The Mothers of Voorhisville (6 page)

But Holly did not reach into her bag of birthing supplies to bring out a large scarlet letter. Instead, she left without addressing the question.

He
did
have blue eyes, but lots of babies do. His hair was dark, his skin was pink, and his body was an amazing, intricate, perfect blessing. After all those horrible dreams, and the months of guilt, and most especially the horrible pain of birth, Tamara felt blessed. In the end it didn't matter who the father was. Well, it
mattered
, of course, but also, it didn't. The only thing that
really
mattered was the baby.

Tamara thought she knew how she'd feel about her first child: protective, loving, proud. She had not been prepared to feel the way she did. In fact, she would say she had underestimated the power of the love she would feel for this little boy as much as she'd underestimated the pain of his birth.

It was three days later, after Raj had gone to the Becksworth airport to pick up her parents, when Tamara discovered the tiny sharp wings protruding from her baby's back. By then she already loved him more than she had ever loved anyone or anything else. Her love was monstrous. When she saw the wings, she turned him over and stared into those deep eyes of his and said, “Nobody is ever going to know, little one.”

When Raj came home with her parents and their frightening amount of luggage, he kissed her on the cheek and said, “Everything okay?” She nodded. Later, when she had time to consider the disturbing events that followed, she pinned her ruin to that moment. The “thing she'd done with the stranger,” as she'd come to think of it, had been wrong, but she could no longer wish it away without wishing away her child.

No, what had sealed her fate was that moment when she decided to lie to her husband about the baby's wings. It was no longer the three of them against the world, but mother and child against everyone else.

*   *   *

So many women were pregnant Shreve started a prenatal yoga class. “Something in the water,” they'd say, or “Who's
your
milkman?”

Emily and Shreve thought they shared the biggest joke of all. Emily liked to say that they were “fuck-related,” though Shreve found this crude. They could not agree on what had happened to them. Emily thought Jeffrey was a jerk, while Shreve thought he was some sort of holy man.

“I can't believe you think that,” Emily said. “Saints don't have sex.”

“Not a saint,” Shreve said. “A yogi. And they do.”

“Oh, come on! He was just a man. He was just like other men.”

Shreve sighed, apparently remembering something wonderful beyond words.

This, of course, stressed Emily out. Did Shreve have better sex with him than Emily did? Was he gentler?
Rougher?
Had something profound happened between those two? Was he more
attracted
to Shreve? Was Shreve better at sex than Emily was?

She suggested that, in the interest of peace, they stop talking about it, and Shreve agreed.

Agreeing to disagree on the nature of what occurred with Jeffrey had been the first big test of their friendship. The next big test happened later.

Emily discovered her baby's small, sharp, featherless wings on June fifth, while changing Gabriel into one of his cute little baseball outfits (Red Sox, of course). She watched in amazement as the tiny wings unfolded and folded shut again, drawn into his back. She touched the spot, certain she'd imagined the wings, a weird hallucination. (Maybe she'd just never gotten to that point in the pregnancy books.) She almost convinced herself that was what had happened, when, with a burp, the wings appeared once more. Emily reached to touch one. The next thing she knew, she was walking down the street with Gabriel secured in his Snugli against her chest. She patted the baby's back, but didn't feel anything unusual.

At that exact moment, Shreve was saying to her baby, Michael, “You're going to meet your half brother today.” She believed Jeffrey had been some kind of an angel sent to her by her dead fiancé. She wasn't sure
why
her dead fiancé had sent the angel to Emily also, except that it gave her son a brother … and that was a very good reason, the more she thought about it.

Michael had blue eyes, a remarkable head of dark curls, and two dimples. His pink flesh was already filling out, losing that newborn look. He had a round face and a round body, round hands, almost round feet, and a little tiny round penis. When Shreve turned him over to admire the beautiful symmetry of his little round butt, she watched, in amazement, as two wings blossomed from his back.

“I
knew
it,” she said.

She wanted to investigate the wings, but Emily would be there any minute, so Shreve hurriedly dressed Michael in a pink romper (she didn't believe in the certain-colors-for-certain-genders thing) and wrapped him in the yellow blanket Emily had given her. It was rather warm in the house for a blanket, but Shreve thought it the best protection against any revelation of his wings.

Right then, the doorbell rang. “Hellooo,” Emily called, in a soft singsong voice. “Is there a mommy home?”

“Come in,” Shreve singsonged back, walking to the door with Michael in her arms.

“He's beautiful,” Emily said. “He looks a lot like his brother.”

“Oh, let me see.”

“He just fell asleep. I don't want to wake him.”

“Okay,” Shreve said, realizing that she had no idea what kind of mother Emily would be. “Well, come in. I'll make some tea.”

The first time Emily had seen Shreve's tiny kitchen—which was painted blue, yellow, and red—she thought it quite strange, but she had grown to like the cozy space. She sat at the small wooden table while Shreve prepared the teakettle and teapot, all while holding Michael.

“You look completely comfortable,” Emily said. “You probably gave birth like it was nothing.”

Shreve couldn't even smile the memory away. She turned to her friend with an expression of horror. “No. It was terrible.”

“Me too,” Emily said.

“I mean, I expected pain, but it was—”

“I know, I know,” Emily said, so loud she woke up Gabriel. She didn't move towards unstrapping the Snugli; but remained seated, jiggling her knees while the baby cried harder.

Shreve did not like to judge, but the thought occurred to her that Emily might not be very good at this mothering thing. “We could go in the living room,” Shreve said. “Lay them down on the blanket and introduce them to each other.”

“Sometimes he cries like this,” Emily heard herself saying, stupidly.

Shreve thought that even the way Emily tried to soothe her baby, like a police officer patting down a suspect, proved that not all women are natural mothers.

The teakettle whistled and Michael joined in the crying. Shreve, laughing, turned to take the kettle off the burner.

“Okay,” Emily said over her baby's wailing. “Let's go in the living room.”

It was warm enough that Shreve had opened the windows. The chakra wind chimes hanging outside were silent in the still air. Shreve realized she wouldn't be able to justify laying Michael down wrapped in a blanket. Instead, she got the little carrier seat one of her yoga students had given her.

At the time, Shreve had not expected to ever use the thing. She intended to raise her child without ever making his body conform to the unnatural rigidity of plastic. Now Shreve placed the carrier at the edge of the blanket on the floor. She set Michael—who had already stopped crying—into it, and adjusted the straps. Emily could see his beautiful face and perfect little body, but there was no danger of exposing his wings.

“Oh,” Emily said. “I thought we were going to lay them down together.”

“I'll get the tea. If he gets fussy, just leave him there, okay?”

Emily unfastened the Snugli and took Gabriel out. He looked at her with those intense blue eyes of his. She patted his back, and he started to make small noises. “Shhh, it's okay,” she cooed. “Mommy's just checking.” Satisfied, she laid him on the blanket in the sun, facing Michael.

Immediately the two babies grinned at each other.

“Shreve,” Emily called, “come quick. You have to see this!”

Shreve ran into the room. “I told you not to touch him,” she said, stopping short when she saw that Michael remained in the carrier.

Emily decided to forgive Shreve's odd behavior. She pointed at the brothers. “Look,” she said, “it's like they recognize each other.”

“I can't believe he can do that already,” Shreve said.

“What?”

“Lift his head up like that.”

“Oh, yeah,” Emily shrugged. “He's really strong.”

“Look at them,” Shreve said.

“It's like they're old friends.”

Shreve walked back to the kitchen and returned with the tray, which she set on the table next to the futon. She poured a cup for each of them. Emily sipped her tea, still focused on her baby's back. That's when she remembered that there had been a paper mill in Voorhisville, years ago. She'd heard about it once, she couldn't remember where. Maybe there were chemicals in Voorhisville, in the soil, or perhaps in the water. “Have you ever heard anything bad about the city water?” she asked.

“Oh, I use bottled water,” Shreve said. “He's beautiful. Have you thought of a name yet?”

“Gabriel.”

“Like the angel?”

“I guess it's old-fashioned.”

“I like it,” Shreve said, but was thinking,
Does she
know something? Is she trying to trick me?
“Why'd you choose it?”

Emily shrugged.

The two women sat sipping their tea and staring glumly at their beautiful children, Michael and Gabriel, who continued to coo and gurgle, occasionally even thrusting little fists in the other's direction, as though waving.

“Emily?” Shreve asked.

“Uh-huh?”

“Do you believe in miracles?”

“Now I do,” Emily said. “You know, I've been thinking. Let's say that we found out there was some kind of chemical, oh, in the soil, or something—you know, from the paper mill, for instance. Let's say it was doing something to the people in Voorhisville. Would we call it a miracle? You know, if it was a chemical reaction or something? I mean even if what happened was, well, miraculous? Or would we call it a disaster?”

“What are you talking about?” Shreve asked.

“Crazy thoughts, you know. I guess from the hormones.”

Shreve nodded. “Well, you know what they say.”

“What?”

“God works in mysterious ways.”

“Oh,” Emily said. “That. Yeah. I guess.”

The two mothers sat on the futon, sipping green tea and watching their babies. The sun poured into the room, refracted by the chakra wind chimes. The babies cooed and gurgled and waved at each other. Shreve took a deep breath. “Do you smell that?”

Emily nodded. “Sylvia's roses,” she said. “They're brilliant this year. Hey, did you know she's pregnant?”

“Maybe there
is
something in the soil.”

“I think maybe so,” Emily agreed.

On that day, it was the closest they came to telling each other the truth.

*   *   *

Theresa Ratcher had joined the library book club with her daughter Elli right after her fifteenth birthday. They left the house at 5:20 p.m. with the car windows rolled down, because the Chevy didn't have air-conditioning. Elli sat in the front seat, leaning against the door, which Theresa had told her a million times not to do, in case it popped open. Theresa drove with one elbow sticking out the window, the hot air blowing strands of hair out of her ponytail. Elli had been humming the same melody all week. Theresa reached to turn on the radio, but thought better of it and pretended to wipe a smudge off the dashboard instead. She knew they would just have an argument about what station to listen to. The news was depressing these days.

“Maybe you could think of something else to hum?”

Elli turned, her mouth hanging open, a pink oval.

“You've been on that same song for a while.”

“Sorry,” Elli said, her tone indicating otherwise.

“I like to hear you hum,” Theresa lied. “It's just, a change of tune would be nice.”

Elli reached over and snapped on the radio. Immediately the car was filled with static and noise, until she finally settled on something loud and talky.

Theresa glanced at her daughter. Did she really
like
this sort of “music”? This fuck-you and booty-this and booty-that groove-thing stuff? It was hard to tell. Elli sat slumped against the car door, staring blankly ahead.

Theresa glanced at her pretty daughter leaning both arms on the open window's ledge, as though trying to get as far away from her mother as possible. She resisted the urge to tell Elli to make sure her head and arms weren't too far outside the car; this was the sort of stuff that deepened the wedge between them. Still, Theresa argued with herself, she
had
heard that story about the two young men driving home after a night of drinking, the passenger, his head hanging out the window, hollering drunken nonsense one minute and the next—whoosh, decapitated by a guide wire. “Stick your head back in the car this instant.”

Elli gave her one of those you're-ruining-my-life looks that Theresa hated.

“I just don't want you getting your head chopped off.”

“This isn't Iraq,” Elli said.

“What?”

“Nothing. I was making a joke.”

“It's not funny. That's not funny at all.” Theresa glanced at her daughter, hunched against the door, arm crooked, elbow hanging out the window. “Billy Melvern died over there. The Baylors' daughter is leaving in a week.”

“It was Afghanistan.”

“What?”