from her father, I saw myself, my past, in her. That period in my life when I was endlessly making, carrying, delivering babies. After all, when I was Gracie’s age I was halfway through making my family. At twenty-nine I was carrying Meggy, or perhaps Johnny. I had lost my daughter, but not yet the twins.
I am thinking about my babies as I drive closer to the people strung like a chain across the street. I have always had the ability to identify a pregnant woman before she has even begun to show. I wasn’t expecting motherhood in Gracie, which is why I wasn’t sure right away. But now, my hands wrapped around the unwieldy steering wheel of my car, I know it is the truth. I just don’t know how I should feel about it.
I’m nearly on top of the family before I recognize them. It is just a feeling at first, a seizing in the pit of my stomach, and that’s when I begin to slow down. My foot presses down on the brake seemingly without my control. The car bucks beneath me. I recognize the individuals, one by one. Mother. Father. Patrick. My eldest daughter. And, cupped against Patrick’s chest, is not one infant, but two.
I stop the car. Except for the twins, who are busy yawning and fussing against Patrick’s suit jacket, my family looks in my direction with little expression. Patrick doesn’t seem to see me at all; he is busy with the children. Mother and Father are leaning toward each other. My daughter is bent over pulling up her knee socks. I give an extra-long moment to gazing at the twins. I have never had the chance to lay eyes on them before. They are so very beautiful, and so very mine that my old shriveled breasts ache, hoping for milk.
When I can think again, I think, My God, I must be dead.
My mother speaks. No, Catharine, you’re not.
My mother is smiling, and it is a smile I had seen many times before, during my childhood. It is the smile I’d always dreaded because it meant lies and craziness. I had hated to see my mother turn her eyes away from me to look at people she only imagined were there. But now she was pointing that loony smile straight at me. And she had said that I was alive. And somehow I knew my mother had engineered this moment. She had brought me my family.
I scan their faces. Patrick is bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, trying to quiet the baby boy. The infant and his father look so similar I feel a catch in my throat. Each has a frustrated, balled-up expression on his face. The three-year-old girl, my daughter, tugs on Patrick’s suit jacket, wanting his attention. Patrick’s face pinkens. I can tell he wants a drink. I can tell he is about to explode. I have seen that look before. I want to warn the children, to get them out of the way, but I can’t move.
I told your father you would be able to see us, my mother says.
Please help the babies, I say.
My parents are not listening to me. They are sharing a look. They have forgotten me and mine. Patrick now has our little girl by the arm and he is shaking her, trying to make her quiet. At first she fights him and then she stops fighting and she moves like a rag doll under his touch. The twins, both crushed against Patrick’s chest, are shrieking at the top of their lungs. I feel my own breath leave me. Their screams are deafening. Their tiny faces turn purple.
I think, Oh Jesus, it is happening all over again.
And then everything gets louder, worse. The nasal roar of car horns and tires screeching overwhelms the cries of my babies, and then my car door flies open. I think, Oh thank goodness, I can go to them now. I can save them.
But the road in front of me has emptied. My family has disappeared and Kelly’s husband, Louis, of all people, is leaning over me, unbuckling my seat belt, taking me by the elbow, half-lifting me out of the car into the clear white light of midday. He is talking to me. His words dance over my head like stars. My son-in-law tells me that I must hold myself together, that my children need me, that my influence is greater than I know, and that before I