The Wonder of All Things (8 page)

The children returned her hug and nodded politely.

“I’ll start cooking a little something once you’re settled in. I sat up all night last night, just waiting for you to get here. You’d think I would have used that time to go ahead and get some food ready.” She laughed. She was trying her best not to make Ava uncomfortable. Her husband had treated the girl in that house since she was barely old enough to walk, but things were different now. Her hand lingered upon Ava’s shoulder. “I’m just so excited,” she added.

“You don’t have to cook anything,” Carmen said, removing her coat and hanging it by the door. Delores only waved the comment away and led them to the examining room.

The examining room had once been a bedroom for one of Dr. Arnold’s seven children, all of whom had long ago marched off into the distances of the world. The small room had the charm that comes with age and use. There were small nicks in the floor and along the molding of the walls, and a papier-mâché snowman perched atop the mantel, the feeling that, within the silent recesses of the house, laughter might arise at any moment.

Carmen perched herself on the edge of the examining table. Ava and Wash sat in a pair of small chairs by the far wall.

“My husband will be in shortly,” Delores said. “He’s in his office on the phone.” Then she looked at Ava and winked proudly. “You just can’t understand how proud I am that you’re standing here in my house. A true healer! I still can’t believe it. You’re a walking miracle, Ava!” The woman’s eyes danced as she watched Ava and waited for the girl to say something.

“I taught her everything she knows,” Wash said. And then he leaned back in his chair and returned the wink Delores had given Ava.

“It’s okay,” Delores said, undeterred. “You don’t have to say anything. I can only imagine what your life is now, how much it’s changed.” She paused and let the image fill her mind. Then: “Is there anything I can get you?”

“No, thank you,” Ava said.

“I’ll take a glass of tea,” Carmen said.

“Of course,” Delores replied, reaching for the pitcher she’d placed on a table near the door.

“Do you have any bourbon?” Wash asked. “Single malt.” He winked at the woman for a second time and, finally, she acknowledged his joke.

“I’ll see what I can come up with,” Delores replied. She left the room with the pitcher in her hand and came back shortly with two tall glasses of iced tea. But the pause to gather drinks had done nothing to redirect her interest. “So how does it feel to have all of this attention, Ava?” she asked. “Was that a police escort I saw outside?”

“We’re all keeping up with it,” Carmen answered quickly.

“Oh, I can only imagine,” Delores replied, crossing her hands in front of her. She glanced around the room, but always her eyes returned to Ava.

“She’s not going to float away,” Carmen said, nodding in Ava’s direction. Delores and Ava both looked at her, each of them taking something different from the comment.

“I know that,” Delores replied, a pang of hurt in her voice. “I’m just fascinated, is all. It’s just a marvel, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Carmen replied. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that.” She exhaled. “I guess all of us are still trying to figure out how to behave now.”

Carmen finished off the glass of tea and handed it back to Delores. She placed her hands on her stomach. “Could you excuse us for just a moment, Delores? The baby’s acting up and I’d like to talk to Ava and Wash for just a second alone if that’s okay.”

“Oh, of course,” Delores added. “Just look at me, standing here harassing you all.” She turned to leave the room. When she was at the door she paused. “It’s just a splendor,” she said. “Just such an impossible blessing. All of it. I hope you understand that.” Then she left.

Ava, Carmen and Wash sat silently. They heard the sound of Delores’s footfalls as she went back into the kitchen. They heard the gentle cracking of the ice cubes as they floated in the tea.

“It won’t be like this forever,” Carmen said. Ava had been looking out the window, watching a large bank of gray clouds roll by. “This will all blow over,” Carmen continued. “There will be a few things that have to get sorted out first, but it’ll get better.” She reclined on the examining table with her hands on her stomach.

“She’s right,” Wash added. He gulped down his tea and placed the glass on the floor beside his chair. “People are just weird right now. But they’ll get less weird, I think.” He scratched the top of his head, not unlike the way his father sometimes did. “Yeah,” he said confidently. “It’ll get less weird.”

“It already has if you ask me,” Carmen said. “Or maybe we’re just all starting to get acclimated.” She tightened her lip and thought for a moment. “It’s like when Macon brought you home from the hospital. You remember how wild that was. Looking back on that now, I see it differently. I don’t think it’s gotten any better. Every day more and more people are showing up in town. I never would have thought getting a routine checkup would take a police escort.” She shook her head. “But I think we’re doing okay.”

“You didn’t come with Dad to get me from the hospital,” Ava said, taking her eyes from the window. “My mom would have.”

Wash started to speak, but stopped. He looked at Carmen.

“It’s okay,” Carmen said to him. Then she leaned back on the table with a sigh. “And if I had come, Ava,” she said, “you would have told me how your mother would have stayed at home and had dinner ready for you when you got there. Wouldn’t you?”

“She would have come,” Ava said flatly. “She would have wanted to be there with me.”

“I
was
there with you, Ava,” Carmen said. “I slept there, right beside Macon, both of us propped up in those damned uncomfortable chairs. But you were unconscious for that, so I guess I don’t get credit for it.” She adjusted her position on the examining table. “And I knew I wouldn’t get credit for it the whole time I was doing it, but I did it, anyway. Because that’s what a mother does. Even a stepmother.” She spoke without malice or hardness in her voice. Then she inhaled quickly and exhaled slowly, looking down at her stomach. “The baby’s kicking,” she said.

“Can I feel it?” Wash asked.

“Sure,” Carmen said.

Wash was already out of his chair and halfway to the examining table. When he was close enough, he reached toward Carmen’s stomach. He hesitated as his hand neared her. She had let him feel the kicking baby before, but his fascination and sense of reverence was never diminished by repetition. He always waited for her to guide his hand the rest of the way.

Carmen took the boy’s hand and placed it atop her stomach. The seconds passed slowly until, at last, there was dull thump of the child’s kick.

“So cool,” Wash said goofily, taking his hand away. “You’ve got to feel this, Ava.” He walked over and took Ava’s hand and led her to the examining table.

Ava hesitated.

“Here,” Carmen said, taking Ava’s hand and placing it on her stomach. “Wait for it.” And then the two of them held their breath and waited. When it came, the kick was soft, like a greeting.

Carmen laughed. “Did you feel it?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Ava said. The anger was gone from her voice, replaced by fascination. “There really is a person in there,” she said. “It’s kinda hard to believe. It’s...it’s so much.”

“It’s everything,” Carmen replied. “You feel fuller than you’ve ever felt in your entire life. Full in a way that you never imagined possible, like everything—the earth, the trees, the sky, the stars, everything—is inside of you.”

Ava held her hand on Carmen’s stomach, and the universe inside of Carmen kicked again. All three of them giggled at the magic of it.

“Ava,” Carmen said, still holding the girl’s hand on her stomach.

“Yes?”

“You’d tell me,” Carmen began. She took a deep breath and looked up into Ava’s eyes. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you? With the baby, I mean. If you could tell something about it like that.”

Ava said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Carmen said, still pressing the girl’s hand to her stomach. “But I’m not sorry, too. I don’t know if it’s even how your gift—or whatever it is—works. But you’d help, wouldn’t you? Like you did with Wash. If you knew the baby was sick, you’d help it, wouldn’t you?”

In Carmen’s face, Ava saw a thousand other people like her. People wanting help. People wanting hope. People hurt and afraid and looking to mend the broken things in their lives. People simply wanting to be reassured that the horrors they imagined in the late hours of the night would not come to pass.

“Is that why you’re being nice to me?” Ava asked. She flinched and took her hand from Carmen’s stomach.

“Please, Ava,” Carmen whispered, her voice thick with fear. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand.”

“I should have known,” Ava replied. “You’re just like everyone else.”

Carmen reached for the girl’s hand, trying to get it back, but Ava had already taken a step away.

“I don’t think she meant anything, Ava,” Wash said.

“She just wanted something,” Ava replied to the boy. “Just like everyone else.”

“I lost a baby once,” Carmen said. “It was born in the night and never lived to see the sunrise. I try not to think about it. I try to block out the memory of it. It was a hard pregnancy, just like this one, and the doctors had to medicate me pretty heavily after the baby was born. I woke up in the afternoon, expecting to see my baby. But there was my mother, sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed. She started crying as soon as I opened my eyes. Never said a word.” Carmen wiped her eyes. “It breaks a person, losing a child. No matter what someone says, no matter how much they may smile, no matter how long ago it happened...it’s a break that never heals. And I’m not sure I can survive that again.” She sighed, as if she had finally given up holding on to a secret.

Ava and Carmen stood watching each other, both expecting, both anticipating. Then, without a word, Ava turned and left the room. Wash followed after her.

“I’ll get her,” he said to Carmen on the way out the door. Then the two children were gone.

Not long after, Dr. Arnold came into the room and Carmen quickly wiped away her tears and placed the fear back into the small box inside of her. “How have you been feeling?” Dr. Arnold asked Carmen once the examination was over. He was balding and overweight, but full of energy and almost always smiling. He reminded Carmen of an Irish Bill Cosby, and that image alone was enough to make her feel better most days.

“About the same,” Carmen replied, sitting up on the table.

“Well, your vitals all look perfectly healthy. Yours and the baby’s. There’s a small indication of some placental abruption, but if it was anything to worry about, I’d let you know.”

“That’s the same thing you said the last time I came in for an examination.”

“Because it was true the last time, as well,” he replied. He smiled. “Face the facts, Carmen. You’re healthy and you’ve got a healthy baby inside of you.”

“I just feel pain some days,” Carmen said. She rubbed her stomach rhythmically. “Everything hurts. Everything except the baby. Sometimes it feels like I’m the weak link here...if that makes any sense.”

“How’s your diet?”

“Good. Eating everything I’m supposed to.”

“Good,” Dr. Arnold said, nodding heavily. “Have you talked with Macon about all of this?”

“Of course,” Carmen said. “But he’s not the doctor, now is he?” She grinned, but her tone was serious.

“Listen,” Dr. Arnold said. He shifted his weight on the rolling stool he was sitting on and folded his arms in front of him. “I’ll do anything I can to reassure you that everything is okay. If you’d like another opinion, I know someone up in Virginia who I trust. He’ll give you a thorough examination and, when it’s all over, you can come back here and we’ll talk. But you really will be fine. Few are capable of more worry than expectant parents.”

His expression was full of warmth and comfort and trust and confidence, and Carmen could not help but believe him, as she always did. He had been the town’s doctor for almost all of his life. He had delivered more children than the town could hold—something he was fond of saying at parties when people asked him if he was staying busy.

“You’re going to be okay,” Dr. Arnold said.

“You’re sure?” Carmen replied. Her voice trembled a little.

“I’m sure,” Dr. Arnold replied. “You’ve got to believe that you’re going to be okay, because you are. And that’s my professional opinion. You’ve just got to have faith,” he said.

It was the height of summer and the air was electric with the insect songs and the humidity that pressed down upon everyone like an anvil, but still Heather stood beneath the summer sun on the far side of the yard with a shovel in her hand, digging a hole. Ava stood at the window of the house watching her mother dig. The ground was hard at times and she would gouge the earth with the shovel and the streams of sweat dripped down from her mother’s brow so much that it looked like rain.

Ava listened to the noise made by her mother’s digging—the heavy chuff, chuff, chuff of the shovel entering the earth rhythmically. She could not understand why her mother was digging a hole in the ground, but because it was hot outside and her mother looked exhausted Ava decided that the best thing she could do was help. So she climbed down from the window and went to the kitchen and fixed a large glass of iced tea and walked out of the house and carried it to her mother.

“Mom?”

“Yes,” Heather answered. She looked up, huffing, sweat dripping from the end of her nose, and saw her daughter with the glass of tea. “Thank you,” she said, taking the glass.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Ava asked as Heather gulped at the drink.

“It’s hot,” the woman said eventually.

“Can I help?” Ava replied.

“Grab a shovel.”

Her mother never said exactly why they were digging this hole on the far edge of the yard and Ava did not ask. Her mother was full of magic, and that was not something a child questioned.

They dug through the hottest part of the day with Heather sending the girl back and forth to the house now and again for more water and tea. She took more care about the temperature now that her daughter was with her. When the afternoon had stretched on late she sent the girl in and asked her to make a meal for them. Ava returned with bologna and cheese and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and more tall glasses of tea. The two of them took a break for nearly an hour in which they stretched out on their backs beneath the sun, stared up at the sky and said nothing. The sun did not seem quite as hot as it had been. There was a coolness radiating out from the hole that they had dug—it had filled partly with water and Ava couldn’t be certain just how far down they had dug, but the hole was above both her and her mother’s head and that felt like a feat that few people in this world could ever hope to achieve.

When they had eaten and rested they slipped back down into the unfinished hole and they went back to digging and Ava’s mother began to tell her daughter stories. She told her about a man several counties away that, according to legend, had lived to be over one hundred and fifty years old. It was only because of a farming accident that he finally met his maker, just two years ago. “If it wasn’t for that,” Heather said, “he’d still be alive and kicking.”

And then Heather spoke about two men who were digging a root cellar and came upon a large mound of ice, like an iceberg hidden inside the earth. The men dug and dug and dug and, as they went farther down and more of the ice was exposed to the sun, the ice began to melt and so they took to covering it with tarps and shades and blankets in the hopes of keeping it intact. And then one morning, on the third day of digging, the men came out and found the ice melted and there was a great, gaping chasm left in the earth large enough to fit a house into. “And then it all collapsed,” Heather concluded.

The two worked until after sunset and then—sore and tired and aching—they went into the house and bathed and they were too tired to eat and so they both stretched out on the floor of the living room and fell asleep. When Ava awoke the next morning she found that a blanket had been placed over her and her mother and, in that moment, she could believe all of the stories her mother had ever told her.

The world was grand and sometimes prone to unexplained acts, and that was the beauty of it.