Page 30 of Under the Stars
She stared at her toes, propped up on Mike’s lap and just visible over the top of her belly.
So there it was at last, out in the open.
The thought that had lurked around the corners of her mind since the moment she’d seen the positive result on the pregnancy test—the guilty idea that had poked its nose in all winter, all spring, whenever she looked down at her peculiar new body, this bizarre shape that didn’t belong to her, was not Meredith at all, could not possibly be the growing body of an actual baby attaching to Meredith like an anchor for the rest of her whole entire life.
“Why not?” she said defiantly. “Since you’re so eager to be a dad.”
Mike’s thumbs started moving again, stroking hard along the arches of her feet. His lips pressed together so tight, they almost disappeared. He looked down at his hands.
“Mike?” she said. “Say something.”
He looked back up. “Mair. I think your water just broke.”
—
They had a plan in place. Mike’s buddy had an old Bayliner he’d left at their disposal, and Meredith had kept a packed bag in the corner of her bedroom for a week now.
Mike thundered through the house, calling for Isobel.
They bundled Meredith into the pickup and trundled up the driveway—Mike at the wheel, Isobel perched in the middle of the bench seat.
He was about to peel onto West Cliff Road when Isobel struck the dashboard with her open palm and yelled, STOP!
“For Chrissakes, Isobel!” he yelled back. “What is it now?”
“I forgot my camera.”
Eventually they made it to the marina and the Bayliner and bumped across Winthrop Island Sound to the mainland and the New London hospital maternity wing, where Meredith gave birth by cesarean section forty-three hours later.
“Never again,” she gasped, as the nurse placed the squalling red baby girl on her chest.
“See? Meredith Junior,” Mike said, touching the back of her tiny head with the tip of one reverent finger.
“No,” said Meredith. “Her name is Audrey.”
—
Because of the protracted labor and the emergency C-section, they wanted to keep Meredith in the hospital for a couple of nights. For observation, they said, but Meredith figured it was also because she lived on an island. Once she was discharged, she was out of range.
“Two more nights in here?” Meredith muttered.
She was trying to give the baby her bottle, but Audrey burst into tears whenever her mouth clamped on the nipple.
Mike had left to get some sleep on the sofa in the waiting room, leaving Isobel in the armchair in the hospital room.
The other bed was still empty, thank God.
“I can’t believe you’re giving her a bottle,” said Isobel. “Even I breastfed you. ”
“The whole idea of milk coming out of my boobs just grosses me out, to be honest. Let alone some poor baby sucking it all up.”
“Believe me, you get used to it fast.”
Meredith peered down at the round, ugly face in the crook of her elbow.
Audrey had finally figured out how to latch onto the latex nipple and sucked frantically, eyes wide with surprise.
Her head was shaped like a cone because she’d spent so much time in the birth canal.
The nurse said the bones would pop back within a few weeks, but Meredith didn’t see how.
She was positive her daughter’s skull would remain in this shape forever, that Audrey would go through life looking like a space alien.
“Mom,” she said, “why did you stay on Winthrop all your life?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
“You could have done anything. You’re smart and gorgeous. You could have married Dad, you could have had a great life somewhere.”
“Because I like it on the island. It’s peaceful. Anyway, your grandmother needed me. After my father died. And there was no money.”
“Dad had money. Has money. Or you could have gone off and made your own way.”
“Oh, honey. It was the fifties. Girls didn’t do that. Nice girls, anyway.”
“They did if they had to. If they wanted it bad enough.”
“Well, I didn’t, that’s all.”
The baby pulled her mouth away from the bottle and started to make those pathetic little coughing, mewling sounds, like she didn’t even have the breath to cry.
“What’s wrong with her?” Meredith said.
“She needs to burp, honey. Put her against your shoulder and pat her back. Oh, forget it. Give her to me.”
Gratefully Meredith handed over the bundle. Isobel propped it up above her right breast and beat a gentle rhythm against the white cotton.
“What if I have to leave?” Meredith said.
“Leave? Why? What about Mike?”
“What if I’m not cut out for motherhood, Mom? What if the baby’s better off staying on Winthrop with you and Mike?”
Isobel laughed. “Honey, every new mother feels that way. My God, I nearly threw you out the window after you were born. I was so mad I was stuck with you, while your father could just waltz in and out like his life hadn’t just turned upside down .
But things worked out. You learn to put the baby first and then the rest just follows. ”
“But that’s what I’m saying, Mom. I’m too selfish. I don’t want to put the baby first. I can’t . I’m twenty years old, I’ve got my whole life—”
From Isobel’s shoulder came the kind of luxurious belch that exited Mike after he’d pounded an entire can of beer.
“Holy shit,” said Meredith. “Was that her ?”
“Wait until you see what comes out the other end, honey.”
Instead of handing the baby back, Isobel pressed her nose against Audrey’s hair, as if she were analyzing the scent of her.
“But how ?” said Meredith. “How did things just work out ?”
“Well, I guess I fell in love with you, that’s all.” Isobel yawned and looked over at the unoccupied bed. “Do you think they’d mind if I slept in that for a few hours?”
—
The second evening, Meredith insisted that Isobel and Mike both go back to the island and get some sleep in their own beds.
“We’ll be fine,” she told them. “You can take the ten-thirty tomorrow morning and be here in plenty of time. Discharge takes forever, the nurse said.”
“If you insist,” said Isobel, briskly. “Come on, Mike. If we hurry, we can catch the six o’clock.”
The moment the door closed behind them, Audrey’s eyes flew open. She made a couple of desperate sobs and began to bawl.
The sound was so weird. It wasn’t like the way babies cried in the movies—steady, sensible, capable howls.
This was more like mewling, only amplified—panicky, visceral, like an animal caught in a trap.
Did all newborns sound like that? Something was probably wrong with her.
Meredith pressed the button for the nurse.
“The baby’s crying,” she said, when the nurse arrived.
The nurse managed a patient smile. “Let me bring her to you. We don’t want to burst those stitches, do we?”
“No, we don’t,” said Meredith.
The nurse lifted Audrey out of the bassinet and deposited her in Meredith’s arms. Meredith held the baby against her chest and patted her back, the way Isobel had done.
The baby took a couple of gulps and started off again at an even more desperate pitch, gave it her all, blowing out her tiny larynx with the force of her craving for whatever it was that Meredith couldn’t give her.
“Maybe she’s hungry?” the nurse said. She smiled encouragingly at Meredith and nodded at her chest.
“I’m bottle-feeding,” said Meredith.
The smile disappeared. “Oh. Well, I guess I’ll fetch a fresh one, then.”
The nurse swept out in an undertow of disapproval. Meredith patted the baby’s back and said, There, there.
Audrey took a deep, shuddering breath and blew out her lungs.
Meredith stared at the opposite wall. From its mounting in the corner, the television played with the volume off.
It was the local news and there was a fire somewhere.
Several trucks had responded. The reporter on the scene wore an expression of heartfelt concern as she spoke into the camera. Behind her, a blurry chaos unfolded.
Meredith bent her face to the baby’s hair and inhaled, the way Isobel had done. Audrey didn’t smell like a person at all. She smelled like a puppy. Or maybe all babies smelled like that? Meredith closed her eyes and focused her attention on the tiny, heaving, noisy barnacle attached to her chest.
Where the hell was the nurse with that bottle?
She couldn’t do this. This creature, this thing crying her needs all over Meredith’s shoulder—she felt nothing for it.
She felt such a void of tenderness, it scared her.
Maybe she was a sociopath. Maybe she was just incapable of love.
Maybe there was something wrong with her, something broken. Maybe she was empty inside.
What the actual fuck had she been thinking, keeping the pregnancy? It must have been the hormones. What happened on that boat last summer, it had fucked her up. Now it was too late. She’d given birth to this baby. Had brought it into the world. What the hell was she supposed to do with it?
Calm down, she told herself. Think. Isn’t that why you sent Mike and Mom away?
To think. To sort all this out in her head—without Mike’s anxious face willing her to just be a mother to this child, without Isobel sitting there as a shining example of what happened when you gave up your future to care for a baby.
She shifted Audrey awkwardly to her left arm and stared at her squashed little old-man face.
All babies look like Winston Churchill, her mother had said cheerfully.
This one looked like Winston Churchill if Winston Churchill had a fuzzy blond cone for a head.
Helpless and angry and deformed. In her mind, Meredith saw a gray future stretch out before her.
Dark Winthrop winters and hot Winthrop summers, the same damn thing day after day; the summer families coming and going while Meredith remained imprisoned, taking care of this child that was like a stranger to her.
A strange, feral marsupial. The outside world appearing as posters on her wall.
In her arms, the baby squalled rage at her. No wonder. Poor little baby. She needed someone who understood her, someone who loved her.
Not Meredith.
Again, the slithering thought— Mike.
The way Mike looked into Audrey’s eyes as if he’d known her all his life. The way he held her in his arms and crooned at her.
Mike would love her. Mike would keep her safe.
Mike would never leave his baby for someone else to raise.
Where the fuck was that nurse with the bottle?
—
She thought it was better not to leave a note. She didn’t want to explain herself—there was no excuse, after all, for what she was about to do.
The nurse had arrived with the bottle and Meredith had fed the baby.
She wasn’t completely devoid of a sense of responsibility.
Had managed to coax a burp out of her, like Isobel had done.
Had climbed out of bed, careful not to strain the stitches, and swaddled up Audrey in her cotton blanket, the way the nurse had shown her, and laid her in the bassinet, where the baby now stared quietly at some object a million miles away, neither awake nor asleep—just relieved, probably, that she had finally gotten rid of this unnatural stranger who masqueraded as her mother.
Meredith took off her hospital gown and folded it on the bed, then put on her regular clothes with excruciating care for her stitches, her torn muscles, her exhaustion.
She’d thought that once the baby was no longer inside your uterus, it would shrink back into place like a deflated balloon, but she was wrong about that too.
She still looked pregnant, just not as pregnant as before. Well, her coat would hide that.
She stared at her overnight bag. When she’d packed it, she’d slid an envelope full of cash into the inner pocket—everything she’d saved over the Christmases and birthdays of her life. Enough to get started. Just in case.
Just do it, she thought. Like the sportswear ad. Don’t think, just do it.
She heard the click of the door handle and turned. Her brain, spinning for some excuse to tell the nurse—what she was doing out of bed, fully clothed—froze in confusion at the sight of the man who stood in the doorway, staring at her.
“I think you have the wrong room,” she heard herself say.
“Are you Meredith Fisher?” he said.
She almost said No . But when she opened her mouth, the Yes came out. Maybe she’d already told her quota of lies, and this was what happened to you after you hit the number. You had to tell the truth.
The man smiled and allowed the door to close behind him.
“My name is Harlan Walker,” he said. “And I believe that’s my grandchild behind you.”