Mother eventually shuffled away from the bed, eased herself into her chair and returned to her knitting. I bustled about the kitchen, listening to the clack of her needles, a steady rhythm.
Over the past months, as Emily’s belly grew and the days lengthened, when the nights were filled with jobs to pass the time, Mother had knit socks to send to soldiers. Her needles framed a box, four sides, neat, even painstakingly crafted stiches, a turn for the ankle, casting off to shape the toe. Mother made socks. She did not knit blankets. There were no layettes lying in wait. No sweaters. No jumpers. She had not instructed Charlie to fashion a cradle or me to stitch sleepers. Mother, whose experience I counted on to direct the matter of birth and babies and motherhood, whose hands always sought a purpose, had done nothing to prepare for the birth of Emily’s child.
As her needles continued to click, a creeping coldness gripped me. A growing awareness, lit by the flames of the stove that warmed a room where a girl nursed her newborn child while her mother sat separate, distant, apart, knitting socks.
Mother had never intended for Emily to hold her baby.
Emily, who had always seen more than I had, had understood what was not there. She knew. She knew enough to shun the comfort and warmth of a bed, the wooden walls of the cottage that stopped the wind. She knew what I did not: that there would be no refuge in the experienced, knowledgeable hands of our mother.
You should have let her die.
Emily knew. And now, the baby had been born. The baby had a name. She suckled at her mother’s breast.
After a time, Emily let me take the child from her. I bathed her as best I could in a basin, gently wiping away the remnants of birth that clung to her before wrapping her snugly in flannel towels. I bathed Emily, too, removing her skirts and blouse and soaking them in pails of water, scrubbing them until they were clean and hanging them outside to catch the breezes of the Lake. She refused to dress, instead lying naked on the bed, washed by the orange glow from the stove, with Anna nuzzled up to her breast. I watched them fall in love.
When night fell, Charlie was the one to light the lamp. I heard his heavy footfall climb the stairs and scuff about on the wooden floors of the gallery. When he was done, he trudged back down again and out the door, without a word or even a glance. Mother prepared dinner in silence. We ate in equal silence.
I fashioned a cradle out of a drawer from the dresser, emptying the contents into a pile on the floor and then lining it with a folded woolen blanket and the clean, soft cloths that we used to polish the lens. I placed it on the floor beside our bed and laid the sleeping Anna, tiny and perfect, inside. Exhausted, Emily and I fell asleep, lulled by the rhythm of the light and the familiar chorus of frogs singing in the bog.
And while I heard Charlie enter a few hours later and climb the stairs to the light, I did not hear him pause by our bed on his way back out. Nor did I hear the buzzing of the outboard motor as Sweet Pea eased away from shore, heading toward the sprinkling of lights that defined the little hamlet of Silver Islet, with the tiny bundle of our baby tucked in her makeshift cradle at his feet.
49
Morgan
What a prick. What a fucking prick. I can see why she hasn’t spoken to him in sixty years.
“Anna,” she says the name again. “Such a coincidence. Such a sad and tragic coincidence.”
I’m not convinced.
*
She doesn’t notice that I take the book with me when I leave. I walk with her back to her room and pretend like I’m putting the journal on her table with the other ones, and make sure the rattle is really noisy when I set it down. She told them that she won’t be going to the dining room for dinner—that she wants to be left alone. They all know what happened. I tell her again that I’m sorry. It seems like the right thing to say. And then I leave her, sitting in her father’s chair in her room.
The instructions say to put the book in the freezer. I was going to put it in a big bag of rice, like Laurie did when she dropped her cell phone into the sink while she was doing the dishes. But when I googled “how to dry out a wet or damp book,” the University of Michigan library website said to freeze it right away. The book isn’t dripping wet. It’s just damp and puffy. I wonder when it was they found Charlie’s body and the book and rattle in his pocket. It could have been yesterday, or even before that. I can see that there’s already a bit of mold growing on the cover. So I do like it says and I put it in the freezer. While it chills in there next to the Pizza Pops and vanilla ice cream, I have time to find the other things I need.
I have to do it in stages, so I set myself up in my room, clearing off the top of my dresser so that I can work there. I put down a layer of newspaper and get my hair dryer and a roll of paper towel ready. I have no idea how long it takes to freeze a book, and I check it so much I’m starting to annoy Bill. I guess once it’s hard, it’s ready, so I take it down to my room as quickly as I can. The cover opens fairly easily. I gently train the hair dryer on the first page inside and fan it back and forth to dry the thawing moisture as it rises from the top sheet. I smooth my hand across it, hoping to hell I’m doing it the way I’m supposed to. I figure I can’t be doing any more damage than the Lake already did. And besides, Miss Livingstone will never know. Once the book has thawed enough that it feels wet again, I lay a piece of paper towel between the dry pages and the wet pages and put it back into the freezer. I have to wait until it freezes again to do any more.
Laurie and Bill don’t let me smoke in the house. They aren’t so stupid that they don’t know I smoke, and I don’t think they really give a shit, but they make me go and sit outside on the back deck or front steps anyway. I actually don’t mind, most of the time. It gets me out of the house and away from the noise of the TV that’s always on, and the bickering of the other kids. While I’m waiting for the book to freeze again, I decide to go outside and light up. It’s one of those nights when you can smell winter coming. There’s an aroma, not like flowers or dog shit in spring, or wet, moldy leaves in the fall, but you can just tell that it’s going to snow by how the air is, by what it smells like. I butt out my cigarette before I’m finished, just so I can take it in.
*