Out at Night (22 page)

“Not anymore,” Grace said. “Andrea, we’re going to need a little room here.”

“I don’t have a knife.” Andrea took a surprised step.

“Careful around that bag of potting soil, Vonda. What’s the knife for, Andrea?”

“There’s no knife.”

Grace could see her confusion, her mind racing. Grace kept steady pressure on Vonda’s elbow. They were within feet of the door and Grace heard the sound of a car engine idling.

“She’s lying, Vee.”
“I saw it. It’s in a bag back there.”

Comprehension flooded Andrea’s face and she raced down the aisle, searching under the ledges of pots. “I was getting soy clippings. To start my own garden.”

“And maybe a knife to cut the cord. Here in the greenhouse. There’s the doorsill, Vonda. Be careful.”

Vonda lifted her foot. It looked as heavy as an elephant’s. Grace steadied her as she cleared the sill, and Andrea looped back, rushing through the door after them.

“It’s not there. What did you do with it?”

Grace squinted in the sunlight. Vonda shuffled her feet and flecks of sand spat into Grace’s shoes. Sarah sat in the driver’s seat of her car, waiting. Grace had her blocked; she couldn’t leave without Grace moving her car. Vonda sighed unsteadily, focused on the grinding pain in her body.

“Doing good, sweetie.”

They were almost up to Sarah’s car. They passed a scattering of cactus, poking out of white bleached sand. Except for the sound of the motor, it was quiet.

Andrea raced ahead and opened Sarah’s passenger-side door. “Vee,” her voice was pleading, “the important thing is getting you into the car, doing everything we’ve talked about.”

“And what’s that, Andrea?” Grace turned to Vonda. “I think Stu’s right. I think she expects to share this kid.”

Through the windshield, Sarah frowned, realizing suddenly that things were not going according to plan. Grace slammed shut the passenger door with her hip. She eased Vonda past the car.

“Don’t you, Andrea?”

Andrea ran ahead so she could walk backwards in front of Vonda, her soft yellow curls almost white in the sun. “Whoever was first.”

Sarah got out of the car. “What’s happening?”

Vonda frowned. “But it’s my kid.” She gripped her belly as if it were a basketball somebody was trying to wrench out of her grasp.

Andrea wet her lip. “Vee, we can do this later. She’s trying to bait us. Let it go.”

“No, what did you mean, whoever was first?” Vee stopped walking. She straightened. “It’s my baby. Understand? He doesn’t even see you, unless I want him to.”

The mask dropped. Glittering fury crackled over Andrea’s features; she wasn’t pretty anymore, not soft, and certainly not harmless.

“You have no idea how it is watching you. Every minute getting more pregnant. Having the one thing all of us want.”

Vonda rocked back on her heels as if she’d been slapped. A hand flew to her face. “I’m leaving with Stu.” Her hand shook.

“You can’t.”

“What do you mean, I can’t. I get in the van, we attach it to the U-Haul, we leave.”

“You promised,” Andrea wailed. “It’s my kid, too. Do you understand?”

“A couple more steps now, Vonda, and we’re there.”

Grace shifted her grip on Vonda and dug into her bag. She came up with her keys. She’d been having trouble with them lately; the automatic opener unlocked doors sporadically and never the trunk anymore, but she didn’t need the trunk opened, only the passenger side.

The lights blinked and she heard the crunch of the door locks opening.

“Vee, you’re staying. At least until Sammy’s a toddler, then we can decide what else to do.”

“A toddler? Are you kidding me?” Grace opened the passenger door of her car and Vonda grunted and slid in.

“No,” Andrea cried, her voice fierce. “We take her in. Vee, we take you. I get to be in there. Sarah and I both do. Hold the baby afterwards first. You promised. We get to cut the cord.”

“You heard her. I’m taking her.” Grace slammed the door and locked it.

Chapter 26

“Okay, now, honey, it’s going to be a little rough here, going in.”

Vonda leaned back in the seat, gripping her belly, moaning as Grace hit a bump.

“Sorry.”

Grace eased the car down a gully of eroded sand. She checked her rearview mirror. Sarah stayed on her bumper. Dust billowed over the road, obscuring the car.

Vonda clutched her arm, fingers damp. “Thanks.” She talked through her teeth, as if the sheer act of moving her mouth caused pain.

Grace nodded.

“Call the cops?”

“No.”

“Call Daddy.”

Grace glanced over at her. “You mean, did I? No. But you need to tell your folks you’re in labor, Vonda.”

“No! After this morning? No way. Don’t want him anywhere near my baby.”

The road dipped and Grace tapped the brakes to soften the bump as they passed a row of rounded metal mailboxes. A rusty barbwire fence roped off a field of wind turbines, sprouting like malignant mushrooms, the kind whose caps had already disintegrated into chalky spikes.

“They’d spotted Stu through the window with the carving knife, Vee. That’s why they burst in the way they did.” She hesitated. “Can you talk?”

“Hurts.”

“Yeah, I know, honey. It could start to come up fast now. The pain.” Grace wet her lip. “How about this. How about you just move one of your fingers for yes, okay? If you hear me and it’s okay to talk.”

A pause. Vonda clawed her belly in a spasm of pain. A moist finger came up.

A middle one.

Grace smiled. “Good. That’s good, honey. Good to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

“Thirsty.” The word came out cracked.

“I know, sweetie, and I wish I had something. I’ll get you there soon.”

Not wanting to tell Vonda that chances were, they weren’t going to let her drink or eat anything from that point forward, except maybe ice chips.

They were still on the dirt road.

“Which hospital?”

“Desert Regional.”

“Do you remember where that is?” She waited as another spasm seized Vonda. She checked her watch.

“Indian.”

“Indian Canyon Drive?”

Vonda groaned.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

The road leading to Vonda and Stuart’s house connected to a frontage road and Grace picked up speed, Sarah tailing them as they came up behind a school bus stopped at a light.

Grace took off her seat belt, reached into the backseat, and opened the velvet bag.

“What?”

“Checking something.”

She clambered back into the driver’s seat and put on the seat belt as the light changed to green. She turned right onto Indian Canyon.

“Vee, what happened after I left this morning? You’ve got five minutes, honey, before the next one hits.”

“Scared. He’s okay?”

“I know it,” Grace lied. “He’s going to be a healthy, beautiful little boy.” She wet her lip. “Can you tell me about this morning?”

Grace glanced at her, saw her mustering energy for one brave torrent of words. Vonda screwed up her face, concentrated, and in a rush, they came.

“They didn’t find anything. No soybean rust. I can’t believe Daddy thought I had something. I’m organic. He knows that. At least I thought he did. That stuff’s as nasty as it can be. Did Dad honestly think I’d grow something to harm people? He doesn’t know me at all.”

She collapsed back against the seat, gasping for breath.

Grace smoothed a hand on Vonda’s shoulder, careful not to press too hard. Pregnant women were sensitive to touch and smells. Vonda squeezed her eyes closed and rocked her neck so that her head was against the seat.

“Vee? About what Andrea said.” Grace kept her eyes on the road. “Are you worried about that?”

Up ahead traffic was slowing to a standstill and Grace felt her stomach knot. This was not a good time to be stalled in traffic, caught in a protest.

“A knife?” Vonda panted, her mouth open. Her tongue looked gray.

“You mean in that bag? No. Gardening shears. She probably wanted clippings, like she said. But the other part. Sharing your baby. Does that make you rethink things?”

Vonda raised a finger briefly and for an instant, Grace thought it must be a reflexive movement from her belly quaking. If Vonda was rethinking her friendship, maybe she was ready to tell what she knew. The finger curled, straightened.

Sweat pooled in tiny beads on her fingers, as if in a commercial for a fancy emollient. She squeezed her belly again and moaned.

“Vee, this is important. I need to know if they’ve planned anything that could hurt somebody.”

Vee twisted her head. Her face looked clammy and pale. “How much longer?”

Her voice raised in timbre, the panting more pronounced, and her body bucked in on itself and a leg spasmed. Grace had been around enough women giving birth to know the signs.

“No worries,” she sang out. “You’re ramping up. Perfectly normal.”

Grace rolled down her window and squeezed onto the bike path, inching her way forward. A traffic cop approached, a whistle clamped in his teeth, the sound shrill. He was lean, probably ran Iron Mans before breakfast. She made herself relax. It was all good; he could fling Vonda over his shoulder and carry her there if he had to.

“Okay, lady, what in the—” He thrust his head in the car and immediately reared back, holding up his palm, whistle shrilling. He stopped Sarah’s car behind them.

“Go, go.” He waved Grace through and slammed up a hand on Sarah’s car. “You. Stop.”

_______

Desert Regional Medical Center was a complex of buildings tucked off Indian Canyon Drive, surrounded by date palms and low-impact succulents. A tiled roof decorated in yellows and blues adorned one of the front buildings.

Grace drove to the emergency entrance and parked haphazardly, flinging open her door and racing into the building. The sliding glass doors opened onto a waiting room, green walls, wailing children, gray-faced people in pain, watching television.

“Emergency outside,” Grace shouted. “I need doctors. She’s giving birth.”

Vonda wasn’t, not yet, and Grace knew it, but it certainly helped move things along, and by the time she’d yanked open the passenger door, two EMTs were already rolling a wheelchair down the ramp toward Vonda’s writhing body.

Grace found the seat belt and unlooped it. It was like freeing a jumbo balloon from its mooring.

“Grace.” Vonda’s voice was feeble.

“Here’s your bag, honey.”

“Get Stu. His cell phone doesn’t work at Windlift. It’s a dead area. You’ll have to go get him.”

“I can’t go right away, Vonda.”

Vonda reached up and convulsively grabbed Grace’s hand. “Hurry.”

Grace hated this. “I can’t drive to Indio right now and get him. I’ve got someplace I have to be.” She hesitated. “I could call your dad.”

“No!” Vonda’s fingers clutched at her. Her face looked damp, gray. “Promise me. Promise me you won’t tell my dad.”

“That’s a terrible promise, Vonda. Trade.”

“No!” Her voice was hoarse. “No trade.”

Grace thought about the tangled trouble between Vonda and her dad. Uncle Pete’s impulse to guard and protect wasn’t surrounding his own daughter with peace; it was driving her away, running head down out of the gale of his wrath and the storms of his emotions, looking for sanctuary anywhere that did not bear his name.

Sending a team over to her greenhouse to check for soybean rust must have sealed the deal from Vonda’s perspective, and no matter what happened next between them, it was a country of arid ground and bad winds and Grace had no place there. It struck her as curious that Vonda would have given over her life to nurturing the soil, bestowing the very gifts she had never received in abundance from her father: light and air and healing rain.

“I won’t tell your folks you’re in labor. But you have to tell me what you know.”

Vonda searched her eyes. She sagged and licked her lip. “They were playing some game. A hunting game.”

“Who, Vonda? Who are you talking about?”

“Friends.”

“Your friends are playing a hunting game. What kind?”

The EMTs counted to three and hoisted Vonda into the wheelchair and she cried out in pain. They made preoccupied shushing noises as they closed shoulder ranks and pressed Grace out of reach, pushing the wheelchair toward the doors that opened.

Grace ran ahead so she was facing Vonda for a split second. Her cousin’s face was blind with pain.

“What were they hunting, Vonda?”

She clutched Grace’s shirt and Grace leaned down, put her ear close. She whispered something.

“I can’t. I don’t. . .”

Vonda was wracked by a pain in earnest and the medics pushed Grace aside and barreled through the door.

At the last second, Grace stopped them. “Two women, Vonda will give you names. Keep them away from her. They’re paparazzi, trying to get birth photos.”

Chapter 27

Birth photos? It was the only thing that had come into her mind. The EMTs had nodded, as if they were always whacking paparazzi out of the way during deliveries in Palm Springs. Grace had climbed back into her car and waited for her heart to slow.

What Vonda had whispered in her ear had chilled her, but she had work to do and time was going fast.

There was no place to park on Palm Drive. She sprinted three blocks, certain she was too late. The lobby smelled like popcorn and butter cookies and the same usher smiled and pointed toward the women’s room as she raced past him toward the auditorium.

In the audience, five frail seniors were standing and facing the stage, their posture stooped. They stood at attention, taking the salute, each a branch of military.

After that in a great heaving rush, everybody who’d served in any branch was invited to stand, and did. Lurching to their feet they trembled, blinking in the white light, as applause roared over them like a wave. Grace clapped and thought of her dad.

He’d served in Vietnam with the marines. Never talked about it, at least not to her, and it seemed like one more thing she had lost. She would have been the hoarder of the beats of his life; he would have lived forever through her. As it was, the memories she had of her father were separate and hard and distinct as glass beads on a bracelet. Beads for a small wrist, memories that were spaced apart, memories that could shatter if not treated carefully.