Nearly ten months after the unexpected nor’easter blew through Manhattan in late October, freezing branches, killing 185 stately trees in Central Park, destroying nearly all the autumnal foliage of the five boroughs, including the colorful mums that lined Park Avenue and the decorative pots of kale the denizens of Brooklyn favored for their front stoops while trying to effect a kind of incongruent country gentility, the birthing centers of New York City were hit with a miniature baby boom. As spring turned to summer and the days grew longer and the humidity crept northward and eastward, slowly making its way up the Jersey shore until it settled over the city like a clammy, uninvited embrace, the citywide birth rate for July nearly doubled, forcing doctors and nurses and midwifes and anesthesiologists to work double shifts, cancel vacations, operate on zero sleep.
“Snowtober babies” they started calling them, the Ethans and Liams and Isabellas and Chloes that appeared in late July in place of the corn, which had failed to thrive because after that early snowstorm the rest of the winter was dry as a bone and the winter’s drought extended into spring and summer. But the babies came—their hair as abundant and soft as corn silk, their new bodies unfurling to expose tiny grasping fingers and clenched toes that looked as sweet as newly bared kernels of corn.
Stephanie had been having prelabor contractions for weeks, but she was five days past her due date and still didn’t have a baby. She’d stopped going into her office, preferring to spend a few desultory hours at the computer before taking a long afternoon nap. She was bored. She was ready. She was beyond ready. Downstairs, Tommy was hammering. She still couldn’t believe the change that had come over him once he got that ridiculous artifact out of his apartment. The day Tommy collapsed on the stoop, EMS declared him fine. Exhausted and dehydrated, but fine. When they finally got him inside and she saw the statue, she’d nearly fainted herself. She knew all about the theft at ground zero because one of her clients had written an entire book about the recovery efforts downtown and was currently covering the rebuilding of the new Freedom Tower.
Logistics of statue moving aside, the transfer was absurdly simple. Stephanie asked her old friend Will to help, knowing she could trust him to protect Tommy. A rented truck, a late-night drop-off at a collection spot that had been set up for anyone wanting to donate 9/11 artifacts. Ever since the statue had been returned to its rightful place, Tommy had taken to his living quarters with a new zeal, renovating the entire garden level himself. It was going to be beautiful.
Five days late. Stephanie had taken her nap, refolded the baby blankets in the spanking new crib in the pretty new nursery. The July heat was blistering and the afternoons were too miserable to do anything but sit in her air-conditioned living room, watch reality TV, and saunter down the block for an overpriced gelato before dinner. Standing in front of a neighboring stoop, listlessly rummaging through a pile of books left out for the taking, she felt a little pop, like a balloon bursting quietly and deep inside. And then the telltale gush between her legs, followed by a long, throbbing ache, longer and heavier than the small precontractions she’d been having. She leaned against a neighbor’s stone balustrade with one hand and took a deep breath. She felt the sweat trickle down the back of her neck, between her tender breasts. She closed her eyes and the sun beat down on her face and shoulder and arms, the peach gelato in her other hand dripping down her palm and wrist. She wanted to remember this moment. She looked at the wet spot on the pavement and thought: This is before. The trickle down her inner thighs, the swelling ache at her back, they were ushering her to a completely different place, to after. She was ready.
As she stood, mesmerized by her amniotic fluid meandering down the slope of the bluestone sidewalk (the first and last moment, as it would happen, that she had the luxury of observing the process with any aplomb), the first contraction hit and was so sustained it took her breath away, doubled her over, and she was stunned to hear herself audibly groan.
Okay, she thought, I guess this is going to be fucking intense.