The winter sun was on its westerly descent outside the hospital window. On the sill, a gift shop flower arrangement moved minutely in the recirculated air. The window was daintily splotched and dripped with bird poop, and the sun shone in, casting a cockeyed, canted silhouette onto the opposite wall. Ginny caught me appreciating it. “It’s because it’s so accidental, I think,” she said. “Accidental beauty. The birds come pooping by, and then the sun starts setting, and it all coincides . . .” She gestured at the dappled wall and together we watched the shadows. “I’m sorry he’s got no name yet,” she said. “It’s my fault.”
“Gin, don’t apologize, he’s two months early.”
“We have one, basically. I’ve just been so superstitious, like the minute we give him a name, he’ll die.” It hurt, how much she sounded like me. “But Silas says it’s a disservice not to name him now. A name is a vote of confidence, how we claim him.” It was hard to imagine Silas saying it in that way, yet it made sense, both that he’d say it and that my daughter loved him. “I know he’s right, I just get scared, but we’ll do it soon, I promise.” She was afraid, but not paralyzed. Afraid, but moving through it, with Silas, to the other side.
Silas drove me to the Gas Stop that evening. Only a few cars in the bar’s lot, but it was open; the refuge of the desperate can’t close on the day desperation runs highest. I’ve read that more people kill themselves on Christmas than any other day of the year. I bet it’s not just Christians, either. A lonely December 25 is miserable no matter what you believe, or don’t.
Miracle on 34th Street was on the inn’s lobby television, Christmas dinner in progress inside the Presidios’ apartment beyond the front desk: stereo carols, laughter, dish-clanking. I called in to Henk and Donna, but the clamor muffled me, and the desktop bell was inaudible amid the jingle bells. I tried Lucius’s cell; he answered groggily. “What room?” I asked.
“I can’t remem— Hang on.” I could hear him fumbling to stand.
On a hunch I asked, “Is there a movie poster on the wall? Harvest of Fire?”
Surprised, he said, “Indeed.”
“On my way.” Must not be much holiday business if we’d snagged the movie room.
Lucius—sock-footed, rumpled—took my hand at the door and led me to bed, where I sank gratefully into that soft red blanket. “How’s everything?” he whispered, drowsy, drifting.
“Good. Everything’s good,” and I let myself fall asleep almost instantaneously.
I woke sometime later, confused, then felt Lucius beside me, pulled him closer, and slept on. When I woke again, he sat reading in the corner La-Z-Boy. I croaked “Hi,” and he shut his book and leapt up, crying, “Hello! I’m starving! The bar’s open across the way. I’m dreaming of fried nuggets.” He climbed into the bed and held me beneath the red blanket.
“Fried nuggets.” I buried my face in his neck, trying to breathe in his warmth, but he was jumping up, pushing shoes onto my feet, saying, “Let’s go!” and I struggled, laughing—“This is serious!”—and he was saying, “I don’t even know when I last ate,” and then we were outside, the cold glorious on my face as we crossed to the Gas Stop. Regina was tending bar, Creamer in his seat, the positions in which I’d last seen them, on Thanksgiving Day, a full month before.
“Merry Christmas!” Regina waved us over; we had no real choice. Creamer barely lifted his head, gave a half nod, a nearly silent grunt, and took up his straw. Lucius, baffled, looked concerned that he’d misunderstood the entire hickey story. But the alchemy that had produced our election-night intimacy—and that bruise—now felt inimitable and inexplicable.
Lucius and I sloughed off our jackets, settled on stools. “I’m starving,” he told Regina.
In a sudden panic, I asked, “You are serving food tonight, aren’t you?”
“Whatever you like,” she said. “It all fries up the same. Or I got Christmas dinner.”
“Christmas dinner?” Lucius’s face lit up.
“Turkey, dressing, the works. Just got to nuke it,” Regina said. “Cooked a twenty-two-pounder. Thing was in the oven half the damn night so we could eat by noon.”
“Hell, if you’re offering . . .” Lucius grinned. “Christmas dinner, the fixings, please.”
“Sally cooks a mean turkey,” Creamer said.
“That she does,” Regina said proudly. She turned to me. “You too, honey?”
I felt suddenly and terribly unmoored. Did I cook a mean turkey? When had I last cooked a turkey? Had I ever cooked a turkey? A mean turkey? Weren’t all turkeys mean? I grabbed for Lucius beneath the bar; I thought I was going to slide off my stool and fall off the world, but he said, “Get this woman a turkey dinner, stat,” patting my leg, then squeezing it, tight and private. “And say congratulations,” he added. “Phil’s a grandma!”
Regina hooted. “Your daughter had her baby! Round on the house! What’ll it be?”
“I’d take a beer.” Lucius is a merciless and unrepentant flirt.
“Bass?” She nodded, then looked at me. “You too?” I nodded back, mute.
Creamer said, “It’s early, isn’t it?” I balked: Creamer telling us it was too early to drink? “Is everything okay,” he asked, “with the baby? Being early and all?” I nodded, unable to speak.
Regina set down a frothing pint. I took a sip and choked, and Lucius thumped me on the back. “Everything’s fine,” he told them. “Early, but fine.”
Regina set down a beer for Lucius and lifted her own. “To birth,” she said. “To life.”
“L’chaim,” Lucius said, and I managed “To life,” and Creamer said “Cheers,” and we all clinked and drank, and then Regina went to microwave our Christmas dinners.
ON DECEMBER 26, Lucius and I woke at the inn, gathered our things, and moved to my place on White Rabbit. I showed him how to use the woodstove, and he set to figuring out the espresso maker, which I’d been too ashamed to give to Randall and Linda in the end. By the time I showered, he had made me a lovely latte, in a travel mug to drink on my way to the hospital. He’d stay at the house, read, take a walk. I kissed him and went to see my grandson.
Michael was already there, by the NICU window where Randall had stood the day before.
“Hi.” I squinted in. There was something taped to the basinet. “Is that a name tag?”
“It is,” Michael said. “He has a name.”
I paused. “Should I prepare myself? Is it weird?”
Michael laughed and shook his head. His eyes were kind. “Not too weird.”
Silas waved from inside, beckoning me to trade places and join Ginny. I deferred to Michael, but he said, “You. I was here early—got to hold him awhile before anyone was up.”
I watched Silas through the window, readying myself to wash up whenever he started toward the door. Beside me, Michael took a breath and began to speak. “I’m driving out to Prairie now to fetch Eula. If you’re sticking around, maybe you could watch Oren while she visits with the baby?” I nodded: Of course. Michael took another big breath. “Gin and Silas can take them back to Prairie later—they’re going out there to collect some things from the house and then come back to River City, stay at the house here, to be closer to the hospital. And I’ll move over to Carpathia. The tenants wound up leaving before Christmas. I thought I’ll get the work done faster if I’m actually living there. Give Gin and Silas some privacy, too. Easier than schlepping from Prairie every day.” My heart wrenched to hear my family’s Yiddish from Michael’s mouth. “When they go back to Prairie, I’ll put the house on the market.”
“The house?”
“Our house.”
“Already?”
“Already? How long did you want to wait? You left a year ago, Phil.”
“I didn’t—”
“Yes,” he said. “You did.”
He was right; January’s when I drove off into the blizzard. “Okay,” I said.
“Okay, then,” he said. “Well. Guess I’ll head out.” Michael turned
from me and strode down the corridor, past a formation of plastic nutcracker soldiers lined up against the wall like they were facing the firing squad. He passed the bulletin boards of all the NICU babies’ before-and-after photos, the notes their parents sent in, year after year: Our Greyson was 1 lb. 9 oz. and spent 23 weeks in the NICU. Now he’s 15, 195, plays JV quarterback. Thank you U of I NICU! Watching Michael walk away made me want to run after him—chase him the way Lucius had chased me down the Yoder driveway—catch his waist, and pull him back. From behind, you might think Michael a younger man than he is—not much gray hair in back, and he’s still slender, his belly concealed at that angle. I watched him walk away. I did not run after him. He paused at the hall’s T, peered right, left, then right again, then chose a direction and took it. He turned and was gone, and I stood in the NICU hall, watching the goings-on inside, until I heard, “Phillipa, good morning.”
It was Silas, beside me, asking, “Would you like to go in?”
“Hi,” I said. “Yes, sure,” I choked. “I would.” I scrubbed in.
The crib sign had stars and red hearts around the blue-stenciled name: OBADIAH BERN.
“Obadiah,” I said.
“And Bern, for Grandma Ma,” Ginny said.
“Obadiah Bern.”
“Obadiah Bern Yoder. We’re going to call him by his initials, though,” she told me.
“O.B.?” I tried to hide my skepticism. Like ob-gyn? Like O.B. tampons?
“Obie,” Ginny corrected. “Stress on the first syllable.”
“Obie, that’s nice. Obie.” Like Opie, but Andy Griffith was my childhood, not hers.
“We’ll see,” she said. “He’ll be Obadiah if Obie doesn’t work. We’re fine with that.”
“It’s a good name, Gin,” I said. “And a tribute to two people who loved you very . . .” and then I was crying, and Ginny was wrapping her arm around me, drawing me to the basinet, and we just stood there and watched the baby—Obie. We stood and watched him sleep.
THREE DAYS AFTER Obie’s birth, Ginny and Silas ensconced themselves at the River City house, and Michael moved over to Carpathia. With Obie in the NICU, his parents didn’t yet need help. Ginny was calling it “practice parenting,” and putting on a good face, but I think she just wanted to take her baby home to Prairie, finish the house, and get on with their life. Still, sick as she was of the hospital with its cheery, scrubbed staff, she was grateful; in another age, a baby born at thirty-two weeks would have had little chance. Casseroles and one-pot reheatable meals were already showing up at the doorstep as fast as Ginny and Silas could freeze them, and I’d be of more use to them once they were home in Prairie and really needed help. So Lucius and I packed up and drove to Ohio for a few days together before the semester began. On the drive—no show tunes: there are limits to Lucius’s love, and he draws a line at Andrew Lloyd Webber—we talked about spring break, when I’d now be free to travel after all.
“We could go back to France,” I said. “To the pension. Try again?”
Lucius nodded. “We could. The weather won’t be great.”
“Will Ginny and Silas be okay on their own by then?” I said. “Can I really just leave? What kind of grandmother does that make me?” I was quiet a moment, then said, “Spring break is when the Yoders died. It’ll be two years in March.” Orah and Obadiah would not, I’m quite sure, have left town while their three-day-old grandson lay hooked to monitors in Neonatal Intensive Care. I know I need to stop comparing myself to them—the Yoders weren’t judgmental people, and if there was any way to honor them, it might be for me to show a little more kindness to the world at large, in which I’d probably have to include myself.
“You know,” Lucius began, “or maybe you don’t . . . Alsace-Lorraine, that region on the German border—Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin, Moselle—is where all the Amish Mennonites are. Active churches, even. It’s where Ammann settled when he split from the Anabaptists. Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines is the so-called cradle of the Amish movement. Farmland’s beautiful.”
“You’re making that up.”
Lucius laughed. “Making what up? No, it really is beautiful.”
“There’s an Amish mecca in the middle of France that you just happen to’ve encountered in your research travels? How does that happen?”
“Edge,” Lucius corrected, “very eastern edge of France.” Then: “Because the world is a strange and miraculous place? Because everything is connected? Because Murphy likes himself a good coincidence? It’s not really that coincidental. The Amish do get around. Slowly, but . . .”
“You know something terrible’ll happen. We’ll get there. It’ll be paradise. Again. And we’ll hike into a field with rucksacks for a picnic, a bottle of local wine, the wheat waving, cows lowing, mourning doves all a-coo, and some Amish garçon will come rushing up with a telegram to deliver heinous news, and I’ll hitch a buggy ride to the airport, yelling giddyup, vite!”
Lucius was laughing. “Twice does not constitute a statistical trend. Phil, you were summoned home when a miserable eighty-year-old woman died. In her sleep! May we all be so lucky.” I tried to protest, but Lucius went on: “Then, you were called home for something not terrible. For a baby! And everyone is fine. There was no tragedy. Here we are, mere days later, headed back together to cold, unlovely Ohio. It’s all perfect—everything’s okay.”
“But by pure luck! It might’ve been so far from okay . . .”
“Yes,” Lucius said, “you’re right.” He smiled at the road ahead. “But it is okay. This time it’s okay. Next time might not be. But try, try and be okay with the okayness of this time. Don’t waste it worrying about next time. Be here, in this time. With me.”
“Everything is connected. Be here now. What are you, a Zen master?”
“In my spare time,” Lucius said. “Weekends. School breaks. Alternate Wednesdays.”
“I love you,” I told him.
“And I you.” He reached for my hand across the center console. We drove east.
ON NEW YEAR’S EVE afternoon, Lucius was out picking up some things for dinner when my cell rang. It was Michael. “What’s wrong?” I said. “Why are you calling? What happened?”
“Phil, Phil, nothing’s wrong. I just found something I thought—it might interest . . .”
“Okay.” My pulse slowed. “Okay.”
“I’m in my mother’s attic and I thought you’d like to know that you were right all along.”
“Right about what?” There was purloined Nazi loot stashed in the rafters?
“I found my birth certificate,” Michael said, “and I don’t know what it means exactly, but it lists no father. It’s blank.” He let out an ironic chuckle. “I am officially fatherless.”
“Oh, Michael . . .” I’m sorry didn’t feel appropriate, but I didn’t know what would be.
“Don’t Oh, Michael me.” He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was gentler. “I just thought you’d be interested. A weird thing, though—maybe just a typo, I don’t know, but her birthday, you know, was November 24, but here it’s May 14—”
“Your birthday?”
“It could be a typo—putting that day’s date accidentally for ‘Mother’s Birth Date,’ but they didn’t put the year as ’45. It’s written May 14, 1927. And she was born in ’22, anyway.”
There was, of course, so much I wanted to ask, but I’m proud to report that I said only, “She just wanted people to tell her how young she looked for her age.” Michael laughed, agreeing, and I laughed, too, relieved. We hung up, and I sat in Lucius’s darkening living room. Nothing had really changed: the birth certificate neither conferred nor confirmed any truth, just cleared the way for different stories. Maybe everything Bernadette told us was true: her young husband, her Dave Maakestad, was killed in the war. By the time Michael arrived, she’d been forsaken by Dave’s family, and proof of their marriage probably wasn’t easily obtained. Records get lost in fires, both proverbial and actual, accidental and deliberate. Was Bernadette�
��s great secret not that Michael was illegitimate, but that his birth certificate made it look as if he were? Why she didn’t burn it, too, is another question to which we’ll never get an answer.
New Year’s was quiet; we were asleep by midnight. Before I returned to Iowa, Lucius and I bought tickets for spring break. We’d fly into Luxembourg, rent a car. The pension had rooms available—not their busy season. The weather might be crummy, but it didn’t much matter to us.
I left Ohio in early January and inched my way through the eternal Greater Chicago traffic. Is it beside the point to say I wished Lucius were beside me? That we were in a car together, not driving on a U.S. interstate, but tootling down a French country road in a rented Citroën, the fertile Franco-Amish farmland unfurling around us like a quilt over the hills? We would go through the mountains and begin switchbacking down into the Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines river valley. Lucius loves driving those roads, winding and winding. I look ahead, over red tile roofs, huddled white-stone houses, church steeples poking up from the ridgelines. The hills are full of caves, Lucius tells me, abandoned mining camps, and I half expect to hear the whistle of dwarfs, Sleepy, Dopey, and Doc tromping along the road, pickaxes slung over their shoulders. Hi-ho, hi-ho. It’s an elfin forest, a Hobbit glen. We come around a bend to an ancient Mennonite cemetery, perched practically at the edge of a cliff, its moss-covered gravestones cockeyed and cantilevered. Following directions, at the next fork we leave pavement for dirt, rattling on, pebbles thunking the undercarriage. And then, there it is, the farmhouse we’re looking for. Not as crumbling as I’ve feared—or maybe it is, under all the ivy and wisteria. Does wisteria bloom in March? To hell with March—let’s make it spring! Spring in Alsace, fictional wisteria blossoming in profusion! Sage and lavender thriving!
A few speckled chickens scatter, spooked by the car. We park, cut the engine, and they return to peck what we’ve stirred up. As we climb out, the old farmhouse door swings open, and Ginny emerges—why not?—with Obie slung on her hip, grabbing at his mama’s tattered purple sundress. On Gin’s feet are old laceless sneakers; she’s ruddy, tanned, plumped, and muscled, as if she’s been here for years, working the farm. When she sees me, she smiles and lifts that baby toward me and we sandwich him in a hug. They smell of earth, sweet-rich as compost, and faintly of straw, rosemary, yeast, and a ripe smokiness. I could stay all day just inhaling them, but Silas is coming out, reaching to shake Lucius’s hand. Ginny and I release Obie. I hug Silas. Gin hugs Lucius. My heart is full.
Our Lady of the Prairie Page 37