26. Chapter 26
Jade
We sit Iris down at the kitchen table on Saturday morning at ten o'clock.
Graham has made pancakes. I have warmed the syrup the way Iris likes it. The lake is doing the thing it does in late November where the water looks like hammered steel and the pines along the shore stand black against a pale sky.
Iris is eating her pancakes with the focused energy of a child who has no idea what is coming.
I look at Graham across the table. He nods once. We agreed last night I would say it.
"Iris. Daddy and I have something we want to tell you."
Her head comes up. She is six and a half. She knows this voice. Her fork goes still.
"Is it bad?"
"No, honey. It's good. Really good."
She waits. Her eyes move from me to Graham and back.
"Iris. I'm going to have a baby. You're going to be a big sister."
She sets down her fork. She looks at me, then at Graham, then back at me.
"A real baby?"
"A real baby."
"Not a pretend baby like in the dolls."
"Not a pretend one."
"Is it in your tummy right now?"
"Right now."
She slides off her chair and walks around the table to me with the gravity of a small person approaching something significant. She stops a foot away, tilts her head, and lifts her hand the way you lift your hand when you are about to touch something fragile.
"Can I."
"You can."
She places her palm flat against my stomach. Fingers spread. She holds it there with her face very serious, like she is listening for something.
"It feels like a regular tummy."
"It is a regular tummy. The baby is still very small."
"How small."
I cup my hands into a small shape. "Right now, about that big."
"That's small."
"It's going to grow."
She pulls her hand back. She looks at it, then at the place on my stomach where her hand just was.
"Mama-Jade."
"Yeah, sweetheart."
"Are you going to be the baby's mommy."
I go very still. I try to gather myself. "Yes. I am."
"Like you are mine."
The kitchen does something to the air. I cannot speak. I don't have to. She is already nodding.
"Good. Then we match."
I press a hand over my mouth.
"Will it be a brother or a sister?"
"We don't know yet."
"I would like a sister."
"We will tell the baby what you want," Graham says.
"Will it be loud."
"Babies can be loud."
"At night."
"Sometimes at night."
She thinks about this. She is six and a half years old and she is running a genuine cost-benefit analysis.
"Will it sleep in my room."
"No, sweetheart. The baby will have its own room."
"Good. Justice and Judge are mine."
"Justice and Judge are absolutely yours."
"But the baby might need their own owl."
"We can get them their own at the festival. The new baby gets a different bird. Not an owl."
"What kind?"
"A duck. Like Greg. But a stuffed one. A nice one. Not the mean kind."
"That is a very generous thought, Iris."
"I am being a big sister already."
She turns back to me and puts her hand on my stomach one more time. She leans down close, the way she leans close to Judge when she has something important to tell him.
"Hi. I'm Iris. I'm going to be your big sister. I will teach you about the lake and about the ducks. There's one named Greg. He's working on his attitude. Don't make Mama-Jade too tired."
She straightens up.
"Daddy. Can I tell the ducks."
"You can tell the ducks."
"After my pancakes."
"After your pancakes."
She climbs back into her chair and resumes eating like she has just concluded a business meeting.
I look at Graham across the table. He is looking at me like he has never looked at anyone. Like you are mine. I think I am going to be hearing those four words for the rest of my life.
My mother arrives at three.
Voss pulls the car up the gravel drive at exactly the time he said he would, and Iris is in the front window watching for the headlights even though it is the middle of the afternoon and there are no headlights to watch for.
She has been at that window for forty minutes.
She is wearing the blue dress I picked out and she has Justice tucked under her arm because Justice is going to be introduced to Abuela first, by Iris's own decree.
Graham opens the door before my mother gets to the porch.
She looks smaller than she did last time. I have not seen her in three weeks and somehow she has lost weight again. Gray hair pinned at the nape of her neck. The wool coat she has worn every winter of my life. One bag, as promised. Voss is carrying it because she let him, not because she asked.
She stops at the bottom of the porch steps and looks up at Graham.
"Mr. Sterling."
"Maria. Please come in. You must be tired."
"I am tired. I am also assessing the porch. It is a good porch."
"Thank you."
"You may take that as the highest compliment you will receive from me this week."
I have to press my lips together to keep from laughing. She is doing the thing where she sounds severe and is in fact entirely delighted. I have watched her do this to my father, my uncle, two priests, and one cardiologist.
Behind Graham, Iris cannot hold still any longer.
"Abuela?"
My mother's face changes. It is a small change, the kind you would miss if you were not watching for it, but it goes through her whole face like weather.
She lowers herself, with effort, to one knee on the porch step.
My chest does something painful at the sight of her doing that.
Her knees have not been good for ten years.
"Ven, mi reina."
Iris does not run. She walks. She walks the way she walks when something is important. She stops in front of my mother with Justice held out in both hands.
"This is Justice. He's an owl. He's the brother of Judge. They are both mine but Justice wanted to meet you first."
"Justice. I am honored." My mother takes the owl with both hands, gravely. She inspects him. "He has kind eyes."
"He does."
"I am your Abuela. I have been waiting a long time to meet you."
"How long."
"Six and a half years."
Iris considers this. "That's my whole life."
"Yes."
"Were you sad."
"I was patient. There is a difference. But sometimes they look the same."
Iris steps forward and puts her arms around my mother's neck. My mother closes her eyes. She holds on.
I have to put both hands over my mouth. I am standing in the hallway behind Graham and I cannot move.
My mother is on the porch of a house on a lake in upstate New York holding a child she has known for ninety seconds, and the child has called her Abuela, and somewhere along the way in the last three months my life became something I do not recognize.
Something I would not give back for anything in the world.
Graham looks at me over his shoulder. He sees my face. He doesn't say anything. He just goes out to help Voss with the bag and gives me the hallway to put myself together.
Dinner is at six-thirty.
I have made arroz con pollo because my mother asked, on the phone two days ago, whether I still remembered how.
I do. I have not made it in two years, since my father's funeral, and my hands remembered before my head did.
Iris has helped with the rice in the way a six-year-old helps with rice, which is to say she has watched and given commentary.
My mother has been at the island for an hour with a glass of water, supervising.
Graham has stayed out of the kitchen. He is in the living room pretending to read a book. He has been on the same page for forty minutes. I know because I have walked past twice.
He is nervous. My alpha husband, who has stared down boards and federal liaisons and a courtroom full of people who came to watch him bleed, is nervous about my mother.
I love him for it.
We sit down. Iris is between me and my mother. Graham is across from my mother. The lake outside has gone full dark.
My mother says grace. It is short and in Spanish and Iris bows her head with the seriousness of a small acolyte. I watch my mother's lips move and I think of a hundred dinners at her table, my father across from her, my brothers on either side of me, the same words.
The first ten minutes are about the food. The next ten are about Iris. My mother asks her about school and about the owls and about whether she has a favorite color, which turns out to be three favorite colors arranged by day of the week. Iris is in her element.
Then my mother sets her fork down.
Here we go.
"Mr. Sterling."
"Maria."
"How old are you."
"Forty-two."
"And my daughter is twenty-six."
"Yes."
"Sixteen years."
"Yes."
"My husband was twelve years older than me. So, I am not going to lecture you about arithmetic. I am only going to make sure you have done the arithmetic yourself."
"I have."
"Good." She picks up her fork. She takes a small bite of rice. She sets the fork down again. "How long were you married before."
"Eight years."
"And your wife."
"Cancer. Iris was three."
"I am sorry."
"Thank you."
"Have you been a good father since."
Graham does not answer right away. I watch him look at Iris, who is feeding a small piece of chicken to Justice under the table and thinks no one can see her. I see his throat move.
"No. Not for most of it. I have been a better one in the last three months than I was in the three years before that. Your daughter is the reason."
My mother looks at him for a long beat.
"That is an honest answer. I was not sure you would give one."
"I am trying to be a man who gives them."
"Are you trying because she is in the room."
"I am trying because she is in my life. The room is incidental."
I have stopped breathing. I am sitting very still next to Iris with my fork halfway to my mouth and I have stopped breathing.
My mother picks up her fork again. She eats two more bites of rice. She is not done with him, and we both know it, but the rhythm of it has shifted. She has decided something.
"The hearing."
"Yes."
"You went into a courtroom and you let a lawyer tell strangers about the worst things you have done."
"Yes."
"For your daughter."
"For my daughter. And for Jade. The two of them are not separable to me anymore."