Promise Me A Rainbow (24 page)

“It won’t be much longer, Sasha. Now breathe like you’re supposed to—pant like a dog pants.”

Sasha gave a weak effort, and Clarkson came back in with a nurse Catherine hadn’t seen before.

“One more time, Sasha,” he said, but Sasha was past caring about another vaginal exam. Tears rolled out of the corners of her eyes and down her cheeks.

“Okay, boys,” Clarkson said at the end of his examination. “We’ve got to go. Unhook our Sasha so we can roll. Where’s Grandmamma?”

“She’s changing her clothes,” Catherine said.

“Well, she’d better get on the stick. We got to get this show on the road.”

He helped pull the bed out into the hall. “There she is,” he said as they moved the bed in a wide turn to go toward the delivery rooms. “Let’s go, Grandmamma!” he called, but he didn’t wait for her. He rolled the bed forward, leaving her to hustle along after them as best she could.

“Nice outfit,” he said to her when she caught up.

“You, too,” Grandmamma said stonily, neither of them cracking a smile.

“Don’t you think so, Catherine?” Clarkson asked innocently.

Catherine frowned because Grandmamma still had on her gray felt pillbox hat and her huge black purse was under her arm. She hadn’t bothered with the cap to cover her hair.

Catherine gave him a hard look. “Yes,” she said pointedly. She was worried about Sasha and her baby, and she had no patience for his cuteness.

“When’s Treasure going to get here, Ms. Holben?” Sasha asked as they rolled her down the hall.

“It won’t be long now. She’ll be here soon,” Catherine said.

“What makes you two so sure we’re having a baby girl? I didn’t see a sonogram on the chart,” the nurse said as they pushed Sasha’s bed through the double doors that led to the suite of delivery rooms.

“Grandmamma said,” Catherine answered.

The nurse rolled her eyes and mouthed a silent
oh
, as if that were a good enough reason for her, too.

“Hold it, Clarkson! I need to talk to you!” another nurse yelled as they made the turn to take Sasha into the delivery room.

“Not now, Beck—”

“Now, Clarkson!”

“Becky, I am busy here—”

“Some of you are not properly attired, Clarkson!” the nurse said pointedly, clearly referring to a certain huge black purse and a gray felt hat.

“I know that, Becky,” he said back, and he didn’t stop. “If you don’t like it,
you
handle it.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Becky said as he pulled Sasha’s bed the rest of the way in.

“Don’t forget Buddha!” he called to her.

“I’ll Buddha you!”

“Anytime you say, Becky!”

“You’ve got some explaining to do, Clarkson!”

“Right! Sasha, sweetie, move over there on the table . . .”

“I can’t!” Sasha wailed. The room was bright and cold, and Sasha began to shiver.

“Yes, you can, because kindly old Dr. Clarkson’s going to lift you. You ready?”

“Oh! I can’t do that!”

“Come on, Sasha, just a little bit more. Atta, girl! See there? You did it good. Now, Miss Catherine’s going to stand right here so she can lift you up when I need her to do that. And Grandmamma’s going to stand over there so she can help. Let’s get the kid a blanket.”

The nurse was already there with the heated blanket, and Clarkson nodded his approval.

“Okay, ready, team? Where’s my gown?”

“Where it always is,” the nurse said.

“Well, damn, so it is!”

Clarkson began putting on the sterile gown and gloves. “Where’s my pediatrician? You got my pediatrician coming?”

“He’s on his way.”

“Who is it?”

“Merchinson.”

“You tell him thirty-two, thirty-three weeks gestation?”

“I told him everything you said—word for word.”

“You tell him if I ain’t going sailing, he ain’t going sailing, either?”

“That, too.”

Clarkson chuckled happily. “Okay, boys. Catherine, move those stirrups in a little, will you? Sasha, you’re just about too little for this table. What’s her BP?”

“Up,” the nurse said, writing it down on Sasha’s record for Clarkson to see.

“My stomach’s
hurting
again, Ms. Holben! It’s not stopping!” Sasha cried, and Catherine took her hands. Grandmamma stroked Sasha’s brow and began to hum a song, something Catherine recognized vaguely from her childhood.

Not a child’s song, she suddenly realized, but an old hymn, one her own grandmother used to sing when one of the grandchildren needed soothing. For a moment Catherine was there again, back home, a child sitting on her grandmother’s lap on a rocking chair on the back porch and listening to that song—“Rock of Ages.”

Sasha closed her eyes, her contractions coming harder and closer together. She clung desperately to Catherine’s hands. The pediatrician arrived. “How’s it going?” he asked as he put on a gown.

“Won’t be long now,” Clarkson told him. “Let’s have the lights down.”

Catherine talked to Sasha quietly, and Grandmamma sang. Treasure Higgins was born at thirteen minutes after two.

“Baby girl, Sasha,” Clarkson said. He cut the cord quickly and handed the baby to the pediatrician.

“I want to see,” Sasha said, straining forward. “I want to see Treasure.”

“In a minute,” Clarkson said. He concentrated on delivering the placenta, his gaze meeting Catherine’s once and shifting away.

“Yo, Merchinson!” he said after a few minutes of silence. “How’s it going?”

Merchinson worked over the baby in the far corner, his back to everyone else, the attending nurse at his shoulder pulling a light around so he could see. Catherine kept listening for some sound besides suctioning. She could hear Merchinson talking to himself, check-listing out loud, the way some doctors did to calm themselves when the situation was out of hand.

“Move my light around a little, Catherine,” Clarkson said, his worried eyes belying his usual silliness. “Merch?” he prompted. “What’s happening?”

“She’s not picking up,” Merchinson said.

It was good advice, but it wasn’t working.

She sighed heavily, and she could feel the taxi driver looking at her in the rearview mirror, trying to assess her condition. Sick? Distraught? Drunk?

None of the above
, she nearly said.
I’m quite fine. Really
. She was fine—because she had no alternative.

She paid the cabbie too much money. The lamp in the Mayfair foyer hadn’t been turned on. She walked carefully into the dimness of the downstairs. She could immediately smell the aromas of evening meals in the building—coffee, onions frying somewhere, baking bread. Her stomach rumbled. She was hungry. And she was too tired to eat.

She didn’t bother to turn the foyer lamp on, and she climbed the stairs slowly, quietly, because she didn’t want to have to deal with any of Mrs. Donovan’s questions. Halfway up the first flight she could smell the pungent sweetness of a newly lit Lucky Strike. Mrs. Donovan was too busy conjuring to bother with the foyer lamp.

She let herself into her apartment, turning lights on as she went because she didn’t want to be in the dark. She sat down heavily on the couch, letting her head rest against the back, her eyes closed. Her throat ached and her eyes burned with the need to weep, and yet she had no tears. Sasha had cried enough for the both of them.

But she was too restless to sit. She didn’t want to be home after all. If she had a car, she’d go somewhere—to the beach, rain or no rain. She’d walk from Johnnie Mercer’s pier north toward the D’Amaro Brothers’ building site, and she’d feel the wind and the rain and listen to the rough sea, and she’d be afraid all the way. But when she came back again, she’d feel better. She’d be glad she was alive and—

She abruptly got up from the couch and walked to the front windows to look down on the rain-wet street below. She could see her own reflection in the dark glass of the window, and she turned away from it. It made things worse somehow, seeing herself. Her gaze went to the gnome sculpture on the small table by the couch. She went to pick it up, holding it a moment, staring into Daisy’s gently smiling face before she set it down again.

Hold on to your baby, Daisy.

She went into the small bathroom, discarding clothes along the way. She showered and washed her hair to get rid of the hospital smell, and she got dressed again because she still wanted to go out somewhere—a walk around the block, anything, anything.

She looked around sharply at a knock on the door. Mrs. Donovan, probably, finished with her nostalgia rituals and ready for inquiries about things that were none of her business. Or if not her, one of the other tenants, who was equally as curious. It had done her no good to creep up the stairs like an errant child after all, and the last thing she needed was an interrogation about her whereabouts today. She stood quietly, waiting for whoever it was to leave.

“Catherine?” someone called through the door.

Joe.

She crossed the room quickly. She was glad he was here. She wanted to smile, but she couldn’t. Her eyes were burning again, and when she opened the door she had to fight down yet another ridiculous notion—one to reach for him so that he could hold her and tell her everything was going to be all right.

But she didn’t reach for him. No one could comfort her—not Joe D’Amaro, not even Jonathan. She knew what Jonathan would say, his words kind but still cutting like a knife.
Poor Katie. Burned out again?

Joe was wearing that look of his—Joe D’Amaro disgruntled—that was no better than Jonathan’s flippant dismissal would have been.

I don’t need this
! she thought.

“Hi,” she said anyway, standing back so that he could come in.

He didn’t move. He stood in the hall with his hands on his hips. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and tie. He had on his usual jeans and plaid shirt. This shirt was blue and white and beige. She had the idea that because he was wearing this particular shirt, his eyes would look very blue—if she could have seen them in the dim hall light.

The door behind him cracked open slightly.

“That’s it?” he asked. “Hi?”

She threw up her hands in exasperation. “I give up, Joe. What is it I’m supposed to say?”

“You could say where the hell you’ve been, for one thing. I think you at least owe me that. I have called you. I have been by here three times, and I can tell you right now, Catherine, I’m getting damn tired of showing the old lady downstairs my driver’s license!”

“I don’t—”

“Were we or weren’t we supposed to go out this afternoon,” he interrupted loudly.

“Yes!”

“You’re damned right we were. But you weren’t here, were you? Okay, I thought, she’s stood you up. Except I don’t think you’d do that, and don’t ask me why,” he said, pointing his finger at her. “I don’t know where you are. Nobody here knows where you are. I don’t know if something’s happened to you, so I get to worry all damn afternoon! And why the hell should I care anyway? I’ve got better things to do!”