She was quiet for a moment. Then the questions came, and they were different now. Not the warm ones from before. These were building something.
"So he's a firefighter?"
"Yes, Mom."
"How many hours does the firehouse keep them?"
"Twenty-four-hour shifts, two or three a week. Sometimes more."
"And the salary. With a baby, I mean. Is it enough for the two of you, or would he need something else?"
"We're not together, Mom. We're not getting married."
She looked at me. The questions she'd been asking had been building toward a shape—a man, a marriage, a plan she could evaluate—and I'd just taken the shape away.
"So what is he, then? To her?"
"He wants to be her father."
"Wants to be." She repeated it back, and the emphasis was quiet but precise. "What does that mean? Does he want weekends? Does he want his name on things? Is he going to show up every day, or is he going to show up when it's convenient?"
"We haven't worked that out yet."
"You haven't worked it out." She nodded slowly. "Audrey, the baby is here. She's in the bassinet. What is there to work out?"
"We're figuring it out, Mom."
"Because a man who wants to be a father and a man who is a father are two different things." She wasn't raising her voice. She never raised her voice. "And if he's in and out—if he's there for the good parts and gone for the hard ones—that's worse than not having him at all. You know that."
I knew she believed that. I knew she believed it because she'd lived it.
"Just be careful what you make official, honey. Paperwork is hard to undo."
I didn't answer. The words landed and sat there, heavier than she meant them and exactly as heavy as she meant them, both at the same time.
She moved on. She pulled a sweater from the tote bag—small, soft, the exact shade of yellow I recognized from the yarn she'd been working with at the shop for weeks. One of several she'd knitted. My closet at home already had three.
"I want to stay," she said. "I'll come to your apartment, sweetheart. The first few weeks. You shouldn't be doing this alone."
This wasn’t a new offer. She had made it twice in the third trimester. I'd said no both times.
"I've got it, Mom. I have to do this on my own."
Her face did the small thing. Hurt for one beat, then folded away. She negotiated the same way she had negotiated since I drew the line five months ago.
"Then I'm coming over. A couple of times a week. Not to stay. Just to help."
"Okay. That would be good. Thank you."
She kissed the top of my head. She touched Nova's foot through the blanket. "I'm going to get you real food. You need to eat something that wasn't made by a hospital."
She left. The door clicked shut behind her, and I sat in the quiet with my mother's two warnings still in the air.
I woke to the clatter of a cart in the hallway. Nova breathing in the bassinet. A knock, and Tita came in with the vitals cuff and the clipboard.
Tita had been on the L&D floor longer than anyone. She'd trained half the nurses on this ward, including me. She checked my blood pressure, checked the IV line, and wrote something on the chart without commentary. Then she set the clipboard on my tray table.
"Birth certificate worksheet, honey. Fill it out when you're ready. I'll pick it up before lunch."
