Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [149]
He knelt beside the cradle and turned the baby over, at the same time gingerly scooping it up so that he held a warm, wrinkled bundle against his chest as he rose. This didn’t feel like any eight pounds. It felt like nothing, like thistledown—a burden so light it seemed almost buoyant; or maybe he was misled by the softness of the flannel. The baby stirred and clutched two miniature handfuls of air but went on sleeping. Ian bore his son gently across the upstairs hall.
“In fact I’ve been thinking of joining your congregation,” Bobbeen was telling Reverend Emmett. “Did Rita happen to mention that?”
“Um, no, she didn’t.”
“I just feel you-all might have the answers.”
“Oh, well, answers,” Reverend Emmett said. “Actually, Mrs.—”
“Bobbeen.”
“Actually, Mrs. Bobbeen …”
Ian grinned.
He was halfway down the stairs when he felt a kind of echo effect—a memory just beyond his reach. He paused, and Danny stepped forward to present his firstborn. “Here she is!” he said. But then the moment slid sideways like a phonograph needle skipping a groove, and all at once it was Lucy he was presenting. “I’d like you to meet the woman who’s changed my life,” he said. His face was very solemn but Lucy was smiling. “Your what?” she seemed to be saying. “Your, what was that? Oh, your life.” And she tipped her head and smiled. After all, she might have said, this was an ordinary occurrence. People changed other people’s lives every day of the year. There was no call to make such a fuss about it.