15. Bonnie
BONNIE
Cleo’s son has decided my hospital bag needs a tractor.
He puts it in the side pocket while I am checking the phone charger. When I take it out, he puts it back. We repeat this twice before I ask why.
“For the baby.”
“She won’t be able to play with it yet.”
“You can.”
I keep it. Cleo sees it in the pocket and says I should expect an invoice if I lose it.
We are in my bedroom on a Friday afternoon, the windows open because the little air conditioner cannot cool the whole cottage.
I am thirty-seven weeks and five days pregnant.
My new doctor has seen me enough times that I no longer have to explain why I transferred care.
The route to the hospital is written on a card for Cleo, though she knows it better than I do.
Her son’s sitter comes by to see where his spare pajamas and overnight bag are kept. She crouches to tell him he can stay with her when the baby comes, and he asks if she has waffles. Once that is settled, he is satisfied.
I envy him the certainty of a breakfast plan.
Cleo and his father are separated, and their son spends time with both of them. The sitter covers the hours neither can manage. Cleo has arranged this stay with her so she can come to the hospital whenever I need her.
After Cleo’s son takes the sitter outside to show her his gravel pile, Cleo sits beside me on the bed. I take the yellow shirt out of the hospital bag. It has been in there since the beginning of July, folded around a pair of socks. Somehow I thought packing it would make me feel prepared.
“Still the one?” she asks.
“Unless you think I should take something prettier.”
“I came home in my brother’s sweatshirt because I packed jeans.”
I laugh and put the shirt back. Cleo brings the bag closer so I can finish without bending over it.
Beryl calls while I am folding a yellow sleeper. She asks if this is a good time. I tell her yes. My eyes go to the phone before I can help it, as though Gage might be standing beside her.
“I checked those appearances,” she says. “The joint ones he told you he canceled.”
I stop smoothing the sleeve.
“They really are canceled?”
“Monday last week. July sixth. I’ve spoken to the organizers I know. He’s competing on his own. Tawny’s appearances are hers.”
I have read Gage’s message so many times I can see it without opening it. You were right about Tawny. I wanted those words for weeks. When they finally came, I sat on the edge of my bed and could not think of an answer.
“Did he ask you to check?”
“No. I wanted to know what I was telling you was true.”
Cleo sits on the chair by the window. I look at her while Beryl explains which bookings ended and which were never part of the joint campaign. She does not tell me how lonely Gage is or how sorry I ought to feel. I am grateful enough for that to have trouble listening to the rest.
I want to feel triumphant. Instead I start crying over how simple it sounds when someone says it after the fact.
“He could’ve done it in May.”
“Yes.”
“I asked him.”
“I know you did.”
I put the yellow sleeper down. If he had listened in May, this bag would be on our bed. I would be complaining that he had packed too many things. He would be trying to fit one more in.
“Has he asked you about coming for the birth?”
“He asked whether you’d changed your mind. I told him he needed to wait for you to tell him.”
For a moment I want to give Beryl something to take back. A photograph of the room. The news that I still wake reaching toward the other side of the bed.
Then I remember Tawny repeating what I had told him there.
“He hasn’t said how much he told her,” I say. “The message said he told her things. I don’t know which things.”
“You can ask him.”
“I know. I don’t think I can hear it this close to the birth.”
Beryl gives me time. Through the open window I hear Cleo’s son asking his sitter the same question about waffles again.
“Then you don’t have to do it today,” she says.
I wipe my face. “Thank you for checking.”
When the call ends, I sit with the phone on my knee. Cleo comes to the bed and takes the bag off it so I can lie back.
“Do you want me to change anything?” she asks.
“No.”
She pulls the curtain across the sunny window. “Then I’ll still be the one getting lost in the parking garage.”
“You said you knew the way.”
“To the hospital. Nobody knows where they parked afterward.”
I laugh, and my nose starts running again. She gives me a tissue and stays until I can breathe without sniffling.
“I’m scared,” I tell her.
“Of the birth?”
“That too. I’m scared I’ll want him when it starts. I’m scared I won’t.” I look at the bag. “I want to be able to say I’m frightened without wondering who’ll hear about it afterward.”
Cleo picks up the yellow sleeper and folds it. “If you want to call him, I’ll bring you the phone. If you want me to put it away, I’ll do that.”
I nod and let her finish with the sleeper.
Later, when the heat eases, we walk to Mercy’s paddock.
Cleo carries the brush bag. I stand outside the gate until the mare comes over, then rub the place beneath her forelock where she likes it.
She has been working lightly with Cleo, keeping fit without any performance schedule.
Her coat shines. She smells of grass and the dust she rolled in this afternoon.
I tell her I will be gone a little while when the baby comes. Cleo pretends not to hear me explaining hospital arrangements to a horse.
On the way back, I have to stop halfway across the yard. Cleo waits beside me with the brush bag while I catch my breath.
“I’m getting very tired of needing help,” I say.
“I know. You can make dinner tomorrow.”
I lean against her for the last few steps. Inside, I check that the tractor is still in the hospital bag.
Keeley brings dinner on Sunday and knocks with her elbow because she has ignored Cleo’s instruction to bring one thing.
Her lessons have been ending with tea for the past few weeks.
We talk about Flint, then her sister, then whatever has gone wrong at the plumbing shop.
Last time she stayed, we forgot to talk about Flint at all.
“I couldn’t decide,” she says when I open the door.
Cleo takes the hot pan from her, and I carry the cake to the counter. Welcome, little one is piped across it beside a yellow horse. That leaves the soft parcel clamped under her arm.
“Who else is coming?” I ask.
“Just us. You’ll have cake for breakfast.”
“I love it.”
I mean it so much that she glances at Cleo, worried. I put my hand over my mouth before I start crying and frighten them into taking it away.
“I’m happy,” I tell them.
Cleo sets the cake farther back and hugs me. There is barely room for her arms between the counter and my stomach. I lean against her, laughing a little, and Keeley puts the parcel down.
“You don’t have to open that now.”
“Of course I do.”
Inside are three cotton bibs Keeley’s sister made. One has a tiny embroidered horse. I spread it across my palm while Keeley begins apologizing because I must already have enough baby things.
“Tell her thank you. Please.”
I wonder what her sister knew about me while she sewed. Keeley is waiting to see if I like the horse; I tell her I do and leave the question alone.
Cleo’s son comes in from the yard and asks who the cake is for. When we say the baby, he looks at my stomach.
“She’ll have to share,” I tell him.
We eat with the back door open. Keeley has made chicken and rice with enough lemon that I go back for a second helping before anyone else has finished the first. I have been hungry all afternoon without wanting anything in my own kitchen. This tastes exactly right.
Cleo asks about Flint. Keeley starts describing their last ride, then stops and looks at me.
“You don’t have to work through dinner.”
“I want to hear.”
She tells me about getting Flint past the trash cans at the end of her road. When she tries to show us what she did with the reins, Cleo puts down her fork to correct her hands. Her son copies them with his spoon until rice lands in his water. Keeley is laughing too hard to finish the story.
I am still laughing when I realize I have hardly thought about being watched all evening. I have talked with my mouth full and asked for more food. Nobody has glanced at somebody else to see whether I am being difficult.
“More rice?” Cleo asks.
“In a minute. I’m working up to it.”
I move my chair back. For a moment I picture Gage at the end of the table, grinning at the size of my second helping. I know the expression he would have worn. I miss him so hard that I set down my fork.
Keeley is explaining the next part of the ride. I lose a sentence and ask her to repeat it. She does, more slowly, and I can see she has noticed.
“I thought he’d be here for things like this,” I say.
He knows where I am. If I invited him, he could come. I mean the dinner we used to plan at the ranch, before getting ready for our daughter became something I had to do away from him.
Neither woman answers quickly. Cleo moves the serving dish so I can put my elbow on the table.
“We talked about having people over before she came. Nothing big. Just dinner.”
I look at the three bibs beside the cake.
“Sorry. You’ve gone to all this trouble.”
“I wanted to bring you dinner,” Keeley says. “You can eat it while you miss somebody.”
Cleo’s son asks whether I hurt myself. I tell him I am sad for a minute, and he offers me his clean spoon. I take it and thank him. A little later, when Keeley asks whether there is more rice, I pass the dish and put some on my own plate too.
After dinner, I show Keeley the baby’s room. I step over the noisy floorboard out of habit, and she follows me into the doorway.
Keeley touches the edge of the crib. “It’s a lovely room.”
“I keep coming in here to move things an inch and put them back.”
She laughs. I open the top drawer for the embroidered bib, then keep it in my hand while we talk.
We go back for cake. Keeley stays over her tea until it is cold.
When she leaves, I go to the door with her. She asks whether I want dinner again next weekend, if the baby has not come.
“I might want it more if she has.”
“Then call.”
Cleo stands beside me while Keeley drives away. I am still holding the bib I meant to leave in the drawer.
“Leave me some cake for breakfast,” I say.
“A sensible size?”
“No.”