The Midwife's Confession (6 page)

More telling, though, was the division of her assets. She’d lived simply, but she’d managed to save a little more than fifty thousand dollars over the years. She wanted Emerson to be sure her mother’s needs were met first. If there was money left over, it was to be put in trusts for Jenny and Grace in a seventy-five/twenty-five percent split, with Jenny getting the larger sum. How did Sam feel as Noelle made it clear that she favored Ted and Emerson’s daughter over his own? I knew the division was fair. It was right. Jenny had helped Noelle with the babies program and she seemed to appreciate Noelle in a way that Grace did not. The money itself didn’t matter. It was the jolt to my solar plexus, the realization that the friendship between Emerson, Noelle and myself had been more lopsided than I’d imagined.

Also in her will, Noelle had requested that Suzanne take over the babies program if she was willing, which she was. Suzanne sat in the pew behind us next to Ian. Her big fiftieth birthday party was right around the corner and now I wondered if we should cancel it. Long ago, she’d worked as a doula with Noelle and they’d been friends ever since, through Suzanne’s divorce and two bouts with cancer. After this last time, her hair grew in curly and full and snow-white. When I greeted her before the service, I noticed how healthy she looked. Her huge round blue eyes always made me think of an awestruck little girl and it was hard to look at her without smiling, even in the days when she was sick and bald from chemo. Those eyes would hold you captive.

I’d imagined that all the women who had been Noelle’s patients would have turned out for this service, but when I glanced over my shoulder I saw that the small church was less than half-full. I put my arm around Noelle’s mother, willing her not to look behind us. I didn’t want her to see that the people Noelle had touched had not cared enough to come.

The mayor was giving the eulogy and I tried to pay attention. He was talking about how they’d tried to give Noelle the Governor’s Award for Voluntary Service for her babies program and she’d refused to accept it. So like Noelle, I thought. None of us had really been surprised. Noelle didn’t think helping others should be treated as anything special.

I felt a tremor run through her mother’s body as we listened to the mayor and I tightened my arm around her shoulders. At Sam’s funeral, I’d sat with my arm around Grace. We’d been like two blocks of wood that day. Her shoulders had felt stiff and hard and my arm had simply gone numb—so numb that I’d had to pry it from her shoulders with my other hand. I remembered sitting so close to her that day, the length of our bodies touching. Now there was nearly a foot of space between us on the pew, nearly two inches of distance for every month Sam had been gone. Too much space for me to reach across. I couldn’t put my arm around her now if I tried.

I wondered if, like me, Grace thought about the what-ifs. What if Sam had left the house five seconds later? The three of us had been rushing around the kitchen as we always did in the morning, not talking much, Sam pouring coffee into the hideous striped purple travel mug Grace had given him for his birthday years ago, Grace scrambling to find a book she’d mislaid, me straightening up behind them both. Sam forgot the mug when he raced out the door. I’d glanced at it on the counter, but figured he’d already pulled out of the driveway by then. What if I’d run out the front door with it? Would he have seen me? Then he would never have stopped at Port City Java for his coffee. He never would have been crossing the Monkey Junction intersection at exactly the wrong moment. Would he be sitting next to me right now if I’d tried to catch him?

If, if, if.

To my right, Emerson was sniffling, and the tissue wadded up in my hand was damp with my own tears. Emerson glanced at me and tried to smile, and I wished Grace and Jenny had not been between us so I could touch her arm. Emerson and I were a mess. When it came to Noelle’s suicide, the what-ifs that tormented us were huge and haunting. Maybe there really
had
been something we could have done to change the course of things for Noelle. Noelle had killed herself. Much different than the freakish collision of two cars at an intersection. Much more preventable if one of us had only seen the symptoms. Yet what symptoms had there been? Noelle committing suicide made no sense. She’d always been so life
embracing
. Had we missed an emptiness in her? I wondered. She’d never married after breaking off her engagement to Ian years ago and she’d delivered baby after baby with no babies of her own. She’d seemed content in her choices, but maybe she’d put on a game face for all of us. I remembered Noelle comforting me as I grieved for Sam that Saturday night in July. I’d thought only of myself. What small, telltale ache had I missed in her that night?

I’d known Noelle since my freshman year in college and I had thousands upon thousands of memories of her since that time. Yet the one that would always stand out in my mind was the night she helped me give birth to Grace. Sam had agreed to a home birth only reluctantly, and frankly, if the midwife had been anyone other than Noelle, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable about it myself. I had total confidence in her, but Sam was afraid we were taking unnecessary risks, and the truth was, things did not go smoothly.

Noelle had been coolheaded, though. There are people whose presence alone can lower your blood pressure. Slow your breathing. Keep you centered. That was Noelle.
I’ll take care of you,
she told me that night, and I believed her. How many women had heard those words from her over the years? I’d known they were the truth. The lamp she’d aimed between my legs lit up her electric-blue eyes, and her wild hair had been pulled back from her face, damp tendrils of it clinging to her forehead. In the lamplight, her hair glowed nearly red. She’d walked me around the moonlit room. She gave me brandy and strange teas that tasted like earth. She turned me in odd positions that, given my big belly and shivering legs, made me feel like a contortionist. She had me stand with one foot on the kitchen stool she’d dragged into the bedroom and told me to rock my hips this way and that. I’d cried and moaned and leaned against her and my worried husband. My teeth had chattered even though the room was very warm. I’d hated feeling so out of control, but I’d had no choice but to turn myself over to Noelle. I would do anything she said, drink any brew she gave me. I trusted her more than I trusted myself, and when she finally said something about calling an ambulance, I thought,
If Noelle says we should, then I guess we should.

But she never did call for help and the rest of the night became a blur of pain to me. I woke up in the darkness to find Sam sitting next to our bed, a fuzzy silhouette against the lamplight. For a moment I didn’t know where I was. My body ached and I felt raw and empty.

“You’re a mom, Tara.” He smoothed his fingers over my cheek. “You’re an amazing, brave and beautiful mom.” I couldn’t see his face, but his voice held a smile.

“Am I in the hospital?” All that I could force from my throat was a whisper. I had no voice. My mouth felt dry and scratchy.

“No, Tara. You’re here. You’re home. Noelle pulled it off. She thought for a while she might need to take you to the hospital, but she was able to turn the baby.” He smoothed my hair, held his hand against my cheek. I smelled soap.

“My mouth.” I licked my dry lips. “Feels like sand.”

Sam chuckled. “Cinders.” He held a glass toward me, guided the straw to my lips, and I felt the scratchiness ease as I sipped.

“Cinders?” Had I misunderstood him?

“You passed out after the baby was born. Noelle cut off some of my hair—” he touched the dark hair above his forehead “—and burned it and put the cinders beneath your tongue to bring you back.”

My head spun a little. “Did it work?” I asked.

He nodded. “I’m sorry everything was so hard on you, but our baby’s beautiful, Tara. You held her. Do you remember?”

All at once, I recalled the mewing cry of my daughter as I reached for her. I remembered the soft flannel-wrapped weight of her in my arms. The tug at my nipple. The memories were dreamlike and I wished I could recapture every minute detail.

“Where is she? I want to see her.” I looked past him toward the bassinet near the window.

“Noelle has her in the kitchen doing some midwifey thing to her. I told her I thought you were waking up and she said she’d bring her in.” Suddenly, he leaned toward me, resting his cheek against mine. “I thought I was going to lose you,” he said. “Lose both of you. I was so scared. I thought we’d made a terrible mistake, trying to have the baby here at home. But Noelle…no obstetrician could have done a better job. We owe her everything. She was so good, Tara.”

I felt the heat of his cheek, the stickiness of his damp skin against my own, and I rested my hand on the side of his face. “The baby’s name…” I whispered. We’d felt so certain the baby would be a boy, another Samuel Vincent, that we’d never settled on a girl’s name. Grace, Sara, Hannah had all risen to the top, but we hadn’t made a firm decision. “Noelle?” I suggested now.

He lifted his cheek from mine. For a moment, I thought I saw a flash of doubt cross his face, but then he smiled. Nodded.

“Here she is.” Noelle walked into the room carrying the tiny bundle. “Your mama’s waiting for you, darlin’.” She leaned her head close to the bundle and I felt a hunger unlike anything I’d ever known. If I could have leaped out of the bed to grab my child I would have, but I held out my arms and let Noelle settle the baby into them.

Sam tipped his forehead to mine and we stared into the face of our daughter. I slipped the tiny yellow hat from her head to reveal light brown hair. Her cheeks were round and rosy, her eyebrows smudged pale crescents. She blinked her eyes open and looked at us blindly but with interest, as though she’d been waiting to see us as anxiously as we’d been waiting to see her, and I felt my own eyes fill at the miracle in my arms. I couldn’t tear my gaze from her, but Sam lifted his head to look at Noelle. She sat, a small smile on her lips, at the foot of the bed.

“We’re going to name her Noelle,” he said.

I looked up in time to see the smile leave her face. “Oh, no, you’re not.” She made it sound like a warning.

“Yes,” I said. “We want to.”

Even without my contacts, I could see the sudden rise of color in Noelle’s cheeks.

“Please don’t,” she said. “Promise me you won’t saddle this child with my name.”

“Okay,” Sam and I said together, quickly, because clearly we’d caused her distress. I didn’t understand. Did she hate her name? I’d always thought it was a pretty name, lyrical and strong. For whatever reason, though, the thought upset her. It didn’t matter. We’d pick another name, a beautiful name for our beautiful little daughter.

Now, sitting in the church next to the daughter born that night, I remembered my closeness with that daughter. Physical. Emotional. Spiritual. It had blossomed between us so easily in those early years. How did that closeness turn into this unbearable distance? Was there any hope of ever getting it back?

6

Emerson

God, I felt like a zombie. The reception after the service was in my own house, but I could hardly find my way around the rooms. Faces and voices blended together into a jumble of sight and sound. Nearly everyone was wearing black except me. I had on my favorite green blouse and the green-and-tan floral skirt that was getting too tight in the waist. Just plucked them out of the closet that morning without thinking. Noelle would have hated all the black, anyway.

I was only vaguely aware of what was happening: Jenny and Grace going upstairs to escape the adults; the caterer Tara’d hired floating through the rooms with trays of bruschetta and shrimp; Ted keeping an eye on me from wherever he was. He knew I was a wreck. I was glad that Noelle’s mother had left with her aide after the service. I didn’t think I could bear to see any more of her sorrow.

Tara was doing her social-butterfly thing, but for the most part she stayed close to my side. Ted and Ian were holding their little plates and talking in the corner of the living room, probably about sports. I still hadn’t adjusted to seeing the guys together without Sam. Now Noelle was gone, too. Not only that, but my grandfather’s nursing home had called that morning to tell me they were moving my beloved grandpa into hospice. I was losing everyone. Nothing was going to feel right again for a long time.

A few volunteers from Noelle’s babies program had come over. I knew most of them, though not well. I tried to make small talk with everyone, nodding, smiling, shaking hands. People said nice things about Noelle. Nobody said, “Why did she do it?” At least, not to me. They asked me how the café was doing and I answered with my usual “Great! Stop in sometime!” But I heard their voices and my own through a thick fog. I kept searching the room for the one person who was missing: Noelle. When I’d catch myself looking for her, my body would suddenly jerk back to reality. I was losing my mind.

An hour into the reception—an hour that felt more like three—Tara finally pulled me away from a woman who was going on and on about knitting baby clothes. “Break time,” she said in my ear.

I let her guide me through the living room and out to the sunroom we’d added on the year before. Tara took me by the shoulders and lowered me to the sofa, then plunked down on an ottoman in front of me. The voices from the living room were a hum through the closed sunroom door. They sounded wonderfully far away. I looked at Tara. “Thank you,” I said. “I was drowning out there.”

Tara nodded. “I know. It’s hard.”

I scrunched up my face. “I keep looking for Noelle,” I admitted. “That’s insane, isn’t it? I mean, seriously, I’m not joking. I keep expecting her to walk through the door.”

“Me, too,” Tara said. “I
still
think I see Sam sometimes. I thought I saw him in the grocery store the other day. And there was a guy driving down Water Street and I almost turned the car around to follow him.”

“I don’t get why there weren’t more people at the service,” I said. The turnout—or lack of turnout—hurt me. “I honestly thought there’d be…that every mother whose baby she delivered…” I shook my head. “You know the kind of relationship she had with her moms. That closeness. I thought they’d all come.”