The Smart One

by JENNIFER CLOSE

  In the room, Cleo went into the bathroom. While she was on the toilet, her water broke. She couldn’t wait to tell that nurse who wanted to send her home that it was too bad, because she was staying put. She sat there for a while, feeling too tired to get up. When she finally pulled up her leggings, she felt them get wet almost immediately.

  Cleo waited on the examining table, feeling like she was leaking. When the nurse came back in, Cleo said, “My water broke.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Why is everyone asking me that? I’m sure that I’m in labor and I’m sure that my water just broke. I am inside this body. I am in my body and I know.” Max was typing something on his phone, and he looked up at her with his eyebrows raised.

  “When did it happen?” the nurse asked.

  “Right after I went to the bathroom.”

  The nurse sighed. “Are you sure you didn’t just wet yourself?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “It’s very common.”

  “I know I didn’t wet myself, okay? I know for sure because I just wet myself yesterday and I know what it feels like.” Max raised his eyebrows at her again, but stayed quiet.

  “Well, then, get changed into the gown. You were supposed to do that already, and we can’t check anything with you still dressed.” Cleo snatched the gown from her. She’d show that nurse.

  THE PLAN WAS FOR MAX to stay by her head. “There’s no way he’s going anywhere else,” she said. She told Lainie this one night while they were over at her house. Brian was in the other room and he laughed.

  “Good luck to you,” he said. “That was our plan too. But once it starts, it’s like a war zone in there. You just go where you’re needed, and you can’t help but look.”

  Lainie rolled her eyes at Cleo as if to say Brian was ridiculous, but now Cleo was more determined than ever to keep to the plan.

  “By my head,” she kept saying. “Stay right here. Up here.”

  “Got it,” Max kept saying.

  After being in labor for ten hours, Cleo was sure she was going to go crazy. “I want an epidural,” she said. “I want it now.”

  The nurse nodded. “We’ll get the doctor and we’ll talk about it.”

  “I know my rights,” Cleo told her. “You can’t deny me what I want. I want the epidural.”

  The doula quietly reminded Cleo of her birth plan, suggested that maybe she was just having a low moment and should try to get through it. “We can do some breathing and meditation,” she said.

  “Get out,” Cleo told her. “Get out of this room.”

  “I know you’re uncomfortable,” the doula said. “Let’s try to switch positions.”

  “I said get out of the room.”

  The doula looked at Max and nodded. “I’ll give you two a few minutes, but I’ll be right out in the hall.”

  Max stood next to her and held her hand, and sometimes smoothed her hair back from her face and put a wet washcloth on her forehead. She knew that he was trying to be helpful, but it felt like water torture to her for some reason. The washcloth dripped down the side of her face and neck, pooling at her shoulder. Finally, she picked it up and whipped it across the room.

  “Okay, Dad,” the nurse said. “I think we can take it easy on the cool compresses.”

  Max gave Cleo a look like she’d hurt his feelings, and if she’d had any room left in her body to feel anything, she might have felt bad. He was so easily hurt.

  Weezy had been surprised that Cleo didn’t want her mother in the room. Cleo didn’t know how to explain that they weren’t that kind of family. She and her mom didn’t talk about bodily functions the way that the Coffeys did, like Will’s constipation or heartburn was just another normal breakfast topic. They never walked out of a bathroom and warned people not to go in there for a while, like she’d seen Weezy do, or announce that their cramps were just unbearable this month, as Martha had done last week.

  No, she and her mother didn’t talk about those things. When Cleo had gotten her period, she’d never even mentioned it, just put her underwear in the laundry and the next day there was a pack of pads and another of tampons. “Any questions?” her mom had asked. And Cleo hadn’t had one.

  So she didn’t want her mom in here while her water was breaking. She didn’t want her here while the doctor explained that it was that color because the baby had just pooped inside of her. And she didn’t want her mom to be here if she pooped on the table, or bled, or did all of the stuff that you do when you have a baby.

  And she hoped to God that Weezy knew that she’d never consider having her in the room. That would be absurd. She wasn’t even thrilled about having Max in the room, but she had to have someone and he was the dad so he was supposed to be there. He would probably never want to have sex with her again, she imagined. And who could blame him? This was why you were supposed to wait until you’d been together longer before you had a baby, because of all the gross and embarrassing stuff that happened along with it. They should advertise that when they tried to stop teen pregnancies.

  The last thing that Lainie had said to her was this: “You’re going to be in the room, and you’re going to think, ‘I can’t do this, I take it back, what was I thinking, I changed my mind.’ And here’s the best part: You can’t change your mind. So there’s no use thinking about it. You’ll just have to do it. If there was any turning back, there’d be no babies in the world. So just remember, the decision is done and you’ll just have to get through it.”

  AFTER SHE GOT THE EPIDURAL, Cleo said to Max, “I know why people are drug addicts.”

  “Okay,” he said. He tried to smile, but he looked concerned.

  Her labor went on and Cleo even managed to rest a little, to close her eyes, and even though she didn’t think she really slept, it made her feel better.

  Afterward, it was hard to remember the pain. It wasn’t that she didn’t remember that it was awful—she knew that much. But if she tried to talk about it, tried to imagine it again, she couldn’t. It was like there were no words for it. Even saying that it was the most awful thing ever didn’t do it justice.

  Someone took pictures, but she didn’t know who. When she looked at them later, she didn’t remember the actual moments that were captured, didn’t remember smiling and posing for anyone.

  Elizabeth and Weezy were the first ones in the room, telling her she did a great job and marveling over the baby. They asked Cleo the name, but she let Max answer.

  “Nina Grace,” he said.

  “It’s perfect,” Elizabeth said, and Weezy agreed.

  Will came in later, looking uncomfortable at being so close to Cleo in her ragged state. But he did hold Nina in the corner, smiling at her as she slept. Claire and Martha came in together, hugged her, and then took turns passing the baby back and forth.

  “She’s perfect,” Claire said. “She’s so beautiful.”

  “She really is,” Martha said. “Are you two going to send her to the nursery for the night? You should, just so you can get some rest.”

  After everyone had gone, she and Max stared at the little red face. Cleo had told him that he could go home, but he’d insisted on staying and sleeping on the window seat that turned into a bed. She was grateful that he was there—even though they did send the baby to the nursery like Martha suggested—so that when she woke up in the middle of the night, there was someone else with her.

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY’RE LETTING US just leave with her,” Cleo said to Max. “Don’t you feel like someone’s going to come and stop us?”

  “Yeah, kind of.” Max had insisted to his family that they were going to take Nina home themselves.

  “Why don’t you just let us come to help?” Weezy asked. “We can even take a different car, if you want.”

  But Max wouldn’t budge. And so, it was just the three of them in the car, Cleo riding in the backseat next to Nina, because she was just so small and they couldn’t really see her, even with the mirror.
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  When they pulled in the driveway, there was a wooden stork in the ground and pink balloons tied to the front door. They walked in and found everyone waiting in the front hall, and they all gathered around the baby as if they’d never seen her before. Ruby came over to see them, and Max knelt down on the ground and held the little bundle out to her. She sniffed Nina’s legs and then poked her snout on her arm.

  Cleo almost told him not to let Ruby lick the baby, but she thought better of it and stayed silent. Ruby looked up at her, like she understood, like she was saying, “I know this baby, I poked her with my nose when she was still in your stomach.”

  “Here she is,” Max said to Ruby. “Here’s your new niece.” Then he looked up at Cleo. “Right? Nina would be Ruby’s niece, because Ruby’s like my sister?”

  “Yeah, that sounds right,” she said. Cleo was crying now, thinking that Ruby understood everything about Nina, which was absurd. She needed to sit down and she needed that weird donut thing that Weezy had gotten for her. She’d been mortified when she received it, but now she thought it might have been the nicest present anyone had ever given her.

  THE FIRST NIGHT HOME WITH THE BABY, they were both too scared to sleep, not that Nina gave them much of a chance. She screamed and cried and nothing they tried seemed to work.

  “She was so quiet in the hospital,” Cleo said. They were standing above the bassinet, looking down at Nina’s red face.

  “Maybe she was in shock from being born,” Max said. “But she’s adjusted now.” They were grateful when the morning came, like they had survived something. It had been only one night.

  The days blended together, all of them sleepless and filled with feedings and diaper changes. Their time was marked by the cycle of Nina’s sleeping and waking. Cleo gave up trying to breast-feed almost immediately. “She doesn’t like it,” she explained to Max. “She seems to know what she wants and she doesn’t want this.”

  The doula was supposed to stop by to check on them, to help with breast-feeding if needed, but Cleo refused to call her back. She couldn’t face the woman after she’d yelled at her and thrown her out of the room. She was fine with giving Nina formula. After all, that meant that Max could feed her too, which meant she could stay in bed sometimes.

  Max stayed home with them for a week, and the first morning he went back to work, Cleo watched him get dressed and was filled with terror.

  “I’ll be back so soon,” he said. “And my mom will be here all day. It will be okay.”

  With Max gone, the days seemed longer and more tedious. Weezy was there almost all the time, making comments or offering to help. Whenever Weezy suggested anything, Cleo’s first instinct was to do the opposite. She had to stop herself from yelling, “You’re not my mom” several times a day. It was just the hormones, she told herself.

  Weezy often mentioned how Nina was such a good baby, and Cleo got the feeling that she was lying to her. If Nina was a good baby, what were the bad ones like? How much fussier and needier could something be?

  Sometimes, she and Nina would wake up from a nap and outside the door would be a laundry basket, filled with clean, folded clothes for Cleo—onesies, pajamas, baby socks, and burp cloths. Things like this usually happened just as Cleo was thinking particularly horrible thoughts about what a beast Weezy was. She’d grab the laundry basket, more thankful than she could ever express, and hope that she’d be a better person soon.

  WHEN NINA CRIED FOR A LONG TIME, Ruby would lift her head and look at Cleo with sad eyes, like, Really? This is really what our life is now? Other times, she would come over and lick Cleo’s hand softly, as if to say, I know you didn’t mean to bring this one home. It’s okay. It was clearly an accident.

  One night, Cleo was up feeding Nina, and she noticed Ruby lying in the corner of the room. Cleo watched her for a while, and then became convinced that Ruby wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing. She crept over to her, holding the baby in her arms, trying to figure out how she was going to tell the family that the dog had died. She wondered if Ruby had just given up, if she was so unhappy with her house being so noisy that she simply willed herself to stop living. Cleo didn’t think she could handle being responsible for the death of the Coffeys’ dog. But just as she bent down, she saw Ruby’s pink tongue dart in and out of her mouth, licking her nose, and Cleo sighed with relief.

  CLEO HAD NEVER KNOWN TIRED like this before. It was constant and violent, like someone had beaten her up when she wasn’t paying attention. She was still sore, everywhere, and sometimes the edges of her vision were blurry, like she was going blind. She was heavy-limbed and clumsy. She found herself walking into doorframes, tripping over her feet, and knocking glasses over. She had no sense of space. Once, she sat on the toilet and started going to the bathroom before realizing that she hadn’t pulled her underwear down.

  Cleo ached for her mom in a way she never had before. Elizabeth felt so far away when she was living in the Coffeys’ basement, even though they talked every day, something they’d never done before. Elizabeth listened to her talk about Nina’s spit-up and diapers. She drove to see them often, sometimes twice a week.

  Of course, no matter how much Cleo ached for her, as soon as they got together, there was some sort of squabble. Often Cleo ended up snapping at her mom, then felt like crying when she left, like a guilt-filled toddler who had done something wrong.

  Cleo prayed that this would be over soon, this feeling of wanting things and then not wanting them as soon as she got them. It was exhausting not to know your own heart.

  CLEO AND MAX WERE AFRAID that Nina was going to die, always; or that they’d hurt her or break her in some way. Clipping her nails almost always resulted in drawing blood, and Cleo often wondered why anyone let them take this baby home. Surely they were not equipped.

  Some days she and Max fought over nothing, over everything. They were so tired that it didn’t take much to get them going. Once she yelled at him for putting Nina in a day outfit in the middle of the night.

  “It was the closest thing I could find, and who cares? They all look the same anyway? Her pajamas were all wet.”

  “The yellow pajamas were there for her,” Cleo said. She held them up as proof.

  “You and your yellow pajamas,” Max said. Neither of them was making any sense, but the anger was real.

  Cleo often imagined packing herself and Nina up, heading to New York, never talking to Max again. There was power in this image, scary and absolute. Whenever she thought about it, she felt strong, then immediately sick and afraid.

  They apologized all the time, and sometimes Cleo was grateful that they were in such a tiny space. There was nowhere else for them to go, so eventually one of them had to say something. After they fought, Cleo often felt a wave of panic rise up. But usually, she was too tired to let it overtake her, and she just let the fight go. She figured it was the only upside of exhaustion.

  THEY PROBABLY WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO let Nina sleep in the bed with them, but almost every morning she got up to eat around four thirty, and they’d feed her and change her, and then take her back into the bed. They’d put her right in the middle, and the three of them would doze for a couple of hours before Max had to get up for work.

  Right after she ate, Nina acted like she was drunk, eyelids fluttering, happily drooling. Max would always say, “You hit that bottle hard, didn’t you?” and lean down to rub his nose against her hair.

  Those were Cleo’s favorite moments, when they were all in bed together, before the day started. She and Max would both open their eyes every so often to check on Nina, and sometimes they opened them at the same time, looked at each other across Nina’s full round tummy, and smiled.

  When that happened, Cleo let herself feel happy, let herself believe that there really was a chance—no matter how small—that things just might turn out okay for all of them.

  Lying in between them in bed, Nina would often wake up with a start, jerking her arms and legs, looking around like she was surpri
sed to find Max and Cleo there. Then she’d settle down, ready to fall back asleep almost immediately. And with her little chin shaking, her eyes would close and she’d sigh like she was saying, Okay then, everyone’s here. Let’s get some rest.

  CHAPTER 23

  When the baby cried in the middle of the night, Weezy’s first instinct was to get up and go downstairs to help. She’d wake up groggy and think, “Oh no, the baby’s up again,” and it would take a minute for her mind to catch up, to remind her that it wasn’t her baby, that there were two parents down there to take care of it. So she’d stay right where she was in her own bed, listening as they paced the floor with Nina, sometimes singing or talking quietly, and sometimes pleading for her to stop crying.

  Well, Weezy stayed in bed most of the time. Sometimes, if Nina was crying for an especially long time, she’d go down and offer her help. Even if it was only to hold the baby for a minute or two, while Cleo or Max went to the bathroom or drank a glass of water, or just got themselves together for a moment. She remembered how it was, the way it could drive you crazy sometimes, the endless crying for what seemed like no reason.

  Once, when Martha was a baby, she’d been screaming all night and Weezy, who was already pregnant again at the time, was pacing back and forth and finally held the baby up, looked in her face, and said loudly, “What? What do you want?” Martha had been so surprised, had started the way babies do at loud noises, and then after a few seconds of silence began screaming again. Weezy had felt like the worst mother in the world, had brought her into the bedroom and woken Will up, told him that he had to take her. Then she’d gotten back into bed and cried herself, feeling like the cruddiest person ever.

  So yes, she remembered the exhaustion and she was there to help if they needed it.

  It was a strange thing to have a baby in the house again. As much as Cleo and Max tried to pick up after Nina (which truthfully wasn’t that much), there was stuff everywhere. Cloth diapers for burping, almost-empty bottles sitting on the coffee table, clean bottles drying in the kitchen, pacifiers on the floor, blankets and baby socks and onesies with spit-up strewn all over the couch and the floor.