Future Home of the Living God(42)
I have this notebook, your letter, because Bernice helped me get together a bag of special things that I would need in the hospital. I added this, of course. I opened your drawer, the one where I have been keeping your layette, and I took out the newborn one-piece stretch terry jumpers, the package of flowered receiving blankets, the plastic mirror toy/rattle, the tiny fist-sized striped hats, the little bitty newborn diapers and booties. I put them in the bag with my nightgowns and sweater and T-shirts and stretchy bras and tie-waist pants. I slipped my nail file and nail scissors into the lining of the bag—they haven’t found those, yet. I grabbed the Zeal files and the books that happened to be shelved together near my suitcase, and dropped them in: Is That in the Bible? by Dr. Charles Francis Potter; Hildegard of Bingen, by Sabina Flanagan; Raids on the Unspeakable, by Thomas Merton; Saint John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul; The Life of Kateri Tekakwitha by Evelyn M. Brown; and Utterly Mad, a Ballantine paperback that says it is “dangerous as a three-week-old liverwurst sandwich,” edited or authored by William Gaines and bearing on its cover a portrait of Alfred E. Neuman dressed as Napoleon. I also grabbed my favorite rosary, the one made from olive wood from Israel, and stuck it in the pocket of Phil’s jeans. I was wearing one of his flannel shirts, a soft red and gold plaid. Bernice held my hand as we walked out to her car and she said, “Don’t be afraid. Your baby will be beautiful.”
And I looked at her and thought, Either she is a very good person and incredibly deluded, or else she is completely evil.
Because they don’t intend to give you to me, I’m sure.
I have found a slot just inside the heating register where this book just fits. Maybe the nurses know where your book is hidden and maybe they don’t. Maybe they remove it and read it while I am sleeping. I do not care, really, and they probably don’t either. Little one, I think we’re both going to live.
September 28 Morning
“Ooh!” says the nurse. “A Christmas baby!”
She’s got a little notebook computer with my chart inside and she holds the info on her hip. She beams at me, weirdly beneficent. She has noticed your due date and coos again at the idea of December 25, oblivious to the outrage of my roommate. Agnes Starr, black-rooted blond, droopy-lidded, with heavy, snarling hot-red lips, loudly gags.
“You fucking hypocrite, you murdering little bitch, don’t pretend everything’s okay.” She speaks in even and calculating tones, with a thrilling dramatic control. Sort of like Little Mary, who turned me in, I remember now.
“Don’t fucking do this, Fatty! We’re women, too, you slime. I haven’t seen one woman yet take her baby out of the delivery room. What do you do with them?”
The nurse glances indulgently at Agnes, smiles, then beams harder at the two of us and trills. “Almost lunchtime!”
“Answer me!” yells Agnes.
The nurse snaps the lid shut on the computer and hustles out the door.
“What the fuck do you do with them!” Agnes screams after her. She falls back against the pillows as the doors shut. Agnes is almost thirty-six weeks. She says they schedule the C-section as soon as the baby is viable and that she thinks she is nearly there. They’ve done two ultrasounds this week. She thinks it could be any day. She says I’ve got about six weeks to plan how I’m going to get out of the hospital.
“I’m busting out tonight,” she says, “and by the way, don’t take the vitamins.”
I’ve already taken mine this morning.
“Hide it in your cheek, not under your tongue. Sometimes they make you stick your tongue out. Once the nurse leaves, go take a pee and flush it. You’re feeling good right now, huh?”
“Yeah.”
I have the most intensely comfortable feeling of peace and order. I am in the center of a glowing configuration, a perfectly safe and clean little habitat. This room has evenly painted golden walls, three photographs of dewy flowers. The sheets are heavy, white, starched cotton. Brilliant white waffle-weave cotton blankets cover both of us, me and Agnes, who is softly radiant.
“Oh, Agnes! It’s like a five-star hotel!”
She squints at me, grinning. “You dumb bitch.” There is a black space between her front teeth, a sexy gap. “I felt like that too for about three days. I wasn’t even pissed off about Bernice shooting Mark. You have a guy?”
“Yes, yes, I do!”
Guilty start. I haven’t given Phil much thought, she’s right. I try to imagine, now, the scenario of Phil returning to our house and me not being there. He’d be frantic, he’d go nuts, he’d bolt to each room and shout my name into the dissonance of empty but familiar space. I try to keep picturing Phil’s reactions, but it exhausts me to imagine anything abstract. It seems impossible to feel anything but a calm and pleasurable acceptance of my comforting little hospital world.
“Does he know where I am?” I ask Agnes. “I mean, do they tell the dads?”
“Oh, right.” Agnes laughs at me. She gets out of bed and toddles over to the window. She is carrying her baby low and her hips are skinny, so her stomach sticks straight out in a perfect ball. Her thin gown is made of the odd institutional material they use. The old boxer-short stuff, complex blue-figured checks, drapes down her front in a dignified flow.
“You’re right. I just feel great,” I say. “Nothing’s wrong even though I know on some level that everything is wrong.”