In the Heart of the Canyon (34 page)

“Dogs are so smart,” Sam told Matthew.

“Should we keep his name?”

“We can probably come up with something better, if you want.”

“I guess I like Blender.”

“I like Blender too.”

Matthew kicked at the water. “Mom’ll never let him sleep in our bedroom, though.”

“Nope.”

“We’ll have to sneak him in.”

“Dad’ll help, I bet,” said Sam.

“When he’s not in Japan.”

“He told Mom he’s not going to spend so much time in Japan,” said Sam.

“That would be cool,” said Matthew.

I
n a small, dimly lit room on the second floor of the Flagstaff hospital, Amy sat propped up in her bed and tried to read the pamphlet on breast-feeding. Beside her, the baby lay in his Plexiglas bassinet, swaddled in flannel. He had been sleeping for half an hour. The nurse had told her she should try and sleep when the baby slept, but she wasn’t tired. Her mother had gone out to get them some food, so Amy was alone.

Be sure the baby has a good latch; otherwise you will develop sore nipples. See illustration
.

Amy studied the tasteful drawing of the pretty mother’s pink round breast, with the Gerber baby sucking away as they gazed lovingly at one another. Amy glanced down. Her boobs were huge and white and veiny and dimpled. And her nipples were
scary;
they’d turned into these big, brown pimply saucers, each with its central rubber knob. If she were a baby, she would take one look and run.

She’d tried nursing him earlier; he’d clumsily batted his head and kissed and sucked, but she didn’t know if it counted as a good latch. Whatever that was. Supposedly there would be a lactation consultant coming to visit in the morning. They told her to nurse him even if she didn’t know if she was going to keep him or not. Amy wished the night nurse would come and tell her if she was doing it right, but the night nurse had three other mothers to take care of.

Tickle your baby’s cheek to stimulate her sucking reflex
.

She sat up and peeked into the bassinet. Her baby’s head was elongated and pointy and, she wasn’t going to lie, pretty ugly In a slot by his head was a blue card with her name and the name of her doctor;
where the baby’s name would have been, they had written simply “Baby Van Doren.”

She thought it wise not to think of names.

Drink a full glass of water or juice each time you nurse
.

They’d given her a large insulated mug decorated with the hospital’s logo and kept it filled with ice water, which tasted good. The drinking water on the river was always warm, and she’d forgotten how good ice water was, and she drank and drank and drank. She’d been so thirsty in the helicopter! During the flight, she’d tried to get a view of the river, but she was trapped on her back, and all could she see were blue sky and a few wispy clouds. She’d never been in a helicopter before and was disappointed that she wasn’t in a condition to appreciate the ride. When they landed at the hospital, she felt like she was in a television show, what with all those people running out to meet them. Before she could say anything, they whisked the baby away, and she panicked that she hadn’t put some kind of a mark on him to prevent the kind of mix-ups you read about in
National Enquirer
What if they switched babies on her? Would she know the difference? Had she looked at her baby long enough to recognize a switch?

Spicy foods can affect the taste of your milk. If your baby seems fussy, consider eliminating these foods from your diet
.

She’d been hoping her mother would bring back enchiladas; now she wondered if that was a good idea. On the other hand, she might as well test it out and see if it bothered the baby. Maybe he would like enchilada milk.

Soon she heard footsteps in the hallway, and Susan appeared with a bag from Subway. She was still dressed in her river clothes, but she’d taken off her hat; her hair was matted and darker than usual, and a white rim of skin banded her hairline.

“Turkey,” she told Amy, handing her the bag. “You’ll want to go easy at first.”

Hungrily Amy unwrapped the sandwich and took a large bite. It tasted of refrigeration, but it still tasted good. Shreds of lettuce dropped on her chest, and she picked them off and ate them.

“Where’s the nurse?” Susan asked, drawing up a chair.

“Busy,” said Amy between bites.

“How long has the baby been sleeping?”

“Half an hour.”

“Did you get any rest?”

“No,” said Amy, “but I read about how much liquid I have to drink. Did you get me a Coke?”

Susan handed her a large cup with a straw. Amy took a long drink, then glanced at her mother. “What about you?”

“I got a sandwich. I already ate it.” Susan straightened the blankets on the bed, and Amy watched her slender fingers and recalled their touch earlier, in the helicopter. She could never have said this out loud, but she’d wished her mother would not only move the strands of hair off her forehead but run her fingers through her hair, starting at her temples, over and over, like she used to do when Amy was sick.

“How are you feeling?” Susan asked now.

“Okay.”

“Sore?”

“Kind of.”

“Maybe they’ll let you take a sitz bath.”

Amy pictured the plastic basin she occasionally found set upon the toilet bowl in her mother’s bathroom. It had always mystified Amy, but suddenly she saw its value.

“You know, I wonder,” her mother began, and Amy thought, Here it comes:

Who’s the father?

How did this happen?

Didn’t you notice your periods stopping?

And what are you going to do with it?

But instead, her mother said, “I wonder if they have a whirlpool. They had a whirlpool in the hospital where I had you. I think I’ll go check. I’ll be right back.”

No, stay
, Amy wanted to say, but her mother was already out of the room.

Now the baby stirred. Amy looked over and watched as he arched his back and made a face. What was the theory of swaddling them so
tightly? She leaned over the bassinet and slid her hands beneath the little bundle and carefully lifted him up. He weighed absolutely nothing! She untied her hospital gown and held him to her breast and tickled his cheek, just like the book said, and he twisted his mouth to the side, like a little gangster. She stuck her giant nipple in between his lips, but he made funny breathing noises, and she was afraid she would suffocate him, so she held him up, and he began to cry, and she began to cry, and her breasts felt prickly all over, and she wished her mother had not left the room, and she wanted to go back to yesterday, the day before Lava, when she was not a mother, she was not pregnant, there was no baby, it was just a stomach problem, annoying but temporary.

She heard the swish of Kleenex and opened her eyes. Her mother was standing by her bedside, and Amy saw the saddest thing she’d ever seen in her life: the sight of her mother crying. Which made Amy cry even more.

Susan took the baby while Amy blew her nose. But Susan didn’t hold him very long; as soon as Amy was ready, she handed him back. Then, using her own finger, Susan gently opened the baby’s mouth and at the same time guided his head to Amy’s breast and helped work her nipple into his tiny mouth. He clamped down, and Amy felt an inner tug as the baby’s jaw worked up and down.

“That’s what they mean by latch,” Susan said gently. As the baby nursed, she dabbed at the corners of Amy’s eyes, which made Amy start crying all over again. Amy stroked the baby’s downy hair, feeling more naked than she’d felt while giving birth.

“Why should I nurse him if I’m not going to keep him?”

“Because it’s good for him,” said Susan.

“If it’s good for him, then I should keep doing it, which means I shouldn’t give him up. And if I keep nursing him, I won’t be
able
to give him up. I’ll want to keep him even more.”

“Shhh,” and Susan handed Amy another Kleenex. Then she told Amy to lean forward a little. She moved around behind her, and after removing a comb from a plastic wrapper, she began to gently work the
snarls out of Amy’s hair. “All these things will fall into place,” she said.

“There’s no rush to decide.”

“I don’t know who the father is,” Amy whispered.

“That’s all right.”

“No. It’s not.”

Susan set down the comb. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“No. Because that means I’ll remember more than I want to remember.”

But it was already there, whether she wanted to remember it or not.

“I won’t flip out,” Susan said. “I promise.”

“Yes you will.” And it suddenly hurt Amy, to think of how much it was going to hurt her mother, to hear what had happened.

“Amy,” said Susan, peering around to face her, “I just helped you deliver a baby. My mind’s already imagining the worst. You might as well tell me.”

“About how I got drunk? You realize I probably don’t have all the details, because of that.”

“Believe me, honey, I probably don’t want all the details.”

Amy adjusted the baby, who had fallen back asleep and was sweating against her breast. She was grateful that her mother was standing behind her. “So last Halloween?”

“Okay,” Susan said, “okay,” and her voice sounded guarded, and Amy wished she hadn’t begun the story but knew there was no way to stop at this point.

“I wasn’t even going out that night. I was going to stay home and hand out candy. But then you got dressed up as Pippi Longstocking.”

Susan stopped combing. “I liked that costume!”

“Except you wanted me to dress up too. You had a Little Orphan Annie wig you wanted me to wear.”

“I did?”

“Yes, you did.”

There was no way she was going to stay home and wear a Little Orphan Annie wig. And so Amy had left the house and gone to a coffee shop, where she ordered a hot chocolate and read a chapter in
Walden
. Around ten, some guys came in; one of them was in her math
class. And they must have taken pity on her because they asked what she was doing there alone, and she said she was reading ahead for lit class, and that’s when they joked about kidnapping her.

People didn’t usually joke with her, and it made her feel cool. She didn’t say that out loud to her mother.

“So we went to a park,” she went on. “They had vodka. They weren’t trying to be mean; they just figured I knew how to drink.”

“How much did you drink?”

“Like I’d know?”

“Do you remember calling and telling me you were staying at Sarah’s?”

“Is that what I told you?”

“You did. And I believed it.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s okay. It’s not like I never lied to my parents.”

Things got even fuzzier after that. She remembered being in the backseat of someone’s car and people helping her walk into a house. She remembered the scratchy carpet against her face, and some girls helping her to her feet and taking her into the bedroom, where there was a king-sized bed piled with coats. She woke up in darkness with a cottony mouth and cold feet. Her pants lay on the floor; her legs were damp and sticky, and her underwear was on backward.

She had the sense there’d been more than one.

She told all this to her mother, except the part about the underwear. And the number. Which she really didn’t know. It was just plural.

“Who was it?” Susan said, after a while.

“You said you wouldn’t ask.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Mom.”

“Honey, we—”

“Mom.”

At home she took a shower, and everything stung, and yes, it occurred to her, but only fleetingly, and she put it out of her head because there were more pressing things to think about, such as college visits during the winter and SATs and AP exams in the spring.

“Didn’t you feel yourself gaining weight?” Susan asked.

“I’m always gaining weight.”

“But didn’t it feel different?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”
Don’t worry
, she wanted to say.
Next time I have sex with the football team, I’ll make sure to get a pregnancy test
.

“And those girls didn’t stay to help you?” Susan said suddenly. “Didn’t they know they shouldn’t leave you alone like that? Whatever happened to the idea of girls looking out for each other?”

“It doesn’t work that way, Mom,” said Amy.

“I want to wring their little necks,” said Susan. “I want to wring that boy’s neck too.”

“Mom. You told me you’d be able to handle it.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t get mad, though,” said Susan. “It infuriates me. Not just what the boy did to you. Didn’t anyone look in on you? You were passed out! You could have choked on your own vomit! What’s
with
these kids?”

Amy shrugged. She’d been the subject of whispery speculation for about a month—until Thanksgiving, actually, when someone else did something dumb and provided new gossip for the high school tabloids.

Now she lay against her hospital pillow, watching her mother pace. She wanted desperately to comfort her mother right now.
I’m alive
, she wanted to say.
I survived
. But she knew her mother’s heart was broken, and nothing she could say would help. And she hated herself, for getting drunk that night and doing this to her mother.

“Mom. Stop. I’m all right.”

Susan took a deep breath and sat down beside Amy and searched her eyes.

“It isn’t easy, hearing this,” she said. “But you’re right. I promised you I wouldn’t flip out.
I feel
like I’m going to flip out, but I won’t. I just need to vent a little. But I’ll deal with this. You’ll deal with this. It’s not going to wreck your life. You’re not going to punish yourself forever. We’re going to figure out the best solution, and it might not be clear for a couple of days, or even weeks, but we’re going to get through this. Remember what JT said? You lose your confidence, you lose everything. My goodness.” She sighed. “What if we had never
come down the river? What if this had happened back in Mequon? I don’t know if I would have been able to get through all this and come out whole. Maybe I would have. But I don’t know.” She took Amy’s face between her hands and shook her own head in a way that meant yes.