The Longest Night (32 page)

“There's no need to be dramatic,” the nurse said. She pressed a needle of clear fluid into Nat's arm and promised her that things would grow fuzzy soon.

M
R.
J
ACKSON, THE MAN
who'd been called for so many times by the woman at the end of the room, showed up the next morning with three children in tow. He hurried past Nat's bed, but the littlest child turned to peek back. The girl's dress was askew and her hair looked like it had been styled with an eggbeater. That was what happened when the mother was in the hospital.

Nat lay in her quiet bed, a shower curtain on either side and no window in sight. She listened to Mr. Jackson talk to his wife and admire the new baby, who she surmised was a boy. The daughter peeked back around at Nat, who raised her fingers in a little wave.

A neighbor had volunteered to bring Doris and the girls by for a visit the next day, but that seemed ages away. At the moment the baby was having her first bath and a bottle. She had been born at three in the morning, pulled out by the doctor in one long slippery rope. Nat could still feel the immense relief of that expulsion, the baby's hard little body sucking out into the world so that Nat's belly slumped like pie dough, the pain finally gone. For a few long seconds the baby was silent, then let out three chirps like a tiny exotic bird. And then—“It's a girl!”—while Nat, pushing away the half second of disappointment that she might never have a boy, allowed herself the joy of a healthy, beautiful baby. Scrunchy and purple fisted, her dark hair plastered to her soft, blood-flecked skull, the baby jerked at the light and was swaddled up. Nat held her, kissed the sweet creased fingers with their translucent lavender nails, ran her fingers over the dewdrop nose.

“What will you call her?” the nurse asked.

Paul and Nat had talked idly about baby names a year or so before; Nat mentioned that if they ever had another girl she liked the name Sadie, and Paul agreed—said he thought it was sweet. So Nat had banked on this early approval. “Sadie, I think,” she told the nurse, who peeked over her shoulder and smiled at the baby in a rare moment of friendliness.

“She looks like a Sadie,” the nurse had agreed. “Those brown, brown eyes.”

“Oh, good,” Nat said. And then it seemed a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders, the baby born and named.

Now, with Sadie off getting her bath, Nat lightly dozed. When another nurse announced a visitor she almost didn't hear. “What?” she said, groggily, thrashing up in bed.

To her surprise Esrom peeked around the corner, and her heart leapt. “Oh, hi!” she cried. “What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to check on you,” he said, still behind the curtain. “Is that all right? Are you, would you rather be alone?”

“No, please come in.” She clutched the sheet awkwardly to her neck; her breasts were bound under gauze to wait out the milk. She tried to smile as if this were all perfectly normal. “I had the baby,” she said. “She's beautiful. Are you hiding back there?”

He stepped into the room.

“Where's your hat?” she asked. His hair went every which way without it, and she found herself giggling.

“In my truck,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“I'm great. How did you know I was here?”

His eyes met hers. “Saw your car was gone last night.”

“Oh,” she said, and her face flushed. “How did you get
in
here?”

“I said I was your brother.” This silenced them both for a moment. Nat felt a stab of terror that his visit would be uncomfortable, but suddenly he let out a chuckle as if it had fully dawned on him: “Another girl! That's incredible.”

“Isn't it?” she said.

He shifted. “So you drove here
yourself 
?” he asked. “To have the baby?”

“Oh, yes. I had plenty of time.” She cleared her throat and gave a wave of her hand. “It was all right.” It did feel all right, now that it was over.

“I wish you could've called me.”

“Well,” she said simply, “I couldn't.”

“I felt like someone should see you,” he said, looking agitated. “I remember my ma having each of my brothers and sisters. Well, we were kept at the front of the house but I could hear it going on. When it was over and they were cleaned up we could go back and see, and she would be sitting there with the new baby and her hair in a braid.”

Nat nodded him on.

“I just thought someone should see what you did. Like otherwise it would be, I don't know. A wasted miracle.”

Nat paused. She recalled each time Paul had come in to see newborn Sam and Liddie, the way anxiety and awe sat plain on his face as he took a baby into his arms. He'd held each one so tenderly, looking a little choked up, while she'd sat, dazed, near his elbow, smelling the cigarette smoke and fresh air in his shirtsleeves, sharp against the cloistered room she'd been in for so many hours. He'd asked her if she was okay and she'd said “yes,” which had somehow been true though part of her wanted to lie in someone's arms and cry for a hundred years.

Esrom was watching her. She focused again, smiling.

“How have you been?” she asked. “The fire department?”

“Oh, fine. They let me on full. Maybe I'll still do some odd jobs on the side, I don't know.”

“That's wonderful.” She was smiling and smiling, loving the company, not wanting him to leave.

The nurse bustled around the corner, adjusting her hat. “Oh, Mr. Collier!” she said. “Welcome! We'll have the baby back in just a moment, after her bath.”

Esrom held up his hands. “I'm not—”

“Is this your first? You'll be used to it in no time. Now, you'll need to step out for a moment. Mrs. Collier, I need to check your”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“bleeding.”

“Really?” Nat said, disappointed. “He needs to go?”

“Well,” said the nurse, “I'm sure you'd be more comfortable with some privacy. Do you mind, Mr. Collier?”

Of course Esrom had to leave. Of course he couldn't just stay here. Nat remembered, vaguely, that she wasn't supposed to see him at all. But it was so wonderful to have him show up that she couldn't have sent him away. She just couldn't have.

“I'm glad to see you're all right, Nat,” Esrom said. “Do you need anything? Back home?”

The nurse glanced up with a quizzical expression, but her smile seemed fixed in place no matter the circumstances.

“I'm fine. Thank you so much. It made me really happy to see you.” Nat glanced at the nurse and, suddenly not caring, said, “I wish you didn't have to leave.”

He looked as if he wanted to say something but, his eyes following hers toward the nurse, nodded, bade Nat good-bye, and slipped off around the corner.

She might never see him again. Until that moment, with the impending baby, this fact had been easier to ignore. But then he'd appeared, and now his absence would seem crueler. She slumped back against her pillow as the nurse lifted the sheets and nudged her knees apart.

“Healthy as a horse,” she said, removing a towel from underneath her and replacing it with a clean one. Then: “Oh, dear. Everyone gets this way. It's the hormones. You'll feel better once your milk is gone.”

“I'm sorry,” Nat said, snuffling into her hand.

“It's fine. I'll get you something to help you sleep.”

“I miss Sadie. Is she finished with her bath?”

“I'll go and check, dear. You just rest.” The nurse tucked Nat in like a child and then she, too, whisked around the corner.

Nat closed her eyes. Mr. Jackson and his brood had left. The silence was deafening. It seemed to close in on her until the nurse came back with the baby in her arms, swaddled so tight she was lozenge-shaped. Nat jolted up, reaching, greedy. “Hello,” she said. “Hello, darling.” She wished Esrom hadn't missed this. She wished Paul were here. But it wasn't a wasted miracle because she had been there to see all of it.

Sadie squirmed, her eyes two closed lines. She let out a quick, tiny sigh. Her weight in Nat's arms was perfect: almost nothing, and yet so much something, at the same time.

T
he arc of mountains circling eastern Idaho looked, from the airplane, like the toothy jaws of an untriggered trap. They were bluish white and brown, heavy with snow this time of year, sloping down into the smooth band of valley that flattened a path between them. Paul had been fortunate enough to sit at the back of the army cargo plane where there was one small window no bigger than his hand. The world below him was cold and beautiful, mostly uninhabited, with skinny roads leading to the occasional small circle of a town and then away again. It was hard to believe that he had left his family down there all these months, tiny specks in what looked like mostly wilderness.

Turbulence tossed the plane as it descended. Paul glanced around at the nine other passengers sitting quietly in the gray hollowed-out cavity. Their faces wore expressions of mild anxiety or expectation, depending upon whom they were returning to and how long they had been away.

Gradually the forms of civilization below him began to take shape, and Paul could see cars moving along the roads; yards with fences; the occasional flimsy, snow-covered metal playground. The plane made its jerking, wind-battered descent, and all at once the ground was rushing up at them, and they were coasting for a moment over dead, snowy fields. The plane's wheels hit the runway with a thump, a tipping hop, and another thump; Paul felt it decelerating against the force of the wind.

He had not heard from anyone back home in weeks, except for a brief telegram from Doris saying that Nat had given birth to a baby girl on December 7 and that both mother and baby were fine. When he received this message, his hands shaking, he realized how anxious he had been. He was plagued by nightmares in the weeks leading up to the birth. His father stalked through his dreams, enormous, throwing a shoe at him, telling him to stop his blubbering. He dreamed again of Nat reaching into the oven, turning back to him with burned hands. In one dream she came toward him and they dangled like meat, and he awoke thinking he might actually retch.

Mayberry had told him he looked like shit.

All of the soldiers on the plane hopped up, trying to squelch the inner competition they felt to be first off the aircraft, and Paul moved slowly so as not to add to this atmosphere, which embarrassed him. Nat and the girls would be inside the airport with the small gathering of other families.

Outside, the wind roared. “Oh my God,” said the first man in line. Everyone hunched down the stairs and waited for their bags to land. Paul peered over his shoulder toward the airport window, but it was shiny and reflective and he could not make out the faces of the people waiting inside. His stomach was beginning to ball up. He turned back to the baggage hold, waiting to hear his name.

There was the awkward checking of each bag's name tag and the effort not to cheer when one's own bag was revealed. Paul spied his own bag as it fell—it had a heavily taped corner where a rip had started—but he allowed the man nearest it to check the tag first, then call out in disappointment, “Collier.” Paul stepped forward to his bag and swung it up onto his shoulder. He strode toward the airport terminal, the wind beating at his duffel and trying to spin its heavy bulk as he walked.

“Can you believe it?” a fellow soldier shouted as they went through the door. “We got sent to the Arctic just at the start of Idaho spring, and now we're home just in time for the Idaho winter. It's the longest goddamn winter in the history of the world.”

A man behind them reminded everyone to please watch their flipping language because they would be around women and children now. Hearing those words sent a shot of adrenaline through Paul and he looked up, scanning the handful of waiting families in search of his own.

“Paul!” he heard from somewhere to his left. “Paul!” His head jerked to the side and he saw Nat, waving an arm over her head in his peripheral vision.

“Excuse me,” he said, ducking through the other soldiers, who were all lost in their own reunions or lack thereof. He bumped into a man's shoulder and apologized, cleared himself of the crowd, and found himself directly in front of his family.

“Paul!” Nat beamed, and she raised her arms and hopped against his chest as if she were nineteen again. He closed his arms around her, crossed over her back; her hair pressed against his chin. She felt exactly the same in his arms as he remembered, and for a split second tears came to his eyes. Then she pulled back and smiled up at him. He wanted to kiss her, that sweet mouth he'd dreamed about all those months; cup her face in his hands, let his hands wander, in fact, the moment they were alone, because what good was a deployment if you didn't at least have that? It was your right to become a fiend for at least a week, to make all those bored and longing thoughts come true and feel the absurd and giddy power in it. But he was revisited by Richards's bizarre, treasonous revelation and found he couldn't even bring himself to kiss her. He released her, knelt quickly to see his girls.

Sam and Liddie wriggled onto his knee, wearing frothy unseasonable dresses, each of their heads topped with a large bow. He hugged and kissed them while Nat turned and fumbled for something. He realized she was taking the baby from her mother's arms; he'd completely forgotten Doris would be there. “Hello, Doris,” he said, standing quickly and leaning over to give her a peck on the cheek, which she received with no visible emotion.

“Welcome home,” she said.

“This is Sadie May,” Nat said, pressing a small oval bundle into Paul's arms. She pulled back the edge of the blanket and there was the baby's round, sleeping face. Paul's heart leapt. “She's two weeks old today,” Nat said.

“Well, hello,” Paul whispered, and he could not stop the smile that spread across his face. Sadie was a pink rosebud. On top of the blanket fold her fingers twitched, shiny, wrinkled. Paul felt one between his thumb and forefinger and his eyes swam. She was peely. She was silk.

“She just fell asleep a few minutes ago,” Nat said.

“Can you imagine,” said Doris, “with all this noise?”

“Hello, Sadie May,” said Paul. “It's nice to meet you.” A man he did not recognize appeared and snapped a flashbulb picture of them, and Paul blinked at him in confusion, then looked back down at his baby girl.

“The newspaper's here,” said Nat. “We chatted with the reporter while we were waiting. He said it makes good press for the testing station to show soldiers coming home.” This was Nat, gabby in the face of emotion. “You're the only one with a new baby, though. One soldier's dog died while he was away. Isn't that sad?”

“Okay,” said Paul, not caring. “She's perfect, Nat. She's beautiful.”

“Isn't she?” Nat smiled.

“And you? How are you feeling?”

“I'm just fine.”

“You're tough,” Paul said, unable to contain his admiration. Then he cleared his throat. “Can we get out of here? I'd like to go home.”

“Of course,” Nat said, taking Sadie back from him.

“Liddie, get in your stroller,” Doris said.

“I no want to,” Liddie said. She and Doris stared each other down, a match that would not end well.

Nat, awakening to Liddie's disobedience, knelt and looked her in the eye. “Liddie,” she whispered, “get in the stroller now.”

“I no want to,”
Liddie repeated.

Paul reached down and lifted her onto his shoulders. “You don't need that stroller 'cause I'll carry you,” he said, marveling at how much bigger and heavier she felt.

“Really?” Liddie beamed. Happiness worked across her face, eyes sparkling beneath their curtain of chestnut fringe. “All da time?”

“Well, for now, anyway.”

“Who will carry
me
?” Sam asked, glowering darkly.

“You're older,” said Nat. “You can walk.”

Sam shuffled tearfully along behind them, Nat carried the baby, and, with a sigh, Doris pushed the empty stroller. Paul pitied Sam. Yes, she was the oldest, but she was still only four and a half. He swooped back to her and picked her up sideways under his arm. She shrieked with delight as he bounced her through the airport, parallel to the ground; he gripped Liddie's thigh with the other hand and she clung to his face, giggling.

“Paul,” Nat said, “be careful!” In the corner of his eye, her face shone.

At the door, they had to get the girls bundled up. Paul thought for a moment and said, “I can fetch the car and bring it around. No sense in trucking these girls through that cold.”

“Good idea,” said Nat. “See, girls? This is what it's like to have a man around again.”

Paul felt his smile wring sideways. He stepped toward the door and then turned back to Nat. She was smiling at him with such openness, it was hard to believe what Richards had said. “Paul, you need the keys,” she said. “I'm parked to the left.” The lot, like the airport, was small.

“Which car did you bring?” Paul asked.

Her smile faded, and she seemed to visibly shrink. “What?”

“Which car?”

“The Fireflite, of course.”

“Just wondering,” he said. He took the key from her outstretched hand, turned on his heel, and started out across the wind-battered parking lot.

T
HERE WAS NO GREEN
Dodge Wayfarer in front of the house. Paul glanced out the corner of his eye at Nat, who was holding baby Sadie on her lap.

The sight of the baby softened Paul. She was truly beautiful, and impossibly small, and she slept as soundly as if there were nothing taking place around her, instead of the hubbub of two older sisters and their grouchy grandmother.

“The house looks good.” He got out of the car and held open Nat's door.

“Oh, I'm glad!” Nat said over the wind. She hurried up the walk with the baby, calling back, “I got someone to trim the hedge. It was getting wild. Girls, hurry inside.”

“Who?” Paul asked, holding the door as Doris scooted out, trying to keep her knees together.

Nat turned back, confused.

“The hedge, who trimmed it?”

“Edna's boy from down the street.”

Paul strode ahead and opened the door. “The nine-year-old?”

“He's fifteen. He's just short.”

“Oh,” said Paul. This conversation about Edna's short fifteen-year-old seemed ridiculous, and Paul felt a sudden surge of anger against Nat, which he struggled to control. He held the door until Doris bustled in, smoothing her hair and huffing about the weather.

The house was just as Paul remembered, yellow-flowered kitchen and small, carpeted living room. He could tell that Nat and Doris had half-killed themselves cleaning for his homecoming. There was a fresh bouquet on the kitchen table and some kind of loaf cake. His slippers had been set out by the armchair as if he had just slid them off that morning to go to work. This struck him as odd, actually, the slippers waiting like mute and loyal dogs, and when he walked past he nudged them under the chair with his foot; but after he washed his hands and face in the bathroom and walked out again, he saw that they had been returned insistently to their displayed spot. Apparently it mattered to Nat that they be kept there.

The afternoon felt very long. Luckily Paul had the girls to occupy his attention. He sat on the living room floor with them while they showed him their dolls. He was not normally one to get down on his knees and play with the children, but he could see the delight in their eyes when he did so, and he had missed them. Liddie asked him to brush the long, white-blond hair of a doll that was supposed to be a baby, though Paul did not think it would be normal for such a tiny child to have hair down to its feet. Meanwhile Nat changed their real baby's diapers, mixed up a few bottles' worth of formula, and tried to make occasional chipper spurts of conversation. He could see that her happiness was dimming, that hurt was winning out over the cheerfulness she'd been trying to maintain.