Why the Sky Is Blue (9 page)

“Are you?” she said finally, gently. “Are you afraid?”

I hesitated for a moment even though I knew I felt no fear among the mix of emotions rolling around inside me.

“No, I’m not,” I answered. “I’m not afraid. I’m sad, but I’m not afraid. But I honestly thought not being afraid would make it easier to say goodbye. I think it’s going to make it harder, Mom. I really do.”

I was not mistaken.

13

We celebrated Spencer’s seventh birthday the Saturday before Palm Sunday, taking him and six of his friends to a movie and then out for pizza afterward. It was a weird kind of day. I know Spencer had a good time, but I didn’t. I didn’t mind the movie, but it was made for adolescent boys and people who like to think like adolescent boys. The jokes were silly, sometimes crude. I realized I was feeling very much like I was nearing my forties and feeling far too old for immature nonsense.

Then at the pizza restaurant one of Spencer’s little friends looked at my abdomen, which I tried to conceal with a baggy sweater, and said, “So you’re having a baby?”

Dan was involved in pouring glasses of root beer at the other end of the table and hadn’t heard it. I wasn’t sure what to say. If I said “yes,” this kid would no doubt expect to see me at some future event with a baby in my arms.

I was formulating an answer when Spencer said, “Yeah, but we’re not keeping it.” And then he took a bite of his pizza.

The kid whirled around and looked at me like either my son was nuts or I was from another planet.

I felt like I
was
from another planet. I wanted to look at that wide-eyed kid and say, “Yep, I’m from Mars. We only keep babies born in December and March.”

“How about some more pizza, Kyle?” I said, though his plate was full of pizza. He looked at his plate and then back at me. I guess he decided Spence and I were both nuts.

I was anxious for the day to end and tried hiding my middle from then on anytime I stood up. I insisted on carrying all of Spence’s presents out to the van, even though Dan kept pestering to help. I didn’t want his help. I wanted camouflage.

That night when I tucked Spencer into bed, I asked him if he’d had a fun day, and he was all smiles.

“Yeah, it was great,” he said.

“I’m glad,” I said and brushed a stray hair off his forehead. “Say, Spencer,” I continued, like I had just thought of something when actually I had been rehearsing what I would say next all evening. “People may not understand why we aren’t keeping the baby, so it would be better not to tell them. It’s kind of a private thing that I don’t want to have to explain to people.”

“You want me to tell people we’re keeping it?” he said, incredulous that I would ask him to lie for me.

“No, no,” I said quickly. “You don’t need to say anything, hon. You don’t need to even mention that I’m pregnant or that we aren’t keeping the baby. If someone asks you if I’m having a baby, you can tell them the truth. You can say ‘yes.’ But you don’t need to say anything else. Okay?”

“But what if later they ask where the baby is?” he asked.

It suddenly occurred to me that everybody who knew me and could see that I was pregnant would wonder where the baby was. There seemed to be no end of uncomfortable circumstances looming ahead.

I wanted to say, “Tell them the baby died.” But I couldn’t tell my son to say that. I knew I couldn’t say it. It was a lie. I decided I needed time to think about what we could say to little seven-year-old boys and everyone else.

“Let me think about it and get back to you on that. Okay?” I said.

“All right.” He cuddled down into his blanket and I left him.

I told Dan that night as we got ready for bed about the little problem I had at the pizza restaurant and what I had told Spencer.

“What are we going to tell people when they ask, Dan?” I said. “Only a handful of family and friends know the truth. What are we supposed to say?”

I could tell Dan had already given this a lot of thought.

“I’m working on it,” he said.

“What?” I said, though I had heard what he said.

“I am working on it.”

He didn’t say anything else. I was tired after the long day with seven little boys, so I let it go.

Katie’s piano recital was held at her school on Palm Sunday afternoon. She played flawlessly. Practicing her piece relentlessly the previous few weeks had definitely paid off, but she had grown to hate the piece, I think. She never played it again.

Two days before Ed and Rosemary came down for the second time, I had another doctor’s visit. I was nearing the end of the seventh month.

An ultrasound revealed the placenta was still in the same place, perhaps a little higher.

“At this point, I would say you could possibly deliver this child naturally, Claire. A lot depends on these last two months,” Dr. Whitestone told me. “The weight of the baby often pushes the placenta upward, where it’s supposed to be. That’s what happened with your first child. Other than that, everything looks fine.”

“I really don’t want another Cesarean,” I told him as I sat up on the table and covered my stomach.

“I know you don’t,” he said gently. It was like he and I both wordlessly agreed I shouldn’t have to bear that burden along with everything else.

The picture of my child was still on the ultrasound screen, frozen in time as Dr. Whitestone printed the image.

“Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” I asked him out of the blue, suddenly wanting confirmation of what I already knew in my heart.

He looked up from the printer and studied me for a moment.

“I do,” he said.

I nodded. So he knew.

“Do you want to know?” he asked.

There didn’t seem to be any point in not knowing. This was not like being pregnant with Katie and Spence or even Sarah—the child I miscarried and we named. I thought for a second that perhaps it would be helpful for Ed and Rosemary to know. Maybe it mattered to them. I quickly dismissed that thought. I knew it would not matter to them. It would not matter to them if the child was male or female, one-legged, blind, or anything else. “Yes, I do,” I said.

“It’s a girl,” he said and turned away from me so I could process this information privately.

“You’re sure?”

He turned around and smiled just a little. “Ninety-nine percent sure,” he said.

So was I.

I left with instructions to take it easy. Keep stair-climbing to a minimum. No jogging or jumping, neither of which I had done in years. Dr. Whitestone also wanted to see me in two weeks, not four, to see if there had been any change.

I didn’t want to go home right away. It was early in the day yet, and the kids wouldn’t be home from school for a few hours. I stopped for lunch at a Taco Bell and then drove to the nearest Target. It was the Thursday before Easter, and the department store was decked out in pastel colors from floor to ceiling.

I shouldn’t have done it, but I purposely strolled over to the baby section, and for a long time I just stood there and stared at the display of Easter dresses for baby girls. I was overcome with a tide of memories of dressing Katie in frilly pink and purple dresses, of stuffing her chubby baby legs into white tights with ruffles on the seat, and trying to keep a bonnet festooned with ribbons and rosebuds on her head. It didn’t seem that long ago that she spent most of her waking hours in my arms. A peculiar sense of longing crept over me as I stood there in a sea of rosy pink, lavender, and pale yellow.

I don’t know how long I stood there. Long enough to attract attention, I suppose. I came out of my reverie to the sound of a woman asking me if she could help me find something. Her tone suggested she had already asked me several times and had gotten no answer.

“No, no,” I stammered.

I attempted a smile, thanked her, and walked away. I headed back to my van and drove home, wildly frustrated and wishing I still had boxes of old Christmas cards to sort through.

Instead I called my mother.

She wasn’t home, but I poured out my heart to Stuart, unaware that the kids had come in through the kitchen door and that Katie had probably heard everything I said. Stu told me he would have my mom call the minute she got in.

When I hung up, I saw Katie standing there, arms folded across her chest and leaning against the arched doorway between the living room where I was, and the dining room.

I felt foolish for not having looked at the clock before making the call and for being so absorbed in it I didn’t hear the kids come inside.

“Katie. You’re home.” A really dumb thing to say, but I was completely taken by surprise at seeing her.

“It’s a girl,” she said to me in a tone of resignation that didn’t suit her but was becoming commonplace for her.

“Yes,” I said. I didn’t take my eyes off her.

She stood there for a few more seconds and then headed up the stairs, slowly, one at a time and with no lift in her step.

I found Spencer in the kitchen eating Oreos and watching cartoons on the little television on the breakfast bar. He appeared to have heard nothing.

“Hey, Spencer. How’s it going?” I said as cheerfully as I could. “Did you have a good day?”

“Yep,” he said, twisting open a cookie and scraping off the filling with his front teeth.

I grabbed some cookies, poured a glass of milk, and headed up the stairs myself. I knocked on Katie’s door and waited for her to answer.

“What?” she said.

“May I come in?” I said.

There was a pause.

“Yeah.”

She was on her bed looking at a catalog, her head propped up on an elbow.

“I brought you a snack,” I said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well, maybe you’ll want it later.” I set the cookies and milk on her dresser. She said nothing and turned a page in her catalog.

“Katie, can we talk about this?” I asked.

She was silent for a moment. I could tell she was considering my request, but she turned another page in the catalog in a way to suggest she wasn’t.

“Talking about it isn’t going to change anything,” she finally said.

“No, it won’t,” I said as I sat down next to her. “But not talking about it is changing us. Can’t you feel it?”

“I don’t feel anything,” she said softly.

I stroked her head and she amazed me by letting me.

“Sometimes I don’t feel anything, either,” I said. “And sometimes I feel way too much.”

She looked up at me, surprised, I think, that she hadn’t shocked me by saying that she felt nothing. If she didn’t want to tell me what was going through her head, then I was going to tell her what was going through mine.

“After my doctor’s appointment,” I said to her, “I went to Target and just stood in the baby-girl section, looking at all the dresses and bonnets and thinking how wonderful it is to be your mother. I was remembering when you were a baby and how much fun it was dressing you up at Easter. One year you wouldn’t keep your bonnet on. Not even for one picture. You were sixteen months old, and in all the photos we have of you, you’re holding your bonnet in your chubby little hands.”

We both smiled—me at the memory, she at the image.

“I just don’t see why we can’t keep her,” she finally said.

I knew she needed something grand and persuasive to get her through this, just like I did. I prayed a quick prayer for wisdom and charged ahead with what I hoped made sense.

“This baby is not a possession we can keep, like an heirloom or even a precious stone. She is a person, and she didn’t choose her circumstances any more than I did,” I said. “Most of the time I think I could love her just like I love you, but the truth is, Kate, I’m unsure. And your dad...well, he is sure he cannot.”

“But what if he’s wrong. What if he can and he just doesn’t know it?”

Katie had unknowingly asked the one question that pestered me daily. I knew there was a possibility that Dan’s feelings for the child could change. But we both knew it was too much of a risk with the child’s emotional welfare at stake.

“But if he is right, and he cannot love her, it could destroy this little girl and probably the four of us as well,” I said. “That would be worse than this.”

We were both quiet for a moment.

“I don’t want her going to Ecuador,” Katie said.

“I really don’t either, Kate,” I said. “But where she lives won’t be up to us.”

It was several long minutes before I rose from her bed and left Kate alone with her thoughts. And feelings she said she didn’t have.

With Katie’s aversion to the baby’s living in Ecuador, I was afraid Ed and Rosemary would find her unapproachable on Saturday. But to my surprise, she was polite, though not overly friendly. Rosemary and Ed would think she was just shy, I thought. Actually Rosemary was able to sense Katie’s displeasure for exactly what it was. At one point on Saturday afternoon the two of them disappeared. I learned later that they had sat on the deck even though it was forty degrees outside, talking about choices, circumstances, and trust.

I could tell that Spencer liked Ed and Rosemary very much. I heard him tell Ed that if they ever needed help in Ecuador, he could come over and lend a hand. He was serious. Ed smiled and said how wonderful that would be. I knew he was serious too.

I had told Dan earlier that when he wanted to talk legal matters over with Ed, I wanted to be out of the room. I could tell he was a little startled, but he said nothing.