Carrying the ice chest and its quiet little contents with one hand, he managed to get into the shallow boat, thrilled to discover that it was full of about two inches of water. “This is going to sink, you should have emptied it out.” His shoes filled up to the ankles immediately. Why had he agreed to come out here? And Eileen would have to know every last detail.
“It’s not going to sink, this is a sissy rain,” said Mary Jane Mayfair, shoving on her long pole. “Now hang on, please, and don’t let the baby get wet.”
The girl was past all patience. Where he came from, nobody talked to a doctor like that! The baby was just fine under the towels, and pissing up a storm for a newborn.
Lo and behold, they were gliding right over the front porch of this dilapidated wreck and into the open doorway.
“My God, this is like a cave!” he declared. “How in the world did a woman give birth in this place? Will you look at that. There are books in there on the top shelf of that bookcase, right above the water.”
“Well, nobody was here when the water came in,” said Mary Jane, straining as she pushed on the pole.
He could hear the thonk-thonk of it hitting the floorboards beneath them.
“And I guess lots of things are still floating around in the parlor. Besides, Mona Mayfair didn’t have her baby down here, she had it upstairs. Women don’t have their babies in the front room, even if it isn’t underwater.”
The boat collided with the steps, tossing him violently to the left, so that he had to grab the slimy wet banister. He leapt out, immediately stamping both his feet to make sure the steps weren’t going to sink under him.
A warm flood of light came from upstairs, and he could hear, over the hiss and roar of the rain, another sound, very fast, clickety, clickety, clickety. He knew that sound. And with it, a woman’s voice humming. Kind of pretty.
“Why doesn’t this stairway just float loose from the wall?” he asked. He started up, the ice-chest cradle beginning to feel like a sack of rocks to him. “Why doesn’t this whole place just disintegrate?”
“Well, in a way, I guess it is,” said Mary Jane, “only it’s taking a couple hundred years, you know???” She went thumping up the steps in front of him, pushing right in his way as she hit the second-floor hall, and then turning around and saying, “You come with me, we got to go up to the attic.”
But where was that clickety, clickety, clickety coming from? He could hear somebody humming, too. But she didn’t even give him a chance to look around, rushing him to the attic steps.
And then he saw old Granny Mayfair at the very top in her flowered flannel gown, waving her little hand at him.
“Hey, there, Dr. Jack. How’s my handsome boy? Come give me a kiss. Surely am glad to see you.”
“Glad to see you too, Grandma,” he said coming up, though Mary Jane once again shoved right past him, with the firm admonition that he was to hold tight to the baby. Four more steps and he’d be glad to set this bundle down. How come he was the one who’d wound up carrying it, anyway?
At last he reached the warm, dry air of the attic, the little old lady standing on tiptoe to press her lips to his cheeks. He did love Grandma Mayfair, he had to admit that much.
“How you doing, Grandma, you taking all your pills?” he asked.
Mary Jane picked up the ice chest as soon as he set it down, and ran off with it. This wasn’t such a bad place, this attic; it was strung with electric lights, and clean clothes hanging on the lines with wooden clothespins. Lots of comfortable old furniture scattered around, and it didn’t smell too much like mold; on the contrary, it smelled like flowers.
“What is that ‘clickety-clickety’ sound I’m hearing on the second floor down there?” he asked as Grandma Mayfair took his arm.
“You just come in here, Dr. Jack, and do what you got to do, and then you fill out that baby’s birth certificate. We don’t want any problems with the registration of this baby’s birth, did I ever tell you about the problems when I didn’t register Yancy Mayfair for two months after he was born, and you wouldn’t believe the trouble I got into with the city hall and them telling me that …”
“And you delivered this little tyke, did you, Granny?” he asked, patting her hand. His nurses had warned him the first time she came in that it was best not to wait till she finished her stories, because she didn’t. She’d been at his office the second day he opened up, saying none of the other doctors in this town were ever going to touch her again. Now that was a story!
“Sure did, Doctor.”
“The mama’s over there,” said Mary Jane, pointing to the side gable of the attic, all draped in unbleached mosquito netting as if it were a tent with its peaked roof, and the distant glowing rectangle of the rain-flooded window at the end of it.
Almost pretty, the way it looked. There was an oil lamp burning inside, he could smell it, and see the warm glow in the smoky glass shade. The bed was big, piled with quilts and coverlets. It made him sad, suddenly, to think of his own grandmother years and years ago, and beds like that, so heavy with quilts you couldn’t move your toes, and how warm it had been underneath on cold mornings in Carriere, Mississippi.
He lifted the long, thin veils and lowered his head just a little as he stepped under the spine of the gable. The cypress boards were bare here, and dark brownish red and clean. Not a leak anywhere, though the rainy window sent a wash of rippling light over everything.
The red-haired girl lay snug in the bed, half asleep, her eyes sunken and the skin around them frighteningly dark, her lips cracked as she took her breaths with obvious effort.
“This young woman should be in a hospital.”
“She’s worn out, Doctor, you would be too,” said Mary Jane, with her smart tongue. “Why don’t you get this over with, so she can get some rest now?”
At least the bed was clean, cleaner than that makeshift bassinet. The girl lay nestled in fresh sheets, and wearing a fancy white shirt trimmed in old-fashioned lace, with little pearl buttons. Her hair was just about the reddest he’d ever seen, and long and full and brushed out on the pillow. The baby’s might be red like that someday, but right now it was a bit paler.
And speaking of the baby, it was making a sound at last in its little ice-chest bed, thank God. He was beginning to worry about it. Granny Mayfair snatched it up into her arms, and he could tell from the way she lifted it that the baby was in fine hands, though who wanted to think of a woman that age in charge of everything? Look at this girl in the bed. She wasn’t even as old as Mary Jane.
He drew closer, went down with effort on his knees, since there was nothing else to do, and he laid his hand on the mother’s forehead. Slowly her eyes opened, and surprised him with their deep green color. This was a child herself, should never have had a baby!
“You all right, honey?” he asked.
“Yes, Doctor,” she said in a bright, clear voice. “Would you fill out the papers, please, for my baby?”
“You know perfectly well that you should-”
“Doctor, the baby’s born,” she said. She wasn’t from around here. “I’m not bleeding anymore. I’m not going anywhere. As a matter of fact, I am fine, better than I expected.”
The flesh beneath her fingernails was nice and pink. Her pulse was normal. Her breasts were huge. And there was a big jug of milk, only half drunk, by the bed. Well, that was good for her.
Intelligent girl, sure of herself, and well bred, he thought, not country.
“You two leave us alone now,” he said to Mary Jane and the old woman, who hovered right at his shoulders like two giant angels, the little baby whining just a little, like it had just discovered again that it was alive and wasn’t sure it liked it. “Go over there so I can examine this child, and make sure she’s not hemorrhaging.”