The Birthday Room (9 page)

Ben laughed. He hadn't meant to; the laugh had just slipped out.

“I agree,” said Ian. “It all sounds very funny.”

“If you think that's funny,” said Nina, working at a smile for Ben's benefit, “you'll appreciate this: Tonight, when's it's dark, your uncle or mom—or you, if you'd like—will hold a flashlight against me and draw it slowly down my belly. The light may attract the baby, causing the baby to move where we want it to.”

Admittedly, Ben knew very little about babies. To him, they had always been mysterious creatures, helpless lumps, and so it seemed strange to imagine his cousin-to-be—still separated by a barrier of skin and muscle—listening to Bach or being able to follow the path of a light. He laughed once more.

No one ate very much, Ben noticed, and when they were finished, Ian said, “I'm happy we're all together.”

Ben went to the cot on the porch to digest all the information he had received. He lay on his stomach and tucked his hands under the pillow. He was puzzled. If everything was supposedly fine, why were Nina's eyes rimmed in pink? He had seen her fingers tremble on her lap as he left the kitchen, and he had seen the wads of tissues crowding her pocket. And why were his mother and Ian suddenly acting as if last night had never happened? There was such an obvious change in their behavior, like a sudden shift in the weather, and that, Ben guessed, meant that something more serious was going on.

He stayed in or near the house all afternoon, sorting things out, trying to make sense of the situation. Most of the time, the three adults were in the kitchen nursing mugs of tea and coffee. They paged through books about pregnancy—index hopping and reading short passages aloud. Ben sensed an effort on their part to be upbeat.

For a while, he sat outside, on a rock, sketching. And for a while, he lost himself to his art. He drew a small section of grass as detailed as he possibly could, being mindful of shadow, light, texture. Then he worked on a rendering of the tree line, dense and dark, and the sunshine above it, and the curtain of clouds that had moved in above that. Accidentally, he smudged the drawing with his arm, but he liked the effect—perfect for clouds—and so he used his fingers as tools and the hem of his T-shirt, too, rubbing the pencil marks into the paper with varying amounts of pressure.

He needed to use the bathroom, but to avoid questions such as “What are you doing?” or “How are you?” he decided to stay outside and use the bushes behind the storage shed instead. He walked along the length of the house en route, and as he slipped around the far corner, he nearly collided with Nina.

Nina gasped. She had been crying. “Caught me,” she said. She turned away and waited a moment, as if she were recovering her dignity, before she faced him and spoke again. “I'm sorry.”

“That's okay,” Ben squeaked. “
I'm
sorry.”

“I just needed to be outside,” she said.

Ben nodded.

“It's silly to be crying,” she said. “I know that.”

Ben pushed his shoulder against the house; his shirt sleeve caught on one of the rough cedar shingles.

Nina said, “My best friend, Nancy—we've been friends since we were six—was pregnant, too. She was due about eight weeks ago. Her baby was breech, like mine.” She lowered her eyes and concentrated on her thumbnail. “During the birth there was a complication with the umbilical cord—do you know what that is?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course you do, you're twelve,” she said, shaking her head. “Anyway, because the baby was breech, there was a problem with the cord . . . and the baby died.” Her voice had thinned to a thread.

Hearing this, Ben stood straighter and offered her a rueful smile. There was absolutely nothing he could say.

“I know that every situation is different,” Nina said, “but finding out that my baby is breech brought back all the sadness about my friend's baby, but in a whole new way. And it reminded me that something awful—the worst—could happen. To me. To us,” she added, looking downward.

“Yeah.” He bit his lip.

“But,” Nina said, a kink in her eyebrow, “on a happier note, my terrible morning smoothed things between Ian and your mom.” She looked directly at him. “Your mom has been very kind to me. Reassuring. And you are very kind, too, you know.”

Ben blushed and frowned. His frown was like a twitch.

“I didn't mean to embarrass you.” Nina's voice perked up. “Do you know what? I'm making it my mission to turn this baby.” She stuck her chin out as if to punctuate her statement.

“How will you know if it happens?”

“The midwife said that some women feel it very strongly, and others have it happen without feeling it at all. They'll check me next week,” she added.

“The head's supposed to be down, right?” said Ben.

“Right.”

“So upside down is really right side up?”

“I hadn't thought about it like that before, but, yes, upside down
is
right side up.”

They laughed silently.

“Say that ten times fast,” Nina joked. She motioned with her hand for him to come along.

Forgetting about his sketchbook and his need to pee, Ben fell into step with Nina. They entered the house.

“Let's take advantage of their truce,” Nina whispered. “Do you like to play cards?”

They played hearts and spades. Ben, his mother, Ian, and Nina. They played gin and poker. They played for hours, not even stopping for a real dinner, but eating pretzels, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches slapped together quickly between games. They played as the shadows lengthened and darkness collected in the valley, among the trees, in the house.

Not long after, with great interest, Ben watched Ian drag a flashlight slowly, slowly down Nina's white moon-belly while she lay on the ironing board. It was the only light in the black room, and it looked red against her skin when it leaked out from the lip of the flashlight. Rather than music, this time Ian tried to coax the baby with his voice. He spoke clearly, sweetly.

“Come on, baby,” he said. “Come down here. Down here to Papa. I'm so excited to meet you. We've only got about a month to go. Your aunt, Julie, and your cousin, Ben, are here now. Let's call this their first visit with you. Come on, baby. Turn around. You can do it. Come to Papa. . . .”

Ben's mother held the flashlight when Ian's arm fell asleep. Ben didn't want to. But he inched closer and closer until the four of them were like one small planet floating in an endless night sky. No one and nothing else existed. They were all alone in the universe. Together.

Part Four

NOWHERE

 

10

O
NE
. T
WO
. T
HREE
. Ben was seeing how many steps he could take with his eyes closed. If I make it to twenty-five, he thought, Mom and Uncle Ian will stay friends and the baby will turn around before we go home. He was on his fifth attempt.
Six. Seven. Eight
. His father had called as they were eating breakfast that morning, and although Ben didn't talk very long or tell about everything that was happening, it was good to hear his father's voice. Happy from the telephone call and full from breakfast, he cautiously traced the edge of the orchard toward the tree to see if Lynnie and the twins were there.
Ten. Eleven. Twelve
. A branch poked his shoulder; he swiveled but kept going, his eyelids clamped down. He had left his mother, aunt, and uncle in the field between the house and the studio, shovels in hand, breaking up grass and weeds, forming a circle of freshly turned dirt—a garden for the baby. Nina wanted to fill it completely with bulbs so that it would be bursting with color and life in the spring. Their conversation as they worked had been as constant as the birdsong.
Sixteen. Seventee—
His foot landed in a hole and he opened his eyes. He'd give it one more try.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six
. When he first heard the noise, it was soft and muffled. He might not even have noticed it at this point if his eyes hadn't been closed. By shutting off one sense, he had sharpened his others. He cocked an ear. The noise grew.
Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen
. He stopped. He could feel the noise throughout his entire body like another pulse. His eyes flew open and he ran to the sound.

An old man was chopping at the tree—
the
tree—with an ax, in a steady rhythm like a mechanical toy. At a safe distance, Lynnie was picking things off the ground and plucking things from the fallen branches and putting them into the old metal cooler. The twins were nowhere to be seen.

The bulk of the tree came crashing down. By the time Ben reached it, the stump was all that was left standing. The stump rose out of the ground, pointy and cavernous as a big rotten tooth. Limbs and branches were strewn about. Heaps of them. The old man had moved over and was chopping at the largest limbs, one of which was so crumbly the ax could barely be heard. Another was so brittle it cracked and snapped upon impact. The silver tabs and pieces of the paper chains dangled here and there among the debris. Ben realized these were the things Lynnie was gathering.

Ben was standing in Lynnie's shadow before she saw him. “What's going on?” he asked. “Who is that? What is he
doing?
”

“Ben—hi.” Lynnie looked over to the old man and looked back. “That's my grandpa,” she said weakly. She seemed distracted. She dropped a handful of tabs into the cooler, then knit her fingers together at her waist. A second later, she unlaced her fingers and folded her arms across her chest. “Last night,” she said in a hushed voice, “Kale ran off and tried to climb to the very top of the tree to get a better look at the leaf.” Her face curdled when she said
leaf
. “The branches are so old and dead they gave way and he fell. Probably twenty feet. His head hit the cooler. He got a concussion, and he broke his arm and his leg. He's all scratched and cut up, too. He got twenty-two stitches.”

“Oh, God,” Ben whispered. Fear flicked inside his rib cage. He had so many questions, he didn't know where to start. “How . . . who . . . found him?”

“I was there,” said Lynnie. “It was dinnertime. We had been at the tree, and we were partway home, when he just took off on me. It was hard because I had to keep an eye on Elka and go get Kale, too. By the time I caught up with him, he was already in the tree.

“I asked him what he was doing, and he said, ‘I want to see the leaf,' and he just kept climbing like a squirrel or a monkey or something. I yelled that it wasn't real, but he didn't listen. I said it again, and he still didn't pay attention. I guess he wanted to see for himself. And then one of the limbs cracked and broke and he fell, screaming. I can still hear the branches snapping, and his head slamming against the cooler.”

Lynnie squeezed her eyes shut, and cringed. “He was really bleeding. See—there's even some on the grass,” she said, casting her eyes to the ground to spots of dried blood. “I ran to get my dad. He drove my grandpa's car to the tree and wrapped Kale in his jacket and lifted him into the car like a baby. He drove to the hospital—” She stopped abruptly, as if she had run out of words or lost her concentration. She turned toward her grandfather, briefly. “My grandpa says it's his fault for not cutting the tree down a long time ago.”

Ben remembered the story Lynnie had told of her grandparents kissing for the first time beneath the tree. He remembered her saying her grandfather had left the dead tree standing for that reason. A nostalgic monument.

Lynnie said, “He keeps apologizing to my parents and Kale. And that's not like my grandpa. At all.”

Ben's thoughts were a turmoil.

“I'm collecting Kale and Elka's stuff,” Lynnie explained. “They're all upset about their gift being ruined.”

In a weighted silence, Ben helped Lynnie gather the tabs and the bits of the paper chains. The baby doll that had been wedged into a crook and the nests were already in the cooler. Everything seemed inert, slowed down, even the air.

All of a sudden, Ben felt pressure on his shoulder. It was Lynnie's grandfather's hand. “Hello,” said the voice that went with the hand. “You must be Ian's nephew.”

Ben nodded. “I'm Ben.”

“Call me Joe,” said Lynnie's grandfather. Sweat dripped down his tanned, wrinkled, stricken face. He wore a baseball cap, pulled low to shield his eyes. Snow white wings of hair shot out from under the cap and covered his ears. His legs and arms were skinny as poles. “That's that,” he said. “I'll clean this up later. I'm going back to the barn, sweetie.” He kissed Lynnie's head. “Seek no further,” he muttered, scanning the messy landscape. He took one last swipe with his ax at a hill of branches.

When her grandfather was out of sight, Lynnie removed something small from her pocket, something so small her fingers concealed it easily. “I found this.” She opened her hand. “This morning.”

Ben knew what it was instantly. “The leaf,” he said, staring. It was just a thin scrap of green plastic with rippled edges. No more, no less.

“It was stuck on a branch,” said Lynnie. She twirled it and twirled it and twirled it.

“How
is
Kale?” Ben asked. “I mean, he's going to be okay.”

“Yeah, but last night I was so scared. Right after he fell, he said he couldn't see anything for about a minute, and I thought he was blind. My mom kept waking him up during the night to make sure he was conscious, and she checked his eyes with a flashlight to make sure the pupils were equal in size. He's got one cut by his eye that the doctor says will leave a scar. Actually, Kale's excited about
that
.”

“It's my fault,” they both said at exactly the same moment after a short pause.

“No, mine,” said Lynnie. “You wanted to tell them it wasn't real. I asked you not to.”