“The rapid heartbeat explained,” Yalé said. Whereas he’d put the first baby right onto Delores’s chest, he cut the umbilical cord of the second baby, also a boy, and solemnly walked it over to the incubator, it’s little naked body quivering in the cold air of the room. He laid the new baby down next to its brother, then picked up the swaddled, firstborn twin and handed him to Nora. “Please bring the baby to Delores.”
Nora walked the first baby over and handed him to Delores, who snuggled him against her chest, despite her heaving sobs. “This is Demetrius,” Delores said.
“Would you like to hold this one?” Yalé asked Nora, motioning her over to diaper and swaddle the new twin. Perhaps there was nothing unusual going on after all. Perhaps it was all in Nora’s mind. Yes, this baby would be taking its rightful place next to his brother just as soon as Nora was done wrapping him up.
Yalé took a couple of steps toward Delores. “Would you—”
“No,” Delores said. “I can’t bear to hold it if . . . Is it a boy or a girl?”
Yalé flashed Nora a quick look, then looked back at Delores. “A girl,” he lied.
“Sweet girl,” Delores said, looking in Nora’s direction, at the incubator. “I can’t. I can’t hold her if she can’t be ours. Do you think there’s any chance?”
Nora rarely saw her boss display emotion, but she thought she spotted tears in his eyes. “I’ll talk to Rickard, but I don’t think so.”
“What if we make sure she knows, from childhood,” Delores said. “As if she’d taken holy orders.”
Nora started to feel physically sick. She didn’t understand why Yalé had lied about the gender of the baby, but was even more taken aback by the fact that they felt they couldn’t keep the second twin. And, if they couldn’t keep him, she wondered, then where would he be sent?
Rickard popped back into the room a short time later. “There’s to be no further discussion about the idea.”
Delores clung to her first child, now feeding from her breast. “Rickard, please be reasonable.”
“Reasonable?” he barked at her, over the cries of the second baby, who Nora now picked up, beginning to softly bounce him. “You married into this tradition. How dare you try to change my family’s way of life!”
Delores hesitated for a second. She had the look of a woman fighting for too much to be deterred by simple unkindness. “What about Yalé?”
Yalé looked down, a passive observer in the conversation between them anyway, he now looked beyond uncomfortable.
“A one-time aberration. And, you know the price he paid,” Rickard said. “Since when is it your place to legislate any of this? There will be no more discussion.”
There was so much Nora didn’t understand about the people she worked for. She knew they held the secret of time travel, but knew nothing else about it, and was told that the entire world might end if she did not keep the secret to herself. She also knew enough about them to fear what they might to do her personally if she ever betrayed them, even accidentally.
They were in the textile business, but she’d never seen a single customer and rarely saw shipments come in or go out. She knew Yalé and Rickard were brothers, but Yalé had told her once, in a rare moment when he showed a lack of discretion, that Rickard wished he’d never existed. It was made clear to Nora—in no uncertain terms—that, unless Rickard and Delores’s firstborn was a daughter, Nora would one day take over Yalé’s position here. It was then, and only then, that the family’s many secrets would be made clear to her. Curiosity aside, whether she wanted this job forever was another story.
After deflating all of the hopefulness around them, Rickard walked quickly out of the room.
Yalé followed after him. “You and I will take care of her until morning,” he said to Nora, gesturing toward the second baby, again calling the little him a her. Then, Yalé left the room again.
Nora held the second twin, quietly shushing him. He barely cried, though, as if somewhere inside of him, he knew that being the squeaky wheel wasn’t going to be his best strategy in this life. Nora noticed the infant formula on the shelf next to her. Across the room, Demetrius was still attached to Delores’s breast. The other breast lay in waiting, but instead, Nora put the second twin down under the reptile light for a moment and began to prepare the fake milk for him.
CHAPTER 3
October 21, 1972
* * *
The next morning
The twins spent most of the evening lying side by side in the makeshift incubator.
Nora brought Demetrius down the hall to Delores’s room each time he woke throughout the night, which seemed to Nora, in her own sleep-deprived state, to be every ten or fifteen minutes. On the other hand, Nora had to wake his brother every ninety minutes to feed—otherwise, she thought the newborn might sleep peacefully through the entire night, passing up necessary feedings in these first hours of life.
Demetrius had more hair and was slightly larger, but Nora preferred the younger twin, less than twenty-four hours old and already an underdog. She wanted to call him Lennie, after one of her favorite characters from literature, from the book Of Mice and Men.
She’d just brought Demetrius down the hall again, and was now staring at his sleeping twin, as unaware of his place in the world as Nora felt herself most of the time. She was scared by Rickard’s reaction to the child and felt instinctively like he needed her protection.
“You need to sleep,” Yalé said, as he entered the room. “Why don’t you go to your room and get some rest?”
Nora was afraid she’d never see “Lennie” again if she left him now. “What’s going to happen?”
Yalé took a deep breath. He’d entered the room with his normal graceful ease, but her question had immediately triggered the agitation in him that she’d seen yesterday, especially after “Lennie” was born. “Demetrius will live here, and you’ll have a hand in raising him, along with myself and his parents.”
She had to consciously remember not to use the name she’d made up for the second twin. “And this little one? Rickard didn’t seem to—”
“That’s why I’ve woken early,” Yalé said. “Since you’re awake, perhaps you can help me by getting him cleaned up and wrapped warmly.”
“Why did he say you were an aberration?” Nora asked. Perhaps it was her sleeplessness, but for once she didn’t feel too shy to ask one of the many questions spurred by her strange employment situation.
Yalé smiled weakly at her, and raised his eyebrows. He looked more pained by her repeating the words than by Rickard uttering them in the first place. “Our family prizes nothing more than our bloodline, and our traditions.”
Nora nodded, as she reached down to stroke Lennie’s face. This wasn’t news to her, but it didn’t answer anything.
“There are rules,” he continued. “Some of which are very unpleasant.”
“What’s he going to do to the baby?” she asked, more concerned with that than her original question.
“Nothing,” Yalé said, “if I have anything to say about it. Just get him ready to go. If Rickard were to find out that the child was male, protecting him would become much more difficult.”
She did as she was told, but it pained her to rush. She gave the little guy a sponge bath, making sure to get every last precious crevice between baby fat, even as she hurried. She concentrated intensely as she dressed him in one of the white, sterile onesies sitting next to the incubator, hoping the memory might be enough to sustain her for the rest of her life. In less than a day, little Lennie had burrowed himself into a part of Nora she wasn’t aware existed before.
Finally, she swaddled him into two blankets, taking care with each fold, knowing that Yalé wouldn’t have the faintest idea as to how to replace them in the way that would keep the baby warmest if they came undone.
Then, she sat down in the folding chair—the one she’d taken infrequent rests in throughout the night when her calves ached—and nuzzled Lennie’s face
against hers, as she listened nervously for Rickard’s heavy footsteps. She fantasized about fighting him off. He’d never touch the baby, she told herself. She wouldn’t let him. Couldn’t let him.
She treasured every second of the baby’s warm skin against her cheek, but even so, she wished Yalé would hurry, because she knew that every second the baby was here, he was in danger.
Finally, Yalé came in, walking more quietly than usual. “Thank you for your help tonight. You’ve done the work of God for this little one.” He gently took the baby from Nora’s arms and headed to the elevator. It wasn’t the work of God, she thought. It was the work of a mother.
Yalé turned back to her. “If Rickard asks after us, be as vague as you can.”
Nora felt her toes and feet moving even before Yalé disappeared into the elevator with Lennie. Her Lennie.
CHAPTER 4
October 21, 1972
* * *
A few minutes later
Mrs. Appleton wasn’t interested in the doctor’s excuse this morning. It was 8:05 and the office opened at 8:00. The first two appointments of the morning were always the most popular, because parents could get their children seen and still get to their schools and offices on time. If the doctor showed up on time, that is.
And, of course, when her boss, Dr. Neal Browning, came in, he’d want his coffee. And Mrs. Appleton would give it to him without delay, because it was her job. And that still meant something to her, even if she thought the young, charming doctor could stand a few lessons in professionalism. She’d make sure not to smile when she brought him his coffee. A medical license didn’t come with a second license to be inconsiderate to his staff and patients, the first of which would be here in only five minutes. Unless the Swartzes were late, too. The world is going straight to hell, she thought. At least I’ve only got a little time left.
A couple of minutes later, as she was reviewing the day’s schedule, she heard the bell on the front door of the office ring. “Good morning, Mrs. Swartz,” she said without looking up. “Good morning, Ryan. The doctor will be a few moments. Please take a seat.” Mrs. Appleton enjoyed having such a firm handle on the place. She knew who was entering and leaving at any given time of day, without even looking up through the window of the small receptionist’s office where she spent her days.
“Hello,” a voice said. “Excuse me.”
Mrs. Appleton looked up and saw a short, bald man holding a baby. The man stood and looked at her as if he were unsure whether it was his turn to speak yet.
She looked back down at her schedule, the better not to give him any illusions about what she could and couldn’t do for him. “New patients need to call first,” Mrs. Appleton said. “I can probably fit you in tomorrow.”
“Yes, thank you,” the man said. “But, I need to see the doctor right away.”
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Appleton said. “That’s just not possible. If you’d called ahead, I would have told you—”
The man walked right up to Mrs. Appleton’s desk. “It’s urgent that I see him.”
Mrs. Appleton saw now that the child was a newborn. “Your baby is only a few days old, sir. If you have any serious concerns about the child’s health, you should be on your way to a hospital. It’s not even advisable that a baby this young be anywhere except a hospital, or your home, of course.”
“I’ve come here for help,” the man said.
“The doctor’s not even in yet, sir, and—”
“I can wait,” he answered.
She heard the doctor enter through the back door of the office. In a few moments, he’d come up front to greet her and ask for his coffee. Surely, he’d shoot himself in the foot by taking pity on this man, seeing the newborn and wrecking her schedule for the remainder of the day. An entire day of playing catch-up was exhausting. “What is your name, sir?”
“You can call me Yalé,” he started. His accent was hard to place.
Mrs. Appleton rose from her seat and walked toward Dr. Browning’s small office, lined with his degrees from Brown and Johns Hopkins, and at least eight different pediatric medicine certifications.
“Good morning, Mrs. Appleton,” Dr. Browning said, standing when she entered the room. He had the same boyish way of disarming her as her youngest grandson did, a combination of a shit-eating grin and complete obliviousness.
“Doctor, there’s a man in reception. No appointment. He has a newborn,” Mrs. Appleton said. “He won’t tell me what’s wrong with the baby, but insists on seeing you.”
Dr. Browning walked to the door of his office and followed her to the lobby. “Would you mind pouring me a cup of coffee—light and sweet, if you would?” He asked every day as if coffee were a new request. He was rubbing his lucky shark tooth with his thumb and forefingers as was his habit. She’d find him lost in thought at his desk sometimes, motionless except for his fingers. She’d felt the tooth once, and it was smooth indeed, but Mrs. Appleton didn’t have objects like Browning’s shark tooth. Possibly because she wasn’t superstitious, and also because she thought fidgeting about so much was terrible manners.
Mrs. Appleton sat down at her desk, and the doctor looked over her, through the window, into the lobby. “I don’t see anyone,” he said.
“He was just . . . ” Mrs. Appleton’s voice trailed off as the baby’s scream filled the entire office. “What in the hell is going on here?”
She followed the doctor into the lobby where they saw the newborn laying swaddled on the floor right below the receptionist’s window. Mrs. Appleton opened the door to the office and peeked down the hall, but didn’t see anyone. She pushed her face against the glass and looked three stories down at the street below. There was no way she could spot the man from up here anyway.
“Did he just leave the child?” Dr. Browning asked, his reddish blond hair falling onto his forehead as he bent down to pick up the baby.
“Apparently so,” Mrs. Appleton answered, walking back toward her desk. “I’ll call child welfare right away.”
Browning put his hand on her shoulder. Such an overly familiar thing to do, but again, she chalked it up to his being from this next generation, like her grandson. “Let’s wait a little while, Mrs. Appleton. A few minutes at least.”
“Who’s going to mind the child?” she asked. “You have your appointments, and I have my work as well, you know.”
He gave her his most disarming smile. “We can spare fifteen minutes, can’t we? Perhaps the father will come back.”
Nora stood across 9th Avenue, her wheeled suitcase at her side—an indulgence from the Macy’s home section. She secretly watched Yalé exit the building and scuttle down the sidewalk. From the building directory in the lobby, she’d guessed that he’d taken the baby to a pediatrician’s office. A Dr. Browning. And then, he’d left. What did he tell them? she wondered. Did he promise he’d return soon? Did he tell them anything at all?
Nora hadn’t had a real home since leaving her parents at seventeen. And, even then, her father had never made it the kind of home you’d want to imitate when you finally had your own. Five years with the Seres, and already Nora felt what little identity she did have being pulled away, into their hive.
She waited for the light and crossed the busy intersection, only a few blocks from where she lived and worked. If she followed through, and was successful, she could never go back. Nora would make a home now. A good one. It would be worth it, there was no question. He would be worth it.
CHAPTER 5
January 16, 1989
* * *
Seventeen years later
“My teacher, Mrs. Wharton, says that love is something that lives inside your soul,” Allaire said to Dr. Browning, as she colored neatly in the lines of her own pencil drawing. She had her colored pencils splayed out all over the large wooden desk in his office. Drawing was the one thing that kept her attention longer than fifteen minutes. He’d stopped buying her coloring books last year when she was seven because she told him they bored
her. She liked to tell her own stories by making the pictures from scratch.
Browning nodded. “And what do you think?”
“I think love is too big to live somewhere as small as your soul,” she answered.
The doctor smiled and took a bite of his pastrami sandwich, practically toppling over with meat. “That’s a great observation, sweetheart. I tend to agree with you.”
“And, also, where is your soul anyway? Maybe it’s just something humans made up. A place for holding everything they can’t explain,” she said.
“Did you come up with that all on your own?” he asked.
“Maybe a little,” she answered, putting her head back down to her drawing. “And Mrs. Wharton a little bit, too . . . What do you think love is, Dada?”
Browning still had the impulse to correct her when she called him that, always afraid of even making an implied promise to a kid who’d had enough promises broken. But now that she was old enough, he knew that she knew that he wasn’t, in fact, her father, so he let it go. “I think love is a choice,” he said. However he defined it, his love for Allaire was deep beyond words. A piece of him had opened up nearly two decades ago when, for a few moments, he’d considered keeping an infant abandoned at his office. When a woman who said she was the baby’s mother came for him, the doctor was both relieved and disappointed about a cancelled future that he’d barely even had time to fantasize about.
“You think it’s a choice? Well, then what happens if you make a different choice?” she asked.
He could tell that she was going to get stuck on his answer. “Well,” he said. “It’s not a choice like that, I don’t think.”
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