“Mama can do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, with her husband, and it ain't none of your business, Marlene. Don’t you got an old clown to chase down for beer money?”
A hug was her answer.
Marlene zeroed in on Trevor and Joe, giving them both an extra squeeze, hand a little too close to Joe's ass for my liking. Hugging Calvin was like giving a pastor a Sunday morning handshake, the kind you went into because it was the proper thing to do but came out of genuinely happier than before.
Joe bent down, unzipped his backpack, and held out a wrapped box, a mix of baby blue and white and silver on the paper, a white card neatly taped to the top. He thrust it at Calvin, who looked pleased.
“For the, uh...” He looked at me. “What's your brother's name again?”
“Cal, Jr.” Calvin said, puffing up. He was a slim, long man who looked more suited to be in an American Gothic painting than anything else. His smile turned his face alight like a Christmas tree, though.
Trevor stared at the present with chagrin.
“I signed all our names to it,” Joe muttered out of the side of his mouth.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I'll save this for Cathy. She'll be so pleased,” Calvin said with great affection. Turning toward the elevator, we walked as a group, Marlene pulling a small box out of her enormous dump of a stretched out purse, moving what sounded like a box of roofing tacks out of the way before finding a white box with a red ribbon on top.
She gave Joe a triumphant look, as if this were a competition.
“Cal, Jr. and you all,” she declared.
Calvin added it to the stack in his hands and thanked her.
As we piled onto the elevator, it dawned on me that you really couldn't put together a group of people more different than each other if you tried. Really tried. Calvin was quiet, a taxidermist by trade, a little creepy but only for what he did, not for who he was.
Marlene was just a barfly. Nothing more complex than that. If I hadn't made it firmly clear my guys were off limits, she'd be screwing them for ciggy money the second I turned my back.
Joe and Trevor were from upper-middle-class homes outside of Boston, Ivy League types who stumbled into becoming rock stars.
And then there was me.
How in the hell do you describe yourself? It's like asking a fish to explain water.
“Which one is he?” Marlene asked as we walked past a window display of babies, like this was Macy's in Pittsburgh and we were looking at a Christmas window, only instead of fake snowmen we had little burrito-wrapped babies.
“He's with Cathy, in her room,” Calvin explained, turning the corners of the halls with precision like he'd lived here for a month.
“When I had Josie, she practically lived in that nursery. Got jaundice and had to be under those lights for two days. Pushing her out wasn't nothing. Tiny little thing.”
Aunt Marlene wasn't known for telling memories about anyone but herself, and she was about as self-reflective as burlap. Even Joe, who paid her as little attention as possible, noticed the change.
“You had her here?' Calvin asked politely.
“The old building, from thirty-odd years ago. But yeah. Here.” A shadow crossed her face, and I almost asked about Uncle Jeff.
Almost.
“You didn't want more, after Josie?” Trevor asked, making small talk.
Oh, shit.
When you're with someone long enough, and especially if you don't live near home no longer, you forget all the nuances of landmine territory.
Trevor just tripped the wire on one.
“No. My uterus split with her. That little girl literally ripped me open coming into the world.” Marlene hacked, a rumbling, phlegmy cough that made the CNA who just climbed out of the elevator car turn away.
“I'm so sorry.” Trevor's voice made it clear he also was sorry he'd asked.
“It's fine. That's what motherhood's about, right? Sacrifice. We put them ahead of us.”
“Right,” Trevor said noncommitally.
“Then they move six hundred miles away and ignore you,” she said pointedly, glaring at me. If Marlene was gunning for agreement, she was priming the wrong well.
I was dead dry when it came to sympathy for her.
“Planes and cars and trains work both ways, Marlene. Hell, you can even ride a stubborn mule,” I said as we turned a corner.
I swear Calvin muttered, “That's what all her meal tickets do,” but that couldn't be right.
Suddenly, Calvin halted in front of room 4112, the tall, thin window with wire criss-crossing in the middle yielding a view of the bed.
I held my breath. Trevor squeezed my hand. Joe touched my shoulder.
And Marlene burped.
Ignoring her, Calvin opened the door. I was five seconds away from seeing this new life that no one knew was coming until less than twenty-four hours ago.
No one but him, of course.
“Darla!” Mama whispered, the baby in her arms, a striped blue, white and pink hat on his head. She looked up at me, sheepish and grinning, shaking her head slowly.
“Mama.” I stopped at her side, taking a good whiff in. Baby and antiseptic was all I smelled.
“I thought the next baby I'd ever hold was yours or Josie's. Not my own.”
“Everyone brought presents!” Calvin said, holding the two small boxes out to Mama, who handed off Little Cal to Big Cal.
The room spun a little at that thought.
“My first baby gets a big hug from me,” Mama said, arms open wide, almost making me lean back.
Away.
Because the Mama I knew didn't hug like this. Didn't gush. Didn't express affection and love with the kind of unleashed joy that radiated out from her.
It scared me.
“Baby,” Marlene snorted, saving my sanity. “She's nearly thirty, Cathy. Darla ain't been a baby since – ”
Her words dissolved as I poured myself into Mama's arms, the feeling unreal. She smelled like Mama, the lingering scent of cigarettes imprinted into her skin even a few years after she quit. I knew she vaped now, but it wasn't near as much as she had smoked back in the day. Her shoulders felt tighter, stronger, like she'd lost some weight, too.
Her hair was thin, rumpled and flat in places, the way it would be if you were a patient in a hospital bed.
And then I felt the wetness.
Looking down between us, I was startled to find the front of my shirt dotted with little spots.
“Oh, goodness!” Mama gasped. “That keeps happening. Calvin, give me the baby.”
“Mama, is that – is that – ”
“Milk? Yup. I started leaking this last week and scheduled an appointment with my lady doctor, because I thought I might have cancer or something. This is the year for me to get my first mammogram. I'm almost fifty,” she chuckled, voice throaty.
I took a good, long look at her face. Sagging bags under her eyes were filled with little red dots, the skin mottled, her eyes bloodshot. One of them had a big red spot in the white of her eye.
“Mama, what happened to your face? It's all... red.”
“Blood blisters. From pushing.”
“Pushing what?”
“You shit out a six pound, fifteen ounce baby you were't expecting and you see what it does to your blood pressure, Darla Jo,” she said in that no-nonsense voice I knew all too well.