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She passed herself down slowly, branch by branch. She had a bit of the monkey in her after all. She hung from a low branch by both hands, skimming above the ground with her feet. Then she let go.
The fall was small, but it was grand. Her hands hurt like crazy. Her whole body was shaking with nervousness and pleasure. Her chest was so full she could barely fit a breath into it. She felt like she was living someone else’s life.
She crept around the house to let herself in the front door. Before she even turned the knob, she realized it would be locked. And so would the back door. And so would the side door. She was locked out of her house.
This struck her as so unbearably funny that she rolled around on the grass and laughed until she cried.
Sometime toward morning, Bridget’s fever broke. As dramatically as it had gone up, it came down. She was hardly aware of what was happening when the air around her suddenly turned from bone-cold to sweltering hot. The sweat seemed to pour from every inch of her skin. When she awoke with a start, she realized she had thrown off all her covers in her sleep. More alarmingly, she was lying in her underwear, still circled in the arms of Eric’s sleeping body. Now she was afraid to move. Whether Bee was sick or not, this would not look good to Kaya, for example. She didn’t want Eric to wake up and see how it was.
She thought she could very carefully untangle the sheet from the bottom of the bed and cover herself with it before he woke up. She was feeling remarkably lucid as she grasped the edge of the sheet between the first and second toes of her left foot. Moving as slowly and smoothly as she could, she pulled her foot toward her.
How funny and strange that she and Eric had slept in the same space twice in less than two weeks. And not for having chosen it. Not for having wanted to sleep together at all. (Well, maybe she did…but no longer at his expense.)
In a way it was a tragic waste, and in a more profound way it was the most romantic thing she had ever experienced. Two years before, they had slept together in the figurative sense; this summer, in the literal one. The former had split her in two. And the latter made her feel whole. The first summer had made her feel abandoned. This made her feel loved.
Sex could be a blissful communion. But it could also be a weapon, and its absence, sometimes, was required for the establishment of peace.
Eric shifted and she halted her foot abruptly. Still asleep, he pulled her closer, so her whole self was pressed against him, his arms and chest against her bare skin. He sighed. He probably dreamed she was Kaya. She also dreamed she was Kaya, the one he truly loved.
Bridget wanted to enjoy this, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t bear to think of him waking up and feeling embarrassed and compromised after he had cared for her with such perfect kindness. She wanted to protect him from that.
She waited until his breathing sank into a rhythm again, and she started back up with the sheet. Morning was almost fully upon them, and the sun was streaming through the window, illuminating their twined bodies. Don’t wake up yet, she begged him.
She had gotten the sheet almost up to her thighs when he awoke. Oh.
For a moment, in that transition, he clung to her hard. And then, in stages, he seemed to recognize the yellow hair spread over his arms and to realize who it was he held like that. Confused, he looked at her full on, at the two of them together, and then he looked away.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, pulling his arms from her.
How she missed them. She pulled the sheet up over herself. The bedding under her was soaked with sweat. “Please don’t say that,” she said.
Bridget had always believed that the night was more dangerous than the day. But in the preceding twelve hours, her conviction had reversed itself. The night protected her and the morning laid her bare.
“I didn’t mean…,” he began, flustered.
“I know,” she said quickly.
He couldn’t look at her anymore. “Are you feeling…?”
“So much better,” she supplied.
He was up on his feet, turned away from her. “I…uh, I’ll let you get dressed. Grab anything you want of mine. T-shirt or whatever.” He pulled a pair of shorts over his boxers.
There were so many things she wanted to say to him. So many shades of the words thank you. So many routes to get to an apprehension of love. Not that kind of love. This kind of love. Any kind of love, really.
She wanted to say these things to him, to make him understand her feelings and also to make him know that though this thing between them was fragile and strange (she knew, she really knew it was!), he was safe.
But it was too late. He was already gone.
This “telephone” has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.
—Western Union internal memo, 1876
“Mom?” Carmen strode into her mother’s room and toward the closed door of her bathroom. “Hey, are you okay in there?”
Carmen was nervous to begin with because her mom had stayed home from work, explaining she was a little under the weather. Carmen had made her scrambled eggs for breakfast and Christina had only picked at them.
Christina had been in there a long time. Carmen heard a moan and then nothing.
“Mama?” She knocked on the bathroom door. “Is everything all right?” She felt her heart pounding. When her mother opened the door a moment later, her face was white.
“Mama! What’s going on?”
Even Christina’s lips were white. “I think…I’m not sure…” She put her hand on the doorframe to steady herself. “I think my water broke.”
“You…you…you do?” Carmen felt like she’d been transported to one of those old-fashioned movies where the wife goes into labor, only in this version, Carmen was the bumbling husband.
“I think so.”
“Does that mean…?”
Christina transferred both hands to her spherical stomach. “I don’t know. I don’t feel like I’m in labor.”
“It’s too early!” Carmen shouted at her mother’s stomach, as though the baby should know better. “The baby isn’t due for four more weeks!”
“Nena, sweetie, I know.”
“Should I call the hospital?”
“I’ll call my midwife,” Christina said. She walked slowly toward the phone.
“Do you…feel okay?” Carmen asked, watching her mother call.
“I feel like I’m…leaking.” Christina pushed a button and waited. She waited longer while the receptionist paged her midwife.
Carmen paced while Christina alternately talked and listened. When she hung up she looked scared, and that pushed Carmen’s heart from a trot to a canter. “What?”
Christina’s eyes were teary. “I have to go to the hospital to get checked. If my water really broke, I have twelve hours to go into labor naturally and after that they induce. The fear of me getting an infection is bigger than worrying about the baby being early.”
“So the baby is coming…”
“Yes. Soon,” Christina said faintly.
“Where is David?” Carmen asked. It was obviously the thing Christina was thinking about.
“He’s, uh…he’s…” Christina put her hands over her face. She was trying not to cry, and that made Carmen feel worse. “I’m trying to think…. He’s been away so much. I think he’s in Trenton, New Jersey. Maybe he’s in Philadelphia now. I’m not sure.”
“We’ll find him!” Carmen shouted, further alarming them both. “We’ll call him!”
“First we’ll go to the hospital, okay? The midwife said go right over.”
Carmen’s hands were clammy and she raced around ineffectively. “Have you got your bag? I’ll drive.”
Once in the car, Carmen watched her mother intently.
“Nena, honey, keep your eyes on the road. I’m okay.”
“Are you having…” Carmen wasn’t sure what the right terminology was, having diligently tuned it out most of the summer. “…labo
r?”
Christina kept her hands on her stomach, her eyes vague, as though she were feeling for some message tapped in Morse code from within. “No. I don’t think so.”
