by Lisa Dale
“Thanks,” he said.
She patted her belly, not quite realizing she’d done it. “So what will you do now?”
He shrugged. “Well, I might stick around ’til the baby’s born. If it’s okay with you.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Karin called the cops off me a while back. So I’m in the Madison again. And I’m working too. Got a job at an office building. Custodial stuff.”
Lana swallowed. “So, you’re going to stay around here?”
“For a while. But I thought maybe I’d like to learn to drive a truck. I think I’d do good on the open road.”
Lana smiled. “Well, for now, I’m glad you’re here. I want the baby to meet you.”
He looked down. “Thank you,” he said.
December 21
The inside of the exam room at the obstetrician’s office was oddly soundless given how busy the waiting room had been. Karin had joined her sister for her thirty-four-week appointment, and now Lana sat on the exam table, white paper crinkling beneath her flimsy gown. Under the harsh ceiling lights, Karin could set a watch by Lana’s visible breathing, her belly rising and falling in arduous waves.
“How close am I?” Lana asked the nurse. “Can you tell?”
The nurse, who had a pretty heart-shaped face, smiled. “Well, it’s hard to say. You’re two centimeters dilated and about 40 percent effaced. You still have a ways to go.”
“My back is hurting on and off,” Lana said. “I’m worried it’s contractions.”
“It might be. If they’re around ten minutes apart, then you’ll want to head over to the hospital to get checked out. But otherwise, you’ll just have to sit tight.”
“Are you sure?” Lana asked.
The nurse laughed—a little pity in her eyes—and she patted Lana’s shoulder. “First-time moms always rush off to the hospital at the first sign of labor. It’s pretty common. But you have time. You have lots of time. Believe me. I was in labor for thirteen hours with my first. Just be sure that when your water breaks, you get to the hospital. Okay?”
“All right,” Lana said. “I guess I’m just a little nervous.”
“All new moms are. Just relax.”
“Is there anything else we should know?” Karin asked. “Anything she shouldn’t do?”
“She’s got about six more days of bedrest. Then, as long as it’s sensible, she can do anything she wants.” She turned to look at Lana directly, a twinkle in her eye. “You can even go back to having sex.”
Lana gave a weak grin. “Probably not going to happen.”
Karin would have laughed, except that she knew just how Lana was feeling deep down. She’d talked to her husband only a handful of times since he left. Though she stood next to the phone every night, her hand gripping the receiver, she fought hard against the urge to call. He’d said he needed space, and she vowed to give it. When she did allow herself to talk to him, she always hung up the phone feeling farther away from him than before.
After Lana had dressed, she left the exam room as quickly as she could, leaving Karin there with only the nurse at the sink. She looked around at the posters of reproductive systems and pictures of childbirth stages and all the other incomprehensible medical illustrations that made her think of Ripley’s “Believe It or Not.” Karin’s gaze lingered on a poster of fetal development, the way a child grows from an imperceptible speck rendered in miniaturist’s detail to a full-term work of art.
She’d thought this would have been her moment. That she would have been here for her own baby by now.
“Do you need something?” the nurse asked, her thin eyebrows politely raised.
Karin paused, strangely paralyzed by the question.
All this time, she’d believed her sole purpose in life was to be a mother. She’d become obsessed—she could see that now. But her identity was bigger than that. Gene’s absence had forced a realization: Her role in the world mattered deeply to the people around her, even if she didn’t have a child of her own.
She didn’t need to have a son or daughter to be complete. She wanted a family, certainly. She always would. But she would never again endanger the family she had now for the family she merely wished for. She wanted children. She needed her husband. Now it was just a matter of showing him, somehow, what she’d learned.
The nurse’s smile was a little put-off. “I said, do you need something else?”
The answer came from someplace quiet and peaceful within her.
“No,” she said. “No, I don’t.”
• • •
December 24
Eli stood on the porch looking out over the countryside, a light dusting of snow glowing faintly on the ground against the night. He could still hear the sounds of happy laughter inside the house behind him. Some old friends he’d become reacquainted with at the meteorite convention had invited him to dinner, and he’d been pleased to go. But about halfway through—among the cheerful adults drinking spiced wine, children crawling on all fours under the dining room table, and plates upon plates of festive cakes and pies—he’d become aware that his heart was giving a low, resonating cry. He’d had to escape for a moment. And so he’d excused himself.
On the porch, the air was painfully cold, smelling of snow and wood smoke, but he welcomed its bite. He pushed his hands deep into his jeans pockets, and when he sighed his breath was thick as white smoke. Above, the sky seemed higher and more endless than usual, stars punctuating the unthinkable black distance of space. Summer had warm air and friendly haze, but winter… winter had this: the clarity of vision that comes with hard, merciless cold.
He heard the sound of a woman laughing, and he thought of her. Always her. She hadn’t called or e-mailed, as he’d hoped she might. Nothing indicated that she was at all interested in seeing or talking to him.
“Hey, man!” Clem, his friend from graduate school, smacked him cheerfully on the back as he came outside onto the porch. In the silence of the night, his boots made hollow thumps on the wooden slats. “Whatcha doing? It’s freezing out here!”
Eli turned to him and smiled. “Just needed some air.”
Clem hooked one hand around a thin beam on the porch, absentmindedly testing the strength of it with his weight. He wore a thick hunter’s vest over his dress shirt, not much protection against the cold, but he seemed in no hurry to go back inside. “Sorry about the pumpkin.”
“It’s okay,” Eli said, looking down at the smear of orange on his shirt.
“My Melly’s a wild one. She’s gonna be trouble down the line.”
Eli laughed. Clem’s youngest daughter had an impish look to her, straight dark hair and dancing green eyes. She was energetic, to say the least, and Eli liked her—even if she’d managed to stain his shirt with pie.
Clem cleared his throat. “I’d have thought you’d want to head back to Burlington by now, being that it’s so close to Christmas.”
Eli was quiet, not sure how much he wanted to say. He bumped the bottom of the porch with the toe of his boot. He was so frustrated with the story of his life at the moment, he wasn’t that interested in hearing it spoken aloud. “You know how it is. I just had to get away for a while.”
“Why’s that?”
He paused, thoughtful. “I don’t know. To test if my life will still be the same when I get back.”
“I hear you there,” Clem said.
Eli glanced at him. He used to be very close to Clem. They’d fallen out of touch when Clem had moved out here, far west of Burlington, to raise his family. But Eli saw no reason not to at least tell Clem the gist of what had happened to him over the past couple of months.
He did the best he could with the story, smoothing it out as he went, all the little ups and downs giving way to one larger, more streamlined arc. To keep from sounding too emotional as he spoke, he pretended the story belonged to someone other than him.
When he was done, Clem shook his head a little, a disbelieving smile on his face. “So l
et me get this straight. You have no idea if she’s gonna marry the guy or not?” Clem laughed out loud and clapped Eli on the back. “Man, you got it bad.”
“Tell me about it,” he said. And oddly enough, he found himself laughing too. It felt good, he realized, to see how asinine the situation looked through Clem’s eyes.
“You met my wife in there,” Clem said, more statement than question.
“Yeah, she’s great.”
“Did you know she was sick when I met her? She had Lyme disease real bad. And man, you should have seen me. Within two weeks, nobody knew more about Lyme disease than me. She and I worked together for months, finding ways to beat it, or at least make it bearable. Then, one day led to another, and she started feeling better. And next thing I knew, we were split up.”
Eli looked at Clem closely, his slight stubble and thick eyebrows. He and his wife seemed so happy, always touching each other on the shoulder or hand. Always connected. It was hard to imagine them apart. “Well, you obviously worked it out,” Eli said.
“Yeah, after I quit being an idiot.”
“I’m not following you.”
“I freaked out. It was like, Well, now that you’re not sick, what do you need me for? You know what I mean?”
Eli was quiet, realization slowing dawning. They stood in silence for a long minute. A light sprinkling of snow began to fall, flakes sparkling red, green, and yellow in the lights strung along the edge of the porch.
Clem breathed out, white rising up clear and strong. “Well,” he said at last. “You coming back in?”
“In a minute,” Eli said.
“Take your time,” Clem said. “The eggnog supply is going strong.”
Eli took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the cold air that was as heavy and refreshing as ice water. Snowflakes glittered in the dark and faded as they reached the ground, and inside, another round of laughter rose above the light music of flutes and guitars. He wanted this for himself—family, friends, laughter, love.
It had scared him, he realized, to think that Lana didn’t need him. He liked when she’d needed him, when he had something to offer that no one else had. When Ron was gone and she was alone, he felt certain of his role—to support her, to be there for her, to be everything she needed. But once Ron showed up, and he was suddenly faced with the prospect of no longer being necessary to her… it had scared him half out of his mind.
In the clear sky above, a falling star streaked downward, a blaze of white, and his heart made a wish long before his mind could even articulate the words of it. It seemed like a good sign.
Tomorrow, he would go back. He wanted to be with her on Christmas. Maybe Lana no longer needed him—maybe she never truly had—but he could only hope that she wanted him half as much as he wanted and needed her. If she did, the future—whatever it was—was theirs.
December 25
Karin and Lana took baby steps, shuffling along slippery asphalt in the parking lot. Early in the morning, they’d driven west forty minutes to Montpelier—a trip they made every Christmas morning. They’d loaded Karin’s van with poinsettia, and then spent a few hours serving cinnamon buns and coffee to those in need. Karin had suggested they stay home because a storm had been predicted for the afternoon. But Lana had rejected the idea, saying they were needed since not too many people were willing to donate their time on the biggest holiday of the year.
Unfortunately, the snow had arrived sooner than predicted. They’d found that the sky had clouded over and a thin layer of ice had formed on every surface, gleaming crystalline and bright. The mountains were blurred by bad weather and the roads were tranquil and untraveled—eerie—as if even sound had been silenced by the ice.
“Maybe we should just stay here,” Lana said, disappointment and weariness in her words.
Karin looked out at the snow-covered roads. “I think it will be okay. The ground is icy, but the roads are still fine. And the minivan is good in the snow.”
As they crossed the parking lot, Lana stretched out her hand to steady herself and Karin reached for her arm. She could think of nothing worse than if her pregnant, bubble-bellied sister were to fall. Though they’d parked less than three hours ago, ice had formed a hard, clear shell around and on the windows and doors. It wasn’t a glass-smooth type of ice, but instead a craterous and cloudy white that might have been the hard skin of some mythical dragon.
Karin pounded on the door handle and leaned all her weight on it to slide the panel open. She helped Lana climb inside, then started the car and headed back out into the cold to chip off what ice she could.
When the last window of the van was scraped off and Karin’s arms burned from exertion, she banged her boots on the side step and climbed in. Lana was shivering in the backseat, her arms wrapped tightly around her body. She could sense Lana’s sadness, her loneliness. She’d hoped the situation with Eli would have been resolved by now. And under different circumstances, she would have marched herself over to Eli’s house and given him an earful. But she’d learned her lesson about getting too involved in her sister’s life. Karin supported her, but Lana’s choices were her own.
She heard Lana give a little squeak, the kind of sound she might make if she’d got a paper cut. Karin turned around in her seat. “You okay?”
Lana didn’t speak for a long moment. She shut her eyes tight, gripping the top of her seat belt so hard that her knuckles went white. Karin felt a little twinge of worry, but in just a moment, Lana let out a big, ragged breath and then she seemed fine. “I’m okay.”
“Are you sure? Because if something’s wrong…”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine. I just don’t understand why we’re not driving already.”
Karin turned back around in her seat, feeling thoroughly put in her place. Lana had been irritable all morning, snippy and at times even mean. It wasn’t like her at all. But if Lana said she was fine, Karin had no choice but to take her at her word.
She put the engine in reverse to back out of the spot and felt the tires slip a little beneath them. She was sure the roads were better than the parking lot—really not bad at all. And Lana’s was less than an hour away.
She glanced in the rearview to see Lana looking out the window, a scowl on her face as if she was furious. She could only imagine what her sister was going through. Each day that Lana didn’t have the baby was a triumph, one more day that the baby could use to gather its strength for its break into the world. Lana never complained and never seemed to get overly emotional or worried. She’d told Karin she needed to focus on the positive, to keep her thoughts in a good place if she wanted to carry the baby to term. Karin agreed with her, but in the privacy of her mind, she couldn’t help but feel that optimism would have been easier if Eli were around. She glanced in the mirror again.
“Do you want to stop for lunch?” she asked.
“I just want to go home,” Lana said. Karin knew enough to let the subject drop. Until her sister had the baby, Lana was in charge. She put the van in four-wheel drive and slowly maneuvered the vehicle toward the exit. As she reached the main road, she saw that the plows had done a good job dealing with the ice. She settled back into her seat and sprayed the windshield with deicing fluid. The storm had turned the trees to glittering white, making kinked branches into smooth lines, rounding out corners and glossing over jagged edges. She had the sense that the worst was behind them now.
Half an hour later, Lana leaned her head back against the seat behind her, trying not to breathe too loudly or alert her sister that anything was wrong. Her stomach had been bothering her all morning while she’d been getting ready to go, and if it weren’t for being pregnant, she would have taken some kind of medicine to sooth her bowels and calm her guts down. Instead she’d ended up running to the bathroom three times before they’d left the house, and she’d considered staying home. But eventually, the urge to go to the bathroom had subsided, even though the pain remained.
All day long, the cramps had become
worse and worse. And now the ride home was taking much longer than normal. The highways had been fine, but now that they were skimming along the smaller back roads that would eventually lead to Lana’s house, the minivan slowed to a crawl. Beyond the windows the countryside passed by, a patchwork of cleared fields and dense copses of old trees. Occasionally, chunks of ice fell from the branches overhead, shattering in hundreds of pieces against the roof and sailing wildly behind them.
“Almost there,” Karin said. “You hanging in?”
Lana started to say yes, but a great wave of pain came over her, taking the breath from her lungs. Everything in her body protested against it. She curled her shoulders forward, trying to find a way to make it stop, but each way she turned the pain was there, confronting and consuming. She gripped the edge of the seat, trying not scare Karin. But her brain was racing and her heart was beating as hard as if she’d just run a marathon. She writhed in her seat, trying to slow down, to cool off, to make the wrenching pain abate.
For the last few weeks, she’d been concentrating unceasingly, willing her body not to give birth. She’d heard the nurse’s warning that she shouldn’t overreact, and she’d heeded it, ignoring twinges and spasms that seemed so immediately dangerous but had no more bearing than things that go bump in the night. She repeated her promise like a mantra: I am not going to go into labor; I am not going to go into labor; I am not going to…
A swell of pain squeezed her like a belt pulled too tight. This was not Braxton-Hicks. It was not stomach cramps. It was labor. And it was happening fast.
Lana took another deep, hard breath, bracing herself. She’d been trying not to make any noise, to keep Karin from worrying that something was wrong. But all that was going out the window and the urge to scream, to gasp and cry, was coming on strong now, as if making noise might somehow keep the pain at bay.
“Karin,” she managed between breaths. She tugged on her seat belt, wanting it off. She loosened it as if she could loosen the ache within her. Suddenly, she felt her bladder let go, and she cried out, mortified. No, it wasn’t her bladder. Her water had just broken. She squeezed every muscle within her, but the rush of fluid kept coming and coming, nonstop, more than she thought possible. How could there be so much? Karin’s backseat would be ruined. She was in trouble. The baby was in trouble. She needed help. “Karin. Please. Stop.”