She put Phoebe back into the box and tucked the blankets lightly around her, thinking of David Henry, edged with weariness, eating a cheese sandwich at his desk, finishing a cup of half-cold coffee, then rising to open the office doors again on Tuesday nights, a free clinic for patients who could not afford to pay him. The waiting room was always full on those nights, and he was often still there when Caroline finally went home at midnight, so weary herself that she could barely think. This was why she had come to love him, for his goodness. Yet he had sent her to this place with his infant daughter, this place where a woman had sat on the edge of a bed, her hair drifting into soft piles on the harsh cold light of the floor.
This would destroy her, he had said of Norah. / will not have her destroyed.
There were footsteps, drawing nearer, and then a woman with gray hair and a white uniform very much like Caroline's stood in the doorway. She was solidly built, agile for her size, no-nonsense. In another situation, Caroline would have been favorably impressed.
"Can I help you?" she asked. "Have you been waiting long?"
"Yes," Caroline said slowly. "I've been waiting for a long time, yes."
The woman, exasperated, shook her head. "Yes, look, I'm sorry. It's the snow. We're short-staffed today because of it. You get as much as an inch here in Kentucky, and the whole state shuts down. I grew up in Iowa, myself, and I don't see what all the fuss is about, but that's just me. Now, then. What can I do for you?"
"Are you Sylvia?" Caroline asked, struggling to remember the name on the paper below the directions. She'd left it in the car. "Sylvia Patterson?"
The woman's expression grew annoyed. "No. I am certainly not. I'm Janet Masters. Sylvia no longer works here."
"Oh," Caroline said, and then stopped. This woman didn't know who she was; clearly, she hadn't talked with Dr. Henry. Caroline, still holding the dirty diaper, dropped her hands to her sides to keep it out of sight.
Janet Masters planted her hands firmly on her hips, and her eyes narrowed. "Are you here from that formula company?" she asked, nodding across the room to the box on the sofa, the red cherubs smiling benignly. "Sylvia had something going with that rep, we all knew that, and if you're from the same company you can just pack up your things and go." She shook her head sharply.
"I don't know what you mean," Caroline said. "I'll just go," she added. "Really. I'm leaving. I won't bother you again."
But Janet Masters wasn't finished. "Insidious, that's what you people are. Dropping off free samples and then sending a bill for them a week later. This may be a home for the feebleminded, but it isn't run by them, you know."
"I know," Caroline whispered. "I'm truly sorry."
A bell rang, distantly, and the woman let her hands fall from her hips.
"See that you're out of here in five minutes," she said. "Out of here, and don't come back." Then she was gone.
Caroline stared at the empty doorway. A draft slid around her legs. After a moment she put the dirty diaper in the middle of the rickety piecrust table by the sofa. She felt in her pocket for her keys, then picked up the box with Phoebe in it. Quickly, before she could think about what she was doing, she went into the spartan hallway and through the double doors, the rush of cold air from the world outside as astonishing as being born.
She settled Phoebe in the car again and pulled away. No one tried to stop her; no one paid any attention at all. Still, Caroline drove fast once she reached the interstate, fatigue sluicing through her body like water down rock. For the first thirty miles she argued with herself, sometimes out loud. What have you done? she de?manded severely. She argued with Dr. Henry, too, imagining the lines deepening in his forehead, the stray muscle in his cheek that leaped whenever he was upset. What are you thinking? he de?manded to know, and Caroline had to confess that she had no idea whatsoever.
But the energy soon drained from these conversations, and by the time she reached the interstate she was driving mechanically, shaking her head now and then just to keep herself awake. It was late afternoon; Phoebe had been asleep for almost twelve hours. Soon she would need to be fed. Caroline hoped against hope they would be in Lexington before this happened.
She had just passed the last Frankfort exit, thirty-two miles from home, when the brake lights of the car ahead of her flared. She slowed, then slowed some more, then had to press down hard. Dusk was already beginning to gather, the sun a dull glow in the overcast sky. As she crested the hill, traffic came to a complete stop, a long ribbon of taillights that ended in a cluster flashing red and white. An accident: a pileup. Caroline thought she might weep. The gas gauge hovered below a quarter of a tank, enough to get back to Lexington but nothing extra, and this line of cars—well, they could be here for hours. She couldn't risk turning off the en?gine and losing the heat, not with a newborn in the car.
She sat still for several minutes, paralyzed. The last exit ramp was a quarter of a mile back, separated from her by a gleaming chain of cars. Heat rose from the Fairlane's powder-blue hood, shimmering faintly in the dusk, melting the few flakes of snow that had started to fall. Phoebe sighed, and her face tightened slightly and then relaxed. Caroline, following an impulse that would amaze her later, jerked the steering wheel and slid the Fairlane off the as?phalt and onto the soft gravel shoulder. She put the car in reverse and then backed up, traveling slowly past the stalled line of cars. It was strange, as if she were passing a train. There was a woman with a fur coat; three children making faces, a man in a cloth jacket, smoking. She traveled slowly backward in the softening dark?ness, the stilled traffic like a frozen river.
She reached the exit without incident. It took her to route 60, where the trees were heavy with snow again. The fields were bro?ken by houses, first a few and then many, their windows already glowing in the dusk. Soon Caroline was driving down the main street of Versailles, charmed by the brick shopfronts, searching for signs that would mark her way home.
A dark blue Kroger sign rose up a block away. That familiar sight, sale flyers decorating its bright windows, comforted Caroline and made her realize suddenly how hungry she was. And it was what, now—Saturday, not quite evening? The stores would be closed all day tomorrow, and she had very little food in her apart?ment. Despite her exhaustion, she pulled into the parking lot and turned off the car.
Phoebe, warm and light, twelve hours old, was wrapped in sleep. Caroline shouldered the diaper bag and tucked the baby beneath her coat, so small, curled close and warm. Wind moved over the as?phalt, whisking the remnants of snow and a few new flakes, swirl?ing them in corners. She picked her way through the slush, afraid of falling and hurting the baby, thinking at the same time, fleet-ingly, how easy it would be to simply leave her, in a garbage dump-ster or on the steps of a church or anywhere. Her power over this tiny life was total. A deep sense of responsibility flooded through her, making her light-headed.
The glass door swung open, releasing a rush of light and warmth. The store was crowded. Shoppers spilled out, their carts piled high. A bag boy stood at the door.
"We're only still open on account of the weather," he warned, as she entered. "We're closing in half an hour."
"But the storm's over," Caroline said, and the boy laughed, ex?cited and incredulous. His face was flushed with the heat pouring down over the automatic doors and spilling out into the evening.
"Didn't you hear? We're supposed to get hit again tonight, but good."
Caroline settled Phoebe in a metal cart and walked through the unfamiliar aisles. She pondered over formulas, a bottle warmer, over the rows of bottles with their selections of nipples, over bibs. She started to the checkout, then realized she had better get milk for herself, and some more diapers, and some kind of food. People passed her, and when they saw Phoebe they all smiled, and some even paused and moved the blanket aside to see her face. They said, "Oh, how sweet!" and "How old?" Caroline lied without com?punction. Two weeks, she told them. "Oh, you shouldn't have her out in this," one woman with gray hair reprimanded her. "My! You should get that baby home."
In aisle 6, while Caroline was picking out cans of tomato soup, Phoebe stirred, her small hands jerking wildly, and began to cry. Caroline vacillated for a moment, then picked up the baby and the bulky bag and went to the restroom in the back of the store. She sat on an orange plastic chair in the corner, listening to water drip from the faucet, while she balanced the infant on her lap and poured for?mula from the thermos into a bottle. It took several minutes for the baby to settle down, because she was so agitated and because her sucking reflex was poor. Eventually, however, she caught on, and then Phoebe drank as she had slept: fiercely, intently, her hands in fists by her chin. By the time she relaxed, sated, they were announc?ing that the store was about to close. Caroline hurried to the check?out counter, where a single cashier waited, bored and impatient. She paid quickly, cradling the paper sack in one arm, Phoebe in the other. When she left, they locked the doors behind her.
The parking lot was nearly empty, the last few cars idling or pulling slowly out into the street. Caroline rested her paper sack of groceries on the hood and settled Phoebe in her box in the backseat. The faint voices of employees echoed across the lot. Scattered flakes swirled in the cones from the streetlights, no more or less than be?fore. The forecasters so often got it wrong. The snow that had started before Phoebe was born—just last night, she reminded her?self, though it seemed ages past—had not even been predicted. She reached into the paper sack and ripped open a loaf of bread, taking out a slice, for she had not eaten all day and was ravenous. She chewed as she shut the door, thinking with weary longing of her apartment, so spare and tidy, of her twin bed with its white chenille spread, everything in order and in place. She was halfway around the back of the car before she realized that her taillights were glow?ing weakly red.
She stopped where she was, staring. All that time, while she had dithered in the grocery aisles, while she had sat in the unfamiliar restroom quietly feeding Phoebe, this light had been spilling out across the snow.
When she tried the ignition it merely clicked, the battery so dead the engine wouldn't even groan.
She got out of the car and stood by the open door. The parking lot was empty now; the last car had driven away. She began to laugh. It wasn't a normal laugh; even Caroline could hear that: her voice too loud, halfway to a sob. "I have a baby," she said out loud, astonished. "I have a baby in this car." But the parking lot stretched quietly before her, the lights from the grocery store windows mak?ing large rectangles in the slush. "I have a baby here," Caroline re?peated, her voice thinning quickly in the air. "A baby!" she shouted then, into the stillness.
Ill
ORAH OPENED HER EYES. OUTSIDE, THE SKY WAS FADING into dawn, but the moon was still caught in the trees, shed?ding pale light into the room. She had been dreaming, searching on frozen ground for something she had lost. Blades of grass, sharp and brittle, shattered at her touch, leaving tiny cuts on her flesh. Waking, she held her hands up, momentarily confused, but her hands were unmarked, her nails carefully filed and polished.
Beside her, in his cradle, her son was crying. In one smooth mo?tion, more instinct than intention, Norah lifted him into the bed. The sheets beside her were cool, arctic white. David was gone then, called to the clinic while she slept. Norah pulled her son into the warm curve of her body, opened her nightgown. His small hands fluttered against her swollen breasts like moth wings; he latched on. A sharp pain, which subsided in a wave as the milk came. She stroked his thin hair, his fragile scalp. Yes, astonishing, the powers of the body. His hands stilled, resting like small stars against her aureolas.
She closed her eyes, drifting slowly between sleep and waking. A well deep within her was tapped, released. Her milk flowed and, mysteriously, Norah felt herself becoming a river or a wind, encom-passing everything: the daffodils on the dresser and the grass grow?ing sweetly and silently outside, the new leaves pressing open against the buds of the trees. Tiny larvae, white as seed pearls and hidden in the ground, transforming themselves into caterpillars, inchworms, bees. Birds in winged flight, calling. All this was hers. Paul clenched his tiny fists below his chin. His cheeks moved rhyth?mically as he drank. Around them the universe hummed, exquisite and demanding.
Norah's heart surged with love, with vast unwieldy happiness and sorrow.
She had not cried about their daughter right away, though David had. A blue baby, he had told her, tears catching in the stubble of his one-day beard. A little girl who never took a breath. Paul was in her lap and Norah had studied him: the tiny face, so serene and wrinkled, the little striped knit cap, the infant fingers, so pink and delicate and curved. Tiny, tiny fingernails, still soft, translucent as the daylight moon. What David was saying—Norah could not take it in, not really. Her memories of the night before were distinct, then blurry: there was the snow, and the long ride to the clinic through the empty streets, and David stopping at every light while she fought against the rippling urge, seismic and intense, to push. After that she remembered only scattered things, strange things: the unfamiliar quietness of the clinic, the soft worn feel of a blue cloth across her knees. The coldness of the examination table slap?ping her bare back. Caroline Gill's gold watch glinting every time she reached to give Norah the gas. Then she was waking up and Paul was in her arms and David was beside her, weeping. She glanced up, watching him with concern and an interested detach?ment. It was the drugs, the aftermath of the birth, a hormonal high. Another baby, a blue one—how could that be? She remembered the second urge to push, and tension beneath David's voice like rocks in white water. But the infant in her arms was perfect, beauti?ful, more than enough. It's all right, she had told David, stroking his arm, it's all right.
