by Heather Clay
Bruce saw Charlotte before she saw him. She was standing near the door to the rectory, a metal door that opened onto the garden from the back of the church. She was speaking to a woman. The woman held on to the hand of a little girl; the girl dragged against the force of the woman’s grasp, leaning away from her as if she were walking into a windstorm. Her body hung at an angle to the grass. If the woman lets go, that kid will fall, Bruce thought. He moved toward his wife. It crossed his mind that if the girl slipped from her mother’s hand, he could reach her in time to catch her body and prevent her from possible injury, and that Charlotte would see.
“Sure,” he heard Charlotte say, laughing. “Go ahead.”
The girl straightened suddenly, and reached toward Charlotte’s belly. She touched it with her hand slightly cupped, like she was trying to deliver an extra puff of air to Charlotte’s skin, or measure all that was contained under the slope of her dress. Bruce felt a rush of pride that made him almost hostile toward the girl, toward the tentative awe in her touch. That’s right, he thought. You wish you could have her, but you can’t. Sorry.
Charlotte looked up at him. He had almost reached her, was stepping over the edge of the lawn now. Bruce saw that the smile on Charlotte’s face didn’t die, but remained where it was.
“Oh,” she said.
The woman looked up at him, too. “Bruce,” she called to him.
He froze. He looked more closely at the woman. Was he supposed to know who she was? He waited for her to become familiar, ticking off the seconds as he searched her face.
“You remember Iris,” Charlotte said.
“I, um,” Bruce said. “Hello.”
The woman laughed. “I’m not even sure we’ve actually met. We’re neighbors of yours.”
“Well, hi,” Bruce said. “Sorry I didn’t recognize you.”
“This is Nora,” the woman said. She gestured at the little girl.
“Hi,” Nora said, scowling at him.
Bruce felt the sun’s heat on the top of his head. The weight of it reminded him of the child’s game, the one that consisted of one person widening his fingers over the crown of another person’s head, insinuating the spread of a yolk. He felt better, now that he could see Charlotte, but he still wished the woman and her child would go away.
“Bruce has been following me,” Charlotte said.
She smiled up at him. Her expression was so sweet that Bruce forgot not to smile back, despite the fact that she meant to embarrass him in front of this stranger.
“Mm?” Iris said.
“He gets worried about me in the big bad city,” Charlotte said. “Don’t you,” she said to Bruce.
Bruce smiled at Iris. Looking into Iris’s face, which held an open friendliness in its heart shape, in the freckled darkness around the eyes that made Bruce think suddenly that she was old to be the mother of such a young girl, he thought it might be easier to simply confess everything. If Charlotte was bent on talking about this, he might as well be allowed to speak from his own point of view. “I told her that it makes me nervous for her to take the subway by herself. You know, at this point. I’ve seen how people won’t give up their seats. It’s just—”
“I get exhausted taking the subway myself,” Iris said. “It can feel like a battle.”
“Yes,” Bruce continued, encouraged. He kept his eyes on Iris’s, which were catlike, flecked with tiny shards of yellow and green. “Exactly. I asked Charlotte to take a cab uptown if she had to go, and then she walked out the door, and I had this feeling that she hadn’t listened to anything I’d said.”
“You followed me to the Christopher Street stop,” Charlotte said. “And don’t talk about me like I’m not here. I’m right here.”
“I did follow her. I mean you,” he said, turning to Charlotte. “I did. And I was right. You were going down the steps into the subway.”
“He practically jumped behind a trash can when I turned around,” Charlotte said. “Oh my God. You should have seen yourself.”
She started to laugh then. When Iris started laughing too, Charlotte bent forward a little, her knees bending to support her. Nora looked from Iris to Charlotte and back again.
Charlotte straightened. She stopped laughing and looked at him, her hand rising to shield her eyes from the sun.
“You shouldn’t do that,” she said.
“New York can be a tough place,” Iris said.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce said. Charlotte was right, but his voice was more defiant than apologetic.
“Don’t do it anymore.”
“You two are cute,” Iris said. “If my husband had worried about me for one second, who knows, we might still be married.”
Nora began to tug on Iris’s arm again. “Mmah,” she whined.
“You followed me here, too,” Charlotte said. “How else would you know I was here?” She looked into Bruce’s eyes. Bruce could see something dissolving in her face, some hope leaking in. She likes for me to be stronger than I am, Bruce thought. That is the only way.
“I didn’t follow you,” Bruce said. “I came to find you. There’s a difference.”
This morning, by the kiosk outside the Christopher Street subway entrance, Charlotte had told him she needed to be alone, then walked slowly toward the corner, turned it, and moved out of sight. He had waited for her, back at the apartment. Hour after hour went by. He straightened up, wiped the coffee cup rings off the glass-topped table with a paper towel, sat down on the couch. The air conditioner chugged through its cycle, quieted, then whirred on again. Ice crystals formed on its filter. There was only the sound of the air conditioner and Charlotte’s words: I need to be alone. By the time he moved to unlock the door and walk out to find her, he was shaking. She had left her cell phone on the hall table, the one that he’d provided her with for these final months and weeks. The keys jangled a little before he slid them into his pocket, before he let himself onto the street like any husband, on any Sunday. He made himself walk like any husband. Maybe he would bump into his wife while he was out getting some fresh air. He tried to think like that.
Now Charlotte looked at him.
“He came to find me,” she said. “Nora, what do you think of that? Should I trust this man?”
“No!” Nora said.
Charlotte laughed.
“Let’s all get out of the sun,” Iris said. “Bruce, it was nice to meet you officially.”
“Thanks,” Bruce said. “You too.” He put his hand on Charlotte’s bare shoulder. He smiled like any husband, which was exactly what he was. He touched Charlotte lightly, in case she decided to move away, but when she leaned into him, he spread his fingers, and kept his hand in place.
KNOX COULD see Bruce standing by the desk, wearing loose green scrubs over his clothes. He held what looked to be a shower cap in his hand. As she moved up the hallway she noticed shower-cap coverings pulled over his shoes, too—their bright seams disappearing into the cuffs of his pants. He stood in profile to her, and when she drew closer he launched into a little soft shoe, his hands stretched out with their palms up, his back foot touching the floor, propelling his front foot forward. His mouth formed an O over the loosened surgical mask that hung below his chin like an airsickness bag. A white minstrel, Knox thought. Al Jolson meets … but the only rhyme she could think of right away was “Nels Oleson,” the shopkeeper from Little House on the Prairie. She started to laugh. That could be a joke for Charlotte, if she could ever explain it. But it would be enough to tell her that Bruce had been dancing, that he was reaching for their mother’s arm now, attempting to co-opt her into a graceless do-si-do.
“Bruce,” Knox said, and she was happy for him as he shuffled toward her, her mother’s hand still in his, and bent to kiss her on the side of her head.
“They’re about to move her into the recovery room, darling,” her mother said. She was flushed, her eyes shining. “It’s already done, they’re getting the babies cleaned up.”
“They need to be incu
bated,” Bruce said. He was slightly breathless from his dance. “They say Ethan’s lungs want some help to clear, but they’re formed, and both of them are looking great. They’re just about four pounds each.” He dropped her mother’s hand and brought his fingers to his rough cheek as if to remind himself that it was still there. “Sorry you missed it. But it was a little scary, I admit.”
“We’re going to go see them,” her mother said. Though she was obviously speaking to Knox, she kept her eyes on Bruce. It was the first time Knox could remember any of them seeing Bruce like this: larger, more dashing, somehow, within his rapture. Her mother looked wooed.
“Maybe Charlotte first, if they’ll let us in,” Bruce said. “They’ve been stitching her up for a while, and I don’t want to leave her for too long.”
“Ethan,” Knox said. She watched Bruce, too. Alongside her gladness for him she noted the murk in her mind, the same darting loneliness she’d felt during her call to Marlene. It hung in her, at half depth, like a bit of sediment or a fish adrift. She would have to swim past it on her way up to the surface, to the present—where a sharper, more reactive version of herself waited. Ethan was Bruce’s father’s name—she was nearly sure of that. She pictured Mr. Tavert in the baggy brown suit he’d worn to the wedding, lying trapped under glass, his lungs wanting help to clear. What kind of help? A tube with a tiny bellows at the end of it, for a nurse to luff open and closed as if she were standing in front of a hearth, her cocktail melting and forgotten on the mantel.
“Ethan and Ben,” Bruce said.
Knox looked at her father, whose face darkened visibly with emotion. Without deciding to, she moved to stand close beside him.
“Isn’t that great, Knoxie,” her mother said.
“It sure is,” her father said. “It really, really is.”
“Ethan and Ben,” Knox said.
Bruce watched the ground. Knox thought he might be humbling himself with his body, as animals do when they feel dominated. He might be reining in an excess of pride, or trying to.
“I hope that’s all right with you, Ben,” Bruce said. “We were going to ask you next week, but—”
“It’s fantastic,” her father said.
“Gosh,” Knox said, rising, with effort, into the moment. “Wow.”
Dr. Boyd took them to Charlotte. He talked as he moved down a hallway, past several open doors that Knox tried not to look into. So many doors, some leading into dark rooms, some into rooms that looked almost coldly bright and crowded with people. He was talking mainly to Knox’s mother, who hung at his side, making it clear with her posture that if he were to pause in his speech he would be forced to resume it again, to answer questions she had at the ready. Bruce and Knox’s father walked together, behind Knox. Dr. Boyd, with his gin-blossom nose, his pocked cheeks, his blunt, bluish hair, said that Charlotte had done well, the twins would be groggy from the anesthesia but most probably unaffected, their breathing was being watched, particularly that of the first one out—that would be Ethan, Knox thought; how arbitrarily he had become the oldest!—the perinatologist had been called, Charlotte was being given something called oxytocin to help her uterus contract. “We’re watching that,” Dr. Boyd said. He spoke with an energy that felt close to glee, Knox thought.
He reached for a metal door handle, pulled it like a trigger, ushered them through one of the closed doors. The room wasn’t small or large; it was sectioned into areas by curtains that could be drawn shut. Charlotte’s bed was at the far end of it, closest to the window. She looked up at them when the door opened, and smiled as they moved toward her, past the only other occupied bed in the room. Knox couldn’t help glancing at the sleeping woman in the near bed as she passed by. The woman’s mouth was slack; her massive head listed to one side. Knox felt a twinge of pity for her without knowing why.
“Well, look who’s here,” Charlotte stage-whispered. “Come here, you guys.”
Knox had forgotten. She had forgotten again just how Charlotte was, was struck by all the ways Charlotte’s outlines, so bright now, matched and didn’t match the duller ones in her memory. Charlotte’s forehead and cheeks were high with color, as if she’d been slapped or had ducked in from the cold. Her head was propped up on some kind of ergonomic pillow, the rest of her prone; a fuzzy strand of hair clung to her left temple. She was beautiful. Wearing earrings of glass, etched-glass triangles, a fact that surprised Knox, until she told herself, Of course she is wearing earrings, it wasn’t as if any small vanity would be thrashed off, lost in the linens, incompatible with birth, with this room. A sheet stretched from below Charlotte’s breasts to a hanging point beyond the foot of the bed; the intern Knox recognized from the reception desk was reaching under the sheet, kneading at some part of Charlotte’s swollen lower body that none of them could see.
They ranged around her like she was fire. There was a slight smell of shit in the air. Knox’s father moved to touch Charlotte’s face, push the hair to one side; then he backed up again to make room for Bruce, who slipped into the space by the bed.
“Kid,” her father said, soft. “This is nice going.”
“Have you seen them yet?” Charlotte asked. She was grinning.
“Not yet,” her mother said, “but—”
“They’re … you’re not going to believe it,” Charlotte said. Her voice, even as it rose over the words being exchanged between Dr. Boyd and the intern and nurse, still carried the friction of a whisper in it. “You are not going to believe.”
“Oh, honey, and they’re both going to be fine,” her mother said. She craned upward, smiling, in her navy travel pantsuit and printed scarf, so Charlotte could see her better.
“Yes,” Charlotte said. “I know they are. I—” She looked up at Bruce. “My heart’s still beating fast. It’s beating really fast.”
“Let’s keep this short,” Dr. Boyd said from the other side of the bed. He peered into the clear bag that hung on an IV stand next to him. “We’re still waiting for the medication to kick in.”
“They’re massaging my uterus, Knoxie,” Charlotte said. “Isn’t that lovely?”
Knox wanted to lie down on the bed beside her sister and learn all the new fat and blood that had crept into Charlotte in the four months since she had last seen her, trace the borders of this puffy, blurred body and learn it by heart. “Nothing like a good uterus massage,” Knox said. “I prefer mine first thing in the morning.”
Charlotte laughed once, in a kind of cry. She held Knox’s eyes with hers.
“With your napalm,” she said. “Knox. Do you like the names?”
“I love them. I honestly do.”
“Not too original,” she said. She glanced at their father, but only for half a beat, before her eyes found Knox’s face again. “But I thought they were good.”
“Food names are trendy now, I think,” Knox said. She felt the room divide like a sea, leaving only her, only Charlotte, in the deep seam between the waters. “I see it at the reading center. We have a Sage. But Ethan and Ben are perfect.”
“Food names,” Charlotte said, thinking. Sweat stippled her upper lip. The skin on her neck was pink, blotched.
“It’s a choice,” Knox said.
Charlotte snickered. “Oh,” she said. “Don’t—it hurts.” She looked at Dr. Boyd and said, “Can I keep my sister with me?”
Knox thought then that she would have to be extracted from the room with an oversized cane, like a vaudeville entertainer who had worn out her welcome onstage. She wouldn’t be able to stop performing tricks for Charlotte, half-demented as she suddenly felt with relief, with love.
“My heart,” Charlotte said, and Knox, with her own so giddy and full, thought, I know.
“It’s like I’m on too much speed,” Charlotte said, looking up again at Bruce.
Not that the lady’s ever been on speed, folks. Bah-dum pum.
“Let’s give her some privacy now,” Dr. Boyd said, in such a way that Knox expected him to follow them out of the room
. Her father nodded and guided her mother through the door. Knox watched them go, then turned back toward Charlotte.
“Bye,” she said, inflecting it like a question.
Charlotte blinked, smiled, closed her eyes.
“She’s tired,” Bruce said.
Yes. Knox covered her disappointment with an expression that she hoped conveyed good humor, understanding. She took a breath, made her feet move. Dr. Boyd stayed where he was, as did Bruce. She closed the door behind her.
In the hall, her parents were waiting. Her father rubbed circles into her mother’s back.
“You have to remember this is major surgery,” her father said.
“That’s right,” her mother said.
“We’ll have more time with her in a minute,” her father said.
Knox ran her fingers through her hair. She either wanted to have her back rubbed, too, or she wanted to walk, walk anywhere, until it was time to be let back into Charlotte’s room. She allowed herself to experience one moment of bittersweet shame that her parents still felt the need to comfort her, at her age, when she found herself on the wrong side of a closed door, with Charlotte inside.