Читать книгу Reunion - Therese Fowler - Страница 8

Her name was Harmony Blue. Harmony Blue Kucharski, not Forrester, as it ought to have been by then. Unmarried, nineteen, she lay in her narrow bed in the smallest of the rundown rental’s bedrooms. Her groans had already driven one of her housemates away, leaving only two people to tend her: the midwife, whose name at the time was Meredith Jones, and a teenage girl who wanted to be known as Bat.

“I’m looking out for you,” Bat said, sitting on the bed’s edge and holding her friend’s clammy hand.

Like all of the fledgling adults who came and went here, Bat was hardly capable of looking out for herself. But if her words had little impact—the young woman hardly cared what she said—the fact of Bat being there was real comfort in between the pains.

Harmony Blue, sweaty and exhausted, had once been described as “fetching.” She tried to remember where she’d heard it, who had used such a word … Then she had it: an old farmer in Wisconsin, five or six years earlier; she had been trying for the Miss Junior Dairy Maiden crown, despite never having been within milking distance of a cow. Entering the pageant had been her mother’s idea, a chance for the two-hundred-fifty-dollar prize. Pink and white hair ribbons, the young woman remembered; ruffles at her throat and knees; a rhinestone tiara that was lost in the next move.

She looked at Bat’s reflection in the mirrored closet door, at bony shoulder blades visible inside a black Duran Duran tour t-shirt, black hair cut asymmetrically, longer on the left and striped with one fuchsia swath behind her ear. Bat had style, identity, whereas she had neither. What she had was matted hair, a stretched-to-its-limits red sweatshirt, a swollen belly and a rounded, pallid face.

Excepting the belly and the fullness of her face, she appeared to be the same untethered person who’d taken refuge here ten months earlier—which just went to show how untrustworthy an image could be; nothing but the visible bit of an iceberg that was otherwise out of sight. She wasn’t the innocent she’d been when she got here. She was no longer quite so naïve.

She watched the mirror, saw her eyes narrow and her lips flatten as another contraction began and tightened, a cinched string yanking her entire body inward to its core. Then she was seeing nothing but the black heat of pain as Bat said, “Breathe, remember? Breathe!”

Slowly, her vision cleared, and the midwife examined her again. “Just about time to push,” Meredith said. Meredith’s face was thin but kind, and not so much older looking than her two companions’, whose desperate faith in her was all too common.

Harmony Blue panted, avoiding the midwife’s eyes and words and looking, instead, at the pink ceramic lamp on the dresser. A painted-on ballerina smiled serenely from the lamp’s rounded base. The light shining through the dusty lampshade warmed the room the same way it had warmed the bedroom where the lamp used to be. Where her sister had been too, until adulthood—such as it was—had come for each of them.

She concentrated on the faded Journey band poster on the wall above the lamp, positioned just as it had been in that other bedroom. “Don’t Stop Believin’” they urged in one of their songs, but she’d failed them, and now look at her. Pregnant not by a man she loved, not by the man she loved, but by a guy she barely knew, a guy she could not have cared less about. Pregnant and then paralyzed by the mistake, tortured, unable to decide what she wanted to do. Keep it? End it? Indecisive weeks had turned to months, leaving her with a different pair of choices—and even then she’d had trouble choosing, until Meredith helped her see which way to go.

Meredith had supported her wish to give birth at home, where she would not be judged. Meredith was a facilitator— that was the term she’d used, a facilitator for the people on the other end. There was some money involved, not that it mattered. There was always money in these situations, according to Bat, who’d found Meredith through the friend of a friend. The new parents’ offer to the girl, through some law firm, through Meredith, had been ten thousand dollars. For expenses, Meredith said. It would be a closed adoption. Anonymous. No strings. No names.

Bat squeezed her hand harder. “Why is there so much blood?”

Meredith, sitting on a stool at the end of the bed, leaned back and sighed. With her forearm, she brushed dark bangs back from her narrow face. “It’s normal. Okay now, with the next contraction, take a breath, focus, and push.”

Focus. Icy rain blew against the window just above the midwife’s head, pattering, streaking. Focus. How was she supposed to focus when her belly was going to split wide open at any second? This accidental baby … the pain was her punishment, pain like a hot iron shoved into her lower back, proving that there was no escaping stupidity. So she’d gotten her heart broken by the man she’d believed was perfect for her, so what? Other girls didn’t deal with heartbreak by running away, by joining a group of directionless misfits like the ones she was living with. Getting high. Getting pregnant.

Getting over it was what she should have done.

She was over it now, though. In her time here, she had not spoken of her past, not to Bat, not to Will—who’d gotten her pregnant, she didn’t care how much he’d denied it before he split—not to any of the people she’d met. If she revealed her heartbreak, they would see her for the fool she was. They’d reject her too, she was sure. She had not spoken of her past, and she would not.

“Deep breath,” Meredith said. “You’re almost there.”

“No,” she moaned, holding her belly. “No, I can’t.” If time would only stop for a minute, let her catch her breath, let her spend a little longer with the baby there beneath her hands. It was true that she hadn’t been sure, at first, if she’d continue the pregnancy. It was true that this baby owed its existence more to inaction than intent. Even so, they were good friends now. She’d tried to protect him—or was it her?—she’d really tried. A few more days as one entity. Maybe that would be enough.

“Push now.” The midwife’s face was lighted, eager. “Come on, here’s the head.”

She began to cry, knowing there was no stopping it, pain like a locomotive pulling, pulling the baby on to its real life, its better life. She wanted that for this child, this unintended effect of too much fun, too little thought—same as its mother had been, and its aunt. She wanted this child to have intentional parents, who would make its life everything that hers hadn’t been.

“Happy accidents” was what her mother had liked to call her and her sister, even after they had little to be happy about. When the girls reached puberty, the refrain became, “Just don’t imagine I’d be able to raise yours. We can barely afford ourselves and, though God knows I try, I am not as capable as my mother.” That would be their grandmother, Kate, who’d helped raise them. Until she died, and then they’d had to for the most part raise themselves.

“Oh my god, oh my god.” Bat leaned over to watch the baby emerging, still squeezing her friend’s hand. “Oh my god! You did it! Jesus! Check him out! It’s a boy!”

A son. Good. Everyone wanted a son. He’d be especially loved by his parents. He was from questionable stock, but the adopting parents didn’t care. It was enough for them that he be white and healthy—he was healthy, just look at him, listen to that cry!—and free of complications. Meredith had assured her that this way was best, no strings for any of them. As soon as the adoption paperwork was filed and finalized, the original birth certificate would be sealed away, accessible only by court order. She would own her future again, free and clear, as if he had never happened. No strings, no trail.

Meredith would be back later, and tomorrow, and again, if needed, in the weeks to come. Post-partum was the word she’d used. Any trouble and Harmony Blue was to call the number she’d called when her labor began, and Meredith would come. “If it isn’t an emergency, don’t go to the ER,” the midwife had said.

Bat had nodded as though she, too, was wise, and said, “Not unless you want to have to answer a lot of questions.”

She didn’t. Not any. Ever.

“Not unless she wants to wait all day,” Meredith said.

Now Meredith held the baby up, one hand beneath his buttocks, one beneath his head. “Do you want to hold him?”

“I do!” Bat said.

Harmony Blue struggled to sit upright. The pain was a shadow now, the way her belly was a shadow of what it had been just moments before. Her belly. Round but no longer bulging. A cantaloupe instead of a watermelon, and why was she thinking of fruit? Would the tiny thing, sputtering there in the midwife’s hands, that red-faced creature with blood drying on his newborn skin, would he love fruit the way she did? Would his parents one day tempt him with fresh pineapple and find he took to it like a duck to bugs? Her grandma, Kate, had always said that, like a duck to bugs.

Would he have her brown eyes, her slender fingers? Would he love to play Scrabble the way she once had? Before, in that other life that now seemed as far away as Sirius. Sirius was the brightest star, the most hopeful point of light in the sky. She had wished on it so often. Had begun, for a time, to believe she’d been heard.

“Yes, I’ll hold him,” she said. Meredith cut the umbilical cord and tied it off. She squeezed drops into the infant’s eyes, then wrapped him in a pale yellow receiving blanket and handed him into her arms. He continued to sputter, but it was a half-hearted noise, as if he knew some sound was expected but really didn’t want to make any further fuss. He’d be a good baby, she could tell already.

When the placenta was out and the contractions had subsided, stitches were put in, plastic bags filled and tied and placed in the cardboard box that Meredith had put by the door. Meredith picked up the box and left the room, saying she’d be back in a few minutes. “We’ll do the paperwork, and then … I’ll be needing to go.”

After the door closed, Bat smoothed the baby’s damp hair and traced his eyebrows with one finger. “You have to keep him. Don’t you want to keep him? God, he’s so … I don’t know. I mean, wow!”

Harmony Blue recognized the feverish look in her friend’s eyes. Speed, probably. She looked away, back to the purity, the innocence of the tiny boy in her arms. “He deserves better.”

Meredith had quizzed her on her drug use when they’d met two months ago. How often? How much? She had backed off once she realized she was pregnant, she truly had, even as she’d still felt the need to disappear from herself. “Not too much,” was the answer she’d given Meredith, “and nothing really, you know, bad.” Nothing from a needle. She’d heard of AIDS, she said—only to have Meredith look at her side ways.

“You know about AIDS, but not condoms?”

Guilty.

The baby seemed to be studying her. What did he see? Was her face, with its narrow nose and wide mouth and olive skin that tanned so quickly, being stored in his memory, so that if he saw her one day he would know? Would she know him? Not that such a meeting would happen: the adopting parents, whom she’d spoken with twice before making her decision, lived far from Chicago. They said they were West Coast people who had tried every fertility treatment medical science had to offer. They seemed caring and kind—she’d thought so even just seeing the Polaroid Meredith had given her before they’d spoken, anonymously of course. Meredith the matchmaker. To the couple, she had given two photos of Harmony Blue: a close-up and a side view—to prove she was seven months along, she supposed. At forty and forty-three, the parents-to-be were a little older than she might have chosen, all things considered—but that was why they were using a law firm, and Meredith: no agency would approve them. They had money though, so why not use it to help out a troubled young woman and fulfill their single most important dream? Their compassion and their money meant this child would never suffer for her weakness.

She whispered to him, “Never.”

They’d told her to take her time deciding—at least a day or two after the birth, so she would be sure she was making the right choice for her, and them. But, having finally made her decision, she’d told Meredith she wanted to get it over with quickly. She was strong, but not that strong.

Soon the front door opened again. She could see Meredith shake out her umbrella then pull it inside and prop it by the door. Terrible weather for a first trip out into the world, but children were resilient, her grandmother had always said so.

Wiping her shoes, Meredith reached into her trench coat’s right pocket. She crossed the front room and came into the bedroom, saying, “Where do you want me to put this?”

The envelope was so fat that a rubber band had to bind it. All twenties? The baby pushed a foot against her ribs reflexively, same as he’d done for months, only on the inside.

She shook her head. “I told you: no money.”

“And I told you, you need it. Take it.” Meredith’s eyes were sympathetic. “Consider it payment for the hard work you just did for this family. Consider it a scholarship fund.”

“Take it,” Bat said.

She kissed the baby’s downy head, letting her lips linger as if to imprint herself on him. He wouldn’t remember her, not really. Thank God he wouldn’t. Except in some quiet piece of his soul, where he would know she loved him.

“Have them start a savings account, with the money.”

Meredith came over and squatted next to her. “He’ll have a savings account already. And everything else he needs. Don’t be foolish.”

“Too late.”

Meredith watched her for a moment, then sighed and put the money in her pocket. “We’ll talk about it again later. Let’s do the paperwork.”

She would not remember, in the years to come, much of what was on the forms she signed. She would remember instead the warm weight of the infant in the crook of her arm, the vision she conjured of the new parents’ joy when Meredith delivered the baby for the second time.

Meredith tucked the papers into a folder and set them aside. She asked Bat, “Do you want to go over the care instructions once more?”

“No, it’s cool, both of you can count on me.”

“All right then,” Meredith said, turning back to the girl. “Supplies are in the bag. I’ll check on you later tonight. Meanwhile, use cold packs for your breasts if needed, and Tylenol every four hours. You’ll be sore all over—”

“I know. Take him.”

Meredith reached for her free hand, held it while she said, “Now I know what you told me, and I know we’ve signed the forms, but until I leave you can still change your—”

“Take him.”

“All right then,” Meredith said, reaching for the child. “It’s a good decision. I want you to know that.”

She could only nod.

Empty. Her arms, her belly. Now, quickly, she had to empty her mind, too, or be destroyed. Teeth clenched, she watched Meredith diaper the infant, watched her wrap him in a heavier blanket and put a cap on his head, watched her put him to her shoulder, watched her grab the file and leave the room and grasp the front door’s knob. Meredith didn’t look back; she’d done this before.

The door closed, and it was over.