The Arrivals: A Novel

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “It’s that simple,” said Marcus.

  Maybe, after all, that was possible, for things to be that simple. What had Tess told her? You’re talented. You have a future here. You just need to focus.

  “Well,” she said. “Thank you.” She almost added, I’ll pay you back. But then something stopped her. Let’s not take it too far, she thought.

  I’m on a roll, she thought. I might as well keep going. She dialed.

  Tess answered on the first ring, and Rachel, taken aback by hearing her voice live after so many weeks—not on voice mail, not on the offensive—nearly panicked and hung up. Breathe, she said. She cut right to the chase: “Can I have my job back?”

  “Rachel?” Tess said. “Rachel Owen, is that you?”

  “Of course it’s me.”

  “You have some nerve, calling me to ask me that.”

  “I know,” said Rachel. “I’m sorry.”

  “You. You left me high and dry. All summer! High and dry.”

  “What about Stacy?”

  “What about her? She sucks, that’s what about her. She’s gone.”

  “Really?” Rachel felt a surge of hope. “She sucks?”

  “Terrible. She scheduled too many people, she scheduled the wrong people, she didn’t have the head shots ready, she broke out in hives. You name it.”

  The hives sounded awful.

  “We’re postponing the whole thing for a month,” continued Tess. “While we pull ourselves together.”

  “So,” said Rachel carefully. “If it’s postponed—”

  “Just get the hell back here. Rachel? Get back here as soon as you can. Let other people take care of things there. I’m sure you’ve done your part. I need you here.”

  Family first, thought Rachel. That’s the spirit.

  “I’m on my way,” she said. “I’ve got loose ends to tie up here. A couple of days, and I’m there.”

  William crouched down in the garden and worked a weed out of the soil. There were a few more weeds, but they came out easily, the mulch having done its job all summer. The dahlias were in full bloom and he paused to admire their sturdiness, their simple squat beauty. They were perhaps his favorite flower. He planted them everywhere he had the opportunity. The trailing blue million bells and zinnias had grown to their full height, and in front of them, low to the ground, were the tender bunches of soft lavender ageratum. It was, perhaps, the best summer garden of his life.

  He breathed in deeply, taking in the mixed scents, thinking ahead to the bulbs he would plant in the fall, the trimming he would do next week in the shrubs along the edge of the lawn, when a commotion from the house interrupted his thoughts. Lillian, coming out on the deck, arms waving cartoonishly, cheeks flushed.

  “It’s Jane!” she said. “It’s Jane.”

  He felt, somewhere deep inside him, a drumroll of anticipation or dread: this was what they had been waiting for all summer. It was here now. Time.

  “Her water broke!” called Lillian. “We’ve got to get her to the hospital. Stephen’s not here. He went off with Mom.” Behind her, mouth open, eyes wide and scared, stood Olivia.

  “She peed,” said Olivia. “All over her room.”

  “She didn’t pee,” said Lillian. “It’s different.”

  “How?” asked Olivia.

  “I’ll explain later. Dad, can you keep an eye on the kids? I’ll take her in. I tried calling Stephen, but he’s not picking up.”

  But William found that for several seconds he could not look away from the garden. He was frozen in place, paralyzed.

  “Dad?” said Lillian again. “Can you watch the kids? Let me just get my shoes.”

  “No,” said William, and he could see by Lillian’s face that she was as surprised by the authority in his voice as he was. He drew himself straighter. “No,” he said again. “Lillian, you stay here and wait for Stephen and your mother. I’ll take her myself.”

  In the car he tried not to look too hard at Jane. Every now and then she shuddered and pressed her hands to her belly. She looked very pale. Then again, she had been inside for the better part of the summer. Was this what a woman on the verge of labor was supposed to look like? He didn’t know. Was this normal?

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  She shook her head. “No. I mean yes. I don’t know.”

  He went up to Shelburne Road to turn left. That would be the fastest way, he thought, though he hadn’t tested it out. Why hadn’t he tested it out? Had anybody? All summer they’d had, to test it out. How unprepared they were!

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said.

  “William?” she said. “I’m scared.”

  At the stoplight he took her hand. It could have been Lillian’s hand, or Rachel’s, or even Olivia’s. It seemed, in that moment, as though all of the females he’d comforted in his life were one and the same. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “You have to know that.”

  They turned onto Pearl Street. “It’s not far now,” he said. But Jane knew that, of course. She’d been coming here for her appointments all summer long.

  “William?” she said. “I did something.”

  “What?” They were on Colchester Avenue now, approaching the hospital. He glanced at her. She was staring straight ahead.

  “I got out of bed. Whenever the house was empty, I got out of bed. I walked around. I went up and down the stairs. And I think that’s why the baby’s coming early. I didn’t relax, I stressed out about work, and I got out of bed when I wasn’t supposed to.” Her lower lip began to tremble. “I did a bad job.”

  “Jane,” he said gently, pulling the car up to the hospital. “You have kept that baby safe all these months. You have done a wonderful job. It’s just ready to come out now, that’s all. So what if it’s a little early? Only a few weeks early, right?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s ready. It will be fine.”

  “She’s gone!” said Olivia excitedly, greeting them at the door.

  Lillian appeared behind her. “Get to the hospital,” she said to Stephen. “You left your cell phone behind. Or else we would have called.”

  Stephen felt his stomach drop. “What do you mean?” he asked, really, truly not understanding. “Who’s gone?”

  “Jane,” said Lillian. “Her water broke. Just like that! And we called the doctor, and the doctor said to get there as soon as possible—”

  “Nobody’s with her?” he said. “She’s there alone?”

  “Of course she’s not there alone!” said Lillian. “What do you take us for? Dad’s with her. Someone had to stay with the children, and nobody else was here, and so we sent Dad.”

  “Dad? To the hospital? With Jane? In labor?” Even to his own ears his voice sounded strange, shaky and high-pitched.

  “He wanted to go with her, he really did. You should have seen him peeling out of the driveway! It was like something out of a movie. And Jane, she was remarkably calm. It was amazing. I just heard this small voice coming from her room, and so I knocked on the door, and when I opened it she had this sort of panicked look on her face, but not really panicked, you know, not the way I’m sure I would have felt if I’d been her—”

  But Stephen wasn’t really listening. His mind had now clicked into gear and was rushing ahead of him. Lillian pressed car keys into his hands.

  “Wait,” said Ginny. “I’m going with you.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s okay. Dad’s there.”

  “It’s not okay,” she said firmly. “This is a big deal. I’m going with you. I’m driving.” She plucked the keys from him and opened the door.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll go alone.” He felt suddenly small, and alone, and as if he were about to cry. He looked pleadingly at Lillian, who was holding Olivia’s hand and smiling at him in a gentle and encouraging way. “But it’s too early,” he whispered. “What if the baby isn’t okay?”

  “Go,” Lillian said, taking him by the shoulders and guiding him gently out the door.
“Everything is going to be fine. Go.”

  “I’m coming down there,” said Ginny when Stephen called two hours later. Lillian hovered near her. Jane had been admitted into a labor and delivery room. It was really going to happen. “I’m coming,” said Ginny. “With Lillian. Rachel can watch the kids.” Lillian nodded.

  “Don’t,” Stephen said. “Just… do something else.”

  “What?”

  “Wait. Pray. We don’t know which way it will go. They might give her a C-section.”

  Ginny mouthed C-section to Lillian.

  “Oh, poor Jane,” said Lillian. “That’s what she didn’t want.”

  “How soon would that be? Stephen?” said Ginny. “Right away?”

  “I don’t know,” said Stephen. “But just stay there for now. Please? Dad’s here.”

  After she hung up, Ginny told Lillian that it took every ounce of whatever she had—willpower, fortitude—not to disobey him. She could not stop thinking, she told Lillian, of how he looked on his first day of first grade, waiting at the bus stop with his back curving under his navy blue backpack and his eyes big and scared beneath his baseball cap. Only twice in all of Stephen’s life, said Ginny, had she felt such a need to protect him—that day, and today. “But we should stay here,” she said, and Lillian heard the catch in her voice. “He doesn’t want us.” Ginny turned her face away and bent to pick up a crumb from the floor. I should hug her, thought Lillian. I should hug her and make her feel better. But she was hurt too, and she felt suddenly very tired, and the house seemed too small and warm to hold her mother’s disappointment as well as her own long-standing, smoldering rage and resentment.

  “I’ll go out for milk,” she said abruptly.

  Ginny was looking out the kitchen window at the garden. William’s weeding tools lay where he had dropped them to take Jane to the hospital. Lillian thought about going out to pick them up, but they seemed too far away, and the day too hot. Even the errand for milk she had just offered to run—air-conditioned car to air-conditioned store and back again—seemed like too much.

  “Take Olivia,” said Ginny. “Will you?”

  “Sure,” said Lillian. “But wouldn’t it be easier if—”

  “Take her,” said Ginny. “I can’t think with all the chattering.”

  Lillian touched her lightly on the shoulder as she passed. “It’s going to be fine, Mom. People have babies all the time. It’s going to be fine.”

  “I know,” said Ginny shortly. “I know it is.”

  In the car Lillian saw her mother’s point. Olivia kept up a running commentary on everything they passed, and some things they didn’t. She ruminated on the state of her pink elephant’s dress (it had a tear that needed to be fixed); she had a few questions about fairies (their diet, how long they lived, who taught them to fly); she wanted to know when her next swimming session at the Y at home would begin; she wanted to know when Tom would come up to bring them back to Massachusetts. To all of these, even (especially!) the last, Lillian answered with a series of noncommittal noises meant to convey wisdom and understanding without actually answering.

  Then, with the milk on the seat next to her and Olivia returned to the safety of her car seat, Lillian looked in the rearview mirror and saw Olivia chewing on her fingernails.

  “Olivia,” she said sharply. “Stop that.”

  “Sorry,” said Olivia, and continued to do it.

  “Stop it. It’s bad for your teeth and bad for your nails too.”

  “I’m thirsty,” said Olivia, finally removing her hands from her mouth and tapping them on the window.

  “I don’t have anything with me. You’ll have to wait.”

  “But I’m thirsty!”

  “Olivia. I don’t have anything.” They were close to the house now. Lillian saw that all of the summer gardens they passed were drooping in the heat. It seemed as though everything around her was desiccated and dry, used up, on the verge of dying. Lillian thought she couldn’t bear it: another conversation with Tom, the memory of her kiss with Father Colin and the shame that came with that, the effort required to continue the charade that everything was fine. And now, on top of it, the little voice chirping at her from the backseat. Needing, needing. Always needing. If not Olivia, then Philip. If not her children, then Rachel. Someone, always! Wanting, needing.

  “But, Mommy.” Lillian heard it from deep inside Olivia: the beginnings of a whine.

  “Olivia!” she said sharply.

  “What?”

  “I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t listen to anything else. We’re almost home. You’ll have to wait, that’s it.” She made the turn onto their street.

  Olivia began to cry softly. “This isn’t home,” she said. “This isn’t our home.”

  Lillian turned into the driveway and pulled up hard on the emergency brake. She reached back and unbuckled Olivia’s car seat. She knew she was doing it too roughly, and Olivia jerked back and opened her eyes wider, startled. “Olivia. Just. Go. Inside.”

  “But—”

  “No. Just go. Really, I need to be myself for a minute. Please. Just go.”

  She would be able to recall forever the look on Olivia’s face, the expression of astonishment and betrayal and disappointment. Because no matter how hard you tried, there were some things you couldn’t undo.

  Jane writhed on the bed. This was nothing she could have imagined, nothing she could have prepared herself for, nothing she would ever be able to recall or explain later. The pain washed over her in waves, and just when she thought she might get a respite, it returned, stronger, again and again and again.

  She gripped Stephen’s hand so tightly that she could imagine clawing her way through the flesh, hitting the bone. And that’s sort of what she wanted to do: make him hurt the way she was hurting.

  Once she opened her eyes and saw a nurse standing near the bed. The nurse looked at the clock on the wall, then checked her cell phone, then checked the monitor hooked to Jane’s stomach. It occurred to Jane then that this, this miraculous and tortuous birth of her child, was nothing but a regular workday to everyone else. It occurred to her in that one moment of lucidity that anyone who had had a baby had gone through some version of this, and that was astonishing to Jane, that something so brutal could be so common. That seemed wrong.

  Another wave came. She thought she might die. She thought she would rather be dead.

  Lillian ushered Olivia into the house, and she put the milk in the refrigerator, and then she got back into the car and without telling anyone she drove (too fast, recklessly, even, but it was the middle of the day and the streets were quiet) to the church.

  She chose a pew in the center and slid into it, pulled down the kneeler. She knelt.

  She was in that position, head down, resting on her folded hands, when Father Colin entered the church. She turned around, hearing his footfall, and her heart quickened. She told him then about Jane and the baby, and about the black cloud of dread in her stomach and the terrible things she believed it foretold. “I am trying to pray. But I don’t know how. Am I going to hell?”

  “Of course not.” It was hard to believe that this was the man she had kissed. She thought of the kitchen in the rectory, with the aging, creaking appliances. It seemed like another person who had done that. A character in a movie, maybe. “Praying is just talking to God. There’s no right or wrong.”

  “I don’t know how to talk to God.”

  “Pray with me,” said Father Colin. He sat beside her, then knelt beside her. He turned toward Lillian. He began, Heavenly Father, hear us in our hour of need, and without saying anything he put his hand over hers as he continued the prayer.

  She acknowledged it then, that it was with that simple gesture, with the way his fingers closed around her fingers, the way she could have pulled away but didn’t, the way she allowed her body to fall slightly toward his until their arms were touching, then their torsos, then their legs, that together they established what had gone on between the
m, and what still might.

  The prayer ended and Father Colin sat back. He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking straight ahead at the altar, at the giant crucifix and the two pots of flowers on either side. His face was open and expectant. There was something so intimate about the way he was looking at the altar that made Lillian feel as though she had intruded on a private moment even though she had entered the church first. She thought suddenly of this phrase: receive the Word of God. Perhaps this was what it looked like, receiving. She felt something blossoming in the general vicinity of her rib cage—not a pain, exactly, but not a wholly pleasant sensation either. A thrust.

  It was then that Lillian understood what Father Colin was doing, what he had done that summer, not just that night in the rectory’s kitchen but all summer long: he had transferred to Lillian his capacity for forgiveness, shoring her up, fortifying her.

  “Thank you,” she said softly, but Father Colin, who now had his head bowed, seemed to have retreated inward.

  She thought of Jane in the hospital. She thought of the way her mother described Stephen on the first day of first grade. She thought of his fearful eyes when they told him Jane had gone. It was scary. It was terrifying, ushering a new person into the world. Things could go wrong in childbirth, even in this day and age, and Jane and Stephen’s baby had been vulnerable.

  Now she needed forgiveness herself. She had been terrible to so many people that summer: to her parents, certainly to Tom, and, not an hour ago, to Olivia. Thinking about that last one, about Olivia’s face in the car, made her shudder. She had not been as nice to Rachel as she could have been, nor to her mother. She had been horrid, really, to Father Colin in the rectory kitchen that night. She may as well have bared her teeth, so willing was she to show the basest parts of herself. She had been taking, taking, taking, and not giving enough. Her heartbeat quickened and she felt a drumming behind her ears. If this baby dies, she thought, it will be my fault.