The Secrets of Midwives (3 page)

“I'm tired,” she said. “Can we talk more tomorrow?” Neva stood with some difficulty and peeled the damp shirt away from her skin. Immediately, it stuck again. “Dinner was great. I'll call you both tomorrow.”

“Wait!” I sprang to my feet. I didn't know what I'd say, but I knew I couldn't let her leave. “Aren't you … going to open your present?”

She paused in the archway leading to the hall. “Oh. Uh … yes. Sorry.”

I darted past her into the dining room and returned with the box, which I thrust at Neva. “You open it this time.” I held my hands up and away from the gift. “No interference from me. Promise.”

Cautiously she opened the box and tipped it up. The silver frame slid into her waiting hand.

The photo was an old one, taken when pictures were smaller and browner and rounder at the edges. Mom sat in her wicker garden chair on the piazza, her salt-and-pepper hair collected in a coil at her nape. In the foreground, I knelt with a four- or five-year old Neva in front of me. The hem of my skirt was pulled up and I was hiding behind it, while Neva—serious even as a child—gave her Gran an exasperated look. I'd stumbled over the picture in an album, and even though Neva said no presents, I thought she might make an exception.

A smile inched its way onto Neva's face. “Who took this?” she asked, staring at the picture.

“Probably your father. Do you like it?”

I watched her closely. Her eyes, I noticed, were dry but filled with emotion. Perhaps for once I'd gotten it right with my daughter?

“I love it, Grace,” she said, looking up. “And I'm sorry. I know this is a shock. I just need some time. Is that okay?”

What could I say? If she meant accepting that her baby didn't have a father, then, no, it wasn't okay. I'd never heard anything less okay in my whole life.

“Of course, darling,” I heard myself saying. “Whatever you need.”

*   *   *

I was pleased to see the bedroom light on when I turned into the driveway. I knew I'd never sleep if I couldn't debrief the night's events. I locked the front door behind me, slipped out of my shoes, and hurried to the bedroom. Just as I turned the door knob, the night-light went out.

“Honey?” I scurried into the dark room and turned on the lamp. “Wake up. You won't believe what has happened.”

Robert made a noise that sounded like “hmmm” but his eyes remained closed.

I jostled him. “Rob. I need to talk to you.”

He muttered something, which sounded like “talk in the morning,” and rolled over.

“Neva's pregnant,” I said finally.

There was a pause, then he rolled back, opened his eyes.

“Six months along,” I continued. “Mom and I only found out because she spilled water down the front of her blouse and there was no hiding it.”

I waited for Robert to snap to attention and beg for more information. Or at least display some overt signs of surprise. But in true Robert style, his movements were slow. Measured. Once, I had loved this about him. Now it made me want to punch him in the face.

“Who's the father?” he asked.

“There isn't one, she says.”

Despite my frustration, it gave me a certain satisfaction saying that. And even more when Robert sat up and reached for his glasses from the side table. Now I had his attention.

“What on earth do you mean?” he asked.

“I don't know what it means. But that's what Neva says. That there's no father.”

“As in, the virgin birth?”

“Who knows? Whatever it is, she's not talking. And the more I pressed her—”

“The more she clammed up, yes.” He sighed and thought. “Well, there's no point in speculating. I'll call her in the morning to get to the bottom of it.” He took off his glasses and returned them to the table. “Why don't you go to sleep, love?”

He shut off the light, leaving me in darkness. I resented his insinuation that one phone call from him would get all the answers we needed, even though a small part of me believed it was true. Neva often confided in her father, possibly just to irritate me. But whatever the reason, I hoped she did tell Robert. I needed to know who the father of that baby was. And the sooner, the better.

With nothing left to do, I stood, slipping out of my clothes and underwear. I was too pumped up to sleep. And experience told me that only one thing helped with pent-up energy at this time of night. I peeled back the covers and slipped into my husband's side of the bed. His skin was rough and warm and I shimmied against it.

“Grace,” he protested, but I silenced him with a kiss and rolled him onto his back.

“Just lie back.”

I followed the trail of salt-and-pepper hair south. He'd had a shower before bed, I could smell—and taste—the soap on his skin. It made me want him more. I needed intimacy. Needed someone to want me. It would be a tall order from my sleepy husband, but I had my ways of convincing him. I'd gotten as far as his navel when his hands curled over my shoulders.

“I have to work in the morning, Grace. And honestly, after the news you've given me, I'm a little distracted.” He tugged me upward and pressed my cheek to his chest. “Why don't you try to get some sleep? It's a full moon tonight—someone is bound to go into labor. You'll want to have had some rest before you get the call.”

His voice was controlled, completely uninfluenced by desire. The tone of a master to its dog.
No more catch tonight, Fido
. These dismissals had been happening more often lately. A sudden headache, an immediate steadying of his breathing when I came to bed. But this rejection was the most overt. How many times had I sat around at book club, listening to my friends complain that all their husbands thought about was sex, sex, sex? And, if they did submit, it was for three minutes of missionary, no foreplay, no fellatio. I was ready to give my husband the whole shebang and … was I that repulsive? Once, Robert had found me irresistible. We'd prided ourselves on being part of a couple who maintained their “spark.” What had happened to us?

I lay in his arms for as long as I could, probably no more than a minute, and then whispered, “I think I'll get some water.”

Robert didn't protest, nor did I expect him to. By the time I had slipped into my dressing gown he was snoring. In the kitchen, the reeds lashed against the house so loudly it sounded like the wind might lift our cottage right off the ground and toss it into Mackerel Cove. I sat in the blue chair with my sketchbook on my lap and face-planted into it.

What was going on with Neva? When it was all boiled down, there were only two possibilities: Neva didn't know who the father was, or she didn't want me to know. Whichever it was, there wasn't going to be a father in the picture for this baby. It was something my grandchild and I would have in common.

A tractor rolled onto my father while my mother was pregnant. I'd always thought that was a tragic, freak thing to happen, but Mom was pretty matter-of-fact about it. “It was the country,” she'd say. “Stuff like that happened.” Mom had done a good job of picking up the slack my father left behind—an exemplary job—but I always knew something was missing. I saw other children being carried by their fathers long after their mothers had lost the strength. Girls giving perfunctory, embarrassed pecks to their fathers' cheeks at the school gates. Kids asking for—and receiving—wads of notes from their father's wallets, together with a promise
not to tell your mother
. Endearments like “princess” and “honey.” Gestures and generosities somehow more special from a father than from a mother.

When I was eight I spent a week with my friend Phyllis at her grandmother's summer home. On the Saturday night, Phyllis's dad was instructed by her mother to “wear us out.” He bustled us onto the huge green lawn and asked us to line up. From the way Phyllis's sister and brother started to giggle, they'd clearly played this game before. I couldn't see a ball or a Frisbee, so when he said “Go!” I remained where I was, even after the others scampered off in different directions. A split second later, I was flying.

“Gotcha!” Phyllis's dad said, tossing me high into the air. His voice was animated. “That was too easy. What am I going to do with her, kids?”

Phyllis shouted out from the tree branch on which she sat with her sister. “Tickle her, Dad.” She laughed hysterically. “You have to tickle her.”

“Death by tickling, eh?” He pinned me to the grass and observed me with mock seriousness. “I'm not sure Grace is ticklish. Are you, Grace?”

“Yes,” I said, already feeling giddy. “I am.”

He waggled his fingers in the air, then brought them down on my stomach, my sides, my neck. Giggles rippled through me until my stomach ached and I thought I'd explode. I rolled around until my pajamas were covered in grass stains. I'd never experienced a greater feeling of content, not before or after.

Eventually he let me go and went after the others. They sprinted away squealing, climbing trees and tucking themselves into small cavities under the house. I didn't understand. Were they trying to avoid the tickling and the throwing? If it were my Dad, I would have just lain there, a sitting duck to his tickling hands.

No, Neva didn't realize what she was doing by keeping her baby's father a secret. She had a doting father. She'd had shoulder rides and tickling and nicknames. She would have a Papa for her children one day and, if she chose it, she would be walked down the aisle.

I knew what her baby would be missing out on. And I wasn't going to let it happen.

 

3

Floss

It was the same nightmare I'd had for sixty years. There were different versions, but they were fundamentally the same: I go into my baby's room or pick up my little girl from school and she's not there. Initially I stay calm; there must be some kind of explanation. She's rolled under the bed. She's hiding. It's someone else's turn to pick her up. But my neck already feels sweaty and I can't hear my thoughts too well past the sound of my thundering heart. It's not long before the hysteria starts. I start thrashing around the nursery or school parking lot, searching for a glimpse of that soft red hair or freckles. Instead I see another face. The face that is synonymous with the end of life as I know it. The end of life with my daughter.

I jerked upward into darkness, my fingers twisted in the bedcovers. Lil was by my side, her warm body a stark contrast to my chilling dream. I lay down again, mimicking her slow breaths—in out, in out—until my heart began to slow. It felt like déjà vu. The situations weren't exactly the same, but the similarities were striking. Neva was going to be a single mother. The father of her child remained under a shroud of secrecy. And if her reasons for this were anything like my own, well … that was what terrified me.

I needed to go to sleep. But when I closed my eyes, all I could see were gray clouds and seagulls. Wind tangling my hair and briny sea air in my lungs. It was 1954 and I was on my way to America. As I strolled the windblown deck, newborn Grace peeked out of my wool coat, perhaps wanting a glimpse of the new life we were about to start. I continued to stroll until, on the third trip around, she drifted off. I waited until I was sure she was completely out, then gingerly lowered myself onto a plastic seat.

“Do you mind if I have a look?”

A woman about my age hovered over me, tugging the hand of the young man beside her. She strained to see inside my coat. Grace's eyes flickered under her lids with new sleep, but seeing the woman's enthusiasm, my motherly pride rose up. I opened my coat an inch.

“Oh, Danny, look—it's so tiny! A boy or a girl?”

“A girl. Grace.”

“You lucky thing. We're desperate for a baby, aren't we, Danny? She's beautiful. How old?”

“Two weeks.”

“Two weeks? But … shouldn't you still be in hospital?”

I opened my mouth, releasing a cloud of smoggy air but no words.

“Well,” the woman said, “your husband must be taking very good care of you.”

Ah, my husband. There wasn't one of those, of course. But my mother, unable to completely turn her back on me, had prepared me with an answer to
that
question.

“Actually, my husband … passed away. He was a farmer. There was an accident.”

“Oh no.” The woman looked at her husband and then back at me. “You're raising the baby alone?”

“A lot of people have worse luck.”

Again, the woman turned to her husband. She just couldn't seem to get her head around it. Life—and love—had obviously been kind to her. “That's so sad. You're going to America alone?”

“No.” I smiled at the ginger-haired bundle in my arms. “I'm going with my daughter.”

*   *   *

At some point I must have drifted off. When I woke, it was with a flying start. It was going to be one of those nights. Jolting in and out of consciousness. Skating along that foggy line between reality and dream. Usually, when this happened, I'd take a book into the study—just because I was restless, didn't mean I had to disturb Lil. But tonight, I didn't get the choice. Because the phone was ringing.

I sat up and dropped my legs off the side of the bed. In the dark, I located the red numbers of the clock—1:03
A.M.
Grace.

Lil, ten years my junior and perpetually nervous of bad news coming at night, was already on her feet.

“I'll get it, Lil,” I said. “It'll be Grace.” I reached for my dressing gown on the bedpost, and by the time I'd reached the hall, Lil held the receiver to her ear.

“Hello?” she said. She nodded, then held the phone out to me. “Grace.”

“Thank you, dear. You go back to bed.”

I rubbed her arm as she horseshoed around me. Poor Lil. First she spent the evening huddled in our room reading a book—her choice, of course. But now her sleep was being interrupted. She was as sweet and tolerant as they came, but sometimes I wondered if Grace was wearing her thin.