23 #3
“I saw the bride before she went in. That was all. A woman drinking water, her mother fussing over her shoulder. And I just… I don’t know. I went back there for a little while.”
On the other end, there was a soft sound, like a chair being moved.
“Do you want me to stay here with you?”
I realized he was talking about the phone call. The simplicity of the offer allowed me to answer.
“I’d like that.”
For a while, I said nothing. Dante didn’t try to fill the silence with an explanation of how sorry he was.
“I never told you what it was like when he was born.”
“No.”
“You know the date.”
“I do.”
I put the phone down for a moment to zoom in on the photo. Then I brought it back to my ear.
“My mother went with me. I woke up in the middle of the night and tried to wait a little longer, because she’d gone to bed late. When she realized, she was angry I hadn’t called her sooner.”
I could see her again, tying her hair up haphazardly and looking for her glasses, which were already on her face. That morning, her haste had made me laugh in the midst of my fear. I told Dante this. I heard a breath that might have been the start of a smile.
“We got there with two bags. I’d checked them over and over and still thought I’d forgotten everything. My mother said as long as I’d brought myself, we had the most important thing.”
I rested my head against the sofa.
There were parts I didn’t want to share yet. The full extent of the pain, the hours, the thoughts that came and went. I chose the moment when I heard the crying and my mother’s voice very close by, saying he was there.
“I thought I’d recognize his face right away,” I said. “I’d imagined it so many times. But when they brought him close to me, he was… just him. A boy I still needed to get to know.”
My voice faltered.
“His hand was so small. I know they all are, but his scared me. I thought I wouldn’t be able to put clothes on him without hurting those little fingers.”
Dante remained silent.
I talked about the yawn in the photograph. About the way his ear had folded slightly against the blanket. About Dalva insisting that I appear in a photo too, and how I’d refused, exhausted, only to regret it later.
“There’s one with my arm in it. I kept that one.”
“If you ever want to show it to me, I’d like to see it.”
Dante waited.
“Maybe,” I replied.
I ran my finger along the edge of the phone.
“That first night home, I couldn’t sleep when he did. I kept watching his chest move. My mother told me to lie down and promised to stay awake for a while. I did. Ten minutes later, I was up again.”
I remembered the dim light in the hallway and the cold tile floor beneath my feet. My mom was sitting with Bento on her lap, and the two of them seemed settled into a peace I didn’t yet know how to be a part of.
“There was a moment when I wanted to call you,” I admitted.
I heard Dante draw in a breath.
“I wanted to tell you he’d been born. And I got angry because you already knew he might be born. I’d told you. It wasn’t news I’d kept from you.”
“I know.”
His voice sounded different, rougher.
“I didn’t call. I didn’t leave a message with anyone, I didn’t write anything hoping it would reach you. I just sat there on the bed, holding the phone. Then he cried, and I went to take care of him.”
A tear rolled down my chin. I wiped it away with my sleeve.
“I’m not saying this so you’ll think you might have found a missed message. There wasn’t one. There was only what I said at the altar.”
“I heard you that day, Cecília.”
I closed my eyes.
I needed him to say it. Even though I knew he’d already said it before.
“There were better nights after that,” I went on. “It wasn’t all sad. One night he laughed at the sound of a bag. My mother crumpled it, he laughed, she crumpled it again. We kept doing it like a pair of idiots, neither of us willing to stop.”
I laughed through my tears. Dante breathed out on the other end.
“I loved being his mother. I love it. I don’t want you to think of those years and only picture suffering. But I was alone in so much that shouldn’t have been mine to handle alone.”
“You shouldn’t have had to go through that alone.”
I didn’t add that my mom was there. He knew what I meant.
I told him a little more. An outfit outgrown between seasons, the weight of Bento asleep after nursing, the first outing when I hadn’t looked for an excuse to go home. I didn’t tell him everything. Four years of life wouldn’t fit into that call, and some of it was still mine to keep.
When I stopped, Dante didn’t ask me to continue.
“Thanks for telling me,” he said.
I was tired, but the tiredness no longer took the shape of the hotel hallway.
“See you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
I hung up and went back to the photo. I thought about sending it. I didn’t want to yet.
I put my phone away and went to check on Bento in the bedroom. He was still lying across the bed, the same leg sticking out from under the blanket, his mouth slightly open.
I pulled the blanket up just far enough for him to tolerate it before he kicked it off again.
Then I went to sleep.