Chapter 3
Life in Dillon plodded on. It was as if Slim and I were pebbles dropped into a pond, creating a brief, transparent disturbance on the surface, and when it was over everything returned to flat calm.
It didn’t seem right. The most important thing that had ever happened in my life, that probably would ever happen in my life, had come and gone, yet nothing had changed. I wished I had asked Slim for something, a lock of his hair, or one of his shirts, some physical evidence of our little time together, but it was too late for that. Resolved not to feel sorry for myself, I determined not to be surprised at how little effect Slim’s unheralded entrance and exit would have on the steady march of days and weeks in Dillon. What did you expect, I thought, that the sun would set a different shade of red because you love someone? Be satisfied with your moment.
Oddly, most of the time I was. In some ways, he was still very much with me, or, at least, I was with him. I can’t explain it, and I don’t expect anyone to understand it because I don’t understand it myself, but sometimes, at unexpected and cherished moments, I could see him, talking, resting, working, on city streets, in empty darkened hangars, in places I didn’t know. Not confused or cloudy like a dream, but bright, clear scenes, like a picture show, but in color and more true, as though I were actually standing next to him.
I can’t say that he saw me, or even sensed my presence, but that didn’t worry me. I didn’t ask myself those questions, not then. It was enough to wrap myself in his life and make it my own. His curiosity and excitement and ambition were always present, his driving, propelling need for something bigger passing through the atmosphere to me like a magnet until it became part of me. That summer and fall I clung to the smallest glimpse of his life and wore it as a disguise over my own, which marched on as predictably as every year.
The county fair was in September after the harvest was in. Mama won prizes for her pickles and for a Baltimore Album style quilt she’d made out of my old dresses the previous winter. Papa went to watch the cattle judging, at least that’s what he told Mama, but I’m pretty sure he snuck off to place a bet or two on the horse races. I’d wager Mama knew that too, though she wouldn’t admit it. Gambling was something she simply could not condone, at least not right out in the open, so she pretended not to know, and he pretended she didn’t know, and somehow that made it all right.
While Papa was off on his own, Mama and I went over to the poultry barn. The moment we walked in, the smell washed over me like a wave and I felt sick at my stomach. Mama had met a friend and was busy congratulating her on winning a blue ribbon in the pie judging, so I didn’t say anything. It seemed ridiculous after so many years of living on a farm that a little whiff of chicken manure should leave me feeling nauseous. I scolded myself for a being a weakling and willed the feeling to pass.
Mama turned around to include me in the conversation, “Eva, you remember Mrs. Stanley, don’t you?” When she saw my face her eyes opened wide in alarm. I thought I must look pretty bad off to see her look so worried, or not exactly worried, more like shocked. Her hand flew up to her cheek, and she said, “Oh my goodness, look at the time! Eva,” she lied, “we were supposed to meet Papa almost a half hour ago. We’d better run. Nice to see you again, Vera.” Then, quick as a shot, she grabbed me by the elbow and propelled me out of the barn.
Mama steered me over to the nearest bench and sat me down. “Breathe in, now, Eva. Breathe deep, and it will pass in just a minute. Put your head down between your knees if that helps. There you go. Feel better now? That’s my girl.”
“I’m sorry, Mama,” I said, fanning myself with a brochure for chicken feed. “I don’t know what came over me. I must be coming down with something. The smell! It just made me so sick, but it’s better out here in the fresh air. I’m fine now.”
Mama sat down next to me on the bench and took my hand in hers. “Eva,” she said, then hesitated. “You are fine. I want you to know that, you’re going to be just fine. I’m not going to be angry with you, but when were you going to tell me?”
I didn’t understand what she was talking about—until a frightening thought popped into my mind that maybe I did. Suddenly I felt butterflies in my stomach again, not from any strange smell, but because I knew that if Mama was talking to me so patiently, so serious, then something really must be wrong. I didn’t want to believe it. “Tell you what, Mama?” I asked softly.
She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, “About the baby, Eva.”
I looked at her blankly, still not completely understanding, not wanting to believe what she was trying to tell me. “Didn’t you know?” she questioned incredulously. I shook my head, and tears started to well in my eyes.
“I’m not sure, Mama,” I choked out. “Maybe I did. Remember when Ruby and I took a picnic down by the pond? I got sick after. For a moment, maybe I knew, but then I told myself it was the heat or maybe the mayonnaise had turned. I didn’t want to think about it.
“Oh, Mama!” I sobbed. “I didn’t mean for this to happen! That night, we weren’t either of us thinking. It was just that ... We found each other, Mama. We were the only two people in the world that night and we had be together! We didn’t stop to think if it was right.” I fell into a fresh wave of weeping, and Mama held me, murmuring sounds of comfort that weren’t even words, but meant much more. She was so patient and calm, as though she were nursing a child with a cut finger that would soon heal, but I knew that inside she had to be churning, and with good reason.
Mona Gilroy’s parents had sent her away to visit an aunt three years before, and she’d never come back. Word in town was they’d shipped her off because Mona was going to have a baby and the boy wouldn’t marry her. Ruby’s mother said that she didn’t blame the boy one bit and that a girl who would give in to one boy might as easily give in to a dozen, so who was to say who the father was. The scandal was whispered around town for months. Mrs. Gilroy was so embarrassed that she never came to town anymore, and finally they sold their place and moved.
I started crying for real, thinking how I’d shamed my parents. “Mama! What are people going to say? What am I going to do? You can’t send me away, please, Mama!”
Mama’s look of patience suddenly turned hard. She grabbed me by the shoulders and held me still, her expression more serious than I’d ever seen it, and made me look at her. “Eva, stop that nonsense! Right now! What do you mean, what are you going to do? You’re going to have a baby, and then you’ll go on and live your life, that’s what you’ll do.” She shook me firmly, the way you shake someone out of a bad dream. “Listen to me! We’re not sending you away! The very idea ...”
“But Papa will be so angry!” I sniffed, trying to get hold of myself and failing. “I’ve disgraced him! I won’t be able to make him understand ...” I choked on my thoughts and buried my head in Mama’s shoulder, unable to put words to my fear, terrified that my father could never love me again. Somehow discovering so suddenly that I was to be two instead of one made me feel smaller, more alone, and more in need of my father’s love than ever.
“Nonsense!” Mama clucked in reproach. “Your papa could never be ashamed of you. This won’t be easy, not for you—or us, either—but whatever we have to get through, we will. We’ll manage, as a family, just like we always have. I’m not saying he’ll be happy or that it will be easy to tell him, but you’ll see, he understands, oh ... a lot more than you think.”
Mama fished around in her handbag for a handkerchief. Her tone softened a bit, but she kept her eyes downcast, searching inside her bag while she spoke. It was hard for her to speak plainly about such things. “Your papa and I ... we were ... we got married in a hurry, Eva. You understand what I’m saying? We were engaged anyway, and I’ve never for one instant regretted a thing, but when we moved the wedding up, well ... there was a lot of talk. You understand?”
I nodded as I dried my eyes with the hankie she held out to me. Suddenly a lot of things about my parents, but especially about Mama, made more sense than it ever had.
“Oh, Eva, people can be awfully cruel, but loose talk is the least of your problems. You’re so young! It’s going to take all your courage, but, like it or not, you’re going to be a mother and you have to be strong. Life is hard for a woman and even harder for a woman alone, but you’ll see, in the end it will all have been worth it.”
She put her arm around me and stroked my hair. I could feel the sadness in her fingertips and knew that it was the last time she would touch me like that and the last time I could cry on her shoulder. From now on I would be too big for that kind of comfort. “You’ll see, Eva. Children are always worth it.”
I believed her, everything she said.
It took several days before I worked up enough courage to tell Papa about the baby. He was known for his ready grin and Irish humor, but when he was finally pushed to anger it was something to behold. His thick brows would draw together to a single, immovable line, and a stream of language would spill forth from him that was part English, part Gaelic, part gutter, and pure fury. His wrath had almost never been directed at me, but I was sure I was in for it this time. A part of me actually wanted to face the anger I felt he was entitled to. However small a penance it might be, enduring his righteous fury might remove some of the shame I’d brought on him.
But he didn’t yell, or bluster, or even slam his fist into his hand. He didn’t allow himself the smallest gesture of ire. Instead he just stared at me hard, then looked at Mama, who confirmed the news with a nod of her head. Silence clouded and filled the room for a long moment before Papa spoke.
“Will you be finishing school, then?”
I shook my head no. Even if such a thing would have been possible, a ruined girl allowed to go to school with the rest of the students, I wouldn’t have returned to class. All my life, people had stared at me and whispered behind my back. I wouldn’t have them doing the same to my baby.
“And, that fella. That ... Slim,” Papa said, a curl of derision playing at his lip as he spoke the name we both knew was no name at all, “will he be coming back, do you suppose?”
“I don’t know, Papa.” Heat rose on my cheeks and the back of my neck when I realized how cheap he would think I’d held myself not even to have exacted a promise of return from my baby’s father. “I don’t think so,” I whispered and hung my head, too ashamed to look him in the eye.
Surely it would come now, I thought. Surely all the anger and hot words he held back would finally spill out and soak me through to the bone. I wouldn’t have blamed him. Instead, he just rocked back on his heels and stared at a corner of the ceiling as though something important were written there. “I see,” he said, without looking at me, then turned and went to the barn, mumbling something about being late feeding the stock.
He didn’t come in for supper. When the clock struck nine, Mama said we’d better be getting to bed. I wanted to go out and get him, but Mama said he needed some time alone. “Best let him come back when he’s ready. He’s got to think things through. Now go to sleep and quit brooding.”
I went to bed, but didn’t sleep. I lay awake, ticking off the hours by tracking the moon’s progress across my window and waiting for the sound of a footfall on the porch and the squeak of the screen door opening. The moon had set, and I was half-dozing, waiting for day, when I heard the sound of someone trying to be quiet and a whispered shuffling of papers. Papa stood in his stocking feet, his boots removed to keep from waking anyone, bent over the kitchen table and poring over a stack of books he’d pulled out of a trunk where he stored them. He jerked in surprise when I asked him what he was doing.
“Evangeline, why are you up? You should be getting your rest, especially now.” He gestured awkwardly in the direction of my still flat belly.
“I was waiting for you. I ... I thought, maybe ...” I didn’t know what I’d thought, just that if I could think of something to say, maybe it would prime the pump and end his silence. That silence was more painful to me than a slap on the face.
“Look here,” he said, pointing to one of the books on the table. He opened it and began flipping the pages, “I’ve got out my collected works of Shakespeare. He wasn’t a bad writer for an Englishman.” He winked. “Here’s my Hume’s history, and a book on French painters, and another by Saint Augustine. What I was thinking,” he continued excitedly, “is that you can keep studying here at home, even if you can’t go to school. I’ve got more books in here than you could read in a year. You finish these and you’ll know more than they’d ever teach you in high school anyway.”
“That’s a good idea,” I agreed. It was such a relief to know he was still speaking to me, I’d have endorsed any plan he’d proposed, but I was genuinely interested. The sight of a new book always piqued my interest, and the idea of passing the time until the baby arrived wrapped in study of places and ideas far removed from Dillon was appealing.
“Good!” he enthused. “I won’t have it said that the mother of my grandchild was dull-witted. We Glennons have never had much formal education, but we could never be called ignorant. Most of these books were my mother’s. Before she married, she was a cook for a rich family. When the old woman died, she left these books as a legacy to my mother. They were her most treasured possessions. She couldn’t read them herself, so she made me read them to her. We both got quite an education that way.”
He was quiet for a moment, still with remembering. “My mother put a great store by learning. She wanted me to go to university, Trinity College in Dublin.” He spoke the name reverently, and I could almost see what a magical place it had become in his mind, a fairy tale of heaven whispered from mother to son. He smiled and brushed back the memory and longing. “We were so poor, I’m sure it never would have happened in any case, but when Ma died and there were so many mouths to feed, university couldn’t be thought of. My father buried his sorrows in the bottom of a bottle, and I caught a boat for Boston. That was that. I wanted better for you.
“I’ve never spoken to you about this, Evangeline, but I’d thought, when you were done with the high school, you might go on to be a teacher before you settled down and got married. I’d put over two hundred dollars by already. If I could’ve gotten two or three more good crops, we might have managed it,” he said wistfully.
“Oh, Papa!” I cried. “I’m so sorry, Papa. Not about Slim. I won’t ever say I’m sorry about him. I love him, and, heaven help me, if he were here today I don’t think I’d have done a thing differently, but I am sorry I ruined all your plans. I never meant to disappoint you or embarrass you.”
“There, now. That’s enough.” He dismissed my apology with a wave of his hand. “Sometimes the fates blow our plans to dust and something better comes out of it. If my mother’d had her plan for me, I’d be the most educated potato farmer ever to scratch an existence out of the rockiest five acres in County Tipperary. Instead, I’ve got a fine farm, a fine wife, and a fine daughter that I’m proud to call my own, no matter what her queer ideas on love, and a fine grandchild on the way that’ll probably be born with wings sproutin’ out of his back like Pegasus.”
“You mean Hermes, Papa,” I corrected gently. “Pegasus was a horse.”
“There now, you see? You’ve not even read my books and already you’re smarter than me. This baby’s bound to be a genius!”
I laughed and put my arms around him. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Evangeline.” We held each other, squeezing tight for a long moment before he spoke again.
“You’re sure, then, that he won’t be coming back?” he asked, the hope that he was wrong showing plainly in his voice and face.
“I’m sure, Papa.”
He sighed. “Then I suppose this child will be needing a grandfather, won’t he?”
“Or she,” I corrected him with a smile. We’ll both be needing you, I thought. I can’t even imagine how I could go on without you.
I squeezed him again, even tighter.
“Whooo-ah! Eva! Hey there!” I saw Ruby come loping across our yard, carrying a lumpy-looking gunnysack, waving her arm high and wide like she was signaling a train. Usually I was glad to see her, but today I bit my lip and sighed as I watched her hustle toward me. Well, I thought, no use putting it off. I put down the feed pail I’d been carrying and waited until she was near before opening the porch screen to let us both pass.
“Hey, Ruby. How are you?”
“How are you!” She made an exasperated face at me. “You drop off the face of the earth for over a month and all you can say is, ‘How are you?’ Eva Glennon, if you weren’t my best friend I swear I’d—” She lowered her voice and composed her face when she saw Mama coming up from the cellar, carrying a basket of potatoes. “Oh, hello, Mrs. Glennon.”
“Good morning, Ruby.”
Ruby stood awkwardly for a moment, wanting to continue with her interrogation, but knowing she couldn’t as long as Mama was in the room. “Oh, I almost forgot!” Ruby dug into the depths of the gunnysack she was carrying and pulled out a pint-sized Ball jar capped with red gingham and tied with green yarn. “My ma asked me to bring you this jar of strawberry preserves. Early Christmas present.”
“How kind. Your mother’s preserves are always so much more delicious than mine. She’s quite a cook. Is she teaching you all her secrets, Ruby?”
Ruby smiled and shook her head no, embarrassed by the question. It was well known in Dillon that Ruby couldn’t boil water. Once she’d made an apple pie for her papa’s birthday and mistook the salt for sugar. Mr. Carter told the story often, and each time he told it, his show of spitting and sputtering, pretending to taste the pie, became longer and more exaggerated. Ruby always laughed good-naturedly along with his audience, but I could see the color rise in her face each time he repeated the tale. After that she kind of lost interest in the kitchen.
“Don’t you worry, Ruby,” Mama said reassuringly. “It takes years of practice and mistakes to make a good cook. You’ll learn how yet. Thank your mother for me. I’ve got something for her, too. Make sure I give it to you before you leave.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Ruby answered automatically. I could see in her eyes that though she knew Mama was trying to be kind, she’d just as soon be spared such painful encouragement. When Mama turned, Ruby raised her eyebrows at me and twitched her head in the direction of my room. There would be no avoiding the list of questions I knew was coming. We excused ourselves and went into my room, where we could talk privately.
Ruby flopped stomach-first onto my bed like a rag doll and propped her head up on her hands, staring at me as I settled myself next to her on the patchwork quilt.
“Well,” she pressed, “where have you been? At first I thought you were sick. I came over three times to see you, but your mother said you weren’t feeling well and I should come back another day. About a week after school started, Mrs. Carmondy assigned Carla Winslow to sit beside me in your old seat because she said you weren’t coming back to school, so I thought you must be dying or something. Now I come out here and you’re fine, feeding the chickens and looking at me like I’m the odd one for asking where you’ve been!”
I sat calmly watching her face, working hard to keep myself from smiling and enjoying the mounting frustration my flat expression was causing my impatient and dear friend.
“So?” Ruby huffed impatiently.
“So what?” I asked innocently. Ruby heaved a down pillow at me and let out a growl of irritation as the pillow thunked me softly on the head and a stray feather floated calmly to the floor.
“So, are you dying or what?” she demanded. A stricken look passed over her face, and she put her palm over her mouth the way she always did when she realized she’d said something she shouldn’t, which was pretty often. “You’re not, are you? I mean, you look fine, but ... Oh, Eva! You don’t have some rare disease that makes you look like always but eats up your insides and turns them black, do you?” Ruby clapped her hand over her mouth again and then thumped herself on the forehead with a fist, “Oh no. There I go again. I’m so stupid! I always say the wrong thing. What I meant was—”
“I know what you meant, you goose.” Poor Ruby, I thought. I should have told her before. She was my best friend. It was wrong to have kept her in the dark. “I’m fine. Really.” I took a deep breath and plunged ahead, determined to sound casual and brave and normal. “It’s just that I’m going to have a baby, that’s all. That’s why I can’t come to school anymore. I’m studying at home instead. Papa is helping me.”
Ruby stared at me, her mouth gaping in a perfect round O of shock. “A baby! A real baby?” She was surprised into silence for a long moment, and then her expression boiled and clouded into anger. I felt my heart sink. She is scandalized, I thought. All my worst, secret fears about telling her were going to come true. She would stomp out of my room and slam the door. I’d never see her again, except in town on the arm of Mary Kay Munson, in whose ear she’d be whispering, telling her all my confidences and laughing at me. I really was alone.
I steeled myself for her exit. Ruby eyes sparked, and a deluge of words poured from her. “Eva Glennon, you’re going to have a baby and you didn’t tell me? I’ve never kept a secret from you in my whole life. I even told you about my drunken Uncle Dwight grabbing me and kissing me in the barn. I thought we were friends! I thought we were always supposed to depend on each other, no matter what!” she spat accusingly. “How could you keep a thing like that from me?”
“Ruby, I’m sorry,” I said, genuinely bothered to think I’d hurt her feelings. “I was going to tell you eventually. I just thought it would be best to keep it to myself for a while. I was afraid you’d be mad at me or ... I don’t know what I thought. I was just afraid you wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore.”
She calmed down some, but I could see that she wasn’t entirely ready to forgive me. “Well,” she said, “I can see not telling the whole world, but I’d think you’d fill in your best friend, at least to let me know why you weren’t coming back to school. You had me scared to death. You should know me better than that. We’re friends forever. Nothing could change that.”
“Oh, Ruby, do you mean that?” She nodded an affirmation, and I reached over and squeezed her so tight I’m sure she couldn’t have drawn a breath if she’d wanted to. “I’m so glad! Nothing could ever be as good anymore if I didn’t have you to talk to. And I’m going to need you, you know.” My eyes started to fill with tears of relief. “I don’t have any blood sisters, and the baby’s going to need an aunt. I guess after all we’ve been through together that makes us practically related, doesn’t it?”
“’Course it does.” Ruby nodded firmly, then broke into a wide grin of surprise. “Aunt Ruby! Think of that! We’ll be great together. We’ll sew baby kimonos and blankets, and when she’s older... Oh, I hope it’s a girl! When she’s older we’ll take her riding on Ranger and go on picnics and everything! I’ll be just like a real aunt. Except for one thing. I’m not changing diapers, Eva; that’s your job.” She chuckled at the thought and started to laugh, but stopped when she noticed the tears streaming down my face.
“Now, don’t go crying, Eva. I’m sorry. I was only joking about the diapers. I’ll change them too, I swear I will!”
“It’s not that.” I wiped tears from my face. “I’m just happy, and everything makes me cry these days. Ruby, you’re such a good friend. I’m so lucky! I should have told you before.” We both grinned, me through my tears and Ruby with all her teeth showing. We hugged once more and promised never to keep secrets from each other again. She swore she forgave me, though I knew a part of her was still miffed that I’d kept her in the dark for so long.
Ruby spoke soothingly. “I ’spect it was your mama’s idea to keep things quiet anyway. Old-fashioned. Like you read in those English novels, a girl gets in trouble and then disappears, never to be seen again. A lot of married ladies still hide out when they’re expecting, as though no one will notice and folks will think babies just pop out of the air like magic.”
“No, it wasn’t Mama’s fault,” I protested. “I wanted to keep it to myself for a while. I wanted time to think about the baby, you understand?” But I could see from the look on her face that she didn’t, and I didn’t blame her. How could I explain it to her?
Confinement sounded like a punishment, something that people came up with because they were embarrassed that other people might look at a woman’s swelling belly and know what she’d been doing, but I didn’t think so. I thought it was something women had invented as an excuse to be alone, sit very still, and treasure every little sensation and change going on inside, to quiet their minds in preparation to meet the most important person in the world.
“Eva? Eva, hello.” I was startled out of my daydream by Ruby waving her hand in front of my eyes. “Even though I forgive you for leaving me hanging for so long, you aren’t getting off that easy. As punishment,” she tittered excitedly, “you have to tell me everything .”
She cracked off questions like bullets from a gun, and mostly I answered them, even the ones that made me blush. Why should that be, I wondered. Why should I be embarrassed to talk about something that had seemed so natural to do? Words stripped and shrunk all my feelings, reduced them to a list of actions, like trying to learn ride a horse by reading a book. The instructions never took into account the power and gentleness of hundreds of pounds of silken muscles, or how it felt to gallop across the field, or how you and the horse became one animal instead of two, or how soft and sweet it was to bury your head in his mane and drink in the feel and smell of sweat and newly cut wheat and damp earth. There was no describing it; it was too fast and fluid, like trying to catch quicksilver in your fingers.
But to please Ruby I tried. I owed her that at least. Ruby sat spellbound, her mouth slightly open as she hung on my every word, trying to imagine each detail and not quite being able to put together the pictures in her head. Every once in a while she’d shiver and say, “Yewww. That’s disgusting!” and put her hands over her ears as though she couldn’t bear to hear more. Then, a moment later, her eyes would spark, and she’d ask another six questions, each more personal than the last.
She also wanted to know about the father. I didn’t want anyone to know about that, ever. I couldn’t bear to think of people imagining Slim and me together. It would have made it all so sticky and cheap. Instead I invented a boy I’d met when we went to visit Mama’s cousins in Kansas. I said he couldn’t marry me because he’d been engaged and gotten married before I knew about the baby.
“He was engaged?” Ruby piped, scandalized and intrigued. “Eva, how could you!”
“Well, I didn’t know it at the time or I’d have never gone out riding with him.”
Ruby clucked her tongue and sighed a sigh of sympathy and delicious shock. At least if I had to tell her a lie I was glad it was one she could enjoy.
“Gosh, that’s so awful—how he took advantage of you.” Ruby sighed again and shook her head as curiosity overcame concern. “Was he handsome, though? What color were his eyes?”
I made up more stories. I marveled at how easily she believed my lies, much more easily than she’d have believed the truth. For once I was thankful that I’d been made so imperfect and twisted that it would never occur to people that someone as straight and beautiful as Slim could want me.
“I can’t believe it. I still just can’t believe it,” Ruby mused. “You don’t even look fat or anything.”
“I had to put a safety pin in the waistbands of my skirts last week. Guess I’ll be big as a house soon.” I pulled up my blouse to show her how my secret child was pushing, taut and swelling, under the coarse fabric of my skirt.
Ruby smiled and instinctively, without thinking to ask permission, reached out her hand to lay it on the tiny bulge. Reverently, as though not to wake the baby, she whispered, “What is it, do you think? A boy or girl?”
“I don’t know. I guess there’s no way to tell for sure.”
“My mama says there’s a way,” Ruby reported solemnly. “You take your wedding ring, put it on a chain, hold it over your stomach, and if it swings in a circle it’s a girl, but it swings in a line it’s a boy. ’Course,” she faltered, “you don’t have a wedding ring, so I guess we’ll just have to wait.”
“I guess so.”
But, I did know. I was sure of it. I knew I was carrying a son. The same way I’d known Slim when he walked into our house, though we’d never spoken a word, I knew our son. He was inside me, part of me, and when I closed my eyes I could see him, tiny and translucent, curled inside the watery protection I’d instinctively made for him, cushioned and cradled so completely that the blows of the world would seem only a buoyant swell to him. How was it that other women didn’t know who it was they carried inside?
Lying in bed that night I felt him move for the first time. A ripple, not a push. A silky spool of bubbles unwound inside me, rising and skating along the skin of my stomach. I lay my hand over the bulge of my abdomen and felt him swim, knotting himself under the heat of my hand, the way a cat searches out a sunbeam on a cold winter morning.
The life in him was pulsing and unmistakable. My strong, beautiful boy—as restless as his father, as faithful as his mother, as helpless as a kitten and too unwise yet to realize it. Our destinies were connected in a way that was entirely new to me, but strong and right. At that moment I realized protecting him and raising him would be the focus of my life. The cold winter would never touch him, capricious life never scar him. Everything I’d ever wanted for myself dimmed to a vague memory, a dream barely remembered upon waking from a dark night.
I smiled to myself and moved my hand to another spot on my stomach just to feel him flutter and glide as he swam and balled himself under a new fountain of my warmth. I whispered to Slim in the darkness: “Feel our boy, he’s floating already; nothing will weigh him down. He’s the best of us both.”
But the words bounced back to me, empty in the cold, slicing darkness. Slim was too far off to hear me. As weeks stretched to months he moved just a bit farther off every time I reached for him. Now, when I wanted him more than ever, he was just a stretched fingertip beyond my grasp. It wasn’t forgetting or distance of time that set him back; it was fear. The pull of memory was more compelling than he could bear, and so he had wiped it away in a full, absolute sweep that sometimes haunted him, an amazed observer of his own self-absorption. I could see him, though, in that strange new compartment of my mind that hadn’t seemed to exist before I knew Slim. I saw him there like a reflection in a glass, clear and sharp in one untouchable dimension. He crouched, shivering in the cold night under the wing of a plane, staring at the stars, too thickly engulfed and tortured by ungratified ambition to remember the sound of my voice because that’s how he had decided it had to be. The choice to burn brightly was a straight, seldom used path that left no room for regret or divergent routes.
Looking back on it, I wonder that I didn’t feel angry, deserted, betrayed. I suppose I’d have hated him if I’d been able to convince myself he had deceived me. As it was, I remember only a deep sense of regret, more for him than for me. He was going to have so much and miss so much. The things we want have to be paid for. The price he’d paid was peace. Mine? My price was to stand on the dark side of the one-way mirror, seeing, anticipating, suffering, and knowing, but invisible and ineffectual—like a witness to a car accident shouting warnings that can’t be heard over the roar of the motor and the sound of wheels skidding on gravel. It was too painful a scene to return to daily.
Mama had said, “You go on, and you live your life,” so I did. I dropped a gauzy curtain over the glass to obscure the view, though I knew that nothing in my lifetime would make the reflection go black. Forgetting was not to be one of my gifts. That would have been too easy and too hard.
“We’re all together, baby,” I whispered to my unborn son. “You won’t see him, but he’ll be there, a part of you, the part that longs for and believes in something golden beyond the horizon. That’s the thing we share. It makes us a family, connected, you see? You and me and him, now and for always.” I pulled the quilt high over my nose and mouth and pulled in gulps of cold, silent air and gave it back again, my breath an incubating warmth in the cocoon of blankets covering us.
“There now,” Mama crooned, “he’s all clean and dry and ready to meet his mother.” Gently, as though the slightest tap would shatter him, she handed me a soft nest of flannel that protected my son.
I pulled back the blanket to see his face. Two dark blue jewel eyes stared solemnly up at mine, searching, as though he were as curious about me as I was about him. Looking at him warmed me straight through. Suddenly, a place in my heart I’d never known existed opened, filled, and spilled over, soothing all the sharp points of my life and answering, for that moment at least, all the questions I’d never even known to ask.
“Oh!” I whispered in wonder, “Look at you! You’re perfect!”
“He is that.” Dr. Townsend snapped his black bag shut with a flourish that spoke of a job well done. “He’s big and strong and about as alert as any newborn I’ve ever seen. You won’t need to make up any tonics for this boy, Miss Eva. If every child in town were as healthy as this, I’d probably be out of business.” He leaned down to take another look at the baby before turning to me with a wink. “Not bad for homemade, young lady. Not bad at all. Almost as pretty a baby as you were when I delivered you.”
Mama stood at the end of the bed and beamed. “You did fine, Eva, just fine. Never saw such a beautiful baby, and you were so brave. You’ll see, he’ll be a good baby because of it.”
“He’s good already,” I breathed. “Look at those beautiful eyes. He’s the one I’ve been waiting for all my life, but I didn’t know it until just now.”
We all stood for a minute more admiring my son until a tentative knock broke the silence and Papa spoke in a stage whisper from the other side of the door, “Is everything all right? Can’t I come in yet?”
“Of course you can, Seamus. I was just leaving,” said Dr. Townsend, picking up his bag and opening the door to reveal Papa’s anxious face. “Sorry to keep you waiting so long, Seamus. Another hour and I swear you’d have worn a hole in the floor pacing, but, I think you’ll find it was worth the wait.” He shook Papa’s hand. “You have a beautiful grandson.”
Mama showed Dr. Townsend to the door, and Papa sat next to me on the bed. I handed him the tiny bundle, and Papa held his grandson tight in his arms. His eyes shone bright and wet as he examined the angelic face and hands and arms, murmuring wonderment over the baby’s perfect, tiny form. Beaming with delighted wonder, he crooned, more to the baby than to me, “Oh, he’s lucky, is this one. You can see that just by looking at him. He’s like a magic charm that will rub off good luck to everyone he touches.” Papa looked up at me and nodded profoundly. “You see if I’m not right, Evangeline. I know these things, just like I knew about you the day you were born, how you were meant for something special, and now look what you’ve gone and done. Here he is, my darling girl: our lucky star.”