Belonging (37 page)

Joanna shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Madaket came next to the bed and put her finger into the diminutive fist. “He’s so beautiful.”

“I’ll leave you now,” Gardner said. “The nurse will show you how to feed your baby. He won’t get much nutrition yet, but the closeness will be good for him.”

But as Joanna went through the motions, letting the nurse undo her gown and position the baby just so in her arms, watching as her son, her living child, searched blindly for her nipple, then found it, and latched onto it firmly with his mouth and sucked, as Joanna heard the nurse exclaim, “Oh, what a smart little fellow you are!” she seemed to hear and see and feel all of this, even the bite of the baby’s mouth on her nipple, as if from behind a barricade of sorrow. It was not a whole, entire sensation. It did not have the quality of reality.

The day after the birth, nurses helped Joanna out of her bed and into a chair, where she sat, groggy and stupid with the aftereffect of the anesthesia used during the delivery. In the afternoon they began to take her for hourly walks, drunken, painful little shuffles out into the corridor, then down the corridor, a longer way each time. Gradually her mind cleared while her body remained a clumsy, heavy bulk dragging from her shoulders.

The nurses brought her her son, and she held him as he slept or gazed up at her with his wide unfocused look. Her milk had not come in yet, and her breasts felt hard and uncomfortable against his small supple body. In spite of herself, she kept sagging; without the use of her abdominal muscles it took immense effort to sit holding him, and she often was afraid she would simply slump over and crash onto the floor.

“You’ll feel more like yourself tomorrow when more of the drugs have worn off,” the nurse promised.

In the very early morning of the next day the nurses came bustling in with their charts and thermometers and sharp anesthetic aroma. Madaket woke from her sleep on the cot against the wall, and stretched and yawned and came to Joanna’s bedside.

“How do you feel?”

Joanna considered. “More alert. Less completely stupid.” The nurses were fussing with her gown, checking the dressing over her abdomen.

Madaket smiled. “Great. I’m going to get some coffee.”

“Coffee,” Joanna said, and suddenly she was salivating. “I’d love some coffee.”

“You’ll have some right away,” a nurse said. “Juice, too. Let’s sit you up.”

A cacophony of pains blared through Joanna’s body as she made her way into the chair. The worst of it was the gas left in her abdomen from the C-section; it wasn’t dangerous, and eventually it would disappear, the nurses promised, but for the moment she had no choice but to tolerate it. Madaket returned to the room and indulged Joanna in as thorough a washing up as she could manage, then she creamed Joanna’s face and hands and feet and brushed Joanna’s hair.

Gardner came into the hospital room and perched on the bed, looking over at

Joanna.

“Doing better today?”

“Much better.”

He cleared his throat. “The nurses will bring your son to you in a minute, but first
I need to get some information from you.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Joanna, but I have to ask all this. Would you like to arrange to have your baby buried or cremated, or would you prefer that the hospital take care of it?”

“Take care of it?”

“We would cremate her.”

Joanna moaned and Madaket gripped her shoulders and stood behind her, holding her that way, supporting her. “I’ll do it,” Joanna said softly. “I want to do it. I want her buried, not cremated. I don’t know why, but it seems important that she have a proper burial.”

“If she’s buried here, she’ll always be here,” Madaket said softly. “Your daughter will always be here on the island. She’ll have a place on the earth.”

“Yes. You’re right. That’s it,” Joanna agreed, looking gratefully at Madaket. Turning back to Gardner, she asked, “Can she be buried here on the island?”

“Yes. In Prospect Hill Cemetery.” Gardner looked at Madaket. “Perhaps you can help Joanna? Call the funeral home and make the arrangements?”

“Of course,” Madaket said.

Gardner nodded. “It should be done fairly soon. And if you want a service, you’ll need to talk to a minister—”

“All right,” Joanna said. “We’ll do it. Madaket can do it.”

Gardner and Madaket left then and the nurses arrived with her baby boy. Joanna held him with a numbed, muted pleasure. The significance of his existence, the pleasure of his living, came to her cramped and twisted, as if it had forced its way through a stony wall of grief. As soon as he was taken away to his incubator, she was washed through with despair. She sat sagging in her chair, head nodding forward like a drunk’s, eyes closed as she replayed her dreams of the Chorus Girl, laughing and running. When people entered her room and disturbed her from her fantasies, she wanted to snap at them, to tell them to leave her alone, to let her remain with her dreams.

Three days after her babies were born, Joanna stood in the privacy of the hospital bathroom, hiked up her gown, and studied her body. Her waist hung in wrinkles and folds over a jiggling belly through which a long puckered scar ran from navel to pubis. She looked like a thing that had exploded, she looked like something destroyed. And she was, she was something destroyed.

Joanna and her son were to remain in the hospital for a week. Mostly they slept. In the evenings, friends came to visit, bearing gifts. The baby, fragile, and mewing like a kitten, was held and admired. Pat and Bob, June and Morris, Tory and John, and Claude all gave their condolences about the daughter she’d lost, but advised her to forget about her, to let her go, and enjoy the child she had. Joanna could only promise she’d try.

Doug showed up one evening. After a few moments of awkward conversation, he presented her with a box; Joanna unwrapped it to find a white, powder-soft blanket.

“It’s beautiful, Doug,” Joanna said, running her hands over it.

“My wife chose it,” he confessed, smiling. “But I chose this. For you.” He handed her a small gold box of Godiva chocolates.

She smiled. She was genuinely pleased. “Thanks, Doug. It’s nice to get a present for myself for a change. I wonder why people don’t think of giving the mother a present. After all, we do so much of the work.”

“I’m sorry about your other baby, too,” Doug told her. He cleared his throat. “My wife and I lost a baby. She miscarried at five months. Not quite like what you’ve gone through, but …”

“Five months,” Joanna said quietly.

“Yes. She had to go to the hospital. It wasn’t easy.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Somehow we all get through it.”

Night darkened the world beyond her windows, and Joanna and Doug were enclosed in the gentle dome of light falling from behind her bed. It was an intimate thing, lying in a gown in a hospital bed while Doug stood nearby. But he had come in pure and simple friendship.

“I looked in the nursery window at your little guy. He looks great,” Doug said.

“Yes. Yes, I think he’ll be fine.”

“Madaket said you’d probably want us not to work out at your house for a while.”

“I think I’ll need just a few weeks to get settled in and get my strength back. Is that all right with you?”

“Sure. I’ve got a list as long as my arm of minor repair work people have been asking me to do. Just give us the word when you want us to come back.”

“Thanks, Doug.”

“All right, then. I’ll be going.”

He came very close to her, as if intending to embrace her. Joanna felt blood rush to her cheeks. He did not smile. His eyes were fixed on hers in an intense gaze that seemed purely sexual. As she watched, enthralled, he bent toward her, and then brought himself up short. He patted her hand.

“Take care of yourself,” he said, and nodded, and turning abruptly, left the room.

In the middle of the night the nurses brought Joanna the baby for his feedings, and then she had him all to herself. In the private glow of her hospital light, she unwrapped the blankets and unsnapped the hand-sized cotton T-shirt and ran her fingers over the skin, soft as petals, which thinly covered the birdlike ribcage and beating heart. His head, like a hot little softball, fit exactly into the palm of Joanna’s hand. His perfect ears lay against his head like shells, and his skin was of a marvelous pearly iridescence, as if the Milky Way had been spun into fabric. When he slept he smiled, and slowly moved his limbs, as if swimming gently through her dreams or memories.

Did he dream of the sister who had floated in warm security beside him?

Joanna’s dreams were full of her. She thought of nothing else all day, all night.

Joanna awakened on the fifth day to discover a masculine presence in the room. Her eyes and senses focused on … a suit, which meant someone from off island, since a sports jacket was as formal as Nantucketers usually got … a rich tweed, hand-tailored over massive arms and bulky shoulders …

“Jake!”

“Hi, sweetheart. How ya doin’?”

Pushing herself up on her elbows, she shook her head. “Not very well at all!”

“Come here,” Jake said. He sat on the side of the bed and took both her hands in his and looked directly at Joanna. “Tell me about it.”

Because of Jake’s tremendous power in the network, he’d always served as a good judge of the seriousness of any situation. His presence in this small hospital room seemed confirmation of the significance of what had transpired. Joanna looked into Jake’s eyes and saw such generous sympathy that she simply leaned forward, trusting that he would catch her, and he did, and he held her close to him, her face against his chest. He stroked her hair, smoothing it over the back of her head and down the base of her skull as if soothing a child. He smelled of wool and tobacco and the peppermints he ate
constantly in an attempt to stop smoking. His arms were muscular and burly and strong, and his embrace was so thorough it was like a kind of homecoming.

“Oh, Jake, I lost a little baby.”

“I know. I’m sorry about that.”

“Jake,” she confessed in a whisper against his chest, “I don’t know if I can bear it.” Pain pressed relentlessly against her heart.

“I know,” Jake said. He stroked her hair.

“It was a little girl. My daughter.”

“That’s terrible, Joanna. It’s just completely unfair.” She felt his voice rumble in his chest with repressed anger.

“Everyone tells me to be glad I have another child, as if one could replace the other. People tell me to ‘focus on the positive.’ It makes me so damned mad!”

“I know. But people don’t know what to say. When Emily died, everyone said, ‘Be glad she didn’t suffer long.’ Or ‘Be glad you had such a happy marriage.’ While all I wanted to do was take apart the universe to get her back.”

“Oh, Jake, I don’t think I was sympathetic enough when you lost Emily. Forgive me.”

“You were fine, honey.” He patted her shoulder.

“I thought—a lot of us thought—that you were in a bad mood for a long time, longer than you should have been.”

“Yeah, well, I was.” He coughed. “You’ll be in a bad mood, too. I don’t think there’s an option. If you’re cut, you bleed. Same thing, but on the emotional level.”

“So you’re still sad about Emily?”

“I expect I’ll be sad about Emily every day for the rest of my life.”

“Really?” A great sense of relief and rapport swept over Joanna. “Then I can be sad about my daughter. Every day. For the rest of my life.”

“I imagine so.”

His words seemed a kind of permission. She felt the pressure against her heart increase unbearably.

“Jake, I don’t know if I can stand it.”

“I know.”

“It hurts so much.”

“I know.” His arms were sheltering.

It was as if a boulder lodged against her heart moved slightly; something dragged beneath her breast. Hiding her face against Jake’s shoulder, she let her face fall open in the tortured grimace caused by grief, and she cried, the high, hideous, keening cry that had been waiting in her heart. Jake did not back away in consternation. He held her tightly. A sea of grief flooded through her. The tears came so fast and hard she was blinded. She could only cling to Jake, her body shuddering and knocking against his as the sorrow poured out of her, drenching her, shaking her, scalding her muscles and nerves and bones.

Finally she was emptied out, shivering with exhaustion. Jake’s arms were still tightly around her, holding her to him. The wool of his vest was wet and scratchy to the side of her face. She could feel his heart thudding solidly against her ear. She just lay against him, catching her breath.

“Here,” Jake said. “You’d better drink some of this.” He poured her a glass of water from the carafe on the bedside table and handed it to her. He looked weary, almost desolate, all the lines of his face drawn downward with sympathy and with his own unforgotten sorrow.

“Thanks.” Joanna drank the water, which tasted cool and clear all the way down her throat. She sniffed. For a few moments they only sat together in silence. “Have you seen the Swimmer?”

“The Swimmer?”

“My son. I call him that because I can’t think of a real name.”

“I haven’t checked him out yet, but I will.” Reaching into his briefcase, Jake said, “Hey, that reminds me. I brought you something.”

He placed two packages, wrapped in white, with stiff gold ribbons and bows, on the bed.

“Jake. How nice.” Joanna opened them: a Hermes scarf for herself, and for the baby, a baseball signed by Don Mattingly.

“My sons always preferred baseball to football,” Jake said. “It’s the more intelligent sport.”

“This ball isn’t much smaller than my baby’s head,” Joanna observed.

“He’ll grow. He’ll be outside throwing it through your windows before you know it.”

A glimpse of the future—spring, a little boy in a baseball cap, perhaps a golden
retriever?—flashed through Joanna’s mind.

“Thanks, Jake. I’m so glad you came. I’m so glad you haven’t forgotten me.” Tears welled up in her eyes.

“I’ll never forget you, kid. You know that. But I’d better go now. I don’t want to wear you out.”

“Are you going right back to New York?”