30. Heidi
HEIDI
On Tuesday, January fifth, I unlock the clinic and hear children arguing about snow before I take off my coat.
Winter break has left the corridor floors polished, the paper snowflakes gone and one forgotten red mitten on the bench outside my door. I pick it up and put it where its owner might see it. Then I stand beneath the strip light and let the morning arrive.
The drawings are waiting on my desk. Seven fingers, nine, ten. The red cape has survived all three versions of me.
I clip on my name badge.
The first child comes in with a stomachache and a spelling test approaching at a speed he considers unreasonable. I check what needs checking, give him water and listen until he admits he studied the wrong list.
“Dread feels sick,” he says.
“It does.”
“Can I stay here?”
“For a few minutes. Then we'll talk to your teacher about what happened.”
He lies on the cot staring at the ceiling. I leave him quiet long enough to discover that he is not going to be scolded for telling the truth.
When he sits up, he asks whether I ever forget something important.
“Frequently.”
“What do you do?”
“Try to fix what I can. Tell somebody when I need help.”
He considers this with the skepticism adults deserve. Then he takes two crackers and goes with my colleague to speak to his teacher.
I wipe the cot. Half an hour has passed without my mind going anywhere near a hospital corridor.
The realization startles me enough that I check the clock again.
For weeks, every quiet minute opened into the labor room. I would be folding a blanket or waiting for water to boil and suddenly feel Beau's fingers leaving mine.
Here, a child needed me to listen.
My colleague appears at the door.
“How are you?”
“I forgot to be miserable for half an hour.”
She smiles. “Promising.”
“Don't make it a milestone.”
“I wouldn't dare.”
She hands me the schedule and asks which appointments I want her to keep. We argue pleasantly about the printer instead.
The next child has a scraped palm. The next has lost a tooth and wants somebody to admire the gap. A first grader needs the bathroom and refuses to explain why she came to the nurse first.
Each small problem brings me farther into the room.
By midmorning, my breasts ache and my legs are tired. I go into the adjoining private room to pump while my colleague covers the clinic. The familiar inconvenience makes me smile: even a morning that belongs to my work still contains the body that belongs to my daughter and me.
Mom sends a photograph of Ivy asleep in her blue sack. No instructions, no account of every ounce. Just my baby with one hand near her cheek and a message saying she is fine.
I send a heart and eat the snack I packed for myself.
The principal knocks after my break. She asks how the morning feels and whether the arrangement of three mornings still suits me.
“Yes,” I say. “I'm tired. I'm also very glad to be here.”
“Both seem reasonable.”
“I'd like to keep it this way through January.”
“Then we will.”
She leaves before I can turn the conversation into an explanation of why I am not doing more. I sit down and answer one email. Then the boy with the drawings appears at the door, sent by his teacher with something he insists I need to see.
“This is your room after the upgrade,” he says.
The new picture contains a cot with wheels, a cabinet taller than the building and a cracker machine operated by a red lever. My hair is orange now. The fingers remain medically plausible.
“I like the machine,” I say.
He points to a square beside it. “That's for babies when their moms have jobs.”
Inside the square is a tiny round face beneath a blue blanket.
My throat tightens.
“My baby is with her grandmother today,” I tell him.
“Does she get crackers?”
“Only milk. She's considering a complaint.”
He laughs, pleased with himself, and leaves the picture for my wall.
I pin it beside the feelings chart. I am still looking at it when the office calls about a child with a nosebleed in the second-grade hall.
I take the supplies and go.
The child is frightened by the blood on her hands. Her teacher clears a little space around us, and I kneel beside her, speaking quietly while I help. She tells me she is going to lose all her blood. I tell her we are looking after it, and ask about the song her class is learning.
By the time she has corrected my disastrous memory of the second verse, she can breathe without crying.
Later, back in the clinic, she shows me the gap where she has lost a tooth too. Apparently it is a busy morning for everybody's body.
When she returns to class, I sit for a moment with both feet flat on the floor. My legs ache. My mind feels bright.
I want to tell Beau.
The wish comes without the old stab of humiliation. I send him a message before I can examine it into something smaller.
I've had a very good morning. I would like to tell you about it.
His answer comes while I am putting away the supplies.
I'd like to hear. Call when you're free.
I call from the car before driving home. He answers with a low, quiet hello, and I can hear Ivy making small noises close to the phone.
“You've got her?”
“Your mother handed over a deeply opinionated person and went to her appointment.”
“She was opinionated when I left.”
“Consistency is important.”
I laugh. Then I tell him about the spelling test, the lost tooth, the new drawing. He asks about the little square for the baby, and I have to stop for a breath before I answer.
“It made me feel as though there was room,” I say.
“For both?”
“Yes.”
He is quiet for a moment. “I'm glad.”
I lean my head against the seat. “Will you still be there when I get home?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I can hear what that word does to him in the small change in his breathing.
At home, Beau opens the door before I find my key.
Ivy is against his chest in the carrier, one cheek flattened by sleep. The sight of them waiting makes my eyes sting.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
“You sounded happy on the phone.”
“I was.”
I step inside. He reaches for my bag, then pauses.
“May I?”
“It is a bag, Beau.”
“I've developed respect for jurisdiction.”
I laugh and hand it to him.
The baby shifts at the sound. We both go still until she settles.
“Tell me the rest,” he whispers.
So I take off my coat and tell him about the boy who studied the wrong spelling list, the lost tooth, and the square drawn for babies whose mothers have jobs. He listens in the hallway with my bag in one hand and our daughter sleeping against his heart.
Later, I wake from an afternoon sleep and find Beau sitting by the window with Ivy against his chest. A novel lies open beside him with two scraps of paper marking different pages.
I slept while he had our daughter. For a few seconds after I woke, I did not check where either of them was. I heard his voice downstairs and knew they were safe.
The relief leaves me unsteady at the sitting-room door.
Beau looks up. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” I look at Ivy, then at him. “There is something I want to show you.”
My phone is upstairs. I leave Beau by the window and go to get it.
My phone is on the nightstand. I pick it up and open the album.
Two photographs.
Ivy alone, her face turned slightly toward the light. Then me holding her.
The woman in the second picture looks past the camera as though she has heard somebody at the door.
Her hair is damp. One shoulder of the hospital gown has slipped.
There is a crease in the blanket beneath the baby's cheek and a raw tenderness in the woman's face that I have never seen on myself before.
I remember the photographer telling me I didn't have to smile.
I remember being grateful.
Downstairs, Beau says something quietly to Ivy. I cannot make out the words. I can hear the affection.
I look at the picture again.
I want him to know the woman in the photograph.
Beau sits on the sofa when I come back. Ivy is awake against his arm, looking toward the light. He has set the book on the side table, the scraps of paper still marking his places.
“You read it?” I ask.
“A little.”
“Which part?”
“The argument about the printer.”
I laugh softly. “I knew you'd like that one.”
He smiles, then sees the phone in my hand and grows still.
I sit beside him, close enough that our knees nearly touch. I do not hand him the phone at once. First I look at our daughter.
She has changed so much. Her face is fuller, her gaze more purposeful. When Beau shifts his hand, she turns toward him, knowing something about the person holding her. He is part of her world now in a way he wasn't in the first photograph.
I am glad. I am sad.
“The photographer came after seven,” I say.
He looks at me.
“I nearly sent her away. We'd planned it together, and I thought I couldn't bear having a picture that showed you weren't there.”
He doesn't speak.
“Then Ivy yawned. Such an enormous yawn for somebody who had only just arrived. I wanted to keep it. I wanted something of that evening that wasn't the other photograph.”
I turn the screen toward him.
He looks at it, and the change in his face is so immediate I almost turn it back.
His mouth parts. His eyes move over me in the image, then to Ivy, then back to my face. He doesn't touch the screen.
For a long time, neither of us says anything.
“I was happy,” I tell him.
He looks up.
“When they put her on me. I was so happy I couldn't think. She was hot and slippery, and she made this furious noise, and all I could say was hello.”
My eyes fill before I expect them to.
“I don't want you to think you took all of it. You didn't. That part was mine.”
He nods, his own eyes wet.
“I'm glad,” he says, barely audible.
I look at the photograph. Ivy's hand is against my collarbone. I remember every tiny finger.
“Dash cried. I thought he might drop the scissors because he was trying to see through tears. He didn't. He was very careful.”
Beau looks down at our daughter in his arms.
“I know he cut the cord,” he says.
“I wanted you to.”
The words come out sharp. I didn't plan the sharpness. I let it stay.
“I know.”
“No. You know the fact. I want you to know what it was like.”
He turns toward me fully.
“Tell me.”
I press my thumb against the edge of the phone. The case has a small worn place where I rub it when I am thinking.
“Before she came, I kept looking at the door. Even when I told Dash not to make excuses for you. Even when I knew you weren't answering. I still thought you'd come through it.”
My breath catches. I look at the window until I can get it back.
“The nurse said Ivy had dark hair. I wanted you to hear that. It was such a stupid thing to want in the middle of everything, but I wanted to turn and see your face.”
“It wasn't stupid.”
I nod. The reassurance helps more than I want it to.
“I was angry with Dash for not being you. He was doing everything he could, and I was angry with him. I didn't say it, but I felt it.”
My voice breaks. “He didn't deserve that.”
“No.”
“I didn't deserve having to feel it.”
“No, Heidi.”
I wipe my face with the back of my hand. Beau reaches for the tissue box and puts it beside me.
“I was scared of how much it hurt. I knew what was happening. I've read about birth, I've listened to women, I'd done the classes. It didn't make it feel smaller when it was happening to me.”
Ivy wriggles. Beau adjusts his arm without taking his eyes off me.
“I thought I'd be good at it,” I say, and laugh once through the tears. “As though it was an examination.”
He looks as if the laugh has hurt him more than the crying.
“You were having our baby.”
“Yes. And I wanted to be allowed to be frightened. I wanted you to be there so I didn't have to keep proving I could manage.”
My vision blurs. I put down the phone before I drop it.
“When Dash gave me his hand, it was the wrong hand. He learned where to put it. He held on when I pulled. He was wonderful.”
I look straight at Beau.
“But I kept wanting yours.”
He closes his eyes.
“I felt the phone,” he says.
I go still.
“What?”
“Dash's calls. In my pocket. I knew it was him.”
“You told me you saw them.”
“I did. I have never told you that I felt the first one and chose not to look.”
Anger rises so quickly that I stand. Beau remains seated with Ivy against him.
“Why are you telling me now?”
“Because you asked me to know what it was like. You deserve the part that makes me hardest to forgive.”
I walk to the window and back.
“You knew it might be the baby.”
“Yes.”
“You knew it might be me.”
“Yes.”
“And you needed Celeste to settle first.”
His voice is nearly gone. “Yes.”
I press both hands to my mouth. This truth is worse than the records and better than another omission. I hate him for giving it to me. I would hate him more if he kept it.
“Keep holding her,” I say when he begins to rise. “I need to be angry without either of you leaving.”
He sits back.
“I'm here.”
I pace until I can speak again.
“I kept wanting your hand,” I repeat. “Even after you left me. Even while I hated you. That's the part I haven't known how to tell you.”
His face crumples. He looks down at Ivy, then back at me, and I see the effort it takes not to turn away from what I have told him.
He makes a sound that is almost my name.
I pick up the phone again and put the photograph between us on the sofa, where he cannot mistake which day I mean.