He laughed and pulled me back onto his lap.
“I’m not moving in with anyone until I marry them,” he said.
I hadn’t heard anyone say this since I was fifteen and my parents forced me to go to Bible camp. “Swell,” I said. “And I’m not sleeping with anyone until I marry them.”
Caleb turned his best I can have you whenever I want you look on me, and I got so flustered I didn’t know whether to kiss him or blush. He outplays my seduction attempts every time. Power, I thought with only half-dipped interest because he was kissing me. He has power over me.
We didn’t mention the ice cream again, though every time I was in the vicinity of the fridge I felt like a base dwelling bottom feeder. The stupid Cherry Garcia turned into a body part to me. It was like he was keeping her finger in the freezer instead of just shitty ice cream. I imagined the finger wore black nail polish and scooted around the house when we weren’t home. It was after my ring, I knew it. Ex-girlfriends have a way of keeping their fingers in things, long after they’re gone.
It worried me at first, but Caleb was so present in our “non-serious” relationship that I forgot about it. I had more pressing matters vying for my attention, like my job at the bank and the everyday drama between my co-workers, and my upcoming vacation with Caleb to go skiing in Colorado. Everything needed my attention, and I was more than willing to spread my ear, input and good times expertise all around. We went another three months without talking about the finger. What we did talk about was us — what we wanted, where we wanted to go, who we wanted to be. When he talked about having children, instead of bolting from the room, I sat up and listened with a half-smile on my face.
We were three days into our ski trip when Caleb’s college roommate called to tell him that his wife was in labor. As soon as he hung up the phone, he looked at me. “If we leave now, we can be there by tomorrow morning.”
“Are you crazy? We have the cabin for two more days!”
“I’m the godfather. I want to see the baby.”
“Yeah, you’re the godfather — not the father. The baby will still be there in two days.”
He didn’t mention it again, but I could tell he was disappointed. When we finally did make it to the hospital, he was grinning from ear to ear, his arms loaded with ridiculous presents.
He held that damn baby for thirty minutes before he had to give him back to his mother to be fed. When he tried to pass him to me, I pretended to have a cold. “I’d love to,” I’d said. “But, I really shouldn’t.”
The truth was, babies made me nervous. People were always shoving them at you, trying to get you to hold them and coo at them. I didn’t want to hold someone else’s spawn. Who knows what you could be holding? The kid could be the next John Wayne Gacy and you’d never know it.
Caleb was nuts for that baby. It sent him into baby talk overdrive and got to me after a while. I started picturing little sandy haired Calebs running around. I’d rewind a little to our picture perfect wedding and rewind some more to the romantic proposal he’d deliver on the beach. I was planning out our lives and that goddamn finger was still in the freezer. If I could just get a little glimpse of her, maybe I’d understand.
Turns out I didn’t have to wait long.
Chapter SevenPresent
I wake up to the sound of an alarm. It is broken, obviously, because the beeping is not constant but wailing like a siren. Everything feels thick, as if my brain has been dipped in honey. I reach for the alarm — to turn it off, and then my eyes snap open. That is not an alarm. I jump up and look around my dimly lit bedroom, the covers slipping to my waist. According to my cell phone it is three o’clock in the morning. Caleb’s side of the bed has not been touched. I wonder if he’s in the guest room, and then I hear it again — the sound of a baby crying. I stumble toward the nursery. Where is Caleb? He must be with her. I walk into the nursery to see him pacing the room with her in his arms. His cell phone is pressed between his shoulder and ear and he’s speaking rapidly. The baby is not just crying, she is screaming like she’s in some sort of pain.
“What’s—?” I stop when he holds up a finger to shush me.
He finishes off the conversation and tosses the phone aside. “Get your things, we’re taking her to the emergency room.”
I nod, cotton-mouthed, and run to throw on some clothes. Sweatpants, his Pink Floyd t-shirt … I race down the stairs and meet him at the door. He is strapping the baby into her car seat. She has not stopped crying since I left them in the nursery.
“What’s happening?“ I say. “Is she sick?”
He nods grimly and walks out the door with her. I follow on his heels and jump into the passenger seat.
I remember the things I’ve read about a baby’s immune system. How you shouldn’t have them around other children, foreign places. Keep them at home until they’ve had time to build antibodies to the many floating viruses.
Shit. He’s going to hate me even more.
“She has a fever of a hundred and five.” He jumps into the driver’s seat, gunning the engine.
“Oh.”
He looks at me out of the corner of his eye as we pull out of the driveway. What was that? Frustration? Disappointment?
I squirm for the entire ten-minute ride, shooting glances to the backseat where she is strapped. Should I have sat back there with her? What is the fucking protocol for being a mother? When we pull up, he hops out of the car before I can even open my door. The car seat is unstrapped, and Caleb is halfway to the emergency room doors before I can straighten my hair. I follow him in. He is at the nurse’s station when the automatic doors hiss open for me.
She slides over a clipboard of paperwork and tells him to fill it out. I reach out before he can and grab it from the counter. He is in no state to fill out paperwork. I carry it over to a chair and get to work.
I can see the worry on his face as he speaks to a nurse. I pause to watch him. It is such a rarity to see him this way — vulnerable, fretting — the corners of his full mouth turned down as he nods at something she says and looks into the car seat at the baby. He glances back at me and disappears behind the emergency room doors with the nurse, not bothering to ask me if I want to come. I’m not sure what to do, so I ask the nurse at the desk if I can go back with them as I hand in the forms. She looks at me like I’m an idiot.
“Aren’t you the mother?”
The mother. Not her mother or the baby’s mother — just the mother.
I look at her frizzy hair and her eyebrows, which are in bad need of plucking.
“Yes, I am the uterus that carried the child,” I snap. I walk through the emergency room doors without waiting for an answer.
I have to peek into several curtained partitions before I find them. Caleb does not acknowledge my presence. He’s watching a nurse hook Estella up to an IV while she explains the risks of dehydration.
“Where are they going to put the needle?” I ask, because clearly her hands are too small.
She gives me a sympathetic look before telling us that the IV needle will be inserted into a vein in Estella’s head. Caleb’s face drains of color. He won’t be able to watch this, I know him. I straighten my back importantly. At least I can be of some use. I can stay with her while they do this procedure while Caleb waits outside. I am neither squeamish nor prone to tears, but when I suggest this, he looks at me coldly and says:
“Just because it makes me uncomfortable doesn’t mean I’m going to leave her by herself.”
I shut my parted lips. I can’t believe he said that. I didn’t leave her by herself per se. She was in the care of professionals.
I sulk in my hard, miserable chair while Estella wails down the emergency room. She looks pitiful and tiny beneath the beeping machines and wires that are snaking out from her small head.
Caleb looks like he’s on the verge of tears, but he has her in his arms, careful not to disturb the wires. Once again, I am struck by how natural he is. I thought it would be this way for me — that the minute I laid eyes on my baby, I would know what to do and feel an instantaneous connection. I bite my lip and wonder if I should offer to hold her.
It is sort of my fault that she’s here. Before I can stand up, the doctor pulls aside the curtain that separates us from the busy ER room beyond. He is middle-aged and balding. Before he greets us, he consults a clipboard in his hand.
“What do we have here?” he asks, touching Estella lightly on the head. Caleb explains her symptoms, and the Doctor listens while examining her. He mentions that she was taken to daycare, and I shoot him a dirty look.
“Her immune system needs time to develop,” he says, removing his stethoscope from her chest. “In my opinion, she’s too young for daycare. Usually women take a short maternity leave before putting their child into full-time care.”
Caleb shoots me a look. Seething. He is absolutely seething.
I focus on a box of latex gloves. He’s going to yell at me. I hate when he yells at me. I can guarantee my skin has already erupted into a splotchy mess; a telltale sign that I’m shitting myself.
“I’m going to admit her so we can monitor her for forty-eight hours. She could dehydrate otherwise. Someone should be in to take her up to pediatrics in a few minutes.”