“Just a minute. Lemme get the plunger.” Tool in hand, Todd stepped into the bathroom. “Whoa! Is that a . . . ? I mean, that looks like a . . . Patricia! What are you doing with a . . . ?” Todd stopped speaking and stared, as slack-jawed as his breathless wife, at the pink plus sign clearly visible in the center of the little plastic device sitting on the edge of the sink.
“We’re pregnant!”
Days later, with Todd in the room, Patricia’s status was officially confirmed. “Yes. I do believe you are,” said the doctor upon examination. “Not sure how far along. Let’s do a sonogram and see. Ready now? Okay. When I squirt this jelly, it’s going to feel cold.”
Bump-a-bump-a-bump-a-bump. A heartbeat—so soon? Patricia and Todd couldn’t make out much of their baby on the screen, but they could certainly hear its tiny heart.
“Is it supposed to be that fast?” Todd could neither tear his eyes from the monitor nor hide his concern.
“Not to worry, Dad,” the doctor said with a grin, not pausing from the job at hand. Over and over he moved the imaging wand around and across Patricia’s tummy, pausing at specific intervals so as to gauge the fetus’s growth and development. “Your baby’s heart is beating just as it should. Everything else looks good too. I’m thinking, Patricia, that you’re about ten weeks into your pregnancy. Let’s see. That would make you due close to Valentine’s Day. Uh-huh, I’d say about the fifteenth of February.” He turned off the machine, handed Patricia a tissue, and helped her sit up. “Any questions? All right. Before you leave, my nurse has a video to show you and some information I want you both to take home and read. Congratulations. See you in a month.”
At home, munching a take-out dinner in front of the TV, Todd said, “See! I knew all along that if we gave ourselves some time, we would have a baby.” (He had never been one to refrain from an I-told-you-so.)
Patricia cut him some slack. “Oh, shush,” she giggled. “Hand me the TV controller, will you? I’m pregnant. I have to take it easy. And while you’re up, could you make me a cup of tea? With a ring of lemon? Thank you, dear.” She smiled at him and swatted his bottom as he walked by.
ONE MONTH LATER, Patricia stood as lightly as she could on the scale in the doctor’s exam room.
“Hmm. Five pounds,” he said. “That’s a little bit much for this early in your pregnancy. Let’s think about cutting back a bit on meals and snacks.”
Patricia tried to suck her still-flat stomach in.
“Told you!” teased Todd at her side. “She’s been eating ice cream every night before bed. Claims it’s to get the calcium. ‘Cookies and Cream?’ I say. Skim milk will do the same thing, won’t it, Doc?”
The doctor winked. “Sweetie, it’s okay to eat ice cream. But we also want you to have plenty of good, nutritious food. Another thing—it’s true that you’re eating for two. But just remember,” he said as he held his thumb and forefinger apart. “One of you is very, very tiny. He does not eat much!”
Chagrined, Patricia climbed up onto the table and lay back.
“Blood pressure’s good,” said the doctor. “Don’t see any swelling in your feet.” He studied her chart. “No sugar in your urine. Good, good. Now let’s take a listen at this critter’s little ticker.” He lifted Patricia’s shirt and placed the listening device on her tummy.
No sound.
“Hiding out, are you? Let’s try over here.” He moved the device over a bit.
Still no sound.
Patricia and Todd watched while he tested to make sure the machine was working properly. They watched him thump on it, adjust a dial, even change the batteries. The thing was working just fine.
The doctor put the device back on her tummy, but this time he didn’t speak. Intent on his task, he methodically moved the device from one spot to another. Over, across, up, down, and back again. Over and over and over again. Took a good five minutes.
Save for Patricia’s breathing, nothing broke the silence in the room.
Then the doctor stood up and said in a flat voice, “We need to do a sonogram.”
But they already knew.
Patricia went into the hospital for a D and C the next morning.
“I’m so sorry,” said the doctor.
“So very sorry,” said the nurses.
That night, Patricia dreamed she was in a snowstorm. She saw the faces of her five lost little babies. As she trudged through deep drifts, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get to them.
For several weeks, Patricia and Todd intermittently mourned and questioned and cried. But finally, as before, the two of them settled down into their prepregnancy routine. It did not take long for all talk of babies to come to a stop.
IN MARCH OF LAST YEAR, the Scutters moved to Ella Louise. Todd was hired by the city to be the new animal control officer. He’s good with animals and good with kids, which is great since problems with the two often run together.
Patricia, an attorney, opened an office just down from the Grace Street church. Ella Louise had never had a female attorney before Patricia, so some people didn’t know what to think. But when citizens figured out that Patricia was not, as was initially rumored and feared, one of those rabid, bra-burning feminists, they concluded that she would be an asset to the community. When folks around town met her, they found the new attorney to be a gentle-voiced little thing with freckles and straight, sandy hair that constantly fell in her eyes.
Ella Louise had been without a lawyer for more than ten years. Those who had needed legal help had to travel at least forty-five minutes to get it. For many, this was a hardship. Within weeks of moving into her new office, Patricia’s appointment book filled up.
It was a good thing Patricia had never settled on one particular area of law to practice, because every day she found herself tackling a wide variety of legal problems. The folks of Ella Louise needed all kinds of legal help. There were wills to write, transfers of property to be accomplished, traffic tickets to contest, and also divorces, child support, and rowdy teenagers who landed in jail.
Even the occasional adoption.
“Have you and Todd ever thought about it?” asked Sugar Fry. She was Patricia’s secretary and one of the first people to make friends with Patricia after she and Todd moved to Ella Louise.
“Thought about what?” They were eating lunch, and Sugar had caught Patricia with a mouth full of ham sandwich.
“Adoption. You know. A baby. Or an older child.”
“Not really. If we did adopt, I’d want a newborn, and the chances of getting one are terrible. Remember the Osgoods? That adoption we did early in the spring? It took them three years to get that baby. Mrs. Osgood told me that during the course of those years, two adoptions fell through. By the time the birth mothers told them that they had changed their minds, she and her husband had already fixed the baby’s room up—bought toys, clothes, formula, and everything. It was wrenching for them.” She wiped her mouth. “Sugar, I have already done wrenching. I don’t plan to do it again.”
“I know, and I don’t blame you after all you’ve been through. But think about it. In the end, they did get a child. Remember how the three of them looked when it was finally done? Like a family. A real family. I bet they would do it again in a heartbeat.”
Patricia didn’t answer. What Sugar said was true. She took another bite of her sandwich.
“What about a foreign baby? I hear there are lots of overseas babies, girls especially, who need good homes.”
“I don’t know. . . . Todd and I wanted children so badly for so long. When it didn’t happen, we sort of resigned ourselves to not having any. And you know, after all this time, it really is okay. We have a good life.”
“Not that I mean to get in your business,” fibbed Sugar, “but you would make such a good mother—and Todd a wonderful father. It’s a crying shame that you two don’t have a house full of kids.”
“Maybe so. But we don’t.”
Sugar had gone too far. Signaling that the c
onversation was over, Patricia stood up and brushed sandwich crumbs from her skirt. “What’ve we got going this afternoon? Is the book full? Wouldn’t hurt my feelings to get out of here a little early this evening. How about you?”
THAT NIGHT AS SHE LAY SPOONED in Todd’s arms, Patricia replayed the noontime conversation in her mind. Though she’d brushed Sugar’s words off at the time, now, in the quiet and the dark, they swirled around and around in her mind.
“Been a long time since we talked about babies, hasn’t it?” she whispered. “Do you think about them? Ever? About the children that we would have had?”
“You’re not . . . ?” Todd tensed.
“No. No. I’m not.”
“Good. I mean . . . It’s not that I . . . It’s just that . . . ”
“Shush. Me too. If I’ve ever been sure of anything in my life, it’s that I don’t ever want to be pregnant again.” Patricia lost her voice for a moment. “But I’ve never stopped wishing we had kids.”
She turned to face Todd. They lay curled on their sides, knees touching knees. “I’m sorry that it didn’t work out,” Todd said.
“I know.” She reached for a tissue to blow her nose. “There’s something we’ve never talked about, and I’m not sure why. How come we never looked into adopting a baby?”
“You think we could?”
“I don’t know.”
“You want to?”
“Maybe. I think that I’d at least like to think about it.”
That night, both Patricia and Todd fell asleep doing just that.
SIX MONTHS LATER, Patricia and Todd’s secret plan was the talk of the town.
“I heard they’re going to Mexico to get a baby,” said Millard Fry.
“Not Mexico. Honduras. It’s in Central America. South of Mexico,” explained his wife, Sugar.
“I know where it is. How come such a faraway place?”
“God’s will,” she said. “No other way to explain it. See, they’ve got some missionary friends living down there who’ve been helping this young woman. Woman’s husband died a few months back, and she’s due to have a baby in December. Poor thing’s got four children already that she can’t afford to feed. When they found out she wanted to find a family who could take care of her baby, the missionaries contacted the Scutters.”
“And they were looking for a baby?” asked Millard.
“Let’s just say they were open to the idea,” said Sugar.
“Sad for the mother, but what a lucky little baby,” said Millard, who liked Patricia and Todd a lot.
“A blessing for them all. But don’t tell anyone. No one knows that they’re doing this.”
But, of course, in a small town like Ella Louise, things don’t stay a secret for long. At the Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Tinker asked his assistant, Faye Beth Newman, what she knew.
“Don’t tell anyone, but I heard that the baby’s due the first week of December. Patricia and Todd are supposed to fly down a little while later just in case she goes past due. Todd’s never flown. Said he never would. But that was before this baby came into the picture.” Faye Beth winked. “From what I hear, one of Patricia’s friends from law school has prepared all of the paperwork. Says they should be able to bring the baby home without a hitch.”
“Bless those kids’ hearts.” Mayor Tinker teared up. “Do they know if they’re getting a boy or a girl?”
“No idea.”
“I doubt that they care.”
At a gathering of the Gentle Thimble Quilting Club, Bessie Bishop, this year’s president, called the meeting to order and moved that the club’s next project be a baby quilt for the Scutter’s little one.
“I second the motion,” said Esther Vaughn.
The motion passed. Everyone agreed that they would have to work quickly in order to have the quilt ready for the surprise baby shower that the ladies of Grace Street Church planned to give.
Rochelle Shartle, too excited to care that the baby was supposed to be a secret, called Patricia right up. “Congratulations! Rocky and I are so happy for you! I want to give the baby a ‘Welcome to Ella Louise’ party as soon as you get home. Everyone who’s come to the café in the past week has said that we ought to do something to welcome that little baby. We’ll have the party here at the Wild Flour, of course. Melissa and I’ll make punch and coffee and coconut cake. ’Course, I need to know what day you’ll be back so I can have it all ready.”
Patricia was touched. As soon as she got off the phone, she gave Sugar the news. “Wonder how word got out that Todd and I were even getting a baby?” she asked.
“Beats me,” Sugar said.
Patricia wasn’t even mad.
WHILE THE ENTIRE TOWN of Ella Louise was terribly excited about the coming baby, Todd’s generally agreeable seventy-seven-year-old mother voiced surprising unease. “Honduras? Where’s that?” she asked in a long-distance telephone call.
“Central America, Mom.”
“Where?”
“Close to Mexico. Down south.”
She fell silent.
“Mom? You there?”
“Son, there’s lots of babies right here that need good homes. Why, they had some orphan children on the 10:00 news last night that were looking for families. I don’t see any need for you kids to be going so far off when you can get yourselves a regular American baby.”
“Mom, there’s more to it than that. This baby needs a home too. We can give it a good one. Besides, once we adopt the baby, it will be an American.”
“A little Mexican,” Todd heard his mother mutter to herself. “Will it have brown eyes?”
“Most likely.”
“Brown hair too?”
“I expect so.”
Brown hair, brown eyes. Likely the baby would have brown skin too.
“Mom, we want you to be happy for us.”
“I am. I mean, I will be. But Todd, there’s some things about this that worry me.”
Todd knew from experience that it was best not to argue with his mother. “We’re bringing the baby home on Tuesday the twelfth. Our flight arrives right at noon. How about the three of us swing by and pick you up on our way back to Ella Louise? Folks in town are giving us a big party. It’ll be fun. You can stay with us a few days, get to know your new grandchild.”
Though she was still not convinced, Todd got her to agree.
“Mom’s getting older. More set in her ways,” Todd told Patricia when he hung up. “She’s worried about us getting a baby from way off. Thinks we should get an American baby.”
“You mean a white baby?”
“She didn’t come out and say it, but I think that’s pretty much what she means.”
“Don’t worry. Much as she loves kids, once she sees the baby, she’ll come around.”
“I hope so.”
And when, two weeks later, Todd knocked on his mother’s door, it was clear that she had. “Come in this house! I’ve been looking for you for hours! Where’s Patricia?”
Patricia stood on the steps behind Todd, out of his mother’s line of vision. Todd stepped aside.
“Did you get the baby? There she is! A girl? Let me see her! Oh my goodness, give her to me.” She took the baby from Patricia and gently lifted the blanket from her new granddaughter’s face. “Look.” Tears filled her eyes. “Isn’t she just the prettiest little thing.”
Not taking her eyes off the baby, she directed them inside. “You all come in. Sit down. Patricia, go on in the kitchen and fix you and Todd something to drink. I’m going to sit right here and hold this baby.”
Todd went in to help Patricia. He noticed a box with a California return address sitting on the kitchen table. “What’s this, Mom?” he called to her. “This big box. You order something?” Except for Lillian Vernon, who she considered a long-distance friend, his mother didn’t trust folks who sold stuff through the mail.
His mother came into the kitchen, still carrying the baby. “That’s my Spanish lessons,” she said.
<
br /> “You’re studying Spanish?”
“’Course I am. Aren’t you?”
“Uh, no. I’m not.”
“Well, when do you intend to start? You don’t have more than a few months—a year at the most.”
“A few months? A year?” Todd was confused. “What are you talking about? Mom, why would I want to learn Spanish?”
“Son! How else do you intend to be able to talk to your daughter?” she huffed. “Now, I admit, when you first told me you were getting a little Mexican baby . . .”
“Honduran,” Todd interrupted.
She waved him quiet. “I was afraid that I couldn’t do it—that learning a new language would be too hard. Fact is, I didn’t know where to start or how to go about it. You forget, Todd, that I’m an old woman. It’s not so easy for me to learn new things. But then I saw where you could order these Spanish lessons from off of the TV. The lessons came yesterday, and I stayed up till 10:00 last night listening to a tape and filling out my workbook. Not to be bragging or anything, but I’ve learned five Spanish words already. Did you know that abuela means grandmother?”
Todd struggled to keep the grin off his face. Careful not to squish the baby, he gathered his mother into his arms. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too. Watch her little head now.”
TODD AND PATRICIA’S BABY, Alecia, is now ten months. She’s a chubby-cheeked, brown-eyed little darling who’s crazy about her grandma. She kicks her little legs and breaks into a grin whenever she sees her, which is often these days.
“Te amo,” says Grandma to Alecia.
“Goo,” says Alecia.
“See,” Grandma says to Todd. “She understands.”
Without a doubt.
6
ANGEL INCOGNITO
FOUR PAIRS OF SHORTS. Two pairs of jeans.
Ten T-shirts. Two long-sleeve shirts.
Flashlight.
Rain poncho.
One pair of athletic shoes. One pair of hiking boots.
Underwear for a week and a half.
Bible. Notebook. Pens.
Sarah Strickland, mother of twelve-year-old twins Kevin and Josh, struggled to fit all of the items printed on the camp-provided “What to Pack” list into her boys’ two suitcases.
Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life Page 5