Chapter Four
Labor started differently than it had with Wesley, sharper and with more intensity. Up until then, the pregnancy had gone smoothly. But Esther’s wasn’t an easy birth. The contractions started sooner than expected, so unrelenting as I waited for Henry to come home from work to rush me to the hospital, where I begged for twilight sleep, for that cocktail of drugs that would make the pain go away. They say women forget, but we don’t. We tuck away the throes deep in our bones, forever carrying the memories in the recesses of our bodies.
We drove home from the hospital a few days later on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. Though every day had been the longest since she was born, especially thanks to a dull but incessant headache. My body hurt in new ways, so deep that all I longed for was sleep that could whisk me away for days. Maybe even weeks. Months.
When we arrived home, a moving truck was parked across the street.
“Looks like we’re finally getting new neighbors,” Henry said as we turned into our driveway.
“I should make them something.” I spoke without thought, as if the etiquette book’s advice had become a reflex, which was probably what my mother-in-law had hoped when she gave it to me at my bridal shower. At the time, I didn’t realize it was only the first set of instructions that would come with being a modern housewife. According to the book, I needed to properly welcome these new neighbors.
Henry parked the car and reached across the seat, putting his hand on my thigh as I held the pink bundle to my chest (Pepperell crib blanket available in blue, yellow, and pink; one book). “When you’re ready,” he said. “Don’t rush it.”
“I know,” I told Henry as I began to gently rock so the baby wouldn’t wake. I didn’t tell him how I thought through each index card tucked within my recipe box, wondering what we had on hand and what I could whip up when he returned to work the next day, the first day I’d be left alone postpartum.
I spent most of the rest of the day in Esther’s bedroom, cradling, soothing, sitting in the rocking chair Henry had bought for me. I had wanted the one Great-Grandpa had made. He had tried to get it for me, but apparently Mama insisted she needed it, that she couldn’t bear to part with it quite yet. So he bought me a new one. It was beautiful, the wood so smooth and perfectly stained. It didn’t creak like Mama’s did. And maybe that’s why it never felt just right.
As I sat and rocked, I watched out the window, waiting for the new owners to arrive. Soon enough, the same blue Chevy sedan we saw during Wesley’s party pulled to the curb across the street. No, not the man with short pants and the wife he left behind. I stood slowly, gingerly, and walked to the window. And there she was: the same lady in the same black oxfords, standing on the same wobbly legs, her hair pulled into a tight, unflinching bun.
With one hand holding the bundle to my breast, I reached for my hair. It lay limp and flat, having not been brushed that day, nor previous ones. I wondered what I looked like, embarrassed by what the nurses must’ve thought, but I had been too tired to care. But now, with this woman in front of me, I cared.
I watched as the back door of the car swung open and a little girl emerged.
Not a boy, as I had hoped, but she looked to be close to Wesley’s age. She pointed at the rosebushes and began to run for them, but the woman grabbed hold of her arm and held on to her wrist. Then she stood still, unnaturally so, holding on to her pocketbook. A yard ornament in a full-skirted swing dress.
She looked across the street at our house. And she kept looking. Directly at me.
Or so it felt. I stood and stared back, entranced, hoping the window acted as a one-way mirror.
By then, Esther had settled, so I put her in the crib, careful to tuck the blanket beneath her, before I returned to the window and continued watching.
The woman remained paused, still holding on to the girl’s wrist. Finally, the man with the flap of hair across his bald head called them into the house— my house. Or what I had imagined to be my own. But now boxes and lamps and a davenport in the most awful pattern I’d ever seen in my life were being moved into the space I had been creating as my own over the last several months. If it were mine, one thing was for sure:
I would not have chosen that davenport.
I was so tired the next day. Esther’s cries had kept me in her room most of the night. When they quieted, I tried to tuck her into the crib and doze in the rocking chair, but it hadn’t ended with much sleep, only a crick in my neck.
Home again and getting back into the swing of the day-to-day life, I forced myself to start the pot of coffee (four books) and fry Henry a few eggs for breakfast, regardless of the fact that our baby’s needs consumed my every thought.
Wesley, now somehow taller than when I had left for the hospital, headed out to play in the yard as soon as he finished breakfast. He was a boy who didn’t like being bound by walls and a roof. I can’t say I blamed him. I used to be the same way, when I could be. On the farm, I rushed through my
chores so I could run through the woods to where the creek divided our land from the neighbor’s. Those were my happiest times, listening to the water wash over the moss-covered rocks as the breeze swayed the tallest branches of the trees, and the squirrels and birds acted as my only companions before Georgie got older.
Now I remained inside, looking out. My duties kept me within the four walls of our home in Greenwood Estates. Four walls that seemed to crawl closer by the minute.
I still remember the first time Henry drove me to the neighborhood. He’d been so excited to show me where we’d be living, where we’d raise our family, where we’d grow old together, him with a briefcase in his hand and me standing firmly beside him on the front porch steps. It hadn’t been the home I had imagined when I was a child. Maybe it wasn’t even the one I would choose if I could. But it was where our life was.
As Esther slept, I wanted to rest my eyes for a bit, but that damn book kept nagging at me, reminding me that the new neighbors’ presence meant there was no time for such frivolity. Now was the time for good first impressions and obligations of neighborliness, not naps.
That book had a way of haunting me. I knew making a dish was a nice thing to do. I didn’t need a book to tell me that, but somehow I felt its judgment, as if it were watching me, waiting for me to be the good neighbor.
Mrs. Mayfield thought it could turn me into the wife I hadn’t been taught to be. Maybe the book had taught me how to be a good housewife. Or maybe it had shown me how to wear a mask.
Truth be told, despite the sense of obligation and the full-body exhaustion, I wanted to take a dish across the street because then maybe I could see inside.
When the phone rang, I ran for it, grabbing the receiver off the hook as quickly as possible before the ringing roused Esther’s cries and I’d spend the
next few hours attempting to quiet them.
“Lulu, honey.” Nora hesitated, as if she had forgotten why she had called.
“God, I’ve missed you. How are you?”
“Fine,” I said. “Tired.”
“I imagine.” She paused again before continuing. “You’re sure you’re—”
“I’m good, Nora.” The socks were all clean, and I hadn’t cried into a laundry hamper yet.
“I hope the hospital treated you well. I mean”—Nora paused for a moment before her voice rose—“with royalty in their midst.”
“I’m not sure they realized that.” I smiled, always thankful for her humor and the fact that she had called to check on me.
Then her voice dropped. “Did you see the new neighbors?”
“I did. Three of them.”
“No. Five of them.” I assumed she hadn’t been watching out the window as closely as I had been, but before I could correct her, she continued. “I already stopped by. They have two boys, a bit older than the girl, but they’re away at school.” Leave it to Nora to already have the gossip on the new family, but I couldn’t help but wonder what she had told them in return. “No one should have more than two kids. That’s simply obnoxious. And Hatti’s on her fourth. Bless her heart.”
I laughed, finally feeling awake, my head throbbing a bit less for the first time in days. Leave it to Nora to pull me out of my fog. She had been my first friend in Greenwood, ever since the day Old Man Reilly got locked out of his house when he was getting the paper and Nora called to make sure I wasn’t missing the scene unfolding across the street. Of course, Nora was friends with everyone, or at least friendly. She believed in keeping her friends close and her enemies closer, swearing she got more dirt that way.
“And did you see that davenport?” I asked as I moved around the kitchen,
testing the length of the phone cord so I could gather the ingredients for the welcome dish.
“Awful. Can’t imagine the drapes that go with it.” Nora laughed, that deep bellow of hers ringing out so that I had to pull the receiver away from my ear.
“Are you taking them one of your famous salads?”
“Of course.” She knew me well, but since I hadn’t made it to the grocery store, my options were limited. I had settled on a creamy lime Jell-O with fruit cocktail, but then I wondered if I should double the recipe in case the boys came home. With the phone firmly lodged between my ear and shoulder, I got on the floor and dug the mold out of the back of the cabinet, trying not to make too much noise.
“So glad the queen has returned,” she said. We both laughed.
The crick in my neck tightened as I tried to hold on to the receiver.
Needing to stretch and focus on the recipe, I attempted to say a quick goodbye.
“Lu?” She was the only friend who called me that. “Get some rest, and I’m here—”
“I know.”
And I did know. I knew she was nearby if I needed anything. I also knew that she had her own two kids, plus dinner to make and a house to keep. We were all nearby one another, close enough to lend a hand, yet far enough apart to blanket ourselves in the illusion of isolation.
