Coming Back to Me

by Caroline Leavitt

  Emma dug into the pocket of her red pants. She put a dollar into Molly’s right hand and curled Molly’s fingers over it, giving them a little pat. “Go,” she said. “My treat. Put it on Saint Ann. She’ll give you an easy labor.”

  Gary had stood on the porch, among the neighbors, watching Molly, magnificently large, trailing into the crowd. Instantly, hands were on her belly. She stumbled back a step.

  Theresa’s front door opened and Carl came out, two children laging behind him, a man Gary had never seen before, all of them carrying boxes. “Here we are! Fireworks!” Carl announced.

  Molly parted through the crowd. “There, now, don’t you feel better?” Emma asked.

  Molly rested her head on Gary’s shoulder. “I’m tired.”

  Carl waited until the parade had passed by and then he crouched and began to pull out the firecrackers, long red sticks that Gary stared at. He knew these kind. He had seen kids shooting them off in the Village, and once in his neighborhood in Chelsea, the explosion so loud, the cops had come to put a stop to it. Fireworks like these were illegal, but you could get them for the asking in Chinatown, you could buy them by the Holland Tunnel, hawked by kids.

  “Carl—” he said, but Carl lighted one and the street boomed with noise. There was a flashing shower of red and green. Blasts of debris flaked onto the sidewalk, smattering like tiny bones. “Jesus,” Gary breathed. Molly came to stand beside him, leaning against him, her hands soothing her belly. “I don’t like this,” she said.

  The man Gary had never seen before, who had Carl’s same crooked nose, his same beefy lower lip, pulled out a handful of firecrackers and handed one to a skinny boy in a plaid jacket. “Thanks, Dad,” the boy said. The man took one step into the street, and there, a foot away from a car, set off a few. “Good one!” he called to Carl.

  Carl bent down to pick up a firecracker. “Are you crazy?” Gary grabbed at Carl’s sleeve, stepping back, away from the roar and color and light. “You can’t set these kinds of fireworks off here. You can’t let a kid shoot them off!”

  The boy, firework fisted in his hand, glared at Gary. Carl jerked his arm free. “Are you going to start with this, too? We’ve been doing this for twenty years. My whole family, my grandkids, come for this. Just who do you think you are?”

  Gary gestured. A little girl in overalls was running into the street, a firecracker in her hand. “There’s little kids here. There’s cars!”

  Molly looked up at the maple tree in front of their house. She touched one of the branches. “You’ll ruin the tree.”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous.” Carl snorted. Another toddler ran out into the street, a firecracker exploding above him. There was a sharp snap and pop and a wild fluttering of red and blue and green flying along the phone lines, raining down on the cars.

  “This is madness!” Gary said. “You’re going to hit someone’s car, someone’s child—these kinds of fireworks are illegal—they’re dangerous—” He looked around. “Aren’t there any police around here?”

  Carl’s face hardened. Emma and Theresa began to look uneasy. Carl started to say something, words hidden in the next booming explosion, when Emma touched Gary’s elbow and pivoted him to Molly, who was suddenly sitting down on the porch, her hands cupped on her belly. Molly looked up at Gary and before she even said one word to him, he knew.

  He didn’t feel scared. Not then.

  He ran for her hospital suitcase, packed with a new nightgown and robe he had bought her as a surprise, with the baby’s first outfit, a green and white polka-dotted onesie with matching hat. She had packed a rubber ball and clean warm socks, and a lollipop, all the things the pregnancy books had suggested. He grabbed a still camera and helped Molly stand. A firecracker exploded over her head, raining rainbow streamers over the trees. Molly craned her neck. “It’ll kill the trees.”

  “Good luck, honey,” Emma cried. Carl moved deeper into the street, farther away from him. The women formed a half circle, waving at Molly, calling things to Gary that he couldn’t hear because the firecrackers kept exploding. Colors crackled and popped around them.

  The car was parked two blocks away, and even from there, he could still hear the bombs. The atmosphere seemed to shudder. He helped Molly in beside him. “How are you doing?” She nodded, her face tense and white. She leaned forward and jammed a fist against her back. “Back labor,” she said.

  The car glided. There was no traffic in the tunnel, the roads were clear, and he made it up to the Upper East Side in less than twenty minutes. “First labor is long,” Karen had told them. “Some of my patients from Connecticut could walk here and be in time.” As soon as he parked, he helped Molly into the hospital, where they got her into a wheelchair and set her up in a labor room, a small pale green room with no window. Molly grimaced. She started to do her Lamaze breathing. “Ha ha, hee hee. Please. I need an epidural.” The nurse laughed and handed her a blue johnny. “Put this on.”

  Molly struggled with the cloth. “The epidural—”

  They settled her up on a high bed with a monitor and a chair for Gary, the door wide open so the nurses could hear her. A tall nurse with a pixie haircut came in, smiling and laughing. “I’m Cat, your labor nurse.” Her voice chirped. Her eyes were green marble. She tapped Molly on the shoulder. “Oh, now, come on and put that sad face away! You’re going to get a baby out of this! I want to see nothing but smiles in this room!”

  “Get her out of here,” Molly whispered to Gary. “Don’t make me have to kill her.”

  Cat hooked Molly up to the monitor. “I’ll be back, sweetie.”

  They watched the contractions on the monitors, jagged mountainous lines. They could hear the other women, in other rooms nearby, moaning and shouting, calling out names. Ralph and Roy and John. “Get away from me! I hate you, Bob!” one woman shrieked. The women screamed for their mothers, for their fathers, for drugs and relief. One woman was screaming out the periodic table, punctuating it with tiny harsh intakes of breaths.

  “I can’t do this!” Molly, panicked, sat up. “I changed my mind.”

  A doctor in green scrubs came in, his hair hidden, his face smattered with acne. He looked fifteen, too young to be a doctor, and Molly shrank from him. She caught Gary’s eye. She shook her head. The doctor smiled, showing braces. “Where’s Karen?” she asked.

  “Let’s get you your epidural,” he said and she suddenly relaxed. She smiled back. “There is a God,” she said.

  He turned her around. “Don’t look.” He wagged a finger at Gary, and Gary looked anyway, at the long skinny needle sliding into his wife’s spine. He winced at the exact moment Molly sighed in relief.

  When she turned around, her face was smooth, her breathing even.

  “I’ll be back to give you boosters. You just holler if you need me.” He winked at Gary.

  Molly slept through most of her labor, lulled by the epidural. When she woke up, resurfacing as if from under deep water, she blinked at him, and then sleepily smiled. “It’s not too bad,” she told him. “It’s not too bad.” And then a contraction would grab at her, and she would bolt upright, straining for him, gripping his hand so hard, she left marks. She gritted her teeth. “I can do this,” she insisted. “I can do this.”

  She had been in labor for three hours when she asked him when he was going to take pictures.

  “Are you sure?” It had seemed like such a good idea documenting the birth, and now he wasn’t so certain. He felt too nervous to focus the lens, his hands were too sweaty, his grip too loose. Molly posed, one hand behind her head. “Shoot.”

  He was giving her the camera, letting her take his picture, when Karen came in. She scooted beside Gary, leaning down. She was in blue scrubs, a shocking pink T-shirt poking up underneath the blue, her dark hair held back with a spangly red barrette. “Cheese,” said Karen.

  Karen turned and examined Molly. “Eight centimeters.” She stood up, shaking her head, and patted Molly’s knee. “Not yet.”


  Karen left the room and the teenaged-looking anesthesiologist entered. “Booster?” he said, and Molly nodded.

  The epidural made her sleep again. Gary, though, didn’t sleep at all. He didn’t know what to do with himself. He found himself talking to Molly, even as she slept. “It’s all right,” he told her. “It’s all right.”

  By three in the morning he began to hate everything in the room. He hated the narrow bed, damp with his wife’s sweat. He hated Cat’s cheeriness, the way she laughed at Molly and teased him. “This is a wonderful time!” she said. He felt like hitting her and seeing how wonderful she thought things were then. He hated the noise of the monitor, the numbers whirring and clicking, and most of all he loathed the clock planted on the wall right where he could see it, marking out the minutes, dragging the hours. Molly’s hair was pasted down her back. Her lips were caked dry but when he asked Cat for some water, she shook her head and cheerfully handed him a cottony swab tipped with lemon.

  Nine hours later, Molly still hadn’t dilated more than eight centimeters, two less than she’d need to push. She was so worn out that when Karen suggested a C-section, Molly nodded. “Let’s do it,” she said. Karen made Gary get into starchy green scrubs, a cap, a mask, a long gown with ties in the back. Molly blinked at him. She half smiled and touched his sleeve. “You look hilarious. I have to get a picture of this.” She made him stand against the wall so she could snap him.

  Cat came in and helped Molly onto a gurney. Gary’s legs suddenly were jelly. His back had no bone. He tried to compose himself, to grip onto his breath so that he might seem calm and strong and so capable Molly didn’t have a thing to worry about. “Coming through,” Cat said, wheeling the gurney out of the room and into the corridor. Gary raced behind. He grabbed blindly for her hand. He held on tight.

  The delivery room was big and bright with light. Four or five people in green surgical scrubs, their faces masked, were already standing around in a kind of lopsided semicircle, casually waiting. Cat slid Molly onto the table. Molly craned her neck and helplessly locked eyes with Gary. He was coiled with nerves, but he rubbed her shoulder, he made himself smile. He looked around for Karen, for a face he recognized and trusted, a voice that might soothe him. “Excuse me.” Cat moved briskly past him and began stretching Molly’s arms out to the sides, strapping them in with leather strips.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Gary looked at Cat in disbelief.

  “Don’t tie my arms!” Molly insisted. She looked alarmed; she tried to rise up and Cat patted her arms.

  “Oh, now. We can’t have you helping out with the operation, can we?” Cat said.

  “Don’t tie my arms—” Molly said again, panicked, and Karen suddenly strode into the room. She patted Gary on the back. She leaned over Molly. “It’s to keep you steadier.” Karen’s voice was calm. “Hold Gary’s hands,” she suggested. Molly’s fingers waggled open. Gary sat beside her, breathing through the starchy cotton of his mask. An IV snaked into Molly’s arm. They set up a tall green curtain, a screen bisecting her. “Stop!” Molly cried.

  Circled around her, the doctors talked about their vacations. “Don’t go to Key West,” Karen said. “The surgeons go there. The gastro people.” They talked about which restaurants made the best steak. They argued the merits of SoHo and Chinatown. “Best Italian food isn’t in Little Italy,” said the anesthesiologist. “Right here. East Eighty-fourth. Paulo’s.” He leaned over Molly. “How’re you doing, kiddo? Need another boost?”

  Molly shook her head. “I don’t feel a thing except scared.” She looked over at Gary. “What’s happening now?”

  A med student, a Chinese girl with a big nose and a wide middle part, stood in the back, peering curiously at Molly. “The incision will be here?” she questioned. “The stitches will be here?” Everything she said was a question. “Good pasta is at Eighty-sixth and Madison?”

  There was a loop of talk and so little of it was about Molly that it began to make Gary nervous. He was about to ask Karen a question, something, anything to get her back on focus when she suddenly snapped upright and the conversations stopped. Everyone seemed to be looking at Karen and waiting. The room seemed to pulse.

  “Here we go,” Karen said. Her voice had changed. It was different, threaded with steel, boned with authority. She even looked different to Gary, like someone he had never seen before, and it made him even more nervous. “Karen?” he asked.

  She nodded at Gary. She snapped her hands into gloves. “I’ll tell you when to look.”

  Molly looked dazed, her skin felt clammy to him when he touched her, holding her hand. In back of the curtain, the doctors worked. He watched their heads, bobbing and dipping. He watched Molly. “Gary—” Karen said, motioning, and then he stood up and looked down over the curtain.

  “What?” Molly said, her voice sliding. “What’s going on now?”

  Molly was opened up, her skin peeled back from her like a strange exotic fruit, and when he looked down, for just a second, he could see the baby curled inside of her, knees tucked up, head bent, skin a flush of pink. Astounded, he stepped back. He stumbled. He caught at his breath.

  “Gary?” Molly said. “What’s going on? Gary?”

  “Back you go.” Karen nodded at him and he stepped back, astonished, and immediately, despite himself, he started to weep. He swiped at his eyes with his free hand, and he held Molly tighter.

  “Gary.” Molly tried to hoist herself up. “What’s wrong?” She was struggling to sit up, to move, her face was tight with alarm and he kept crying. “Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong!” she cried. “What is it? What’s wrong with the baby?” Her arms wrestled against the ties.

  “Nothing’s wrong. Look and see.” Karen held up the baby. His eyes were wide open. He was covered in vernix and blood. He was like moonlight. Molly, stunned, stopped moving. Gary gripped her hand.

  “Baby boy, coming through,” said Karen, and lifted him back over to the table, for swabs and tests and cleaning. The Chinese medical student hovered by the table. Then Karen came back to Molly. “Just some finishing up to do, and then we’re done.”

  “Here?” said the Chinese student and Gary bent and kissed Molly, here and here and here, and she sighed and shut her eyes.

  “He’s brilliant, score nine on the Apgar,” Karen said. “Ten’s only for other doctors. Professional courtesy.” Someone unstrapped Molly’s arms. She flexed her fingers. The baby was lowered into her arms.

  “She’s wrong,” Molly said to Otis. “You’re ten. You’re perfect.”

  Gary had wanted to sleep in the empty bed beside Molly, but the hospital wouldn’t let him. “That bed has somebody else’s name on it,” Karen ordered, placing a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Kiss your wife and let her be for a while. She did hard work.” Karen paused. “So did Otis. And so did you.”

  Gary was so exhausted, he listed on his feet. He felt unmoored and exhilarated, as if every cell in his body were somehow prickling. I’m a father, he kept repeating. A father. We’re a family. He laughed out loud.

  Gary bent and kissed Molly very gently on her cheek. She smelled faintly of sweat. “I’ll see you both soon.”

  As soon as he got home, he couldn’t sleep. The neighborhood was dark. The front of the house was littered with debris from the fireworks. Threads, paper parachutes. The tree in front, the one Molly had worried over, had two broken branches. Nobody had bothered to clean anything, but he didn’t feel angry. He felt like ringing doorbells, waking up Emma and Bill and even Carl, who had asked him who he thought he was, making them all come over and celebrate with him. He didn’t care what time of night it was. I have a son. he thought, amazed. I have Otis.

  The house was clean. Everything was ready. It was the first time since he had married Molly that they had spent a night apart and already he missed her. He went into Otis’s room and sat in the wood rocker he had bought.

  He got up and went into the living room. With a section, Molly and the baby wouldn�
��t be home for another three days, but he couldn’t wait. He felt like a little kid, jumpy with excitement. He wanted everyone to know. He went to the kitchen cabinet and found the blue balloons he had bought the day he found out their baby was a boy. He was going to string them on the front railing, the only decorations he’d ever put on the house. He sat in the middle of his living room and blew them up, gulping, blowing long deep puffs. Two balloons down and he still wasn’t out of breath, he wasn’t in as bad shape as he sometimes thought. Maybe he and Molly could have a little party, too, invite friends, some neighbors, celebrate their son. Son, he thought, and reached for another balloon.

  He thought about all the things they might do. He had a little vacation time left, they had money saved, enough for two months. He was going to stay at home with Molly so both of them could do nothing but be full-time parents. The first time he had mentioned that to Bill, Bill had looked at him as if he had suddenly started speaking Swahili. “Molly wants you to do that?” Bill said, perplexed. “Your boss okays that sort of thing?”

  He’d read all the books along with Molly. He’d talked to Otis through Molly’s belly when he was little more than a pinpoint. He’d sung to him. Ada at work had warned him how exhausting a newborn could be. She told him horror stories about her sister’s kid, how the lack of sleep and endless neediness of a newborn had made her sister feel cannibalized. A newborn had no personality, Ada insisted. They didn’t even smile until they were six weeks old. “My sister asked the doctor if he’d take the baby back,” Ada said, “and she wasn’t kidding.” Ada had petted him on the shoulder. “Maybe your kid will be different. And if not, I guess we’ll see you back at work sooner than you think.”

  He had no intention of going back to work earlier than he had planned. He had never thought of Otis as a blob, even when he was no more than a blue line on Molly’s pregnancy test. He couldn’t wait to be sleepless and bleary-eyed, to be facing a mountain of diapers and laundry breeding in the corners of the rooms because neither he nor Molly could get around to it. He couldn’t wait to sing to his son, to lie on the bed with Molly and the baby and feel like a family.