“My first grandchild is right here.” Rose pointed at Julia’s belly.
“No,” Cecelia and Julia said, at the same time.
Rose took a step back.
Izzy, who was missing her morning nap, rubbed at her eyes with the backs of her hands and frowned at everyone.
“It’s going to be so hot in Florida,” Julia said, trying to steer the conversation to a place that made sense, that had potential for peace. As the words left her mouth, though, she knew they were meaningless. “You’ve never liked the heat, Mama.”
“You don’t have to be this stubborn,” Cecelia said.
Julia felt a tremor run through her body. She’d known there would be an important conversation with her mother at the airport—she’d felt this in her bones—but she hadn’t known it would include Cecelia. She felt a pinch of jealousy, because her younger sister had stepped in front of her again. Cecelia was almost nineteen and seemed more powerful, more certain, in motherhood than she had been before. She was pretty and wearing clothes that fit her. Julia felt as big as the ocean, and her thoughts swam like fish in her head.
“Are you trying to kill me too?” Rose said to Cecelia. “Right before I get on an airplane to have some relaxation for the first time in my life?”
Oh no, Julia thought.
“You can’t really, truly believe that I had anything to do with Daddy’s death.” Cecelia pointed a look at Rose that said, If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours.
There were people all around them—eating snacks, drinking coffee, making sure they had what they needed in their carry-on bags—but Julia couldn’t have said whether there were ten strangers in the terminal or one hundred. Were they watching and listening to her mother and sister stab each other in the heart?
“Daddy said that you never spoke to your mother again after she turned you out.” Cecelia shook her head, and so Izzy shook hers too. “I wanted to say goodbye and tell you that I always loved you and that I’ll tell Izzy only good stories about you. And you know why? Not for you, Mom. I’m going to do that for me. I don’t want to get bitter and angry like you. I want to miss you, because I love you.”
“You shouldn’t talk like this,” Rose said. “I’d like to sit down.” And she went to sit in one of the waiting-area chairs. The tremors coursing through Julia’s body seemed to pass over her mother’s face, but Rose said nothing until the boarding announcement was made.
“Do you have everything you need for the flight?” Julia said, and then thought, Why can I only say stupid things? She wanted to be in this moment with her mother and sister, but she wasn’t. She was a cheap bouncy ball in the middle of a gunfight.
Rose directed her attention at Cecelia. “I choose what conversations I have, young lady. Not you. There’s no virtue in being mouthy.” Rose nodded, as if in agreement with herself, and then walked slowly toward the boarding tunnel, where she showed the flight attendant her ticket and disappeared from sight.
Izzy made a soft noise and bounced in her mother’s arms.
The two sisters looked at each other. “I didn’t know I was going to come here when I woke up this morning,” Cecelia said. “I just found myself walking to the train.”
The airport thrummed around them: overhead announcements, the clack of bags being set down, the murmur of conversation. Julia said, “Could you drive the car back to the city? I think the baby is coming.”
“Now?” Cecelia’s eyes widened, and she kissed her sister on the cheek. Izzy leaned forward from her mother’s arms to do the same. One firm kiss, and one butterfly-light.
“Of course he’s coming,” Cecelia said. “Let’s go.”
“You were so brave,” Julia said, as she let herself be led down the hallway. Her voice was dim in her own ears, and these would be the last words she would say out loud for a while. She could feel some kind of vast power pulling her within herself.
They didn’t have a car seat, so Julia half-sat and half-lay in the back seat, holding Izzy with both hands.
“Hang on,” Cecelia said. “Just hang on until we get to the hospital. I thought it was so silly when Daddy taught us to drive, since we live in a city and never owned a car. He told me that it was a valuable life skill and that I could be the driver when the four of us robbed a bank one day.”
Julia knew her sister was talking to keep her attention away from the pain, but it wasn’t pain exactly—more a smothering intensity. Every few minutes, she felt like she was being sat on by an invisible elephant—the weight crushed her—and then the elephant stood up, and she was herself again. Julia focused on keeping her hands on Izzy, who had fallen asleep beside her. She looked so perfect and beautiful in her sleep that Julia started to cry. No baby could ever be this cute again, she thought. Which means my baby won’t be this cute.
“There’s the river,” Cecelia said from the front seat. “Five more minutes. I’m going to paint a picture of Izzy and your baby together. I’ll paint one for each of us.”
When the elephant stood up, Julia thought, Mama is in the sky right now. She’s not even on this earth. She’s literally unreachable.
Cecelia seemed to hear her thoughts. “It’s Mom’s loss, not yours,” she said. “She’s going to miss everything, but you won’t. I won’t. I’ll call William and the others when we get to the hospital. All of us will be there.”
They reached the hospital, Cecelia peeled Julia’s fingers off Izzy’s onesie, and people—faceless strangers whose voices she couldn’t understand—helped her into a wheelchair. Julia wondered if they were the same people from the airport. She could hear the timbre of Cecelia’s voice, but the words wouldn’t separate into distinct shapes. Julia kept shifting her weight, twisting in the seat, trying to evade the elephant, who now refused to stand up.
Later she would be told that her labor was surprisingly fast for a first birth and that she arrived too late to have an epidural. Cecelia called the history department at Northwestern, but no one could track William down right away. It took thirty minutes before he was found in the university gym and then he ran, despite his bad knee, to the corner of the Northwestern campus where it was possible to find a cab. Sylvie abandoned her desk at the library. Emeline had been sitting alone in the house they grew up in, intent on spending every minute of the last day their family owned it inside its walls. She ran out the front door, though, when she got the call from her twin.
Because everything moved so quickly and William hadn’t yet arrived, Cecelia was in the delivery room, just as Julia had been with her. The ability to hear and understand words was the first of Julia’s capacities to go. Soon she was thinking in sentences without prepositions or adjectives. No, no more, stop, baby coming. It felt like a wall had fallen inside her and revealed that she was no more than an animal. This was a surprise to Julia, even from that place. She growled and mooed and caterwauled as her body somehow squeezed itself. The noises seemed to come from inside her and outside her, and she felt no shame. She felt power. She felt like a lioness, covered in sweat, rising up on the hard bed they’d laid her on, announcing, “Push,” as everything she was made of, in lockstep, guided the baby out of her body.
“It’s a girl!” Cecelia cried.