Eleven Hours (33 page)

It was a boy.

He was dark and still.
Oh, my God,
she thought,
he's not breathing.
She pried his mouth open with her fingers and a glob fell out. She didn't know what it was and wouldn't care to find out. She touched the baby's nose, his wet throat, opened the mouth a little more, held the head down for a few seconds. No sound was coming from him. Didi went deaf trying to hear her son's first cry.

Ahh, she breathed out, tears running down her face, ahh, come on, come on, darling. Taking him with both hands, Didi held him to her, and then lifted him up and turned him upside down and shook him a little.
Come on, come on.
She heard him croak and choke and splutter like an old car, and there was a little sound. Then it stopped.

Oh, God! Come on, dear one, come on.
The baby coughed again, and suddenly let out a bellow, and even in the night, she saw his color change—from dark to something lighter. Didi put the baby on her naked belly and chest and realized she had been holding her breath. Grateful, she breathed out.

He cried. She saw his face. He was blue and his little face was all scrunched up and he was crying. “Wah, wah.”

It was the best, the dearest sound.

Didi stroked his sticky head. His face was little, and his eyes were closed. His lips were very big, like Mick Jagger's lips. She didn't know where those lips came from. They were just enormous. Her throat made a noise. “My little one, my dear one, cry, my darling, cry.”

And then she cried herself. “You're a sweet boy,” she whispered. “You're a dear boy, you're Mommy's boy, and we've made it. Me and you, you and your mommy, we're here, and we're going to be okay. We didn't make that trip to Mazatlán, thank God. Thank Mommy. Thank you. You did very well,” Didi said, stroking her baby's tiny face. “You did very well. What a brave one you are. Wanted to see your mommy, huh? Well, here I am.”

Leaning back, Didi closed her eyes. “Today is the day God and I gave birth to my son,” she whispered. “And his name is Adam.”

*   *   *

Didi had nothing to cover the baby with. He was under a flap of her robe, but they couldn't both fit under it if Didi was going to try to find the highway.

The baby was still attached to her. There was nothing to cut the cord with except
the knife
near Lyle. She looked out of the car. She could see his silhouette on the ground. The cord would have to stay uncut.

There was no more pain. All pain had stopped when the baby was born, but her left wrist felt weak, and Didi thought she might have broken it trying to get free from the cuffs. Also there was a vague stunned feeling to her body. Parts of her felt swollen and numb. She was sure that tomorrow she would feel worse. It was a blessing she would feel anything at all
tomorrow,
Didi thought.

Her baby was crying.

“Dear Adam,” she said. “I have nothing to wrap you in. All I have is the robe on my body and the nightgown that's all full of blood now, and my yellow dress, which is clearly unsuitable. Why don't you have some milk? And tell Mommy,” she whispered, “what it's like to drink, Adam.”

She put him to her breast, and it took him a few seconds, but he got the hang of it, and stopped crying, and opened his eyes. She looked down at him looking up at her, and muttered something to him, something sweet and simple.

*   *   *

Didi's eyes felt very heavy. She was about to fall asleep, but she suddenly became afraid that Lyle might still be alive. That he was just pretending to be dead, just so she could have her baby, and then he would snatch him, kill her, cut her throat, and escape to Mazatlán.

She had to get out of there.

Wearing only her wine robe, Didi gingerly stepped out of the car, holding her naked baby. She wobbled like a newborn giraffe and nearly fell over.

Didi looked to see where the road was. She was going to honk the horn, but then, thinking it might upset the little one, decided not to.

She found the road, and with the baby in her arms, began hobbling, clad in one sandal, to what she hoped was out of the park and onto the highway. After a few steps, she kicked the sandal off and continued walking barefoot.

If it hadn't been for the quarter-moon up above, she would have been lost in the dark.

Thank God for the moon.

*   *   *

Up ahead, she thought she heard a distant noise and saw bright lights. Is that God? Didi thought.

She saw a procession of cars with red and blue flashing lights turn off the main highway and rush toward her. Didi was walking in the middle of the road. The cars were coming up fast. Their lights were on her. The first car slowed down, then stopped. A man got out and ran toward her.

It's Lyle! thought Didi, turning around and limping with her baby away from the cars. She wanted to run, but couldn't run. She heard his voice: “Didi, Didi.”

Oh, God, I knew it, I knew he was still alive, help me, and then arms grabbed her and a voice again said, “Didi,” and a man was crying and holding her to him. She couldn't see his face. She wasn't dying yet.

“Didi,” he said.

With one eye, she looked into a familiar face. The other eye felt as if it were closed forever. Was it Lyle? It was hard to tell. She hadn't seen another face in so long she'd forgotten what other men looked like. It wasn't the dead policeman. “Didi,” the man repeated, looking at her with a horrified expression. “It's me, Didi, it's Rich.”

Rich, she thought. Rich?

It wasn't Lyle.

The man was crying, and Didi mumbled to him, and he said, “What?”

She said it again, and he said, “I can't hear you! What?”

And she whispered, “Water. Water.”

He started to go away, and she grabbed onto him with one arm. “Don't leave me,” she said. “Water.”

“Water!” Rich screamed. “Bring her some water!”

Someone ran out of the car with a bottle and gave it to Rich. Didi opened her mouth, and he put the bottle to her throat but didn't tilt it all the way up. He was trying to be delicate, but she grabbed it away from him and poured the contents of the bottle into her throat. Then she bent over and threw the water up without letting go of the baby.

“Let me hold the baby,” Rich said, crying. “Is he alive? Let me hold the baby, Didi.”

“No,” she said, holding the infant tighter. “Water.”

She was brought more. She continued to stand, then she sank down to the ground. She threw up the second time she drank and the third, but then some must have stayed inside her and she felt better.

Another man came up to her.

She looked up at him and he crouched down. He had a kind black face. She was leaning against Rich, who was holding her up in a sitting position. All Didi wanted was to lie down and sleep, so she lay down, holding the baby to her breast. The man leaned over her and said, “Didi, we're so sorry. We tried to find you. We really tried.”

She nodded. She didn't believe them. God could have found her. He could have told them where she was.

“Where is he?” the man asked. “Is he out there somewhere?”

“No,” Didi said. “He's dead.”

The man stared at her and then nodded. “Good,” he said.

She felt Rich hold her tighter. “Oh God, Didi. Oh, God, oh, God. OHGOD.”

She said, “Rich?” and then forgot the rest. “I called for Him too. I called for Him the whole day.”

“He came.…”

Didi looked at the man in front of her and saw understanding in his eyes. She whispered to him, “Lyle—he was going to kill me and take my baby. I had to kill him. I stabbed him with his own knife.”

The man said, “Good.”

She saw Rich staring at her from the side and then staring at the man dressed in black with an expression Didi could best describe as disbelief. The man nodded to Rich, and said comfortingly to Didi, “Shh, shh, don't worry. You're safe. You're all right. The ambulance is right here. We're here to help you. You don't have to worry about anything.”

No, she didn't suppose she did.

And then in the ambulance she stretched out. Her baby slept next to her. “The baby is alive,” she said.

“The baby is alive,” echoed Rich.

“You know,” Didi said, after the paramedics cut the cord and set up an IV drip, “I don't feel too bad, considering I've just had a baby.”

Rich groaned.

“Really,” she said. “Listen, this labor, though, must have been harder than I ever imagined. I think I went into delirium.”

“Really?” he said, kissing her head. “Why do you say that?”

“I must have been in tremendous pain. I dreamed—no, it's just too silly. I dreamed—will you believe it—that I was kidnapped, and beaten and cut, and had my nose broken, and was nearly killed, can you believe it?”

Rich couldn't look at her.

“I was right, Richie, wasn't I?” she said, taking his hand and squeezing it. “Karma came knocking. I was right.”

Through his tears he shook his head and smiled crookedly. “Karma has nothing on you, my darling. Karma didn't know what it was dealing with when it picked you.”

Didi almost smiled.

Rich was thinking about something. “What, Richie?” she said.

“Didi, we were both wrong.”

Didi didn't have enough energy to be surprised. She let go his hand.

Rich took her hand in his and rubbed it gently. She was glad it wasn't the injured hand. “We were both wrong, and I'll tell you why. I just figured it out. He wasn't your karma, Didi.
You were his.
God didn't forget you at all. He didn't abandon you. He sent you to get that man out of His world, to put him out of his misery and out of our misery. And who better to send than you? God sent you because He knew you would do what you were meant to do—kill him and live yourself.”

Didi closed her eyes. God had sent her to kill Lyle. “I don't think we should be second-guessing God, Richard,” she said. “How did God know I would…”

“He knew,” Rich said. “He knew.”

They fell quiet. She reached out to him, touching his face. “Richie,” she said. “Maybe after I've recovered from all this birth stuff, we can take a vacation?”

Wiping his face, he said. “Anywhere, Didi, anywhere.” And then later, “Where would you like to go?”

Hoarsely, her answer came. “Anywhere but Mazatlán.”

EPILOGUE

Rich opened the car door for Didi. She slowly got out and squinted even though she was wearing sunglasses. The bright sun this Sunday reflected wildly off the water. The family had come to feed the ducks. The girls piled out from the back of the minivan, squabbling over who was going to hold the bag of bread.

Rich opened up the new hunter-green stroller and then gently lifted the boy out of his car seat and put him in. The baby twitched but continued to sleep, barely disturbed by the change of napping quarters. Didi came around to push the stroller. She walked slowly, favoring her right leg. A bone in her ankle had been fractured in the fall from the car.

In her heavily bandaged left hand, she held a bottle of water and every few minutes sipped from it. It was ten in the morning and still bearable outside. Didi knew that they could only stay out until noon because it would get too hot for the baby.

“I'll push, I'll push,” Rich said to her.

“It's okay—”

“No, please. Let me.”

She let him.

At the lake, they watched the girls feed the ducks. Rich stood close by Didi. She stood with her hands on the stroller, taking little sips out of her water bottle. Amanda and Irene were squealing as the white geese waddled over to them and the ducks from the lake scrambled up the embankment, squawking,
feed me, feed me.
The delight turned quickly to hysteria when one of the overzealous geese nipped Irene's finger. Rich picked her up, and for the rest of the feeding she threw the bread down while safely perched in his arms. Pushing the stroller, Didi went to sit down on the nearby bench. She adjusted the baby's hat and settled back.

Rich came over with Irene and sat down next to Didi. “You okay?” he said to Didi. Irene wiggled out and ran to Amanda.

“I'm great,” she said, turning her face to him. “I just wanted to get the baby out of the sun.”

When Rich said nothing, she patted his face. “Don't worry.”

Nodding, he sighed deeply.

They were quiet for a moment. Didi felt hot.

She said, “About dinner tonight. What does Scott like to eat?”

“I don't know. We didn't get that far.”

Smiling, she said, “I don't know why. You had plenty of time to chat.”

“Yeah, but oddly, we were talking about other things,” Rich replied.

Pausing, Didi said, “Well, I have to make him something. Does he like spaghetti?”

“I'm sure he does,” Rich tried to assure her.

“Hmm. What about steak? Everyone likes a good steak.”

“Steak is good,” Rich agreed.

She thought about it. “What if he's a vegetarian? Then what?”

Rich studied Didi's face; her eyes were hidden from him by her wide sunglasses. “Scott put away a roast beef sandwich right in front of me. Make him a steak,” he said.

“Steak it is, then,” said Didi.

When they were finished feeding the ducks, Amanda put on her Rollerblades and, with Irene running alongside, skated ahead of Rich and Didi.

Didi had difficulty walking and stopped for a rest every few minutes. Two young women passing by slowed down near the stroller and looked in.

“My,” said one, “what a cute baby!”

“Thanks,” said Didi.

“How old?”

“Two weeks.”

“Oh, he's a cutie. And look at that red hair!” The woman looked at brown-haired Didi and then at blond Rich. “Where's the hair from?”