Matilda would tell how Stephanie had dropped her bags and flowers and started running down the street when she saw Tommy fall, how she’d sat and cradled his head in her lap and held his hand and made him stay still until the paramedics came and told them he was going to be fine. How they’d finally gotten him to his feet and helped him inside and then they knew why Tommy had fainted, why seeing Vinnie and Matilda on the street had made him dizzy and confused.
It was a statue of Mommy and Daddy! As soon as Vinnie junior was old enough to know the story, he’d always interrupt and say that part. It was a statue of you guys!
That’s right. Matilda would run her hand over his head, his glossy hair dark like his mother’s, curly like his father’s. It was a famous statue from France. The lady was missing a foot and the man was missing an arm, just like your mommy and daddy. I took one look at that statue and I knew.
Here, if Matilda and Vinnie were in the same room, she would always pause, always give him the look, a look like she’d given him that day brimming with awe and revelation, a look that fixed his world and made him whole and filled him with such unbearable desire and hope that he was always the first to turn away because the look was almost too much, a virtual sun flooding his world with light.
I saw that statue, Matilda would say, smiling at her boys (first Victor Jr., then little Fernando, then Arturo for Vinnie’s grandfather), and I knew. That statue? It was my sign.
CHAPTER FORTY–FOUR
Nearly ten months after the unexpected nor’easter blew through Manhattan in late October, freezing branches, killing 185 stately trees in Central Park, destroying nearly all the autumnal foliage of the five boroughs, including the colorful mums that lined Park Avenue and the decorative pots of kale the denizens of Brooklyn favored for their front stoops while trying to effect a kind of incongruent country gentility, the birthing centers of New York City were hit with a miniature baby boom. As spring turned to summer and the days grew longer and the humidity crept northward and eastward, slowly making its way up the Jersey shore until it settled over the city like a clammy, uninvited embrace, the citywide birth rate for July nearly doubled, forcing doctors and nurses and midwifes and anesthesiologists to work double shifts, cancel vacations, operate on zero sleep.
“Snowtober babies” they started calling them, the Ethans and Liams and Isabellas and Chloes that appeared in late July in place of the corn, which had failed to thrive because after that early snowstorm the rest of the winter was dry as a bone and the winter’s drought extended into spring and summer. But the babies came—their hair as abundant and soft as corn silk, their new bodies unfurling to expose tiny grasping fingers and clenched toes that looked as sweet as newly bared kernels of corn.
Stephanie had been having prelabor contractions for weeks, but she was five days past her due date and still didn’t have a baby. She’d stopped going into her office, preferring to spend a few desultory hours at the computer before taking a long afternoon nap. She was bored. She was ready. She was beyond ready. Downstairs, Tommy was hammering. She still couldn’t believe the change that had come over him once he got that ridiculous artifact out of his apartment. The day Tommy collapsed on the stoop, EMS declared him fine. Exhausted and dehydrated, but fine. When they finally got him inside and she saw the statue, she’d nearly fainted herself. She knew all about the theft at ground zero because one of her clients had written an entire book about the recovery efforts downtown and was currently covering the rebuilding of the new Freedom Tower.
Logistics of statue moving aside, the transfer was absurdly simple. Stephanie asked her old friend Will to help, knowing she could trust him to protect Tommy. A rented truck, a late-night drop-off at a collection spot that had been set up for anyone wanting to donate 9/11 artifacts. Ever since the statue had been returned to its rightful place, Tommy had taken to his living quarters with a new zeal, renovating the entire garden level himself. It was going to be beautiful.
Five days late. Stephanie had taken her nap, refolded the baby blankets in the spanking new crib in the pretty new nursery. The July heat was blistering and the afternoons were too miserable to do anything but sit in her air-conditioned living room, watch reality TV, and saunter down the block for an overpriced gelato before dinner. Standing in front of a neighboring stoop, listlessly rummaging through a pile of books left out for the taking, she felt a little pop, like a balloon bursting quietly and deep inside. And then the telltale gush between her legs, followed by a long, throbbing ache, longer and heavier than the small precontractions she’d been having. She leaned against a neighbor’s stone balustrade with one hand and took a deep breath. She felt the sweat trickle down the back of her neck, between her tender breasts. She closed her eyes and the sun beat down on her face and shoulder and arms, the peach gelato in her other hand dripping down her palm and wrist. She wanted to remember this moment. She looked at the wet spot on the pavement and thought: This is before. The trickle down her inner thighs, the swelling ache at her back, they were ushering her to a completely different place, to after. She was ready.
As she stood, mesmerized by her amniotic fluid meandering down the slope of the bluestone sidewalk (the first and last moment, as it would happen, that she had the luxury of observing the process with any aplomb), the first contraction hit and was so sustained it took her breath away, doubled her over, and she was stunned to hear herself audibly groan.
Okay, she thought, I guess this is going to be fucking intense.
As the pain receded and she tried to catch her breath and move toward her house, another contraction, right on the heels of the first and this one—she didn’t even know how it was possible that she registered it but she did—a little stronger and longer than the first.
As the second contraction subsided, she stood and waited. Nothing. She took the phone out of her pocket and hit the stopwatch function so she could time the intervals between contractions. Everything was happening too fast. Gingerly, she started to walk and when she was directly in front of Tommy’s living room windows, the third contraction. She grabbed onto the wrought-iron railing with both hands and the sound that came out of her was so primal and involuntary that she scared herself; she felt as if she were being torn in two.
Tommy loved telling this part of the story, how he heard her before he saw her. “Three kids,” he’d say. “I knew that sound. Oh, boy, did I know that sound.” He ran out the front door and managed to get Stephanie up the stairs and through the front door (contractions four and five). He tried to settle her on the floor (contraction six).
“Not on the rug!” she’d screamed at him. He’d run upstairs to grab some sheets out of the linen closet and a blanket to wrap the baby because it was evident that there would be no time to get to the hospital. A pair of scissors from the bathroom. Peroxide? Why not. He started toward her bedroom thinking he could use a few pillows when he heard her bellowing.
Downstairs, Stephanie was just trying to control her breathing. Shit! Why hadn’t she paid more attention to the breathing? Practiced? She couldn’t manage her breathing, couldn’t get ahead of the pain. She sat on the living room floor, pulled out her phone, and after a brief, unsettling conversation with her doctor during which she had two contractions and the doctor said, “I’m hanging up and sending an ambulance,” and before she could even check the time again—and she knew this was very wrong, way too soon—she had to push.
“Tommy?” she wailed up to him. Where was he? “I have to push.”
“No, no, no,” he yelled down to her. “No pushing. Absolutely no pushing.”
But telling her not to push was like telling her not to breathe. Her body was pushing, her body wouldn’t not push. She reached up from the floor and pulled a cashmere blanket off the back of the sofa. She could hear sirens, but it was too soon for her ambulance and she knew she wasn’t going anywhere. She tried to remember if she’d learned anything about what to do once the baby was out. Would she have to cut the cord? Oh, God. The afterbirth? What th
e fuck was she going to do! The contractions were seamless; a constant tsunami of pressure, there was no break, no moment when she didn’t feel like every internal organ was trying to exit her body in one concerted rush. She pulled up her maternity skirt, managed to work her underpants off, and place the cashmere blanket next to her on the floor.
Nothing but the best for baby, she thought, hoping she would remember later that she’d had the presence of mind to make a tiny joke.
She was trying to fight the urge to push, but she knew she’d already lost. Her body was doing what it needed to do and it was completely clear that her job was to surrender. Tommy had come down the stairs and dumped a pile of things near her head and was in the kitchen washing his hands. At least she thought that’s what he was doing. She’d lost count of the contractions. She’d lost track of time. She thought she could feel something emerging, but how could that be true? It couldn’t be true. She remembered she was supposed to be trying short little breaths—ha, ha, ha, ha. No use. She reached down between her legs and felt it: her daughter’s head, slick and wet and grainy with hair. Her daughter was in a hurry.
“Tommy,” she yelled into the kitchen. “She’s coming.”
Her daughter was here.
CHAPTER FORTY–FIVE
There were three things Paul Underwood assiduously avoided: the beach, watercraft, and so-called street food. He genuinely disliked the beach, enjoyed neither the sand nor the beating sun nor the occasional whiff of putrefying sea creatures, nor the practically prehensile barnacles cleaving to a twist of brown otherworldly, goose-fleshed kelp. He made certain exceptions. On a cool, cloudy day, preferably in winter, preferably with an offshore breeze, he could be persuaded to walk along the waterfront for atmosphere if, say, a bowl of chowder or a bucket of steamers were offered as recompense at the end. But otherwise? Thank you very much, but no thank you. He’d never learned to swim, and marine vessels of any kind from kayaks to cruise ships petrified him. (He’d never even learned to drive a car, so the prospect of a stalled boat was also disturbing.) And the entire concept of street food was befuddling and abhorrent: the greasy cart with its questionable sanitation, the paper plates that lost all tensile strength before you were finished, eating while standing, having things drip down your hand or onto your pants, and how to accommodate a beverage along with flatware and napkins? He didn’t even approve of dining al fresco—what was the point when there was a perfectly wonderful, bug-free, climate-controlled room nearby? Street food was dining al fresco minus the petty luxuries of a table and a chair. In other words, minus civilization.
So Paul’s discomfort, while standing on a slightly swaying dock, under the relentless afternoon Caribbean sun, waiting to board a ferry while eating a plate of jerk chicken and fried plantains served from a truck in confounding proximity to the diesel fumes from the nearby idling ferry, was immense. Immense and vaguely nauseating.
His consolation? Bea. She was across the dock, sitting on a bench, her face bent to her plate of food and momentarily hidden by the wide-brimmed straw hat he’d bought her the minute they arrived at the ferry terminal from the airport, ten days ago. Although their trip hadn’t been successful by Bea’s measure (she hadn’t found Leo), the trip for Paul had gone exceedingly well. Bea’s spirits had oddly—or maybe predictably—risen a bit each day. Partly it was their surroundings, being away from New York, being away from the Plumbs. But partly it was because Bea seemed to let go a little bit more each day of the need to find Leo. It wasn’t anything she said—she wouldn’t talk about not finding Leo—but her dissipating urgency was obvious to Paul. Her brow seemed to smooth a little each day. Her shoulders unwound. She’d stopped chewing the side of her mouth.
Everyone else seemed convinced that Bea was on a fool’s errand. Well, if that made him the fool’s accomplice, so be it. He’d eagerly volunteered to accompany Bea when she confided how anxious she was about going alone, and not just for the opportunity of her company or to offer support for her fraught mission, but to be there to help her confront Leo if he actually appeared. Paul would be quite happy to confront Leo.
He enjoyed parts of their trip, especially the tiny side-by-side but separate wooden cottages they rented near the water, both with green tile roofs and cherry-colored bougainvillea surrounding the front doors. He appreciated the expansive view of the shimmering blue water that he could admire safely from his shaded deck. And the trip had begun with promise. An airport worker recognized Leo’s photo as someone who’d landed on a small charter from Miami some weeks ago and who hadn’t left, at least not by plane.
But after that initial hopeful sign, nothing. Nobody recognized his photo or—as Paul strongly suspected was the case—they did and didn’t say so. As Bea became increasingly frustrated, he started going out on his own some afternoons, looking in the more remote bars on the island, the places not frequented by tourists and, Paul believed, not appropriate for Bea. But those efforts ran dry, too. Two nights ago he’d coaxed her out for dinner at a small inn on the island. He took her hand in his and made his case for returning to New York. That’s as far as his physical intrusion went. She was preoccupied with Leo, occasionally despondent, and he didn’t want her to turn to him out of sadness or desperation. He’d waited this long, he could wait until they got back to New York. Or he could wait for her to make the first move. They’d been so simpatico lately that he thought he wasn’t crazy in believing she might just make the first move.
And she’d been writing nearly every day. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack. He could hear her from his deck when the door to her room was open, typing on the keyboard. She demurred when he asked what she was working on, but he could tell she was pleased. And he was patient. If Paul Underwood was anything, he was extremely patient.
Then this morning, she’d excitedly knocked on his door before breakfast. She was talking so fast, he didn’t understand her at first. She’d sent fifty pages of something new to Stephanie, she told him.
“More Archie—”
“No, no,” she said, shaking her head vigorously. “No Archie. No more freaking Archie. Something else. I don’t even know what it is yet, but listen.” Bea read from Stephanie’s e-mail, lavish with praise for the pages and ending with “Keep going. I love this. I can sell it.” And just like that, Bea was ready to go home.
They’d slipped some cash to a local police officer, asking him to “keep his eyes open” for Leo. They packed their things and booked their flights. They were waiting for the ferry to take them to the larger island’s airport. Paul walked over to Bea as she stood and tossed her empty plate of mediocre food in a nearby trash can. He had a headache.
“I’m going to go across the street to look for aspirin,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He walked over to the small gas station and accompanying rickety wooden building that sold mechanical parts and a smattering of groceries and other sundries. Flanking the doors were two small stands with boxes of mangoes in various states of ripening, swarms of fruit flies hovering over each crate. Inside, Paul went to grab the guava soda Bea liked. He could hear a lively crowd in a side room, a bunch of men laughing. He smelled weed.
Paul heard Leo before he saw him, recognized the barking laugh that was distinctly Leo’s. He told himself he was just imagining things, that they’d spent so many hours of so many days looking for Leo that he was constituting him out of thin air in the very last minutes before boarding the ferry. But then he heard the laugh again, closer, and the man with the laugh was heading to a rear restroom. Paul ducked behind a cardboard display for Kodak film that had to be at least twenty years old, two life-size all-American teens holding tennis rackets and laughing; the sun had faded all the pigment on the display to various shades of blue so the models looked ghostly in spite of their jauntily cocked elbows and toothy smiles. From his spot behind the display, he saw the back of the laugher’s head, took in his height, his hair, the particular profile that was, absolutely and beyond any doubt, Leo Plumb.
He’d foun
d Leo.
LATER PAUL WOULD TELL HIMSELF he hesitated that afternoon in the bodega because he’d had too much sun. Or that it was the jerk chicken that was already roiling his stomach with ill portent given that they were about to get on a ferry and then a small plane to Miami and then a bigger plane to New York. Or shock, sheer shock. He’d never really expected to find Leo. He hurriedly paid for the soda and a tiny bottle of baby aspirin, which was all they had. As he made his way across the street, he thought about what to tell Bea. Back at the ferry terminal, he found a bit of shade at the side of the building and stopped to think for a minute. Seeing Leo again made Paul realize how much he loathed him. Nathan had told Paul about Leo’s undermining tactics, how he’d questioned Paul’s leadership and competence. Paul had been furious but he also recognized that Leo’s misstep had angered Nathan enough to tip the scale in Paul’s favor. The first influx of Nathan’s funding had already arrived and Paul was working night and day to prove to Nathan that he’d made the right choice.
From afar he could see Bea, still sitting where he’d left her. The straw hat was on the bench beside her; she was getting too much sun. She was wearing the old yellow dress he remembered from her first SpeakEasy photo, the picture he’d chosen for the cover, a decision that somehow ended up being credited to Leo. Like then, her face was in profile, her expression undimmed, hopeful. He walked over and handed her the drink.
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