On Christmas morning they opened their presents—most of Ian’s and Rita’s relating to babies—and then cleared away the gift wrap and started getting ready for the dinner guests. Rita directed from an armchair Ian had dragged into the dining room, except that she kept jumping up to do things herself. Finally Agatha put Stuart in charge of diverting her. “Show her your card tricks, Stu,” she said. “Oh, please, no,” Rita groaned. Ian and his father fitted all the leaves into the table, and the women added last-minute touches to the dishes Rita had prepared. Everyone was entranced to find nothing but hors d’oeuvres. “Look! Artichokes,” Doug pointed out. “Look at this, kids, my favorite: Chesapeake crab spread. It’s just like the old days.” Rita beamed. Stuart told her, “Pick a card. Any card. Come on, Rita, pay attention.”
The current foreigners’ names were Manny, Mike, and Buck. They were the first to arrive—they always showed up on the dot, not familiar with Baltimore ways—and Mrs. Jordan followed, bearing one of her sumptuous black fruitcakes with the frosting you had to crack through with a chisel. Then Bobbeen appeared
with an old-fashioned crank-style ice cream freezer, fully loaded and ready for the ice, and last came Curt, looking as if he’d just that minute rolled out of bed. Those who were guests had to have the hors d’oeuvres explained for them—all but Mrs. Jordan, of course, who’d been through this year after year. Mrs. Jordan said, “Why, you’ve even made Bee’s hearts-of-palm dish!” And later, once they’d taken their seats and Doug had offered the blessing, she said, “Rita, if Ian’s mother could see what you’ve done here she would be so pleased.”
“Remember the first time we tasted hearts of palm?” Agatha asked Thomas.
“Was that when we had the flu?”
“No, no, this was before. You were really little, and Daphne was just a baby. I don’t think she got to try them. But you and I were crazy about them; we polished off the platter. It wasn’t till five or six years later we had that flu.”
“Ugh! Worst flu of my life,” Thomas said.
“Mine too. I couldn’t eat a bite for days. But finally I called out, ‘Ian, I’m hungry!’ Remember, Ian? You were flat on your back—”
“
I
was sick?” Ian asked.
“Everyone was, even Grandma and Grandpa. You said, ‘Hungry for what?’ And I thought and thought, and the only thing that came to me was hearts of palm.”
“So then we all wanted hearts of palm,” Thomas told him. “They just sounded so
good
, even though I’d forgotten them and Daphne’d never had them. We said, ‘Please, Ian, won’t you please bring us hearts of—’ ”
“I don’t remember this,” Ian said.
“So you got up and tottered downstairs, holding onto the banister—”
“Put your coat on over your pajamas, stepped into somebody’s boots—”
“Drove all the way to the grocery store and brought back hearts of palm.”
“I don’t remember any of it,” Ian said.
They regarded him fondly—all but the foreigners, who were giving the hors d’oeuvres their single-minded attention. “My hero!” Rita told him.
“I said, ‘Ian, thank you,’ ” Agatha went on, “and you said, ‘Thank
you
. Until you mentioned them,’ you said, ‘I didn’t realize that’s what I’d been wanting all along myself.’ ”
Stuart said, “Maybe they contained some trace element your bodies knew they needed.”
“Well, whatever,” Curt said, “these here taste mighty good. You should go into the catering business, Rita.”
“Oh, I believe I’ve got enough to do for the next little bit,” she told him. And she patted her abdomen, which Ian’s borrowed shirt could barely cover.
Daphne said, “Have you heard? After this baby’s born, Rita and I are planning to be partners. Half the time I’ll do clutter counseling while she stays home with the baby, half the time I’ll stay with the baby while
she
does clutter counseling.”
Ian raised his eyebrows. He knew Rita had been considering various strategies, but she hadn’t mentioned Daphne. He said, “What about Trips Unlimited?”
“That’s not really working out,” Daphne told him. “It’s too personal.”
“A travel agency is personal?”
“Mr. X and Mrs. Y book two flights to Paris and one hotel room, say, and I can’t let on I’ve noticed. Or they cheat on their expense accounts with first-class reservations to—”
No one suggested that this new job would surely be even more personal—that she seemed to
search out
the personal. Finally Curt said, “Well, if you ever get tired
of clutter counseling you could always become a scribe.”
“Scribe?” Daphne asked, perking up.
“You could rent a stall at Harborplace and offer to write people’s letters for them.”
Daphne looked perplexed. The only person who laughed was Ian.
There was a little wait before dessert because they had to freeze the ice cream. Bobbeen said, “You realize we don’t have a single child here? No one begging to turn the crank for us.” But the foreigners, it emerged, would love to turn the crank. They rushed off to the kitchen while Daphne and Agatha cleared the table. Rita stayed seated at Ian’s left, debating baby names with Mrs. Jordan. Curt was attempting to break into the fruitcake, and Thomas was telling his grandfather about his latest computer game. The idea was, he said, to show how dislodging one historical event could dislodge a hundred others, even those that seemed unrelated. “Take slavery,” he said. “Students would tell the computer that the U.S. has never had slavery, and then they would name some later event. The computer goes, ‘Beep!’ and a message flashes up on the screen:
Null and void.
”
“But why would that be any fun?” Doug asked.
“Well, it’s not supposed to be fun so much as educational.”
“I wonder whatever became of Monopoly,” Doug said wistfully.
Rita took Ian’s hand and placed it palm-down on a spot just beneath her left breast. “Feel,” she whispered. A round, blunt knob—a knee or foot or elbow—slid beneath his fingers. It always unnerved him when that happened.
Last week he had signed the papers for Rita’s hospital stay. She’d be in just overnight, if everything went as it
should. On the first day he was liable for one dependent and on the second, for two. Two? Then he realized: the baby. One person checks in; two check out. It seemed like sleight of hand. He had never noticed before what a truly astonishing arrangement this was.
“So I took a shortcut through a side street,” Daphne told him, “or really more of an alley, and it was starting to get dark and I heard these footsteps coming up behind me. Pad-pad, pad-pad: gym-shoe footsteps. Rubber soles. I started walking faster. The footsteps walked faster too. I dug my hand in my bag and pulled out that siren you gave me. Remember that key chain with the siren on it you gave me one Christmas?”
They were heading down to the shop together to bring home the cradle. Ian was driving Rita’s pickup, which had a balky gear shift that was annoying him to no end. When the light turned green he had to struggle to get it into first. He said, “Very smart, Daphne. How many times have I warned you not to walk alone at night?”
“I spun around and I pressed the button. The siren went
wow! wow! wow!
and this person just about fell on top of me—this young, stalky black boy wearing great huge enormous white basketball shoes. He was shocked, you could tell. He backed off and sort of goggled at me. He said, ‘What the hell, man? You know? What the hell?’ And I was standing in front of him with my mouth wide open because I realized I had no idea how to switch the fool thing off. There we were, just looking at each other, and the siren going
wow! wow!
until bit by bit I started giggling. And then finally he kind of like shook his head and stepped around me. So I threw the siren over a fence and walked on, only making sure not to follow him too
closely, and way far behind I could still hear
wow, wow, wow
…”
“You think it’s all a big joke, don’t you,” Ian said, turning down Chalmer.
“Well, it was, in a way. I mean I wouldn’t have been surprised if that boy had said, ‘Oh, man, that uncle of yours,’ while he was shaking his head. Like we were the old ones and you were the young one. You were the greenhorn.”
“At least I won’t end up dead in some alley,” Ian told her. “What were you doing in that part of town? How come you’re always cruising strange neighborhoods?”
“I like newness,” Daphne said.
He parked in front of the wood shop.
“I like for things not to be too familiar. I like to go on first dates; I like it when a guy takes me someplace I’ve never been before, some restaurant or bar, and the waitress calls him by name and the bartender kids him but I’m the stranger, just looking around all interested at this whole new world that’s so unknown and untried.”
They got out of the truck. (Ian didn’t ask how come she still lived in Baltimore, in that case. He was very happy she lived in Baltimore.) He walked around to the rear end to lower the tailgate, and he reached in for the folded blanket he’d brought and spread it across the floorboards.
“If I were a man I’d call up a different woman every night,” Daphne said, following him. “I’d like that little thrill of not knowing if she would go out with me.”
“Easy for
you
to say,” Ian told her.
He didn’t have to use his key to get into the shop, which meant Mr. Brant must be working on a weekend again. He ushered Daphne inside and led the way across the dusty linoleum floor, passing a half-assembled desk
and the carcass of an armoire. Through the office doorway he glimpsed Mr. Brant bending over the drafting table, and he stepped extra heavily so as to make his presence felt. Mr. Brant raised his head but merely nodded, deadpan.
When they reached the corner that was Ian’s work space, he came to a stop. He gestured toward the cradle—straight-edged and shining. “Well?” he said. “What do you think?”
“Oh, Ian, it’s beautiful! Rita’s going to love it.”
“Well, I hope so,” he said. He bent to lift it. The honey smell of Wood-Witch paste wax drifted toward him. “You take the other end. Be careful getting it past that desk; I spent a long time on the finish.”
They started back through the shop, bearing the cradle between them. Mr. Brant came to the office doorway to watch, but Daphne didn’t even glance in his direction. She was still talking about newness. “I’d call some woman I’d just seen across a room or something,” she said. “I would
not
say, ‘You don’t know me, but—’ That’s such an obvious remark. Why would she need to be informed she doesn’t know you, for goodness’ sake?”
All at once it seemed time slipped, or jerked, or fell away beneath Ian’s feet. He was fifteen years old and he was rehearsing to ask Cicely Brown to the Freshman Dance. Over and over again he dialed the special number that made his own telephone ring, and Danny picked up the receiver in the kitchen and pretended to be Cicely’s mother. “
Yell
-ow,” he answered in fulsome, golden tones, and then he’d call, “Cicely, dahling!” and switch to his Cicely voice, squeaky and mincing and cracked across the high notes. “Hello? Oooh! Ian-baby!” By that stage Ian was usually helpless with laughter. But Danny waited tolerantly, and then he led Ian through
each step of the conversation. He told Ian it was good to hear from him. He asked how he’d done on the history test. He spent several minutes on the he-said-she-said girls always seemed to think was so important, although in this case it was, “He said mumble-grumble and she said yattata-yattata.” Then he left a conspicuous space for Ian to state his business, after which he told him, why, of course; you bet; he’d be thrilled to go to the dance.
Daphne said, “Ian?”
He balanced his end of the cradle on one knee and turned away, blotting his eyes with his jacket sleeve. When he turned back he found Mr. Brant next to him. “Hot,” Ian explained. It was January, and cold enough in the shop to see your breath, but Mr. Brant nodded as if he knew all about it and opened the front door for him. Ian and Daphne carried the cradle on out.
Rita started labor in the middle of a working day. Envisioning this moment earlier, Ian had expected it to be nighttime—Rita nudging him awake the way women did on TV—but it was a sunny afternoon in late February when Doreen came to the office door and said, “Ian! Rita’s on the phone.” The other men glanced up. “Sure you don’t want to change your mind, now,” one said, grinning. They’d acted much less guarded around him since the news of the baby.
On the phone Rita said she was fine, pains coming every five minutes, no reason to leave the shop yet unless he wanted. By the time he reached home, though (for of course he came immediately), things had speeded up and she said maybe they should think about getting to the hospital. She was striding back and forth in the living room, wearing her usual outfit of leather boots and maternity jeans and one of his
chambray shirts. His father paced alongside her, all but wringing his hands. “I’ve
never
liked this stage, never liked it,” he told Ian. “Shouldn’t we make her sit down?”
“I’m more comfortable walking,” Rita said.
For the last two weeks she had been allowed on her feet again, and Ian often felt she was making up for lost time.
It was the mildest February ever recorded—not even cool enough for a sweater—and Rita looked surprised when Ian wanted to bring her coat to the hospital. “You don’t know what the weather will be like when you come home,” he told her.
She said, “Ian. I’m coming home
tomorrow.
”
“Oh, yes.”
He seemed to be preparing for a moment far in the future. It was unthinkable that in twenty-four hours they’d be back in this house with a child.
At the hospital they whisked her away while he dealt with Admissions, and by the time they allowed him in the labor room she had turned into a patient. She lay in bed in a coarse white gown, her forehead beaded with sweat. Every two minutes or so her face seemed to flatten. “Are you all right?” he kept asking. “Should I be doing anything?”
“I’m fine,” she said. Her lips were so dry they looked gathered. The nurse had instructed him to feed her chips of ice from a plastic bowl on the nightstand, but when he offered her one she turned her head away fretfully.