Postcards From Last Summer (30 page)

E
lle sat cross-legged in the chair at the console, rocking along with the music being recorded by two of her favorite people in the world, Darcy and Ricardo. Darcy wore a black A-line dress with white piping that could have been Dior, the pleated skirt demure under her large belly. Ricardo, in his low-slung jeans and avocado green T-shirt, looked like a tall tree beside her.

Darcy and Ricardo sang together, their eyes on the music, their ears capped with headphones as Elle nodded in time from the other side of the glass at the studio control panel.

The volume lowered on the musical accompaniment, and Darcy turned to Ricardo, looking genuinely perplexed.

“But, Brownie, uh . . . just one more thing . . .” Darcy said in the giddy Delilah Fox voice she'd been hired to do in voice-over. Delilah's body was a small puppet, a silvery fox with an orange bow, played by a heavyset male puppeteer known as Jukes, whose heavy, burly voice was just unacceptable for the role. But Jukes had already been hired on to play two other puppet characters in
Woodchuck Village
, so Elle convinced the executive producer, the wicked Isabel Slater, creator of Brownie Beaver, to let her hire Darcy to do Delilah's voice-overs.

“What's that, Delilah?” Brownie asked.

“Now that I'm across the river, I forgot where I'm supposed to go! I think I need to go back and ask Daddy Fox for directions,” Darcy chirped.

“That's fine, Delilah,” said Ricardo in a voice so warm, Elle wanted to burst into the studio and grip him in a huge hug. “But before you cross the river, what are you going to do?”

The music swelled again as Darcy and Ricardo sang, “Look both ways before you cross the river . . .”

Elle closed her eyes and grooved to the corny, warmhearted tune. Whenever she met twentysomethings who found out that she worked on
Woodchuck Village
, they razzed her and mocked Brownie's popularity, but Elle didn't care. She'd grown genuinely attached to the warm, homey quality of Brownie and his
Woodchuck Village
friends. The sweet, earnest characters, the innocent, instructional songs, and the tidy miniature village itself, a mishmash of nature and cubism done in brilliant blues, bold greens, and warm oranges and pinks—it was all the perfect home, a place where characters cared about one another and problems could be easily fixed with a song or an apology. For Elle, Woodchuck Village was the place to be.

Okay, so the executive producer was a bitch, and Elle's day was always riddled with a zillion obstacles . . . like how to transport a walrus into the studio when no refrigerated trucks were available. Or how to come up with enough work for the puppeteers so they could afford to quit their other jobs to be on set full time. Or how to get underwater footage of real beavers eating that wouldn't appear too frightening to toddlers as they eviscerated fish. But Elle rose to each challenge. She'd learned that boredom was dangerous for her, and the demands of producing a low-budget show kept her hopping.

Of course, there was the added bonus of falling in love with Brownie Beaver himself, Ricardo Bonet. A classically trained actor, Ricardo was a master of physical humor, and often Elle felt that his expressions could give voice to her own emotions as he portrayed Brownie feeling left out by his friends, feeling alone in the world, or romping merrily at a party. Sometimes, admittedly, she confused the actions of Ricardo and Brownie, but Elle rationalized that Ricardo had to have a deep understanding of this material to interpret it so well.

As the song ended Lloyd, the studio engineer, gave Darcy and Ricardo a thumbs-up and they took off their headsets and emerged from the glassed-in studio.

“Nice job,” Lloyd told them. “Your vocals work well together. I think Isabel's going to like this. She might want to include this on the CD.”

Executive producer Isabel Slater was a cranky spinster, former schoolteacher who considered herself an expert on children and entertainment. Although Elle thought she was a miserable person, she figured Isabel must have at least a scintilla of love in her heart to have created the world of
Woodchuck Village.
But was that any excuse for treating her staff like dirt?

“Isabel will criticize my voice and claim that Elle hired Darcy out of nepotism,” Ricardo predicted. “Then she'll go home, drink a glass of sherry, and decide that it was a brilliant idea to hire a woman to do Delilah's voice. Her brilliant idea.”

“I don't care if she takes all the credit,” Darcy said, shrugging. “Just as long as I get my cut on the CD.”

“Actor's Equity . . . you're in!” Elle assured her as they headed out of the recording booth to hook up with Milo, who was working on set downstairs.

A few minutes later they were seated at a small Greenwich Village restaurant just around the corner from where the show was taped, a mandarin red–themed room with tables so close you could share your spring rolls with the people dining beside you.

“Cozy,” Darcy said, struggling to pull closer to the table without bumping it with her belly.

“We call it the Woodchuck cafeteria. We eat here so often, I could recite the menu in my sleep, but the food is great, and we love Chioki and Kim,” Milo said, smiling up at their waitress, apparently Chioki.

As they ordered a few dishes to share, Ricardo's cell phone rang. “It's my mother,” he said, recognizing the number. “I must take it.” He flipped it open and moved away from the table.

Elle watched him pace nervously as he talked in rapid-fire Spanish, turning away and finally ducking out the door to the street. “Mom's apron strings are thousands of miles long,” Elle said. “It's a wonder Ricardo hasn't been strangled in them yet.”

“But she's in Puerto Rico, isn't she?” asked Darcy.

“His whole family is still there. And I do like the fact that he respects his parents. I just feel like it's hard to break in. Families usually adore me, but I don't have a chance with his. Unless I can get them to come for a visit.” She split her chopsticks apart and rubbed them together. “Now there's an idea.”

“They could all stay in the Love Mansion,” Milo said as he passed around the beef satay. “They'll think you're a wealthy American princess.”

“She is a wealthy American princess,” Darcy said, grinning at Elle. “The title I used to aspire to.”

“Darce, they retired the crown with you,” Elle shot back at her as Darcy took a beef stick from the platter and bit her bottom lip. Elle wondered if she'd gone a little too far.

“Oh, don't get weepy on us,” Elle said, trying to play it cool. “You've been through a string of bad luck, but you're still the princess in my book.”

“Just having a cramp. My back has been aching all day. I guess I'm just not used to the commute to Manhattan anymore.” Darcy squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the table.

“Cramps?” Milo winced. “Pregnant women don't get cramps.” He swung toward Elle. “Do they?”

Elle exchanged a panicked look with him and shrugged. “What the hell do I know? Darcy, are you okay?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It's going away now.” She took a deep breath. “I'm fine.”

“Do you want to call your doctor?” Milo suggested. “I mean, feeling sick and we didn't even get to the appetizers yet.”

“It's a little too early to call,” Darcy said. “I mean, if it's the beginning of labor, the hospital probably won't admit me for another twelve hours.”

Milo's satay froze on the way to his mouth, and Elle swallowed an ice cube. “Labor?” they cried in unison.

“Don't flip out. I said
if.
” Darcy put the meat stick on her plate and stood up. “I'm going to hit the restroom while you two try to calm each other.”

One minute Elle was dipping her beef in hot sauce, the next she noticed Darcy just standing there, standing over a puddle on the restaurant's red tile floor.

“What the hell . . .” Elle looked at the puddle, then back up at Darcy, who seemed equally surprised that her legs were dripping wet under the perfect pleats of her black Dior maternity dress.

Darcy pressed her hands to her face and spoke the words that incited panic in Elle's heart: “Looks like my water broke.”

“Y
ou guys make about as much sense as Fred and Ethel in a rerun of
I Love Lucy
,” Darcy said as they finally were strapped into Elle's Jeep and headed uptown. “Don't you know that babies aren't born in five minutes? Especially to a first-time mother.”

“I don't know nothin' about birthin' no babies,” Elle said.

“Wrong genre, wrong medium,” Darcy said from the back seat.

“Can I be Ethel?” Milo asked. “I've always found Fred so abrupt and domineering.”

“Don't you want to stretch out back there?” Elle suggested, looking in the rearview mirror.

“It's better if I stay upright, keep active, so that I dilate. Now that the water's broken, the baby really needs to come in the next twenty-four hours.”

Milo gripped the armrests in the front seat, staring forward. “All this technical talk is making me really, really nervous about this. Darcy, you don't want the baby born in the backseat of Elle's Jeep between Park and Madison.”

“Just get me out of Manhattan and back to the sanity of the Hamptons.” Darcy had already spoken with Lindsay, who had this Friday off for summer hours and was writing away in the attic room. “Call me as soon as you get to Montauk Highway and I'll meet you at Southampton Hospital,” Lindsay told her. Holding on to the handgrip as another pain seized her, Darcy mentally reviewed the things she was supposed to do when the contractions started. Stop eating. Stay hydrated. Don't bother calling the doctor or timing contractions until they start coming closer together. “First-time mothers take hours, sometimes days to go through the stages of childbirth, the dilation and thinning,” her childbirth instructor had said. “So be patient, and don't run around like a crazy person.”

As Elle and Milo were doing.

“Last chance,” Elle said as the car crawled toward the Midtown Tunnel. “Are you sure you don't want us to check you into a hospital in Manhattan?”

“I've heard New York Hospital is the best,” Milo said, “but Bellevue can work if you're a downtown girl.”

“Southampton Hospital is perfect,” Darcy said. “Just keep driving.”

Traffic was slow. They rolled to a stop in the tunnel, where the air felt stuffy and stale. Darcy wasn't sure how long they were stopped, but she was starting to break a sweat despite the air-conditioning, and the labor pains seemed to boomerang back all too fast. By the time they made it out of the tunnel, the pain was hitting her hard, pummeling her through the middle.

“How long is this trip going to take?” she asked, squirming to find a more comfortable position in the car seat.

“On a summer Friday afternoon? I'm afraid to think about it.” Elle bit her lower lip as she glanced at the dashboard. “Are you sure you're okay? Darcy, you're dripping with sweat.”

Darcy was looking at the clock on the car dashboard, timing the contractions. “I think it's happening too fast. It hurts like hell, and at this rate, we're not going to make it to the Hamptons.”

“Call the doctor!” Elle barked.

“I'm timing the contractions,” Darcy gasped, trying to breathe through the pain.

Milo fumbled with his cell phone. “I'll call, I'll call. What's his number?”

“Dr. Stacey White.” She handed her cell forward, unable to focus on numbers now.

When Milo reached the doctor, it was decided that they'd better get out of traffic and stop at a hospital on the way. “Stop at North Shore,” Milo repeated from the phone. “Or LIJ. LIJ? What's an LIJ?”

“Long Island Jewish,” Darcy said, remembering the lay of the land from her Great Egg upbringing. “But we're closer to North Shore now. Take the Manhasset exit . . . you'll see a hospital sign.”

Just knowing relief was closer helped Darcy cope a little better. By the time Elle pulled up to the ER entrance she felt able to walk, but the nurse insisted on a wheelchair.

While Elle waited outside, a resident came into the curtained area to conduct a torturous exam, pronouncing Darcy dilated to eight centimeters. “That's fairly far along for a first-timer,” she said encouragingly. “Have you been doing your breathing?”

“The breathing is crap.” Darcy propped herself up on her fists and growled, “Get me the epidural.”

There was a bad patch of pain, wheeling to maternity. Elle jogged alongside her, tucking into the oversized elevator and following down the hall to the maternity ward and her very own birthing suite.

“Wow, you get a room with a couch?” Elle said as she washed up and slipped scrubs over her clothes.

“I need drugs,” Darcy cried, split by pain.

Elle flagged down a nurse, who tried to keep Darcy focused on breathing. At last, Dr. Jennifer Cho, the ob-gyn on call, introduced herself, along with the anesthesiologist, who appeared with his kit to administer the epidural. The magic potion was inserted, to almost immediate relief, and Darcy relaxed, happy to breathe and be human again.

“Is that better?” Elle asked tentatively when the room quieted at the end of a contraction.

“Much.” She suddenly noticed her petite friend, swimming in oversized scrubs, her green eyes wide with curiosity. “I can't believe it's down to the two of us. After all this, you're going to help me deliver this baby.”

“Stuck with me again.” Elle gave a nervous laugh. “Are you scared?”

Darcy shook her head. “Not about this.” She took a breath as the pressure mounted. “It's all the stuff that comes after that frightens the hell out of me.”

“I'll be there,” Elle said as the doctor ordered Darcy to take a deep breath and push. “I'll help you with the baby.”

“Sounds like you have an experienced friend here,” Dr. Cho said through her mask.

“Who, me?” Elle shook her head, her silver earrings wiggling. “Nope. No experience. But lots of good intentions.”

“No experience required,” Darcy said before bracing herself for a major push.