Chapter Two #5
The only unfortunate news to be had—and it was big—was that both the delivery doctor and Dr. Clements agreed this should be her first and last baby.
Her first, and her last. The high glucose levels and high blood pressure she’d endured for seven of her nine months, plus the large amount of blood she’d lost during the delivery, were clear indicators that another pregnancy, no matter how far down the line, would be too risky.
So two babies was one too many to wish for.
Becky was deeply sad about that, but her sadness didn’t stand a chance against what she held in her arms.
—
The baby’s hair soon turned blond, like Cal’s, but curly, like Becky’s, and his eyes turned dark brown, like hers.
He was officially a “Jr.” on his birth certificate, and they’d planned on calling him by his middle name, Maurice.
But he didn’t seem like a Maurice to them, or a Maurie.
On a whim, Cal started calling him Skipper, and before long, Skip.
That felt right. Ten fingers, ten toes, normal legs.
Ida pointed that out, the legs, and Becky nodded.
Cal realized they’d both been worried—as he had—that his shortened leg might be passed on to the child.
But Skip was symmetrical. He also had a strong grip and a pair of lungs that could rattle the windows.
Becky, who’d come out of the delivery with burst blood vessels speckling her face, was still tired, but she took to mothering like an old pro.
She nursed and bathed and diapered with ease, and she could stop the baby from crying sometimes just by talking to him, could elicit a smile from his bubbling mouth just by tapping a finger against his chin.
Meanwhile, the baby terrified Cal. Skip wouldn’t let them sleep for more than two hours at a time, and Cal didn’t want to make a sound when he finally went down.
If he stayed down, Cal couldn’t stop worrying that it was because he’d stopped breathing.
But that first week passed, and then another, and Cal began to get used to it.
When he wasn’t at work, he helped out as much as he could.
He rocked. He burped. He’d never changed a diaper before but tried—why not?
—and managed never to stick Skip with safety pins, only himself.
Then one day he was giving the baby raspberries on his belly when Skip, who had a remarkable ability to stare into the middle distance, looked at Cal in a single-brow-lifting, James Cagney kind of way.
It broke Cal up, and suddenly the whole baby thing seemed manageable.
He began to anticipate the Cagney look, began to elicit it, and laughed every time.
As they had with their marriage, they figured out how to care for a baby by doing it (and by asking a lot of questions of Ida, who was giddy about being a grandmother and more than happy to advise).
They disappeared into the task, shoveled themselves night and day into the furnace of their intention to keep Skip safe and healthy.
Cal staggered back to work a week later, but Becky decided not to return to the recycling center or do much of anything besides be a mother until Skip was at least three months old.
She stayed with him twenty-four seven, fed him and bathed him and talked to him and listened to him, had lunch with him every day at the kitchen table and took a nap curled around him on the couch.
On the map of her life, there were already plenty of pins where she’d been happy, and over time there would be plenty more, but none would mean as much to her as those first three months with Skip, when there hardly seemed to be a world out there beyond the two of them and Cal.
One cold, clear Saturday afternoon in April, when Skip was almost a month old, it occurred to Becky that Everett had never laid eyes on him.
She asked Cal if that was going to change—if, now that there was a grandchild to visit, Everett might start coming around.
Cal shrugged and said his father was the kind of person who liked to be alone.
“You see him,” Becky said. “You bring him groceries. He’s not that alone.”
Cal clarified: his father wasn’t the kind of person who came around.
But Becky didn’t want to leave it at that, she wanted Skip to know both his grandfathers. She told Cal that if Everett wouldn’t come to the baby, they would take the baby to Everett.
Cal thought of the many times he’d found his father too drunk to hold a conversation. He thought of the times he’d found his father too drunk to get up off the couch, or the floor. He pictured a baby in that house. “I’ll go get him.”
Everett’s place was a ten-minute drive away.
While Becky waited, she changed Skip’s diaper on the dining table.
She put him on a blanket on the living room floor and gathered up the newspapers and comic books that lay scattered about.
She fluffed the couch pillows. Found some big band music on the radio.
It was over an hour before the Nash pulled into the driveway.
There looked to be a small hairy person sitting in the cab between her husband and her father-in-law, and when the doors opened she saw it was a spaniel of some kind.
It cleared Everett’s lap and ran across the grass to lift a speckled leg over the bluebeard shrub.
Then it came bounding up the steps after Cal and his father.
Everett had on a drooping straw fedora, a once-white button-down shirt, frayed overalls, and a bolo tie.
His steps were short and his hands shook.
As the dog scraped around the hardwood floor, Becky invited her father-in-law to sit down and have some iced tea.
Everett declined the tea but sat, then said, “Buster! Mind yourself!” To Cal’s amazement, the dog dropped to the floor and looked up at Everett with rueful eyes.
Becky asked him if he was ready to meet Skip.
“Isn’t that why I’m here?” Everett replied.
She sent Cal into the kitchen for the baby and showed Everett how to hold his arms like a bassinette in his lap, told him how important it was to support the baby’s head.
Everett looked overwhelmed at these instructions but nodded several times.
When Cal came back in carrying Skip, he said, “He’s sound asleep. ”
“That’s okay,” Everett said. “I don’t have to.”
“Nonsense.” Becky took Skip from Cal and laid him carefully inside the well of Everett’s arms. Cal got down on one knee and hovered nearby in case the old man flinched.
But Everett seemed frozen. It had been so long since he’d held a baby that it was as if the world had stopped making them ages ago. Tears disappeared into his beard. When he was finally able to speak, he said, “Look what you did.”