The Birthday Room (8 page)

“It's okay,” said Ben, pushing his other hand into his pocket, slowly, self-consciously.

“Will you show us?” Kale asked.

Lynnie said, “I'll take them home. It's almost lunchtime, anyway.”

“No, wait,” said Ben.

Normally, Kale and Elka's fascination with his missing finger wouldn't have bothered Ben (he might even have laughed about Icky Pee), but he could tell that Lynnie was embarrassed, and so he was embarrassed, too. His hands felt clammy and clumsy. If only he could distract Kale and Elka in some way, turn their attention from him to something better. Thinking fast, he looked at the tree. His eyes bounced about the dead wood and the decorations, lighting on nothing, until they picked out a fleck of green at the tree's highest point.

“Hey, look,” Ben said loudly, nodding. “Look. At the top of the tree. I see green. Maybe the tree really
is
coming back to life.”

Kale and Elka craned their necks. They took baby steps—to the side, forward—stopping when they caught the sliver of green in their sights. Their voices rang out. “There it is!” “It's a teeny weeny leaf!”

Soon the twins were hunched together, speaking in hushed tones. Ben couldn't make out much of what they were saying, but he did hear, “We should start watering it again,” and “Maybe we could use some of Grandma's plant food.”

A breeze sheared past, and Ben saw the little spot of green quiver. The green was not the green of a new leaf. It was too dark and shiny. He guessed it was a windblown piece of either a balloon or a plastic garbage bag that happened to be snagged on the tip of one of the tallest branches.

Ben and Lynnie went back to where Lynnie's beach towel was, but they remained standing. Silence fell between them for a few moments. The air was filled with so many noises, Ben thought, if you really listened. With his head dipped, chin to chest, Ben watched the rise and fall of his breathing.

Lynnie placed one foot flat against the inside of the opposite calf, balancing like some kind of waterbird. The foot slid down onto the other foot, then back onto the ground. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “They're really something,” she said. “Sometimes I can't believe we're related.”

“I didn't think they'd be that excited,” said Ben, glancing up at the tree.

“You mean gullible,” said Lynnie.

“Should I tell them?”

“No. They deserve it. They were so rude.”

“Forget it.”

Lynnie's head was bent and her shoulders were slightly stooped. “Was it the worst thing that ever happened to you?” Her eyebrows did a funny lift as she asked the question.

“No,” Ben answered instantly. He was surprised by how emphatic he sounded. “I don't even remember it. It happened when I was two.” His hands were still in his pockets. They seemed to be boulders—big, impossibly heavy—attached to his arms. Gravity pulled at them. “Do you know how it happened?”

Lynnie regarded him with a quizzical tilt of her head and a questioning gaze. “I just met you yesterday. How would I know that?”

“I thought maybe Ian told you.”

“No. I didn't even know Ian had a nephew until the day before you came.”

The back of Ben's throat prickled. He took his hands out of his pockets, crossed his fingers, and traced tight figure-eights on his legs. He didn't want to betray his uncle, but he didn't want to be mysterious either, so he told the story of the accident. He finished by saying, “I guess my mom never really got over it, or something. I guess that's why I haven't seen him in so long.”

A wave of understanding moved the planes of Lynnie's face. Her mouth opened, forming an
O
. “I bet that's why Ian doesn't want us in his studio, especially Kale and Elka.”

“I guess.” Ben wondered when Lynnie had noticed that his hand was different, but he was suddenly too shy to ask. And he was tired of talking about himself anyway. “What's the worst thing that ever happened to
you?
” he said.

“That's easy,” Lynnie responded, the color in her cheeks deepening. “A few years ago, I overheard my parents talking about money problems. How the orchards weren't doing as well as they should have been. How the truck needed to be repaired—again. How the bills were piling up. You know. So I had this great idea, which was really a stupid idea.” She grimaced.

“What was it?”

“It was spring,” Lynnie told him. “The blossoms were on the trees. And I have to say I love the blossoms even more than the fruit. At peak blossom time, the trees smell perfumey, and they look magical, like giant popcorn balls, drizzled with pink, growing on stems. Even when the blossoms are barely open, they're pretty. Then they remind me of the rosebuds on my grandma's bathrobe. A little bit of pink, a little bit of green.”

While she was speaking, Lynnie had pushed her hair off the back of her neck, and gathered it into a ponytail. She twisted the ponytail and spooled it on her hand and wrist, then let it drop, her hair spilling freely over one shoulder. She sighed in a reflective way. “Anyway, because the trees looked so beautiful, I thought that if I cut some of the branches, I could sell them out on the highway to people in passing cars and make gobs of money for my parents.”

Ben was nodding politely.

“I chose young trees because they were easier for me to reach, easier to cut. My dad—who loves the trees so much he must have radar—found me hacking away at my fourth tree with his old trusty lopping shears. I kind of ruined them—the trees. Not to mention decreasing the year's apple supply. He just stared right into me with these eyes that were surprised and then furious and then sad. I had filled a couple of buckets with water for the cut branches, and he kicked them across the grass and walked away. The branches shot out, petals dropped everywhere. My explanation sounded so lame when I heard myself blabbering the words as I ran after him. I mean, I knew better—I grew up on the farm. I must have been temporarily insane. I guess I just wanted the money for them
now
—I mean,
then
. You know what I mean. Anyway, he didn't say a thing to me for two whole days—not one single word. Later he told me he didn't want to try talking to me because he was afraid he would yell and scream, and he didn't want to do that.”

The color in Lynnie's cheeks was so heightened now, Ben wanted to touch them to see if the red would rub off. She shook her head, as if by doing so, the incident would be jumbled and beyond recall. Her hair flew about, and Ben was close enough to smell her shampoo.

“Those two days were the worst days of my life,” she said. “I was convinced he hated me, and that was unbearable. I kept rereading the chapter in
Little Women
where Beth dies. I thought if I read the saddest thing I know, I'd feel better about me.”

“Did it work?” was the weak question Ben managed to ask, because he felt he should say something.

“Not really.” She looked past him, out at the prim and proper rows of trees and the hills and the outline of the mountains. “The chapter is called ‘The Valley of the Shadow.' And so that's what I called this place. I still do, if I'm really sad about something, or when life is totally unfair.”

The Valley of the Shadow
. A good name, Ben thought, for the place where his mother and uncle were stuck. Where they had been stuck for years.

“Pretty dumb, huh?” said Lynnie. “It all sounds like something Kale and Elka would do.”

“Your dad's not still mad about it, is he?” asked Ben.

“No. Not at all. Now he even jokes about it. But when I think about it, I feel hot all over, like I'm burning from the inside, like it happened yesterday.”

A dull bell clanged in the distance precisely when Lynnie finished her sentence, putting an abrupt and ceremonious end to their conversation.

“That's my grandma's signal,” Lynnie said, checking her watch. “It's time for lunch.” She threw her beach towel around her shoulders and tied two of the frayed corners at her neck to make a cape. The towel strained at the knot. She clutched her book near her heart. “Do you want to walk together? Till the twisty path to Ian's?”

“Sure.” Ben had already become familiar enough with the land to know exactly where Lynnie meant.

“Why don't you look for us later? Now you know where we'll be.”

“Okay. I'll see what's going on at my uncle's.”

“I can pay you then. You know, your baby-sitting money.”

“You don't have to.”

“Hey,” said Lynnie, repositioning the towel, “I still don't know what
your
worst thing is.”

Ben shrugged. “If I think of it, I'll let you know.”

At the tree, Lynnie hurried the twins along, and then the four of them set out together. Kale and Elka were still buzzing about the leaf. They made Ben renew his vow of silence concerning the tree, after which Ben whispered to Lynnie, “Should we tell them now?”

“Let's not,” Lynnie whispered in reply. “It'll keep them occupied for a while.” And five minutes later, as they went their separate ways, Lynnie added, “Don't worry, Ben. The wind'll just take care of it anyway.”

Ben stepped onto the sheltered path to a flurry of birds' wings. With the midday sun beating down through the filter of leaves, he returned to his uncle's house.

 

9

T
HE CAR WAS BACK
, parked in its space, which meant that Nina was home from the midwife. And yet, on the porch, Ben felt a twinge of dread. Ever so slowly, he turned the doorknob. What would he find? Rooms of silence? A bitter argument?

What he did find, in the living room, confused him, and frightened him at first. One end of an ironing board was propped on the seat of the couch, and Nina was lying on the board, her knees bent gently up toward her swollen belly, her head near the floor, supported by a bed pillow. Beside her, Ben's mother knelt, stroking Nina's hair with one hand; in her other hand she held a piece of paper. Ian, it appeared to Ben, was lightly pressing the earphones from a portable CD player to Nina's lower abdomen, directly to her skin. Her pants were pulled down, a wreath of folds around the tops of her thighs.

Feeling as if he were just a trace of himself, Ben hung in the doorway, watching. Was Nina having the baby right here? he wondered. Right now? Were they trying to stop the baby from spilling out? And was that why Nina's head was down and the rest of her body elevated? Ben's presence went unnoticed until he cleared his throat and blurted, “What's going on? Is everyone all right?”

“Oh, Ben—” his mother said, her head jerking in an arc toward the sound of his voice. “Everything's fine.” She rose and came to him.

“Hello, Ben,” Nina breathed, without changing her position on the board.

“Hey, Ben,” said Ian. “This must look very odd to you.”

Ben's mother peered at the clock on the mantle across the room. “Time's up,” she said.

Nina wiggled the elastic waistband on her light, stretchy pants over the bulge that was her baby. With a bit of difficulty, Ian helped her off the ironing board and onto her feet. “I don't think it worked,” she said.

“Be patient,” said Ian. “This was our first attempt.”

Somewhat urgently, Ben said, “Would someone please tell me what's happening?”

“The baby is breech,” said his mother.

When he heard the word
breech
, Ben immediately thought: The baby has some rare disease. He learned, however, that it meant that the baby was in a position inside Nina that was not desirable for an easy birth. The baby was sitting cross-legged, buttocks down.

“We were trying to turn the baby,” Ian explained. “Lying on the ironing board will, with luck, encourage the baby to float into a good position. Head down.”

Ben's mother flipped and straightened the sheet of paper she had been holding so that Ben could see it. On it were illustrations showing the different types of breech presentation, and an illustration of a woman lying on an ironing board with arrows indicating the direction in which the baby should rotate.

“How do you know that the baby's the wrong way?” Ben asked.

“The midwife suspected it right away, just by feeling my belly,” said Nina. “Then she sent me to a clinic with an ultrasound machine. To verify her suspicion. They gave me a copy of the scan. Look.” She pulled a small, flimsy piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to Ben. “This is our baby.”

It was a ghostly image, white on black, like scratches of light coming through a dark cloth. Although grainy, it was most definitely the picture of a baby. A baby so compact, so round, a baby filling its space so completely, Ben doubted it could ever reverse itself. This is my cousin, he thought. My wrong-way-round cousin.

Ben gave the photograph back to Nina, saying, “But everything's okay, right?”

Nina told him that only three to four percent of the time babies were breech, and that it could make for a riskier birth, but in most cases, one way or another, breech births turned out well.

“Ours will be a great birth,” Ian announced rather loudly. He pecked Nina's cheek, and did the same to Ben's mother.

“Mmm-hmm,” Ben's mother murmured, nodding. “It will.”

“Do you know if it's a boy or girl?” Ben asked Nina.

“No,” she answered, “I don't. I'm sure I could have found out this morning, but I want it to be a surprise.”

During lunch, Ben finally got around to asking Ian what he had been doing with the CD earphones.

“It's just another way to help turn the baby. Apparently a fetus can hear very well at this point, so maybe it'll move its head down to hear the music better.” Ian bunched up his shoulders.

“What kind of music were you playing?” asked Ben.

“The midwife said to try Bach,” Nina replied.