Castle of Water: A Novel(67)
“What would it be like to visit Cleveland?”
“We would have to go in summer, because the winters are so cold and gray. But we would show her how to catch lightning bugs, and how to play kick the can, and how to trick her parents when the ice-cream truck came by cutting through the neighbor’s backyard and getting your Rocket Pop on the next street over.”
“Would we take her to your family’s farm in Illinois?”
“Yes. She would sit on my lap while I drove the tractor, and gig frogs in the cow pond behind the barn for supper. We’d steal wooden shingles off the old pump house and whittle them into shingle darts, and we’d look for Indian arrowheads in the woodlot, and I’d show her the family cemetery by the little whitewashed Baptist church where her great-grandparents are buried. Oh, and Frito pies. We would definitely get Frito pies.”
“What would our daughter be like?”
“She’d be a lot like you. Maybe a little less stubborn.”
“Pfff.”
“Okay, fine. Just as stubborn. She would get freckles when she spent too much time in the sun the way you do, she would love to make things with her hands the way you do, and she’d probably have brown hair, too.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we both have brown hair. You know, dominant genes, Mendel’s bean plants and all that. What do you think?”
“About what?”
“About what she’d be like.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think you can predict something like that. I would want it to be a surprise. I’d like to discover new things about her every day. The things that would make her unique.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right about that. It’s silly to guess.”
“But I would still take her to the Pyrenees. That, she has to do.”
“You mean hiking in the mountains?”
“Oui. The same path my grandfather used to take us on. We would pack a picnic of saucisson sec and fromage de Bethmale. We would have a little dog named Astazou that would follow behind us. You would be very allergique to him, but you wouldn’t be able to get rid of him because Persinette would love him so much.”
“But would we stay in Paris? To live, I mean?”
“Well, most of the time. But when you really became a great painter, you would probably surprise me with a cute little house in Portugal. Maybe in Cascais.”
“That sounds like a lot of paintings to sell.”
“No, not so many. Each one would be worth a lot.”
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up, baby. Architects make a lot more than aspiring painters.”
“Then we’d save up and buy it together. We would spend some of the summers there, and get coffee and pastéis de nata from Belém in the mornings, and go into Lisbon in the evenings and take the little trolley car up the steep sides of the hill, all three of us, together.”
“Well, that all sounds great, but she’s not ever going to want to go to Cleveland if she’s spending all that time in the south of France, and on a beautiful beach in Portugal.”
“Of course she will. She’ll love both. She’ll love my half, and she’ll love your half, too.”
“How do you know?”
“I know because I do. Even though I’ve never been to the places you’ve told me about, I love them because they’re part of you. I can close my eyes and see them. Cleveland in the summer is beautiful—deep, dark, sad, and green. The farm in the south of Illinois is all gold—golden sunlight, golden corn. New York at night is like a giant paper lantern, but during the day … Are you crying?”
“Yes.”
“Shhh. It’s okay, my love. But really, now might not be the best time to talk about this.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because my water just broke.”
44
For the first few minutes of what he assumed to be impending labor, Barry was consumed by a fatherly panic. Sophie calmed him, assuring him that unlike the taxicab childbirth scenes of Hollywood movies, labor was hardly a speedy affair. We probably have hours ahead of us, she informed him, and on that score she was absolutely right.
Neither could make it back to the house very easily alone, between bad eyesight and severe contractions, so they hobbled arm in arm and helped each other home. Once there, Sophie settled onto the bamboo cot while Barry lit the oil lamps and started a fire in the stone oven, intending to boil as much sterile water as he could—he wasn’t sure precisely why, although it seemed like something a midwife ought to do. He also burrowed through the deflated rubber folds of the life raft, rummaging around until he found the first-aid kit. Upon locating it—next to a pack of decidedly stale Russian cigarettes that in his anxious state he longed to smoke—he removed all of the gauze and bandages contained within, leaving the cigarettes right where they lay.
“How are you doing, baby?” he shouted over his shoulder as he checked the water.
“I’m okay. I don’t think I want to be inside, though.”
“You don’t?”
Sophie, half-inclined on their bed, shook a sweaty brow. “Non. I want the baby to be born outside.”
After taking the water off the stove, he helped Sophie as best he could to shuffle across the palm-frond mat and out the door.