Be My Baby Tonight (28 page)

The nurse looked to Mrs. B.

“Tell him, Susan,” she said in her teacher
voice. “We’re all adults here.” She bent down, put a hand on Jack’s
shoulder. “This man has a right to know everything.”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s not without its risks, sir,
to both mother and child,” Susan answered, “but I’ve seen more good
results than bad. Please, let me go check and see how things are
progressing. Whatever happens, happens very quickly.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Jack said, burying his head in
his hands as Tim half lifted his brother to his feet and clumsily
gathered him into his arms. “We were going to have a baby, Timmy.
That’s all. People have babies every damn day. This isn’t supposed
to happen....”

Suzanna brushed back tears as she walked down
the hallway, toward the operating room. Jack needed a private
moment, with family, and she had this overwhelming need to be
closer to Keely, as if she might be able to
will
everything
to be all right.

The nursery was ready back at the house. She
and Keely had put it together while Jack and Tim were gone. Knowing
the baby would be a boy, Keely had done it up in blue and green,
with a wallpaper border of baseballs, mitts, and bats.

The diaper holder was stacked and ready. All
the little shirts and kimonos were neatly in their assigned
drawers.

There was a huge teddy bear sitting in the
crib.

Just no baby. All they needed now was the
baby, and the baby’s mother.

Suzanna approached the double doors and tried
to look through the glass, but she couldn’t see anything but people
in greens, so many people, all with their backs to her.

She pressed her hands against the glass,
closed her eyes, willed Keely to be strong.

“You’re a fighter, Keel,” she whispered. “A
real fighter. You won’t let anything bad happen, I know it.”

How long she stood there she didn’t know.
Hours, minutes. The longest minutes of her life.

And then she heard it. She heard the cry. A
baby’s cry. The most beautiful sound in the world.

“Jack!” she called out, running back down the
hall and into the waiting room.

Jack got to his feet, brushing away his
brother’s hands. “What? What is it?”

Before Suzanna could say anything, Susan was
there, and she was smiling. “Mr. Trehan? You can come with me now.
It may look a little messy in there, but everybody’s just fine.
Your wife, your son.”

Jack just stood there, his shoulders heaving,
so Tim gave him a small push. “Go on, Daddy. Go see your wife and
baby.”

Jack nodded, just nodded, then slowly walked
toward the door. He stopped, looked back. “It’s all right,” he
said, tears streaming down his face, the look of joy still edged by
fear on his face difficult to witness. “Keely’s all right.”

And then he was gone, and Suzanna walked into
Tim’s outstretched arms, to cry against his shoulder.

* * *

Three days later, Keely and John Joseph
Trehan, Jr., were home in Whitehall, with Keely holding court from
the den couch as the baby napped in his bassinet beside her.

“Me, me,” Candy said, holding out her arms to
her mother, and Keely helped the child climb up onto the couch to
get a better look at her little brother.

“Are you sure you can hold her?” Suzanna
asked. “She’s all elbows and knees, Keel, and you’re still pretty
sore.”

“I’m okay, Suzanna,” Keely told her, kissing
her daughter’s curly blond head. “Candy has to know that she hasn’t
been replaced. Don’t you, sweetheart?” she asked, nuzzling the
child’s neck.

“Me, me,” Candy said, which was pretty much
her answer to most anything; her question for most everything. In
fact, Aunt Sadie had been rechristened Me-Me by the child, and
seemed to revel in the name.

“Can I get you anything? Tea? Some of those
sugar cookies I baked the other day?”

Keely looked at Suzanna quizzically. “And
here I thought you liked me,” she said, then grinned.

“Oh, come on, they’re not so bad; you said so
yourself. Although they’re certainly not my mother’s, even if I
used her recipe.”

“Not unless your mother was into baking
sugar-coated hockey pucks, and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t. We’ll
get back to your lessons in the next week or two, I promise. In the
meantime, though, Suzanna, I think you’re going to have to do some
studying. You know, like learning that a capital
T
means
tablespoonful, and a lower case
t
means teaspoonful. Just
the basics.”

“Got ya,” Suzanna said, walking over to the
bassinet as little Johnny began to stir. “Do you think he’s
hungry?” she asked, wishing she didn’t feel so nervous around the
baby. But he was so small, and his entrance into this world had
been so traumatic.

“No, I don’t think so. He ate only an hour
ago. Maybe he’ll settle down again.”

As if his mother’s suggestion was an order
from on high, Johnny closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

“Oh, he’s so adorable,” Suzanna said,
blinking back tears. It was silly, but she’d been crying on and off
for three days now, and her emotions showed no signs of calming
down. “He’s the most beautiful baby I ever saw.”

“Sure. That’s because he came flying out in
such a rush when Dr. Phillips grabbed him. He didn’t have time for
his little head to go all cone-shaped or anything. But he is cute.
I think he has Jack’s mouth.”

Suzanna grinned. “When he’s sleeping, or when
he’s crying?”

“Both,” Keely answered, rubbing Candy’s back,
as the child had now stretched herself belly to belly with her
mother and was noisily sucking her thumb. “And I think he’s going
to have that same blond streak Jack and Tim have. Not that he has
much hair right now, but I think I can see the different shade near
his temple.”

“I wonder if our...” Suzanna began, still
leaning over the bassinet, then quickly stopped when Jack and Tim
walked into the den. “Hi, guys,” she said, standing up straight
once more. “Did you find the right kind?”

Jack lifted a small plastic bag “Do you
people have any idea how many different kinds of pacifiers are out
there? I know what you said, Keely, but when we got there, and saw
them all, my mind sort of went blank.”

“So he bought one of each,” Tim said, giving
his brother’s shoulder a playful punch. “Johnny’s going to have his
pick. Suze? Ready to go home? Aunt Sadie’s on duty in ten minutes,
but maybe we could give Keely and Jack some time alone?”

“How considerate,” Keely said. “Thank you,
Tim. God bless Aunt Sadie, and Mrs. B., and everyone, but I was
never alone in the hospital, and now I’m never alone here, at home.
Not that I’m not happy for all the help.”

Suzanna looked at Tim. “Well, I don’t know
about you, but I can take a hint. Come on, Tim, let’s go.”

That had sounded good, she thought as she and
Tim exited the front door for their walk back to their own house.
She’d sounded light, and upbeat, and all that good stuff. She
didn’t think anyone would even come close to guessing that the last
thing
she
wanted was to be alone with
her
husband.

“Keely looks good,” Tim said as they cut
across the grass rather than walk down the curving drive to the
road. “And Johnny’s a lot better.”

“He still has to take sun baths,” Keely said,
talking about the child’s elevated bilirubin that had kept mother
and baby in the hospital an extra day so that Johnny could be put
under special lights in the nursery. “But his little nose isn’t so
orange anymore, is it?”

“I don’t know; I didn’t look,” Tim said,
guiding Suzanna so that she walked at the edge of the road, where
macadam met lawns, and he took the outside position. Very mannerly
and correct, just as his mother probably taught him, even if there
were seldom any cars on this private road that led nowhere but to
the houses built there.

“No, you haven’t, have you?” Suzanna said,
frowning. “Why is that?”

“I don’t know. I look at Johnny, and all I
can think about is holding Jack, feeling him tremble and shake,
listening to him cry. My brother, crying? I don’t think I’ve heard
that since we were kids. Not even when Mom and Dad died—or if he
did, he did it in private. He just fell apart in that waiting room,
Suze, like his whole world was ending. Is it worth it? He could
have lost Keely.”

“But he didn’t. Keely’s fine, Johnny’s fine,
and they’re all happy as pigs in mud. Tim, you can’t stop living
just because sometimes things don’t work out the way you think
they’re supposed to. Why, if everyone thought like that, nobody’d
have babies. Or get married, for that matter.”

“You’re right, you’re right.” Tim said, then
sighed. “I just... I just didn’t realize how
complicated
it
all could get, I guess.”

She wanted to tell him, longed to tell him.
I’ll be all right, Tim, please don’t worry.
Please.

“At least Margo had an uncomplicated birth,
and the kittens are so adorable. I shouldn’t like the one that
looks just like Lucky, but I have to admit that he’s my
favorite.”

“Candy gets one, right?” Tim asked, taking
her hand in his. “And Sadie wants one, but I’d like to keep the
other two, if you don’t mind. One mini-Margo, one mini-Lucky.”

“Four cats? You want us to own four
cats?”

“Hey, why not?” he said, grinning.

They turned into their own property, crossing
the bridge that ran above the Coplay Creek, and she stopped there,
walked over to the railing.

“It’s so pretty here,” she said, looking at
the tall, nearly bare trees, the red and gold leaves swirling in
the water as it tumbled over smooth rocks. “So quiet, so peaceful.
Oh, look, Tim—geese.”

Tim rested his arms beside hers on the
railing. “They’ll be heading south soon, for the winter. Then the
seagulls will be here.”

“Seagulls?” she repeated, turning away from
the railing and heading up the long, curved drive. “In
Pennsylvania? You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope. It started a few years ago, I don’t
know why. Used to be you only saw seagulls at the shore, when we’d
go to Jersey to the beach house Jack has there. But, a couple of
years ago, we started seeing them in the wintertime, in the parking
lots of the local malls. Now we even get them up here. Aunt Sadie
feeds them, which could be one reason. Then, in the spring, they’re
gone again. I guess they decided all birds should have a winter
home.”

“They probably come here for the food, once
all the tourists leave the shore,” Suzanna said as she waited for
Tim to open the door, turn off the alarm in the kitchen hallway. “I
mean, think of all the restaurant dumpsters around here.”

“Possible,” Tim said, looking through the
mail Suzanna had placed on the kitchen table before heading over to
Keely’s. “So, Suzanna—when are you going to tell me you’re
pregnant?”

“Wha—what?”

He put down the mail and turned, looked
straight at her. “I said, when are you going to tell me
you’re—”

“I heard you,” she said, pulling out a chair
and sitting down before she fell down.

“Heard, but haven’t answered,” he pointed
out, walking over to the counter and lifting the lid on the cookie
jar. “I like these,” he said, holding up one of her hockey puck
sugar cookies. “If we’re ever attacked by marauding seagulls, we
can use them as weapons.”

Suzanna heard him. She saw him. She just
didn’t understand him.

“Tim, I—”

“Do you want to know how long I’ve known?” he
asked, his tone still light, although his eyes seemed to have gone
cold. “Do you, Suze? I’ve known since Aunt Sadie’s birthday party.
Nearly two months, Suze. I’ve known for almost two months. I even
know your due date, April fourteenth. It’s November, Suze. So I’ll
ask you again, when were you going to tell me?”

This wasn’t going right. When Suzanna thought
about this moment, she thought about him coming to her, telling her
he loved her desperately, with or without a baby, with or without
the Trehan curse, with or without anything but the fact that he
loved her.
Her.

Didn’t he understand that? First he would
tell her he loved her, and
then
she would tell him about the
baby.

But he hadn’t said a word. He still slept in
the back bedroom. He rarely even tried to kiss her. She still went
to work each day, and he still spent most of his free time with
Jack, the rest of it overseeing his bowling alley and the
irrigation project at his golf course. They were living together,
but they were living separate lives.

“I... I was working my way up to it,” she
said at last, knowing he was waiting for her answer, knowing that
answer sounded lame, so very lame.

“Uh-huh. Why?”

“Why?” She looked at him, her eyes wide.
“What do you mean, why?”

“I mean, why were you working your way up to
it? You’re pregnant. I’m the father. I
am
the father,
right?”

Suzanna felt the blood drain out of her
cheeks. “You... you
bastard!”

“That’s what I thought. Relax. I know I’m the
father, Suze. I always knew that. But you’d be surprised at the
insane thoughts that can dig into your mind when you know your
wife’s pregnant and she won’t tell you.”

“I... I never thought of that...” she said
quietly.

“No, I know you didn’t. I’ll bet you also
didn’t think about what it was like to call here from the road and
wonder if you were still here, or if you’d decided to leave, have
our baby somewhere, send me divorce papers.”

“I wouldn’t have—oh, Tim. I... I never looked
at any of this from
your
side, did I?”

“No, babe, you didn’t. I’m in a pennant race,
and I’m going nuts every moment, wondering where my wife is, why
she’s hiding things from me. If she’ll even be there when I get
home. Not a lot of fun Suze.”

She nodded, embarrassed, and sorry, and—wait
a minute. He was pushing all the old buttons, and she was still
responding in all the old ways.