Bygones (20 page)
“If it is, we’re going to be in trouble because we haven’t thought of a boys name yet. But if it’s a girl, it’ll be Natalie.”
The contractions came and went. It was hard for Bess to watch Lisa suffer. At
Jake Padgett arrived, straight from work, and Bess left the birthing room because it was getting too crowded. She returned at seven and watched two more contractions, before rubbing Mark’s shoulder and suggesting, “Why don’t you sit dawn awhile. I think I can do this.” Mark sank gratefully into a chair.
Bess took his place beside the bed. Lisa smiled weakly. Her hair was stringy, her face slightly puffy. “I guess Dad’s not coming.”
Bess took her hand. “I don’t know, sweetheart.”
From his chair Mark murmured sleepily, “I called his once a long time ago. They said they’d give him the message.”
Lisa said, “I want him here.”
“Yes, I know,” Bess whispered. “So do
I
”
It was true. While she had watched Lisa laboring she had wanted Michael beside her as strongly as ever in her life.
By
there’d been no change, and Lisa needed to rest. The anesthesiologist was called into administer an epidural, which would make Lisa unaware that she was having the contractions.
Mark napped. The
Padgetts
closed their eyes, in front of the TV, and Bess went out to find a pay phone to call Stella, who said she wouldn’t clutter up the proceedings, but wanted updates. Then Bess wandered into the solarium, a room with windows overlooking
,
Bess felt her eyes grow misty.
She’d been staring out the window a long time, weighted by the bittersweet tug of nostalgia, when someone touched her shoulder.
“Bess.”
She turned at the sound of Michael’s voice and felt an overwhelming sense of relief. “You’re here.” She stepped into his arms, and the pressure of his embrace was firm and reassuring.
“I’m sorry,” he said against her temple. “I just got the message. I got that mess straightened out down on
“That’s good.”
The strength of Bess’s embrace surprised him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, really.
I’m just so glad you’re here.”
Then she confessed, “I’ve been thinking about when the children were little. Oh, Michael, those were wonderful days, weren’t they?”
“Yes, they were.”
“And now Randy is out on the road somewhere, probably high on pot, and Lisa is in there going through all this.”
“That’s how it is, Bess. They grow up.”
“Oh, Michael . . . I don’t know what’s come over me tonight. I’m usually not so sentimental.”
She drew away self-consciously and dropped into a chair. “Did you stop by Lisa’s room?”
“Yes. The nurse explained they gave her something to help her rest for a little while.” He sat down in a chair beside Bess, found her hand, and held it. They thought about their time apart, their stubbornness, which had brought them both nothing but loneliness. Each of them felt grateful that some force outside themselves had thrust them back together.
They waited in the solarium, alternately dozing and waking. By two a.m. Lisa’s contractions were five minutes apart. The anesthesiologist cut the epidural, and the birthing roam came to life.
Those who wanted to witness the birth were asked to don sterile scrubs. A new nurse, Marcie Unger, stayed with Lisa every moment, and Mark held Lisa’s hand, guiding her through her breathing.
Jake Padgett decided to wait in the family lounge next door, but
Hildy
, Bess, and Michael went to put on the scrubs.
Michael’s mask billowed as he asked Bess, “How do you feel?”
“Scared.
How about you?”
“The same,” Michael replied.
“We’re just being typical parents. Everything will go fine.”
“If I don’t faint on the delivery-room floor,” Michael said.
When they entered the birthing room again, Lisa’s eyes were closed, and her face was glistening with sweat. She opened her eyes and found her father’s, above the blue mask. “Dad?” she said with a weak smile.
“Hi, honey.” He moved close to squeeze her hand. “I made it.” “And Mom,” she added in a whisper, finding her mother’s eyes. “You’re both here.” Bess and Michael exchanged glances that said,
This
is what she wanted.
The doctor swept in. “Well, how are things going, Lisa?” she asked. “Hello, Dr.
Lewis,” Lisa said without much enthusiasm.
“Let’s see if we can’t get this baby into the world and have a look at him. Things will happen pretty fast now.”
While the doctor was giving Lisa a monologue on what she was about to do, Bess whispered to Michael, “Are you all right?”
He nodded, but she could tell he was not. She felt Michael secretly groping for her hand in the folds of their scrubs, and she gripped his hand and squeezed it.
Lisa’s next pain made her cry out. Dr. Lewis said
, .
“Here it comes,” and all eyes were fixes upon Lisa’s body and the tiny head that emerged. One more push brought the full birth.
“It’s a gull” the doctor announced, catching the infant as it slipped forth.
Bess and Michael stared through their tears, wonderstruck.
Lisa smiled. Mark cried, “Yahoo”
Hildy
rubbed Mark’s back, then went out to tell Jake.
A nurse came immediately with a soft blue towel, scooped the infant into it, and laid her on Lisa’s stomach. The doctor clamped the cord in two places and handed a pair of scissors to Mark.
“Okay, Daddy,” she said. “You get to cut the cord.”
The baby was wriggling, testing out its arms in the confines of the towel. “Wow,” Lisa breathed.
“She’s really here.”
Natalie Padgett was then being passed around from hand to hand-to her father, her grandmother, her grandfather. She was about as pretty as a baby bird, still plastered with afterbirth, trying to keep her eyes open, while her fists remained tightly shut. Bess and Michael had one lavish minute with their grandchild before
Hildy
returned with Jake in tow and the birthing room became crowded. Bess and Michael left, repairing to the family lounge. There, all alone, they turned to each other, pulled down their masks, and embraced, wordless for a long time, the birth they had just witnessed melding with the birth of Lisa in their memories. When Michael spoke, his voice was gruff with emotion. “I never thought I’d feel like this . . . . Complete.”
“Yes, that’s it, isn’t it?”
“A part of us, coming into the world again.
It does something to you, doesn’t it, Bess?”
It did. It brought a lump to her throat and a yearning to her heart as she stood in Michael’s arms, disinclined to ever leave him again. Then Michael asked, against her hair, “Tired?”
“Yes.
You?”
“Exhausted.
Well, I guess there’s no reason for us to stay. Let’s go see the baby once more, and say gad-bye to Lisa.”
In the room next door, the new parents, radiant with love and happiness, created a heartwarming tableau with their clean,
redfaced
infant between them, wrapped now in a pink blanket. Bess and Michael congratulated and hugged them, promising to return in the afternoon. Then they left the hospital together.
Outside, it was nearly dawn. The parking lot was almost empty. As they approached Bess’s car Michael took her hand. “Do you have to work today?” “I think I’ll let Heather handle it alone. I’ll probably sleep for a few hours, then come back to see Lisa and the baby again.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
There seemed little else to say. It was time to part, but they stood in the parking lot holding hands until it made no sense anymore. One of them had to move.
“Well. . .” she said. “See
ya
.”
“Yeah,” he repeated. “See
ya
.”
Bess pulled free, as if against her will, and got into her car. He stepped back as it began to roll, and remained behind feeling empty and lost as he watched her drive away.
When she was gone, he sighed deeply and tried to gulp down the lump in his throat. He went to his car, thinking.
Thinking.
About himself, his future, and how empty it would remain without Bess.
It began deep down within him, a bubbling rebellion that said, Why? Why must it be that way?
We’ve both changed. We both love each other.
We both want this family back together. What are we waiting for?
He started his engine and tore out of the parking lot on Bess’s trail, doing a good fifteen miles above the speed limit. At the house, he screeched to a halt and opened the car door even before the engine stopped running. He jogged up to the front door and thumped on it several times, then stood waiting with one hand braced on the doorframe.
Bess answered the door. “Michael, what’s wrong?”
He burst inside, slammed the door, and scooped her into his arms. “You know what’s wrong, Bess. You and me, living separately, being divorced when we love each other the way we do. That’s no way for us to act-not when we could be together and happy. I want that. . . . I want that so much.” He interrupted himself to kiss her, to hold her to his breast. “I want Lisa and Mark to bring that baby to our house, the two of us waiting with outstretched arms, and all of us together on Christmas mornings after Santa Claus comes. And I want us to try to make up for what we did to Randy.”
He drew back, holding her face in both hands, pleading, “Please, Bess, marry me again. I love you. We’ll try harder this time, and we’ll compromise-for both us and the kids. Can’t you see? Lisa was right. This is the way it should be I”
She was crying long before he finished.
“Oh, Michael, yes.
I love you too, and I want all those things, and I don’t know what’s going to become of Randy, but we’ve got to try. He needs us so much.”
They kissed the way they’d wanted to in the hospital
comparking
lot, sealed together full length, earnest with passion.
“Let’s get married right away.
As soon as possible.”
Bess smiled through her tears.
“All right.
Whatever you say.”
“And we’ll tell the kids today.”
“Lisa will be doing cartwheels,” Bess said.
“I feel like I could do a few
myself
.”
“You do? I’m falling off my feet.”
“On second thought, so am I” He caught her hands and stepped back. “I’ll see you at the hospital later. Walk me to my car?”
She walked outside with him, holding his hand. The scent of heavy summer was rising from the warming earth.
At his car Michael got in and rolled down the window. “I really think we can make it this time.”
“So do
I
.”
Chapter Sixteen
The band quit playing at
It took them one hour to load up, and over five hours to drive back from
Bemidji
. Randy got home at
to find his mother asleep and a note on his bed: Lisa had a girl, Natalie, 9 lbs., 12 oz., at five this morning. Everybody’s doing fine. I’m not going into the store, but hope to see you at the hospital later.
hove
, Mom But the way it worked out, he was unable to make it to the hospital that afternoon. He was still asleep when his mother got up, and she was gone by the time he rose, groggy, to get to his
gig, at the
White Bear Lake
festival.
At the festival there would be parades and bingo, contests and street dances.
White Bear Lake
had a pretty little downtown with brick sidewalks and fancy, old-fashioned storefronts. Now the en tire length of the main street was barricaded off, and a bandstand set up at the south end. A crowd was beginning to gather.
While the rest of the band was setting up, Randy stacked a pair of drums and lifted them from the rear of the van. He turned to find a boy watching him.
The kid was perhaps twelve years old, and his hair was jelled up into a flattop.
“Hey, you play those things?” the kid asked in a cocky voice.
“Yup.”
Randy took the load up the back steps onto the stage. The boy was still there when he returned.
“I play drums, too-in the band at school.
Ain’t
got any of my own yet.
But I will have someday, though. And then look out.”