The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [94]
Iona’s heart leaps like a flight animal into her throat. “I’ll be in the waiting room,” she says. Jeff forces his gaze from his wife’s. “Why not stay?” he says.
“Three’s a crowd.” Of course, it’s the doctor who makes three and Iona would be four, but this seems irrelevant. Iona flees to the waiting room in a broth of emotion, feeling at once excluded, relieved, and anxious. Her stomach is in a knot. She can’t sit. This is why expectant fathers pace. She follows their example, pacing for fifty-seven minutes (she times it), until Jeff comes in and says, “Well, you’re a grandma now”—not true, but at the moment, not the primary concern—“Come on. Let me introduce you to Rosalie.”
“Rosalie.” Iona tests the name. Jeff and Lori chose it months ago but wouldn’t tell anyone, lest they’d have to hear negative opinions. Their secrecy had made her imagine the worst: Hepzebah, Imogene, Penelope. By contrast, Rosalie . . . who could object to Rosalie?
Iona means to be polite no matter how awful the infant looks. And, of course, the child does look awful, what little Iona can see of her, wrapped in a blanket like a taco and set in the middle of a portable—well, a portable box with see-through sides—a red, wrinkly creature topped by a pink cap that clashes with her complexion, and a smashed-in nose and small, lashless eyes of no particular color. She seems alert, though. Half an hour old, and looking around.
“Seven pounds four ounces,” Lori says. “Not a bruiser, but a decent weight. She got a ten on her Apgar.”
“Her Apgar?”
“A newborn strength and vitality test,” Lori says. “Ten’s the highest score.”
“Oh.” Why it makes sense to measure strength and vitality in a creature less capable than newly hatched poultry, Iona has no idea.
“Here. You can hold her.”
“But I’m not—”
Before Iona has time to demur, Jeff has loosened the blanket to free the baby’s hands, lifted her from her box, and set her in Iona’s arms.
Support the neck, she reminds herself as blood drums in her ears. It isn’t difficult. There’s not much neck, or anything else, to support.
“Rosalie,” she says, for lack of anything better to say to the child. As if she recognizes the sound, the baby grows perfectly still. She opens her eyes and regards Iona’s face. They study each other for a long moment.
Iona dangles a finger at Rosalie’s hand, perfectly formed down to the fingernails, which appear to need cutting. She touches the tiny palm. The baby clutches Iona’s finger in her rosebud fist. Iona knows babies do this, she knows it’s just a reflex, but it seems remarkable all the same. Not an hour old and holding on. Godawful to look at, but strong.
“You did good,” she tells Jeff. “You, too,” she assures Lori. The two of them seem to bask in her praise. Jeff turns to his wife and they gaze at each other adoringly, apparently love struck all over again.
Embarrassed, Iona keeps her attention on Rosalie. “Good thing you didn’t have to see the ponytail,” she whispers. Rosalie smiles. This is not possible, but there it is. A smile. All along, without meaning to, Iona has been trembling on the brink of loving her. The smile pushes her over the edge.
With that a fait accompli, she allows herself to note that the child’s forehead, which she has been aware of all along, is higher and more intelligent looking than either of her parents’. It is exactly like Richard’s. She had not expected that—Richard appearing not in the form of a ghostly visitation, but in a forehead.
Jeff’s voice brings her up short. “You’re boo-hooing, aren’t you?” Jeff says. “Don’t say you’re not.”
“I never boo-hoo about anything.” But Iona watches a tear—her own tear?—fall onto the receiving blanket. “It’s just that she’s so perfect,” she says. “Considering who her father is, I’m sort of astonished.”
“I’m sort of astonished myself,” Jeff tells her, while in the gentlest possible motion, he lifts his daughter into his fatherly arms.
It’s nearly dark by the time Iona gets home. Her headlights sweep across her front yard, which looks fairly dismal