Loving Chloe

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  It sounded so cheap to say boyfriend. Kit was right: She should have married him.

  “You might as well bring me the baby. I’m not going to believe she’s all right until I see her for myself.”

  “Chloe, I counted all her fingers and toes myself. Same as you did when she was born. You’ve been through major surgery. The anesthetic confuses some people. You just don’t remember.”

  Chloe’s cheeks burned. She’d been a mother less than twenty-four hours and already failed. Raising her chin, she said, “There a telephone around here so I can get some answers?”

  “Here, on your bedside table. You need a phone book?”

  “I live there,” Chloe said. “I think I remember the number.”

  Dr. Carrywater pressed the call button and spoke into the wall speaker, ordering Chloe’s breakfast. “I’ll stop by this afternoon. We’ll talk more then.”

  Chloe couldn’t look at her. She nodded, concentrating on dialing their number, but the hospital operator came on the line and began explaining how long-distance calls needed to be billed to a personal phone card, and suddenly the whole effort seemed more complicated than it was worth pursuing. She hung up. Screw it. Hank would show up soon. This was his baby too. A girl, like he wanted. A daughter. Unless the baby was not okay, and her secret horseback rides on the mare were responsible, in which case she’d be lucky ever to see him again.

  A nurse set down a breakfast tray, uncovered a bowl of whitish, lumpy gruel, and handed over a spoon. “Enjoy.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” When she left, Chloe squeezed the tears crowding her eyes back into the ducts. She hungrily spooned warm cereal into her mouth and then immediately looked for somewhere to spit it out. Syrup, brown sugar, even raisins would have helped. She set the spoon down on the tray and tentatively explored the bandage spanning her abdomen. Things down there were beginning to ache with purpose, building up speed. No uterus. That meant all her cards lay flat on the table. This baby girl was a one-shot deal.

  She pressed her call button, and a voice issued forth from the wall speaker. “Yes, Mrs. Morgan?”

  She didn’t bother to correct her. “Can I change my mind about the pain shot?”

  The nurse returned swiftly, her shoes moving noiselessly across the hospital tiles. It hurt so badly now that Chloe couldn’t help softly whimpering. The bed tray cranked over her abdomen prevented her from finding a comfortable position. The sheet against her body seemed to be the weight of ten wool blankets.

  “This will help you rest. When you wake up, call for Yvonne. One way or another, I’ll get you down to NICU.”

  “NICU?”

  “Neonatal Intensive Care. Try not to worry. All the preemies go in there. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything bad.”

  That seemed fair, inevitable, but not convincing in the least. “I’ll try to believe that.”

  “Good, because it’s true.” The nurse injected a full syringe into the clear IV tubing, and as Chloe watched it empty, her limbs began to fill with the cottony thickness of sedative. I must be pretty bad off, she guessed, them pumping me full of dope every time I open my eyes. Well, here I go. The toy horse reappeared in her small hand under the kitchen table. El no tiene madre? Que verguenza! someone was saying. And then, Here is your locker. You can put your things here. A Breyer Little Bits chestnut gelding, four white socks and a blaze the color of the moon. She’d mended its leg with a Band-Aid. It had fit just so into the palm of her hand, tucked safely under her pillow when she slept. She’d been afraid to name it because once named things became so precious it was agony to lose them. They had loads of boys’ names picked out for this baby, from Kit’s teen heartthrob Hollywood list to Chloe’s personal favorite, Chase, but not one single girl’s name except Annie, after Hank’s sister. Seemed like bad luck to name a premature baby after one who’d died. Where had the toy horse ended up? Did they send it along with her to the children’s home, or had it gotten lost in that gouge in the flooring with her secret stash of coins? Chloe trailed her fingers over her belly and fingered the thick wad of bandages. Pain was a touchstone, a place to come back to. Sleep laid its hand over her face, blocking out her worries. She stood alone in the yellow kitchen again, calling out for someone, anyone. The toy horse melted into her hand like dark pigment.

  Late-afternoon sun shone through the bank of hospital windows. The ringing of nearby telephones, the soapy-clean smell of showers and hard-edged laughter finally woke her. Still giddy from the pain shots, she smiled, hearing what sounded like an echo of Kit’s giggling. Kit found humor in every corner of the universe. Across the room a teenage girl was swigging from a two-liter bottle of Dr Pepper and talking on the hospital phone.

  “I’m naming him Montana Estes Park San Francisco Peaks Watson,” she announced. “Who says a baby can’t have all the names of my favorite places?” Then she lit a cigarette. “I’ll call him Monty, Mother. It is so a perfectly normal name.” She hung up the phone, said, “Bitch,” took a few quick puffs on her cigarette and stubbed it out in her WAY TO GO, RHONDA! floral arrangement. “Freakin’ hospital rules,” she said, when Chloe raised up on her elbow to investigate. “Don’t give me any crap, okay? I put it out.”

  The room had four beds, and each was filled. Yellow gingham curtains were pulled around the other two. Smart roommates, Chloe decided, sleeping it off, and wondered whether she could possibly find the strength to pull her own drape. She lay back pondering the problem until the nurse who’d promised her a visit to the baby came into the room pushing an empty wheelchair. She stopped, sniffed the air and shook her finger at Rhonda. “Girl, I swear I catch you puffing one more time, I’ll…”

  Rhonda, on the phone again, held her palm over the receiver. “You’ll what? Kick my poor, defenseless premature baby and me out in the snow? Go empty a bedpan.”

  “Premature, my foot. That baby’s tiny because she smoked two packs a day all nine months she was carrying him,” the nurse muttered under her breath as she locked the wheelchair next to Chloe’s bed. “Come on, let’s get you in the limo and go see your daughter.” Arm at her elbow, she helped Chloe battle the dizziness of standing up for the first time, and hooked her IV bottle to her chair.

  “Why can’t I walk?”

  “Like to see you try,” the nurse answered. “You forget you just had a hysterectomy?”

  “No. But I’ve been wondering who said they could do that.”

  “It’s in your chart that your doctor stopped by and talked to you about this.”

  “Yeah, I heard the story. What I don’t know is why they had to take it out.”

  “To save your life, I imagine.” The nurse patted her shoulder and handed her a folded slip of paper. “Your boyfriend left this about a half hour ago. You were sleeping so hard he didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Wish he had.”

  “Bad dreams, honey?”

  “The worst.” Chloe unfolded the pink While You Were Out. It was indeed Hank’s handwriting, artistic and even, not one word misspelled.

  Thank you from the bottom of my heart. She is as beautiful as her mother. Rest, and heal quickly. I’ll see you tonight. In the meantime, think of names and remember how much I love you, which is infinite.

  Hank

  Chloe folded the note between her fingers and scrubbed the tears dripping down her cheeks. “Damn, I don’t know what’s gotten into me,” she said, sobs beginning to break forth, crying like she hadn’t done for anyone since her old horse, Absalom, had to be put to sleep.

  The nurse handed her a tissue. “Baby blues,” she said. “They’re inescapable. Soon as your estrogen kicks in, they’ll go away. I’ve seen it a thousand times. You cry so hard you think you’re empty. Then they put that little baby in your arms, and love floods the empty places, and you’re never alone again.”

  Maybe we should name her Kit, Chloe thought, wiping her cheeks, trying to quell the tears, flowing mindlessly now, in perpetual motion, like the Pacific Ocean back home in Californ
ia. A baby could do worse than be called after a red-headed ball of teenage flame.

  NICU had only two occupants on December 22, Rhonda’s multi-monikered, smoke-stunted son and the tiny black-haired girl whose ID bracelet read “Girl Morgan.” The nurse helped Chloe slide her arms inside a paper gown and put on a surgical mask. She supervised Chloe’s hand washing at the sink, then she wheeled mother over to meet daughter, opened the isolette, and placed Chloe’s hand under the tiny capped skull of her baby. Together they lifted her out of the blankets, and for the first time Chloe held what had all those months been growing inside. She looked down into her daughter’s face and saw a miniature mouth curl up in one corner the same way Hank’s did when he was sleeping. She marveled at the black hair—where had that come from? Whatever of herself had she given to this baby? But there was something besides bone and muscle. The baby yawned. She looked fragile but bullheaded, possessed of a tough, survivor’s spirit—that was Chloe’s contribution to this baby.

  “No one told me it would feel like this. No one said.”

  The nurse tucked the hair falling into Chloe’s face behind her ear. “How’s that, honey?”

  Chloe rubbed her thumb across the unbelievably soft skin, the fingers with nails so infinitesimal they might be flecks of mica in the side of a rocky canyon. “That you automatically love them. That it peels your soul raw to look at her.”

  The nurse smiled. “I’ve heard that happens.”

  “I mean, the whole time I was pregnant I had these feelings that maybe I wasn’t fit to be a mother, like maybe the best thing I could do was give her away to somebody who could do a better job.”

  “And now?”

  “How could I take my next breath without her?”

  “Nature’s plan exactly,” the nurse said, and sat down and began reading a People magazine.

  While the nurse scanned the latest dirt on the Hollywood stars, Chloe held onto her own cosmic chunk of creation. Her infant daughter made puppy noises in her slumber. Her limbs were no bigger around than a doll’s. She watched the rise and fall of the baby’s chest, her not-quite-finished body performing all the magic people took for granted every time they lit a cigarette or yelled, “Fuck you!” just for the hell of using bad words. How could she have thought riding a horse was worth jeopardizing this? She could hardly imagine riding a horse again. She would be far too busy holding this nameless girl tightly, keeping her safe from harm.

  She remembered how Fats Valentine used to sing sometimes, like when they were spending the night in an unfamiliar barn, preparing to show horses the following day. Fats had a Burl Ives kind of voice. He made goofy old songs, that nobody but him knew the words to, mean something special. He recited old cowboy poetry, like Curley Fletcher’s “The Strawberry Roan,” a sixteen-stanza saga recited in such exacting rhythms it might as well have been set to music. “King of the Road,” “Dang Me,” “An Itty-Bitty Tear Let Me Down.” She wished Fats were here right now. He’d know what to sing to the baby. All she could think of was the Mexican folk songs Francisco used to whistle while he mucked stalls at her old California stables. Could you whistle to a baby? Tentatively, she bent her head to press her mask-covered mouth to the baby’s forehead.

  “A la rro, rro, niña, a la rro, rro, rro. Duermase mi niña, duermase me ya,” she half-whispered, half-sang. She seemed to have known that old Spanish lullaby forever. When a horse looked to be considering colicking, or one was coming out of a bad time, and it became her job to walk him through the night and keep him among the living, these same words were the ones she always sang. “Señora Santa Ana por que llora la niña? Por una mansana que se le perdido….”

  “That’s pretty,” the nurse commented. “Isn’t that off the new Linda Ronstadt CD?”

  11

  Over his bouquet of yellow roses, Hank smiled broadly, as he always did when he was worried sick. Chloe had to bless the man’s heart for trying; counting the bunch Francisco had brought her sixteen years ago for high school graduation, this was the second time in her life any man had brought her flowers. The florist had tucked baby’s breath into the arrangement. It was amazing they got anything to bloom in December.

  Kit Wedler was with him. Chloe tried to sit up, but the effort hurt so damn much she gave up, rested against her pillows, and waited for them to come to her. Kit was still on her diet. The carrot-haired teenager was decked out in a hot-pink parka that looked like it had just had the price tags ripped off it. She toted a small pink teddy bear and a large McDonald’s bag.

  “Can you believe it?” she squealed. “My dad acting cool for the first time in his life? Changed my plane ticket the minute Hank called and didn’t even go ballistic over paying the extra fare. Thanks to Lita the terminally optimistic, Rich Wedler is born again. Chloe, she buys him tiger-striped bikini underwear, and he even wears them! God, Chloe, hate to say it, but you look thrashed. So where’s the baby? I can’t wait to hold her. Here you were all certain it was a boy. What are you going to name her? Promise me you won’t give her a stupid Christmas name, like Angel or Winter, or something New Agey like calling her after a kind of crystal. Promise. She’ll hate you for it, I swear.”

  Kit rattled on. Chloe met Hank’s eyes with her own and pressed her lips together tightly, forcing a smile. He set the roses down on her bedside table next to the telephone and bent close to give her a kiss. His carefulness she could understand. Hank’d had practice at being careful, dealing with his mother’s illness. She wasn’t the only one hospitals spooked.

  “It’s so great to see you.” Chloe let Kit fold her into a hug. “Listen, I can’t wait a minute longer for you to meet her,” she said. “Go down the hallway and turn right. She’s in the nursery at the very end. They won’t let you go in, but you can look through the glass. You can’t miss her. There’s only one other kid, this poor little boy saddled with so many names they had to use two cards to get them all on there.”

  Kit twirled the teddy bear around by one of his stubby arms. “You know, it’s not like I’m dense. Way duh, leave the new parents alone.” She sighed and set down the bag of hamburgers. “But no one eats these until I come back, okay? All they served on the plane ride was rat bait.”

  “Rat bait?” Hank echoed.

  “Those stale old oatmeal airline cookies. It’s what you get when you fly budget.” She took off her jacket, draped it over a chair and marched out the door. Then they were alone.

  Hank sat down on the bed and Chloe felt the staples in her belly pull. “I’ve never had anybody bring me roses.”

  “I wanted to say thank you.”

  “Okay. I guess you’re welcome.” She knew he meant for going through with the pregnancy. For eating a few green things when he’d badgered her to. For not riding the mare any more than she had.

  He shook his head as if to clear it. “What an ordeal. If things ever settle down, I’ll bet I could sleep for a week. Did this really happen only twenty-four hours ago?”

  “They let me hold her this afternoon, Hank. Not interested in my groceries, but to have her in my arms was really something.”

  “Still, it’s good that you tried.”

  She gave his arm a small pinch. “You think I wasn’t planning on feeding her? Jesus. Why don’t you get over here in bed next to me and hug me like you mean it?”

  “Chloe, there are other people here. You just had surgery—”

  She kept her face calm and passive. “I know all about it. I’ll feel guilty until I cash in my chips for riding that mare.”

  “Dr. Carrywater said it might not have been the horse, Chloe. The placenta tearing away from the uterus like that and you bleeding. They had to remove your womb, or you could have died. You’re lucky you didn’t.”

  “So I heard.”

  “It happens to some women.”

  To some women. But it wasn’t a thing that happened to responsible women who put the baby first. The price she’d paid was permanent. She turned her head to glance over at the roses, the forced
, lemon-colored, perfectly shaped but unscented blossoms more like an idea of roses than the real thing. “Now there won’t be any more babies. I know you, Hank Oliver. You’d have a houseful.”

  He blew out a breath. “So maybe that’s a good enough reason to keep teaching elementary school.”

  “Or maybe someday you’ll meet some other woman, one who’s got all her equipment. Smarter, too.”

  All at once the weariness in his face seemed to catch up with his words. He was quiet for several long moments. “When will you give that old song and dance a rest? We have the most beautiful daughter in the world. Let’s just count our blessings. And settle on a name while we’re at it. Every time I walk past the nurse at the desk, she waves papers in my face.”

  Across the ward the other mothers were visiting with their husbands. Siblings were discovering how to get acquainted with the newest member of the family. Rhonda had finished her jug of Dr Pepper and was well into a plastic drum of red licorice twists as she penned out baby announcements. She was on the phone, too, but as far as Chloe could tell, she hadn’t had a visitor or an incoming call. “Maybe her middle name could be Silverado Canyon,” she said, laughing as much as her torn-up belly would allow.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing. A joke,” she said. “Did you call your parents?”

  “First thing this morning.”

  “Is all forgiven, or have I given birth to the devil’s spawn?”

  “I said, ‘Good morning, Grandmother,’ and Iris started to cry. That was about as far as we got. Then my father took the phone and suggested it would be a good idea for me to come for a visit now instead of after Christmas. Apparently my mother’s not doing as well as I thought.”

  Chloe felt guilt rise up to choke her. All those letters of Iris’s she’d pried open—her narrow heart would land her in hell. “He’s right, Hank. You’d better go.”

  “In awhile. After everything here settles down.”