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He read well past midnight, until the words shimmered
senselessly
on the bright white pages, and then he tossed the journal on
the coffee table and got up to tend to the fire. He tamped the
charred fire-laced logs into embers, opened the damper fully,
and
closed the brass fireplace screen. When he turned off the
lights,
shards of fire glowed softly through layers of ash as delicate
and
white as the snow piled so high now on the porch railings and
the
rhododendron bushes.
The stairs creaked with his weight. He paused by the nursery
door, studying the shadowy shapes of the crib and the changing
table, the stuffed animals arranged on shelves. The walls were
painted a pale sea green. His wife had made the Mother Goose
quilt
that hung on the far wall, sewing with tiny stitches, tearing
out entire
panels if she noted the slightest imperfection. A border of
bears
was stenciled just below the ceiling; she had done that too.
On an impulse he went into the room and stood before the window,
pushing aside the sheer curtain to watch the snow, now nearly
eight inches high on the lampposts and the fences and the roofs.
It
was the sort of storm that rarely happened in Lexington, and the
steady white flakes, the silence, filled him with a sense of
excitement
and peace. It was a moment when all the disparate shards of
his life seemed to knit themselves together, every past sadness
and
disappointment, every anxious secret and uncertainty hidden now
beneath the soft white layers. Tomorrow would be quiet, the
world
subdued and fragile, until the neighborhood children came out to
break the stillness with their tracks and shouts and joy. He
remembered
such days from his own childhood in the mountains, rare moments
of escape when he went into the woods, his breathing
amplified and his voice somehow muffled by the heavy snow that
bent branches low, drifted over paths. The world, for a few
short
hours, transformed.
He stood there for a long time, until he heard her moving
quietly.
He found her sitting on the edge of their bed, her head bent,
her hands gripping the mattress.
"I think this is labor," she said, looking up. Her hair was
loose, a
strand caught on her lip. He brushed it back behind her ear. She
shook her head as he sat beside her. "I don't know. I feel
strange.
This crampy feeling, it comes and goes."
He helped her lie down on her side and then he lay down too,
massaging her back. "It's probably just false labor," he assured
her.
"It's three weeks early, after all, and first babies are usually
late."
This was true, he knew, he believed it as he spoke, and he was,
in
fact, so sure of it that after a time he drifted into sleep. He
woke to
find her standing over the bed, shaking his shoulder. Her robe,
her
hair, looked nearly white in the strange snowy light that filled
their
room.
"I've been timing them. Five minutes apart. They're strong, and
I'm scared."
He felt an inner surge then; excitement and fear tumbled
through him like foam pushed by a wave. But he had been trained
to be calm in emergencies, to keep his emotions in check, so he
was
able to stand without any urgency, take the watch, and walk with
her, slowly and calmly, up and down the hall. When the
contractions
came she squeezed his hand so hard he felt as if the bones in
his
fingers might fuse. The contractions were as she had said, five
minutes
apart, then four. He took the suitcase from the closet, feeling
numb suddenly with the momentousness of these events, long
expected but a surprise all the same. He moved, as she did, but
the
world slowed to stillness around them. He was acutely aware of
every action, the way breath rushed against his tongue, the way
her
feet slid uncomfortably into the only shoes she could still
wear, her
swollen flesh making a ridge against the dark gray leather. When
he took her arm he felt strangely as if he himself were
suspended in
the room, somewhere near the light fixture, watching them both
from above, noting every nuance and detail: how she trembled
with
a contraction, how his fingers closed so firmly and protectively
around her elbow. How outside, still, the snow was drifting
down.
He helped her into her green wool coat, which hung unbuttoned,
gaping around her belly. He found the leather gloves she'd
been wearing when he first saw her, too. It seemed important
that
these details be right. They stood together on the porch for a
moment,
stunned by the soft white world.
(c) 2005, Kim Edwards. Reproduced with the permission of the publisher, Penguin Group.
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