Merry Christmas, Babies

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Fork suspended over his loaded baked potato, Joe said, “Kate? You’ve got to be kidding! She’s always been the most cheerful one of us.”

  “She’s always been doing what her heart most desired—she’s felt fulfilled.”

  “Do you really think she’d be interested in helping me?” Elise couldn’t hold back any longer. For the first time since the initial ultrasound had revealed four fetuses, she felt like she’d actually be able to pull this whole quadruplet thing off. Like things were going to fall into place somehow, that they’d be okay.

  “I know she would,” Clara said, her face alight with pleasure, as though she was being relieved of a great worry. “But I don’t want you to think you have to consider her if you have other plans,” she added.

  Elise teared up again. “Sorry,” she said, embarrassed while she waited for the emotion to pass. “I’ve never been a person who cries easily. But you have no idea how much this would mean to me. I’ve been in a panic trying to figure out what I’m going to do, how I can leave my babies with a stranger. Obviously she’d need help, too, at least until they’re old enough to hold their own bottles, but I’d trust my babies to Kate in a heartbeat.”

  Not only did Elise know the woman, she’d seen Kate’s knack for mothering in action—she’d had three kids in diapers at the same time. The woman was gentle, firm and had the patience of a saint. And she was Joe’s sister. Safe. Solid. Almost family.

  She reminded Elise of her own mother.

  Clara dug her cell phone out of her purse. Joe took it from her.

  “You eat, Mom. You know how you hate cold steak. I’ll call Kate.”

  “TO HEAR MOM TELL IT, you’d think we were all one big happy family when I was growing up,” Joe said, frowning as he turned the Lexus toward Lowell.

  “You don’t think your parents were happy?”

  He didn’t know what he thought anymore. “I guess I always assumed they weren’t. Their stuff was broken by one kid or another on a regular basis. They were always trying to drive one of us somewhere. They had to deal with homework, endless carpooling, mending, bathing, bandaging—and all of that after dinner when they were tired. We kids all whined about everything from meals to bedtime a whole lot more than we were grateful for anything. We fought, too. There was never any peace.”

  He wanted peace. For as long as he could remember, that was all he’d ever wanted. How many times had he climbed the stairs to the attic as a boy, escaping to a place away from everyone else?

  “Kate took the brunt of helping out with the younger kids—then married straight out of high school. I thought she’d be ecstatic just to leave home and finally having some freedom and peace. But within four years she had three kids of her own.”

  “What about Kenny?” Elise asked. “He’s second oldest, right? Does he feel like you do?”

  “I doubt it,” Joe said. “Kenny was the space cadet. Everything rolled off his back—still does. If there was a fight, he could be sitting right in the middle of it and not even know it was going on.”

  “Sounds like my brother, Danny. We girls would be carrying on, laughing, fighting, Baby Grace would be crying, and he’d sit there watching cartoons and not even seem to hear us.”

  It was hard for him to picture Elise in such a setting. The woman he knew had always been alone.

  He decided to take the scenic route and turned along the river, slowing for the hills and bends. Tall trees on either side of the road blocked out the moon.

  “I’ve heard lots of stories that involved you helping the younger kids with one thing or another—like the time you stayed up half the night in your bedroom helping Bradley with a project for school,” Elise said. “Did you really hate it that much?”

  Joe didn’t want to go back to those days. He’d rather concentrate on the woman sitting next to him. The woman who’d seen his potential, shared his vision and stood by his side making it possible for him to live the life he wanted to live.

  “I did what had to be done,” he answered her eventually. “Bradley’s school project was kind of fun, as I recall. Playing Chutes and Ladders a million times when I’d rather have been on the basketball court with my friends was not.”

  It wasn’t a matter of the various chores. He’d always hated taking out the trash—still hated it. But he made trash, so he took it out. Life required chores—Joe had no problem with that. It was the constant, endless needs and wants of others that made him cringe.

  “It was never enough.”

  “What wasn’t?”

  “No matter how much Mom or Dad or Kate or I did, there was always someone who needed something, who wasn’t happy with something. When it comes to kids, no matter how much you do, it’s never enough.”

  Joe heard the words and wished he’d bitten his tongue. This was Elise, the woman he’d always been able to spout off to, the one person he could tell anything to and know that she’d neither judge nor humor him. But now she was also a woman who was pregnant with four kids.

  “I think the key to that lies in what your mother said, at least partially,” Elise said. Her tone wasn’t defensive. Apparently they were still talking, airing their views, just as they always had. “There comes a time when your contribution to a project, whatever it is, is to stand back and allow it to take its own course.”

  Maybe because he was out of his element, living outside his own space, his own routine, outside the life he’d carefully created for himself, her words made some kind of sense to him.

  “Happiness is largely an illusion, isn’t it?” she asked, her face turned away as she stared out her side window. “It’s always that elusive something just out of our reach, yet we spend our lives constantly reaching anyway. Unless, like your parents, we simply decide to be happy where we are and find that joy and peace and contentment had been in our grasp all along.”

  He didn’t think he agreed with her. But couldn’t find a logical argument to refute what she’d said.

  “Are you happy, Joe?”

  “Absolutely.” Some of the time. Of course he was.

  “Happier alone than when you were living with Kelly?”

  “Overall.” Life was entirely peaceful. A little boring sometimes, maybe, but he had the canoe and sports and friends and business meetings.

  “Well, I wasn’t,” she told him. “I love my job. I love my house. I was happy at work, but I hated coming home alone every night. I hated crashing your family parties, or being alone on holidays. I hated not having people to care for or share good news with. I hated not belonging to anyone.”

  Joe supposed he’d hate that, too.

  “Having you around this past month,” she went on, “has been really different, and a little hard to adjust to. But at the same time it’s given me a taste of how great it’s going to be to have other people around sharing the everyday things we do by rote and take so much for granted.”

  It was nice hearing the shower running when you weren’t in it, Joe thought.

  “I’m sure you’re just pulling at the bit, dying to get back home alone, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe a little,” he said. And maybe not much at all. But he wasn’t even going to start thinking along those lines.

  ELISE HAD THE LAST of her every-third-week doctor’s appointments the next day. From this point on she’d be going every two weeks until closer to term when, if she was still at home, the visits would become once a week.

  Joe opted to remain in the waiting room while Elise was examined—not wanting to tempt his libido again with that much intimacy—but he was inordinately glad he’d insisted on being included in the visits when they all sat in her doctor’s office following the exam.

  “You’re still okay for all normal activity, within reason,” Dr. Braden told her patient. “No heavy lifting or mountain climbing. But judging by how quickly your measurements are changing, I’m guessing it’ll only be another month at the most before you’ll need to take your leave from work.”

  Her leave
from work? It sounded as though the doctor and Elise had already discussed the plan.

  “Why will she need to leave work so soon? Is something wrong?”

  “No. So far she’s textbook for a perfect quad pregnancy.” Dr. Braden shook her head, never losing her serious demeanor. “But the babies are going to start growing more now and things are going to get pretty crowded in there fairly quickly. We expect premature delivery in multiple pregnancies, but the closer we can get Elise to thirty-four or thirty-six weeks gestation, the better the chances of delivering four well babies. In order to do that, she’ll need to spend a good bit of time lying down. As a matter of fact—” the woman put her reading glasses on top of Elise’s file on a desk so strewn with papers Joe thought it was a wonder she could find anything “—I’m expecting to have to prescribe full bed rest before we get through here. My hope is to be able to keep Elise at home, but it’s not uncommon for a mother of multiples to spend the last weeks of her pregnancy in the hospital.”

  Joe’s heart began to race. Why hadn’t Elise told him this pregnancy of hers was so dangerous? The more the doctor talked, the more he realized how easily he could lose her in the course of the next months.

  And the more determined he grew to make certain he did everything in his power to ensure that didn’t happen. Whatever it took.

  “I want you to go down to the lab sometime in the next few days,” Dr. Braden continued with what seemed to be never-ending instruction. “I’d like another diabetes test just to be safe. Your blood pressure’s normal and the swelling in your hands and feet is normal, and that’s all good news. I just want to make certain we stay on top of things so we don’t have any scares down the road.”

  Elise nodded. And then the doctor smiled. Looked at Joe.

  “We heard five healthy heartbeats this morning.”

  He almost choked. “Five?”

  “Mommy’s and four babies.”

  Oh. Well, that was okay, then. The four-member crew they were in the process of bringing aboard were keeping up to speed.

  Elise talked about the heartbeats all the way out to their cars.

  Joe kind of wished he’d heard them, too.

  “I CALLED KATE BACK today,” Joe said that evening as they sat down to a dinner of pasta broccoli casserole and wheat bread from the bakery on the first floor of their office building.

  Elise looked up, her appetite immediately stunted. “Did she change her mind about wanting the job?”

  “On the contrary.” He chewed as though nothing was wrong. But then, Joe had always been able to take things in stride better than she could. Once he got his mind wrapped around something, that was. “She’s onboard to start as soon as you get put on bed rest. She’ll come before I leave for work in the morning and stay until I get home.”

  Elise stared at him. “You told her you’re staying with me?” Not that she minded. He’d been the one who’d been adamant about not telling anyone. And she understood why. He didn’t want anyone getting any ideas.

  Joe was not and was never going to be a family man. Since his divorce, he’d been very careful not to give his family any idea or hope that he’d ever hook up with someone again.

  Since their staff had found out about their living arrangement, he’d gone out of his way not to have a private moment with her that could be misconstrued.

  “Kate’s always been good for a secret,” Joe said now. “And after hearing what the doctor said today, I knew we were going to need help.”

  We. The pronoun sounded so good Elise couldn’t help smiling. As for the rest, she was still set on being the first known mother of quads in Michigan not to be confined to bed before the birth.

  AFTER DINNER, JOE ASKED HER if she wanted to take a walk.

  “Dr. Braden said you should get as much moderate exercise as you can while you can,” he told her. And he needed a break from being alone with her in the quiet intimacy of her home.

  The entire weekend stretched out before them. They could get naked and stay that way for two full days without arousing any suspicions anywhere.

  Damn. What was he thinking?

  “Let me get my running shoes.”

  She’d be covering up those bare feet. That was progress. Now if only he could find a way to talk her into wearing a blanket that covered every inch of her, in place of the spaghetti-strapped flowery dress she had on.

  “Did you call that Fallow guy today?” he asked as they strolled along Main Street.

  “Yes. I told him I’d let him know in a week, and today was it.”

  Being outside wasn’t helping Joe’s tension all that much. “What’d you tell him?”

  “That I wasn’t going to make a decision until after the babies were born.”

  It was better than nothing, though Joe would’ve preferred a solid no. He didn’t like the guy looming out there.

  And was really uncomfortable with the realization that he had no logical reason for feeling that way.

  Elise with other men had never bothered him before. And he had absolutely no ownership over these babies she was birthing. No interest in ownership.

  “I told him that if something changed and he had reason to need an answer sooner to call me.”

  “He has your phone number?”

  “I gave it to him today.”

  Joe’s mood didn’t improve, but he managed to keep his mouth shut against the negative admonition he had the urge to put forth.

  A woman with three kids was coming the other way. She had two by the hand and the third, a boy who looked to be about seven, was walking off to the side, dragging a stick in the gutter. The woman’s shoulders sagged—probably so she could reach the little hands at her sides. Her makeup, if she’d had any on, had long since worn off. And the child on her right was crying.

  A far cry from the peace and relaxation he and Elise were sharing.

  Unfortunately, he could relate to the woman. And to the son with the stick in the gutter, creating his own world to escape the one in which he lived. Wrapping himself in make-believe, in plans for how he’d change his life when he was old enough. Because when you had younger siblings, there was always more that had to be done. As soon as you got one settled, another needed something.

  He couldn’t face the thought of living his adult life feeling that way—as though no matter what he did, when he went to bed at night he’d have to feel guilty for the things he was leaving undone, the people he was letting down. As though no matter what he’d done, it was never enough.

  They passed the now silent Lowell showboat docked in its permanent home beside the Flat River Grill. The town hosted concerts on the decked-out paddlewheel vessel every Thursday all summer, but he hadn’t been to one in years.

  “When I was a kid there used to be vaudeville-type shows on that thing every night,” he said, stopping to lean on the rail of the sidewalk bridge over the river.

  “All summer long?” She’d stopped beside him, her arms only inches from his on the rail.

  “Probably not,” he said, thinking back. “But it seemed that way. I’m guessing there was a season—two weeks, a month, I don’t know.”

  “Was it run by the town then?”

  “I don’t know that, either, but they had some fairly big-name entertainers. And there were these ‘end men’—they’d probably be outlawed today, but they were local entertainers who blackened their faces and doubled as ushers and gave comedic relief throughout the performance.

  “The boat used to come up the river every evening before the show with all the colorful lights on its deck glowing and music playing.”

  He’d watched the boat from a corner close to Elise’s house every night he could get there. Those had been magical moments.

  “Did you ever go to one of the shows?”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “Each summer Mom and Dad bought three tickets to seven shows. We’d each get a date night, just one of us kids and the two of them.”

  She turned, and he was hard pressed to keep h
is grin, her lips were so close. “They went seven times?”

  “Yeah. I never thought about it at the time,” he admitted, glancing back at the boat as he wondered how many other things about his childhood he’d framed incorrectly. “I just saw it as a duty they did to give us each the experience, but in reality, they were entertaining themselves sevenfold.”

  “Pretty smart, if you ask me.”

  And kind of romantic, he thought, if you didn’t consider that each of their dates included a kid.

  “I’ve always been meaning to come down for one of the concerts, but never seem to get around to it,” she said.

  “Next year, we’ll go four times and take one baby each time.” Joe was joking, of course.

  “Yeah, right!” Elise laughed, moving on.

  And he was kind of disappointed.

  THEY WALKED AGAIN on Saturday. This time Elise took Joe to the cemetery. The local florist had been keeping flowers in the urn, the grass was lush green and freshly cut. There wasn’t a weed to be found.

  She felt uncertain.

  “I…um…Joe, meet my mom and dad and Danny, Ellen and Baby Grace,” she said, pointing out the headstones.

  He moved slowly and silently down the row, reading each one.

  “Do you do the flowers?” he asked.

  “No. I pay to have them kept fresh from Memorial Day to Labor Day.”

  “Do you come often?”

  “Yes, especially if I have reason.”

  He rubbed out a smudge on Grace’s little marker. “I wish you’d told me before.”

  Maybe she should have. “I couldn’t, Joe. Not the person I was.”

  “You’re still that person, only better.”