NORA JANE was seven months pregnant when Sandy disappeared again. Dear Baby, the note said. I can’t take it. Here’s all the money that is left. Don’t get mad if you can help it. I love you, Sandy.
She folded up the note and put it in a drawer. Then she made up the bed. Then she went outside and walked along the water’s edge. At least we are living on the water, she was thinking. I always get lucky about things like that. Well, I know one thing. I’m going to have these babies no matter what I have to do and I’m going to keep them alive. They won’t die on me or get drunk or take cocaine. Freddy was right. A decent home is the best thing.
Nora Jane was on a beach fifty miles south of San Francisco, beside a little stucco house Sandy’s old employer had been renting them for next to nothing. Nora Jane had never liked living in that house. Still, it was on the ocean.
The ocean spread out before her now, gray and dark, breaking against the boulders where it turned into a little cove. There were places where people had been making fires. Nora Jane began to pick up all the litter she could find and put it in a pile beside a fire site. She walked around for half an hour picking up cans and barrettes and half-burned pieces of cardboard and piled them up beside a boulder. Then she went back to the house and got some charcoal lighter and a match and lit the mess and watched it burn. It was the middle of October. December the fifteenth was only two months away. I could go to Freddy, she was thinking. He will always love me and forgive me anything. But what will it do to him? Do I have a right to get around him so he’ll only love me more? This was a question Nora Jane was always asking herself about Freddy Harwood. Now she asked it once again.
A cold wind was blowing off the ocean. She picked up a piece of driftwood and added it to the fire. She sank down upon the sand. She was carrying ten pounds of babies but she moved as gracefully as ever. She wiggled around until her back was against the boulder, sitting up very straight, not giving in to the cold or the wind. I’m one of those people that could go to the Himalayas, she decided. Because I never give in to cold. If you hunch over it will get you.
Freddy Harwood stood on the porch of his half-finished house, deep in the woods outside of Willits, California, and thought about Nora Jane. He was thinking about her voice, trying to remember how it sounded when she said his name. If I could remember that sound, he decided. If I could remember what she said that first night it would be enough. If that’s all I get it will have to do.
He looked deep into the woods, past the madrone tree, where once he had seen a bobcat come walking out and stop at the place where the trees ended and the grass began. A huge yellow cat with a muff around its neck and brilliant eyes. A poet had been visiting and they had made up a song about the afternoon called “The Great Bobcat Visit and Other Mysteries of Willits.” If she was here I could teach it to her, Freddy thought. So, there I go again. Everything either reminds me of her or it doesn’t remind me of her, so everything reminds me of her. What good does it do to have six million dollars and two houses and a bookstore if I’m in love with Nora Jane? Freddy left his bobcat lookout and walked around the side of the house toward the road. A man was hurrying up the path.
It was his neighbor, Sam Lyons, who lived a few miles away up an impassable road. Freddy waved and went to meet him. He’s coming to tell me she’s dead, he decided. She died in childbirth in the hands of a midwife in Chinatown and I’m supposed to go on living after that. “What’s happening?” he called out. “What’s going on?”
“You got a call,” Sam said. “Your girlfriend’s coming on the train. I’m getting tired of this, Harwood. You get yourself a phone. That’s twice this week. Two calls in one week! ”
In a small neat room near the Berkeley campus a young Chinese geneticist named Lin Tan Sing packed a change of clothes and his toilet articles, left a note for himself about some things to do when he returned, and walked out into the beautiful fall day. He had been saving his money for a vacation and today was the day it began. As soon as he finished work that afternoon he would ride the subway to the train station and get on board the Starlight Express and travel all the way up the California coast to Puget Sound. He would see the world. My eyes have gone too far inside, Lin Tan told himself. Now I will go outside and see what’s happening at other end. People will look at me and I will look at them. We will learn about each other. Perhaps the train will fall off cliff into the ocean. There will be stories in the newspapers. Young Chinese scientist saves many lives in daring rescues. President of United States invites young Chinese scientist to live in White House and tutor children of politicians. Young Chinese scientist adopted by wealthy man whose life he saves in train wreck. I am only a humble scientist trying to unravel genetic code, young Chinese scientist tells reporters. Did not mean to be hero. Do not know what came over me. I pushed on fallen car and great strength came to me when it was least expected.
Lin Tan entered the Berkeley campus and strolled along a sidewalk leading to the student union. Students were all around. A man in black was playing a piano beneath a tree. The sky was clear with only a few clouds to the west. The Starlight Express, Lin Tan was thinking. All Plexiglas across the top. Stars rolling by while I am inside with something nice to drink. Who knows? Perhaps I will find a girl on the train who wishes to talk with me. I will tell her all things scientific and also of poetry. I will tell her the poetry of my country and also of England. Lin Tan folded his hands before him as he walked, already he was on the train, speeding up the California coast telling some dazzling blonde the story of his life and all about his work. Lin Tan worked at night in the lab of the Berkeley Women’s Clinic. He did chemical analyses on the fluid removed during amniocentesis. So far he had made only one mistake in his work. One time a test had to be repeated because he knocked a petri dish off the table with his sleeve. Except for that his results had proved correct in every single instance. No one else in the lab had such a record. Because of this Lin Tan always kept his head politely bowed in the halls and was extra-nice to the other technicians and generous with advice and help. He had a fellowship in the graduate program in biology and he had this easy part-time job and his sister, Jade Tan Sing, was coming in six months to join him. Only one thing was lacking in Lin Tan’s life and that was a girlfriend. He had what he considered a flaw in his character and wished to be in love with a Western girl with blond hair. It was only fate, the I Ching assured him. A fateful flaw that would cause disaster and ruin but not of his own doing and therefore nothing to worry about.
On this train, he was thinking, I will sit up straight and hold my head high. If she asks where I come from I will say Shanghai or Hong Kong as it is difficult for them to picture village life in China without thinking of rice paddies. I am a businessman, I will say, and have only taken time off to learn science. No, I will say only the truth so she may gaze into my eyes and be at peace. I will buy you jewels and perfume, I will tell her. Robes with silken dragons eating the moon, many pearls. Shoes with flowers embroidered on them for every minute of the day. Look out the Plexiglas ceiling at the stars. They are whirling by and so are we even when we are off the train.
Nora Jane bought her ticket and went outside to get some air while she waited for the train. She was wearing a long gray sweatshirt with a black leather belt riding on top of the twins. On her legs were bright yellow tights and yellow ballet shoes. A yellow and white scarf was tied around her black curls. She looked just about as wonderful as someone carrying ten pounds of babies could ever look in the world. She was deserted and unwed and on her way to find a man whose heart she had broken only four months before and she should have been in a terrible mood but she couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for despair. Whatever chemicals Tammili and Lydia were pumping into her bloodstream were working nicely to keep Nora Jane in a good mood. She stood outside the train station watching a line of cirrus clouds chugging along the horizon, thinking about the outfits she would buy for her babies as soon as they were born. Nora Jane loved clothes. She couldn’t wait until she had three people to dress instead of only one. All her life she had wanted to be able to wear all her favorite colors at one time. Now she would have her chance. She could just see herself walking into a drugstore holding her little girls by the hand. Tammili would be wearing blue. Lydia would be wearing red or pink. Nora Jane would have on peach or mauve or her old standby, yellow. Unless that was too many primaries on one day. I’ll start singing, she decided. That way I can work at night while they’re asleep. I have to have some money of my own. I don’t want anyone supporting us. When I go shopping and buy stuff I don’t want anybody saying why did you get this stuff and you didn’t need that shirt and so forth. As soon as they’re born I’ll be able to work and make some money. Nieman said I could sing anyplace in San Francisco. Nieman should know. After all, he writes for the newspaper. If they don’t like it then I’ll just get a job in a day-care center like I meant to last fall. I’ll do whatever I have to do.
A whistle blew. Nora Jane walked back down the concrete stairs. “Starlight Express,” a black voice was calling out. “Get on board for the long haul to Washington State. Don’t go if you’re scared of stars. Stars all the way to Marin, San Rafael, Petaluma, and Sebastopol. Stars all the way to Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. Stars to Alaska and points north. Stars to the North Pole. Get on board this train….”
Nora Jane threw her backpack over her shoulder and ran for the train. Lin Tan caught a glimpse of her yellow stockings and reminded himself not to completely rule out black hair in his search for happiness.
Freddy Harwood was straightening up his house. He moved the wooden table holding his jigsaw puzzle of the suspended whale from the Museum of Natural History. He watered his paper-white narcissus. He got a broom out of a closet and began to sweep the floor. He found a column Nieman did about My Dinner with André and leaned on the broom reading it. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and there was no reason to leave for the station before five. They aren’t my babies, he reminded himself. She’s having someone else’s babies and they aren’t mine and I don’t want them anyway. Why do I want her at all? Because I like to talk to her, that’s why. I like to talk to her more than anyone in the world. That’s that. It’s my business. Mine and only mine. I like to look at her and I like to talk to her. Jesus Christ! Could I have a maid? I mean would it violate every tenet if I had a maid once a week?
He threw the broom into a closet and pulled on his boots and walked out into the yard to look for the bobcat.
The house Freddy was stamping out of was a structure he had been building on and off for years. It was in Mendocino County near the town of Willits and could only be reached by a long winding uphill road that became impassable when it rained. Actually, it was impassable when it didn’t rain but Freddy and his lone neighbor put their four-wheel jeeps in gear and pretended the rock-covered path was a road. Sometimes it even looked like a road, from the right angle and if several trips had been made in a single spell of dry weather.
The house sat on high ground and had several amazing views. To the west lay the coastal ranges of northern California. To the east the state game refuge of the Mendocino National Forest. In any direction were spruce trees and Douglas fir and Northern pine. Freddy had bought the place with the first money he ever earned. That was years ago, during the time when he stopped speaking to his family and smoked dope all day and worked as a chimney sweep. He had lived in a van and saved twelve thousand dollars. Then he had driven up the California coast until he found Douglas fir on land with no roads leading to it. He bought as much as twelve thousand dollars would buy. Two acres, almost three. Then he set up a tent and started building. He built a cistern to catch water and laid pipes to carry it to where the kitchen would later be. He leveled the land and poured a concrete foundation and marked off rooms and hauled stones for a fireplace. He planted fruit trees and a vineyard and put in root plants and an herb garden for medical emergencies. He had been working on the house off and on for twenty-three years. The house was as much a part of Freddy Harwood as his skin. When he was away from Willits for long stretches of time, he thought about the house every day, the red sun of early morning and the redder sun of sundown. The eyes of the bobcat in the woods, the endless lines of mountains in the distance. The taste of the air and the taste of the water. His body sleeping in peace in his own invention.
Now she’s ruined my house for me, he was thinking, leaning against the madrone tree while he waited for the bobcat. She’s slept in all the rooms and sat on the chairs and touched the furniture. She’s used all the forks and spoons and moved the table. I’m putting it back where it goes today. Well, let her come up here and beg for mercy. I don’t care. I’ll give it to her. Let her cry her dumb little Roman Catholic heart out. I guess she looks like hell. I bet she’s as big as a house. Well, shit, not that again.
He turned toward the house. A redbird was throwing itself against the windows. Bird in the house means bad luck. Well, don’t let it get in. I’ll have to put some screens on those windows. Ruin the light.
The house was very tall with many windows. It was a house a child might draw, tall and thin. Inside were six rooms, or areas, filled with books and mattresses and lamps and tables. Everything was white or black or brown or gray. Freddy had made all the furniture himself except for two chairs by Mies van der Rohe. A closet held all of Buiji Dalton’s pottery in case she should come to visit. A shelf held Nieman’s books. On a peg behind the bathroom door was Nora Jane’s yellow silk kimono.
When she comes, Freddy was saying to himself as he trudged back up the hill to do something about the bird, I won’t say a word about anything. I’ll just act like everything is normal. Sam came over and said you’d be on the train and it was getting into Fort Bragg at eight and would I meet you. Well, great. I mean, what brought you here? I thought you and the robber baron had settled down for the duration. I mean, I thought I’d never see you again. I mean, it’s okay with me. It’s not your fault I am an extremely passionate and uncontrollably sensitive personality. I can tell you one thing. It’s not easy being this sensitive. Oh, shit, he concluded. I’ll just go on and get drunk. I’m a match for her when I’m drunk. Drunk, I’m a match for anyone, even Nora Jane. He opened the closet and reached in behind one of Buiji Dalton’s hand-painted Egyptian funeral urns and took out a bottle of Red Aubruch his brother had sent from somewhere. He found a corkscrew and opened it. He passed the cork before his nose, then lifted the bottle and began to drink. “There ain’t no little bottle,” he was thinking. “Like that old bottle of mine.”
At about the same time that Freddy Harwood was resorting to this time-honored method of acquiring courage, Lin Tan Sing was using a similar approach aboard the Starlight Express. He was drinking gin and trying not to stare at the yellow stockings which were all he could see of Nora Jane. She was in a high-backed swivel chair turned around to look out the glassed-in back of the train. She was thinking about whales, how they had their babies in the water, and also about Sandra Draine, who had a baby in a tub of saltwater in Sausalito while her husband videotaped the birth. They had shown the tape at the gallery when Sandra had her fall show. It won’t be like that for me, Nora Jane was thinking. I’m not letting anyone take any pictures or even come in the room except the doctor and maybe Freddy, but no cameras. I know he’ll want to bring a camera, if he’s there. He’s the silliest man I have ever known.
But I love him anyway. And I hate to do this to him but I have to do what I have to do. I can’t be alone now. I have to go somewhere. The train rounded a curve. The wheels screeched. Nora Jane’s chair swiveled around. Her feet flew out and she hit Lin Tan in the knee with a ballet shoe.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Did I hurt you?”
“It is nothing.”
“We hit a curve. I’m really sorry. I thought the chair was fastened down.”
“You are going to have a baby?” His face was very close to her face. It was the largest oriental face Nora Jane had ever seen. The darkest eyes. She had not known there were eyes that dark in all the world, even in China. She lowered her own.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
“I am geneticist. This interests me very much.”
“It does me too.”
“Would you like to talk with me?”
“Sure. I’d like to have someone to talk to. I was just thinking about the whales. I guess they don’t even know it’s cold, do they?”
“I have gone out in kayak to be near them. It is very mysterious. It was the best experience I have had in California. A friend of mine in lab at Berkeley Women’s Clinic took me with him. He heads a team of volunteers to collect money for whales. Next summer I will go again.”
“Oh, my God. That’s where I go. I mean, that’s my doctor. I’m going to have twin baby girls. I had an amnio at your clinic. That’s how I know what they are.”
“Oh, this is very strange. You are Miss Whittington of 1512 Arch Street, is it not so? Oh, this is very strange meeting. I am head technician at this lab. Head technician for night lab. Yes. I am the one who did the test for you. I was very excited to have these twin girls show up. It was an important day for me. I had just been given great honor at the university. Oh, this is chance meeting like in books.” He stood up and took her hand. “I am Lin Tan Sing, of the province of Suchow, near Beijing, in Central China. I am honored to make your acquaintance.” He stood above her, waiting.
“I am Nora Jane Whittington, of New Orleans, Louisiana, and San Jose, California. And Berkeley. I am glad to meet you also. What all did the tests show? What did they look like under the microscope? Do you remember anything else about it?”
“Oh, it is not in lab that I learn things of substance. Only chip away at physical world in lab. Very humble. Because it was a memorable day in my own life I took great liberty and cast I Ching for your daughters. I saw great honors for them and gifts of music brought to the world.”
“Oh, my God,” Nora Jane said. She leaned toward him. “I can’t believe I met you on this train.” Snowy mountains, Lin Tan was thinking. Peony and butterfly. Redbird in the shade of willows.
Later a waiter came through the club car and Lin Tan advised Nora Jane to have an egg salad sandwich and a carton of milk. “I am surprised they allow you to travel so far along in your pregnancy. Are you going far?”
“Oh, no one said I could go. I mean, I didn’t ask anyone. They said I could travel until two months before they came.” She put her hand to her mouth. “I guess I should have asked someone. But I was real upset about something and I needed to come up here. I need to see this friend of mine.”
“Be sure and get plenty of rest tonight. Very heavy burden for small body.”
“My body’s not so small. I have big bones. See my wrists.” She held out her wrists and he pretended to be amazed at their size. “All the same, be sure and rest tomorrow. Don’t take chances. Many very small babies at clinic now. I am worrying very much about so many months in machine for tiny babies. Still, it is United States and they will not allow anything to die. It is the modern age.”
“I want my babies no matter what size they are.” She folded her hands across her lap. “I guess I shouldn’t have come up here. Well, it’s too late now. Anyway, where did you learn to speak English so well? Did you have it in school?”
“I studied your writers. I studied Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner and John Dos Passos. Also, many American poets. Then, since I am here, I am learning all the time with my ears.”
“I like poetry a lot. I’m crazy about it to tell the truth.”
“I am going to translate poetry of women in my country for women of America. I have noticed there is much sadness and menustation in poetry of women here. But is not sadness in life here. In my country poetry is to overcome sadness, help people to understand how things are and see beauty and order and not give in to despair.”
“Oh, like what? Tell me some.”
“Here is poem by famous poet of the T’ang Dynasty. The golden age of Chinese poetry.
“A branch is torn from the tree
The tree does not grieve
And goes on growing”
“Oh, that’s wonderful.”
“This poet is called the White Poppy. She has been dead for hundreds of years but her poems will always live. This is how it is with the making of beautiful things, don’t you find it so?”
“Whenever I think of being on this train I’ll remember you telling me that poem.” She was embarrassed and lowered her eyes to be talking of such important things with a stranger.
“A poem is very light.” Lin Tan laughed, to save the moment. “Not like babies. Easy to transport or carry.” Nora Jane laughed with him. The train sped through the night. The whales gave birth in the water. The stars stayed on course. The waiter appeared with the tray and they began to eat their sandwiches.
Freddy was waiting on the platform when the train arrived at the Noyo–Point Cabrillo Station. He was wearing his old green stadium coat and carrying a blanket. Nora Jane stepped down from the train and kissed him on the cheek. Lin Tan pressed his face against the window and smiled and waved. Nora Jane waved back. “That’s my new friend,” she said. “He gave me his address in Berkeley. He’s a scientist. Get this. He did the amnio on Lydia and Tammili. Can you believe it? Can anybody believe the stuff that happens?”
Freddy wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. “I thought you might like to see a movie before we go back. The Night of the Shooting Stars is playing at the Courthouse in Willits.”
“He ran off and left me,” she said. “I knew he would. I don’t think I even care.”
“You met the guy on the train that did the amnio? I don’t believe it.”
“He knew my name. I almost fainted when he said it.”
“Look, we don’t have to go to a movie unless you feel like it. I just noticed it was playing. It’s got a pregnant woman in it.”
“I’ve seen it three times. We went last year, don’t you remember? But I’ll go again if you want to.”
“We could eat instead. Have you eaten anything?”
“I had a sandwich on the train. I guess we better go on to the house. I’m supposed to take it easy. I don’t have any luggage. I just brought this duffel bag. I was too mad to pack.”
“We’ll get something to eat.” He took her arm and pulled her close to him. Her skin beneath her sleeve was the same as the last time he had touched her. They began to move in the direction of the car. “I love the way you smell,” she said. “You always smell just like you are. Listen, Freddy, I don’t know exactly what I’m doing right now. I’m just doing the best I can and playing it by ear. But I’m okay. I really am okay. Do you believe everything that’s happened?”
“You want to buy anything? Is there anything you need? You want to see a doctor or anything like that?”
“No, let’s just go up to the house. I’ve been thinking about the house a lot. About the windows. Did you get the rest of them put in?”
“Yeah, and now the goddamn birds are going crazy crashing into them. Five dead birds this week. They fight their reflections. How’s that for a metaphor.” He helped her into the car. “Wear your seat belt, okay? So, what’s going on inside there?”
“They just move around all the time. If I need to I can sell the car. I don’t want anybody supporting us, even you. I’m really doing great. I don’t know all the details yet but I’m figuring things out.” He started the motor and began to drive. She reached over and touched his knee. They drove through the town of Fort Bragg and turned onto the road to Willits. Nora Jane moved her hand and fell asleep curled up on the seat. She didn’t wake again until they were past Willits and had started up the long hill leading to the gravel road that led to the broken path to Freddy’s house. “He said they were going to give great gifts to the world, gifts of music,” she said when she woke. “I think it means they won’t be afraid to sing in public. I want to call Li Suyin and talk to her about it. I forgot you didn’t have a phone. I need to call and tell her where I am. If she calls San Jose she’ll start worrying about me.”
“You can call tomorrow. Look, how about putting your hand back on my leg. That way I’ll believe you’re here.” He looked at her. “I want to believe you’re here.”
“You’re crazy to even talk to me.”
“No, I’m not. I’m the sane one, remember, the control in the modern world experiment.” She was laughing now so he could afford to look at her as hard as he liked. She looked okay. Tired and not much color in her face, but okay. Perfect as always from Freddy Harwood’s point of view.
“I want to take them on the grand tour as soon as they’re old enough,” Freddy was saying. They were lying on a futon on top of a mattress in the smallest of the upstairs rooms. “My grandmother took me when I was twelve. She took my cousin, Sally, and hired a gigolo to dance with her in Vienna. I had this navy blue raincoat with a zip-in lining. God, I wish I still had that coat.” Nora Jane snuggled down beside him, smelling his chest. It smelled like a wild animal. There were many things about Freddy Harwood that excited her almost as much as love. She patted him on the arm. “So, anyway,” he continued. “I have this uncle in New Orleans and he’s married two women with three children. He’s raised six children that didn’t belong to him and he’s getting along all right. He says at least his subconscious isn’t involved. There’s a lot to be said for that…. What I’m saying is, I haven’t lived in Berkeley all my life to give in to some kind of old worn-out masculine pride. Not with all the books I’ve read.”
“All I’ve ever done is make you sad. I always end up doing something mean to you.”
“Maybe I like it. Anyway, you’re here and that’s how it is. But we ought to go back to town in a few days. You can stay with me there, can’t you?” He pulled her closer, as close as he dared. She was so soft. The babies only made her softer. “I ought to call Stuart and tell him you’re here.”
“He’s a heart doctor. He doesn’t know anything about babies.”
“Wait a minute. One of them did something. Oh, shit, did you feel that?”
“I know. They’re in there. Sometimes I forget it but not very often. Tell me some more about when you went to Europe. Tell me everything you can remember, just the way it happened. Like what you had to eat and what everyone was wearing.”
“Okay. Sally had a navy blue skirt and a jacket and she had some white blouses and in Paris we got some scarves. She had this scarf with the Visigoth crowns on it and she had it tied in a loop so a whole crown showed. She fixed it all the time she wore it. She couldn’t leave it alone. Then they went somewhere and got some dresses made out of velvet but they only wore them at night.”
“What did you wear?” She had a vision of him alone in a hotel room putting on his clothes when he was twelve. “I bet you were a wonderful-looking boy. I bet you were the smartest boy in Europe.”
“We met Jung. We talked to him. So, what else did you talk about to this Chinese research biologist?”
“A genetic research biologist. He’s still studying it. He has to finish school before he can do his real work. He wants to do things to DNA and find out how much we remember. He thinks we remember everything that ever happened to anyone from the beginning of time because there wouldn’t be any reason to forget it, and if you can make computer chips so small, then the brain is much larger than that. We talked all the way from Sausalito. His father was a painter. When his sister gets here they might move to Sweden. He believes in the global village.”
“He says they’re musicians, huh?”
“Well, it wasn’t that simple. It was very complicated. He had the biggest face of any oriental I’ve met. I just love him. I’m going to talk to him a lot more when we both get back to San Francisco.” Her voice was getting softer, blurring the words.
“Go to sleep,” Freddy said. “Don’t talk anymore.” He felt a baby move, then move again. They were moving quite a bit.
“I’m cold,” she said. “Also, he said the birth process was the worst thing we ever go through in our life. He told me about this boy in England that’s a genius, his parents are both doctors and they let him stay in the womb for eighteen months for an experiment and he can remember being born and tells about it. He said it was like someone tore a hole in the universe and jerked you out. Get closer, will you. God, I’m tired.”
“We ought to go downstairs and sleep in front of the fire. I’m going to make a bed down there and come get you.”
Freddy went downstairs and pulled a mattress up before the fireplace and built up the fire and brought two futons in and laid them on top of the mattress and added a stack of wool blankets and some pillows. When he had everything arranged, he went back upstairs and carried her down and tucked her in. Then he rubbed her back and told her stories about Vienna and wondered what time it was. I am an hour from town, he told himself, and Sam is twenty minutes away and probably drunk besides. It’s at least three o’clock in the morning and the water’s half frozen in the cistern and I let her come up here because I was too goddamn selfish to think of a way to stop it. So, tomorrow we go to town.
“Freddy?”
“Yes.”
“I had a dream a moment ago… a dream of a meadow. All full of light and this dark tree. I had to go around it.”
“Go to sleep, honey. Please go to sleep.”
When she fell asleep he got up and sat on the hearth. We are here as on a darkling plain, he thought. We forget who we are. Branching plants, at the mercy of water. But tough. Tough and violent, some of us anyway. Oh, shit, if anything happened to her I couldn’t live. Well, I’ve got to get some air. This day is one too many.
He pulled on a long black cashmere coat that had belonged to his father and went outside and took a sack of dogfood out of the car and walked down into the hollow to feed the bobcat. He spread part of the food on the ground and left the open sack beside it. “I know you’re in there,” he said out loud. “Well, here’s some food. Come and get it. Nora Jane’s here. I guess you know that by now. Don’t kill anything until she leaves.” He listened. The only sound was the wind in the trees. It was very cold. The stars were very clear. There was a rustle, about forty yards away. Then nothing. “Good night then,” Freddy said. “I guess this dog food was grown in Iowa. The global village. Well, why not.” He started back up the hill, thinking the bobcat might jump on him at any moment. It took his mind off Nora Jane for almost thirty seconds.
At that moment the Starlight Express came to a stop in Seattle, Washington, and Lin Tan climbed down from the train and started off in search of adventure. Before the week was over he would fall in love with the daughter of a poet. His life would be shadowed for five years by the events of the next few hours but he didn’t know that yet. He was in a wonderful mood. All his philosophical and mystical beliefs were coming together like ducks on a pond. To make him believe in his work, fate had put him on a train with a girl whose amnio he had done only a few months before. Twin baby girls with AB positive blood, the luckiest of all blood. Not many scientists have also great feeling for mystical properties of life, he decided, and see genetic structure when they gaze at stars. I am very lucky my father taught me to love beauty. Moss on Pond, Light on Water, Smoke Rising Beneath the Wheels of Locomotive. Yes, Lin Tan concluded, I am a fortunate man in a universe that really knows what it is doing.
Freddy let himself back into the house. He built up the fire, covered Nora Jane and lay down beside her to try to sleep. This is not paranoia, he told himself. I am hyper-aware, which is a different thing. If it weren’t for people like me the race would have disappeared years ago. Who tends the lines at night? Who watches for the big cats with their night vision? Who stays outside the circle and guards the tribe?
He snuggled closer, smelling her hair. “What is divinity if it can come only in silent shadows and in dreams?” Barukh atah Adonai eloheinu, melekh ha-olam. Praised be thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has brought forth bread from the earth. Nora Jane, me. Jesus Christ!
It was five-thirty when she woke him. “I’m wet,” she said. “I think my water broke. I guess that’s it. You’d better go and get someone.”
“Oh, no, you didn’t do this to me.” He was bolt upright, pulling on his boots. “You’re joking. There isn’t even a phone.”
“Go use one somewhere. Freddy, this is serious. I’m in a lot of pain, I think. I can’t tell. Please go on. Go right now.”
“Nora Jane. This isn’t happening to me.” He was pulling on his boots.
“Go on. It’ll be okay. This Chinese guy said they were going to be great so they can’t die. But hurry up. How far is it to Sam’s?”
“Twenty minutes. Oh, shit. Okay, I’m going. Don’t do anything until I get back. If you have to go to the bathroom, do it right there.” He leaned fiercely down over her. His hands were on her shoulders. “I’ll be right back here. Don’t move until I come.” He ran from the house, jumped into his car, and began driving down the rocky drive. It was impossible to do more than five miles an hour over the rocks. The whole thing was impossible. The sun was lighting up the sky behind the mountains. The sky was silver. Brilliant clouds covered the western sky. Freddy came to the gate he shared with the other people on the mountain and drove right through it, leaving it torn off the post. He drove as fast as he dared down the rocky incline and turned onto gravel and saw the smoke coming from the chimney of Sam Lyons’s house.
Nora Jane was in great pain. “I’m your mother,” she was pleading. “Don’t hurt me. I wouldn’t hurt you. Please don’t do it. Don’t come now. Just wait awhile, go back to sleep. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus Christ. It’s too cold. I’m freezing. I have to stop this. Pray for us sinners.” The bed filled with water. She looked down. It wasn’t water. It was blood. So much blood. What’s going on? she thought. Why is this happening to me? I don’t want it. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen. Hail Mary, Mother of God, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Oh, Christ, oh, shit, oh, goddammit all to hell. I don’t know what’s so cold. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Someone should be here. I want to see somebody.
The blood continued to pour out upon the bed.
Sam came to the door. “A woman’s up there having babies,” Freddy said. “Get on the phone and call an ambulance and the nearest helicopter service. Try Ukiah but call the hospital in Willits first. Do it now. Sam, a woman’s in my house having babies. Please.” Sam turned and ran back through the house to the phone. Freddy followed him. “I’m going back. Get everyone you can get. Then come and help me. Make sure they understand the way. Or wait here for them if they don’t seem to understand. Be very specific about the way. Then come. No, wait here for them. Get Selby and tell him to come to my house. I’m leaving.” He ran back out the door and got back into his car and turned it around and started driving. His hands burned into the wheel. He had never known anything in his life like this. Worse than the earthquake that ruined the store. He was alone with this. “No,” he said out loud as he drove. “I couldn’t love them enough to let them call me on the phone. No, I had to have this goddamn fucking house a million miles from nowhere. She’ll die. I know it. I have known it from the first moment I set eyes on her. Every time I ever touched her I knew she would die and leave me. Now it’s coming true.” The car hit a boulder. The wheel was wrenched from his hand but he straightened it with another wrench and went on driving. The sky was lighter now. The clouds were blowing away. He parked the car a hundred yards from the house and got out and started running.
Lydia came out into the space between Nora Jane’s legs. Nora Jane reached for the child and held her, struggling to remember what you did with the cord. Then Freddy was there and took the baby from her and bit the cord in two and tied it and wrapped the baby in his coat and handed it to her. Tammili’s head moved down into the space where Lydia’s had been. Nora Jane screamed a long scream that filled all the spaces of the house and then Nora Jane didn’t care anymore. Tammili’s body moved out into Freddy’s hands and he wrapped her in a pillowcase and laid her beside her sister, picking up one and then the other, then turning to Nora Jane. Blood was everywhere and more was coming. There was nothing to do, and there was too much to do. There wasn’t any way to hold them and help her too. “It’s all right,” she said. “Wipe them off. I don’t want blood all over them. You can’t do anything for me.”
“I want you to drink something.” He ran into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator door. He found a bottle of Coke and a bottle of red wine and held them in his hands trying to decide. He took the wine and went back to where she lay. “Drink this. I want you to drink this. You’re bleeding, honey. You have to drink something. They’ll be here in a minute. It won’t be a minute from now.”
She shook her head. “I’m going to die, Freddy. It’s all right. It looks real good. You wouldn’t believe how it looks. Get them some good-looking clothes… get them a red raincoat with a hood. And yellow. Get them a lot of yellow.” He pulled her body into his. She felt as if she weighed a thousand pounds. Then nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. “Wake up,” he screamed. “Wake up. Don’t die on me. Don’t you dare die on me.” Still, there was nothing. He turned to the babies. He must take care of them. No, he must revive Nora Jane. He laid his head down beside hers. She was breathing. He picked up the bottle of wine and drank from it. He turned to the baby girls. He picked them up, one at a time, then one in each arm. Then he began to count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. He laid Lydia down beside Nora Jane, and, holding Tammili, he began to throw logs on the fire. He went into the kitchen and lit the stove and put water on to boil. He dipped a kitchen towel in cold water, then threw that away and took a bottle of cooking oil and soaked a rag in it and carried Tammili back to the fire and began to wipe the blood and mucous from the child’s hair. Then he put Tammili down and picked up Lydia and cleaned her for a while. They were both crying, very small yelps like no sound he had ever heard. Nora Jane lay on the floor covered with a red wool blanket soaked in blood and Freddy kept on counting. Seven hundred and seventeen. Seven hundred and eighteen. Seven hundred and nineteen. He found more towels and made a nest for the babies in the chair and knelt beside them, patting and stirring them with his hands until he heard the cars drive up and the helicopter blades descending to the cleared place beside the cistern. Barukh atah Adonai eloheinu, melekh ha-olam, he was saying. Praised be thou, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has brought forth bread from the earth. Praised be thou, inventor of helicopters, miner of steel, king of applied science. Oh, shit, thank God, they’re here.
When Nora Jane came to, the helicopter pilot was on top of her, Freddy was doing something with her arms, and people were moving around the room. A man in a leather jacket was holding the twins. “They’re going to freeze,” she said. “I want to see them. I think I died. I died, didn’t I?” The pilot moved away. Freddy propped her body up with his own and Sam tucked a blanket around her legs. “The ambulance is coming,” he said. “It’s okay. Everyone’s okay.”
“I died and it was light, like walking through a field of light. A fog made out of light. Do you think it’s really like that or only shock?”
“Oh, honey,” Freddy crooned into her hair. “It was the end of light. Listen, they’re so cute. Wait till you see them. They’re like little kittens or mice, like baby mice. They have black hair. Listen, they imprinted on my black cashmere coat. God knows what will happen now.”
“I want to see them if nobody minds too much,” she said. The man in the leather jacket brought them to her. She tried to reach out for them but her arms were too tired to move. “You just be still,” the pilot said. “I’m Doctor Windom from the Sausalito Air Emergency Service. We were in the neighborhood. I’m sorry it took so long. We had to make three passes to find the clearing. Well, a ground crew is coming up the hill. We’ll take you out in a ground vehicle. Just hold on. Everything’s okay.”
“I’m holding on. Freddy?”
“Yes.”
“Are we safe?”
“For now.” He knelt beside her and buried his face in her shoulder. He began to tremble. “Don’t do that,” she whispered. “Not in front of people. It’s okay.”
Lydia began to cry. It was the first really loud cry either of the babies had uttered. Tammili was terrified by the sound and began to cry even louder than her sister. Help, help, help, she cried. This is me. Give me something. Do something, say something, make something happen. This is me, Tammili Louise Whittington, laying my first guilt trip on my people.