“He’ll come out looking like Frankie. That’s all that counts.”
“I’ve felt so horrible for lying to you.”
“I really don’t think it matters at this point. I don’t care. I love you… and here comes another one.”
“Don’t tell me!”
I sit back down in my chair and keep my mouth shut. Or at least I try, but when the doctor comes in and wheels a stool to the end of the bed, all bets are off. I move behind his left shoulder and watch Lindsey grab her bent knees and push. It’s not a pretty sight down here in the front row. Kind of disturbing, but exactly where I want to be sitting.
“There’s his head,” the doctor announces from his catcher’s position.
“Where?”
“Right here.”
I bend my head down and look right up Lindsey’s hoo-ha. “That hairy-walnut-looking thing?”
“Yep.”
“Oh my God.” It hits me that I am seeing the top of an actual baby’s head. I know this is biologically natural, but it’s new to me. A few more pushes and Frankie’s head pops out like a little purple alien. “Oh my God, Lindsey, Frankie’s head’s out. I can see his face.” The doctor suctions the baby’s nose and mouth. Lindsey pushes out a shoulder, and then Frankie just slips into the world and is put on his momma’s stomach. Lindsey’s bawling and touching him, and he opens his mouth and screams and screams.
“That’s my favorite part,” the doctor says, and I agree. A nurse hands me scissors to cut the rubbery cord. His color has changed to pink, and he is rolled up in a swaddling cloth like a burrito and placed in his mother’s arms.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” Lindsey asks through blubbery tears.
“Beautiful.” I touch his cheek with the back of my finger. He’s the softest thing I’ve ever felt. He has so much dark hair. “He looks like he’s wearing a little toupee,” I say, just before I start blubbering too. I’ve never experienced this kind of awe and sheer j
oy.
“I’m your momma,” Lindsey tells him, and I think of my mother. For the first time since her death, her memory isn’t accompanied by pain. I think about her on the day of Lindsey’s baby shower, smiling when she beat the other women in the worst-birthing-story competition. I think I’m going to miss hearing about how I ripped out her uterus.
I take tons of pictures, and after a nurse snaps pictures of the three of us, Frankie is taken across the room and put in a little bed beneath a warming light. He weighs in at ten pounds two ounces and he is twenty-three inches long. He looks tiny to me, but I guess that’s considered big. At least that’s what the nurses tell me. His thick hair is parted on the side like a little old man’s, and I think Lindsey can cross Swedish off her list.
The next day, I drive the three of us home and feel bad when Lindsey sucks a breath between her teeth as she gets out of the car. She walks slowly into the house, Frankie in his car seat in one hand and a bag of hospital swag in the other. I follow behind, carrying a gigantic floral arrangement that I can’t see over or around. I can only look at my feet and take careful steps. The flowers are from Jim, and the card reads, To my wonderful girl and little man. Considering all things, it seems kind of presumptuous to me, but Lindsey cried and didn’t ask my opinion, and I’m out of the relationship advice business.
While Lindsey takes a shower, Frankie naps in the cradle Mother and I bought him. Next to his head is the blue elephant named Earl. He’s a perfect baby.
The first few days are rough, and I start to think he’s less perfect. Frankie doesn’t like to sleep at night, and when Lindsey’s milk comes in, her boobs are like sprinklers. This makes Frankie very mad. Of course, Raphael has to get in on the act and starts to imitate a crying baby. If it isn’t one of them wailing, it’s the other, but by the end of the week, Lindsey and the baby have calmed down. Raphael has calmed down too.
When it’s just me and Frankie and Raphael in the room, the bird even purrs and shifts from side to side like he’s dancing. Frankie’s blue eyes get big when he watches Raphael squawk and smiles when the bird opens his beak and bays like a hound dog. Raphael hasn’t given up his feud with Lindsey, but he controls himself when the baby is near.
I love having Frankie around, but I know that he and Lindsey will leave someday. It’s only right that she makes her own home. I am not looking forward to that day, but I officially become Frankie’s godmother on the third Sunday of his life, which only seems appropriate, since I was the first one to see his face.
I think Mother would have liked Frankie, had they met. He’s a handsome little man and a captive audience, right up Mom’s alley.
I think about Mom a lot. I still have guilt, but it is less of a companion these days. I remember snippets of our life together—sad, bad, happy, funny—and I don’t want to lose those memories. I sit at my desk and turn on my computer, and I am reminded of the day Mom and I used the Google net to search for baby shower ideas.
My first memory of Mom is of sitting on the back of a green velvet couch, brushing her hair and watching Dynasty through a haze of cigarette smoke, I write. I was probably four or five, and I think even back then I knew I had to take advantage of those special times when it was just the two of us. When Mom was between men and I had her full attention.
I write about my earliest memory of Mom’s push-and-pull and about how much I loved her. How much I will always love her.
It takes me several hours to get it all out of my head and into a document I’ve titled “How I Lost My Mind.” I haven’t looked at the day planner on my phone since Mother died, but I’m sure it will inspire a new rush of memories for me to write down.
The Louisiana sunlight pours through the library windows, creating a wavy swath across the hardwood floors and round couch. I rise from my chair and stand in that light, looking out at the patchy front yard, where I once stood slapping mosquitoes and sweating in my St. John suit.
It seems like it’s been years since I stood next to Mom, both of us looking at the same old estate but each seeing something entirely different. She saw a home, I saw a money pit, and we were both right. Sutton Hall is a two-hundred-year-old money pit, and I can’t think of anywhere else I would rather call home.
So much has happened since that day we arrived. Life is so different. I stand in the same place but see a different world. So much has changed.