“Lillian? I expected to leave a message, I didn’t think anyone would be home—”
“Father Colin!” she said, and Tom looked up quizzically.
“I was calling for news of the baby. I’ve been waiting, and praying.”
“There’s no news,” she said. “But Olivia’s missing.”
“Missing?”
“Missing,” she said, and her voice broke. “Missing. Gone. The police are here. We’re all looking. We can’t find her.”
“Should I come over?”
“Yes,” said Lillian. “No, don’t. Yes, do. Oh, I don’t know.” She couldn’t quiet the sensation of her blood moving too quickly through her body. “Come if you want. No, I don’t mean that. We need you. Come, please.”
She put the phone down. It rang again.
“What?” she said.
“Any news?” It was Ginny.
“No.”
“Well, sweetheart, I know it’s going to be okay. I just know it.”
“I hope so,” said Lillian dully. “How’s Jane?” It seemed like days ago—months, even—that she’d stood in the labor and delivery room and held Jane’s hand. It seemed like another lifetime. It seemed like her life had now been divided into two sections: before Olivia went missing, and after.
“The baby is here!” said Ginny. “Sarah. She’s perfect. I just peeked in, but I’ll leave them alone now, they’re exhausted. I’ll come home. Lillian? We’re going to find her.”
“I know,” said Lillian, but she didn’t.
Later, when the nurse came in, carrying a bundle in a striped blanket, Stephen reached through a fog of fatigue and astonishment and thought, That’s my baby.
“She’s had her first bath,” said the nurse briskly. She had a no-nonsense haircut and sturdy ankles just visible below her scrub pants. “She’s going to need a feeding,” she told Jane.
The baby opened her mouth and began to make small, chicken-like noises. Jane reached her arms out, and the nurse, passing over the baby, looked approvingly at Jane.
“You kept her safe, all those weeks. You did good.”
Well, thought Stephen. You did well.
“She’s perfect, right?” Jane said eagerly.
“She is.”
Privately, Stephen was surprised by how imperfect the baby looked. Her head was very small and very red, and oddly shaped, like a plum tomato, and she seemed to be, if you judged by her expression, very angry. Stephen had been surprised, too, when he’d watched the baby get weighed and had seen her reddish and swollen genitals. All very normal, the nurse had told Stephen, something to do with Jane’s hormones surging through the baby’s body, but nonetheless unexpected and disconcerting.
Jane opened her hospital robe and the nurse pointed the baby’s head, like a shuttle, toward Jane’s nipple.
“There,” she said. “She’s on.” Then, “Nope, she slipped. Here, try a little bit this way—”
“Ouch,” said Jane, shifting her body, using her own hand to lift her breast toward the baby. Finally Jane made a wincing face and looked plaintively at the nurse and said, “Is that right?”
“Perfect,” said the nurse. “You look like you’ve been doing it for years. She won’t nurse for long now. Remember, she’s new to it too, she’s bound to get frustrated. So I can come back and bring her to the nursery in a few minutes if you want to get some rest.”
“No!” Jane looked horrified. “Don’t you dare. I’ll keep her.”
The BlackBerry, which had been in Jane’s bag when she left for the hospital, began buzzing like a chain saw. Out of habit, Stephen made a move toward it.
“Don’t,” said Jane fiercely.
“I was just—”
“Throw it out the window.” She shifted the baby and peered down at her.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“I wasn’t suggesting that you call a meeting or answer an e-mail—”
“I know you weren’t.” Her face softened. “Look, Stephen. Her eyes are closed. She’s sleeping!”
“Mmmm.” He felt his own eyes grow heavy. In the hallway he could hear the nearly constant beeping and humming of people and machinery, nurses coming and going; it was comforting, in the same way that the sound of his parents eating dinner downstairs with friends past his bedtime when he was a child had been comforting.
He watched the baby’s tight little fist, her tiny moving chest. He thought, Someday I will know this person. Someday I will take her to a birthday party, or walking in Central Park. Someday she will call me Daddy. Someday I will say no to her about something, and she will cry.
But just then it seemed impossible that the tiny red creature before him would be anything more than she was at that moment, tiny and red and concentrating so intently on living.
Twilight was coming on. Rachel noticed the folds of pink coming in under the blue. She reported that the police officer was outside in his car, talking into his walkie-talkie. Father Colin had just come in from driving around the neighborhood again. “Nothing,” he said, and Rachel saw the way he touched Lillian on the shoulder. She thought Tom saw too, but she couldn’t be sure.
Ginny was holding Philip, who was gurgling away, oblivious. “I suppose I should make something,” said Ginny, and made no move to get up. “Is everybody hungry?”
“No,” said Lillian.
“No,” said Tom.
“No,” said William. He was pacing in the den. He had called every neighbor he could think to call. “Maybe” he said carefully, “we should check Red Rocks. Before it gets dark.”
“She wouldn’t have gone there!” said Lillian, horrified. “She doesn’t even know how to get there.”
“There’s that cut-through,” said Ginny. “Behind that white house.”
Lillian started crying again. “It’s all woods in there. And the drop-offs to the lake. There’s that cliff part, remember one summer, those boys? Oh, God.”
“I’ll go,” said Tom.
“No,” said Father Colin. “Let me go. I run in there all the time. I know those trails. It’s easy to get lost.”
Lillian moaned.
“That’s not what I meant—”
“I’ll go with you,” said Rachel.
“Don’t we need dogs, or something, to search there? Why aren’t there any dogs? Where’d the police officer go?” Lillian looked around. “Right? We need dogs. Why didn’t he ask for something of Olivia’s? A shirt she wore yesterday or something?”
“I’ll get something,” said Rachel. “Just in case.”
“I’m going to see what’s going on out there,” said Lillian. “There should be dogs.”
“I’ll come,” said Tom. He followed her, and William followed Tom, and even Father Colin and Ginny followed. The scene, Rachel thought, looking out the window of her childhood bedroom, would have been beautiful in any other circumstance because of the way the receding light was playing in the trees along the street, and the way they all formed a natural semicircle, shoulders nearly touching, as if they were waiting for something.
Which, of course, they were. For there, curled up, sleeping like a kitten in the clothes hamper inside her closet, was Olivia: tear-streaked, grimy, a stain in the shape of a jagged diamond on the front of her shirt. Olivia.
She stirred a little when Rachel lifted her and she flopped against Rachel’s shoulder. It occurred to Rachel that she had never held a child this way, a sleeping child, with a thick and substantial body. Rachel carried her to the window and called out to the people on the lawn below. Lillian lifted her face first, and then Tom did, and then the rest of them, and Rachel stood there, holding Olivia like a prize, and she thought she understood, for the first time, the strange and terrible power a parent had over a child’s happiness, and also how it worked in reverse.
William went out to pick up pizzas from Flatbread. Olivia ate four pieces, minus the crust, never moving from Tom’s lap. After the plates were cleared away, and the boxes had bee
n folded and put out with the recycling, and the beers that William offered around were mostly empty, Ginny stood and said, “I’m exhausted. Sleeping arrangements? Everything sorted out?”
“No,” said Lillian.
“Yes,” said Tom.
They all looked at him. “I’ve got a reservation,” he said. “At the Come On Inn.” He shifted Olivia off his lap and picked up Philip, who had been in the car seat and was now beginning to stir.
“That place?” said Ginny. “Up on Shelburne Road? For heaven’s sake, Tom, that’s ridiculous. That place is a pit.”
“I didn’t know the Come On Inn took reservations,” said Rachel.
“They do,” said Tom defensively, as Philip flopped his head onto Tom’s shoulder. “Recommended but not required. There’s a pool—”
“Gross,” said Rachel. “I wouldn’t swim in there!”
“You’ll stay here. We’ve got room,” said Ginny. “You can stay in Jane and Stephen’s room, or—”
“Oh, enough already,” said Lillian. “He’ll stay with me.”
“I want a bubble bath,” said Olivia.
“I’ll get you a bubble bath,” said Rachel.
“And I,” said William, “cannot keep my eyes open any longer.” He kissed Lillian on the forehead, shook Tom’s hand rather formally, and followed the rest of them up the stairs.
“I have to feed Philip,” said Lillian. She held her arms out to Tom.
“He’s fine,” he said. “Look! He’s sleeping.”
“No, I want to feed him. I do, at this time. This is what I’ve been doing all summer.”
Wordlessly, he handed Philip over. Lillian moved to the den. She didn’t tell Tom to follow her, but she didn’t tell him not to either. He did. She settled herself in her usual spot on the recliner and he sat on the sofa, which, since the Laundromat scene, she had folded up and arranged semi-tidily every day.
“So,” Tom began. “Will you come home now?”
She looked around the den, at the piles of her belongings, and Olivia’s belongings, and Philip’s belongings. And yet she didn’t belong here, not really, not living in limbo in her parents’ house like some college dropout. “I want—” She stopped.
“What?”
“I want to come back.”
He smiled. She shifted Philip to the other breast. “But I want it to be like it was.”
He stopped smiling. “It can be,” he ventured.
“No, it can’t. It’s all changed. Forever.”
“Lillian—”
“Well. It is, right?”
“Not to me.”
“But it is to me.”
“Listen, Lillian. I want you back. I want things to be good. I want to be a family again.”
She shrugged. “Maybe as long as it’s going to be different, it can be better different, not just different.”
Tom waited, then asked, “How?”
“I want more help. From you.”
Slowly Tom nodded. “Okay. For example?”
“I don’t know yet. I just don’t want to feel like I’m alone in all this, you know?”
“I know,” he said.
“Do you really? Do you really know?”
“I think I do.”
Then they heard Olivia’s little feet working their way down the stairs and toward the den. Philip had finished eating and fallen asleep, so Lillian laid him carefully down in the Pack ’n Play and opened her arms to Olivia.
But Olivia shook her head! “I want Daddy,” she said, and she went to Tom. Lillian’s heart twisted a little bit at that. Then, watching Olivia wrap her arms around Tom and pat his back the way she’d done even as a baby, in imitation of what adults did to her, Lillian recognized something. She recognized that they were all battling—all of them, everyone in the family—to have their needs met. Ginny, William, Rachel, Stephen, Jane, all of them. Even little Philip. Clashing, every day, primal forces pitted against one another. And in the face of those battles her sorrow was not the biggest force. She’d learned that much when she thought Olivia was gone.
Olivia put her thumb in her mouth, and before five minutes had passed she was asleep, leaning sloppily against Tom.
“Okay,” she said softly, to Tom, to Olivia, to Philip, and maybe even to the tired den furniture that had supported her throughout the summer, and on which she had cried and raged and threatened and sometimes—she could admit this now, though mostly to herself—laughed.
“Okay? Really?” Tom made a move toward her, but Lillian signaled to him to stay where he was because of Olivia.
“One more thing,” she said. She saw him flinch so she said quickly, “This one’s for us. I want us to get a babysitter. Once a week, date night. Guaranteed.”
He smiled. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. More time for us.”
“I like it. We need it.”
“We do. And.”
“There’s more?”
“I want Philip baptized.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Before we go, in the church here.”
“Don’t you think there’s a lot going on at the moment? We can get him baptized, if you want, but why not wait until we get home? I’m sure your parents will come down, and maybe the others will come up from New York—”
“Here,” she said. “Not negotiable.”
“Okay. If that matters to you.”
“It does.”
“Okay.”
And they sat there for a long time, listening to the children breathe, watching Olivia’s hair blow with each inhalation, listening to the sounds of the old house.
The next day Ginny drove to the hospital alone. Fall was still a couple of weeks away. Only yesterday it had been hot. But every now and then in August you got a day that made you remember how September would feel, and what the autumn light striking the trees would look like. This was such a day.
The others were going to follow. Already they were crowding into their various vehicles, sorting out seating arrangements and Rachel’s luggage and which car seat belonged where. Rachel was going back to New York later that day. In a few days William would celebrate his birthday, his sixty-fifth. And then what? The rest of them would all head back, and she and William would be alone again.
The door to Jane’s room was ajar. Jane was by herself, holding Sarah in one hand and the phone in the other. When she saw Ginny she said, “Mom. I have to go. Mom. I’ll call you later.” After she hung up she motioned to the chair beside the bed and said, “Sit down. Stephen went to find coffee.” Then she rolled her eyes and said, “My mother keeps calling. She’s in a panic that she wasn’t here for the birth.”
“Oh, but that’s natural. I envy her these next months,” said Ginny, sitting. “Watching your daughter become a mother for the first time… well, it’s something.”
“Yes,” said Jane soberly. “I know.”
“No,” said Ginny. “No, you don’t.” More softly, she said, “But you will, one day.”
Sarah began to make little grunting noises.
“Shh,” Jane said. “Shh, baby girl.” To Ginny she said, “Apparently I’m supposed to nurse her almost constantly. Do you mind if I—”
“Not at all,” said Ginny. Jane winced as Sarah latched on, then she closed her eyes and lifted her face to the ceiling. Watching the two of them, mother and child, Ginny felt a strange sensation of envy, like pinpricks all over her arm. To be wanted like that. To be needed.
“What I came here to say,” said Ginny, “is that I’m sorry about that conversation we had, back at home. I never really apologized.”
Jane waved her arm dismissively.
“But what will you do?” asked Ginny. “If it all goes the way you think it will?”
Jane lifted Sarah to her shoulder to burp her. It seemed to Ginny that she had not nursed her long enough on the first side. If Jane had been Lillian she would have told her so, but Jane wasn’t Lillian, so she kept her mouth shut.
Jane moved Sarah to the
other breast. “I don’t know. This, I guess, for a while. And then we’ll see. But I think we’ll be okay. I really do. I just need Stephen to believe that too. And I’m not sure he does. Maybe you can help him? Help him see that?”
Ginny nodded slowly. “Listen, Jane—”
“What?”
“I know I haven’t always—”
“Oh, stop it. I overdid it that day. I’m sorry too. I snapped. But I was tired. I was just so, so tired.”
“It’s okay to be tired,” said Ginny. “We’re all tired. Life is tiring.”
Jane let out a short, abrupt laugh. “I know,” she said. “Isn’t it, though?”
“But listen. There’s something important I have to tell you.”
“What?”
“You’ll think this sounds silly, but I wanted to get here before the others. I wanted to talk to you alone.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s about the knuckles.”
Jane stared at her. “Whose?”
“Sarah’s. Babies, all of them. When they go from pudgy to bone, when you can see the knuckles, that’s when they’re not your babies anymore. And it goes so fast from that point on, you have no idea.”
Jane wore an expression of innocent bemusement; she looked like a child being taught a lesson in school. Finally she said, “I believe you.”
“No. I mean, yes, I’m sure you do. But you don’t know—you can’t know—until it’s too late. You have no idea.”
“That seems very cruel,” said Jane softly.
“It is. It’s the cruelest thing.”
Just then the door opened and Stephen came in. “There’s a massive number of people out there waiting to see you,” he said to Jane. “And you,” he said to Sarah. He put down his cup of coffee and held his arms out for the baby. Stephen looked, thought Ginny, like someone who had been doing it for ages. He looked like a natural. He looked gentle and strong and determined and responsible and beautiful, her son, standing there holding little Sarah in the late-summer sunlight filtering into the hospital room. Then he sighed, a great, belly-deep, purposeful sigh that signified not boredom or irritation but a confirmation of the enormous responsibility that had settled on his shoulders.
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