Chapter Nine Bailey #2
“They told us visiting hours were over at eight tonight.” Clara pouted. Bailey glanced at the clock and saw that it was barely past breakfast time. She tried to shoot Vanny another look, but he was quietly stuffing the sandwich wrappers and empty chip bags into the trash.
“Have you picked a name?” Clara asked, perching on the edge of Bailey’s bed.
“We named him Dylan.” Vanny grinned. “Bailey and I went to see Dylan together in Exeter in high school.”
“I love it!” Juliette clapped her hands. “You know he and I dated for a bit when I lived in New York.”
“What?” Vanny looked stricken. “You dated Bob Dylan?”
“Oh, not really dating. Things were much more relaxed back then,” Juliette said airily, waving a hand. “We were having fun.” She was so cool Bailey wanted to die.
“Jesus Christ.” Vanny briefly closed his eyes.
“What’s his full name?” Clara asked. “Dylan what?”
“Dylan Whitaker Newmarch,” said Bailey.
“Why not Dylan Newmarch Whitaker? Why not have Van’s name last?” Clara looked at her daughter, dismayed.
“We’re giving him Vanny’s name as the middle and mine as the last.”
Clara sighed theatrically. “Well, you don’t have to decide today.” Bailey had told her parents that Van had a girlfriend, told them to stop pushing her to be with him, but her mother had a special gift for forgetting things she didn’t want to hear.
“Darling, let’s do presents.” Juliette put her arm around Clara, who immediately brightened. “Clara got the sweetest little layette from Newbury Street!”
Thus distracted, they spent the next half hour opening ribbon-wrapped bundles of onesies and pants made of pale-blue organic cotton, cashmere and seersucker stroller blankets, and a knit rattle embroidered with the word “baby,” just in case there was any confusion.
All the pregnancy blogs had offered long lists of things to pack to make your stay in the hospital more comfortable.
“Bring your pillows from home!” “Make sure to pack your own pajamas and flip-flops!” “You’ll want to bring makeup for after the baby is born since you will have those pictures forever!
” But the sad fact was that no matter what Bailey wore or stuffed in her bag, there was no way to actually get comfortable in such a loud, bright place.
The door was always opening and closing, the curtains yanked back along the metal rail.
Machines beeped, temperatures were checked, breasts and stomach palpated, enormous hospital underwear whipped down for a peek, then yanked back up.
By the time Clara and Juliet left that evening, Bailey and Vanny were dazed with exhaustion.
“Do you want me to help you take a shower?” Vanny offered.
Bailey was still unsteady on her feet, but there was no way she was letting Vanny see her naked, her stomach suddenly strange, her body still covered in the film of labor.
There was a shower down the hall, and the nurse helped her carry a fresh gown and a towel (a thin, white hospital towel, worse than any Bailey had seen at a gym) and showed her how to flip the sign on the door to say it was occupied.
There were no locks, the bathroom was huge, and Bailey felt certain a stranger was about to burst in, but she untied her ratty blue gown and dropped it in a bin in the corner.
She was dizzy and so she kept a hand on the tiled wall as she peeled off her underwear and stepped into the warm water.
There were the showers you took every morning before work, pleasant but businesslike, there were the luxurious showers you took after a day on the beach, the soap running down your back as you scrubbed the sunblock and sand from your skin, but this was a thousand, no, a million times better, a cleansing that felt nearly spiritual.
Bailey pumped handfuls of liquid soap from the dispenser on the wall and washed her armpits, her shoulders, and her stomach.
She scrubbed her hair until bubbles cascaded down her face and felt as though every gulp of the drain put another mile between her and the horror of the delivery room.
After some time, she began to worry that the nurse would think she had slipped and fallen and she’d barge into the room with no lock, so she regretfully twisted the water off and dried herself on the towel, rough as a cat’s tongue.
Back in the room Dylan was stirring, making a mewling noise, and Vanny was stretching his arms and rolling his shoulders, still stiff from his night in the chair. He was wearing the same pair of jeans he’d had on when he arrived, and a baseball cap covered his greasy hair.
“You can shower now,” Bailey offered.
“Oh, I think the showers are only for the mothers.” Vanny shook his head.
“I’m sure it’s okay.”
“Can I use that towel?” He gestured at the damp one Bailey had hung on the hook.
“Of course.”
Sometimes they were so formal together, and Bailey didn’t really understand why.
She had known him for so long, but she wasn’t even sure she knew him that well.
Sure, she could tell you the names of his childhood pets, the names of his aunts and uncles, and she could instantly recall his first kiss—Alexis Corrigan at the Roller Palace—but it had been years since they’d been an actual couple.
If they were trying to trick immigration in a green card marriage scam, they would have failed spectacularly.
She didn’t know what kind of razor he used, where he sat when he watched TV, or even if he had a bank account.
(She assumed he did. He was a functional adult.)
When Vanny left to shower, terrible towel in hand, Bailey was alone with the baby for the first time.
“Dylan,” she whispered. “I’m your mother.
” It was such a crazy thing to say to another human.
She nursed him for ten minutes and then he passed out again and Bailey carefully lifted him back into the bassinet.
She had read that a newborn’s belly was only the size of a gumdrop, so he got full from the tiniest bit of milk, then had to eat again hours later.
She scrolled through her phone and picked her favorite pictures of Dylan, texting them to the group chain, Augusta and Colin, RJ and Fran, Eben and Max.
They replied with a series of hearts and exclamation points, jokes about whether or not the baby had Vanny’s third nipple.
(Vanny didn’t really have a third nipple, but someone had started the rumor back in high school and it had semi-stuck.) She assumed Vanny had texted Caroline, but she wasn’t going to ask.
It was nearly ten, and Bailey knew she should try to sleep.
Everyone said the second night was the hardest, that the baby had finally recovered from the exhaustion of birth and wanted to eat all the time.
“Sleep when the baby sleeps,” they said over and over and over, like Bailey had some kind of switch on her back she could just flick on and off.
She had wished for a switch like that her whole life, the ability to sleep on command on planes and in cars and the night before big exams. She knew the days were structured in a way to give everyone adequate time to rest, but getting her brain and body to calm down was a trick she had never entirely mastered.
The door opened and Vanny crept quietly back into the room, now in a pair of fresh joggers and long-sleeve T-shirt, his hair damp and uncombed. “I fed him and he passed out fifteen minutes ago,” Bailey whispered. “We should try to sleep.”
Vanny gave her a thumbs-up and moved his backpack to the floor, sitting down in the wooden chair, draping a sweatshirt across his chest, and using his bag as a footrest. Bailey fluffed her hospital pillow and nestled down on her side, facing Dylan and Vanny.
The TV monitor made a faint buzzing noise, voices echoed in the hall, carts clinked past their door, and a symphony of quiet beeping played out across Bailey’s brain.
She lay there for thirty minutes, forty, waiting to hear Vanny’s breathing settle.
He quietly shifted in the chair and she could tell he wasn’t sleeping either. “You okay over there?” she whispered.
“All good,” he whispered back.
“I can’t sleep,” Bailey admitted.
“It’s all right. You will.”
“Do you want to come get in the bed?”
“I don’t want to crowd you. The bed’s so small.”
“I lost ten pounds today,” Bailey teased, and scooted over. Vanny considered and then climbed in, lying on his back, only the smallest inch between them, and they fell asleep.
Five Crisp Hundreds
The first two weeks of Dylan’s life were a slushy, happy, terrible mess.
Bailey was delirious with her love for him, besotted with his tiny face, singing him nonsense pop songs about kissing and grand romance, but plagued with intrusive thoughts that arrived like dark smog, terrified he might seize or stop breathing at any moment.
The nights were long, Bailey sleeping in snatches, but no sooner had she closed her eyes than Dylan was crying to eat again.
She changed a wet diaper, she fed him and scrolled her phone, she clicked through her social media accounts and could see that she was truly alone, the only one awake, by herself at the end of the internet.
She counted the hours until eight when her mother would arrive, drop her keys on the counter, wash her hands, and spread a cotton burp cloth over her shoulder, taking Dylan away for three hours so that Bailey could sleep.