At first I didn’t really think what happened to Lang had anything to do with Dillon. And I certainly didn’t know anything about any card at my mama’s house. Or I would have told. I really would have. About my card with the red ribbons. About the card Dillon sent me. And about the card I found.
It sounds horrible, and ridiculous, but I didn’t really think it was important. Not right then. Not by the time I got into the hospital just the next morning and the birth was starting and all. I thought it could have been a prank. I was pretty sure Dillon never told anyone about the things we did, or the things we said.
But he could have.
He could have told Kevin.
And in my heart I did suspect that Dillon was the one who’d sent our poetry to that TV anchorwoman in San Antonio. He would have liked the attention.
But that morning, the day before Desi was born, I was outside getting my own mail. Mostly, I just got mail that said “Occupant,” but I was looking for a CD I’d ordered through a special offer from the Ameristar Music Library. The guy said it would be there in three days, and here it had been six. I went flipping through the envelopes, looking for something in cardboard, and then I saw it.
It was a shiny black envelope. Like a fancy wedding invitation or one of those You’re-Turning-Thirty birthday cards. No stamp on it.
I opened it. There was a card inside. It didn’t look like the card I got FedEx’d on fiesta night. It was just a plain white file card, and the words on it were cut out of some book. Very tiny. It said: “Then look for me by moonlight.”
It scared me so bad I dropped it right there by the mailboxes and went running back inside. Then I was afraid to go back down and get it. If it was from Dillon, then he knew where I was. But nobody was supposed to know where I was, and Jeanine’s apartments were, like, sealed from the telephone directory and everything. Nobody but the birth parents knew where in the city they were.
And what did it mean? Was I going to see Dillon? My heart felt like it was starting to expand. With the baby, I could barely breathe anyhow. I thought I’d pass out, standing there by the breakfast bar. Where was Dillon? Was he telling me he was coming for me and for our baby? Coming to rush us off to Mexico? I didn’t want to go to Mexico. I didn’t want to have my baby in some old house with some old car sitting out in front of it. I didn’t want to have my baby without Annie. On the other hand, I wanted to be with him, at least for a little while. At least for a night. To look in his eyes. To touch him and make love. To see whether he really hurt that man, or if, as I suspected, it was all Kevin and that Indian, with Dillon craving only his freedom.
How had he found me, I wondered. Someone would have had to see me come over, that first night, to know I was here at all. . . . It didn’t make sense. He wasn’t a ghost, even though I sometimes thought of him that way. He was just a person. He couldn’t be in two places at once. . . . I didn’t know whether to be excited or terrified.
If I’d known about Lang then, I’d have been scared to death.
But not much was making sense to me at that time. I was addled by my body. Even my brain seemed to float.
They say you don’t recall labor—or you wouldn’t ever go through it again willingly. But I remember every instant of Desiree’s birth. It’s before and after I don’t recall. Hardly anything from the month before and not much of the whole month after, my first month at the cabin, when Annie was practically living there and I was asleep half the time. The birth, though, that was beautiful, though Annie would not say the same thing, particularly the shape she’s in right now. At the time, she kept comparing the physical part of it, especially hooking the IV lines up for the induction, to what happened to Stuart’s clients on death row, which was sort of weird. She even thought having to go to the hospital at six A.M. was horrible—like getting guys up at midnight to execute them.
She was a nervous wreck the night before we went to the hospital. I thought it was because she’d dropped Stuart off at the airport and was depressed.
But it was really because she was so afraid.
That’s why she just kept babbling. Talking about death row. It didn’t do much for my frame of mind.
“Think about it, Arley.” She made us some macaroni and picked up the plates to rinse them before I could even finish mine. “Think about dinner dishes from your last meal—now, there’s a concept, huh? Say they’re all cleared away. What are you going to do for the night? Watch old Mary Tyler Moore shows? You could never sleep. No hope for that. And no hope for anything else, no room to maneuver, no way to back off and change the course, no reprieve, nothing to do but hang around. Like we’re hanging around tonight. No! God! I didn’t mean it that way at all! I’m just babbling . . . I’m sorry.”
“Annie, chill,” I told her. “Come on! I think you’re more scared than I am.”
“I’m sure I’m more scared than you are.”
By that time, I’d almost forgotten the card by the downstairs mailbox. I guess it was swept up or something. I was so worn out, I slept like a baby that night. But Annie was up, checking the windows, fiddling with the phone. She wouldn’t let me touch the TV. “The sound will drive me nuts,” she grumbled. What I didn’t know then was that she was keeping me away from TV news, especially those little breaks they like to do when something happens in a juicy case like Dillon’s. Since I didn’t know anything about what had gone on at Mama’s house (though I did think that Annie got a strange number of phone calls at my apartment, even for her), I just believed she was all wired up over me going to have the baby and Stuart leaving, coming so close on each other.
Later, Annie told me she’d watched the parkway all night long like it was a movie. Every time she heard a rustle in the live oak outside my window, she’d turn, expecting what she called Dillon’s “green glass” eyes. All night long, police cruisers glided around the apartment house, she said later, surfacing unexpectedly like sharks. She’d wondered, all alone, whether she should have brought me to the hospital that very night, whether Dillon would jump us when she brought me outside in the morning. And she’d kept thinking about what would happen if he did and wanted to take me. Would I go? Would I run right to him, without a backward glance? She had no idea how strong my commitment was to my baby. And neither of us had any idea how strong my commitment was to her, to Annie herself. So, until she heard the dawn birds, she didn’t relax. And she never let me know.
About five in the morning, I woke up when I heard the door of my apartment open and close. I got up and slipped into my clothes, which I’d set out the night before, and looked out the window. Annie was talking to somebody in a police car. I knew it was a police car because Charley had showed me how to spot unmarkeds: four-doors with big tires. The phone rang then. I picked it up, and it was the hospital. They told me that the induction had to be rescheduled and they would call me later in the day with more information.
Dr. Carroll was overbooked. They were sorry.
They didn’t sound sorry.
I started to cry.
Annie unlocked the door and came back in. When she saw me, she dropped her purse with a big thunk—it had her gun in it—and yelled, “Where is he?”
I looked up at her and shrank back on my couch. “Who?”
“Dillon! Is he here?”
“Annie,” I said, shocked out of my tears. “There’s no one here but me.” Breath rushed back into my chest, hurting as if I’d run a mile of hurdles.
“What’s the matter, then, honey? Are you scared?”
“No. But the hospital called. They said I can’t have the baby.”
She almost laughed. “It’s a little late for that, I think. What did they really say?”
“They said they were . . . filled. There was no bed for me. So they would just do the induction next week or something.”
“But you know that’s a mistake, honey. I talked with Doctor Carroll yesterday.”
“I know! I told them that! I asked to talk to Doctor Carroll, but they said he was
busy. They said to call back later.”
Annie stood there puffing.
She later told me that she was thinking maybe she could fire her gun, after all, take it into the lobby of Texas Christian Hospital and just open up. And then she grabbed up the phone and told me to go in the other room. I heard some of what she was saying, though, even through the door.
“. . . a misunderstanding . . . Arlington LeGrande was to be admitted this morning. . . . In jeopardy, yes, and not just because of problems with the baby. . . . Oh, yes you do. . . . It had better not be because of that. . . . Yes, we will. Oh, no, do not misunderstand me. We will be there in approximately half an hour for this procedure.”
Annie opened the bedroom door. “Get your duffel bag, Arley.” I got my duffel bag. It was all packed. She was still on the telephone.
“Listen, you poor soul,” she said. “I am Anne D. Singer, Arlington LeGrande’s attorney. At a regularly scheduled prenatal appointment last week, I witnessed the decision to induce labor so as not to jeopardize a pregnancy in which a young woman in fragile health is past her due date and in which the fetus has demonstrated some evidence of distress. I confirmed this situation by telephone yesterday with Doctor Carroll. . . . No, it doesn’t matter a goddamn what has happened since yesterday. . . . Sorry, no, here’s the situation: As Arlington LeGrande’s attending physician, who has been responsible for her prenatal care since the eighth week of her pregnancy, only Doctor Carroll can make the decision to postpone this birth—despite the anxiety and emotional damage already caused my client by the nature and timing of the new decision—for reasons that I can only surmise are medically suspect. But you tell him now that if he makes that choice, given that any other physician would be very reluctant to assume Arlington’s care at this stage, and any harm result to Arlington LeGrande or her baby because of what might appear to be a decision motivated by expedience and reasons other than her medical well-being and that of her unborn child, you can certainly expect that he and Texas Christian Hospital will be called to answer for this harm in a legal proceeding of serious proportions.”
She waited. I guess she was on hold. “Turn out the lights, Arley,” she said.
“Why’s there a police car downstairs?”
“How did you know it’s a police car?”
“I know. Everybody knows what those cars look like.”
“Well, they’re just checking, you know. They do that all the time.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. They’re checking up on you, you know. They know that Dillon would realize it’s around the time when the baby would be—yes, I understand.” She was back on the phone. “No, there will be no inconvenience to my client in that regard. I’m sure you will make every effort to see Missus LeGrande to her room promptly.”
That police car followed us the whole way. Once we got there, we didn’t even wait five minutes. There were a few police in uniforms in the lobby. “There are always police in city hospitals,” Annie said. “You should see Bellevue.”
The medical technician came to take blood samples from me right when we got off the elevator. “Keep walking,” the tech said. “Maybe you can get things happening on your own that way. Worked for me.” I was in my room in under ten minutes. The nurse came right away. “Sientes bien, mi hija?” she asked me sweetly.
“I don’t speak Spanish,” I told her, trying not to sound like I was smart-mouthed. “I’m not Hispanic. I just look it.”
It made Annie mad that they assumed I had to be Mexican, since I was a young girl and had no man. But the way it turned out, this nurse, Shelley, didn’t even know who I was or what had happened with Dillon. She wasn’t the type to pay attention to the news, not that any of this would have made Annie get less angry. By that point, she was ready to blow sky-high.
“Well, I never miss the chance to try out my Spanish,” said the nurse, and she asked Annie, “Will you be with Missus LeGrande? Are you responsible for medical decisions?”
“I’m her lawyer, and I’m her friend, so yes. Her husband can’t . . . be present.”
“I see,” Shelley said.
The nurses took my clothes and I showered. Annie stayed right there with me. I didn’t mind. They gave me this cotton gown stamped all over with red stars. I found out later it came from the pediatrics ward and that they gave it to me because they thought I might like it better. I think that was a nice thing to do. As they were hooking up all the tubes and the baby’s heart monitor, Annie took off and went for coffee. When she came back, I just for, like, tradition’s sake, decided I should ask her to call my mama.
But Annie answered, “I already tried. I couldn’t reach her.”
Well. That was that. To keep from feeling sad, I watched Shelley and another nurse fiddle with dials and knobs.
“See?” Shelley said, pointing to the line of liquid light. “That’s the baby’s heart rate: one-sixty, one-thirty, one-forty, one-eighty. Can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl. It’s all over the place.” All of a sudden, I felt the baby unfurl and stretch.
“It moved,” I said, “the baby.” It was only then I realized it. After months of gymnastics, the baby had hardly moved at all in . . . well, I didn’t remember how long. I just hadn’t noticed.
“Doesn’t the baby move all the time, honey?” Shelley asked.
“No, not hardly ever,” I told her. “Not for days and days. Is that okay?” I saw Annie and the nurses look at each other. The nurse who was not Shelley went out into the hall. Then Dr. Carroll came in—he was so clean!—and shook hands with Annie. She’d been his patient for years, but they didn’t look very friendly right now.
“Doctor,” Shelley told him, “Missus LeGrande isn’t feeling very much movement.”
“Maybe not much room left to move, I suspect? Well, that’s why we’re here.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Anne,” Dr. Carroll said then, softly. “My daughter is a lawyer too. And she says that the primary rule of law is that you never go after a mosquito with a cannon, because you usually miss.”
“You don’t know what she’s going through, or what she’s going to have to go through,” Annie said.
“In fact, there was no intent to upset or discourage Arlington this morning. It was a misunderstanding. And it would have been corrected within a very few minutes even if you hadn’t—”
“She didn’t know that. I didn’t know that.”
“But I did,” he said firmly. “No patient’s status with Medicaid nor any other events in her life have any bearing on my individual treatment of that patient. Surely, in your work, you practice the same standard.”
“All my clients have the same status,” Annie said. “Except her.”
Dr. Carroll smiled. “I know this is a time of real stress for you. I know that as your physician and as your friend.” He turned to me. “Shall we have this baby?”
“Yes, please,” I said.
They left Annie and me alone for a while. Even Shelley left. I was just supposed to contract. The induction would be slow and gradual. “People say that you get harder labor with Pitocin, but it’s just not true,” Shelley told us when she returned. “You’ll go just the same way as anyone else.” As she hipped open the door, there came an animal howl from down the corridor. “Another citizen of the republic,” she said, smiling. I gripped Annie’s hand. That lady sounded like she was dying, not having a baby. She sounded like a horror movie.
I had to take my mind off it. “Let’s watch TV,” I told Annie. “Let’s watch the Today show.”
Annie said, “No. You have to concentrate.” Now I know why she did that. But then I thought it was pretty unfair—after all, I was the one who was having a baby.
Plus I was starving. “I reckon they won’t let me eat, huh?”
“No.”
“I’m so hungry I could eat Saint Augustine grass.”
“Well, hurry up and have a baby, then.”
“Maybe I should try to sleep.”
>
“Good idea.”
She was the one who fell asleep, though. She closed her eyes and relaxed her grip on my hand, and in about one second she was gone, her head just leaning against the mountain of my belly. It was weird; I could see it get all hard, like the sides of a volcano, whenever a contraction came. They didn’t even hurt. The sun was coming up, and the slats of the blinds made bars across Annie’s face. She was moaning in her sleep. When Shelley came in and checked me, Annie didn’t even move. “There’s a policeman out there,” Shelley said.
“It’s because I’m a movie star,” I whispered. I can’t believe I said that. She could tell I was goofing around.
“I didn’t know!” Shelley replied. It was like she actually believed me. But by the next time she came back in, I figured she knew exactly who I was, because she shook her finger at me, like “bad girl,” and said, “You poor little thing. You ain’t but a child yourself. I bet you wish he was here, huh?”
“I guess so. And I . . . I keep thinking about where he is right now and if he can feel what’s happening to me. . . .” Something about those words woke Annie up. She told me to stop getting overexcited.
“I’m not overexcited!” I told her, but I was. I wanted Shelley to know I wasn’t some gangster girl. “Those other boys who broke out . . . Dillon’s not really like that.”
Shelley left the room. Annie and I looked at each other. The contractions were coming closer together now and lasting longer. They were real labor pains. “I know I’m going to have to raise this baby all by myself,” I told Annie, all of a sudden.
“You don’t know that.”
“Well, I know that after . . . what Dillon did, even if he didn’t actually do it himself, I know we can’t ever be together anymore. He can’t be with the baby or me. He’s going to go back to prison. Maybe he’ll be like one of those people Stuart helps.”
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