Property Of, the Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter, and At Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  Hannie left her village the very next day, and during the two years it took her to reach New York, she decided to concentrate on the future. That’s when she began to read tea leaves, at first for no money, and later for only a token.

  When Lila had heard Hannie’s story, she had not known how to react. It was too awful, condolences could never be enough. But Hannie had seemed so detached it was almost as if she had been telling a story about someone else. Hannie called for the waitress and ordered toast and jam, although when her order came she only spread butter on her bread very thinly, with the brittle motions of someone who knows she can’t explain her grief any more than she can describe the moment when she knows she has held on to her grief for too long.

  Lila knew that it was sometimes quite impossible to account for some very simple things: how your life can go on after you’ve lost your child, how the clear blue sky of an early morning can move you to tears, how a woman can stand by her own kitchen window and watch her husband go out to gather wood and not want anything more than that one moment—that instant when the man she loves sees her watching through the curtains, and turns to wave.

  On the twelfth day after her due date Rae began to have chaotic cramps that came and went and a feeling that wire was being pulled taut all the way around, from her belly to her backbone. She drank herbal tea and read magazines. There was no point in alerting Richard and Lila because Rae thought it might be nothing more than back strain, something gone wrong with her spine. But the cramps grew stronger, and when they began to come at five-minute intervals Rae knew they were contractions. She phoned her doctor. She was ready to leave for the hospital then and there, but her doctor told her to call back when the contractions were two minutes apart.

  Late in the day, when nothing had changed, Rae grew calmer. She got out the mop and washed the kitchen floor, then took the dog out and watched it chase birds in the courtyard. She did all this between contractions, which had begun to feel familiar, separate from childbirth, some flaw in her body she’d have to learn to live with. Then they changed. They were still coming five minutes apart, but they were hot, as if someone pressed a burning bar of iron into her flesh at regular intervals. She took a cold shower and let the water beat against her spine. But she was still so hot that she opened every window in the apartment, and as she leaned out the kitchen window, to gulp down some cool evening air, she saw that a pickup truck was parked at the curb.

  Rae threw on a dress, then held the dog back by its collar until she could run out the door. All week she’d felt Jessup had been there, late at night, at hours when Rae didn’t go out. Now she’d caught him. He was sitting behind the wheel, eating his dinner out of a McDonald’s bag when Rae pounded on the passenger window. Jessup looked at her through the glass; he held his hamburger in the air and for a moment he seemed to be considering turning the key in the ignition and stepping on the gas as hard as he could. Rae knocked on the window again, and after he’d looked at her a little longer, Jessup leaned over and rolled it down. Rae held on to the base of the window and lifted herself up to get a better look.

  “I knew you were sneaking around here,” she said triumphantly.

  “I’m not sneaking anywhere,” Jessup said. “I just don’t happen to have an address right now. That’s all.”

  “So you’ve just been parking here,” Rae said.

  “That’s right,” Jessup told her.

  “You just happened to pick my street out of all the streets in Southern California? How dare you park here and eat a goddamned hamburger? How dare you think you can do this to me?”

  “All right!” Jessup said. “I happen to think I have a right to see my kid.”

  “Oh, really,” Rae said.

  “Are you going to let me see him or not?” Jessup said.

  Rae was holding on to the edge of the window; she pulled herself up and held on tighter as she felt a contraction begin. For seven nights Jessup had been watching the apartment, but because he didn’t want to be found out, he never saw more than what might happen in any apartment after midnight: a light switched on, a window opened, a shade lowered. Now, all he saw was Rae’s face, her fingers, her narrow shoulders.

  “It was a boy, wasn’t it?” Jessup said.

  She stepped away from the truck and let him see how huge she was. “It hasn’t been born yet, but when it is I’ll send you a telegram.” She began to walk away. “If you have an address by then,” she called over her shoulder.

  When she heard the door of the truck open and slam shut, Rae began to walk faster. She could feel that this contraction was different; the wire around her was so hot and tight it was impossible to move.

  “I want to talk to you,” Jessup called.

  Rae tried to keep walking but couldn’t. She inhaled slowly and counted to five, then exhaled and counted again. By the time Jessup had run across the courtyard, she was doubled over.

  “Are you okay?” Jessup said.

  Rae took his hand and placed it on her belly so that he could feel the contraction.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jessup said, withdrawing his hand. “Rae.”

  Jessup leaned toward her so she could support herself on his arm until the contraction was over. Afterward, he tried to follow Rae into the apartment, but the dog stood in the doorway, barking.

  “Get this dog away from me,” Jessup said.

  Rae looked through the drawer in the night table for an old watch with a second hand. Jessup tried to push the dog back with his foot, but each time he did its barks were worse than before.

  “I’m going to have to kick the shit out of you,” Jessup told the dog.

  “Stop it!” Rae said.

  Jessup and the dog looked over at her.

  “I thought you were supposed to have already had this baby,” Jessup said.

  Rae went to the doorway and held the dog by its collar. She could feel the vibration of a growl low in its throat.

  “That just shows how little you know,” Rae said.

  It wasn’t just the dog’s growl she was feeling, she could feel vibrations in the air.

  “I need something to drink,” Rae said. “Herbal tea.”

  Jessup looked at her confused. “You want me to make you tea?”

  “I think you could manage it,” Rae said. “They’ve trained chimpanzees to make tea—all you have to do is fill the kettle and turn on the burner.”

  Jessup went into the kitchen, and Rae could hear him rummaging through everything, making a mess.

  “Mint,” she called. “In the first cabinet.”

  After she sat down in the easy chair Rae realized she was still holding on to the dog’s collar. The metal felt cool, like the chain-link fence that marked off Rae’s parents’ house from the next-door neighbors’. When Jessup came in with the tea, Rae waved him away. It had been a little more than two minutes between contractions, and this last one had gone on for nearly a minute. The blood had drained from Jessup’s face, and all you had to do was look at him to see how scared he was.

  “Let’s go,” Jessup said. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  “I have to time the next one,” Rae said. She still couldn’t let go of the dog. “I don’t want to get to the hospital and have to turn around and come back home.”

  Jessup took the wristwatch and sat on the edge of the bed, facing Rae.

  “You really have nerve,” Rae said. “What makes you think I want you here?”

  She could feel the next one beginning, low in her back, spreading out in a circle.

  “Is it starting?” Jessup said. “Should I time it?”

  Rae nodded and began to breathe deeply. She kept her eyes focused on the center of Jessup’s forehead. As the contraction subsided she thought of how Jessup couldn’t wait to be born, how they’d had to stop the elevator and deliver him right there. After twelve days of hesitation, Rae’s baby suddenly seemed to take after its father. She could feel its urgency inside her, and she knew that the time had come. She let go o
f the dog’s collar, and when the dog whined and rested its head on her knee, she gently pushed it away. And then Rae felt a pop, like the sensation you feel in your ears when a jet suddenly drops and the pressure changes.

  “Something’s happening,” Rae whispered.

  Jessup ran over to her, but before he could reach Rae her water broke. Her dress was drenched, and beneath the easy chair there was a pool of liquid.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Jessup said.

  He knelt down beside her, stricken. It took Rae a moment to realize that he hadn’t the faintest idea of what had just happened. As far as Jessup could tell she was dying, first water, then blood, then her bones might begin to dissolve.

  In spite of herself, Rae smiled. “Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “This is supposed to happen. Get me a towel and the blue dress in the closet.”

  When she stood up to phone her doctor she was still dripping, amazed by how much fluid had actually been inside her. She left a message for her doctor that she would meet her at the hospital, then changed her dress.

  “I want you to listen to me,” Jessup said, but Rae couldn’t. She held her hand up in the air to silence him and Jessup began to time her contraction. This time Rae imagined the moment when the horses escaped from the corral. The sound of their hoofbeats on the flat sand was deafening, the sand rose up like a twister, burning the horses’ eyes, making them wilder and a hundred times more desperate to escape.

  “That one lasted for a minute and a half,” Jessup said.

  Rae went into the kitchen and put out fresh water and dog food.

  “Are you crazy?” Jessup said. He pulled his keys out of his pocket. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “If you really want to help me you can take care of the dog.”

  “Shit,” Jessup said under his breath.

  “She needs to be walked three times a day.”

  The dog was lying near the bed, nose buried in its paws. It watched Rae carefully, following every move she made with its eyes. Jessup glared over at it.

  “All right,” he said. “All right, all right.”

  But just to make sure the dog wouldn’t be locked up indefinitely if Jessup didn’t live up to his word, Rae left the kitchen window open. That way the dog could escape if it wanted to: all it had to do was climb up on a kitchen chair and leap over the window ledge. The drop was only a few feet, and under the bamboo there were soft weeds and grass.

  When the next contraction came, Rae leaned up against the refrigerator and rocked back and forth. All of a sudden she wanted Lila, she nearly got lost in between the waves of the contraction.

  “We’re leaving right now,” Jessup said as soon as it was over.

  Rae went to the telephone, but before she could dial, Jessup took the receiver out of her hands.

  “Don’t start up with me now,” Rae warned him. “I swear to God I’m dangerous.”

  She grabbed at the phone, but Jessup wouldn’t let go.

  “I have to call my labor coaches,” Rae yelled.

  “Let me go with you,” Jessup said.

  They both held on to the receiver and stared at each other.

  “Please,” Jessup said.

  She thought then of the one time she had gone to the apartment where Jessup had grown up. It was before she moved out to Newton; she’d been hanging around the front door of his building, hoping to see him, when his mother came home from work, carrying some groceries.

  “I know you,” she said to Rae, and she’d insisted Rae come up to the apartment. Inside, the hallways were dark, and they had to walk up four flights of stairs. The apartment itself was tiny, Jessup slept on a fold-out couch in the living room. Jessup’s mother had sat Rae down at the kitchen table and made her a glass of chocolate milk. She was apologetic about everything—the lack of heat, the fact that she came home from work after six and didn’t know where her son was—as if Rae were another adult, someone she had to impress.

  “I’m so glad that Jessup has friends,” his mother confided, and for a moment Rae didn’t understand. Jessup never had any friends. Then it dawned on Rae that his mother meant her.

  Jessup’s mother put the groceries away, then slipped off her shoes and got herself a cup of coffee.

  “He’s told me all about you,” she told Rae. “The girl with the red hair.”

  Rae was too shocked to speak; she gulped her chocolate milk as she listened to the details of his birth. When, at seven, Jessup still hadn’t arrived, Rae told his mother that she had to go home. Jessup’s mother walked her to the door, and as though by agreement they stopped to look at the couch that folded out to become Jessup’s bed.

  “He started walking when he was nine months old,” Jessup’s mother said proudly.

  Rae’s throat had begun to hurt. She knew that if Jessup found out she’d been there, he’d never be able to face her again.

  “I meant to surprise him,” she told his mother. “So maybe we’d better not tell him I was here.”

  Jessup’s mother looked at Rae for a moment before she understood. “It will be our secret,” she said, and Rae knew that she was talking about more than just this one visit.

  “I know I’ve made some mistakes,” Jessup was saying to her now.

  “Several,” Rae agreed.

  “I know it,” Jessup said. “I wanted things. I’m not going to lie to you—I still want them.”

  Rae held her hand in the air so that he would stop talking. This time her contraction lasted for nearly as long as the space between it and the last one.

  “Are you all right?” Jessup asked when it was over.

  Rae nodded and blew out air. She had expected it to hurt, but she’d never expected this.

  “I want to tell you something, so you’ll understand,” Jessup said. “I always thought you’d leave me.”

  “This isn’t fair,” Rae said.

  “I know,” Jessup said.

  He put his arms around her when the next contraction came, and counted the seconds.

  “You can drive me to the hospital, but that’s all,” Rae told him. Jessup looked so grateful that she would have laughed out loud if she could have. She pointed to her overnight bag. He picked it up and stood in the doorway, waiting, until she waved him out.

  “Go on,” she told him. “I’ll meet you in the truck.”

  When he left Rae could see him out the window as he crossed the courtyard; he was the exact same distance away as he’d been on those nights when Rae had looked out her bedroom window to see him out on the sidewalk. But she’d never noticed how frightened he looked from this distance, or that he had a nervous habit of rubbing his fingers together, as if he was worried that she might not appear.

  Jessup threw the overnight case in the cab of the truck, started the engine, then got out and waited for her. It was dark by now, and the exhaust from the pickup was inky, the color of winter nights in Boston just before the snow begins. Rae went to her closet, steadied herself by holding on to the wall, then slipped on her red shoes. This child really was a lot like Jessup—it could hardly wait to be born. So she hurried—she bent down to stroke the dog’s head, and before she went out to cross the courtyard, she phoned Richard and Lila to tell them she was ready at last.

  They both heard the phone at the same time. Richard jumped up from the couch to answer it and, out in the garden, Lila knew it was time. That afternoon she had baked a cake—she had thought she was making it for dessert that night, but when Richard went to cut a piece, she stopped him. She’d been particularly careful with the ingredients: sweet butter, a cup of sugar, milk, a spoonful of lemon rind saved from their own tree. Lila wrapped the cake in waxed paper, knowing it was a gift for Rae. As she stored it in a metal tin she wondered if she would feel jealous when the call finally came, but now that it had she was actually relieved. It was a comfort to know what you did and did not have.

  While Richard made arrangements to meet Rae at the hospital, Lila heard a rustling in the grass. She knew exactly what it was. A li
ttle girl with slate-gray eyes crawled across the patio, then lifted herself onto Lila’s lap. Holding her was like trying to hold on to light, or water, or air. But when she reached up and put her arms around Lila’s neck, Lila could feel the heat of her body, and no mother, in any nursery, could have loved her child more.

  Inside the house, Richard hung up the phone and rushed to the bedroom to pack the few things they might need: a change of clothes, white washcloths, a good clock with a second hand. They had already begun to plan a trip to East China, and once they went back it would be nearly summer, the lilies would have already begun to send up green shoots. Richard planned to spend most of their visit helping his father work on the house. He’d be so busy with wallpaper and leaking pipes that he’d never notice when Lila took their rented car and disappeared for an afternoon. And even if he did notice, he’d know enough to let it pass. He and Jason would replace the gutters on the north side of the house and fix the rotten floor boards in the porch, while Lila drove out to a place where last winter’s salt and ice had been so powerful they had cut through stone. A place where if you were standing in the right spot you could see the shadow of the moon in late afternoon, you could run your hand along a small headstone and imagine it was made out of memory and pearls and bones.

  And so when the baby began to inch away, Lila didn’t try to stop her. She bit her lip until she drew two drops of blood and watched as the baby lowered herself back onto the patio. Above them the sky grew darker. The baby moved along the flat stones, past the hedges, into the neighbor’s yard. At this hour the potted gardenias next door smelled sweeter; the air was cool enough to make you shiver. Lila reached down and touched the warm slate, but when she went to look beyond the hedges there wasn’t a sign of her child. Just another garden that had to be coaxed to grow, a row of thin tomato seedlings and a bent magnolia tree.