had tapped into my thoughts.
“That one was a ten, right, Dad?” Cami squealed as a large chrysanthemum-shaped firework spread its golden dust over the sky.
“Maybe an eleven,” I replied, and squeezed Zoe’s hand in return.
But Zoe didn’t let go. “Spence,” she said again—a whisper that was a shout.
“Mom!” I called back to where my parents and Zoe’s sat in lawn chairs on the patio. Both grandmothers ran to us.
“Whoa!” Cami shrieked covering her ears and laughing as the fireworks went into their grand finale.
I helped Zoe to her feet and we walked back toward the house. Dad had already gone inside for the car keys.
“Where’s everybody going?” Cami shouted in the silence that followed the final display of light and color and noise.
“For ice cream,” Zoe said as a contraction took hold.
“Oh,” Cami said, disappointed. Ever since our trip to the hospital the previous February after her fall and Dad’s dizzy spell, Cami associated going for ice cream as adult double talk for seeing the doctor. “Do I have to go?”
“Absolutely not,” Mike Wingfield said, scooping Cami high in his arms and swinging her around. “Let’s have some of that peach ice cream your Grandma Marie made this afternoon.”
“With chocolate syrup,” Dad promised her in a conspiratorial tone. Cami squealed with delight and forgot all about us.
“Hey,” Zoe said after she was settled in the birthing room, “maybe, given the occasion, we need to rethink the names.”
“I am not saddling a kid of mine with Yankee Doodle.”
She laughed and then grimaced as a contraction took hold. “What’s wrong with Sam?” she grunted. “Sammy?”
“Too close to Cami,” I said, coaching her with puffs of breath. “Besides, what would we call the other guy?”
In the end we stuck with the names we’d originally selected for the twins—Todd and Taylor Wingfield Andersen. Todd arrived a few minutes before midnight on the Fourth of July and Taylor followed just a few minutes into the fifth.
“Oh, goody,” an exhausted Zoe cracked, “two birthday parties and the Fourth.”
Mom laughed. “I’ll start making cakes.”
Later, after Zoe had drifted into sleep and our parents had left, I walked down the darkened corridors to the nursery and stood at the window, watching my sons. Todd was sleeping soundly, while Taylor flailed about in his bassinet. He wasn’t crying and didn’t seem to be in pain. It was just as if he wanted to get on with it—life. He was here and he had no intention of wasting a moment.