Chapter 9 - The Salt and the Silt
The hospital in Waukesha had eight delivery suites on the third floor, each with a wide window that looked out over the retention basin where the Canada geese were gathering for the southern flight.
Ella arrived on November sixth, eight days before the date on the pewter box, at four-twelve in the morning.
She did not cry when she came into the light. She took one long, startled breath of the air that smelled of antiseptic and warm linen, sneezed twice, and then looked around the room with wide, dark blue eyes that were neither mine nor Ryan’s, but had the clear, cold grey of the lake water off Door County.
She weighed six pounds and eleven ounces.
Melissa was there, holding the ice chips in a small paper cup, her face pale with the thirty-six hours of labor that had kept us awake through two nights of steady, cold rain.
And Diane was there.
She sat in the vinyl armchair in the corner, wearing her good tweed skirt and the silver brooch her husband had brought her from the World’s Fair in Montreal fifty years ago. She had not left the floor since three o'clock the previous afternoon. When the nurse had asked if she was the grandmother, Diane had looked up over her spectacles and said:
"I am the trustee."
At seven in the morning, while the light was beginning to pink the edges of the clouds over the interstate, the door opened.
A woman in a grey wool coat stood in the opening.
It was not Kayla.
It was Kayla’s mother, Evelyn Thompson. She was seventy, with thin, bird-like shoulders and hair that had been dyed the color of a copper penny forty years ago and never allowed to return to grey. She carried an old wicker picnic basket covered with a clean dish towel.
She didn't look at me. She looked at Diane.
"Evelyn," Diane said from the vinyl chair. She didn't stand up.
"Diane," the other woman replied. Her voice had the dry, whistling rattle of a woman who had smoked two packs of Salems a day since the Kennedy administration. "The girl is in Fond du Lac. She’s working the desk at her uncle’s lumber yard."
"Good," Diane said. "They need people who know how to keep a ledger."
Evelyn set the wicker basket on the small rolling table by the door.
"This was my mother’s," she said, her fingers twitching against the handle. "The Christening gown. The one with the Belgian lace that came through Baltimore in nineteen-ten. Kayla told me... she told me to bring it to the hospital."
"Take it back, Evelyn," Diane said.
The room went completely silent, save for the rhythmic hiss-click of the blood pressure cuff on my arm.
"Diane," Evelyn whispered, her chin quivering beneath her powder. "The children have known each other since they were seven years old. They played in the sandbox behind the creamery."
"They aren't children anymore," Diane said. She stood up, her joints cracking with a dull, wooden pop that sounded like the furniture in an old house settling after a storm. "And your daughter didn't play in the sandbox. She went through my daughter-in-law’s desk while she was having an ultrasound to see if the child had a heartbeat."
She walked to the table, picked up the wicker basket by its handle, and placed it back in Evelyn’s thin, trembling hands.
"Take it home, Evelyn," Diane said softly. "Wash it with the borax. And don't bring it back to this county."
She closed the door with her own hand, turned the small thumb-latch until it clicked, and then walked back to the bed where Ella was sleeping against my ribs.
"She has Arthur’s ears," Diane said, looking down at the small, pink face beneath the cotton cap. "Too big for her head. She’ll have to wear her hair down until she’s twelve."
"I don't care about her ears," I whispered, my fingers touching the damp, dark fuzz at the back of the baby’s neck.
May you like
"Neither do I," Diane said.
She reached out and covered my hand with hers. Her skin was still rough from the garden, but her grip was steady, unmovable, the foundation that had survived the storm that had broken her son into small, forgotten pieces.
