She made her drink and took it onto the front porch and sat down in a wicker rocking chair and sipped and rocked and sipped and rocked.
Then one of the housekeepers saw her and said, “Mrs. Fernweh, you don’t look so hot. I think you may be aboutto have a couple babies.”
“I had just figured that out myself,” my mother said, and raised her glass in a toast.
She hadn’t wanted to rush her drink.
My father worked as a fisherman; my mother sent word down to the docks that the babies were coming, and then she got into her pickup truck and drove herself to the small hospital, so small it wasn’t even named, so small there were only five parking spaces and four were free. She parked and went inside and filled out some forms and walked herself down to the birthing room, which was also the emergency room and the surgery room and the recovery room and, on Friday nights, the movie room.
I came first, a full five hours before my sister. I came out easily, noisily, red-faced and screaming, hardly half an hour after my mother had lain down.
I came out, and then the rains started, and then the doctor told my mother,Hold off on pushing again, at least for a while, this second one seems to be a little stubborn.
“Has anybody heard from my husband?” my mother asked, smiling down at me, wrapped in that generic hospital baby blanket that not even By-the-Sea’s small hospital was lacking.
Outside, the skies had unzipped themselves and the rain fell so thickly that all you could see were lines of gray against gray.
But nobody had heard from my father.
“The rain is heavy; it should drive the boats in,” the nurse, Emery Grace, said. “He’ll be here soon, maybe even in time for number two.”
My mom patted her stomach gingerly. “This one’s called Mary.” She touched my forehead. “This one’s Georgina.”
“Georgina, that’s beautiful.”
“It’s a family name. Has somebody called the docks?”
Emery shook her head sadly. “It’s the phone lines, Penny. The storm’s knocked them all down.”
“Can I get up? If it’s going to be a while?”
“You’re really not supposed to.”
“I just want to sit by the window,” my mother said.
So Emery raised the back of my mom’s hospital bed and undid the brakes and rolled the whole thing over to the window, with me still wrapped in that blanket, trying to figure out how to nurse.
When I’d had enough milk, my mother turned me around and tucked my head under her chin, and we watched the rain come down while we waited for my sister, while we waited for my father.
But only one of them would ever show up.
Nobody ever saw my father again. His boat went down in the storm; the small crew was lost.
Now I think of him whenever it rains. And sometimes—though I know it’s impossible—it rains whenever I think of him.
That was what I was dreaming about—the storm, theflooded island, my mother with her two small babies in a rowboat—when Mary threw herself on my bed the morning after the bonfire, so early that the room was still dark. My head pounded—half from the cinnamon whiskey, half from the lack of sleep. I groaned and tried to hit her.
“You overslept, and Mom is pi-i-issed,” Mary sang, catching my hand and forcing something into it. I cracked an eyelid: a banana muffin. I took a bite and chewed.
“My alarm’s set,” I mumbled through muffin.
“Yeah, I checked, and you actually set it for sixtonight, which is very cute wishful thinking on your part. It’s almost seven now, and I’ve been ironing napkins for an hour.”
I grabbed Mary’s arm with my free hand and pulled myself up to a sitting position. The room tilted dangerously. She held a mug of steaming coffee out to me, and I took it, gulping gratefully, not even caring about the inevitable mouth blisters I was giving myself. That little piece of skin right behind my top teeth was already shriveling up.
“Did you sleep well? I slept really well,” Mary said, stretching her arms over her head luxuriantly.
“Check-in isn’t tillnoon,” I whined.
