How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [141]
I am going to be pregnant forever.
Ramona
We pile into the car—Katie with a big paperback she bought at the drugstore, Merlin with a shiny new harness around his chest to make it easier to let him out to exercise, and Jonah with a bag of candies. The one fly in the whole thing is that my phone is dead, and in all the confusion I forgot to bring my charger. I looked for one in the small town we passed right after I realized it was completely out of power, but no luck. It’s weirdly unsettling to be out of touch. Jonah has his, in case of emergencies, but I don’t have access to the numbers on my phone.
It occurs to me that only a person middle-aged or older would make this mistake. Anyone younger is so attached to her phone she’d probably have spare chargers everywhere—purse, car, whatever.
Anyway, we’re going to surprise Sofia, so it doesn’t matter. I keep imagining her face when she sees us.
We take turns with the radio, Top 40 for Katie, classical for me, some jazz for Jonah. When the radio loses reception, we play CDs from the little suitcase Jonah has brought along.
We sing. We talk, all of us shifting the positions of the passengers and the driver: me and Jonah in front, then Jonah and me, then Katie and me, then Katie and Jonah. The person in the back sleeps with the dog or reads. It is not the most inspiring landscape, largely empty and windblown, as you might expect of West Texas, but I am still cheered by the simple act of travel.
We arrive in San Antonio at eight p.m. I’m not sure exactly where the hospital is, but Jonah finds that information on his phone, and we all agree that it’s not so late we shouldn’t give it a try.
As we enter the hospital, I’m nervous. I take Jonah’s hand. Katie, uncharacteristically, takes my other hand. A volunteer at the visitors’ desk tells us it’s almost too late, but we have fifteen minutes. That’s long enough.
In the elevator, we are quiet. The hospital is settling in for the night, with nurses talking quietly at the station and visitors saying their goodbyes. Most of the doors are propped open to show burn patients in various states of wrapping. They watch television, sit with friends or parents. A pair of toddlers play hide-and-seek in the waiting area, a mother bent into a phone nearby. She looks exhausted.
Katie stops as we near Oscar’s room. Her hand is on her belly, and she’s panting softly. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“You don’t have to.” I don’t let go of her hand. “If you aren’t ready—”
A woman comes out of a room just ahead of us with a bundle in her arms, and even though I can’t see her face, I recognize my mother’s style at a hundred paces. A crisp sleeveless blouse, white trimmed with peach accents, and peach capris, and—
She’s carrying a baby. “Mom!” I cry out without thinking, dropping both Katie’s and Jonah’s hands.
Lily turns, her mouth falling open for a second before she gets the biggest smile on her face. “Well, look who’s here,” she says in a mom-to-baby voice. “It’s your grandma.”
She brings the baby over, and it’s plain he’s a boy—a big, hearty creature, with giant hands and a headful of black hair. “Oh!” is all I can manage as she nestles him into my arms. His face is bruised and a little swollen from the trauma of birth, but his eyes are distinctly, clearly the same color as Katie’s and Oscar’s. He yawns and then looks at me, calmly and easily, and in that very second I am smitten. Falling down the rabbit hole of love all over again. It makes me dizzy, and, helplessly, I look up to find Jonah’s face. He smiles broadly.
Breathless, I bend back over the baby, kiss his forehead. “Hello, little man. What is your name?”
“Marcus Gallagher Wilson,” my mother says. “He was nine pounds, fourteen ounces.”
I blink at her. “What? How is my daughter?”
“Fine. That child was born to have babies,