I take the elevator up to the maternity ward, where weakened but elated new mothers, their faces rosy with exhaustion, stroll the hallways with their babies. Visiting hours in baby land is the most joyful time on the planet, people’s spirits still soaring from witnessing the miracle of childbirth, and though babies cry, the sound that catches my ear is the cutesy baby talk new mothers, fathers, grandpapas, and friends coo to soothe the newborns.
Laurel’s room, alone among all the rooms lining the corridor, is dark. A used Pampers lies on top of Anne Elise’s bassinet—someone changed her diaper but forgot to throw out the old one—but Anne Elise herself isn’t in the room, and Laurel is asleep, her sleep interrupted by her fitful moans and groans that make me believe her dreams are the stuff of struggles and foes. Though the room’s lights are off, light pours in from the hallway. I sit on the leather recliner, fold my hands behind my head, and listen to the periodic laughter floating in from the hallways. Someone should bottle the good cheer and sense of well-being that seem to coat the entire maternity ward.
Laurel’s not well when she awakens. Her eyes are hollow pits, little sinkholes that flutter open at intervals, flashing glimpses of panicked confusion. Her hand is a burning coal, hot, feverish. For the last half hour, I wondered where Anne Elise might be. More than likely, nurses carried her to the nursery so Laurel could sleep, but now Laurel croaks out Anne Elise’s name. She pulls herself to a sitting position in her bed. She might be delusional, caught in a fever dream, so frantically do her eyes dash around the room.
“Laurel,” I say, grabbing her hands. I’m not sure my presence even registers on her. “Are you all right?”
Laurel jerks her hand, but she can’t move it far because her IV cord is wrapped around her bed railing, restraining her. She groans, the sound of her groan like two sticks clacking together. “I hate this thing,” she says, freeing up the IV tubing with her free hand. “It’s always getting snagged on something.”
“Should I get a doctor? I can do that, my dear.”
“Where’s our baby?”
“She’s okay. She’s in the nursery.”
“I’m c-c-cold,” Laurel says, stuttering.
An extra blanket sits in the drawer of the nightstand. I toss it over Laurel, tucking its flimsy corners tight around her. She’s burning up but refuses to let me call in a doctor because she says every time they treat her, she ends up feeling worse for their efforts. Sooner or later, the nurses or doctors are going to drop in on their rounds and check up on her anyways, so I stay close, holding her hand. Laurel’s always struck me as a lost soul, a feral but fragile child who never learned how to develop friendships and stable relationships; admittedly, this was one of the things that drew me to her. She needed a friend, and I was patient and kind. She ate up my flattery and readily believed I was as wealthy as I represented myself to be.
“What’s that smell?”
“Chocolate,” I say, plucking the gift shop candy bars from my jacket pocket. “Today’s your lucky day: Do you want Almond Joy or Hershey’s?”
“That’s not what I meant.” Laurel breathes in deeply, the air passing through her nose in thistly scratches. “Something smells like shit.”
It’s the diaper she smells. I should have thrown it out when I saw it. “It’s one of Anne Elise’s dirty diapers. Someone left it out. I’ll take care of it.”
“She was here again.”
“Who?”
Laurel points to the boot prints on the floor. “Tricia. That’s who. She must have dropped by when I was napping. Thank god I was asleep so she couldn’t harangue me again. She creeps me out.”
“She wants to be friendly,” I say, though I can’t rightly think of an innocent reason Trish would choose to pal around with Laurel.
“Why are you always sticking up for her?”
“You catch more flies with sugar, honey. That’s why,” I say, not telling Laurel about Trish’s private investigator or my surreptitious work to neutralize her efforts. Instead, not wanting to ramp up Laurel’s alarm, I paint Trish as a harmless spurned lover working her way through the stages of her grief so that one hopefully soon day she’ll give in to my request and divorce me. “Tricia’s clinically depressed. She’s popping Valiums as if they were candy. Last night, she made an elaborate meal and set the table with our good china and our silver setting pieces. She lit candles around the dinner table and then stared at the food for hours, too distraught to even eat. When I came home, the candles were little shrunken stubs, their dripping wax pooling beneath the candelabras, puddling onto the table. She’s not well enough to think things through rationally. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us. We can wait a few weeks. Trust me, honey. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I don’t care. You need to divorce her.”
“I’m working on that.”
“Not fast enough.”
“Honey, let’s not argue. You need your strength. Right now, you don’t need tension. You’ve had medicines and antibiotics; what you need are happy thoughts. Toss aside your anger, your anxiety and jealousy. Project the thoughts you want to have. The future is built upon our expectations. Visualize yourself serene and happy if you want to actually be serene and happy. That’s your prescription for happiness.”
Laurel looks at me skeptically.
“I was thinking about you all day, honey. Can I tell you what I was thinking when I walked into the hospital to see you just now?”
Laurel never tires of hearing what I have to say about her. I give her a long look. Her unkempt hair hasn’t been washed for days. Three days in the hospital have undone her exuberance and the healthy glow that pregnancy had bestowed upon her, replacing them with acne blemishes, an oily sheen, and an exhaustion that is almost palpable. Shadows hang beneath her eyes.
“As soon as I stepped onto the elevator, I looked forward to telling you how beautiful you are. It is something I like saying and something you deserve to hear as often as possible.”
Laurel blushes, the color rising in her chalky cheeks. She looks at her feet, which stick out from the flimsy blanket I wrapped around her. “Thank you.”
I raise my hand, gesturing for her silence. “But now I look at you, and what I see is tension and worry and fatigue. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t worry about Tricia; worry about yourself. The Tricia thing will sort itself out.”
“But how?”
I kiss Laurel. Her breath is sour, and she looks sick, but I’ve put her at ease, buying more time for me to figure out what to do about her, the baby, and Trish. For now, at least tonight, she won’t tighten the screws and press me further to ditch anyone. It may not quite be happiness that spreads across her face but something more long-lasting: acceptance. She wraps an arm around my shoulder and sighs. Someone else enters the room. My back is to the door. Laurel, seeing whoever comes into the room, becomes excited.
“Mom!”
“How sweet! You two were hugging!”
I turn around. Laurel’s mother, Belinda, stands in the doorway, her face more made up than yesterday, her eyes ringed with kohl eyeliner. Polka-dot shifts must be her thing, for today she’s wearing a green-and-red polka-dot shift, the kind of dress one might wear to make an impression at a holiday party.
“Ahh! Belinda! So good of you to visit Laurel again,” I say.
Belinda sways over to Laurel’s bed. She takes Laurel’s hands and smiles. “Tully’s out parking the car, but I wanted to run up and see you as soon as I could. I was thinking about you all night last night. I’m so glad you’re keeping your baby.”
Laurel starts shivering again, whether from emotion or infection, I can’t tell. “Thank you, Mama.”
“Oh, look! You’re wearing the earrings I gave you,” Belinda says, noticing one of the blue diamond studs on Laurel’s earlobe. “They look good on you too.”
“Oh, Mom. They’re awesome. Thank you.”
“Say, where’s your baby?”
“She’s in the nursery. The nurses took her there so Laurel could catch up on her rest.”
“But I can still see her today, can’t I?”