“Anyone special?” Caroline asked.
“No, definitely not.”
“You’ll meet someone soon enough,” she said in a soothing way, “don’t worry.”
“Oh, I’m not worried,” I said. “I’m not really looking for someone special.”
Caroline raised her eyebrows. “How did you get your cheeks to look like that?” she asked me. “Makeup?”
“No,” I said. “Not makeup.”
“And your eyes look different, too.”
“I’ve lost weight, Caroline. Almost fifty pounds”
“Oh.” Caroline gazed at me, standing in the overgrown yard of this dirty, disappointing house, and I saw on her face a jealousy so pure it took my breath away. By the time Caroline was my age, she’d already had three children and been married to Nathan for eight years.
“Let me take the cats, Caroline,” I said. “You’ve got enough to deal with.”
“No,” she said. “I’ll take them.”
I saw my sister struggle, the rubbing together of two versions of herself. The first was Caroline the mother, the nurturer, a woman who wanted the kittens to live, who cared for her family and bestowed emergency hugs and made pancakes from scratch, who was worried about Joe and wondered why he did the things he did, who was trying to protect him. But the other Caroline was worn out. She wanted to get rid of the kittens; she wanted Nathan to make the pancakes for once; she wanted nothing more than to sleep a full night in a hotel bed covered with sheets that someone else had washed. She wanted Joe to take care of himself. Why should she take care of everyone? When had she signed up for that? It seemed that every year her scope of concern grew wider and more unmanageable. Preschool, elementary school, home school, the new towns, the new mothers’ groups, Nathan’s new colleagues, Nathan’s new class schedule. No. Enough was enough. Caroline needed to draw a line or she might explode. She might lie down beside the mother cat and its dozen dozing kittens and never get up again.
* * *
After Nathan heard Caroline’s calls, after he found her lying on the grass, curled around her stomach as though it were something she was holding rather than something that was part of her, after the paramedics arrived (faster than Nathan thought possible), after the blessedly calm ER nurse told Nathan that the baby was coming now, he’s crowning now, Mr. Duffy, Caroline Skinner Duffy screamed a great loud “Fuck!” and pushed baby Louis into the world. He was messy and bloody, purple, crying his head off, with a mop of dark curly hair and a nose the size of a pencil eraser. Caroline held her son to her chest and began to cry, because she knew with absolute clarity that she had been waiting her whole life to meet this boy. Every minute had been leading her to this one now, minute falling into minute, pushing her forward, and thank goodness. Thank God (although Caroline had never before believed in God) she had done everything just as she’d done it so that she might be sitting here now in this achingly bright room, surrounded by these two miraculous women wearing yellow scrubs and rubber shoes that made the smallest, most pleasing squeaks as they moved around the bed, and in her arms holding this tiny, perfect body.
With her thumb Caroline rubbed a bit of blood off her son’s cheek. His eyes were the darkest blue, almost black, and he gazed at her with a seriousness that seemed nearly wise. But how? Caroline thought. How could he already be wise?
“Look at him.” Nathan’s voice at her shoulder so startled Caroline that she almost released her grip on Louis. She had forgotten that Nathan was here, too.
“Oh, Nathan,” Caroline said. “Look at him!”
“He’s amazing.”
Caroline did not even nod, the statement being so self-evident. Together they watched Louis breathe.
Then one of the miraculous women told them that she needed to take Louis away for respiratory tests and monitoring because his Apgar score was low. “You can visit him in a few hours,” the nurse said, and gently removed Louis from Caroline’s grip. As the nurse wrapped him efficiently in a yellow flannel blanket printed with small blue elephants, Caroline began to weep. Nathan took her hand, but he too was crying, and they gripped each other with a desperate strength as their son was carried from the room.
Twenty-four hours later, Caroline opened her eyes in her hospital room that was painted the same chalky pink as calamine lotion. Baby Louis, swaddled up tight as a sausage, was asleep beside her in a rolling cot. He had been discharged already from the NICU; in two days they would both be going home.
Sitting in a chair beside the cot was Renee.
“Renee!” Caroline said.
“Congratulations sleepyhead,” said Renee. “I finished my board exams and thought I’d come see you.”
Maybe it was the post-delivery drugs or her general state of sleepiness or the new-mother hormones, but Caroline had never before been happier to see another human being.
“I’m so glad you came!” she said. “I’m really touched.”
“Of course I came. Noni was worried about you.”
“When does she get here?”
“Oh— Well, she had to work. She’ll come down next week. Nathan told her that would give you guys a chance to settle in first.”
Caroline wondered when this conversation had taken place and why Noni hadn’t come immediately. If a first grandchild didn’t merit a day off work, then what did? And what time was it? What day was it?
It was then that Renee smiled and laughed. “How lucky that Louis came when he did,” she said.
“Lucky? But he was too early,” said Caroline, confused.
“I mean on the same day as Joe’s trouble with the college. Noni was so distracted. I don’t think I could have gotten away with it otherwise. She’d still be asking questions and wanting to talk to the coach. Now she’s buying onesies. It worked out perfectly.”
“Oh, of course,” Caroline said; now she understood. “Joe. Perfect timing.”
Renee peered into Louis’s cot. “He’s cute,” she said without touching him, and then she sat back down in the chair.
They talked for a bit longer, though later Caroline would not be able to recall the details of the conversation. Undoubtedly they talked about Joe. Probably the delivery, the ER doctor, burping, diapers.
What Caroline would remember was that after Renee left, she closed her eyes and she thought about Joe and about baby Louis. She thought about Noni, her sisters, how we were raised, who we’d all become, and Caroline decided then that everything she knew about parenting was misconceived. That she and Nathan would start fresh. The past didn’t matter, it didn’t, as long as you were aware of its reach. If you possessed that self-knowledge, you would not fall down the same holes. That day in the hospital, alone with her newborn son, Caroline promised him that she would be a better mother than the one she’d had. And it would be this imperative, flawed and guilt-ridden and imbued with Caroline’s own sense of personal history, that would propel my sister through the next fifteen years of her life. Only after Joe’s accident would she realize the futility of her mission. Better was largely irrelevant when it came to mothering because the entire enterprise relied on the presumption that one day, sooner than you thought, your child would become an entirely self-reliant, independent person who made her own decisions. That child wouldn’t necessarily remember the Halloween costumes you made from hand six years running. Or maybe she did, but she resented you for it because she’d wanted store-bought costumes just like all her friends. It didn’t matter how great a mother you tried to be; eventually every child walked off into the world alone.