37. Arielle
ARIELLE
It happens on a Tuesday, six days before the grand opening, while I am standing in the kitchen of the penthouse arguing with Nolan about whether I am allowed to attend the final dress-rehearsal walk-through.
"You are not standing on a slab in this heat at thirty-nine weeks, Arielle. Carla will run the rehearsal. Patel will run the rehearsal. You will watch it on a tablet with your feet up, and you can yell at all of us in real time, which I know you'll enjoy more than the heat anyway?—"
“I drew the ribbon placement, Nolan, and I’m sure as hell not having it sited by a man who treats symmetry like it’s?—”
The sentence doesn’t make it out, because something low in me lets go all at once, warm and unmistakable. I put my hand flat on the counter and stop talking, and Nolan stops too, and we both look down at the floor at the same time.
"Okay," I say. My voice is very calm, which surprises me. "Okay. That's my water. That's six days early. That's — Nolan, the opening is in six days, I am not — she cannot?—"
"She can, and she is, and that's fine." He is already moving, but not at me, which is the thing I notice even through the first slow tightening that follows the warmth.
He is moving around me, not over me. He has the hospital bag off the hook by the door.
He has his phone out. "Sit down on the stool, sweetheart.
Not because you have to. Because the floor's wet and I don't want you on a wet floor.
Malcolm. We're going. Now. Call Dr. Ellis, tell her her water broke at — what time is it — eight-forty, contractions starting, she's coherent and furious, which I assume is a good sign. "
"It's a good sign," I tell him, and then the tightening crests, and I grip the edge of the counter, and it is nothing like the contractions in the fire — those were panic wearing a body — this is slower, deeper, a thing with a tide to it, and I breathe through it the way Dr. Ellis taught me in October and Nolan breathes with me without being asked, his hand hovering near my back, not touching until I reach for it.
"You're not deciding anything for me tonight," I tell him, when it passes. "I want that on the record before we get in the car. You're going to want to. I can see you wanting to. Logistics, yes. Me, no."
"Logistics yes, you no. I've got it. I had it tattooed on the inside of my eyelids in March. Can I carry the bag, or is the bag also a sovereignty issue."
"You can carry the bag, Nolan."
The car ride is the calmest twelve minutes of the whole night, which I will appreciate only in hindsight.
Outside the windows the sky has gone the bruised green-black of a Midwestern summer about to do something, and by the time Malcolm pulls under the hospital canopy the first fat drops are hitting the windshield and the thunder is already walking toward us across the lake.
The next hours come in waves, the same as the contractions, peaks and troughs.
By eleven the room is full of women. My mother arrives first—silver curls, a duffel bag, and the brisk competence she’s carried since raising a daughter alone, determined not to be useless in a delivery wing.
She takes one look at me, one look at Nolan, says, “Good, he’s still here,” and sets up camp in the corner like she’s moving in.
Bianca and Kiara come together, Bianca in a teal jumpsuit she clearly hasn’t changed out of since lunch, Kiara with a bag of snacks no one is allowed to eat in the room and eats anyway in the hall.
Claire arrives last, in the camel coat, and stands in the doorway uncertain until my mother waves her in like she’s family, which, by then, she is.
They are not in the room for the hard part. The hard part is just me and Nolan and Dr. Ellis and a nurse named Pam, and the storm.
The storm is enormous. The window of the delivery room looks east toward the lake and the lightning comes in sheets, lighting the whole room white for a half second at a time, and the thunder lands close enough to feel in the floor, and somewhere around midnight, in a trough between contractions, I start to come apart in a way I have spent thirty-one years making sure no one ever saw.
"I can't, Nolan." It comes out of me small and raw and nothing like my own voice. "I can't do this. I'm not — I built myself wrong for this. I built myself to not need anyone and you can't do this part not needing anyone, you can't, and I don't know how to?—"
“Hey. Hey. Look at me.” He has my face in both his hands.
He isn’t managing me — I can feel the difference now, the way you can feel the difference between a hand that’s steering you and a hand that’s holding you.
“You don’t have to do this not needing anyone.
That rule’s gone. You retired it. You’re allowed to need the whole room tonight, and the room will be here.
I’ll be here. Your mother’s down the hall.
You are the least alone you’ve ever been in your life, and I know that scares you more than the pain.
I’m telling you it’s safe. It’s safe to need it. I’ve got you.”
"Don't leave."
"I am not going anywhere. I ran into a building for you, sweetheart. A hospital room with your mother in it doesn't even register."
"That's not — Nolan, that's not funny?—"
"It's a little funny. You laughed. I felt it. Breathe with me. Here it comes."
It comes. I crush his hand. He lets me. He counts me through it in a low steady voice, and when it crests he tells me I'm doing it, I'm already doing it, the thing I just said I couldn't do I'm in the middle of doing, and somewhere in the white flash of the lightning and the long roll of the thunder behind it I stop fighting the part of me that needs him and just let it need him, and it is the most frightened and the most safe I have been at the same time in my entire life.
"Last one, Arielle," Dr. Ellis says, calm as a Sunday. "This is it. With the next contraction. You and me. Big push."
"Nolan—"
"Right here. Both hands. Look at me, not the window. There you go. There you go, sweetheart. Now."
I push, and the storm hits the building hard enough to rattle the glass, and at four minutes past midnight, in a flash of lightning that turns the whole room to silver, our daughter is born into Dr. Ellis's hands with a sound like outrage, furious and alive and so loud it cuts clean through the thunder.
"There she is," Dr. Ellis says. "There's your girl."
They put her on my chest, wet and warm and screaming, dark curls plastered to a head the size of an orange, and she opens her eyes — gray-brown, his eyes, my mother's cheekbones — and she stops crying, and she looks at me, and I look at her, and Nolan makes a sound above me that I have never heard him make and never want to stop hearing.
"Hi," I tell her. My whole face is wet and I do not care who sees it. "Hi, Isabelle. Hi, baby. I'm your mama. That's your dad. He's a lot. You'll get used to him. We're so glad you're here."
Nolan's forehead drops against my temple, his hand spread over both of us, shaking, and outside the storm begins, finally, to move off over the water.