Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

Claudia’s baby came two days later — a girl. Frances, they named her. Ian said, “Well, I was almost right. It’s almost my birthday.”

“Cheer up,” Bee told him. “There’s always the next one.”

“Next one! Good grief.”

The next one of Claudia’s, they both meant. It never occurred to them that Lucy’s baby might arrive on his birthday. But that was what happened.

He had spent the evening at Cicely’s, where she and his friends threw him a party. When he got home he found his mother waiting up for him. “Guess what!” she said. “Lucy had her baby.”

“What, so soon?”

“A little girl: Daphne. She’s small but healthy, breathing on her own … Danny called about an hour ago and he was so excited he could hardly talk.”

“After this he won’t be fit to live with,” Ian said gloomily.

“And Lucy’s doing fine. Oh, won’t the neighbors tease us? They’ll be counting on their fingers, except in this case it’s obvious that … you want to go with me to the hospital tomorrow?”

“I have school tomorrow,” Ian said.

Besides, he had never been much interested in infants.

He didn’t see the new baby for a week, in fact, what with one thing and another. Neither did Claudia, who was stuck at home with her own baby. So on Sunday, when everyone gathered at the Bedloes’ for dinner, Danny made a big production of introducing his daughter. “Ta-da!” he trumpeted, and he entered the house bearing her high in both hands — a tiny cluster of crochet work. “Here she is, folks! Miss Daphne Bedloe.” Lucy looked paler than usual, but she laughed as she bent to unbutton Thomas’s jacket.

“Let’s see her,” Claudia commanded from the couch. She had constructed a kind of nest there and was nursing Franny. Ian had retreated to the other side of the room as soon as he saw Claudia fumbling under her blouse, and he made no move now to come closer. All newborns looked more or less alike, he figured. And this one might still be sort of … fetus-shaped. He hung back and dug his hands in his pockets and traced an arc in the rug with one sneaker.

But Danny said, “Don’t you want to see too, Ian?” and he sounded so hurt that Ian had to say, “Huh? Oh. Sure.” He took his hands from his pockets and approached.

Danny set her on the couch next to Claudia and started peeling off layers. First the crocheted blanket, then an inner blanket, then a bonnet. His fingers seemed too thick for the task, but finally he said, “There!” and straightened up, grinning.

What was that fairy tale? “Sleeping Beauty,” maybe, or “Snow White.” Skin as white as snow and hair as black as coal and lips as red as roses. So she was prettier than most other babies, yes, but still not all that interesting. Until she opened her eyes.

She opened her eyes and fixed Ian with a thoughtful, considering stare, and Ian felt a sudden loosening in his chest. It seemed she had reached out and pulled a string from somewhere deep inside him. It seemed she knew him. He blinked.

“Your birthday-mate,” Danny was saying. “Or birthmate, or whatever they call it. Isn’t she something?”

To regain his distance, Ian let his eyes slide over to Claudia. He found her looking directly into his face, meaningfully, narrowly. He couldn’t think what she wanted to convey; he didn’t understand her intensity. Then it came to him, as clearly as if she had spoken.

This is not a premature baby .

He was so astonished that he let his eyes slide back again, forgetting why he had glanced away in the first place. And it was true: she might be small but her cheeks were round, and her little fists were dimpled. She looked nothing like those “Life Before Birth” photos in Life magazine.

“Isn’t she a love?” Bee asked. “Two loves,” she added, blowing a kiss toward Franny. And Claudia said, “She’s a beauty, Lucy.”

Ian turned to study Claudia. She was smiling now. Her face — a younger, smoother version of Bee’s — seemed relaxed and peaceful. The hitch had been smoothed over. Not a trace of it remained. Here was their newest member, born early but in perfect health, thank God, and everything in the Bedloe family was as wonderful as always.

Well, hold on (Ian told himself). Don’t be too hasty. Daphne was no longer brand-new, after all. She’d had six whole days to catch up before he laid eyes on her. Best to put the subject right out of his mind.

But over the next few weeks it kept sidling back, somehow.

If Danny and Lucy had been going together forever, why, a seven-months baby (quote, unquote) would have been something to wink at. But they hadn’t been going together forever. Nine months ago they hadn’t even known each other. Lucy had not yet walked into the post office to plunk her famous package on Danny’s counter. She might have been dating someone else entirely.

In school last year a senior had had to get married to a girl he swore he hardly knew. Or rather, he swore everybody knew her. It was Ian’s first intimation of the fix a man could find himself in. Women were the ones who held the reins, it emerged. Women were up close to things. Men stood off at one remove and were forced to accept women’s reading of whatever happened. Probably this was what Ian’s father had been trying to tell him in that talk they’d had a few years ago, but Ian hadn’t fully understood it at the time.

One night he asked Cicely, “What do you think of Lucy?”

“Oh, I just love her,” Cicely said.

“Yes, but—”

“She’s always so easy to talk to; she always asks me these questions that show she’s been listening. Real questions, I mean. Not those who-cares questions most other grownups ask.”

“Yes …” Ian said, because he had noticed the same thing himself. Lucy had a grave, focused manner of looking at him. He could imagine she had been reflecting upon him seriously ever since their last meeting.

“I just think Danny is lucky to have her,” Cicely said, and Ian said, “Well, yes, he is. Yes, he is lucky.”

Ian had quit his job with Sid ’n’ Ed’s when school reopened; his mother made him. This was his senior year and she wanted him to concentrate on getting into a halfway decent college. The last thing he needed was to waste his time hauling other people’s mattresses, she said.

But what she didn’t seem to realize was that a person his age had to have a social life, and a social life took money. By February, he was broke. So when Lucy called and asked if he would baby-sit — a job he hated, and one he was ill equipped for besides, as youngest in his family — he didn’t immediately refuse. “Well,” he said, stalling, “but I don’t even know how to change a diaper.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” Lucy told him. “I would change her just before I left. And most likely she’d be sleeping; this would be afternoons.”

“Oh. Afternoons.”

“Just a couple of hours after school now and then. Please, Ian? I’m about to lose my mind cooped up all day. And I can’t keep imposing on your mother, and Mrs. Myrdal won’t come anymore and Cicely’s got cheerleading practice. I just want to get out on my own a while — go shopping or take a walk with nobody hanging onto me. I’d pay you a dollar an hour.”

“You would?” he said.

On the rare occasions Claudia had talked him into sitting, the pay had been fifty cents.

“And Thomas and Agatha have taken such a shine to you. They’re the ones who suggested you.”

“Oh, well, in that case,” Ian said. “If it’s a matter of popular demand …”

So he started walking over from school one or two afternoons a week and staying till dusk. It wasn’t a job that required much work, but somehow he found it far more tiring than Sid ’n’ Ed’s. No wonder Lucy wanted a break! This was the coldest, grayest time of year, and the stark modern furniture that had seemed so elegant in the summer had a bleak feel in the winter. Toys and picture books covered the white vinyl couch. Sheaves of Agatha’s pulpy first-grade papers lay scattered across the rug. Thomas and Agatha had the used, slightly tarnished look that even the best-tended children take on late in the day, and they pressed in upon him too closely, drilling him with questions. Was Ian ever going to play in the World Series? Did he know how to drive a car? A motorcycle? An airplane? Did he and Cicely go to many balls? (This last from Agatha, who had a big crush on Cicely.) Gradually he forgot that they had once been tongue-tied in his presence.