Baby (7 page)

There was a terrible silence in the room. Ms. Minifred put down the book very carefully. She looked at us, but didn’t say anything. We sat still, staring at her.

After a moment Rebel stepped forward, standing in front of Ms. Minifred the way Lalo stood in front of me sometimes.

“Class is over,” Rebel said quietly. “Go home.”

I shut the front door softly, leaning against it, hardly breathing. Byrd’s door was open, and when I walked past I saw her asleep, Sophie curled beside her. Lalo’s voice echoed in my head. He had called to me as I got up from that library room and walked past Ms. Minifred and Rebel and out the door. He had called my name as I walked away from the school and then started to run toward home.

The house was quiet, and I knew Mama was in her studio. I went to Papa’s book-lined study, shutting the door behind me. I found the book right away,
Collected Poems
, Edna St. Vincent Millay.
It had been read, I could tell. The pages had been turned and looked at and read, and I was angry suddenly, and frightened by it. The anger came up from my stomach and sat in my throat like a shout about to be let go. How could he have read this and not told me? All the months of
silence
. All the times we talked about stars and planets and Sophie. How could he?

I sat in the big chair by his desk and found the poem.

I put my hand over the page, hiding the words. All the way home I had thought that it was the library: that it was Ms. Minifred looking so wonderful and sad as she read, and most of all, Rebel coming forward to protect Ms. Minifred. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t just those things. It was the poem.

I put the book facedown on the desk. Then, very slowly, I picked it up again and went out the
door and to Mama’s studio. I didn’t knock. I opened the door and walked in and saw Mama, and as if I dreamed it, she slowly turned from a painting, her mouth opening to ask me what was the matter, her eyes so blue in the north light of the room.

“Larkin! What’s wrong?”

I gave her the book, opened to the poem, and the anger finally came out of me.

“I never saw the baby!” I said softly. “And you never named him!” I began to cry. My voice rose. “And you never talked to me about him!”

The tears came down my face and Mama took me in her arms, the book falling to the floor.

“Larkin, Larkin,” she said over and over. “I didn’t know.”

“You should have known,” I said, my voice muffled in her shoulder. “You’re my mother.”

Mama didn’t say anything for a moment.

“I haven’t been a good mother to you,” she said softly.

I leaned back and looked at her.

“No, but you’ve been a good mother to Sophie,” I said.

And then Mama began to cry, and she scared
me. It was as if she hadn’t cried ever before and needed to make up all that time without tears. The tears came down her face and over my hair. We stood that way for a long time. And then Mama stopped and stepped back, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. And I saw her easel behind her. There was a painting there, not finished, all bathed in white. There was light all around a small face with a tiny mouth, and the clear, dark eyes of a baby.

I stared at it for a long time.

“That’s the way he was,” she said.

I nodded. I stared at the painting for a long time. Then I looked up at Mama.

“Can we name him William?” I asked.

Mama didn’t answer.

Sophie and I sat by the windows in Lalo’s parents’ big kitchen, Sophie patting the poinsettia plant on the table.

“That is red,” I told her.

“That is red,” she repeated.

Lalo’s father was setting up the Christmas tree in the lobby, and from behind the closed kitchen door we could hear his father cursing loudly. Lalo grinned.

“Merry Christmas,” he said.

Interested, Sophie looked up and pointed to the door as Marvella came rushing through, leaning on it as if to shut out his words.

“She didn’t hear that, did she?” she asked, breathless. “He always curses when he puts up the Christmas tree.”

“That’s
our
family tradition,” Lalo said to me.

“Man is not glad,” said Sophie with a frown.

“Oh, dear,” Marvella moaned. “Are you hungry, Sophie?”

Marvella hoped that food would interest Sophie. More loud words came from behind the door.

“Toast!” said Marvella loudly. “How about toast, sweet girls?”

Lalo got up and put a slice of bread in the toaster.

“Put slices in both sides remember, Lalo,” said Marvella.

Lalo smirked at me.

“My mother thinks that if you don’t fill up both sides of the toaster, electricity will leak out the empty side.”

“Leakage,” said Marvella, nodding.

The door opened and Lalo’s father and Papa came in. Sophie looked up and smiled.

“Dammit,” she said.

Papa and I walked home together, Sophie between us holding on to Papa’s hand and mine. She wore her jacket and red boots, and we swung her up over puddles and curbs. The sun was behind a cloud, and the light slanted across the water and over the boats so that they looked like they’d been washed in silver. Herring gulls flew above us, and ringbills, too, with their fast, easy wing beats. Far off, the ferry came into sight. Sophie switched hands, walking backwards between us.

“You’re silly, Sophie,” said Papa, smiling at her.

“Silly Sophie,” said Sophie.

Papa laughed.

“Silly Sophie,” said Papa. “That’s almost a poem.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Words,” said Papa, softly. “Did you know that words have a life? They travel out into the air with the speed of sound, a small life of their own, before they disappear. Like the circles that a rock makes when it’s tossed into the middle of the pond.”

I smiled at the thought of it.

“You used to frown at words,” said Papa.

“Until Ms. Minifred,” I said.

“She walks in beauty, Ms. Minifred does,” said Papa. “That’s a poem.”

“I know,” I said. “I found it in your books.”

Papa looked at me for a moment. We lifted Sophie high over a dog that lay sleeping on the sidewalk.

“I used to say that poem to your mother before she married me,” said Papa. “I used to write her poems, and call her up to read poetry to her. Once, I stood under her window and shouted a Shakespeare sonnet to her until she threw a glass of water down on me.”

I could feel my heart beating. Everything seemed still, even Sophie between us, the only sound the lonely cries of the gulls. I thought of Papa when he was young, trying to get Mama to love him with words.

“It would be good,” I said, “if you still did that.”

Papa looked quickly at me. Then he sighed, a sound that made Sophie look up at him.

“You grew up, Larkin,” said Papa so softly
that I almost missed his words. “You grew up almost without me noticing.”

Papa looked straight ahead, his face sad.

“And it wasn’t behind my back, Lark.” He sighed again. “It was right in front of me. And still I hardly saw it,” he whispered.

I could feel tears in the corners of my eyes. “You were busy,” I whispered, my throat tight.

Sophie looked at Papa, then at me.

“Busy,” she whispered.

Papa stopped walking and dropped Sophie’s hand. He gathered me up in his arms.

It had been a long time since he had held me like this, and I held on. I wound my legs around him and laid my head against his neck, and his smell that I remembered from when I was little finally made the tears come. Above, the birds cried, and Sophie reached over and took hold of my foot. But she didn’t speak.

Papa kept me in his arms, holding me tighter, until the whistle of the ferry sounded when it passed the breakwater. Then, he bent down and picked up Sophie, holding the two of us. Sophie smiled and smiled at us, and the ferry came into the harbor.

“I love you, Lark,” said Papa. “I love you.”

“Love,” said Sophie, touching Papa’s mouth.

I thought about that word,
love
, with Papa’s arms around me. That word with a life of its own, traveling out over the town, over the water, out into the world, flying above all of us like the birds.

Love.

There were clouds in all her dreams. She liked their names: cirrus, cumulus, and another one just out of reach of her memory. She didn’t remember ever learning the names of clouds
.

Sometimes she thought she was born knowing them
.

“There are three things to remember about spring on the island,” old man Brick said. “One, it comes after winter. Two, it comes after winter. Three, it comes after winter and you think it’s still winter.”

Island winters were always long, flurries of snow when what we had longed for were drifts of it, rain when we wanted sun. Spring came after without change, except for more rain that made us cold.

“Cold to the bone,” said Byrd.

She got out the black lace long underwear
she’d decorated with jewels and wore it from October to June.

Mama loved spring. Papa liked it because the island was still empty of tourists. But Mama saw color.

“That’s wonderful, look! Pink, and that wonderful warm gray. Violet and mauve!” she said.

Mama made Lalo smile.

“Your mother is not trustworthy,” he said. “So, just remember your Christmas tree.”

Papa laughed. Sophie had helped trim the tree, carefully setting large untidy wads of cotton on one side. Mama wouldn’t allow anyone to change it.

“It’s Sophie’s Christmas too,” she said firmly.

Lalo thought it was the ugliest tree he had ever seen, and he said so.

“It is very tasteless,” he said admiringly.

“There’s some redundancy there,” I said, echoing Rebel.

The tree had leaned to one side all through Christmas, finally falling in a heap on New Year’s Day, glass balls breaking and the lights going out with a final flash.

A Christmas letter and package had come for
Sophie, delivered two weeks late because of windstorms that kept the ferry in port and the planes on the ground. Papa read us the letter.

Things are better
. None of Sophie’s mother’s letters had ever said that. Each month she wrote, sometimes twice a month, always saying the same things: I love you, I miss you. But no letter had ever said things are better.

Byrd got up and walked to the window, pulling a curtain aside to look out.

“It was a good Christmas with Sophie here,” she said, her voice sounding far away and unsteady.

Mama unwrapped the package, a small rubber doll in a red dress. She handed it to Sophie. Sophie turned it over in her hand. She pulled a leg off.

“Baby leg,” she said.

She smiled and pulled the other one off.

Mama leaned over and took Sophie in her arms.

Papa looked at me quickly, then went off to work. And winter slipped into spring with those words—
things are better
—always with us, following us like clouds over our heads.

When it came to Mama that it was really, truly spring, she made us bundle up for the beach. Every spring she took her easel and paints to the beach before tourists came. She packed picnic lunches, and we pretended it was warm.

“It’s April, love,” Mama told Papa cheerfully. “Let’s go.”

“This is your mother’s robust time of year,” said Papa grumpily, pulling on his hat with the ear flaps.

“Well, I’m not going,” said Byrd. “I’m going to sit by the fire.”