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“You think I’m beautiful?” Brianna asked, but the tone implied that she knew she was beautiful and was saying it more for form. Once, I couldn’t have told the difference, but dating other women had taught me more about the different ways there were to be female than actually being a woman ever had.
“You know you are beautiful, beautiful bait,” Olaf said, and the voice was almost achingly low, but there was no heat of his beast making him growl—it was testosterone or an act. I’d ask later, maybe.
“Bait,” she whispered, and leaned her upper body toward him as if she didn’t realize she’d done it, like it was gravity and he was a heavenly body pulling her inward.
I looked at Nicky for a clue. The last thing I’d expected was for Olaf to flirt with this woman. Nicky raised eyebrows above his glasses, which was a version of a shrug for him.
One of the babies started to cry, and just like that the spell, or whatever, was broken. Brianna got up and went to check on her baby. She picked up the crying infant, the one dressed in yellow, but then the one in lavender started to cry for attention. Brianna tried to just pick up the second baby, but the child had gotten her leg hooked on something and was stuck.
Brianna turned to
me. “Can you hold her for just a second? I need two hands.” She didn’t wait for me to answer, but just shoved the baby at me. It was like having something thrown at you. You just automatically put your hands up. Suddenly I was holding a baby while Brianna knelt and tried to free the other one’s leg.
I grasped the baby awkwardly, like I was afraid she’d break. That seemed silly, so I tried to hold her closer, a little less like I thought she’d explode and more like she was a small person who probably needed to feel like the adult holding her wasn’t about to drop her. The baby still had tears drying on her face, but she stopped crying and stared at me with wide dark eyes like she knew I wasn’t her mom. I stared back. I wasn’t sure when I’d held a baby this young. Maybe when my younger brother was a baby, which had been when I was a child myself.
The baby was round and strong and very firm, but still strangely delicate. I couldn’t explain it even to myself, but I could feel the potential of all she would ever be in my arms, as if her grown-up self was inside just waiting for time to let her out, but at the same time she seemed fragile and in need of protection so that she could grow into all that promise. Would she always be as solemn as she was right now, studying my face like she’d memorize it? It was like she was judging me. Would this adult take care of her? Would she drop her? Would she feed her? Would she leave her for the wild animals on some hillside, or would she love and protect her? And just like that I knew I would protect her, because she was small and couldn’t protect herself and that was what you’re supposed to do with babies. It was like some switch inside of me got turned on, and I suddenly wondered if I felt this about a stranger’s baby, what would it be like to hold my own? For the first time, having that thought didn’t scare me. Did babies give off pheromones or something that made having your own baby seem like a better idea? Fuckers, and yet I held the solemn baby in my arms, and it felt . . . right somehow. Stupid biological clock.
I tried to be angry about it, but I couldn’t, not while I was holding her. I heard myself asking, “What’s her name?”
“Heidi,” Brianna said.
The baby didn’t look like a Heidi to me, but then what did a Heidi look like? I guess newborns didn’t look like any name; they were all so unfinished and tiny whenever I visited friends and their newborns. By the time they had enough personality to earn a name, it was too late, and they were Heidi, or Frankie, or Anita. Weird to think that the name I thought of as mine had probably not matched me once either.
“She likes you,” Brianna said, standing beside me with the other twin.
“She seems like she’s thinking serious thoughts,” I said.
Brianna frowned and then said, “Thank you for saying that. I told my mother-in-law that, and she told me babies don’t think that deeply at this age, but Heidi is always watching, studying the world like she’s memorizing it all. Clara is the one who does everything first, and Heidi hangs back and waits to see how it goes. My mother says that Heidi is shy, and Clara is outgoing, and she’s right, but it’s more like Heidi is cautious like Daryl, and Clara is like me, trying anything once.”
“Heidi and Clara, like the characters in the book Heidi,” I said.
Brianna looked a little embarrassed but nodded. She hugged Clara and said, “It was my favorite book when I was a little girl. Most people don’t even recognize the names or remember the book.”
“I read it when I was a little girl, and I remember the Shirley Temple movie.”
“I loved that movie,” Brianna said.
“They played all the Shirley Temple movies in the afternoon on one of the old cable channels when I was little.”
“I loved watching all those on summer afternoons with my sister and mother.” When Brianna smiled, her face appeared younger and happier with the memory.
Her reaction made me smile back. “I watched them with my mother.” In my head, I added, Before she died, but the memory of watching them with her on summer afternoons was still a happy memory. “I totally forgot about the Shirley Temple film festival. Isn’t that what they called it?”
“Yeah, I think you’re right. What was your favorite movie?”
“The Little Princess, I think.”
“Oh, that was a good one. Mine was Heidi,” she said, laughing, and I found myself laughing with her.
Clara joined in with the laughter, and after a second, so did Heidi. Nicky joined in on the laughter, because that was what you’re supposed to do as a social animal. I watched the baby’s face light up with laughter, and it made me happy. Damn it, hormones. My life would not work with babies, would it?
“And then puberty hit, and I forgot all about Heidi and Shirley Temple,” Brianna said.
“My mother died before I hit puberty, and it was just my dad and me for a while.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Brianna said, and she reached out and laid her hand on my arm.
Usually that would have bugged me from a stranger, but this time it was all right. It felt like she meant it and really was sorry about all the time I’d lost with my mother when she’d had all those years with her own.
