Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood (22 page)

Her fingers were flying. The muscles in her father’s neck quivered slightly with the great effort of holding still for her. He was trying. He really was.

That moved her too.

After almost two hours she set him free. “Thank you,” she said earnestly.

He pretended he didn’t notice so much.

She held the drawing board facing out as she left, so he could peek at the results if he wanted to. He didn’t peek.

But later that night, when she was going to bed, she tiptoed past the kitchen, where she’d left her drawing of him propped on a chair. He stood alone in the quiet room. And even though she just saw his back, she knew he was looking.

Win offered to take the wheel so Carmen could work the phone. Half an hour into the drive they had to stop for gas. He bought two Cokes and a bag of Corn Nuts. Carmen had never had Corn Nuts before, and she loved them. They could barely hear each other over the crunching, so they found themselves shouting, which they both thought was incredibly funny once they realized it. The laughter made Carmen’s eyes start running again, and the salt made her lips burn.

She was tired and punchy and worried and also happy that they were driving toward David and doing everything they could.

By her calculation they had four hours to find David and get back to her mom. He was only an hour away now. It would work. It had to work. She felt confident that Tibby could keep her mom company for the waiting part, and David and Carmen would be there in time for the inducing part, when the real drama started.

Win was a good driver. He was confident and sharp about it, and yet effortless too. For some reason, the look of his hands on the wheel (at ten and two—Valia would have approved) struck her as masculine and even sexy.

Furthermore, he had an excellent profile. Not a Ryan Hennessey profile exactly—Win’s nose was a tiny bit crooked, and his upper lip went out a little farther than his bottom one. But on him, it worked. It was fun how you could get away with watching someone when they drove. He concentrated on the road, and she braved a full look at him.

They barely knew each other, and yet they always had a project together. It was the opposite of most of her romantic relationships, which were all form and no content. Carmen was infamous for writing out talking points to use with the boys she dated. She never searched for things to say to Win.

“You’re close to your mother, huh?” he asked her thoughtfully.

“Yes.” It was the Good Carmen answer instead of the Whole Carmen answer. “What about you?”

“I’m close to both my parents,” he said. “I’m the only one, so it gets intense sometimes.”

“Me too,” Carmen chimed in. Then she remembered. “Until today, I guess.”

“Pretty strange, becoming a sister at the age of…how old are you?”

“Seventeen,” Carmen said.

“Seventeen,” he echoed.

“Almost eighteen. And you?” she asked. These were questions they could have gotten out of the way on an awkward date two months ago, but somehow they hadn’t.

“Nineteen.”

“And yeah, it is strange. Stranger than I can say.”

“I had a sibling for a short while.” He tried to say it lightly and conversationally, but it didn’t come out that way.

“What do you mean?” Carmen wanted to know, but she didn’t want to demand anything. “I mean, if you want to tell me.”

“I had a little brother. He was born when I was five and he died just before I turned six.”

“Oh.” Carmen’s tears were so near the surface these days, even a fourteen-year-old tragedy concerning a person she didn’t really know called them up. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago. But he is part of my identity, you know?”

She didn’t know, but she could try to guess. She nodded.

“I still think about him sometimes. I dream about him too. I try to remember what he looked like. It’s hard to remember, though, either because of time or because of strong feelings. I sometimes think the stronger you feel about someone, the harder it is to picture their face when you are away from them.”

Carmen’s tears were falling now, and she tried to hide them from Win. He would interpret her tears as belonging to Good Carmen. He would think she was crying selflessly, for him and his family’s pain. Whereas Bad Carmen was crying because Win had spent a lifetime missing a baby who’d been lost, and she’d spent a summer resenting a baby who hadn’t yet come.

Tibby was learning something about her future. She was learning that it would not include having children. Not unless she adopted some.

Christina was in hell, and Tibby could barely watch it. With each contraction—and they seemed like they were coming all the time now—Christina seemed to lose some of herself. When she came down she was less focused, less coherent, less recognizable. Tibby glanced at the printout. One line followed the baby’s heartbeat and the other followed the quaking of Christina’s uterus. It reminded Tibby of a seismogram. Christina had gone from a five on the Richter scale to about a twenty. If Christina’s stomach were California, then California would be under the ocean by now.

Tibby tried calling her mother again, but there was no answer. Alice would know all about this stuff. She would know how to help. She was punching in Carmen’s cell number when a nurse appeared in her face.

“You have to put that away,” she snapped, pointing at Tibby’s cell phone. “It interferes with the equipment. You could get thrown out of here.”

Tibby considered that possibility with a certain amount of longing.

“Can you give her some medicine or something?” Tibby asked Lauren when she popped her head in. Tibby was afraid of this much pain. She didn’t know how to get close to it.

Lauren came over and put her hands on Christina’s shoulders. “You doing okay, honey?”

Christina tried to focus. It didn’t look like the question made any sense to her. The answer was so profoundly
no
that the question hardly applied.

“In her birth plan she specified natural childbirth. That means, basically, no drugs,” Lauren explained to Tibby. “That’s partly why she’s working with me instead of an OB. Midwives don’t prescribe the heavy stuff.”

It didn’t seem a good sign that they were talking about Christina rather than to her. “An OB is…a doctor?” Tibby asked, wondering for a moment if a doctor wouldn’t be a good idea right now. If she were Christina she would want the heavy stuff. She would want the heaviest stuff, and every bit of it they had. She would want them to knock her out so completely that she wouldn’t wake up for a week.

“It seems like you should make that plan when you’re actually giving birth. Then at least you know what it feels like,” Tibby opined, but Lauren wasn’t listening.

Lauren was now studying the printout with some degree of interest. “Christina, let me check you again, hon. These contractions are coming fast and furious.”

Christina was shaking her head. “No. I don’t want to.” Her legs were clamped shut.

“We’ll wait until this contraction is over.” Lauren stroked Christina’s shoulders in a way that was meant to be soothing, but Christina was not soothed. She was writhing. She pushed Lauren away. “I can’t. I’m not ready.” Christina’s voice was breaking up into sobs.

Lauren cast a look at Tibby that seemed to say she was certainly the most horrendous labor partner any pregnant woman had ever been saddled with. Tibby did feel bad. Not because of Lauren—she didn’t really care what Lauren thought—but because of Christina. Christina was alone here. She didn’t have her husband or her sister or her daughter or her mother. She had Tibby.

Tibby’s instinct was to get on the bed with Christina, but her muscles were fighting with her. They were remembering Bailey, and more recently, Katherine. Tibby did not have happy associations with beds in hospitals. Who did?

Christina was in a ball. She was crying quietly. Tibby suffered a deep ache in her chest, climbing up to her throat.

“I need to check you, Christina. I need to see where you are,” Lauren said.

She’s right there!
Tibby felt like screaming.
Leave her alone!

“I’m not ready,” Christina said, weeping.

Lauren tried to uncurl Christina, but Christina fought her off.

Tibby couldn’t stand it anymore. She got on the bed with Christina. She grabbed her hands and squeezed them hard. That seemed to get her attention.

Lauren still pulled at Christina’s legs.

“She said she’s not ready!” Tibby roared.

Lauren looked taken aback, like Tibby had smacked her. Then, to Tibby’s utter astonishment, Lauren put her face to the side of Tibby’s head. She kissed her temple.

As if this day could get any stranger.

“That a girl,” Lauren whispered. “Fight for her. She needs you.”

Tibby pulled Christina up by her hands. She looked into her eyes. “Christina, I’m here. Look at me, okay? Hold my hands. Squeeze them as hard as it hurts.” That was something Alice used to say to Tibby when she had to get a shot.

Christina was coming down from a contraction. She looked lost, but slowly she zeroed in on Tibby.

Tibby knelt by her. “I’m here. You’re okay. Show me how much it hurts.”

The pain mounted again in Christina’s face. She squeezed Tibby’s hands so hard, Tibby saw them turning white. She tried her hardest not to flinch. The pressure mounted until Tibby half expected to see her ten severed fingers lying on the mattress.

“That’s good!” Tibby shouted. “I feel it! That’s so great!”

Christina’s eyes were tracking hers now. Tibby felt, on some level, that that was the right thing.

“I need to check her. I think this is happening,” Lauren said to Tibby under her breath. “Help me, okay?”

Tibby did not know what
happening
meant. She did not want to know what
happening
meant. She straddled Christina’s legs, so she was practically sitting on her, though carrying her own weight. “Tina, Lauren’s gonna do her thing. Stick with me, okay. With my eyes. Are you watching?”

Christina nodded.

“Squeeze my hands. Can you do it?”

Christina allowed Lauren to examine her cervix, though she was desperately uncomfortable. Tibby’s hands were mottled white and purple.

“My goodness,” Lauren said breathlessly. “This is fast. Christina, you are ten centimeters and ready to go.”

Tibby stared at Lauren, dumbfounded. Wasn’t Lauren supposed to do this kind of thing every day? Why did she allow herself to get surprised? She said this was going to take hours. As in several. Not as in one. Did Lauren have any idea what she was doing?

Tibby hadn’t even gotten hold of Carmen. She hadn’t wanted to scare her. She’d thought they had
hours
. She’d thought Carmen would still have enough time to get back. Now what? What were they supposed to do now?

Christina started crying again. There was a whole lot of blood on the bed, under Christina’s legs.

Tibby didn’t want to show her fast-rising fear. If she panicked, where would that leave Christina? She needed to get them focused again.

Christina was in a new kind of pain, making a new kind of noise. Tibby tried not to be alarmed. It wouldn’t help.

“You need to push, hon,” Lauren said. “You’re feeling the pressure and that means you need to push. You’re almost there!”

“No!” Christina was suddenly livid. “I’m not ready! I can’t do this! David isn’t here! Where is he? Where is Carmen? We took the classes! This baby is not due for
four weeks
!” In her anger, Christina had tuned herself right back in. She let go of Tibby’s hands, rolled back onto her side, and curled into her ball.

Tibby could see from her body that Christina was fighting a ferocious urge.

“She needs to push. I can see it,” Lauren said. “Don’t fight it, Christina. It’s time to have this baby. You gotta let go!” She was trying unsuccessfully to get Christina’s attention.

Tibby tried pulling her up again, but Christina wouldn’t budge. “Tina, will you look at me? Do you see me? You can do this! I know it!”

Christina wouldn’t look. “I can’t.”

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

R
oughly twenty minutes south of Downingtown,

Carmen realized there was another sizable topic she and Win hadn’t considered.

“Are you going away to school next year?” he asked her without looking at her. He was bearing down on a slow Nissan in the fast lane.

“Um.” She licked her lips. “Yes.”

This was the obvious moment to say where she was going. It suddenly struck her how badly she wanted to say she was going to Williams. She wanted Win to think she was smart.

She tapped her bare toes against the dashboard. But she wasn’t going to Williams. She was going to Maryland, and she didn’t want to lie to him anymore. She liked him too much to keep doing that.

“I’m going to Maryland,” she said. She quelled the urge to spout her near-perfect grades and her academic honors. She left it at the truth. If he didn’t like the truth, well…then that was a good thing to know.

“Oh.”

Did he find her disappointing?

“What about you?” she asked. It was strange that she didn’t know. Carmen was a great student. She cared about that kind of thing. Most boys she assessed almost like a brand, and where they went to college added or subtracted from their cachet. Win was different. She’d gotten to know him from the inside, it seemed.

“I go to Tufts. In Boston.” He smiled a little and tipped his head toward her. “I was kind of hoping you were going somewhere up around there.”

I was!
she felt like shouting at him.
I could have! I almost did!

But she stayed quiet, which was good in a way, because when her cell phone started ringing she heard it right away and snapped it open.

It was Tibby, trying to be calm.

“Oh, my God! Oh, no! Tell me you are kidding,” Carmen roared into the phone.

Tibby wasn’t kidding.

“We’ll be there as fast as we can,” Carmen said helplessly.

“What happened?” Win asked.

“She’s in heavy labor,” Carmen said, a little sob getting past her. “It’s going fast. She’s asking for David and for me.”