Back in her element once again caring for multiple people, Hannah blossomed, Fritz seeing her happy—was too. Now all that was needed to complete this rosy picture—was the birth of a healthy baby and Ebbely’s safe return.
Her labor began on a warm summer’s eve. This time aided only by experience and Hannah’s care, at dawn Jane gave birth to a son, unmarked yet with a quietness that first alarmed. When slapped, he did not bellow, only meowed. As if still bewildered by his harrowing journey into the light, he remained silent as if contemplating where he was and if he would like it once he knew. Then resigned, he allowed Hannah to cut his lifeline, clean and swaddle him, hand him in his latest cocoon over to the woman whose heartbeat he was accustomed to. As Jane looked down at him—he looked up at her—and she saw Michael in his eyes. Hannah too had seen the resemblance.
“Ninnie! You got anudder Bubbele! Just like our Michael he looks.”
Jane tore her eyes off the bundle.
“He’s alright? You’re sure? Did you look? Really look?”
“Nutting wrong, child. Nutting missing—everyting perfect—a healthy boy! I swear.” Relief overwhelming her, Hannah sobbed, “A healthy boy, Ninnie! A healthy boy—God loves you, child. God loves you!”
The baby slept. They had been through a lot together she and this helpless being and survived. Jane liked the feeling of accomplishment this gave her, a bond, a sort of victory united them. Holding him close she slept.
Without stopping to take off his riding boots, John sprinted up the stairs, hugged Hannah, kissed his wife, cradled his new son, then kissed her again. Hannah quite overcome by the picture of such marital bliss so long in coming exited the room to preserve its impression before anything could alter its perfection.
“Michelino, that’s your new brother.” John pushed him towards the bed. Jane pulled back the swaddling blanket as Michael took a look. Having gone through the arrival of his brother John, he was careful not to touch the bundle in case it too would screech, but this one only looked at him, and sucking his fist fell fast asleep. Michael decided he would do. Little John climbed up onto the bed and tried to sit on his new brother but was caught in time. Kissing his wife, John scooted the children out of the room. With the heady thought how nice it felt to be a family, Jane fell asleep.
Being a woman, Jane knew the exact moment she fell in love. Being a man, John did not; knew only that he loved the woman he happened to be married to and that sufficed. It would take more time before Jane would learn the difference between being in love and actual loving and then know to put them into the rightful category of either. But for now, she was content, basking in being treasured, a healthy son, who for the first time she wanted to nurse, actually enjoying his need of her.
Early the next morning though it was time to resume her duties she lingered, wanting to get something settled before starting her day.
“John.”
“Yes, Ninnie?”
“I was so sure it would be a girl I wanted to name her for Hannah but now … I think it should be Fritz.”
“Fritz? Do you like Fritz?”
“No, not particularly. But …”
“And it doesn’t translate into Italian.”
“I know—but without Hannah I wouldn’t have been alive to have this baby so it has to be for her—Fritz.”
“What about using his middle name—Wilhelm?”
“John, that’s the name of the German kaiser!”
“Not in English. In English it’s William and in Italian it’s …”
“Guillermo! That sounds nice. Yes, that will do. It’s decided then?”
“For you, Ninnie—anything!” And laughing John left to tell his friends the news of their choice.
Though William it was decreed—Billy he became. It suited him. Hannah often explained his exuberance for life as being the natural result of nearly having died. Just as everyone was drawn to Michael’s gentleness, as he grew Billy captured everyone’s heart by being such a happy little boy.
Michael put this new brother into the place in his heart Gloria had left behind. Rocked him when he was teething, shooed flies from him on the back porch, waited with harnessed impatience for him to grow, become his pal. Billy did not disappoint him—by the time he could crawl he was the acknowledged shadow of his eldest brother, as though one breathed for the other they became inseparable. Young John, the solitary, was content to be what he was, the judgmental onlooker of life not its gullible participant.
Their parents’ loving resumed as if birthing had never interrupted it. When John was home, he loved Jane. When away, though his body enjoyed other excitements, he loved her still. Men are capable of such separability, often women wish they could so divide emotion, keeping one from the other without destroying either.
Even when only felt not overly displayed, Jane’s love for her husband sweetened their existence. She softened, smiled more often, he finding a new sense of comfort in a home though always efficient usually devoid of much feeling, relaxed with new appreciation.
Children always acutely aware of the emotional currents within which they must exist, Michael even John allowed their self-protective guard to slip, became younger, less self-contained. Of course Billy never having known any other atmosphere but one infused by love—went right on blossoming—certain the whole world was made of it.
Their first camping trip having been such a rousing success the summer before, annual Ford-inspired camping trips captured a new wanderlust of the common man that through the freedom and heretofore unenvisioned possibilities of his Model T, had become possible. Whole families began Fording into nature there to eat, sleep and frolic as untroubled creatures of the forests, until duty to hard work called them back. Soon small cabins began to sprout by the wayside of those roads mostly traveled, one astounding establishment even permitting its patrons to consume food without ever having to exit their automobiles, dispensing a beverage named Coca-Cola that promised “to refresh the parched throat—to invigorate the fatigued body and quicken the tired brain.” One could of course also refresh oneself with Prohibition’s favorite, a very dark brown brew known as root beer.
As the country’s expanding highways took on their latest enticements, the once so astounding way stations that had been invented to dispense the fuel necessary for the feeding of the horseless carriage lost their awe-inspiring uniqueness that, only a short time ago, had been theirs alone.
Fall was beginning to strip the trees when Jane was handed a letter by the dour Mr. Jeremiah, who requested that if she was not a collector, at her convenience of course, he would appreciate being given the foreign postage adorning her envelope. Assuring him it would be his, eventually—once alone, hands trembling, she tore it open. This time Teresa had written in perfect French.
Giovanna, Ma Chere,