Saturday Night

The Long Saturday

Chapter 56: Saturday Night

Labor begins while Norah is criticizing my knife work.

We are in the kitchen on a Saturday in late May.

Tomatoes on the board.

Pasta water threatening insurrection.

Windows open to a warm storm gathering itself somewhere west of Mercer.

"You cut basil like a man apologizing to salad," she says from the table, one hand low against the underside of her belly.

"That is called tenderness."

"That is called fear."

"Rude."

She opens her mouth to continue and then stops.

Not dramatic.

Not cinematic.

Just all at once absent from the room in a new way.

I set the knife down.

"What."

She breathes once through her nose and looks at the clock over the stove.

"Maybe nothing."

"Norah."

"Maybe," she says, slower this time, "a contraction."

I turn the burner off.

"Okay."

"Do not okay me in that voice."

"What voice."

"The voice you use when you are trying to become the emergency services."

"Fair."

She waits.

One hand still under the curve of herself.

Then the moment passes.

"Could be Braxton Hicks," she says.

"Could be."

"Could also be this child deciding punctuality is for cowards."

That sounds, unfortunately, plausible.

We time the next one.

Then the next.

Pasta is abandoned.

Tomatoes drying out on the board like collateral.

Norah walks the length of the house once, then again, stopping every seven or eight minutes to close her eyes and breathe with the focus of a woman negotiating directly with creation.

I follow her once before she turns in the hall and says, "If you shadow me like a Victorian nurse I will bite you."

"I am trying to be supportive."

"Try from six feet away."

So I do.

By the time the storm breaks over Alder, we have called Mom.

Mom answers on the second ring.

"Well."

"I think," I say, watching Norah brace both hands on the dining table through another contraction, "we may be moving out of theory."

There is a beat of silence so brief it counts as love.

"How far apart?"

I tell her.

"I'll come water the plant and make sure you two don't leave the house without anything idiotic. Bag packed?"

"Mostly."

"That means no. I'm coming."

Norah hears only my side and says, "If she brings lasagna I am divorcing everyone."

Mom arrives in twelve minutes with a raincoat over her nightdress and the demeanor of a woman who has been preparing for practical emergency for months.

"Shoes," she says the second she enters.

"Already wearing them," I say.

"Good. Snacks?"

"In the bag."

"Phone charger?"

"Yes."

She looks at Norah, who is standing very still by the counter waiting out another wave.

"You."

Norah opens one eye.

"Alive."

"Good."

Mom kisses her forehead with military efficiency and goes straight to the stove to turn the abandoned burner fully off because, even now, fire remains an enemy to be managed.

At nine-thirty Norah grips the back of a chair hard enough that her knuckles go white and says, "We are going now."

That ends discussion.

The rain is coming hard enough to blur the windshield.

I drive.

Mom sits in the back with one hand on Norah's shoulder between contractions and zero sentimental speeches available.

The wipers slap time.

The dashboard glows a practical blue.

Saturday moves with us through wet Mercer streets and does not once feel like a cage.

Only a road.

At the hospital entrance I pull under the awning and help Norah out.

She stops halfway between the car and the automatic doors, bent forward, breathing through a contraction with both hands locked around my forearm.

Rain hammers the concrete inches away.

The whole night narrows to her breath.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Then she straightens.

"Go," she says.

Inside everything is too bright and exactly right.

Check-in.

Wheelchair offered and refused.

Labor and delivery.

Wristband.

Questions answered between contractions with the strange bluntness pain grants.

By the time they admit us, I have become a pair of hands carrying bags, forms, water, and whatever steadiness I can keep from leaking.

The room is larger than obstetric triage and somehow less comforting for it.

Bed.

Monitor.

Recliner that no manufacturer has ever loved.

One bassinet in the corner folded into readiness like a promise too soon to trust.

The nurse helping us settle has silver braids and the look of a woman who can smell panic before it reaches speech.

"First baby?" she asks.

"Is it obvious?" Norah says through clenched teeth.

"Honey, it is the radiance coming off your husband."

I feel personally attacked.

The nurse smiles while strapping the monitor around Norah's belly.

The baby's heartbeat fills the room.

Faster than mine.

Stronger than my composure.

"Good tracing," the nurse says. "We're in business."

Norah looks over at me.

"You okay?"

I glance at the rain streaking the dark window, the monitor line marching its little faithful march, the bag by the chair with snacks we will not touch for hours.

"No," I say.

"Excellent."

"You?"

Another contraction takes her before she can answer.

She crushes my fingers.

When it passes, she opens her eyes and says, with such offended clarity it nearly makes me laugh:

"Also no."

Sometime after midnight, with the storm moving east and the hallway outside full of low wheels and distant voices, Mom kisses Norah's temple once, tells me to call if anybody starts behaving like a fool, and leaves us to the work.

The room quiets.

Monitor.

Breathing.

The occasional squeak of my chair when I stand too fast and sit too slowly.

Norah reaches for my hand again and keeps it.

"Stay here," she says.

"Yeah."

She closes her eyes.

"I mean it."

"I know."

So I do.