Read Lullaby and Goodnight Online

Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub

Lullaby and Goodnight (5 page)

“Or babies,” Allison contributes wryly. “Believe me, he doesn’t exist.”
“Yeah, and what are you talking about, Kate? You have somebody. You and Gary are getting married in the fall, right?”
“Right. I’m just saying—”
“You just want the rest of us to live happily ever after, right?” Julie says. “But trust me, Kate, some people aren’t meant to be married. I’m one of them.”
“But don’t you want your baby to have a father someday?” Wanda asks. “I know I do. Babies need two parents.”
“Well, if that’s how you feel, you should have married the guy who got you pregnant,” Allison tells her.
“Not an option.”
“Why not?”
“He’s already married, remember?”
On that bleak note, Peyton tunes out of the conversation again. She’s fallen in love three times, to no avail. That part of her life is history. Looks like she’ll have to be content with sex dreams about her ob-gyn from here on in.
 
“If you hold out a few more hours, you can have a Saint Patrick’s Day baby, Laura.”
“. . . Few . . . more . . . hours?” the woman sprawled in the bathtub grunts between gasps for breath. “Are you . . . out . . . of . . . your goddamned mind?” The last few words are hurriedly snarled before giving way to a high-pitched moan.
“Laura!”
“It’s okay,” Rita assures Laura’s embarrassed husband with a smile. “Believe me, I’ve heard worse. And I was only kidding about holding out, Laura. Bad joke, huh?”
“You don’t really think it’s going to take a few more hours, then?” the man asks, face pale, mouth drawn. “I don’t think she can take much more of this.”
It’s been a grueling twenty-hour labor already. Suspecting that Michael Chesterson is as worried about his own stamina as his wife’s, Rita shakes her head and assures him, “It won’t be long now.”
Leaning over the tub, she dips another clean cloth into the warm water and wrings it out swiftly with one hand as her patient’s grip tightens painfully on the other. “You’re doing great, sugar pie,” she croons, expertly mopping the woman’s sweaty brow.
“. . . Hurts . . .” Laura says through clenched teeth as the contraction wracks her body.
“I know it does. Try not to fight it. If you’re tense it’s more painful.”
“ Need . . . music . . .”
“Quick . . . go change the CD,” Rita orders Michael.
He rises to his feet, looking relieved to have a few moments’ reprieve. “Which one do you want to hear next, Laura? The Rachmaninov or the Beethoven?”
“I . . . don’t . . . give . . . a . . . flying—”
“I’ll put on the Rachmaninov,” Michael says quickly, and disappears into the next room.
“Men,” Rita says conspiratorially, catching Laura’s eye.
Her patient manages to smile, then says, amidst grunts and pants, “Yeah. They’re . . . morons.”
“Not always. Michael will be a good daddy. You’ll see.”
“He . . . better . . . Ow . . . here comes another one. . . .”
Waiting for the contraction—and Laura’s anguished howling—to subside, Rita takes stock of the items she placed earlier on a clean towel draped over a small folding table wedged between the sink and the toilet. In addition to her blood pressure cuff, stethoscope, fetoscope, and Doppler, there are two sets of sterilized towels, a bottle of mineral oil and one of ammonia, sterile gauze, a small bowl in case Laura vomits during delivery, a plastic bag for the placenta. Her bag in the next room holds other equipment she rarely uses: an oxygen tank and mask, a laryngoscope, an IV line, and drugs including Pitocin and Methergine.
Everything is ready. Glancing at her patient, Rita notes that the torturous pain seems to have momentarily receded.
Swiftly trading the washcloth for a rubber glove, she says apologetically, “I’m going to have to check you again, Laura.”
“Oh, no . . . no . . .”
“I’ll be as gentle as I can. It might be time to push, but I won’t know unless I see how far you’re dilated.”
Expertly inserting her latex-covered hand into the birth canal, she murmurs, “I’m so sorry,” at Laura’s primal scream of pain.
The cervix is at ten centimeters. Time to start pushing.
“Come on back in here, Dad,” she calls to Michael, discarding the glove and smiling down at the writhing woman in the tub. “We’re going to have ourselves a baby.”
“Welcome,” the familiar electronic mail voice announces as the sign-on screen gives way to a mailbox icon with the flag raised. “You’ve got mail.”
Mouse in hand, Derry left-clicks on the icon, then takes a handful of cheese popcorn from the bag in her lap as the list of incoming messages pops up.
Singing along with the Journey CD on the stereo, she scans the subject lines, looking for something more interesting than spam, bargains, and endless dirty jokes forwarded by her teenaged nephew. She licks the salty cheese dust off her stinging index finger, its nail bitten painfully low thanks to a lifelong habit that’s intensified in the stress of these last few weeks.
After drying her finger on her sweatpants, she repeatedly presses the Delete key, scrolling down the list of mail.
Boring, boring, boring . . .
Baby?
The single-word subject line is enough to set her heart pounding. She glances from it to the unfamiliar sender—[email protected]—and back again.
Baby.
Probably spam.
She should just delete it.
Her finger twitches on the button, but somehow, she can’t make herself do it.
Holding her breath, she double-clicks on the message.
 
Dear Mrs. Cordell:
If you and your husband are interested in adopting a healthy white infant, please respond to this e-mail as soon as possible. We specialize in discreet, affordable adoption for deserving couples.
Sincerely,
Rose Calabrone, Cradle to Cradle Adoption Agency.
Pulse racing, Derry rereads the e-mail several times before clicking on the underlined blue link at the bottom.
A web page begins to load.
This old computer is so damned slow. If only she could afford a new one, or even a high-speed connection. But the monthly Internet access fee has tapped out the household budget as it is. Linden keeps threatening to get rid of AOL altogether. Especially since Derry got laid off from her latest waitress job earlier this month.
She needs AOL more than ever, though, considering she’s been spending more and more of her time in front of the computer.
She can’t help it. She hasn’t been in the mood for anything other than junk food and idle Web surfing these past few weeks. She doesn’t feel like going out, or job hunting, or watching television, or making love.
Especially
making love. Why bother? She isn’t going to get pregnant, ever.
As an increasingly frustrated Linden pointed out, there are other reasons to sleep with your husband.
Whatever. Lately, Derry is too depressed to think about his needs, let alone any of her own, beyond the unattainable one: motherhood.
As she waits for the Cradle to Cradle Web site to load, she chews her ragged thumbnail and gazes absently out the window at the lights of Co-Op City and the east Bronx, reminding herself that adoption is out of the question. She and Linden can’t afford it, even if she manages to land a better-paying waitress job.
Nor would they have been able to afford expensive infertility procedures even if Dr. Lombardo had presented that option. Linden ruled that out before they even got the crushing verdict. It wouldn’t be covered by their health insurance, and they can’t afford it. They can’t expect her parents or his elderly mother in a Florida nursing home to provide financial assistance.
Maybe one day,
he said to appease her, if
we win the lottery, we can look into adoption. . . .
Derry shakes her head and shoves another handful of popcorn into her mouth. She’s been over and over the “options,” or lack thereof. The bottom line is that the Cordells are too poor for parenthood.
Unless . . .
All at once, a chubby Gerber baby materializes on her screen.
Derry gazes at the image for a moment, tears slowly filling her eyes. She wipes them with her sleeve, rubs her popcorn-dusted hand on her sweatpants.
You’re a mess,
she tells herself miserably.
Pull yourself together, for God’s sake.
In the background, Steve Perry is singing “Don’t stop . . . believing. . . . Hold on to your dreams.”
It’s a sign, Derry tells herself. Sniffling, she reaches for the mouse with a trembling hand and clicks again.
The baby gives way to a montage of images: pregnant birth mothers hugging ecstatic-looking couples, women cradling newborns, happy toddlers, a close-up of a baby’s fist wrapped around an adult’s sturdy finger. The soft strains of a Brahms lullaby play over the computer’s speakers, all but drowned out by Journey until Derry reaches over impatiently and turns off the stereo.
This isn’t the first time she’s looked at an adoption Web site . . . but it’s the first time an adoption Web site has directly solicited her. How did they get her e-mail address?
It’s spam,
she reminds herself. That e-mail probably went out to anyone who’s ever looked at an adoption Web site.
But it was so personal. It was addressed to her.
Dear Mrs. Cordell . . .
So? That doesn’t mean it isn’t spam.
And anyway, you can’t afford to adopt, remember?
If she were wise, she’d sign off the computer and crawl into bed in the next room, where Linden is already snoring.
Instead, she takes another handful of popcorn and hits the Reply button, telling herself that it can’t hurt.
Nothing can hurt any more than she already does.
 
The best thing about New York, as far as Peyton is concerned, is that you can get anything you want at any hour of the night.
Including fresh, ripe watermelon just after midnight on Saint Patrick’s Day. The small market is surprisingly bustling at this hour on a weeknight.
God, it’s late. She should have fallen into bed the second she walked in the door of her apartment, instead of checking the refrigerator for snacks—and then deciding to venture out in search of some.
The truth is, she would have been asleep hours ago if she hadn’t lingered so long at the Pregnant and Single meeting. But once her initial reservations gave way to female com-raderie, she found herself reluctant to leave.
Nurse Nancy was right. Those women understand what she’s going through in a way nobody else in her life can. She’s looking forward to seeing them again.
Now, heading purposefully toward the produce case, Peyton sidesteps a group of attractive, well-dressed men, all in varying shades of green, obviously fresh from a party or pub. She finds herself fighting the urge to check them out, the earlier conversation at the support group still fresh in her mind. She really has no business interacting with members of the opposite sex from here on in, unless it’s on a professional—or medical—level. Or in her dreams.
“What else?” the smiling Korean grocer asks as she plunks down a clear plastic container filled with luscious pink cubes.
“That’s it.”
She watches him weighing the purchase, then punching the numbers into the register.
“That’s seven sixty-three.”
“Seven sixty-three?” she echoes in dismay. She has only the five-dollar bill she shoved into her pocket along with her keys on her way out of the apartment. Who would imagine that a small container of melon could be so pricey?
Then again, this
is
the middle of March. And this
is
New York. She should have brought her purse along.

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