A Witch In Time

by Madelyn Alt

  The door to the waiting room opened just as Marcus reached for it. He stood aside, and Mom leapt to her feet in anticipation. Dad and Grandpa G, on the other hand, were too busy noshing on their dinners to notice. But instead of Mel’s husband Greg walking through to let us know our vigil had come to an end, another family filed into the room to join us in a vigil of their own.

  Marcus did a double take. “Joyce! Harold! What are you two doing here?”

  Chapter 6

  The presumed Harold, a tall, barrel-chested man in a plaid cotton shirt, his stomach out to there over a pair of khakis, held out a hand to Marcus. “Hey there, son. Good to see you. It’s been a while.” As Marcus enveloped the much shorter, even rounder silver-haired wife into a friendly hug, Harold continued. “We’re here with Harry Jr. and his wife. The baby’s comin’ a little early, it seems.”

  Joyce nodded, her eyes worried but her face stoic. “It’ll be fine. Just a matter of time now.”

  Harold looked over at Marcus. “But what are you doing here? Did I miss some news of some sort? Your Uncle Lou and Aunt Molly been holdin’ out on me?”

  Marcus laughed, holding up his hands in a keep-away gesture. “Whoa there. Nope, no way, no news on my end. I’m here in a purely supportive mode.” He turned to one side and swept an arm wide to indicate me. “I’d like you to meet someone. My girl, Maggie O’Neill. Oh, and her parents, Glenn and Patricia, and her grandpa, Gordon. Maggie, everyone, these two fine folks are Harold and Joyce Watkins, old friends of my Uncle Lou.”

  Grandpa G stopped ladling his cracker-laden soup into his mouth long enough to wave a spoon at the newcomers. My mother and father nodded a hello, although I couldn’t help noticing my mom deep breathing again at the words “my girl.” Oh well. She’d get used to it.

  “Well, it’s sure a pleasure to meet you all,” Harold Watkins said. “Looks like we’re in the same boat tonight, eh?”

  My mom took the helm of that vessel. “It’s my daughter, Melanie,” she confided. “She’s in with her third tonight, and ... well, to tell you the truth, we’re not quite sure how it’s going. It’s been very quiet, and I’m not ashamed to say that’s making me nervous.”

  “Oh dear,” Joyce Watkins said, coming over and plop-ping her plump self down on the loveseat beside my mother, her round face going all soft with understanding. She took Mom’s hand in her own and patted reassuringly. “Don’t you worry. Everything will be all right, I’m sure of it. The good Lord sends his angels down from on high to watch over all the newborn babies and their mommies at times like this. All we can do is leave the details up to him. No more, no less.”

  My mom just looked at her, and for a moment I worried about what reaction her pause for breath was hiding. But in the next she heaved a sigh of resignation and bowed her head, nodding shamefacedly. “You’re right. You’re so right. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. How could I forget that?”

  I cringed, wishing she hadn’t gone for the giveth-and-taketh speech tonight. Not after the town had just lost another young man in Jordan Everett. Not after what I’d overheard in the elevator. I exchanged a glance with Marcus.

  Don’t worry, he mouthed from behind my mother’s back. Aloud he said, “Excuse me, I’m off to get coffee. Harold, Joyce, can I offer you some?”

  “Oh!” Joyce said, beaming. “That would be lovely. Thank you, dear.”

  “Need some help?” Harold asked.

  The two of them headed off, and my mom and Joyce quickly got down to the business of comparing motherly and grandmotherly notes. When I saw the wallets come out, fat to bursting with photos, I had to smile. Fast friends with similar tastes, they gabbed, they oohed, they compared notes, they conferred.

  “Hot damn!” Grandpa G’s outburst was so sudden it scared us all. Not only that, but he was wriggling around so much in his hoverchair that I worried for a moment he might flop right out like a fish. “Hot damn, didja see that? That boy’s got talent up the wazoo. Socked the ball right outta there. Right outta the damn park!” His thin body quivered within the folds of flannel and denim overalls that were his daily fashion faux pas.

  “Dad!” Mom exclaimed.

  Grandpa looked away from the screen with his brow furrowed, as though he didn’t understand what the fuss was about. “What? Well, he did. Right out of the damn park. What?”

  My mom sighed, her brows knitted together, face like thunder. “Men,” she muttered under her breath to her new-found BFF.

  Mrs. Watkins smiled politely, but the crinkles at the edges of her eyes betrayed the humor she saw in Grandpa’s behavior.

  Trying to forget her exasperation, Mom got back to business. “Now, Melanie is my youngest daughter. Neither my son nor my eldest daughter”—pointed look in my direction—“have found their special someones yet. I keep telling Maggie here that she’s not getting any younger, but”—meaningful sidelong glance—“you know how well parents are listened to these days.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes. I suppose that comes with life and experience, though. Our son was the same way, you know. Married so young, and his bride even younger, but they waited to add a child into the mix, and you know, I think waiting was the best thing they could have done... even though my grandma clock had been ticking at warp speed all along.” She reached over and patted my mother’s fat wallet. “But you have such lovely granddaughters to be proud of. The others will come along in time, I think,” she said with a kindly side wink in my direction.

  I was especially glad that Marcus had been out for this particular conversation. Nothing like a little baby pressure in the early days of a relationship to scare a guy away forever. Now I was really wishing I had somehow managed to convince him that he didn’t have to accompany me to the hospital. I alone knew the danger. He couldn’t possibly have understood the force of nature that was my loving mother, and I was worried that before the night was over, he would be finding out.

  Oh, I don’t know, Margaret. It’s a good test of a man’s character... best to know these things at the onset.

  And why did everyone, my conscience included, think that I was ready for children right here, right now, anyway? I mean, yes, someday, I would like a family. I was pretty sure about that. I might even want the typical, picket-fence scenario, and although I wasn’t completely sold on the existence of fairy-tale endings, I was definitely willing to consider the possibilities. But I think the thing that scared me the most about the prospect of children of my own was this: Over the years, I had watched my mother put all of us before her in every single aspect of her life. That wasn’t so much the problem—eventually I had decided that was just an inherent part of being a mom. What really worried me was the way her life had eventually stopped being about herself so entirely that there no longer seemed to be a “Patty” at all. I wondered, sometimes, whether she even remembered who she had been before the three of us came along. And now with us out of the house and my father and grandfather not playing nice with her need for absolute dominion, I had a feeling she was looking to us for new and improved ways of filling the gap.

  My mother was still waxing eloquent about how terrible it was that adult children should have so many priorities claiming their attention these days. She didn’t seem to notice that her new friend seemed to be waiting for the right moment to jump in. Sensing an appropriate pause at last, Joyce Watkins leaned in confidentially.

  “You know, I’m as guilty as the next mother, wanting grandchildren, and the sooner the better. The good Lord knows, I pushed and prodded my son and his wife for far too long, to my everlasting shame. I don’t know what I was thinking. Just me being selfish, I guess. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble for them. He’s my only child, you see. Harold and I never were able to have another. Not for lack of trying.” Oy. I for one really didn’t need that visual, but ... “So you see, grandchildren, the more the merrier, the quicker the better, seemed to be the perfect solution. In the end, though, I think the constant nagging did the two of them more harm than good.”r />
  That decided things. Joyce Watkins was my new best friend.

  Mom pulled her chin in and gazed at her over her thin gold frames and bifocals, obviously unconvinced. “Do you?”

  Joyce nodded. “For a while there, I think they might even have been close to separating. Maybe even breaking up entirely. And that right there, that was my wake-up call. I don’t think I ever would have forgiven myself if I had been the cause of that. I really don’t.”

  “What happened?” my mother asked.

  “I don’t know, really. It was touch and go there between them for quite some time. Neither of them confided in me, but a mother can tell these things. Could have cut the tension with an old butter knife. It’s not so hard to read between the lines. There was a shadow that came over their relationship. It hung over them, even over their home. Oh, that probably sounds melodramatic, doesn’t it? Just a silly woman’s musings.”

  “No,” my mother said in a quiet voice. “No, I think I know what you mean.”

  Joyce nodded. “It’s a mother’s curse and blessing, isn’t it, being so close to your child that you can just tell when something is wrong. Something changed between them.” And then she brightened. “But there’s a happy ending. Because, like the flick of a light switch, all of a sudden it was over and done with, everything seemed completely better, and just like that, she was pregnant and they were happy. So happy. And just in time, too. You see, Harold—well, with his heart condition, things are touch and go. One never knows... and I so want him to be around to know his grandchild.”

  By now poor Joyce had tears in her eyes. She dug in her purse, sifting through the contents, but her eyes were overflowing the banks. My mom, efficient as ever, reached with military precision into her purse, located a clean tissue, and pressed it into Joyce’s hand.

  “Oh! Thank you.” She applied the tissue liberally, then blew her nose until it squeaked. “Anyway, as you see. A happy ending. This baby is a godsend, truly.”

  I had heard the deeper meaning in Joyce Watkins’s tale, but I’m not sure my mom had picked up on the messages Joyce was sending out.

  “Ah, yes. All babies are gifts from God.”

  Happily now, the two middle-aged grandmothers—well, a grandmother and a very-shortly-to-be-grandmother-smiled at each other.

  For a few moments we all sat together quietly: Dad reading the paper again after having finished his stir-fry, Mom and Joyce bolstering each other through a moment of shared experience, Grandpa G muttering under his breath about fools and tools as he changed the channel over to the local news. I caught a quick glimpse of an interview with Chief Boggs, who was lamenting the rise in crime and the need for a budget increase, declaring, “What we have here, folks, is an epidemic; some might say, of Biblical proportions,” but then Grandpa clicked on. I went back to what I had been doing: using the façade of a fashion magazine to hide the fact that I was meditating... or trying to. I finally gave up when Marcus and Harold returned with fresh coffee—hot, yes, but fairly disgusting—and sat down with us, passing the time with chitchat.

  Restless, I stood up. Grandpa G had been looking bored to tears and glum now that his favorite team had lost the game after all the excitement. “Grandpa G, how’d you like to go get some air?”

  His watery blue eyes lit up in an instant.

  Marcus stood up as well, quietly stating his intention to accompany me wherever, whenever. That warmed my heart, too.

  “Just be sure to keep him away from the snack machines,” my mother interjected with an imperious wave of her hand.

  Grandpa’s grizzled face fell just a bit. He muttered under his breath as I manually steered his chair toward the door. “Spoilsport.”

  “And for heaven’s sake, don’t let him out of your sight for a minute!” she called after us as the door closed with a solid snick.

  “That woman is going to be the death of me yet,” Grandpa G grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t do this, don’t eat that, don’t breathe, don’t think, don‘t, don’t, don’t.”

  I ruffled his sparse silvery hair. “She loves you and wants you to take care of yourself.”

  He leaned back and arched an eyebrow up at me over his shoulder. “I suppose that’s what you tell yourself every time she gets a little high-handed with you, is it, missy?”

  I laughed. “Well . . . maybe not. But it’s probably true.”

  “Where should we go?” Marcus asked.

  But before we could go anywhere, the doors to one of the labor rooms down the hall opened. Through the doors backed a man suited up in blue-green surgical scrubs, his surgical cap still in place but his face mask pulled down under his chin. He was a nondescript man in every way except for one: the light of deep, utter, profound joy that was etched into the sun-worn lines of his face as he gazed down into the little bundle he held in his big hands. It was that expression that stopped me in my tracks and compelled, no, dared me to look. My heart started to beat faster, and my chest squeezed tight. He scarcely noticed us as we stepped out of the way so that he could reach the family waiting room. He knocked on the window and held up his little bundle, backing up in self-defense as Joyce came hurtling through the door, her face aglow like a candle. Harold followed at a slightly more measured pace.

  “Mom. Dad. I have a son,” the man announced, awe reverberating through his voice. “Can you believe it? This is my son!”

  There is something about a moment of purest joy that commands the attention of those fortunate enough to witness it, even from the sidelines. Neither Marcus nor I nor even Grandpa moved. We all just stood by with silly little grins on our faces, watching the scene unfold.

  “Ohh! Let me have a look at the little bean sprout!” Joyce squealed like a pro. A professional grandmother, that is, with her smile on high beams and her hands making the universal “gimme, gimme” gesture.

  “That was certainly fast,” I heard my mother say as she came to the doorway to see what all the ruckus was about. “Bless her heart.”

  “I’m sure your new grandbaby will be along any second now,” Joyce said reassuringly in between cooing in delight over the tightly wrapped newborn in her arms. “Just look at you, little man, how precious you are. Have you ever seen anything so precious, Harold? Oh, he looks just like you, Junior. Don’t you think, Harold?”

  New Grandpa Harold looked down over her shoulder at the baby. “Naw, he’s got a whole headful of his mother’s dark hair, and he has her dark eyes, too.”

  “Oh, but around the eyes, dear. And the nose. And the little mouth.”

  Clearly she was too enraptured to remember that newborns rarely resembled anything more than each other, with the same button nose, swollen eyes, and rosebud mouth that every other newborn baby sported. Grandmotherly love. It was a wonderful thing. She began pulling the blanket away, exposing tiny, pink flailing arms with the most perfect little fists. Awing again, she took one between her thumb and forefinger. “Would you look at this? Have you ever seen anything more exquisite? Oh! There’s something he did get from his mother,” she said, rolling his armband around. “His blood type. Junior’s is A positive. But that doesn’t matter, does it?” she cooed, tucking arms and fists back inside the warm flannel. “No, that doesn’t matter at all.”

  Somewhat less tolerant of all the baby mush, Grandpa G was starting to get restless, so Marcus and I tiptoed away, closed the door to the waiting room and, smiling, pushed Grandpa toward the bank of elevators.

  “You don’t have to push me around,” Grandpa grumbled. “This is a fully operational hoverchair, you know.”

  “You could just enjoy the attention,” I told him.

  “I’d enjoy it more if it came with one of them there chocolate chip cookies I saw in the machine downstairs when your hunky man here pushed me on past.”

  “They’re not even good chocolate chip cookies.”

  “But they are cookies,” he said with a wink and a cackle.

  “Oh, Grandpa.”

  We v
eered off into the little hallway that led to the main elevators (not the service elevators—I wasn’t going anywhere near those anytime soon), and I reached around Grandpa to push the call button. As I turned back to warn him about the addictive evils of cookies, I was startled to find a face looking out at us through the narrow pane of glass set into the stairwell door behind us. A young man with dark curls that flopped down over his forehead and dark eyes that burned into mine.

  My breath caught and my hand flew to my throat.

  “What’s the matter?” Marcus turned around to see what I was looking at. He saw the man just as he backed away. The man seemed to catch his gaze with a slight nod, and then I saw a flash of movement deeper within the stairwell as he retreated.

  Marcus gasped. Dramatically. His reaction made me clutch at him and press my body up against his side. “Did you see him, too? What? Oh, jeez ...”

  For a moment, I honestly believed his reaction was true... and then he dissolved into laughter, and I thought I was going to have to smack him. “The look on your face!” he gasped, only this time with half-suppressed laughter.

  “Yeah, yeah, very funny,” I sniffed, pouting.

  He grinned. “Sorry. It was just the maintenance guy, Maggie. Probably checking on the elevators, after all the trouble.”

  “Oh, the maintenance guy.” I felt a little silly. “You mean the one who fixed it earlier?”

  “The one and the same.”

  Okay, so I was feeling a lot silly. I couldn’t help being jumpy. It is just something that happens to me whenever I’m startled. Humph.

  “Yeah, yeah, less yakking, more snacking,” Grandpa sassed, switching on the power to his hoverchair and maneuvering into the now-open elevator, leaving me to hurriedly get on myself or risk the doors closing with Marcus and me left out entirely. The door tried to close on Marcus, but he held his hand up and—now, I know I’m an imaginative person, but I know I did not imagine this—well before the rubber bumper got to his hand, it reversed. No, the heavy metal door was repelled back as though by some invisible force, allowing him to walk through unimpeded.