Almost Twins

by Gail Sattler

  He sighed. He had so much to learn, and if he was going to do it alone he supposed this was a good place to start.

  She pulled a large roasting pan out of the closet. Her cheeks flushed again, which he thought, was kind of cute. “I’m not going to roast her,” she mumbled as she set the roaster on the counter beside the sink. “Aunt Min told me to use this instead of lugging my baby washtub all the way here.”

  He smiled back. “I’m glad.”

  His heart nearly stopped when it looked like she was going to give him Rachel to hold. She hesitated, then fortunately for him, placed Rachel in the infant car seat on the floor, and filled the tub with the water she had in the pot on the woodstove. She then put what looked like a terry-towel ramp into the tub, undressed Rachel, and laid her on it.

  “That looks kinda comfy.”

  She nodded as she soaped the baby. “Yes. And it also lets me use both hands while she’s supported.”

  Before he knew it, she was done, and Rachel was dressed in a clean sleeper.

  Adelle smiled at him. “Your turn.”

  He laid Raymond in his infant car seat. Then, together they dumped the used water and refilled the roasting pan. When everything was ready, he began to undress Raymond. But, as he opened the diaper, his stomach churned. Dennis held his breath. Still, the war in his stomach continued.

  “It looks like you picked just the right time to bathe him.”

  “Uh. . .yeah. . .”

  He did his best to wipe Raymond up as quickly as he could, hoping he wouldn’t pass out. This was what he had dreaded, and also what he would have appreciated help with, but Adelle didn’t offer to help, nor did she offer to dispose of the soiled diaper.

  When the mess was taken care of, he lowered Raymond into the warm water, and laid him on the ramp. At first he thought Raymond was going to cry, but he didn’t, which buoyed Dennis’s confidence. With far more self-assurance than when he’d begun, he dressed Raymond in his last clean sleeper.

  He cradled Raymond against his chest and stood at the window to watch the non-stop snowfall. Clothes for Raymond weren’t the only things he was running out of.

  The next time he fed Raymond, it would be the last bottle of formula, and he didn’t know what to do.

  He again turned his attention to what was happening outside. The heavy snowfall hadn’t changed since the last time he looked at it. On the outside chance that something had changed, he picked up the phone.

  “Anything?”

  “No.” He hung up and stared at the phone. He really didn’t know what to do. In his business he always had a Plan B. Out here in the middle of nowhere, there was no Plan B. “We’re really going to be stranded out here for days, aren’t we?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “Is there any way to contact anyone, any way at all?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  He lowered Raymond into the car seat on the floor, calculating the time since he’d been fed. He’d be hungry again in approximately two hours, and that would last until suppertime. Then, he would have to trust God that a miracle would happen, because a miracle was all he had left.

  Six

  After Rachel’s afternoon feeding, Adelle sank to the couch. If she was at home, she would have crawled into bed for a nap while Rachel slept during the daytime. Now that she had to entertain a guest, she didn’t have that option.

  Dennis requested she turn on the radio again, just in case there was an update to the weather forecast. While the music played, he stood at the window with Raymond, talking to him and explaining the difference between the snow and the rain in the wintertime, which Adelle thought rather sweet. It was also quite an education.

  Having been raised in Blue River, and never having gone far from home, she found his stories fascinating. She had never been to Vancouver and couldn’t imagine living in a place that didn’t get snow in the winter. She imagined it would be boring with green all year round and no winter snow to enjoy.

  He was silent when the announcer’s voice came on between the songs with the news that no change was expected in the forecast. They turned the radio off to conserve the batteries.

  Since she had nothing to do, Adelle heated a bottle for Dennis and then sat beside him as he fed Raymond and put him into the playpen to sleep.

  With both babies asleep, they were forced to talk to each other. They stood in the kitchen, away from the sleeping babies, so as not to disturb them.

  Dennis checked again for dial tone, and then toyed absently with the phone cord, not looking at her as he spoke. “I have a problem. That was my last bottle of formula. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  Adelle looked toward the fridge. “I know plain cow’s milk isn’t great for babies, but it will do in an emergency. I have a couple of gallons of milk. That should last for a while if we don’t drink it, and leave it all for Raymond. As soon as the phone is back, there must be some kind of emergency service we can contact that can either have someone come out here by snowmobile, or maybe when it stops snowing they could drop a case of formula out of a plane. I don’t know what they call that. Kind of like an airlift, except they don’t lift anything, they drop it out. By parachute or something.”

  He shook his head and continued to stare at the dead phone. Now, more than ever, he felt the loss of his cell phone. “I can’t give Raymond milk. I remember Harv telling me that Ray-mond is lactose intolerant. I asked the health nurse what that meant, and she told me that he’d get really sick if he drank cow’s milk. Not just sick. He’d have severe cramps. He’d vomit and have bad diarrhea. That also means dehydration, which for a baby is really bad, not including the pain he’d be in. I need your help, Adelle. I’m sorry.”

  Adelle didn’t know what to say. She’d been told about that kind of thing in prenatal class, but since she’d already decided to breast-feed her baby she hadn’t really paid much attention when the teacher had spoken on the different kinds of formula and the possibilities and ramifications of lactose intolerance. Now she wished she would have.

  At least now she knew why Dennis had been so concerned about getting home. It was not to get away from her, but because of Raymond’s dietary requirements. She didn’t know what she could scrounge up to feed him if he couldn’t drink milk. Even if a baby so small could eat applesauce or pureed apples, they didn’t have a blender. And if they did, there was no electricity to run it.

  A sick feeling of dread came over her as she imagined what it would be like trying to help little Raymond, not just to try to soothe him, because he wouldn’t understand why he was hungry, or why his tummy hurt from eating the wrong thing. Knowing how much he would be suffering broke her heart for him already. The poor darling didn’t know what was in store for him. For now, he was sleeping soundly, expecting in his own little baby way that all his needs would be met.

  Adelle wondered if his mother, before she died, gave him formula, or. . .

  Her heart sank as she fully realized what Dennis was asking when he said he was sorry.

  The only way to help Raymond was for her to feed him. He wanted her to nurse someone else’s baby.

  She turned to watch Rachel as she slept. Adelle had her own baby to feed. He was asking her to nurse both of them until help arrived or he found some way to get Raymond home.

  She turned toward him and noticed he made very direct eye contact, as if he dared not look elsewhere. She couldn’t help crossing her arms over herself.

  He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to. The regret in his eyes said everything he couldn’t put into words.

  She didn’t know if she could do it. She was. . .small.

  Her gaze drifted to Raymond, asleep in the playpen, right beside Rachel. They were born only days apart. They could have been almost twins.

  Many women breast-fed twins. And it wasn’t like they were big. They were only one month old. A baby that size couldn’t possibly eat much, although she had never measured.

  Adelle realized she didn�
��t have a choice. She couldn’t let Raymond suffer, and she certainly couldn’t let him starve, which was what could potentially happen if he couldn’t digest cow’s milk.

  Dennis’s voice came out in a low, gravelly sound. “I’ll never be able to thank you, Adelle. I don’t even know what to say. But if you ever need anything from me, anything, just name it.”

  She knew she would never ask him for anything. Given the circumstances, she couldn’t refuse to help.

  She tried to speak clearly through the tightness in her throat. “Don’t worry about it.”

  His whole body sagged, his relief almost tangible. “I know it will be hard on you. Please, tell me what I can do to give you a hand.”

  Adelle shuffled her feet. “There isn’t much to do.”

  She felt silly just standing in the kitchen. The polite thing to do should have been to sit together on the couch and talk, but that was too close to the sleeping babies and she didn’t want their voices to disturb them. She also didn’t want to get too close to Dennis. Not that he had said or done anything threatening, he’d been nothing but a gentleman. She just couldn’t sit beside him.

  They stared at each other, glanced around the small cabin, then back to each other.

  Adelle cleared her throat. “You know what we need? I was thinking about it when I was on the way here. Before I picked you up, I mean. Every Christmas, when my family comes to the cabin Aunt Min makes her secret recipe Holiday cocoa. It’s only two days before Christmas, and I think that’s what we should do. We need a holiday treat to get ourselves in the holiday mood.”

  “I’ve never made cocoa before, all I do is dump the package in a cup, add some water, and put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. I wouldn’t know what to do.”

  “The microwave? You can’t make real cocoa in the microwave. You’ve got to use real ingredients, and heat it in a pot. It tastes different. I don’t know why, it just does. What you’re talking about isn’t real cocoa, that’s processed hot chocolate.” She started searching through the cupboards for what she needed. “I have milk, and I know there is sugar here. If the other ingredients were left the last time they used the cabin, I can show you the best cocoa in the world.”

  When the two steaming cups were ready, she set them on the table. They both cradled the warm mugs in their hands across the table from each other. Adelle felt like she could have been looking in a mirror, except it wasn’t herself looking back.

  He held the cup under his nose, sniffed the warm beverage, and sighed. “This smells so good. Is that a hint of mint in there, besides the cocoa?”

  Adelle nodded. “Yes. I hope I’ve done it right. I’ve not made this for a whole year. I sometimes wonder if Aunt Min has withheld the last secret ingredient. It always tastes better when she makes it.”

  “She makes this every Christmas? Only at Christmas?”

  She took a slow, cautious sip, so she wouldn’t burn her tongue. “Yes. I look forward to this every year. I come to the cabin every year for Christmas, and my parents come here every second year. They alternate between this and my brother’s house in California. This year is the year for California.”

  “That’s too bad. It would probably have been nice for them to be with Rachel on her first Christmas.”

  “I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with their decision. My brother Andrew has two kids, a boy and a girl, and there’s been a couple times where they’ve gone to California two years in a row. I wonder if part of what draws them, besides their obvious love for their grandchildren, is the weather. They’re getting close to retirement and I think they might be considering moving south for the winters.”

  “I hear lots of people do that. Snowbirds.”

  She stared down into her mug. “They do,” she mumbled. “But I thought they would want to spend some time with Rachel, especially while she’s young.”

  Adelle bit her bottom lip, then quickly took anther sip of her cocoa. She couldn’t believe she had told him that. She had never mentioned what she just told Dennis to anyone, not at church, not even to her closest friend. He just seemed easy to talk to and she couldn’t put her finger on why. Perhaps, because he was a Christian.

  “You know, drinking my aunt’s cocoa makes me want to decorate. There should be something around here to remind us of Christmas. Aunt Min was going to bring all the decorations, but there’s probably something around here we could do to get us in the mood for Christmas.”

  “I thought they spent Christmas here every year. Wouldn’t she store the decorations here?”

  Adelle laughed for the first time in too long, and it felt good. “This place is really small. There’s barely enough room for the necessities, never mind a box of decorations. You also have to know my aunt. Since the cabin is in a really remote area, she keeps some necessities here, but nothing she really values, as you can see by looking around the place. She does that in case a vagrant breaks in and either steals everything or trashes the place. There is a special story behind every single one of my aunt’s ornaments, and she would never take the chance anything could happen to them. Before we go home, everything is carefully packed and taken back to their attic at their house.”

  “That sounds really special. I bet there are homemade things in there, right? Things made by her own children?”

  “They never had kids, unfortunately. Maybe that’s one reason I’ve always been really close to them.” Adelle couldn’t hold back her grin. “I must admit, they spoil me.”

  Dennis grinned back, and it took her by surprise. It occurred to her that this was the first time since they’d been together that she’d seen him smile like he meant it, not just for the sake of good manners. He really was a good-looking man. Adorable little crinkles formed at the sides of his eyes when he smiled, and when he smiled so broadly, a pair of very attractive dimples appeared in his cheeks.

  She wondered if he smiled more often when he was in familiar surroundings. He didn’t seem to be the shy and silent type, but at the same time, he wasn’t exactly sharing the intimate details of his life either. Of course, they’d met less than twenty-four hours ago, so she didn’t expect to suddenly get a life history from him. She wondered what he did for a living and how long he’d been a Christian.

  His voice broke her out of her daydreams. “Everyone needs to be spoiled, sometimes.”

  She forced herself to remember what they were talking about. “Yes. I had the best dressed Barbie on the block. My parents couldn’t afford extravagant doll clothes and my mom didn’t sew, but Aunt Min did. She made so many beautiful clothes for my Barbie that my Barbie was better dressed than I was.”

  He never lost his grin. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “It’s true. I was a bit of a tomboy, and my mother gave up trying to make me wear dresses. The only place I ever wore a dress was to church, and that was entirely under protest. But enough of that. Let’s start decorating before the babies wake up.”

  She tried to remember some childhood Christmas craft idea. All she could think of that might be available in the cabin was aluminum foil—which wasn’t colorful, but at least it was shiny.

  She found scissors, although she couldn’t find any cardboard to cut for shaping. Dennis watched without offering to help as she cut and scrunched enough foil to fashion a crude but recognizable star.

  “Tah-dah!” she sang out, holding her masterpiece up for him to see.

  One of the babies gurgled at the sound of her voice. Dennis froze, and Adelle slapped her hands over her mouth, with the star dangling from her fingers.

  “See?” she said in a stage whisper. “Now to put it by the window, because that way is north.”

  “I really don’t think it matters.”

  “But it does! Every year, we set out a special nativity set and, instead of just putting them out for decoration, we re-enact the Christmas story. We put the innkeeper in the stable, and Mary and Joseph and the donkey start by the couch over there.” She pointed to the c
ouch, and he actually turned his head to look where she was pointing.

  “Every day we move them a bit closer toward the stable. When we were kids, Andrew and I had lots of fun moving them. The shepherds and sheep went beside the coffee table, over there, and the Wise Men and their camels were in the kitchen, which is the Eastern-most part of the cabin.”

  “This sounds like quite a process.”

  “It is. And then, on Christmas morning, we brought out the star and put it on top of the tree. Mary and Joseph got moved all the way to the stable, and we brought out Jesus like he’d just been born. Then we prayed before opening our gifts. I’d like to do the same thing as Rachel grows up.”

  Dennis nodded. “That sounds like a good way to start Christmas Day.”

  She nodded back. “Yes. And after we tore into the gifts and cleaned up the mess, then we moved the sheep and shepherds into the stable. The day after Christmas, we started moving the Wise Men and their camels across the room until New Year’s Day, when they would finally make it to the stable. And then we’d pack everything up until the next year.”

  “It sounds like a special way to remind the family, especially the children, of the real meaning of Christmas, which is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.”

  Adelle sighed. “Yes. I really am going to miss not putting everything out this year. That set is getting a little more tattered as time goes on, but it seems to make it more special. Of course, that set is my Aunt’s favorite Christmas decoration, and that’s why she couldn’t bear it if anything ever went missing.”

  “My family never had any real tradition like that.”

  Adelle walked to the window and tied the star onto the cord from the mini-blinds as best she could, and then patted it for effect when it was in place. “I really miss Aunt Min’s decorations. The cabin doesn’t feel like Christmas. But I guess this is a start.”

  She stood back to admire her handiwork. There wasn’t any sunshine to reflect on it, since the heavy clouds obliterated the sun. The constant snowfall made the world appear pasty white.