Invisible(61)
She awoke a moment later with an oxygen mask on her face, feeling like her nether regions had been torn to shreds and beaten with a club, and she saw them wrapping a baby in a pink blanket, but she was too weak to hold her. The midwife told her that she had lost a fair amount of blood, but nothing to be alarmed about, and the baby was fine, it was a girl.
“That’s what her father would have wanted,” Antonia said and nearly passed out again. They put smelling salts under her nose, gave her more oxygen and a shot for the pain while they sewed her up, and an hour later she was drifting drowsily, listening to them talk in the distance, but not caring what they said. The delivery had been as horrible as everything in her life was these days. Everything was painful, sad, tragic, terrifying. This was just one more thing, and she felt none of the unbridled joy and peace she had felt when Dash was born, with Hamish at her side. He had been born in the midst of a glorious sunrise of vivid colors, as though he’d come straight from Heaven. Their daughter had been born during a storm in the dark of night, with the wind shrieking, as though Hell had overtaken them, and indeed it had, for many months now, ever since April, when Hamish had died.
Two hours later, they let her hold the baby, when Antonia’s vital signs were more stable. The baby girl had a small angry face and cried loudly, as though she hadn’t enjoyed what had happened either. They had displaced and dislodged her, and her little face was full of fury, and none of the gentle peace when Dash was born. When Antonia tried to put the breast to her mouth to comfort her, she screamed even louder. They finally took her away to calm her. But she cried for a long time.
“Some babies take longer to settle down,” the nurse said soothingly, but Antonia suspected that maybe this one was not going to be the easy, happy baby that Dash had been when he arrived. And who could blame her, with no father?
“What are you going to call her?” they asked her. She only weighed seven pounds, two ounces, but she had been much harder and more painful to deliver than her brother, who was two pounds bigger. Antonia wondered if it would have been as excruciating if Hamish had been there.
“The first time I was pregnant, her father liked Olympia for a girl. I thought I’d call her that. Olympia Lara.” They all agreed it was a beautiful name and said she was a pretty baby. They gave Antonia something for the pain and to help her sleep then, and the nurse and assistant midwife were going to spend the night to check them both. A baby nurse had been hired to take care of Olympia. She was arriving in the morning. Antonia had called her as soon as her water broke. Everything was organized and she could spend the next month recovering and getting her strength back, and then it would be Christmas, which was a nightmare Antonia didn’t want to think about now, since Hamish wouldn’t be there, or for the rest of her life.
* * *
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The recovery from Olympia’s birth was harder than it had been from Dash’s. But she had Hamish to fuss over her then, and share the joy with her. Antonia was anemic, exhausted, and the baby cried all the time. Olympia was colicky, hard to feed, lived on gripe water, which the British used for colicky babies, but it did nothing for Olympia, and she had a hard time nursing, so Antonia ended up with engorged breasts and painful mastitis, a breast infection.
Everything about the entire process was difficult with Olympia. Antonia wasn’t sure if it was due to her own depression, or the baby’s personality. But she was one of those babies parents talk about years later, remembering how hard the early months were, or even the first year. Antonia eventually ran out of milk and stopped nursing after her third breast infection. Every step of the way was hard now.
She decided not to celebrate Christmas, which would have made her feel even worse, and her children were too young to know the difference, so she gave herself a break and didn’t let anyone put up decorations. She and Hamish had decorated the house themselves the year before, and didn’t let anyone else do it.
In the bleak January weather, she made a decision. Hamish had been gone for nine months and she felt worse than ever. She was going to close his London house, but not put it on the market yet, and go back to the States and look for a country property, like a farm in Connecticut or Massachusetts, where her children could grow up. She wanted to go home, but had no home to go to. Hamish’s associates were buying his studio and equipment from her. And once she got back to the States, she was going to sell his plane. She didn’t need one. She wanted to stay home and take care of her children as they grew up. She had started writing again, but her acting career was over. She had told Fred several times. He said it was a crime to waste a talent like hers, and Hamish would have been upset about it, but he couldn’t convince her.
“I’m not an actress, Fred. I never was,” she told him. “If I’m anything, I’m a writer, and maybe one day a director, but I’m never going to act again.” She was in hiding, and wanted to become invisible again, much to the dismay of her fans.
She went to New York in February, without the children, and Lara introduced her to real estate brokers in Connecticut and the Boston area to look for a large property where her children could grow up.
It took three weeks, but she found the perfect spot in Connecticut. It was a hundred-acre farm with beautiful old trees on it, a barn, stables for horses, a small lake, and a big, beautifully built farmhouse where a family with six children had lived before they grew up and disbanded. There was a nearby private school with a good reputation, and a picturesque little town. George Washington had supposedly lived in the area at one time, and a few well-known politicians, and a famous writer lived nearby. The farm was in perfect condition. It was expensive, but with what Hamish had left her, she could afford it. She set the wheels in motion to buy it, thanked Lara for her help, had lunch with Jake between voice-overs he was recording, and flew back to London on Hamish’s plane.