She went into labor one night as they walked home. They had been window shopping on Madison Avenue, and she scarcely noticed the first pains. It was only after a while that she realized what had happened. They called the doctor and he told them to take their time, first babies were usually in no hurry.
“Are you okay?” he asked her a thousand times, and she lay on their bed, watching TV, and eating Jell-O. “Are you sure that's what you're supposed to do?” he asked nervously. He felt a thousand years old as he watched her, fearing that she might have a hard time, or have the baby before they left the house. Lately, her belly had looked enormous. But she seemed unconcerned as she watched her favorite shows, drank ginger ale and ate ice cream. It was almost midnight when she finally started to look seriously uncomfortable and could no longer talk through the pains, which he knew was his sign to take her to the hospital and call the doctor.
He called him again, and the doctor told them to come in. And as Charles helped her down the stairs, she snapped at him several times, and he smiled at her. This was the real thing. Pretty soon, they'd have a baby. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him, and to her. And by the time they settled her in a labor room, she had calmed down again, but Grace was surprised by how much the contractions hurt, and how strong they were. Finally, by two a.m. she was panting and said she couldn't stand them any longer.
Charles was doing everything he'd been taught to do, but none of it was helping, and he was starting to worry that they'd have to do a cesarean section. But as the pains got worse, she started to scream, and clutch at him, and he would have done anything to make it end. He kept asking the nurses to give her some medication.
“Everything is fine, Mr. Mackenzie. Your wife is doing beautifully.” His wife looked like she was ready to die as she screamed again, and then finally they took her to the delivery room, and she started pushing. Charles thought he had never seen anything so painful, and he was sorry they'd ever done it. All he wanted to do was take her in his arms again, and make the pain stop for her. But nothing helped her now, and the doctor didn't want to give her medication. He said he really preferred natural childbirth, for mother and child. Charles wanted to kill him, as he watched what Grace was going through.
She pushed for an hour, and it was five in the morning by then, Grace was beside herself with pain, and incoherent with the agony of each contraction. And as he watched her, he vowed they'd never do this again. He wanted to apologize to Grace for putting her through it. And he swore to himself that if she and the baby both came out of it alive, he'd never let this happen again. And just as he was about to promise never to lay a hand on her again, there was a terrifying scream from her, and a long, thin howl, and suddenly he found himself looking into the face of the son they had decided to call Andrew Charles Mackenzie. He had huge blue eyes like Grace, and dark red hair, but everything else about him was Charles, right down to his tiny fingers. For his father, it was exactly like looking into the mirror. He laughed and cried all at once as he looked at him.
“Oh my God … he's so beautiful,” Charles said in awe of the baby, and bent to kiss his wife. She was lying flat now, after so much hard work, and looking suddenly ecstatic as she laughed and smiled at her husband.
“Is the baby all right?” she asked over and over again, and as soon as they had cleaned him off and checked his lungs again, they handed him to his mother, and he lay at her breast, and immediately nuzzled close to her, while Charles watched them.
“Grace … how can I ever thank you?” Charles said, wondering how he had managed to live so long without this baby. And how brave she was to go through all that for him. He had never been as touched or as much in love with anyone as he was with Grace at that moment.
They went back to her room after that, and little Andrew lay by her side, and much to Charles's astonishment, they all went home the next morning. She was healthy and young, the baby was fine, and weighed just under nine pounds. They had had natural childbirth. There was no reason for them not to go home, her obstetrician explained. And Charles realized that he had a whole new world to discover. It was terrifying taking a baby home so soon, but Grace acted as though it was completely natural, and seemed totally at ease with her son from the very first moment he was born. It took Charles a few days, but within a week, he seemed like a practiced hand, and he bragged to everyone constantly about the baby. The only thing his friends didn't envy him was the sleepless nights he was having to live with. He left for the office every day feeling as though he'd been running on the wheel of a hamster cage all night. Master Andrew was waking up every two hours to be nursed, and it took him roughly an hour to go back to sleep again, and Charles only slighdy longer. He figured out that he was sleeping in fifteen-minute increments, and getting approximately two and a half hours sleep a night, which was roughly five and a half less than he needed. But it was fun anyway, and he was crazy about his wife and the baby.
They rented a house in East Hampton for the month of July, and spent Grace's birthday there. Charles commuted two or three times a week, and she came back and forth with the baby to be with him. And in August he took two weeks off and they went to Martha's Vineyard to his old house. Grace thought she'd never been happier, and in October she found out she was pregnant again, and Charles was as delighted as she was.
“Why don't we just have twins this time, and get it over with?” he said good-naturedly. He was really enjoying their son. And he was only getting four or five hours sleep a night which seemed like a lot now. It amused him that life could change so quickly.
Their second baby took longer to come, and once again Charles found himself ready to promise to the gods that he would never touch his wife again, but this time the doctor finally gave in, and gave her some medication. It didn't help much, but it was something. And nineteen hours after labor began, Abigail Mackenzie pushed her way into the world and looked up at her father with an expression of amazement. He melted on the spot when he saw her. She was a miniature version of her mother, 6nly with her father's dark hair. She was a real beauty. And she managed to make a complete spectacle of herself by arriving on her mother's twenty-fifth birthday. Charles was almost forty-five, and those were the happy years.
Grace was constantly busy with her children. She went to playgrounds and play groups and kindergyms, and music classes for toddlers. She was totally involved in doing everything with them. She worried a lot about being boring to Charles, but he seemed to love their life. It was all so new to him, and he was the envy of all who knew him, with a young, beautiful wife and a young family, he seemed to have the world by the tail.
Grace had never gotten back to her charity work again, although she still talked about it. But just after Andrew was born, she gave a gift, in his name, to St. Andrew's Shelter. She gave them every penny she had left from Frank Wills. It seemed the best use for it she could think of. In some ways, it was blood money to her, and a relic of a life that had brought her nothing but grief. She was sure that Father Tim would find a happier use for it. And they gave another, smaller gift, when Abigail was born. But she hadn't been there to visit for a long time. She was too involved with her husband and children.