She plucks off little knit caps and unwraps blankets. Their bodies are scarlet or
imperial purple; they have tiny, bright red fingers, no eyebrows, no kneecaps,
no expression except a constant, bewildered wince. Her voice is a whisper: Why
here she is, there he goes, OK now, baby, just lift you here. Their wrists are the
circumference of Tom’s pinkie.
Fran takes a new washcloth from a stack, dips it in warm water, and wipes every
inch of the creature—ears, armpits, eyelids—washing away bits of placenta,
dried blood, all the milky fluids that accompanied it into this world. Meanwhile
the child stares up at her with blank, memorizing eyes, peering into the newness
of all things. Knowing what? Only light and dark, only mother, only fluid.
Fran dries the baby and splays her fingers beneath its head and diapers it and
tugs its hat back on. She whispers, Here you are, see what a good girl you are,
down you go, and with one free hand lays out two new, crisp blankets, and binds
the baby—wrap, wrap, turn—and sets her in a rolling bassinet for Tom to wheel
into the nursery, where she’ll wait with the others beneath the lights like loaves
of bread.
***
In a magazine Tom finds a colour photograph of a three-hundred-year-old
skeleton of a bowhead whale, stranded on a coastal plain in a place called
Finland. He tears it out, studies it in the lamplight. See, he murmurs to Mr.
Weems, how the flowers closest to it are brightest? See how the closest leaves
are the darkest green?
***
Tom is twenty-one and fainting three times a week when, one Wednesday in
January, he sees, among the drugged, dazed mothers in their rows of beds, the
unmistakable face of Ruby Hornaday. Flaming orange hair, freckles sprayed
across her cheeks, hands folded in her lap, and a thin gold wedding ring on her
finger. The material of the ward ripples. Tom leans on the handle of his cart to
keep from falling.
Blue, he whispers. Blue, blue, blue.
He retreats to his chair in the corner of Fran’s washing room and tries to
suppress his heart. Any minute, he thinks, her baby will come through the door.
Two hours later, he pushes his cart into the post-delivery room, and Ruby is
gone. Tom’s shift ends; he rides the elevator down. Outside, rain settles lightly
on the city. The streetlights glow yellow. The early morning avenues are empty
except for the occasional automobile, passing with a damp sigh. Tom steadies
himself with a hand against the bricks and closes his eyes.
A police officer helps him home. All that day Tom lies on his stomach in his
rented bed and recopies the letter until little suns burst behind his eyes. Deer
Ruby, I saw you in the hospital and I saw your baby two. His eyes are very
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