Christopher Beha - Arts & Entertainments - A Novel

“Yes, I do.”

“Let me show you how to hold her.”

She approached with one arm holding the baby, who was swaddled so tightly in a blue hospital blanket that she might have been a package about to be dropped in the mail. Eddie reached out his arm and the nurse placed the bundle on him. The baby was smaller than his arm from the elbow to the wrist, and Eddie felt terrified of her. How fragile, this thing that had been placed into his care. But she seemed to fit so naturally.

“Say hello to your oldest daughter,” the nurse said. “This is Martha Hartley.”

“It seemed appropriate,” Susan said. “Martha’s the one who made this all possible.”

Eddie looked into the child’s tiny, milky eyes. She twisted her mouth in what might have been a yawn or a burp. He’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

“She looks like you,” he told Susan.

The other girls were set down, one on Eddie’s other arm and one on his lap.

“Meet Justine and Regina.”

“Regina?” Eddie asked.

“I decided that one should be named after Rex,” Susan explained. “He was really there for me when things were bad. I hope that doesn’t seem weird.”

Eddie didn’t care what they were called. They were his, and they were all connected in a place where names had no meaning.

“Why don’t we get a picture of the happy family?” the nurse asked, though everything was already being captured by camera. She took Susan’s phone and stood in front of Eddie and the girls.

“Smile,” she said.

As soon as the picture was taken, the girls began to cry in their rolling bassinets, first one and then all three together.

“They’re hungry,” Susan said.

“What do we do?”

“The nurses showed me, but I need your help.”

Eddie propped Susan up with pillows and brought the girls over, one at a time. Susan opened her hospital gown and took two of them while Eddie fed the third a bottle.

“Come over here,” Susan said.

He sat beside her on the bed, and the entire family was together.

There was so much he meant to say, but he couldn’t while the cameras were on. It wasn’t that any of it conflicted with Moody’s story, just that he didn’t want it to be broadcast to the world. He wanted it to belong to them. Susan turned up from feeding and looked at him. What passed between them then lasted only an instant. It wasn’t something that could be captured or reproduced, but Eddie was almost certain it was real.

THEY LEFT THE HOSPITAL two days later. The sidewalk was filled as though for a parade. As he pushed Susan’s wheelchair through the oversized revolving door, Eddie read the signs being waved at them. “Congratulations Eddie and Susan.” “The Hartleys Give Me Hope.” When they came into sight, a cheer spread up the block. Guards created a path to the black Escalade waiting on the corner. Eddie helped Susan up and clicked the three baby carriers into place. A camera mounted on the back of the driver’s seat tracked Eddie’s motion while he struggled to climb in after them. The shake of the starting car sent the girls into a syncopated round of screams.

“I guess we just let them cry it out,” Susan said.

Eddie watched through the front windshield as the driver pulled into traffic. When the light changed, they continued west.

“Where are you going?” Eddie asked. “Our apartment is in the other direction.”

“I’m taking you to your new place,” the driver answered. “Plenty of room for the family.”

They turned uptown on Park Avenue. In the nineties, they turned onto a side street and pulled up in front of a four-story brownstone that made Eddie think of the places where his richer St. Albert’s classmates had lived. The driver got out first and opened the curbside door. He helped them both to the street and carefully handed down the babies. Hal was waiting on the sidewalk with his camera. He followed them to the front door but stayed behind as they crossed the threshold. Eddie didn’t see any cameras in the front hall, which meant that they might be anywhere. A tall woman with neatly cut black hair greeted them.

“Mr. and Mrs. Hartley,” she said in a perfect British accent. “My name is Priscilla, and I’ll be managing your house.” She hadn’t had that accent, Eddie remembered, when she’d stood beside him at the bar and told him that Susan was calling his name. “Why don’t I show you to the nursery first, then I can give you a full tour of the place?”

A banner above the nursery door read “The Von Verdant Gallery welcomes home Martha, Justine, and Regina.” Below it was a painting of a pink stork carrying three bundles, signed by Graham Turnbough. Susan grabbed Eddie as they walked inside.

“It’s got everything,” she said. “Can you believe it?”

Eddie looked over the three cribs, the three changing tables, the pile of diapers.

“These diapers are a gift from our friends at Pampers,” Priscilla said. “And Fisher-Price has outfitted the nursery with phthalate-free toys appropriate for ages zero to three months.”

“That sounds good,” Eddie said as they each set one of the babies in a crib.

“The nurses and the nanny get here tomorrow,” Priscilla continued. “But we’re on our own tonight.”

“How big a staff have we got?” Eddie asked.

“The numbers aren’t important. It’s just to make sure the children have what they need.”

They went through the rest of the house, beginning with the home gym in the basement and ending with the pool inside the rooftop bubble. Eddie imagined his girls growing up thinking this was just what life was like. On their way back downstairs, they stopped on the third floor.

“I’ve got another surprise for you,” Priscilla said.

She opened a door to reveal a room filled with stretched canvases on easels and a table covered in brushes and paints.

“My own studio,” Susan said. She turned to Eddie. “Did you have anything to do with this?”

Eddie shrugged.

“I’ve always wanted to paint,” Susan said to Priscilla, who seemed to exist in part as a stand-in for the audience. “All these years working at the gallery, I really wanted to be an artist myself.”

They both now looked expectantly at Eddie.

“She’s very talented,” he said, improvising. “All she needed was a little push, and I think this might be it.”

At the end of the tour, Priscilla left them sitting together on the living room couch. Eddie wanted to say something, but one of the babies started crying, and the others quickly joined in. They walked to the nursery together.

“I guess this is our life,” Susan said. “We’re going to have to grab private moments where we can.”

Just after ten o’clock, all three girls fell asleep at the same time. Eddie and Susan used the chance to get ready for bed. In their room, Eddie discovered that his closet was filled with the clothes he’d given away on the street.

By the time he’d brushed his teeth and undressed, Susan was already under the covers.

“Get in,” she told Eddie. “Who knows how long we’ve got until we’re up again.”

Eddie lay down beside her. He had so much to say, but the camera was still on.

“I really did miss you,” he said.

“Why don’t we turn out the light,” Susan answered.

“I love you,” Eddie told her, once the room was dark.

From the production suite next door, Moody engaged the night vision on the bedroom camera. In the darkness, Handsome Eddie Hartley reached for his wife so naturally it was impossible to say whether he even knew we were watching.

CHRISTOPHER BEHAis a deputy editor at Harper’s magazine. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review , the London Review of Books, The Believer, Bookforum , and elsewhere. He is the author of the novel What Happened to Sophie Wilder and the memoir The Whole Five Feet . A New York City native, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife.