Sleeping Beauty (54 page)

Whoever’s filming definitely has my squeamish eyes in mind; there’re no shots of Bill hacking into me, just a few seconds of Brendan and me talking quietly at the head of the table as the nurses outfit me with a ridiculous-looking surgical cap and a nasal cannula. Fortunately, a cloth curtain separates us from whatever gory procedures are happening further down.

I get closer to the screen, holding my breath in anticipation. And then I see her, her tiny body pulled into a tight ball as she’s delivered. The shot cuts back to me just as Brendan disappears, only briefly, before I hear his disembodied voice say, “
I know you don’t want to see this, but for the sake of posterity I should mention that I just cut the cord
.”

Everyone laughs, except me. I appear to be drifting off.

Then I see her again as a nurse rubs her vigorously with a cotton blanket, but it’s not until she takes a startled breath that I see her face. I cover my mouth with my hand and drop to my knees, reaching out my hand to touch her face on the screen. She doesn’t cry, just looks mildly irritated at the rough treatment she’s receiving.

“Oh, my god,” I whisper. “Oh, my god, look at her!”

I expect Brendan to take her from the nurse then, but he returns to the head of the table to shake me awake. He keeps me that way with a lot of gentle slaps on the back of my hand. Every once in awhile he touches my face, even once giving me a few pokes on the cheek with his finger, to bring me around.

He sits with me, both of us watching as the nurses move her through an assembly line of drying and swaddling and weighing, and a bunch of other procedures I can’t really make out from where the camera is.

I say something unintelligible to Brendan, and he shakes his head. “
No, I want you to be the first one to hold her.”

And then she’s right there, right beside me, propped up on my chest by the nurse. I think that “video me” is crying, but I can’t tell for sure; it’s hard to see anything clearly through all the tears gushing out of my eyes on this side of the TV. It’s difficult to actually hold her the way I’m positioned on the table, but watch as I pull her close to me the best that I can with one arm.

Brendan gives me a kiss on the forehead just as one of the medical staff asks what we’re naming her. “
Constance Bonnie,
” he says, and then explains that these are our mothers’ first names. “
April Fools
,” he adds to much laughter from the onlookers before taking over the baby-propping duties from the nurse. The two of us pet her and coo at her like suckers.

Even as I watch, I know that this has to end, and soon. Without the two drugs that I was given during my fourth episode, there’s no way to maintain high-level wakefulness for very long. Sure enough, I drift off again, and Brendan takes her from me. She looks so incredibly tiny in his arms, like he could hold her from crown to heel in the palm of his hand.

The final words of the song are sung and the shot fades to black.

Violins and a piano usher in “April 2
^nd
.” I recognize another McLachlan song, the tearjerker ballad from
Toy Story
, “When She Loved Me.”

“Oh, hell,” I mutter.
Like I’m not already crying enough here
. I tear a few more tissues from the box on the end table and blow my nose again.

What follows is a montage of days that dissolve into weeks, the footage cut together so beautifully that it’s hard to fathom how I don’t remember any of this. It’s immediately obvious that Brendan had decided that me being high-functioning was going to trump nursing the baby, because once I’m up and around after I leave the hospital, it looks like I’m doing everything: changing her and feeding her, burping her and bathing her. I play on the floor with her, dangling rattles and cloth hoops. I read Dr. Suess books to her while she stares at me like I’m performing Shakespeare.

I seem delighted,
elated
–even when I’m still limping around as the incision heals, even when I’m up rocking her in what looks like the dead of night.

Wonder who the chump is who got roped into midnight filming?
I think. But I don’t wonder, not really. I know it’s Davin. Even my brother wouldn’t have been able to work up that level of enthusiasm.

And as the days turn to weeks, she grows. Every tableau reveals a change in her: less hair, more hair, dark hair, lighter hair, her body filling more of our arms every day. Close-up shots of her face show slate blue eyes that seem to be growing warmer and darker–not brown, but more like hazel or green.

Please let them be green,
I think.

The song comes to a close on a beautiful shot of Brendan and me lying on our bed, holding hands, both of us on our sides and facing each other, Constance between us, all three of us dead asleep in the middle of the afternoon, the gauzy, white curtains catching the ocean breeze and billowing into the room.

The last thing I see is the date: “May 7
^th
.” I do some quick calculations.

“Six weeks,” I mutter, feeling incredibly disappointed. Even though he refused to start the drugs on me before my episode started because I was still pregnant, I knew he’d always planned to start them once the baby was born. It was foolish, but I’d secretly hoped that this time would be different, that the episode would be shortened.

I hear a series of beeps coming from the bedroom door. I abandon the TV and take off like a shot, getting to it just as it swings open.

“Hey, gidget,” says Davin, limping in on a walking boot and grinning from ear to ear.

I throw myself at him, I’m so happy to see someone I know. “I loved it!” I say as I’m hugging him as hard as I can.

He pulls away, his smile vanishing once he really sees me. “Whoa, what happened to you?”

I touch my nose and shake my head, dismissing something so relatively unimportant. “I navigated the room with my face when I woke up.” I look past him out the door. “Where is she? Where’s Brendan?”

“Calm down, they’re coming. He was taking her to the zoo. I was closest.”

“Where’s West?”

“Not close. He’s across town, says he can’t be here for at least another two hours. C’mon,” he says, taking me by the hand, “let’s go back to your house. That’s where they’re heading.”

“Why am I in here? Why am I not in our house?” I say as we head down the hallway towards the stairs.

“Logistics, Claire-Bo. It was too hard to block off the rooms in the guest house. You were in one of those dazed-out phases last week, and you tried to climb over the bedroom balcony.”

“I did?”

“Nearly gave us all a heart attack. Even CB cried like a baby.”

“‘CB?’”

He gives me a petulant look. “Claire, you didn’t really think that anyone would go around calling her ‘Constance Bonnie,” did you?”

“Well, I knew she’d have a nickname eventually. I hate ‘CB’ though. Sounds like a trucker radio.”

“You’re going to like it a whole lot more than some of the other ones.”

We emerge from Andy’s otherwise empty house and head down the path towards the guest house. “What’re the other ones?”

“Rev calls her ‘Breaker.’”

“Why?”

“Aw, hell, I can’t remember. Some existential bullshit about the last wave you attempt before you’re washed back to shore…or something. When have Rev’s nicknames for anyone ever made sense? It’s been six years and I’m still scratching my head over ‘Dookie.’”

“True.”

“Doc, Andy and Reb call her ‘Connie Bonnie.”

I smile. “That’s cute!”

“West calls her ‘Constantly Bawling.’”

I stop smiling. “You’re right, ‘CB’ is better.”

We’re about twenty feet away from the door to the guest house when I see Brendan’s car coming down the long lane. My heart hitches into my throat, and I freeze “Oh, my god, there they are.”

He tugs my arm. “Come inside, give them a chance to get into the house. No need to have a bunch of boo-hooing in the middle of the driveway.”

“You think she’ll cry?” I say, panicked. “I mean, how long’s it been since she’s seen me? Do you think it’ll upset her?”

He rolls his eyes. “You saw her yesterday, you tool. Why would
she
cry? I was talking about
you
.”

“Oh.” I let him pull me into the house, but I can’t help peeking out the living room window as Brendan pulls the car to a stop on the driveway.

“Here,” he says, “why don’t I go get her out of the car seat? You went full-on zombie five days ago, and he’s been working a lot and hasn’t really been home. I know he’s chomping at the bit to see you. Give you guys a minute alone.”

“Five days? Who’s been taking care of Constance?” I have no memory of saying her name, not while she’s outside of my uterus anyway. I love the way it sounds.

“Uh…well, Doc hired this nurse to stay with us, and then Poppins came on board, but after the first few weeks I was a lot more mobile and–”

“‘Poppins?’ Who’s Poppins?”

“The nanny.”

“Her name’s ‘Poppins?’”

He rolls his eyes at my incomprehension. “Mary Poppins, get it?”

“Oh, right. What about after the first few weeks?”

“What?”

I sigh. “You said Poppins was here with a nurse, but after the first few weeks you were a lot more mobile…?”

“Oh, right.” He looks sheepish, clearing his throat like he’s stalling for time.

I understand. “
You
helped us, right? That’s why you got to the Big House so fast…you were already here.”

“There was always another person here with you and me, Claire,
always,
but I didn’t really like the nurse, and I knew Doc didn’t either, and I figured since I had all this time on my hands…”

I turn around and see the video equipment–lights, cords, cameras–stashed in the corner. Suddenly, I tear up, thinking about the video. “Davin?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you, you know, for everything…taking care of us, the video. That must’ve been a lot of work, not to mention you having to leave your place to stay here, and getting up in the middle of the night to shoot video and everything, and I just loved it, it was so perfect, and I wanted to say–and I know you don’t want me to, but I’m going to anyway–I just wanted to tell you that I–”

“I was just doing what I was told.”

I raise an eyebrow. “By who?”

“You, bubbles. You left us a note, remember?”

I smile “Oh, right.”

“You’re okay with it?”

“Of course!”

“Doc said you would be, but you know…I wasn’t sure.” He clears his throat again. “Anyway, it was the least I could do.” He smiles. “And I love you too.” I must look shocked, because he says, “What?”

“I can say it now?”

“I told you in the hospital, it doesn’t make it worse anymore.” He looks pensive. “I think it’ll actually make everything better.”

I gasp. “You met someone, didn’t you?”

His smile is mischievous. “Maybe.”

“Guy or girl?”

“Well…”

“Guy or girl?”

“Uh, both I guess.”

I crinkle my nose. “You’re dating a hermaphrodite?”

He shakes his head sadly. “No, you tool. I’m dating two different people.” He stops. “Well, maybe not
dating
, but I’ve gone out on some dates. Nothing serious, you know…god knows I haven’t had much time lately to really go after it–”

I hold up my hand. “Stop. You’re like a second cousin to me, so this is one of those topics where the less I know the better.”

He laughs and gives me a hug. “Okay, then. No more details.” He looks at the door. “Can I, you know, be dismissed? She’s going to be hungry, and the damn car explodes to, like, five hundred degrees two seconds after you turn it off.” He releases me and heads for the door before I have time to answer.

“Davin?”

“Yeah?”

“I just want to tell you how cliché it is to be dating the nanny.”

He looks stunned. “How did you–”

I smile. “‘Poppins?’ C’mon, when do you ever give a nickname to someone you don’t like? So…do you guys spend your days dancing around the chimney and singing with Cockney accents?”

“You don’t have a chimney, gidget,” he says as he sails out the door, leaving me to my rampant speculation. I hear him call out to Brendan: “Coast is clear, Doc. I’ve got CB.”

Brendan comes in a few seconds later, looking exhausted and apprehensive. Instead of rushing over to me, he just stands in the doorway, watching me. “Hey, babe.”

I feel like my life’s been thrown in reverse, like I’m back in the hospital room going from eclipse to supernova in less than three seconds. I know why he’s acting this way, but I can’t help it; the need to touch him is primal.

He tilts his head. “You okay?”

I swallow hard, and try to relax my fingers that have curled up into my palms. “What do you mean?”

He touches his nose. “Did you fall out of bed or something?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine, I just ran into the wall when I was half-asleep.” I feel anxious again. “Are
you
okay?”

He blinks. “What do you mean? I’m fine, never better.”

I narrow my eyes. “You just have that look…”

“What look?”

“That look that says that you’re scared I won’t remember who you are, and that you’ll wake up tomorrow with a felony sexual assault charge to deal with. Am I right?”

He smiles. “Maybe.” He holds his index finger and thumb about an inch apart. “Just a little. Sorry.”

We both move at the same time, crossing the living room in three strides to get to each other. He picks me up and kisses me.

“We’re not going to have to go back to holding hands are we?” I say, my eyebrow cocked.

He grins. “I think we can go right from breakfast to taking showers with our clothes on.”

“Well, that’s progress.”

“Besides, if I don’t let you do whatever you want, you’ll just take me to another bombing range and scare me out of my clothes.”

I tilt my head in acknowledgment. “Probably.”

“You ready to see her?”

I get a fluttery feeling in my stomach. “Do you think she’ll be happy to see me?”

He kisses me on the cheek. “She remembers you, silly. You’re the one who doesn’t remember her, remember?”