The Ordinary Life of Emily P. Bates

by Anna Cackler

  “You were asleep when me and Dad were talking about that!”

  “No, I was just pretending,” he said “Nobody bothers you when you’re sleeping, but that’s not the point.” He paused and leaned forward. “Tell me something else, why did you practically kill yourself with work over Christmas?”

  “Because nobody else seemed to want to help out around the house!”

  “Not even Mom does as much as you took on while she was sick. She never bothered to do the dishes every night, or to keep the laundry done, or the floors cleaned. You were practically a maid for a whole month, and for what? So that you could be the brave one? The helpful one?” He settled back into his chair. “Better yet, you were just being superior. A saint. But you’re not perfect, are you? So you can stop lecturing me.”

  I was speechless. Aaron rarely put so many sentences together at the same time, which only made his words hit a little harder. And the trouble was, I believed him. I had been lecturing him, and it wasn’t just because I was stressed.

  “Are you okay?” Finn asked me after a few moments of tense silence.

  “I need some water.” I got up. He let my hand go without complaint this time.

  Nobody followed me. I didn’t want them to. Right now all I wanted was to sink into the floor and disappear. Jeez, I really was terrible, and Aaron was exactly right. I did think I was superior, and I really didn’t have much room to lecture him about anything.

  I stalked over to the water fountain and took a drink, but only because that’s what I said I was leaving to do. After a couple of unnecessary sips, I straightened up again. Now what? Where else could I go except back to the waiting room? Aaron would be over his little outburst by now. He just didn’t care enough about anything at all to bother holding a grudge. Finn would be concerned; he would ask me about all of this later when we were alone. Shannon wouldn’t ask me anything at all, but she would give me lots of knowing stares every time I did or said anything superior at all for the next few weeks. She would be over-analyzing my behavior, just waiting for me to be holier-than-thou so that she could have an excuse to butt in. That would be more irritating than anything at else.

  After taking a few deep breaths to steady myself, I marched purposefully back into the room. Aaron, as I had predicted, didn’t even look up from his magazine when I entered. Shannon did, though, and so did Finn. He had pulled out a worn copy of the collected works of William Shakespeare.

  “Which play are you reading?” I asked calmly in an attempt to change the subject.

  “Taming of the Shrew,” he said without looking up.

  Of course. What else would he be reading just then?

  I rolled my eyes and plopped back down in the chair next to him. This time, though, I crossed my arms across my chest so that he couldn’t take my hand. To my intense annoyance, he found an easy loophole and rested his arm around my shoulders instead.

  Now, don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be close to Finn. It was that I was mad and didn’t want to be close to anybody. Finn just saw through that, though, and realized that I was being stupid so he put his arm around me anyway. This, of course, only served to make me even madder.

  But now was not the time to be mad. Now was the time to be calm and worry about my mom and my little sister. Shannon was watching me out of the corner of her eye, though she was trying to be subtle about it. “I’m fine,” I told her a little too forcefully.

  “You’re not fine. Don’t lie,” Aaron said without looking away from his magazine.

  “Fine! I’m sorry I’m so morally superior, Aaron. Are you happy? Can we move past this, please?”

  “You’re the one who’s not moving past this,” he said.

  “Ahh!”

  “Fine, Emily! I accept your apology. Now can you move past this?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” he muttered, though I suspected he was thanking some unidentified higher power instead of me.

  We sat in relative silence after that. Finn was absorbed in his play and Aaron in his magazine. Shannon started picking at her nails again to entertain herself, leaving me alone to stare at the clock and fidget. After a while Finn removed his arm from my shoulders. I missed the weight of it there now that I’d calmed down, but I didn’t say anything. Instead I just curled up in my chair and rested my head on his shoulder. I tried to read along with him for a few minutes, but I’d never been able to read Shakespeare easily. I gave up after a while, and just stared at the clock again.

  It was almost two hours later before Dad burst into the waiting room. He was still wearing his blue paper gown and his face mask was dangling from his right hand. We all jumped to our feet.

  His face was excited. Not sad, not relieved, but excited. I felt my hopes float to the ceiling.

  “What? What, what?” I sputtered. Aaron said nothing. His face was hard as stone.

  “Mom’s fine!” he announced. “Mom’s fine. Baby’s fine. It’s all fine!”

  “Oh!” I cried, jumping into my Dad’s arms. He picked me up easily and twirled me around in a circle. Aaron came over to us and Dad scooped him up as well. The weight that had taken up residence in my gut for the past six months suddenly disappeared. It almost felt like it had never been there at all.

  “Boy or girl?” Shannon asked animatedly.

  “A little girl. Lily Marie Bates,” Dad said.

  Aaron’s face resumed its normal apathy and he shrugged. “Well, you win some, you lose some.”

  Dad rolled his eyes and shoved him playfully. “You will be just as nice to your little sister as you would have been to a brother, all right?” I grinned.

  “Whatever,” Aaron cried defensively. “I never said I was going to be mean. I’m not mean, am I Em?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Wait, Dad. How can the baby be fine? She’s three months premature.”

  “Well, fine as fine can be. She’s in the NICU, of course, but the prognosis is good. She’ll be here for several weeks, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, but we were expecting that,” I said. “And Mom? How long is she staying?”

  “Two days if everything stays normal. Preeclampsia can stick with her for a while, so we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “But she’s okay now? No real problems?”

  “No real problems. Honestly, Emily, we told you she’d be all right!”

  I nodded ruefully. “I know, I know.” Shannon stepped up and put her arm around my waist. I returned her happy smile. “I know,” I repeated.

  “Of course you know,” she grinned.

  “Can we see her yet?” Aaron asked.

  “Yeah. She’ll be kind of loopy, though, I have to warn you.”

  “I’ll take loopy,” I said hastily. I felt like I was breathing normally for the first time in two months. “I’ll take loopy any day.”

  Dad grinned and pulled me into another bear hug. He kissed the top of my head. “Let’s go, shall we? We’ll stop by the nursery on our way.”

  Lilly was so little. Too little to be allowed. She looked like a porcelain doll that had been magically turned to life. Her skin was fair, like the rest of us, and her head was covered in thick, black hair. I frowned. Maybe I was destined to be the plain one in the family. Even Aaron was good looking according to most of the girls in my grade. Dad was a big man, but what he lacked in looks he made up for in charm.

  And now here was my little sister, already destined to be a knockout. Lilly was just a miniature version of Mom with Dad’s long legs. She kicked and flailed in the air, trying to cry around the tube in her throat. She was encased in a clear plastic box. We weren’t allowed in, but we all watched her furious punching of the air for several minutes through the window in the hallway.

  “She’s so cute!” Shannon squealed softly. “She’s so little!”

  “Three pounds on the nose,” Dad murmured. His eyes were trained on his fragile little daughter. “That’s a little big for her age, but your mom a
nd I are starting to think she was conceived before the doctors say she was.”

  “So her chances are better?” I asked hopefully. I couldn’t take my eyes away from her either.

  “Much better if we’re right. But there’s no real way to tell now.”

  Finn was standing next to me and I felt his fingers slip into mine again. “Congratulations,” he said whispered in my ear.

  “Thanks.”

  Twenty-two

  Lily did better than anyone thought she could have. It was just three weeks before her doctors decided she was healthy enough to survive on her own. Mom was ecstatic. She had rebounded from her own poor health almost immediately after her painkillers wore off after the surgery, and she was itching to have her whole family home at last.

  I had to say I was glad, too. Mom and Dad were spending all of their extra time at the hospital. Because neither of them exactly had nine-to-five jobs, that was almost all day long. I always hated being alone in my house, so of course I practically lived at the O’Malley’s for the full three weeks. Mom hadn’t been too happy about that after we told her about me and Finn, but I wore her down. In the end she allowed me to stay there as long as I wanted while she and Dad were at the hospital, so long as I went home to go to sleep and so long as Mr. O’Malley didn’t get tired of me.

  I agreed without complaint. Mr. O’Malley loved me. So did the rest of his family, for that matter. They weren’t going to kick me out any time soon.

  The night before Lily was scheduled to come home, I coaxed Oscar into life and went over to the library to see Finn. Shannon was spending the day with Tom, who had given her, in her own words, the best first date of her life three weeks previously. Who’d have thought that someone so shy could dazzle one of the most beautiful girls in our school so thoroughly? And not only that, but he was keeping it up with apparent ease. It was nice, actually, to see Shannon be herself with Tom and be happy at the same time. That was quite an accomplishment for her.

  It was still freezing outside, though it was the middle of February now, so it was with reluctance that I stepped out into the chilly blast of wind. I dashed breathlessly across the sidewalk and into the Cornell Library.

  “Hello,” Finn said when he saw me. I hadn’t called before coming, but he still wasn’t surprised. “How’s the family?”

  I grinned at him and stepped inside. “The family is the same as always, just a little more hectic now. Mom and Dad are spending way too much time at the hospital. I don’t know how we’ll survive.”

  “You worry too much. You’re going to give yourself an aneurism.”

  “Jerk.” I attempted to punch him in the arm, but he was too quick for me. He snatched my fist right out of the air and held it firmly in his vice-like grip. He grinned at me as he pulled me around the counter so that he could draw me into a quick kiss.

  “Who’s the jerk now? Hitting your boyfriend like that. Tsk, tsk.” He continued to hold me close as shook his head.

  “You shouldn’t be mean to me,” I turned up my nose.

  “The truth hurts,” he said with a shrug and finally let me go. “By the way, I never got the chance to apologize for not looking at Oscar before he quit on you.”

  I laughed. “That’s right, you didn’t. You said you were going to fix my car ages ago.”

  “I did. But I did have a good reason, though.”

  “Really? It had better be a very good reason.” I pulled myself up into his desk chair and waited expectantly.

  “Margo didn’t want me to.”

  “What?” I certainly hadn’t been expecting that.

  “Margo didn’t want me to spend any more time with you than I had to, so she monopolized my time as much as she could. That is, by the way, the real reason we split up. As it turns out you only had an indirect effect on the whole situation.”

  My mouth gaped. “You split up with Margo because she was smothering you?” I gasped.

  He nodded. “And she smothered me because she was afraid of losing me to you.” He looked up at me from his seat on the old straight back chair near the wall. It creaked under his weight.

  “I had no idea! She always seemed so mousy.”

  “She is mousy,” Finn agreed. He pulled my chair so that it rolled close enough for him to take my left hand. He started drawing on the inside of my wrist with a green marker. “But she is also insanely jealous.”

  “I don’t think I like Margo anymore.” I watched the progress of his doodle with a frown. It was another apple, like the one he’d drawn on my cast a few months ago.

  He smiled at my jealous tone. “Did you ever?”

  “Not really, I guess, but I didn’t know why at the time.”

  “At least you know now.”

  “Either way I wish you had never gotten involved with her in the first place, even though it was partly my fault.”

  “It was nobody’s fault.” He looked up, his expression as intense as ever. It took my breath away. “Just so you know, I never felt about her what I feel about you. Not once. Not even close. She and I had fun together, nothing more.”

  “You better not have, or else I’d really have cause to hate her.”

  He smiled. “Something else that might interest you, since we’re on the subject, is that I was all for confiding in you about the whole mess. Margo was the one who convinced me to keep quiet.” He glanced up at me, his expression unreadable.

  I returned his gaze, confused. “Why would she do that?”

  “Because, like I said, her behavior stemmed directly from her jealousy about you, and she didn’t want me to get hurt when you didn’t return my feelings.” He looked up, the apple on my wrist now complete. “I went along with it, though, for a different reason. For the reason I gave you before.”

  “Because you didn’t want to freak me out so soon after the whole Ethan thing.”

  He winced when I said his name. “Yeah.”

  I took his face between my hands and kissed him softly. I smiled a little afterwards, self conscious. It was still so strange to kiss him, but I couldn’t help myself when he was so close. “Why didn’t you tell me all of this before?” I asked.

  He shrugged and kissed me again. His kisses were far more casual than mine. I’d have to work on that. “It didn’t come up.”

  I slapped his cheek playfully and laughed. “As if you couldn’t have brought it up.”

  He chuckled as he enveloped me in his arms and I immediately forgot what it was that we had been talking about. What could be more important that his embrace in this moment? He laid his head against my heart and sighed. “How did I manage before you?” he asked after a few quiet moments.

  “Dumb luck and a good book to pass the time,” I said with a smile.

  He laughed into my hair and sat back. “That must have been it.”

  They brought Lily home on a Monday afternoon, just after school let out. Aaron came home from work early that day so that we could both be there when she got home. I sat in front of the TV, flipping aimlessly through the channels while we waited for Dad’s car to appear in the driveway. Finally, around four o’clock, I heard the familiar chugging sound of Dad’s blue sedan.

  “They’re here!” I called up to Aaron as I flipped off the TV. An answering thud echoed down the stairs and I glared up at the ceiling in curiosity. “What are you doing?” I called.

  “I fell. Shut up!” he yelled back. I could hear his footsteps on the stairs now, and when he appeared he was rubbing the back of his head with an irritated expression.

  “How’d you fall on your head?”

  “You ask too many questions,” he told me, heading toward the front door as it opened from the outside.

  “We’re home!” Mom called happily. She was carrying the sleeping Lilly in the car seat while Dad hauled in all the various baby items from the car. Gifts, flowers, diapers, formula. He could barely see over the huge pile.

  “Let me help,” I told him, taking various boxes and bags out of his arms.

>   “Thanks, Pru,” he said appreciatively.

  I glared at him for half a second before dumping the items back in his arms. He caught them, but only just barely. “Don’t call me that!” I said.

  “Come on! It was just a slip!” he begged.

  I knew it wasn’t an accident. He just liked to pick at me.

  “Shh,” Mom hissed at us. “Don’t wake her up. She fell asleep in the car on the way over here.”

  “That’s all she does, dear,” Dad told her as he settled the last of his packages onto the kitchen table. “She just sleeps and poops, then she cries until she sleeps again.”

  “Lord help us,” Aaron groaned. “I only just got over the trauma of having to deal with Prudence here when she was a baby!”

  “Don’t call me that!” I howled, punching him in the arm. “And that was what, fifteen years ago?”

  “So?”

  “You were only a year older than me, stupid!”

  “Dad, Prudence called me stupid!” Aaron complained indifferently.

  “Dad!”

  A furious wail suddenly filled the room and Mom scowled. “I told you guys not to wake her up!” she hissed. She carefully removed Lily from the car seat and began rocking her. Lily screamed and flailed, her eyes squeezed shut and streaming.

  “Way to go, Prudence!” Aaron taunted in a hushed voice.

  “Dad!”

  But Dad just rolled his eyes and turned away as if to leave. “And so it begins,” he muttered. He turned back to Mom with a grin. “How did we ever think this would work out all right?”

  “Because I’m here to force it to be all right,” Mom said. “The same way I forced the first two to be all right. Don’t doubt me.”

  He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Never!” He stepped over and kissed her over the head of his screaming daughter. “I could never doubt you.”

  I rolled my eyes and started picking through the packages on the table. Aaron settled down into one of the dining chairs, grinning wickedly at me as if he were plotting his next move. Dad was right, this was the beginning of a whole new life for us, and it had gotten off to a characteristic start. It started with a stupid fight, and ended with someone screaming. I couldn’t help but laugh as I watched Mom and Dad trying in vain to get Lily to calm down. Maybe she was more like me than I had thought.