Dr. Woods came and examined both the baby and Dora, and pronounced them perfectly healthy. He raised his eyebrows over the decision to have the baby at home, but other than a wry comment about medical treatment being available for everyone whether they could pay or not, he let that part of things drop.
Mamie was clearly ecstatic about Danny. She was undaunted by the washing of heaps of sheets, by a new mother who needed waiting on, by being awakened from sleep by the thin cry of a hungry infant.
Teddi felt a bit like a fifth wheel—unnoticed and unnecessary. Yet she, too, was fascinated by the tiny boy who sucked so ferociously on his fist when he was hungry, who looked so angelic in his sleep.
In the exhausted exuberance following Danny’s birth, she wanted enthusiastically to tell someone about him. She was delighted, then, when on the morning after Danny arrived, her friend Callie showed up at breakfast time.
Callie had been on a trip with her grandmother to a family reunion in Kansas City. She didn’t know anything about Dora or the baby. She sank onto a chair opposite Teddi and accepted a sugared doughnut while Teddi told her all that had happened in the few weeks she’d been gone.
Teddi felt closer to Callie than to any of the other girls she knew. During the months when her mother was dying, Teddi hadn’t had much time for friendships. She had had to help at home, with meals and laundry and what little housekeeping got done. There hadn’t been many opportunities to join the activities of the other girls in her class, and most of them seemed almost to have forgotten her. But not Callie.
Once in a while, when Callie had been offered more than one baby-sitting job for the same night, she’d recommended Teddi in her place. Teddi had been glad of a chance to earn a little money. One time, with the Ross kids—there were six of them—they’d shared the duties. If Teddi hadn’t been tied so closely to home while her mother was so bad she’d have had more families calling her, she supposed. As it was, she was grateful to Callie for sharing, because there wasn’t much in the way of jobs for fourteen-year-olds.
Callie lived only four doors down. They usually walked to school together, which at least gave them a chance to talk. Once in a while she had slept over with Teddi, which was fun even though they had to keep their voices low so as not to disturb Teddi’s parents. Callie had been Teddi’s principal support, aside from Mamie, when Stan Stuart committed suicide.
When Dora, still in her housecoat, wandered into the kitchen, Teddi was brave enough to ask, “Can Callie see the baby?”
Dora, yawning, poured herself a cup of coffee. “Sure. He’s sleeping, I think.”
So they tiptoed into the room that had once been Teddi’s, to peer into the bassinet.
“He’s so tiny!” Callie marveled. “Have you held him? I mean, except when he was first born?”
“Just that once, so far.” The baby was none of her doing, of course. Yet Teddi felt a surge of pleasure and pride in Danny, almost as if he were her own family.
“He’s darling,” Callie murmured. “Are they going to stay here, living with you and Mamie?”
Teddi shrugged. “It looks like it. So far nobody’s mentioned their going anywhere else. Mamie is so thrilled with him, she can hardly stand it. It’s nice to see her smiling again.”
By the time they got back to the kitchen, Dora was seated at the table, eating a doughnut, while Mamie was frying eggs. Since Mamie had eaten earlier, the eggs had to be for Dora.
“I hoped you could come over and see the new outfit Grandma bought me in Kansas City,” Callie said after greeting Mamie.
“Well, if Mamie doesn’t need me here, the new guy next door offered to give me a tennis lesson,” Teddi said. “At ten.”
Callie’s eyes grew round with interest. Teddi had known they would. She had once heard another girl remark disdainfully that Callie was so predictable she was boring. But Teddi liked her that way. She enjoyed knowing that Callie would take her side in any dispute, that Callie wouldn’t get into a snit over some minor issue, that Callie liked the same kinds of books and videos and music as she did.
“There’s a new guy next door? Tell me about him.”
So they went out on the back porch, beyond Dora’s ears, and talked.
A few of the kids at school teased them about the disparity in their looks and sizes. Where Teddi was rather tall and fair, Callie was short and dark; they were as opposite as they could be. So Callie now said wistfully, “No boy has ever invited me to do anything. Do you think it’s just because I’m so little I look like I’m twelve instead of fourteen? Or is there something else wrong with me?”
“It’s probably mostly because they’re intimidated by your brains,” Teddi told her, laughing. “Mamie says boys don’t appreciate brains until they get a little older.”
Callie, who sat on the porch rail facing the house next door, said suddenly, “Is this Jason coming now? Wow, he’s cute.”
Teddi swiveled to face him, wanting to tell him about Danny, too. She felt oddly shy about it, though. She wasn’t sure boys were much interested in babies.
“You ready?” Jason asked, whacking a pair of tennis rackets against his leg. He was wearing white shorts and a red knit shirt, and Teddi thought “cute” was an understatement. “I missed seeing you last night. I even decorated my new window shade for your benefit, and when I got it up you didn’t bother to look over and see it.”
“I was busy delivering a baby,” Teddi told him after she’d introduced him to Callie. “I didn’t get to bed until it was almost time to get up again.”
“A baby? Dora had her baby?” And then, as the full significance of what she’d said hit him, he said, “You delivered it?”
“Well, sort of. Dora had the baby, and I was the only one here, so I did what I had to do. Mostly she told me, like cutting the cord and everything.”
“No kidding! How come you didn’t call for help?” He sounded impressed.
“I wanted to, but Dora said she couldn’t afford to go to the hospital, and she wouldn’t let me call 911. Um, do I need to change clothes to play?”
“Cutoffs, T-shirt, tennis shoes. You look okay to me. Let’s go, and you can explain to me all this business about delivering a baby. We got the bed ready for him just in time, didn’t we?”
“I’d better go,” Callie interjected quickly. “Come over when you get a chance, okay?”
“This afternoon,” Teddi promised. And then, to Jason, “Let me tell Mamie where I’m going.” She felt a twinge of guilt as she stuck her head into the laundry room. “Jason’s offered to teach me to play tennis,” she said to Mamie, who was folding sheets. “Is it okay? Or would you rather I stayed here and helped?”
Mamie smoothed the top sheet on the stack. “No, go ahead. I’ve done all these things before, many times, even if it was a long time ago. I always wanted to know how to play tennis, but I never seemed to have a teacher and the time to try it at the same time. Oh, wait, I’ll give you some cash. On your way home would you pick up a few things from the store? We have baby clothes and disposable diapers, but we hadn’t gotten around to things like Baby Wipes, and Q-Tips to clean his ears, and I think maybe we ought to have a few cloth diapers. They make such good burp cloths.”
“Okay,” Teddi agreed. “I’ll see you around lunchtime.”
They went down the steps and around the house together, Jason swinging the rackets. “It must have been pretty scary, delivering a baby.”
“It was. Dora said there wouldn’t be anything to it, though, that women have been delivering babies with no help for hundreds of years, and she’d read up on what had to be done.”
“I’m glad it was you and not me,” Jason said with feeling. “I suppose Mamie’s all excited to have a grandson.”
“Yes. She was so devastated when Ricky died, and now it’s as if her life’s been given back to her.”
There must have been some reservation in her voice, because Jason looked at her sharply. “Don’t you want that to happen?”
“Yes,” Teddi said slowly, matching her strides to his as they headed for the park. “I’m just not sure about . . . Dora.”
Jason made a sound deep in his throat. “Kind of . . . lazy, is she?”
Immediately, Teddi felt a stirring of guilt. “Well, she seems quite content to have Mamie wait on her. And me, a little bit. But of course, when she first came, she was pregnant and not feeling too well. And now she’s had the baby and hasn’t had time to recover. So it’s probably not fair to make that kind of judgment.”
Yet she had made it, hadn’t she? There was this small but unmistakable thread of resentment running through her, though Dora really hadn’t done that much to make her feel uncomfortable.
“Give her a few more weeks,” Jason advised, “and see how she does. Listen, you know anything about the game of tennis?”
She shook her head, so he explained the basic rules, and Teddi willed herself to remember what he said.
They had to wait about ten minutes when they reached the park, and they watched two boys who were finishing up. Teddi knew who they were, though they were several years older than she was and, outside of exchanging greetings when they met on the street, they’d never had much to do with one another.
Still, they walked over to where Teddi and Jason were waiting, and she introduced them. They were friendly, asked Jason about his classes in the fall and his general interests, and invited him to join them in a swimming competition at the local pool.
Teddi felt him being pulled away from her, and wondered if she were becoming selfish and unrealistic. She was the first one Jason had met since his family moved in next door, and it stood to reason that he’d make other friends as soon as he met other kids. It was possible he wouldn’t bother with her at all once he got acquainted with those closer to his own age. But somehow she’d hoped that she and Jason would remain friends.
She had nothing to complain about in her first tennis lesson. Jason was patient with her ineptitude and, instead of humiliating her when she didn’t do it very well, he made her laugh. A sense of humor, Mamie had told her, was one of the most important characteristics a man could have as a companion.
Because she arrived home just as the mailman was coming up the walk, Teddi was the one who accepted the mail. Ordinarily she paid no attention to what he brought. The only mail she’d gotten in a long time were two postcards from Callie that came while she was in Kansas City.
Teddi didn’t know why she leafed idly through the handful of envelopes, since she didn’t expect anything herself. An electric bill. An ad from a local department store. A notice of some kind about a church activity. And an envelope from an insurance company. It was crumpled and dirty, as if something had happened to it in transit, even torn on one corner. The post office had stamped it DAMAGED IN HANDLING and MISSENT TO PORTLAND, OREGON.
Then her eye caught another detail, and Teddi came to a standstill at the foot of the front steps.
It had been mailed in Los Angeles on the date Ricky’s plane had crashed, a date burned into Teddi’s mind for all time.
A small prickle of alarm ran up her spine, though she didn’t know why. She left that envelope on the top of the stack as she carried the mail into the house and handed it to Mamie.
Mamie didn’t react to the envelope itself, but cut it open with the letter opener she kept on the desk just inside the dining room door.
A moment later, she gave a small gasp. “Oh, my dear God,” she said, and handed the contents of the letter to Teddi before she sank into a chair. “Oh, Lord!” And she started to cry.