But I never asked her about that man and she never asked me anything about Cecilia, except whether or not I'd loved her. She was always staring at her name across my shoulder when we were in bed at night. She made like it was the tattoo she was really interested in. "Did it hurt?" she asked.
"I don't remember. It was a long time ago."
"But it must have hurt. Needles." She shivered.
"I guess it must have," I said. Pain is one of those things where the big ones just wipe the small ones away, so I really couldn't imagine a needle working in and out of my arm when I was seventeen could have hurt so much.
I loved lying in bed with Rose, smelling her warm skin, running my hand down against her sides once she fell asleep. Everything about her was big; her belly was a mountain, her breasts and legs were smooth and swollen and round. In bed with her I didn't feel lonely the way I did with other women who had fallen asleep beside me. Not that I'm saying there'd been so many, but there were enough to know. Sleep brings out the smallness in a woman, their little hands holding the edge of the pillow while they dream. I felt so huge beside them. I was afraid they would wake up and be scared to see me there. I never touched them while they slept. But Rose could hold her own against anybody. Even after the baby was born, when her body whittled down into its old self, she was still a match for me. There was something about Rose, not just her size but who she was. I could tell she'd seen some things. When we were married she wasn't yet twenty-four and I was forty-five. I'd seen plenty, more than God will forgive me for, but not more than Rose. Even knowing her as little as I did, I knew that much.
That first month was the only time in our marriage we were ever alone, if you can call living so close to Saint Elizabeth's being alone. Me and Rose both stayed over there pretty much all the time, same as always. We were used to it that way. Some days it seemed like nothing had changed. I was still eating dinner in the big kitchen while she cleaned up, and as she washed dishes I would find myself looking at her breasts under her wet apron and then looking away so she wouldn't see. Then I'd think, that's my wife, and hell, I've seen her coming out of the bathtub in the morning, big as life. So I tried to tell myself it was okay if I looked, that I don't have nothing to be ashamed of, but it's hard for me to believe.
When a man gets to be my age, he don't much expect things will change. Winter and you press caulk into the windows, summer and you're putting up the screens. The pipes give way one by one. By the time you've repainted the whole place inside and out it's time to start over again. You're alone and you'll always be alone. It's so true it doesn't bear mention. You just stop thinking about it, the way you stopped thinking about everything after a while.
But then here comes Rose, after eighteen years of pregnant girls come and gone. After the first day I saw her I found myself looking for her. I hoped she would be there when I came in in the morning. I went to the kitchen at night to find her. It had been so long since I'd done anything like that that for a while I didn't even know I was doing it. Then all of the sudden I'm lonely at night. I couldn't remember the last time I was lonely. I would think of her, the way she pushed her hair behind her ear with one wet hand, the way she blew on a spoon of soup she was tasting for salt. I longed for her. Not like I longed for a woman at seventeen, not like I longed for Cecilia, where I wanted to feel her hands on my back and press my face against her neck. I only wanted to be near to Rose. I guess maybe I wanted the rest of it too, but that kind of longing had pretty much been worn out of me. I'd come to believe that part of my life was over.
So when I found her that morning in the snow and she came to my house and slept and woke up and said yes, she would marry me, everything changed. It was like the sun had set in the east, and suddenly nothing was like it was, even though everything was like it was. I can't explain it. It felt like I should be coming home to another house, living in a different state, that nothing of my old life should have stayed the same because I was suddenly a married man. But instead we went on just like before, except now the longing wasn't there. Rose was there, beside me in my bed.
We stayed pretty formal for a long time, always being polite to each other. You marry a person you don't really know and you're afraid of saying something that might run them off. But we got along fine. The only sore point between us was over the naming of the baby, which wasn't even a sore point with Rose 'cause she simply refused to see it as a problem. I couldn't seem to make her understand how badly I didn't want her to go through with it.
Five days before our baby came, Angie went into the hospital. She went right away, the very first pain that she felt, which I think is as it should be. I had taken a real liking to Angie, she was always one to stop and tell you a joke or throw out a big wave when she saw you coming across the field. Rose was a wreck right from the minute Angie told her it was time, rubbing her hands the way she does when she gets nervous. She insisted on taking her to the hospital. We put Angie's suitcase in the back, but the box she had with her she wanted to hold up front.
"I can't believe the way they listen to you now," Angie said, pressed between us in the front of the truck, the three of us all as big as houses. "It's like you're one of the sisters."
"That's an awful thought," Rose said.
"No, no, I mean, you've got that kind of power. The way you stared them down and said, 'No, Son and I will take her to the hospital.'" Angie laughed. "Like, la-di-da, I'm running this show now. Well, I think it's something, is all. You stay on, they're gonna be calling that place Saint Rose the Divine."
"I like the sound of that," I said.
Then Angie bunched up her face and grabbed on to my arm so hard I liked to drive right off the road. "God! What?" I said.
Rose reached over and smoothed back her hair, and Angie took a few short, quick breaths. "She wasn't lying," Angie said. "This is gonna hurt."
"Are you okay to make the drive?" I asked.
Angie laughed. "What if I'm not?" she said. "What're we gonna do then?"
When the two of them came into the emergency room the nurses like to took a fit, two girls so pregnant coming in together. Angie gave the nurse her box and said something to her about the letter that's taped on top of it. The nurse said that nothing could be left at the front desk, but Angie held her ground. Tired as she was she wouldn't get in the wheelchair until they promised to do exactly what she told them. The nurse took the box, and they started to wheel Angie through the doors, when all of a sudden she raised both arms over her head and called out for Rose.
"What is it?" Rose said, going to her.
Angie just smiled and shook her head. "Never mind," she said.
"What?"
"I was gonna say I changed my mind."
Rose was squatted down on the floor beside her chair and the two of them just stared at each other, their noses not six inches apart. I wasn't even sure what she meant, changed her mind about having it or changed her mind about giving it up. Then my wife leaned over and kissed her friend on the forehead, so sweetly and right that it made me look away.
Once Angie was gone the doctor tried to talk Rose into staying on, said her time was so close it was hardly worth the trip home. I didn't think it would be a bad idea. I wanted to see her have some rest. But she wouldn't hear of it. All she wanted to talk about was Angie. Every five minutes she was out of her chair, going to ask about Angie and the baby. They kept saying fine, fine, everything looks great, but Rose wouldn't settle.
"Come on and sit," I said to her. "You're going to wear out the floor."
"I hate this."
"Well, she's fine. You heard the doctor."
"She's too thin, too small." Rose started to tear up, but when I reached for her she moved away just slightly so that my hand fell down across her back and barely touched it.
We waited there all night and Rose never fell asleep, even though I'm sure I did. When the doctor came out, all solemn, you could see in Rose's face that she had already resigned herself to what he was about to say and was r
eady to take it. The cord had worked its way around the neck and by the time they knew, it was all too late.
Rose looked up at him. "You mean it could have been prevented?"
"No," the doctor said. "There was no way to tell."
"But if you'd known something was going to go wrong?" Her voice was high, almost like she was about to start shouting at him.
The doctor looked puzzled. "If we'd known," he said slowly, "then yes, I guess we could have taken the baby cesarean, but you can't think about things like that."
Rose sat still for the first time, her hands folded between her knees, her head down. Finally she nodded. "All right," she said.
"You can see her for a minute if you'd like," the doctor told her.
Rose got up and started to follow him down the hall. She'd forgotten I was there, and so I just went along behind them. "Maybe she doesn't know," I said.
"She knows," Rose said, not turning around.
I almost went inside the room with her, but when I saw Angie's face, looking so small and pale against the starched white pillow slip, I stepped back. The doctor went on, reading a chart as he walked away from us. I sat down on a chair in the hallway, not wanting to listen but hearing it just the same.
"Hey," Rose said.
"It didn't go so good," Angie said. Her voice sounded dreamy, more tired than sad. They would have given her something. They would give her one good long sleep before she had to wake up and remember everything for the rest of her life.
"You're fine," Rose said. "That's what matters. You're just perfect."
"I don't feel it."
There was a long silence and I felt for Rose, wondering what it was she was supposed to say to her friend. I looked up and down the hallway. No one was there but one lone nurse, and she turned into a room before I could get a good look at her. I could hear her shoes squeak away from me and the door click shut behind her. It was late, but the fluorescent lights made it seem like high noon. I thought about how everything in that hall would always be just so. The brown and black tiles on the floor would always be scrubbed clean, the walls would always be the same dull green color. There would always be that smell of sweet soap, which was trying to cover something up, sickness and worse.
"Rose?" Angie's voice was sleepy, fading, a million miles away.
"What?"
"You knew, didn't you?"
"Knew what?"
"About my baby. Sister Evangeline would have known, she would have told you." She stopped for a while, and I held my breath. "It makes sense now, the way she was that day. I never saw her get upset with other girls the way she did with me."
"Of course I didn't know."
"I'm so stupid, why I never thought about it before. Never thought about it before because I'm so stupid, right?"
"Go to sleep, Angie."
"And there you were, watching me make all those stupid things and you said it was stupid, didn't you?"
"Angie."
"I'm not saying I blame you. I mean, what could you have done? You couldn't have told me. You wouldn't want to hurt me. But you could have told me. Maybe if I'd known I might have been able to do something about it, tell the doctors to watch out. Did you think about that, all that time you were watching me?"
I was on my feet, standing by the door. Rose's voice came quiet and steady, everything about it said, trust me, believe me. "I never knew this would happen. Nobody knows life and death, not even Sister. It's just a bad thing, an awful thing. There isn't any reason for it."
And then Angie started to cry and she said something I couldn't understand. I looked down at my shoes and felt something like a cold wind go through me because I knew Rose was lying. I didn't know from the way she said it, that's what worried me. The way she said it I never would have figured it out. But I knew Sister Evangeline, and she would know whether or not a baby was going to live, I was sure of it. Rose would be sure of it, too.
"That's right," Rose said. "You just cry."
I wanted to look around the corner, see them there. I wondered how her face would look when she lied. But I was intruding just being in the hallway, in the hospital. I should have been in Habit.
"I want to go home," Angie said.
"You will soon enough."
"I want to go home with you."
"You're going home to your mother."
"No."
"Go to sleep."
"Rose?"
"What?"
"Take the box of baby clothes. From the front desk, don't forget it. It was a lucky thing we both had girls, huh?"
"Go to sleep, now."
"Don't forget it, promise?"
"Promise," Rose said.
Rose stayed in a while longer, I imagine until Angie fell asleep. When she finally came out of the room she looked worn down. She took hold of my arm, not out of love but because she was afraid she wouldn't be able to stand up a whole lot longer.
Driving back from the hospital I couldn't help but think about our wedding, since that was the last time we were in Owensboro, but I didn't think it would be such a good idea to bring it up. It probably would have been best not to bring up anything at all, but Rose looked so tired and sad, staring down at her hands and not saying anything.
"It was best, your not telling her," I said.
"Not telling her what?" she said. Her voice was flat, like she was responding to some worn-out joke that everyone already knew.
"Not telling her what Sister Evangeline told you, about her baby dying. If Sister said that was the way it was going to be there wasn't a single thing that could have been done. That's fate. Divine fate. That's God's business."
"I didn't know," she said. "That's what I told Angie."
I looked right at her. I didn't care about the road.
"I didn't know anything," she said, and then she closed her eyes, which was her way of saying the conversation was over, even if she wasn't going to sleep.
When we went back to the hospital a week later Angie had already checked out and gone home to her people, but she wasn't the reason we were going up anyway. It was Rose's time, the two trips so close that in my memory they blur together. It's hard for me to sort out who had her baby before who sometimes. There was a day, when first I was at Saint Elizabeth's, I could tell you the delivery time of every baby to come through that place. I knew the length and weight and whether it was a boy or a girl. I would make a point to remember the weather on that day and the color of the mother's hair and what town she was from. That was when I felt a certain responsibility to all those babies, thought that they might come back looking for their true selves some day and appreciate a gardener who had a mind for facts. But it got to be too much is all, and it seemed cruel to remember one and not the other, so I just stopped trying.
This girl was to be one of them, this daughter of mine. The one her cousins would whisper about, the one who finds out years later, just by accident, that she is not herself at all. Was it not for so many bits of fate fallen into our laps, my daughter would have been someone else's daughter.
I was like Rose had been in the waiting room the week before, pestering every person in a white coat that went by. "I want to know about my wife," I said, the words so right in my mouth. My wife. My family.
"She's doing fine," they all said, and it bothered me, because it was the same way they told us Angie was fine.
The night my daughter was born I thought about her father, just that one time and not later. I thought about him because he didn't know. With just about every girl to come through Saint Elizabeth's, you can be sure the fellow knew, that she cried and he turned on his heel and left her there. For a long time I wanted to think that was true of Rose, but anyone who knew her at all could see she was a leaver, that she wouldn't know a thing about what it's like to be left. Somewhere out in California was a man thinking that right about now his baby was being born, but he didn't know where to start looking, so for just one minute I felt for him, and then I let it go. A child needs one mother, o
ne father. Even if the job wasn't meant to be mine, it was now. I would be the only father she would have.
I went to the gift shop and bought myself a pack of Luckys. I didn't smoke much, but I figured with the baby around I'd need to quit altogether, so I was just going to sit in the waiting room and smoke a couple. No sooner did I get one lit than a nurse came out and said, "Congratulations, Mr. Abbott."
I stubbed out the cigarette and tossed the pack down on the table for the next poor guy who'd come to wait. "Everything okay?"
"Better than that," she said, real chipper, and I thought this must be a pretty sweet job, getting to come out and tell people their babies are born. If anything bad happens they always send out the doctor. "You have a beautiful girl, and your wife came through it all like a dream. She didn't even cry out, Mr. Abbott, not one time. I can't remember that happening as long as I've been here."
I followed her down a long corridor and through a set of double doors that said, NO ADMITTANCE. "YOU can see her for a second," she said quietly, "but then you'll have to go. She needs her rest." She pointed over to a gurney where Rose was lying.
I looked down on Rose for a minute before her eyes half opened and she saw me there. She looked like she'd been to war.
"Hiya," she said.
"Tough time?"
She moved her head around, but I couldn't tell if she was nodding or shaking her head no. She reached out for my hand and I gave it to her. "Know what I did?" she whispered.