Margot Early - Talking About My Baby

SHE DROVE SLOWLY, yet the low-slung station wagon hit rocks in the four-wheel-drive road. Her mother had offered to watch Laura, but Tara had declined. She didn’t want to be apart from her. You’re so precious. Blowing bubbles in her car seat.

Twilight bathed Tomboy. The ghostly skeleton of an uninhabited mining structure rose against the far rock walls. Closer by stood another deserted building, the Columbine, which had once been a bordello. Now the windows were boarded, like those of the houses across the road where miners had lived, but Tara drove with one elbow in order to direct an X made with her two index fingers toward the house of prostitution.

Had he bought that, too? Her mother had said “everything north of the road.”

Lights shone from a house set alone at the edge of the tundra. Decades ago, the mine owner had resided there, in a two-story cabin set eight feet above the road, at winter snow level. Subsequent owners had built onto the sides and back, adding the steep rooflines of a chalet, with outdoor shutters and balconies. A snowmobile near the side porch awaited the first storms.

Isaac McCrea had chosen a high and desolate paradise for his home, and Tara envied him the alpine wildflowers that would poke through the tundra, the grasslike slivers ice formed at that altitude, the alpenglow which would turn the peaks pink each night.

He must have heard her car. A tall shadow darkened a downstairs window, then moved away.

She parked, and when the motor died, she could hear music. Drums and singing.

HIS DOORBELL RANG, and he crossed the pine floor in his wool socks, calling over his shoulder to David, “I’m going to steal the scroll.”

Dice rolled on the kitchen table as he opened the door.

It was Francesca Walcott’s daughter with her newborn. He remembered an observation earlier that day. She didn’t look like a woman who’d recently given birth.

A black cat shot between his feet and leaped to the porch railing. Arching its back, it hissed.

“Don’t take it personally. She always acts that way.”

Tara heard a trace of an accent. How could she have missed it earlier? She held out a cardboard box. “I made you some pies. The bottom one might be a little crunched. I had to stack them. There’s cardboard in between.”

“Smells great. We’re not picky.” Pumpkin. Like his mom’s. “Come in.”

“Thanks.” Her grin was raw and unbridled, radiating sexuality. When she stepped inside, he noticed she was tall, five-ten maybe. Long straight hair the shade of a walnut fell down her back, and her eyes were almost the same color. They swept the foyer, the great beams, the ancient floors, the loft. Isaac realized what she must see—the laundry heaped on a chair, the dishes in the sink, Barbie dolls and Micro Machines on the rug, a cat’s kill. He grabbed a snow shovel from the porch and scooped the last outside.

The three children gathered at the table were neater than their surroundings. The little girl wore blue flannel pajamas, her long thick hair in two braids. Dirty dishes covered two counters. The music came from upstairs.

“You steal the scroll,” one of the boys said to Isaac.

“Okay, I’m going to read it.” Isaac remembered his manners belatedly. “Hold up, gang. We have a visitor. This is—”

“Tara.” She grabbed a chair at the table and surreptitiously brushed off crumbs before sitting. In Mexico, out in the country, the women’s homes had dirt floors. She’d loved visiting each home for prenatal visits and births. Years ago. “Who’s who, here? And what are you playing?”

“Dungeons & Dragons,” David said. As the boys dove in with answers, Isaac shut the door. Why was she here? The eviction? She couldn’t possibly think this would sway his decision about the Victorian.

And that couldn’t be her baby.

“Dad’s a thief. We just found this scroll, and he stole it.”

Isaac’s thoughts drifted back to the game, and he winced. “I forgot to ask Oliver to identify it.”

“That’s true.” David, his younger son, held their destinies in his hands. “And when you read the scroll, you begin to grow a beard. It grows at a rate of one foot per hour.”

Isaac and his fellow adventurers groaned.

“It’s okay, Daddy,” said Danielle. “Oliver has les ciseaux. La magique!” Her heavily accented English turned to French, then Kinyarwanda, until she covered her mouth to keep the words inside. The gesture stabbed Isaac. He’d been too intense about her speaking English.

Daddy was easy. She’d known him as Daddy all her life. Having the children call him Dad or Daddy had been his and Heloise’s main concession to the obvious fact that he was not Rwandan, not Hutu, not Tutsi, not Belgian. American.

Tara stared at Danielle with brilliant, admiring eyes. “You know more languages than me!”

“Not English.” Danielle sighed.

“You shouldn’t have read the scroll, Dad,” said Oliver, their magician. “We’ll try the magic scissors, but I think we’re going to have to pay someone to remove the curse.”

“Your English is very good.” Tara saw something dart across the shadows in the kitchen. A mouse. Someone should let the cat back in.

You sure made yourself at home, Isaac thought. “Everyone who wants a piece of pie needs to wash a plate.”

Three chairs moved in unison.

Another cat, dark gray, stalked toward the corner. Get him. Get that mouse. Tara glanced up at Isaac. “You have a great family.”

“Thanks. Shall I wash a plate for you?”

“Oh, I can wash my own.”

She began to rise, and he waved her down. “You’re a guest. Dishes just aren’t a high priority around here.”

“They never have been with me, either.” But someone better get a handle on the crumbs.

“And guys,” he told the children, “that’s a wrap for tonight. After the pie, go to bed.”

None of the children chose to eat at the table, instead settling all over the rustic furniture and the tattered rug that covered the center of the distressed-wood floor. In the kitchen, the mouse had become a toy for the charcoal cat.

Isaac set a piece of pie and a fork in front of Tara. “Something to drink?”

“Water, please.”

He brought it, then his own, and they were alone at the table while the kids carried on their own conversation about the game, lapsing into Kinyarwanda—then, with a glance at him, returning to English. Rules for guests.

Tara tried to kick off the conversation. “How do you like being a doctor in Precipice?” She tucked a finger into the newborn’s tiny hand.

“It’s nice.” Calling himself to the conversation, Isaac shrugged.

Tara thought he sounded as though he was just visiting.

The baby began to wake, and she lifted the child from the sling. “Hello, Laura. Hello, hello, sweet princess.”

Laura. A coincidence that this baby should share a name with one of his dead children, one of the triplets. Only Danielle had survived the birth, to become his brother’s namesake three days later, when he had named her sisters, too, the sisters he’d dug up from the dirt in which they were buried. As he’d dug to find Heloise. His hands itched to hold this Laura. Could holding her be part of healing?

He reached out.

So the doctor likes babies. Tara filed the thought away. What was his story? What had happened to the children’s mother? Was she Hutu or Tutsi? One or the other, surely.

“This is Laura Estrella,” she said. Her hands to his. Big, long-fingered hands, man hands, beautiful hands.

The baby was all eyes. She was also wet, Isaac observed, and Tara hadn’t brought a diaper bag inside. “How many days old?”

“Two weeks.” Two weeks of finishing business at Maternity House—without letting anyone know about Laura. Then, packing her birth records and midwifery texts, settling into a routine with Laura. But this man would know, would know she hadn’t given birth to the child. I’m looking after her for her mother. Sure. Why not? Tara said the words, then followed them up. “I was working at Maternity House in Sagrado, Texas. Her mother was from Mexico and came up to have the baby. She’s young and doesn’t want to take care of Laura yet.” A lie. It was the worst kind of lie, partly true.