Midwives

  Of course, there may be one nice thing that comes with a later quickening. After all that anxiety, the high must be amazing when it finally arrives. Absolutely, unbelievably, outrageously amazing.

  --from the notebooks of Sibyl Danforth, midwife

  APRIL IS NEITHER WHOLLY SPRING nor wholly winter in Vermont. It's common for there to be flurries--maybe even a few inches of heavy, wet snow--one day, and then hot sun and temperatures in the high sixties the next. The crocuses and tulips emerge, endure the schizophrenic weather about as well as everything else (they flower, they sag, they perk up and flower), blooming blue or yellow against brown grass one day, and then against green the next.

  Vermonters don't manifest their reactions to the abrupt changes in weather as dramatically as flowers, but we do feel them inside and show them outside. We might not bother to shovel our walks or plow our driveways after an April snow shower--the snow will melt soon enough--but we will sweep it away from the front porch or front steps, and the idea of taking a broom to sopping white blankets when the rest of the world seems well into spring makes even the most resilient among us shake our heads with disgust. And with the exception of the sugar makers hoping for one last frenzied maple sap run, as a group we all sigh when we awake and discover that our roofs were covered once more with snow as we slept: By midmorning those drapes will slide off the slate or sheet metal, rolling like avalanches down the pitch, creating snowdrifts that torment us for days.

  When the sun is strong and the air is warm, however, we shout greetings to one another down the lengths of long driveways and from the windows of our cars as we pass; we hold our heads high as we walk, staring up into the sky with our eyes shut and our faces widened by smiles. We breathe in deeply the summery air, but this sort of inhalation doesn't result in a sigh; it's a precursor to a purr, or the moans one might make during a backrub.

  We no longer mope, we no longer grouse. We are filled with energy.

  Although my family understood on the first of the month that my mother would be charged with a crime, it wasn't until a little later in the month that the State had determined exactly what that crime--crimes, actually--would be. Consequently, throughout the first week and a half in April our emotions rode a roller coaster with more pronounced peaks and dips than even our almost malevolently capricious weather could erect on its own.

  Stephen had warned my parents on the very first day they had met that the State might suggest that my mother had willfully killed Charlotte Bedford, and she should therefore be charged with second-degree murder. The difference between second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter was no small distinction: Second-degree murder came with a decade in prison if there were mitigating factors on the defendant's side, and up to a lifetime if there weren't. Involuntary manslaughter, the charge Stephen thought was likely, merely implied that my mother had acted with absolutely wanton or gross negligence, but at least she hadn't consciously decided to kill anybody. Murdering Charlotte Bedford was not her intention in this case, it was just an unhappy accident and therefore came with a mere one to fifteen years behind bars, and a possible three-thousand-dollar fine.

  There was never any doubt about the lesser charge, however, the misdemeanor: practicing medicine without a license. That, Stephen said, was inevitable.

  Nevertheless, despite Stephen's warning--and his reassurance that a charge of second degree was unlikely--the first time Bill Tanner suggested that the State might try seriously to build the case that my mother's actions were willful, my father grew furious, my mother grew frightened, and they both grew confused. I sat on the stairs of our house one night, listening as they spoke to Stephen on the telephone--my mother from the phone on the first floor, my father from the phone on the second.

  "I know what the words intentional and involuntary mean to a normal person," my father was saying. "I want to know what the hell they mean to lawyers ... I see ... A precedent? Are you telling me this kind of thing has happened before? ... Uhhuh ... The woman was already dead, for God's sake. Why would Sibyl have thought a C-section would kill her? ..."

  A moment later my mother added, her voice almost frantic, "How can they say that? I'd already told Asa she'd died!" but I can't imagine Stephen got far into a response to her exclamation, because my father almost immediately cut in again.

  "I thought if you killed someone you were supposed to have a motive ... But there's no goddamn reason why she would have 'desired to effect the death' of that woman, there's just no reason! ... That's stupid, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard ... Well, it's still stupid. I hope they do say that, because they wouldn't have a fucking chance of winning. Right? Right?"

  When it was clear that the conversation was winding down, I left my perch on the stairs and went into the living room, and acted as if I'd been reading my biology textbook all along. Almost immediately my father came downstairs and joined my mother in the kitchen.

  "I'm sorry I lost my temper," he said, and I heard him opening the cabinet with the liquor.

  "You couldn't help it," my mother said softly. "Probably happens all the time to him."

  "People blowing up?"

  "I guess."

  "He didn't seem to mind."

  "Nope."

  The freezer door shut with a pop, and the ice cubes struck the sides of the glass before splashing down in a puddle of scotch at the bottom.

  "Let me make sure I've got this right," my father said, and he pulled one of the kitchen chairs away from the table, sliding it along the floor with a brief squeal. "They're going to say you killed Charlotte Bedford on purpose--"

  "They might say that. Apparently they haven't decided anything."

  "Okay, they might say you killed Charlotte Bedford on purpose."

  "I guess."

  "To save the baby."

  "Yes. They might say I thought Charlotte was going to die, but I had to know full well she was alive when I did the cesarean."

  "You had to ..."

  "I had to. I couldn't possibly do what I do for a living without being able to tell the difference. I couldn't possibly have made such a ... a mistake."

  "And you did it to save the baby ..."

  "The C-section? Yup. So they think."

  A long silence. Then an echo from my father: "Yup. So they think."

  I couldn't see either of my parents from my spot on the couch, but I envisioned my father swirling his drink in his hand, and my mother sitting perfectly still with her arms folded across her chest. I knew those actions and poses well.

  "Sib?" my father continued after another quiet moment.

  "Yes."

  "I want to ask something."

  "Of Stephen or me?"

  "You. And I'll only ask it this one time, and I'll never ask it again. But I have to know. I have to ask--"

  "Don't even think of it, don't even think of asking it. I can't have you doubting me, too."

  "You answered it. That's all I wanted to hear."

  "Don't doubt me, Rand."

  "I don't."

  My mother had spent almost uncountable days and nights bringing life into the world. It didn't seem fair to me that her trial revolved around the notion that she could mistake it for death in the end.

  Here's how our emotional roller coaster worked: No sooner had my parents begun to pull themselves up from the almost debilitating despair and self-doubt inspired by the possibility of a second-degree murder trial than Stephen reassured them that the charge was unlikely. Instead of working their way slowly to the crest of the ride over days, they were yanked abruptly to the top in an instant--my mother first, in an afternoon visit from Stephen, my father that night when he came home from work.

  Almost as if we'd been diagnosed with a terminal disease, the sort of news that would once have appalled us was thrilling. I'm in remission, I might have two whole years to live? That's wonderful! Involuntary manslaughter only? Oh my, that's great!

  I was surprised when I came home from track practice one afternoon
later that week to find my mother and Stephen sitting on the front porch of our house. It was one of those wondrous April days with a hot sun shining above cold, still-sloshy ground, and as late as five in the afternoon one could still sit comfortably outside on a deck or a stoop that faced west.

  My mother and Stephen were each sitting with their backs against one of the white posts that supported the porch roof, their legs bent at the knees into pyramids. They stopped talking and smiled at me when they saw me at the end of our driveway, and I could sense the lawyer had arrived with good news.

  Was I surprised that Stephen had come all the way from Burlington to meet with my mother--a drive closer to ninety minutes than an hour--rather than call? I was, briefly. And it was that night at dinner that my father made the first of a great many catty comments about Stephen that I believe he came to regret. But my first reaction when I saw Stephen sitting there that moment was that he would be a good friend for my mother, and he would certainly do his best to protect her. If he had feelings for her that most attorneys would have deemed unprofessional, that could only be to our benefit.

  They both stood when I got to the beginning of the walkway, and my mother started forward as if to kiss me when I got to the steps. She stopped suddenly, however, as if she feared I'd be embarrassed if she kissed me in front of Mr. Hastings. She was right, I would have been. But I was probably equally embarrassed by the way she had bobbed her head forward like a wild turkey, and almost would have preferred she'd given me that kiss.

  "How'd it go today, honey?" she asked, referring to practice.

  "Good. Fine."

  "Legs sore?"

  "Nope. Not a bit."

  "Your mom tells me you made the track team," Stephen said.

  "Just the junior varsity," I told him, a meaningful correction in my mind.

  "In eighth grade, that's still a mighty accomplishment," he said.

  I nodded and stared at my sneakers, my way then of graciously accepting a compliment.

  "Mr. Hastings is here to tell us what's going on," my mother explained.

  "Us? Is Dad home?" I looked back at the driveway, wondering if somehow I had managed to walk past my father's Jeep without noticing it. I hadn't; there was no Jeep there. Just Stephen's dignified but boxy gray Volvo.

  "No, not yet. I only meant us, our family."

  "Oh."

  "Mr. Hastings says I'm not in as much trouble as we thought the other night." She offered a tiny grin that seemed sincere and brave to me at the same time, but I think now was probably ironic. My parents had tried to explain to me as best they could the distinctions between second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, an intentional killing versus merely reckless and illegal behavior, and while much of what they had said made perfect sense, a lot of it was still completely unfathomable to me those first weeks in April, and I still reduced my mother's plight to one fundamental vision: Joan of Arc being burned at the stake. The exact image came from a painting in our encyclopedia, and it was horrid: a beautiful woman a bit younger than my mother, standing in a midwifelike peasant dress, her face stoic--almost superhumanly heroic--as yellow and red flames turned brown wood black. Joan's skin had not yet begun to blister, but the heat from the flames was causing her to sweat, and some in the crowd around her were standing atop her dead horse to get a better view of her death.

  My mother was no saint in my eyes, even then: I was still troubled by the way her pregnant mothers always seemed to come before me. But I believed she had done absolutely nothing wrong in the case of Charlotte Bedford, and certainly didn't deserve to be consumed by the fire that suddenly surrounded her. And so when she said she seemed to be in less trouble--so much less trouble that Stephen had driven all the way out to our house in Reddington--I immediately assumed she must have been granted a complete pardon, and the bonfire was being disassembled. That man named Bill Tanner had come to his senses. Asa Bedford had come to his senses. That Anne Austin--despicable, lying, traitorous Anne Austin--had come to her senses.

  "What happened?" I asked, and the expectant joy in my voice was so apparent that instantly both adults began shaking their heads to calm me down.

  "It's good news, Connie, don't get us wrong," my mother said quickly, "but neither of us should start spinning cartwheels on the lawn."

  I hadn't done a cartwheel in at least five or six years, and I couldn't imagine that my mother had done one in decades, but I kept the thought to myself. Perhaps if Stephen hadn't been present I would have said something flip, but he was there and so I simply nodded and waited for her to continue.

  "There are still a lot of people out there who are even more freaked out about Charlotte's death than we are, if that's possible, but at least it looks like they don't think your mom is a"--and she paused as she pulled from within her the strength she needed to verbalize the word--"murderer."

  And then quickly she grinned, and added through lips parted in sarcasm, "They just think your old lady's one really lousy midwife."

  Stephen bent to wipe some dry dirt from his one-click-above, shiny black loafers, and said, "Sibyl, I don't think that anyone believes that."

  "Pardon me. They just think I can't tell if a woman is dead or alive."

  "They think that once--one time--you made a mistake."

  "A gross mistake. A reckless mistake."

  Stephen stared at my mother, and I could see by the expression on his face that he was trying to put the brakes on her emotions, to calm her down for my benefit. He then turned to me, his hands behind his back as he leaned against the post, and said, "Assuming this whole nasty ordeal ever goes to court, it probably won't be a murder trial. That's the news."

  I thought for a moment, the words murder and manslaughter and willful a tremendous jumble in my mind. I tried to remember all the distinctions. Finally I gave up and asked, "What kind of trial will it be?"

  "Involuntary manslaughter. At least that's what it looks like the charge will be right now."

  "Do you understand what that means, sweetie?" my mother asked.

  "Sort of."

  "Sort of, but not completely?"

  "Yup."

  "What that means," Stephen continued, "is that the State is going to say your mom was responsible for Mrs. Bedford's death, and she acted illegally when she did the C-section. But it was an accident. She didn't mean to hurt anyone."

  "If they think it was an accident, why are they bothering to have a trial?"

  "Just because something is an accident doesn't mean it isn't also a crime."

  "That's the manslaughter thing, right?"

  "The involuntary manslaughter thing. That's right."

  Fifteen years. For an accident. I stood there, trying to absorb a number of years longer than I'd been alive.

  "When will the trial begin?" I asked.

  "Months from now. Hopefully years," Stephen said.

  "Years?"

  "If it even goes to trial."

  "Stephen, I don't want this thing to drag on for years," my mother said.

  "Delay is our friend, Sibyl."

  "Why?"

  He shrugged. "A case like this always starts out with a lot of prosecutorial energy, and it always loses momentum over time. It's a fact of nature. Bill has to focus on prosecuting the real bad guys, not some nice lady midwife and mother like Sibyl Danforth. And all of those doctors who seem so angry right now will move on to other things. Let's assume nobody else dies in a home birth: Eventually they'll lose interest. Eventually the press will lose interest. Besides, the longer you're out on bail without any problems, the more likely you are to walk away with probation even if you're found guilty."

  "Bail," my mother murmured, not so much a question as it was perhaps the first dawning comprehension that along with a charge would come an arrest.

  "It's one of those strange absolutes no lawyer completely understands. But delay always benefits the defense. It really does. The last thing we want is for this thing to go to trial before Christmas--or even next sprin
g."

  My mother took long strands of her dirty blond hair between her thumb and fingers and contemplated the brownish lengths as if she disliked their color. Bringing the tips close to her eyes, she said to me, "We probably won't eat till late, honey, so why don't you go inside and make yourself a snack?"

  I've never had any sort of weight problem, but like many teenage girls I snacked on low- and no-cal products. And so it was a diet cola and a bowl of freezer-burned chocolate ice milk that I brought with me to the dining room, the best room from which to eavesdrop upon a conversation on our porch. Just because my mother didn't want me to hear what she and Stephen were saying didn't mean that I didn't want to listen.