No Defense

by Rangeley Wallace

  This time, three would become five.

  “Eddie,” I called.

  “One sec,” he said, without looking over.

  Eddie conversed the questions with questions of his own about police training. The policemen might have assumed that Eddie was interested in joining the force, but I knew better. Eddie loved to talk to people from different walks of life-firemen, construction workers, plumbers, painters, mailmen, lawyers, doctors, poets, singers-anyone who would answer his questions about the details of their work, details he somehow remembered and worked into his political cartoons days, weeks, or even years later.

  I gave out a yell. Although I was standing behind Jessie and the swing set, the contraction gripping me was so powerful and intense that for a moment I was sure she had somehow swung all her weight smack into my lower back. Jessie, as far out in front of me as the swing could take her, turned around and looked at me, concerned. “Eddie!” I screamed.

  He looked over.

  “I think we better get to the hospital,” I said. “Now!”

  All three men, two of whom had certainly been trained for more serious emergencies than this one, stood stock still and stared at me as if I’d spoken to them in ancient Greek. After a moment, during which each digested the information I conveyed, everyone sprang into action.

  Jessie skidded to a stop and took my hand. Eddie rushed to my side, a look of disbelief on his face. The black policeman offered to radio for an ambulance.

  “Thanks, but Eddie can drive me,” I said. “Can’t you, Eddie?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “We’ll escort you then,” the white policeman said. “Which hospital?”

  “Emory,” Eddie said. “We have to drop Jessie at her friends. At Abby’s, right, LuAnn?”

  “Right,” I said. “It’s on the way.”

  “What should I do now?” Eddie asked. He sounded mildly frantic.

  “Call Abby’s mother and Dr. Powers,” I said. “And I’ll get my stuff”

  Everyone went inside-Eddie, Jessie, the two policemen, and I. In the bedroom, I changed my pants, underwear, and socks and packed. Jessie followed me each step of the way, so closely that I had to move cautiously lest I step on her. Then we packed her overnight bag, a small pink duffel with pictures of ballerinas on it.

  “Mommy, do you want to take Lily Lee with you?” Jessie asked in a small voice, holding out her doll to me.

  “That is the sweetest thing you’ve ever said, Jessie.” Tears filled my eyes. “But I think she’d like to be with you at Abby’s. Thank you though, honey. Thank you so much.” I sat on the edge of her bed and opened my arms to her. She tried my lap, gave up, and we snuggled side by side. “Daddy will pick you up at Abby’s as soon as he can, and then you can come visit me at the hospital,” I assured her.

  I’d hoped to get a gift for Jessie to give her when she visited the hospital, but hadn’t had time. Eddie would have to pick something out for her.

  Jessie didn’t know-though I’m sure she sensed-that this was a moment in her life after which things would never be the same. I felt guilty for that.

  As we approached the hospital, our police car escort close behind us, I thought back to when Jessie had been born. The thing I remembered most about that day, besides Jessie of course, was how I’d felt about Eddie. I’d been warned that during labor I might hate him, scream at him, accuse him of horrible crimes, but instead the day Jessie was born I fell in love with him all over again. What a marvelous feeling that was. If only we could repeat that experience now, when we needed so much a reminder, a sort of refresher course in the intense feelings that had brought us together in college.

  My freshman year I’d known all about Eddie Garrett the way you know about someone famous, but I didn’t meet him until my sophomore year. He was known as a wild man, almost a legend at age twenty. Part of his fame was based on the fact that one of the political cartoons he’d done for the school paper had been published in the New York Times. But there was more. He rode a motorcycle, he rarely went to class but always made straight As, his best friend, Sam, was black, he dated women from the city, he played pool, he was the star of the track team, he wore cowboy boots, and he spoke--along with Sam-at just about every civil rights and antiwar protest, both on and off the campus.

  Eddie turned up one evening at an out-of-the-way hospital snack bar where on any given night five to thirty students studied. A few doctors and nurses dropped in for junk food out of the machines, but usually the small room served as a college hangout, an extension of the library for those who liked to eat, drink, or smoke while they studied. I preferred the hospital snack bar to the modern college library because it had windows that opened, as well as a small patio area good for study breaks and star hopping.

  That evening Eddie and Sam sat two tables away from me. I couldn’t help but watch Eddie and listen to his conversation with Sam. While I’d seen him before, up close I was struck by his compelling good looks, his steel-gray eyes, and his wonderful but infrequent smile. When he did smile, he looked like he was about to do something that most likely would get him arrested. When he did smile, any woman close enough to think he was smiling at her found him hard to resist.

  By the time I left the snack bar that night, we’d talked, he’d smiled at me, and I was in love. It was an instant, almost chemical reaction that had occurred only one other time in my life, and, as on that occasion, I was not merely interested, I was one hundred percent committed.

  Thereafter I dreamed about Eddie. I thought about Eddie. I stared at Eddie (in the hospital snack bar, in the coffee shop, on the quad, at demonstrations, anywhere I could find him), trying to will him to call me, to talk to me, to do something with me. By the time of our first date, I had memorized him.

  I was brought back to the present by a vicious contraction at the same time the car slowed to a stop at the hospital. The black policeman helped Eddie park the car, while I waited with his partner in the police car. He didn’t talk much, spending those endless minutes unnecessarily brushing his thin mustache with his finger.

  Eddie returned. He helped me out of the police car and then just stood there looking at me, smiling that smile. He seemed surprised at what he saw, and I felt a connection between us that had been missing for some time. I took his hand. Together we walked through the sliding-glass hospital doors into the fancy new building not fifty yards from the old hospital snack bar where we’d first met.

  Will and Hank were born ten hours later, identical twins. Will weighed six pounds nine ounces, Hank six pounds five ounces.

  The afternoon following the births, Eddie came to my hospital room carrying a grocery bag in the crook of his arm. I was sitting up in bed in a standard-issue blue and white hospital gown. He set the bag down at the foot of my bed, kissed me, then stood for a few moments with his back to me, watching his two sleeping sons in their clear plastic hospital bassinets, both swaddled in blue receiving blankets. They were turned on their left sides. Tiny white cotton caps covered their thin, fuzzy layers of light brown hair.

  “I nursed them twice,” I said proudly. “Once in the middle of the night. Once this morning. They’ve slept the rest of the time.”

  Eddie turned to look at me. “They’re playing that trick Jessie played.” He laughed. “Being real good, sleeping a lot in the hospital, waiting ‘til they get home to stay up all night. How do you feel?”

  “I feel great,” I said. “I took a shower, ate a huge breakfast, and even slept some.”

  “Those are the good hormones. They just give those out in the hospital too, if I remember correctly,” he said.

  “I wasn’t that bad last time, was I?”

  “You were just exhausted. And this time will be three times as hard.” He rubbed his hand across the stubble on his chin.

  “Did you get any sleep?” I asked.

  He pulled up a chair next to my bed and shook his head. “Instead I drove out to Six Flags this morning, thinking I might apply for that job I tol
d you about.”

  “And I told you not to even think about that,” I said. “You could never work there, Eddie. We’ll figure something out.”

  “We don’t have any choice,” he said. “We need help. We need a bigger place to live. We need money. We have three children. So I went to Six Flags. I watched four people drawing these ridiculous pictures of tourists. Making a big nose bigger, a cowlick higher, and on and on, people paying half-assed artists to make them look stupider than they already look. For two hours I sat at a picnic table in the shadow of this huge roller coaster called the Cyclone, where people stand in line for hours just to scare themselves silly.” He sighed. “You’re right, LuAnn. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t work there. I’d be dead or crazy within a year. So I have a proposal We’ll go to Tallagumsa for that year instead and see how it goes.” He held up one finger. “One year.”

  Suddenly my mind was made up too. “Oh, Eddie. Do you really mean it? You do! Tallagumsa will be wonderful. I promise. How can it not be better?”

  “Lots of ways,” he said. “Anyway, I stopped at the Piggly Wiggly and got boxes. They’re in the car. And I got this.” He opened the grocery bag and pulled out a pie, paper plates, and plastic ware. “Miss Reese’s strawberry pie. I think we should buy one every week after we get there to remind us that we can leave; that if the time comes to leave, we go the way Liz Reese did-as fast as we can and we don’t look back.” He cut a piece of the pie and put it on a paper plate. “Pie, anyone?” he asked.

  “Yes, please. I’m starving.”

  He handed me the piece.

  I leaned over and kissed him. “I love you, Eddie Garrett.”

  “One year,” he repeated. “I love you too, LuAnn Hagerdorn.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  As soon as Eddie left my hospital room, I called my father for the second time in less than twenty-four hours and gave him the latest good news: We’d be moving to Tallagumsa as soon as we could pack and say good-bye to everyone.

  “I have no idea how long that will take,” I warned him, “with the twins and Jessie and all.”

  “I’ll have your brother-in-law bring Jolene to help you,” Daddy said. “And I’ll wire you a thousand dollars. That should make the move a little less painful.”

  Jolene Wilson had taken care of me since the day I was born she was only sixteen at the time she started working for us-and I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather have sit for the twins and Jessie. She was steady, loving, not a critical bone in her body, and very physical, using hugs where most people used words. She had been at the apartment for two days when Eddie brought the twins and me home from the hospital. When we arrived Jolene and Jessie were sitting on the front steps waiting for us, Jessie’s head resting on Jolene’s shoulder.

  Jessie ran down the steps to greet us. She was dressed up in a flowered purple and white spring dress Jane had sent while I was in the hospital and the patent-leather shoes she’d worn to the courthouse dedication. I thought the shoes had been ruined that day, but Jolene had worked some miracle on them and they looked good as new. A purple ribbon kept Jessie’s hair out of her face. She looked like an angel.

  Jolene was right behind Jessie, her worn-out work shoes old loafers with the heels stomped in so they looked like bedroom slippers--slapping against each step and her washed-out barely still green uniform stretched taut across her chest and hips. Only four of the original six or seven buttons held the uniform closed, providing triangular glimpses of the blue jeans and madras blouse underneath. Except for her weight, which had increased steadily over the years, she always looked the same to me. Her chocolate-brown skin never seemed to age.

  “Get away from there ‘til it stops,” Jolene warned Jessie as the car rolled in. Jolene held Jessie’s hand and gently pulled her back a few feet. As soon as I opened the car door, Jolene released Jessie and she ran to hug me. Jolene was close behind her, obviously desperate to get her hands on Will and Hank. As far as she was concerned, babies made the world go round.

  “LuAnn!” she screamed. “You’re a sight, girl, a sight! Them babies! Look at them! Give ‘em to me!”

  Jolene opened the back door and took Will out of his car seat. He scrunched his face up and began to cry. She rested him on her chest and patted his back. He cried louder.

  “He’s a crier,” Eddie said. He was busy unloading the trunk: my overnight bag, two potted plants, and a bag of all the stuff the hospital had given us for the babies-Pampers, formula, instruction manuals, certificates of birth bearing the babies’ footprints, and presealed glucose-water bottles. “He eats and cries.”

  “Well, he ain’t old enough to talk, bless his heart,” Jolene said.

  “Here,” I said, taking Will from her. “Why don’t you get Hank out.”

  Jolene removed Hank from his car seat. He didn’t even open his eyes. She cradled him in her arms and stared.

  “He’s a sleeper,” Eddie said over his shoulder from the front steps.

  “They is something else,” Jolene said. “Both of ‘em looks like you, LuAnn. But Jessie, you was the best-looking and acting baby I ever saw.”

  Jessie grinned. I knew Jolene would one day tell each of the boys that they were the best too, but right now what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

  I took off my flats, using my right foot to remove my left shoe and vice versa, and left the shoes next to the pile of stuff Eddie was to bring into the house. The grass under my feet and toes was cool and fine. With my free hand I picked one of the enormous lilac chinaberry blossoms from the front-yard tree.

  “Our new house has two of these trees, Jessie.” I handed her the fragrant flower. “Look, it goes with your dress.”

  She tucked the flower into her sash and smiled.

  Over the front door a piece of posterboard hung from the trim. “Welcome Home” was written on it in red magic marker. Several figures-one large, two small-had been colored below the words. Eddie’s head brushed against the bottom of the poster as he carried his load inside.

  “Oooh! Who made that?” I stopped on the porch to admire the sign.

  “Me!” Jessie said. “I drew you and Will and Hank. See, I even did Will’s birth color.” She pointed at a red dot on the child’s thigh.

  “It’s his birthmark,” I said. “You did a wonderful job, Jessie.”

  “Jolene helped,” she said.

  I bent over to kiss Jessie in thanks, lowering Will to the level of her face. He stopped crying and looked at her. “See? He likes you,” I said.

  “I know,” Jessie insisted. ‘Jolene told me all about being a big sister.”

  I hugged Jolene and kissed her cheek. “You’re wonderful!” I said. “Only two days here and you’ve worked miracles. As always. Thanks for coming to help. I don’t think I would have been brave enough to leave the hospital if you weren’t here.”

  “I always take care of my babies,” she said.

  “Will and Hank appreciate it.”

  “I mean you, girl,” she said. “You is my baby. Get in that room and lay yourself down. You need your rest.”

  Inside the apartment, piles of newspapers and open boxes covered the living-room floor. Many of the boxes were already packed with books, records, tapes, and pictures. Despite the move in-progress, the room was clean and organized.

  “Who did all this?” I was astonished to see how much work had been accomplished.

  “All of us,” Eddie said. He pushed a box aside and sat down on the living-room couch with a beer. “If we’re going, we might as well go.”

  “Look in my room,” Jessie said. “I packed all my toys.”

  “Then your mama gets in the bed,” Jolene said.

  “Okay,” Jessie said without complaint.

  I was relieved at how easy this transition was going to be. Jessie and Jolene had struck up a warm friendship in a matter of days. Much of the packing was finished. Eddie, although he seemed a bit distracted, was trying hard to get along. He hadn’t said anything sarcastic
about Tallagumsa or my family all day, which took some effort on his part.

  The sense of anticipation surrounding the days leading up to our move reminded me of the summer before I left for college. Then, as now, there were high expectations and also a little sadness. Then, I was leaving my whole family behind, even Jane, who’d left for college her freshman year but come home and never returned after the summer semester. Then, I had not yet admitted it to Junior, but I’d known September would mark the end of our relationship as we headed off to different colleges.

  Four seniors left town in 1969: Junior, Barbara Cox, Billy Vines, and I. With my move back home, that would make three out of four who’d returned. Barbara Cox had been lured away from a teaching job at Vanderbilt to become dean at the state college. Back in town a few months prior to Junior’s return, she’d earned a reputation as an incredible fundraiser, a savvy recruiter of talented professors, and the main reason out-of-state applications at the college had tripled.

  Because Barbara was very active in state politics, I had been surprised when I didn’t see her at the courthouse dedication, but I was even more surprised when Barbara and Jane appeared at the apartment door in Atlanta six days after the twins and I got home from the hospital.

  That afternoon I was lying in Jessie’s bed, desperate for a nap, when the doorbell rang. Although I was exhausted after being up much of the night with Will, I quickly forced myself up and ran for the door. I would do anything to avoid the doorbell waking the twins.

  Jane and Barbara stood on the front porch, both in suits and heels. Jane looked frumpy; Barbara looked like a poised and polished Vogue model. She had full pink lips, aqua-marine eyes, and light blond hair blunt cut in a straight line at her shoulders.