Darla had a low opinion of the home birth plan, observing that her own three days at the hospital following the birth of her daughter, Kimmie, six years earlier had been the only time she could remember when someone actually took care of her, as her husband, Bobby, definitely did not.
“Take advantage of the vacation,” she’d told Eleanor.
The snow kept falling. Even in the midst of her worry, there was no denying the beauty of what they saw out the window, and most of all its aftermath—the snowdrifts, like sheets draped over the furniture at some old English country estate, covering up the mess (rusting propane tanks, the busted washing machine discarded back in the spring) so all you could make out was a single expanse of white, vast and unbroken. On the last night of the storm, the snow had turned briefly to freezing rain, so when they woke up every branch and twig—also the electric wires to the house, and the clothesline, and the two mismatched socks still dangling from it—were encased in ice. The sun came out then, and for a few hours the sight of it all was so brilliant that when he went outside to shovel, Cam had to put on his sunglasses. He looked, that morning, like a movie star.
The world never looked more peaceful than it did right after snow fell. The only vehicles on the road were the creeping snowplows scraping the frozen dirt, but it would be hours before one of those reached their little farmhouse. For a few days, Eleanor occupied herself with baking—casseroles from her Tassajara cookbook, granola, whole wheat muffins that she wrapped in foil and stored in the freezer they’d bought with what was left of the advance from the last Bodie book. The pregnancy, and the worries about money, had left her with a fixation on storing food. (She left one muffin out of the batch for Cam, but took none for herself.)
“Take a picture,” she said to Cam, placing the stash in the one spot not yet filled with all the other foods she’d prepared, for their future. Better to see it all there, with the labels facing out, and the dates, than to actually consume any of what she’d set aside. The contents of that freezer were the closest they had to money in the bank. It occurred to her, as he took the picture that day, of her in his stretched-out hockey shirt—her amazing breasts, her belly presented to the camera like some prize she’d won at a fair—that this would be the only photograph she had of herself pregnant. Cam was never one for taking pictures. “I keep it all in my head,” he told her.
That afternoon—day nine since the snow had begun falling, almost nonstop—standing at the sink filling the teakettle, Eleanor felt a burst of warm water trickle down her leg.
“It’s going to happen today,” she said to Cam, dialing the midwife. Valerie lived half an hour’s drive away, but she had four-wheel drive, and the plow had finally made it down their driveway sometime in the early hours of morning. There was one good thing.
She put on her Doc Watson record.Shady grove, my little love, shady grove, my darling.Happy songs, mostly. This was not a Joni Mitchell moment, or one for Bob Dylan, either. She heated soup and set a bowl of bread dough next to the woodstove to rise. “By the time it’s baked there might be another person in this house,” she told Cam. Someone who didn’t enter through the door.
By midafternoon, the contractions were coming strong, the spaces between them shorter in duration. She called Valerie again.
Walt stopped by in his truck. She could hear him talking with Cam in the kitchen. “Back when Edith delivered Walt Junior and Cassie, they made the fathers sit outside in the waiting room,” he said. “Times sure have changed.”
“Or gone back to how it used to be,” Cam pointed out. Theirs was not the first baby born in this house.
“You got a point there,” Walt told him. “If it ain’t broken, why fix it?”
After Walt left, Cam’s friend Jeremy showed up with supplies—a box of Cocoa Puffs and his recycled copy of theSports Illustratedswimsuit issue for Cam, and a tie-dye T-shirt in size zero. From the bedroom, Eleanor could hear the two of them, her husband and his friend, whooping it up about the Celtics game—John Havlicek had just pulled off a miracle shot from mid-court—and the swimsuit model he found particularly hot. Jeremy had a bead on a car for them: a Plymouth Valiant, always a good bet. The car had twelve years on it, all but the last few months of them spent in the state of Georgia.
“This one’s a peach, buddy,” she heard Jeremy tell Cam. Slant-six engine. Push-button transmission.
Their neighbor Betsy stopped by with her daughter, Coco, in tow. “We thought you might like some banana bread,” Betsy said. “Coco made it herself.” Eleanor got up briefly to say hello, and because she thought the pain might not be so bad, standing up, but it was. Shetook in the sight of their neighbor’s little girl just for a moment, Cam, kneeling beside her so they were at eye level, explaining how burls formed on trees.
More contractions now. Sharper than before, and so close together that as soon as she caught her breath from one, another overtook her. Eleanor knelt on the floor, her cheek against the wood, remembering the nights she and Cam had made love in this spot.
Now came the strongest contraction yet. Eleanor pictured Valerie at the wheel of her four-wheel drive, making her way along the snowy roads toward the farmhouse.Come soon.
A sound came out of her then that she’d never heard before, the sound a person makes when she’s doing the hardest thing she ever attempted. From the living room came the roar of the fans, and Bob Cousy announcing some amazing play. She heard whooping from Jeremy in the living room; the Celtics must be winning.
Valerie arrived—door swinging open, door slamming shut, her daughter Asa in her sleeper suit, carrying the Fisher-Price farm set. Eleanor heard Valerie talking to Cam—“You won’t even know she’s here.” Then the sound of the faucet—Valerie washing her hands, laying out towels and a bowl of water, warming a stack of blankets on the woodstove, unpacking her roll of implements. Cam, back at Eleanor’s side, telling her she was doing great. Asa, in the corner, making animal noises.
Eleanor, in the brief calm between contractions, lay on the bed, legs apart, knees bent.
Valerie returned to the room and inspected her. “You’re almost there,” she said. “Eight centimeters.” She laid her towel out on the table by the bed and set out swabs, speculum, scissors. A pitcher of water. A bowl of ice cubes.
“It’s good to walk,” Valerie told Eleanor, but her body had started to tremble, in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room, which was plenty warm enough. That morning Cam had stoked their woodstove to the top and opened the dampers.
Another voice at the door. Darla’s. The sound boots make when you slap them against the side of the woodstove to knock the ice off.
It was dark out, a full-moon night. The moonlight came in thebedroom window, slashing across the blue double-wedding-ring quilt. From the kitchen, Asa was asking if they had any chocolate milk. Darla was talking to Cam, who had defrosted a steak when the contractions first started. Now he was setting it in the pan.
“I wasn’t sure my car would make it.” Darla was in the doorway now. “Thought you might like these.”
A bag of Florida oranges tumbled out on the bed and rolled onto the floor. From her spot at the foot of the bed (Eleanor breathing hard now, sweating), Darla dug into the peel of one with her thumbnail, and a spurt of orange sprayed into the air. Between breaths, Eleanor took in the scent like a meal.
From the kitchen, another smell, but this made her feel sick. The odor of meat. Cam’s steak, sizzling in the pan.
“Take it outside,” Eleanor said, between contractions. “I’m going to throw up.” A look came over Valerie’s face—impatience, irritation, the expression of a woman accustomed to the failures and disappointments provided by men. This was not the first time in her days as a midwife that a father had proved himself oblivious to the strains of his wife’s labor. Not the first time a sporting event provided the soundtrack to a child’s birth.
The contractions got stronger. Cam returned, taking his place on the bed next to Eleanor. From the living room, she could hear the sound of the basketball game.
Then no more words. Everything coming fast and faster. Cam was pulling Eleanor up on the pillows, bracing her back, Darla rubbing her shoulders. At the foot of the bed, with the reading lamp in position to illuminate the place where the baby would make its entrance, knelt the midwife.
