Why was a harder question. Rosie thought about it all the way to the hospital, not that day, but 257 days later on the one when Claude was born. Labor had begun in earnest during dinner, though she’d known it was coming all morning and afternoon. Her feet itched peculiarly just before contractions started. She knew that sensation from long experience and had figured the baby would come the next day or even the one after that, so even though the contractions came closer and harder, she made dinner. But between passing the salad around and actually finishing the pasta, contractions had gone from every seven minutes to every three. Penn said, “So, how about dessert?” Rosie said, “Instead, maybe the hospital.”
How they were going to get home was an open question, but for the moment, they all still fit in one car. Rosie installed herself in the front seat, calmly but with no little effort. Penn grabbed the bags. They weren’t for Rosie, who needed so little. She had never been the type to prepare a soundtrack or a collage or a special pillow for the delivery room, but by now she realized that even the handful of things she’d brought the first few times were unnecessary. No, the bags were for her mother. They contained provisions to spend hours and perhaps days on end in a waiting room with four small, giddy boys—books, trains, LEGOs, glue sticks, juice boxes, granola bars, stuffies, blankies, and particular pillows. Rosie did not need a special pillow for the hospital. This was the difference between her and her sons.
One boy’s trash is another boy’s treasure. Back to square one.
All the way to the hospital while the kids sang Peter Pan in their car seats and boosters—their babysitter was starring in her high school musical—and Penn squeezed her hand and pretended, unsuccessfully, to be nonchalant by obeying all posted speed limits, and she resisted the temptation to tell him to hurry the hell up, Rosie was thinking one word over and over: Poppy. If the baby was a girl—and surely, surely it had to be: she had eaten fish and cookies; she had had sex in the afternoon facing east; she had done the thing with the spoon, and besides, it was her turn—she would name her Poppy.
They had had the name picked out from the first pregnancy. Rosie had had it for even longer, since one dark day sitting on her little sister’s hospital bed while their parents were in the cafeteria taking a break. Rosie was braiding Poppy’s wig hair and Poppy was braiding Poppy’s doll’s hair when she said, out of nowhere, “I’ll never have a little girl whose hair I get to braid.” Her voice was raspy. Rosie knew now it was from the chemotherapy, but at the time it seemed like something inside her little sister was fighting to get out—and winning—a goblin or a witch or a demon, something that was already breaking through in snatches here and there: a croaking voice, red rolling eyes, bruises that raised slowly then seemed to spread and multiply as if peeling back from a sea of purple skin roiling just beneath her ever more delicate surface. Rather than being frightened, Rosie found this idea comforting. She welcomed the demon on its way out of her sister because it was becoming increasingly clear that Poppy could not survive this terrible, unspeakable, unthinkable disease, but maybe the demon could. Demon Poppy seemed much stronger. Demon Poppy had more fight in her.
“Will you take care of Clover for me?” Poppy croaked. Like all the children in the Walsh home, Poppy’s doll was named for a flower.
Rosie nodded. It was all she could manage. But then Poppy’s regular voice came back: “Where should we go on vacation?”
“When?”
“When I get out of here.”
“I dunno.” The only place they’d ever been on vacation so far was their grandparents’ house, which smelled like basement. “Where do you want to go?”
“Siam,” Poppy said immediately.
“Siam?”
“Like The King and I.” The hospital had a poorly stocked video library of which that was the highlight. And Poppy had a lot of lying-around time.
“We’ll go everywhere,” Rosie promised. “As soon as you’re out. Well, we probably have to wait four years till I get my license. Is Siam in driving distance?”
“I dunno. Probably.” Poppy smiled happily. “You’re such a good hair braider.” It was the best thing about cancer it turned out. Poppy’s wig hair was much longer and less tangled than her real hair. “Your daughter’s going to be so lucky.”
At that very moment, Rosalind Walsh, aged twelve, decided two things: her daughter would have long hair, like really long, like long enough to sit on, and she would name her Poppy. Eventually, Rosie discovered Siam was now called Thailand, but it was several lifetimes later before she got there, and then it was not for vacation. This was the last time she was ever alone with her sister.
All the way to the hospital, while Penn murmured, “Breathe, breathe,” and Roo sang, “I gotta crow,” and Ben and Rigel and Orion cawed back at the tops of their little boy voices, “Er-er-er-errrrr,” Rosie whispered, “Poppy. Poppy. Poppy. Poppy.”
Twenty minutes after they pulled up at the front door, the baby was ready.
“Push,” said the doctor.
“Breathe,” said Penn.