First Comes Baby

by Janice Kay Johnson

  UNNOTICED, LAUREL STOOD in the door to the hospital room and stared in amazement at Nadia nursing her newborn child. For a moment, she forgot that Caleb waited down the hall.

  Just last Sunday, she’d taken the ferry to Bainbridge Island, met Nadia’s husband, Darren, an orthopedic surgeon, and had a tearful reunion with her best friend in the world, next to Caleb.

  Pregnancy had given them an instant bond that erased the lost years. In no time, they’d been laughing and talking as if there’d been no interruption in their friendship.

  Now here it was, only Thursday, and Laurel had gotten a call on her cell phone from Darren.

  “She went into labor yesterday, and she just had a nine-pound, five-ounce boy.” He had sounded both exhausted and exhilarated, the words coming fast. “Nadia asked me to call you. She said to tell you it was worth every minute.”

  “Nine pounds, five ounces? She wasn’t kidding about having a huge baby.”

  “The doctor’s thinking we miscalculated on when he was conceived. But I was a big baby, too.”

  He was also a big man, easily six foot three or four, dwarfing his petite wife. Laurel had liked him.

  “Is she staying at the hospital?”

  “Probably just overnight. Alex is a little jaundiced and they want to keep an eye on him.”

  “Would she like a visitor?”

  “She’d love one.”

  So she’d come after work, and now stood gazing at her dark-haired friend, whose head was bent as she looked down at the swaddled infant seemingly latched on to her nipple. The expression on her face was so tender, Laurel felt tears prick in her eyes.

  “Hi,” she said softly.

  Nadia’s head came up and she gave a glowing smile. “You’re here! Come and sit down. Isn’t he the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen?”

  She couldn’t see him all that well, but…no, he wasn’t. Laurel hadn’t actually set eyes on that many newborns before. She assumed she’d be prejudiced when her baby was born, too. Actually, little Alex’s head was somewhat misshapen, his dark hair patchy and his skin blotchy. And he looked so tiny!

  “He’s a big baby?” she said, looking down at the tiny hand that had crept from beneath the receiving blanket to flex like a kitten’s paw when it nursed.

  “Really, really big.” Nadia laughed up at her. “Isn’t it amazing? He’ll be walking before I know it.”

  “And wanting his driver’s license.”

  “Even if you understand intellectually…”

  “Emotionally it doesn’t seem possible,” Laurel agreed. “Wow.” Her legs felt weak, and she sank down in a chair beside the bed. “Suddenly it’s become real.”

  “I’m not sure I believed it, either.” Nadia’s dark hair was sweaty and disheveled, she wore no makeup, according to her husband she’d been in labor for twenty-six hours, and yet she was radiant, her brown eyes glowing, her smile soft. “But, Laurel, now I do. And the way I feel about him…” Her gaze caressed her infant son. “No matter what you read about it, you’re not prepared.”

  “Is Darren jealous?” Laurel asked, only half kidding.

  “He’s too in love.” Nadia laughed gently. “He keeps wanting to unwrap him so he can see him better. I accused him of wanting to count toes.”

  “He does have the regulation ten?”

  “Mmm.” She eased her son from her breast. “He’s asleep.”

  His tiny face was screwed up as if he had a thousand worries, but then he’d had a tough day so far, too. What must babies think, thrust into light and noise and the chill of air outside their mother’s bodies.

  “Caleb came with me. He’s down the hall,” Laurel said.

  “Really?” Nadia looked up. “Well, for heaven’s sake, go get him.”

  “Are you sure? He thought you might not want too many visitors.”

  “Are you kidding? I’d love to see him!”

  When Laurel came back down the hall, Caleb rose from the hard plastic chair. “That was a short visit.”

  “She’s not going to let you get away without admiring her baby.”

  He laughed and followed her, a big, vibrant man who strode the hospital’s corridors with the confidence of a doctor. In Nadia’s room, he went right to the bed and bent to kiss her cheek. Then he straightened and studied the crumpled face of her newborn son.

  “He looks like you.” Pause. “At the end of finals week.”

  She punched him and he dodged, laughing.

  “Seriously. He does look like you. Shape of his eyebrows, nose, even his mouth.”

  Laurel looked more closely and saw that he was right. “Except for his chin. Does he have a cleft like his daddy?”

  “I think so.” Nadia gazed bemusedly at her sleeping son’s face. “I hope he’s tall like his dad, too.”

  “That’ll mean having your kid looking down at you by the time he’s eleven or twelve.”

  “Did that bother your mom?” Nadia asked.

  “Nah. She knew who had the real power.”

  He pulled up a second chair and they chatted for a few minutes. Then Laurel noticed the smudges of tiredness under Nadia’s eyes and the way she began to pause before she answered a question, as if her brain felt filled with sludge.

  A nurse came in and took Alex away, and even without her significant glance, Laurel had begun to rise. “You need a nap, sweetie.”

  “You don’t have to go…”

  “Yes, we do. What better chance will you have to rest up for the long nights ahead?”

  The two women hugged goodbye, Caleb kissed her cheek again and then he and Laurel left the room. They paused at the window to the nursery to look at the half dozen swaddled babies sleeping, knit caps on their small heads, identical expressions of fierce concentration on their faces.

  “Just think,” Caleb murmured.

  She was thinking, had been thinking for five months, and increasingly so recently. At first she’d been so miserable, focusing on the baby had been impossible. But now, since she’d begun to feel the flutter of movement inside her, she found herself daydreaming constantly.

  Was her child a girl or boy? She kept imagining a girl, for no logical reason. Laurel wondered what she’d be like. Would she have her daddy’s idealism? Mom’s insistence on nailing down the details? Would she be creative, silly, earnest? A social butterfly or an introvert? Would she be cautious with money, or a spendthrift?

  What would she become? Would she find something in life she wanted passionately to do? Would she get married, have children, be fulfilled?

  Laurel felt herself poised on the brink of wondrous discoveries. Right now, she was almost jealous of Nadia, who had begun making them.

  “Let’s get a bite to eat and go to a movie,” Caleb said suddenly.

  “I have work tomorrow…”

  His eyes were so blue and beguiling. “We won’t be out that late.”

  “What do you want to see?”

  He laughed and gave her a quick hug, releasing her before she could feel the first flicker of alarm. “That’s my Laurel. Ever suspicious.”

  How often had he said that to her? And how often had she argued the same way?

  “I’m not suspicious. I just like to know what I’m getting into.”

  The moment she said that, she had an insight.

  Oh. So that’s why I lost my ability to be even the tiniest bit reckless. Because it never came naturally to me in the first place.

  Not profound, but something that hadn’t occurred to her before. She had been the cautious toddler, the reserved child, liking all her t’s crossed and her i’s dotted, as her father had put it. She had eventually persuaded herself that she could take chances. Then, in one horrifying hour, she had learned that even studying late, even walking out to her car alone, had been too great a chance.

  So now, she didn’t take even minute chances. She didn’t try new grocery stores, didn’t risk missing the same bus she took every day, had a routine for locking up at night and one for get
ting dressed in the morning.

  Whereas someone less cautious in the first place might have rebounded more readily.

  “What are you thinking?” Caleb asked.

  “That I’d forgotten I was always chicken.”

  “You weren’t chicken. You just didn’t like surprises.”

  “But surprises can be good.”

  His forehead creased a little as he studied her. “Yeah, they can.”

  “Surprise me,” she said impulsively. “Whatever movie you want to see.”

  His grin warmed her heart. “Thatta girl.”

  He grabbed a newspaper on the way out of the hospital. In the car, he opened it to the movie section, pages rustling, and studied it for a minute before saying, “How does Serafina sound?”

  “Melanzane alla Serafina? It always sounds good.”

  Caleb made a rude noise and folded the paper. “By any name, still eggplant.”

  “So sue me. I like eggplant.” Laurel buckled her seat belt. “I haven’t been to a movie in ages.”

  “I haven’t, either.”

  Caleb found parking on a steep hill not a block from the Tuscan-style restaurant on Eastlake that was a favorite of theirs. Dinner was as good as she’d anticipated, conversation better with Caleb telling her about his latest trip, and her telling him about how it had felt to see Nadia again after nearly five years. At the end they shared some divine cream puffs filled with caramel ice cream and topped with bittersweet chocolate sauce.

  “Yum,” she murmured, licking her lips. “I’ve never been a huge chocolate fan, but lately I crave it.”

  It seemed to her Caleb’s eyes had darkened, and for a moment his gaze lingered on her mouth. His voice was huskier than usual, too. “I can tell.”

  Laurel felt a tiny thrill, as if…oh, she held some power she hadn’t known she possessed.

  But the moment passed, he smiled and thanked the waiter who brought their tab, and she decided she’d imagined any charge in the air between them.

  She braced herself for some peculiar independent film. Caleb claimed to like his movies challenging. Instead, he took her to the Metro to see a film from Denmark she remembered reading about. “Sweet” the reviewer had called it.

  Settled in their theater seats, Caleb laid his hand, palm up, on the armrest between them. “You remember our ‘dates’?”

  A funny bubble of happiness made her want to hiccup. They’d done that, even when one or the other of them was going with someone else. He’d stop by her room, or she’d stop by his, and they’d say, “Date night!”

  In their poverty-stricken college days, that had meant pizza or a burger, maybe, instead of dining hall food, and then a movie at the local multiplex. They would always hold hands during the movie. “Because it’s a date,” Caleb would explain.

  She supposed whichever one felt insecure about their relationship had demanded the date night. It had been a way of reclaiming them, Caleb and Laurel, even when they’d both known that the current boyfriend or girlfriend would resent their bond.

  Laughing, now she held out her hand in turn and felt his engulf it. She hadn’t held hands with anyone in…oh, forever. Probably not since the last movie she and Caleb had seen the spring of their senior year. After that, he was gone, and although she’d dated during her first year of law school, that had mostly meant intense conversations over cappuccinos.

  The theater darkened, previews played and then the movie unfolded. Caleb never let her hand go, holding it on her thigh. His shoulder and upper arm brushed hers. But she didn’t feel trapped. Instead, the contact was reassuring, a recovery of good times past, a way to enhance the closeness they had begun again to share.

  The movie was delightful and as sweet as the reviewer promised. The thing Laurel liked about many foreign films was that they weren’t about gorgeous movie stars. The people seemed ordinary, sometimes homely, their problems modest but real. This couple found each other even though they didn’t speak the same language. The obstacles to their happiness were sometimes absurd, yet also believable. Laurel was smiling when the credits rolled and the lights came up.

  She turned to Caleb. “You chose that movie for me.”

  “Yeah, I did. I figured your first surprise in a long time should be a good one.”

  “Was it too corny for you?”

  “Actually, I liked it.” He gave her hand a squeeze, then released it, reaching toward the ceiling for a stretch. “Time to get you home.”

  He walked her to her door, as if the date was just that. Laurel was glad. She didn’t like coming home at night alone. Once she’d unlocked and turned on lights, he smiled, said, “That was fun,” and kissed her cheek, just as he had Nadia’s earlier.

  She jumped, startled by having his face come toward hers, by the warmth of his breath on her cheek, the brush of his mouth, the faintest scrape of whiskers as he drew away.

  As if he hadn’t noticed, Caleb said, “’Night,” and left.

  Laurel locked up, then went straight to the bathroom to brush her teeth and get ready for bed.

  Why had he done that? she wondered. Had he thought she might be hurt if he seemed more affectionate toward Nadia than he was toward her? It had seemed perfectly natural when he greeted Nadia that way, so she didn’t know why she was making a big deal out of this.

  Yes, she did. It was because they’d never kissed before, even on date nights. There’d been a few times she had ached for him to bend his head, for his mouth to cover hers. And she’d seen in his eyes that he’d wanted that, too. But they had both known that it couldn’t be just fun, that they didn’t dare go beyond a certain point with their flirting. To stay friends, they couldn’t cross that line.

  But tonight, he had. It hadn’t been a romantic kiss. Maybe she was making too much of it. Maybe it was a Latin American thing, as casual as a handshake to him now.

  But if so, you’d think he’d have kissed her cheek without thinking sometime in the past five years. So why now?

  Because it was a date night? Because they were now adults? Because she’d been comfortable with holding hands, so he thought it wouldn’t scare her?

  Laurel set her alarm and turned out her bedside lamp. In the dark, she admitted to herself that she’d liked having him kiss her. She’d missed physical intimacies even as she shied from them.

  Her dad was a wonderful man, but he wasn’t physically demonstrative. It wasn’t until college that she’d learned that other people, even just friends, hugged easily, snuggled when they watched movies even if they weren’t boyfriend/girlfriend, put on each other’s suntan lotion, gave neck and shoulder massages, walked with their arms wrapped around each other’s waists.

  Maybe, she thought, maybe she could learn to enjoy that kind of intimacy again. Maybe that was all Caleb was trying to show her.

  But a picture of him at dinner flashed into her mind. His eyes darkening, his sudden stillness creating tension, making her see anew that he was a man now. One who on a certain level was…a threat.

  Staring at the ceiling, she worried: What if all the time he was spending with her wasn’t just about friendship, or even about the baby? How would she feel if the next time, he really kissed her?

  CALEB DIDN’T WANT to leave town right now, when Laurel was coming to trust him, but if he was going to squeeze all this year’s travels into a compressed few months, he had to go.

  “You’re okay without me?” he asked her on the phone when he called to tell her about his projected trip.

  “Of course I’m okay!”

  “Geez, leave me my illusions. I thought I was essential to your very existence.” Light tone, but he winced anyway. Shouldn’t have said that. Too close to wish fulfillment.

  But her voice softened. “Being friends doesn’t mean you have to check in three times a week. An import business means traveling.”

  Yeah, and he wouldn’t want to give it all up, but his attitude toward these trips was changing. He hadn’t noticed, until Laurel asked him to become a daddy, b
ut Caleb realized now that his enthusiasm had been waning already. The excitement and passion of the first couple years had mellowed into satisfaction somewhere along the line. Lately, even that wasn’t driving him as effectively. He had to brace himself to head for the airport again.

  He had become less patient with the squabbles among his co-ops, too, with missed deliveries, with the mindless interference of bureaucrats.

  A week later, wasting a day negotiating with a local functionary in Ecuador who wanted to be bribed so that he wouldn’t insist on meticulously searching shipments for drugs—and breaking half the ceramic items—Caleb was well aware of how different he would have felt once upon a time. Fuming behind his smiles and handshakes, he thought, Does this goddamn idiot want the villagers in his district to die because they can’t afford TB medicine or to own a couple of alpacas to shear?

  The goddamn idiot probably didn’t. He was just too consumed with solidifying the tiny amount of power that separated him from the impoverished to see the greater good.

  Not that many years ago, Caleb had believed he could convert bureaucrats like this jackass and infect them with his belief in how the world could be changed. Today, having succumbed and “thanked” his nemesis with a wad of bills, he shook hands, exchanged grandiloquent promises of eternal friendship and left the government offices. His Ecuadorian driver was waiting for him. Quito was still a mix of modern and ancient, and not many miles out of the city they were on a dirt track. Dust bloomed behind them, and the Jeep swayed through ruts and jolted over rocks and potholes in the dirt track that would become a sea of mud the next time it rained.

  Feet braced on the rusting floorboard, Caleb seethed with frustration to the point where he wasn’t aware when they slowed to go through a village of the colorfully garbed women walking to the well with pots on their heads, naked children laughing and darting out of the way. He was oblivious to the sight of the terraced fields rising toward the Andes.

  That night, sleeping on a mat on the floor, he thought, Maybe I’ve expanded too much. The joy of the early days was gone. Challenges didn’t get his juices flowing anymore; they were irritating obstacles. He no longer flew down here to spend three relaxed weeks in Ecuador. No, instead he had a planned itinerary of four countries in that same period of time, and a wasted day like this screwed up his whole schedule.