Chapter 17 Poppy #2
Hanging? Hanging by a thread? Hanging in there despite everything?
Richard had been practical with Debra. He had benefited from his first wife’s good sense.
Now Sylvia’s heart raced. Was it the baby suspended between life and death?
Who was this midwife? Who was Heather, really?
She was from Ithaca New York. Who came from there?
Of course, Heather’s parents lived there—but they were academics.
Her mother had been her father’s graduate student, so they had the age difference too.
And they were leftists. Terrible about Israel.
Heather was not so extreme, but how could you know?
What could you know about a person in such a short time?
And Heather’s thank-you notes were very very brief. Sometimes she didn’t write at all.
Sylvia was up all night. She only closed her eyes briefly in the morning. She rested her head on the white couch—and then a moment later, she heard Lew’s voice. He was leaning over her.
“Sylvia?”
“What is it?” She sat up immediately. “What happened?”
“They had a baby boy.”
“A boy! When?”
“While you were sleeping.”
“I wasn’t sleeping. Is he all right?”
“I think so.”
Lew showed her a picture on his phone and there was Heather holding a tiny naked infant against her bare breast. “She’s in a birthing tub.” Lew showed Sylvia another photo in which Heather was indeed half-submerged in water.
“A tub?” Sylvia was already phoning Richard. “Hello?”
“Mom?”
“Mazel tov! Do you have any blankets?”
“He’s nice and warm. He’s perfect!”
“He looks so small.”
“He’s six pounds thirteen ounces.”
“That’s very small.”
“Not really.”
“You were eight pounds six ounces.”
“He’s beautiful,” said Richard. “Heather is amazing.”
“Resting?”
“She’s on the phone with her parents.”
“Did you tell the girls?”
“The girls are here!”
“Already?”
“Yes! Lily went upstairs about midnight, but Sophie was here the whole time.”
“Didn’t you—” Sylvia looked wide-eyed at Lew. “Weren’t you—” Because where did you even start with that? “You let Sophie…watch?”
“She was helping!” Richard’s voice was buoyant.
“Heather wanted Sophie to help?” Sylvia had a hard time believing that.
“Yes!”
“And Debra agreed to it?”
“The girls were here anyway,” Richard said in his lawyer voice. “It was our weekend.”
“They watched the birth!” Sylvia whispered to Lew, her witness. “Can you believe that?”
Suddenly, Richard’s voice was curt. “Here, I’ll put them on.”
“Hello,” came a sleepy voice.
“Who is this? Sophie?”
“Hi, Grandma.”
“Hello, darling. Mazel tov.” Sylvia paused for a moment, uncertain what to say. “You have a brother.”
“I know! He’s so cute. We named him Froggy.”
“That has a nice ring,” Lew interjected from the couch. “Sophie, Lily, and Froggy.”
“But that can’t be his name,” Sylvia said.
“Not officially,” said Sophie. “It’s just because he looked like a frog in the water.”
“Where is he now?”
“Just hanging out.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s on Heather’s breast.”
“Were you really there the whole time?”
“Yeah! And Dad was here and Heather’s sisters, and the midwife, but Lily was only here at the beginning because she was afraid to look.”
Lily called into the phone, “Because it was gross.”
Sophie said, “But it was so cool.”
Sylvia thought of Heather squatting in the birthing tub.
Naked and panting and screaming in pain.
How could Richard let a sixteen-year-old witness such a thing?
But she deferred to her future daughter-in-law, even now.
Even when she gave birth in a three-ring circus.
All Sylvia said was, “That’s not what I would have done. ”
“Oh my God, he’s so cute,” said Sophie.
“Ohh! Let me see.” Sylvia put on her reading glasses and squinted at new photos coming in from Lily. A grandson! She had hardly dared to hope, and of course it didn’t matter at all, but at last, a baby boy!
—
“Isn’t he darling?” Sylvia showed a picture to Lew after she got off the phone. The baby was tiny and pink, eyes closed, one little hand curled up against his cheek.
“He doesn’t know what’s about to happen to him,” said Lew.
“Lew! That’s terrible.”
“I’m just stating the obvious,” Lew said.
Sylvia calculated quickly and then gasped. “A bris on New Year’s Day.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“We have nowhere to stay!”
She called, but everywhere was booked, just as she had predicted. All she could find was a Residence Inn.
“It will be fine,” said Lew.
“You say that now.”
They were in bed, watching the Weather Channel. “We’re tracking a powerful storm that’s going to affect a lot of us, particularly in the mid-Atlantic region,” the forecaster said gleefully.
“Our flight will be canceled.” Sylvia gazed at the weather map with the expected accumulation for Philadelphia. “We’ll have to come in early.”
“How early?”
“At least two days.”
“We may as well go down now,” said Lew.
“Well, we can’t come late!”
But nobody knew exactly when the storm would start.
And nobody said exactly what time the bris would be.
Morning? Afternoon? Would there be lunch, or any kind of food?
Nobody could explain the plan. If there was one!
Sylvia didn’t even know where the baby was registered.
When she called Richard, he didn’t answer, and when she emailed him questions, he did not reply, except to say that Heather didn’t believe in registries.
“What does that mean?” Sylvia asked Lew. “What is there to believe?”
Sylvia and Lew would have to come early with whatever presents they could find in Boston. And now the storm looked like it was coming on the day of their new flight—so should they change again? No, said Lew.
The blizzard was imminent; all the forecasters agreed on that. Lew looked into trains, but there were no tickets left—and in heavy snow they wouldn’t run.
“I’m not sure what we should do,” Sylvia told Richard on the phone.
“Stay where you are,” he said, a little too fast. “Stay safe. It’s fine!”
“But we have to be there for the naming.”
“We’ll film it.”
“You can’t film a circumcision!”
“Why not?”
“No one wants to see that!”
“You just said you have to be there.”
“I don’t want to look.”
Sylvia texted with one finger, picking out her SOS to Helen. Baby was born luckily healthy all things considered bris is on New Year’s Day and we might not get there due to snow!
She sent this message—and once again, there was no reply.
—
Not to have a sister. A confidante. Confederate.
Comrade in arms. Sylvia had always told her granddaughters how fortunate they were to have each other, and how she regretted that their father was an only child.
She had been in the middle once, with a sister on each side.
Now she was alone. Sylvia’s sisters had abandoned her.
Of course, Jeanne had an excuse because she was dead. But Helen!
“How can she be so cruel?” Sylvia asked Lew as their plane landed in Philly.
“Sylvia,” he said, “it’s up to you. You can decide whether to let Helen ruin this day.”
And so, they took a terrible shuttle bus to the Marriott and then a taxi to Richard’s place which was a townhouse, looking white and temporary, littered with boxes and a baby swing and nursing cushions.
You could hardly take a step without tripping over some equipment, but there on the couch sat Heather, huge, enveloping, with the baby curled up in her arms. “Oh, look at you!” said Sylvia, speaking to her grandson. “Aren’t you precious!”
When Heather offered her the baby, Sylvia wept.
It was because he was so small and warm and like a seed, curled into himself.
And Helen would never know this feeling—holding a newborn grandchild in the crook of your arm.
Sylvia would share this baby. She would share him without asking, if only Helen let her.
“What a doll,” she told Lew, who was still carrying presents upstairs from the garage-level entryway.
“He looks like your Aunt Jeanne,” Sylvia told Richard.
“Really?”
“Oh yes,” said Sylvia, who remembered Jeanne at this size, small enough to fit into her doll’s cradle.
How she and Helen used to squabble over their baby sister!
Of course, Helen acted as though the baby were all hers.
When other children peered inside the baby carriage, Helen announced, You can look at her, but if you want to touch her, you have to ask me first. “He has Jeanne’s face,” said Sylvia. “But he has my father’s nose.”
“You can already see that?” Heather asked.
The baby’s eyes were closed. His ears were translucent; he was so new. His nose was broad and flat, remarkably large in such a little face. “It’s a very strong nose,” Sylvia said.
“Hopefully, he’ll grow into it,” said Heather.
“My father was a wonderful man,” said Sylvia. “You remember him, Richard.”
He looked offended. “Of course!”
“He was a wonderful physician,” Sylvia told Heather. “He practiced at Beth Israel Hospital for forty years. He healed thousands of hearts.”
Sylvia did not say there was nobody in the family named after her father, Morris.
Of his five great-grandchildren, not a single one.
No, when it came to names, she would never suggest anything.
Helen would have spoken up—but Sylvia was not a dictator.
All she said was, “Richard, do you remember how Poppy used to give you a bowl of fresh-picked blueberries topped with sugar?”
“We brought baby clothes and we’ve got toys, and we brought cake,” said Lew, pulling out a Bundt pan covered with plastic wrap.
“Yes! Apple cake!” said Richard, and Heather tried to stand, as though to find some plates.
“Sit!” Sylvia told her. “Tell me,” she asked with a touch of melancholy, “how are your parents?”
“They’re coming tomorrow,” said Heather, “if they can.”
“It’s going to be a terrible storm.” Sylvia held the baby closer.
“How would they fly from Ithaca?” asked Lew.
“They’re going to drive.”