Forever And A Baby. Margot Early

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      The dreadlock woman.

      Pregnant…

      Tristan’s ponytail blew in the October wind.

      Dru resented the woman again. She wanted her twin to herself, wanted to walk alone with him on the beach, wanted to explain the truth. Explain those tabloid photos, the photos from Gloucester. Why a man, a cousin much too distant to be accorded the trust of a brother, had been touching her hair and her skin so that the aching of man and woman translated through newsprint. Tristan would have heard gossip, too; Gloucester was his world.

      That vision from the Gloucester Marine Railways needled her. Again, she saw the gray-haired man—a ghost—and this woman, hugging, like a father wishing farewell to his daughter. Like my father. So much like her father and Tristan’s, who had never come home.

      “She’s not welcome. This is private.”

      A pause. His blue eyes said she’d changed. “I brought her for you. You can help with her birth.”

      Presenting his companion like a gift. A birth to attend.

      “I’m not a practicing midwife, I don’t do home births—” she didn’t do any births, now “—and I know nothing about her.” Except that no one in pregnancy should be exposed to unpleasantness. A burial.

      Tristan’s eyes had slanted, his slim jaw set.

      A stalemate with this tall twin who had never looked anything like her. He’d never looked like a Haverford, with the white-sand hair he tied in a knot for fishing, with his gaunt cheeks and sensuous mouth, and the vertical scars where flesh had been gouged away from the base of his lower eyelids to his jaw, three on each side, discolored shades of black and purple and blue. A face that seduced by hypnosis—you couldn’t look away.

      Years ago, Omar had said, with resignation, You love Tristan best.

      Dru couldn’t explain that she and Tristan were each other. She knew no words that meant twin, no words that explained.

      But that pregnant woman—girl, college girl—was not coming to Omar’s graveside.

      Tristan said, “I’ll have to miss it, too.”

      “You’re excused.” She walked away, Louis Vuitton shoes sinking in the dry, pale-yellow grass. The fifth richest woman in the world. Wishing she was pregnant. By some reversal of fortune, with Omar’s child.

      Outside the cemetery gate, photographers rustled dry leaves, cameras clicking and whirring, capturing the widow, framing the ebony casket hovering over the hole in the earth. Men in tailored suits, ambassadors from countries Omar had assisted, fund managers and financial gurus and the media had flocked to Nantucket. Inexplicably, the cameras made her feel lonely.

      Those assembled at the grave were Islanders. Tristan wasn’t the only one missing, the only relative who should have been there. Omar wasn’t the only one Dru missed. She wanted another. And couldn’t help it.

      Dru caught the gagging in her throat, swallowed it. Earlier, she’d noticed the conspiratorial look of a cousin from California who’d pretended consternation. But wouldn’t say aloud, Where’s Ben, for goodness’ sake? He’s as close to Omar as any of us. Other relatives murmuring to each other.

      The wind blew October through her hair. The season of ghosts and regrets. She sent wordless messages to her twin, images of Gloucester. She pictured, carefully, another face, with black-brown eyes. Two Land Cruisers meeting in dust without horizon, a twenty-year-old image. Remember, Tristan?

      How could he forget? As she’d said to Ben, how could any of them?

      When the time came for her words, Dru unfolded the piece of paper she’d brought. Here, she could read with no press listening. She trusted the few at the grave.

      There was Sergio, Omar’s personal assistant, who had served the Hall family for thirty-eight years.

      And Keziah Mayhew, Dru’s dear friend since childhood, a fourth cousin twice removed, the midwife of Nantucket, fighting for her share of the island’s two hundred and thirty births a year. She and Dru had planned to practice together someday. They never had and never would.

      And over Omar’s grave stood his sister, Keziah’s mother—Mary Hall Mayhew.

      And Dru’s mother, Joanna.

      That was all.

      “I just wanted—” was that her voice? “—to say some things about Omar. I agreed with every word of Roger’s eulogy at the church.” The manager of The Caravan Fund had spoken about Omar. “But this is for family.” Pressing her lips tight, she ignored the glimpse of Tristan’s blond head somewhere on the perimeter, outside the gate. “I guess it’s for me.” She read, “Omar was a good man. I loved him—because he was good. We had no secrets. I did nothing against his wishes. He did nothing against mine. This is the truth. We loved each other deeply till the day he died.” A lie, a lie, isn’t it, Dru? Aren’t you lying? Your voice is shaking. Your face is so warm you feel it through the cold wind, that wind blowing Keziah’s long auburn hair.

      They waited to see if she was done.

      All she’d given was self-defense.

      Security apprehended a photographer inside the fence. Dru looked toward the casket where Omar wasn’t, with the winds of Nantucket. Spontaneously she crumpled the paper. You all know who he was. As well as I did.

      She would have liked to sing a Bedouin love song, to mourn him her own way. Mary would sing, too, for the death of her adopted brother, her last surviving brother. But Omar had disliked their singing and dancing, just as he’d been ambivalent toward Dru’s midwifery. This staid burial was what he’d requested.

      Only one thing Dru had done differently. She had gone to the funeral home and dressed him. She’d needed to touch and know his cold, thick, unmoving limbs, the stone feel of his body. To kiss his face in death. So that it would not be the way it had been with her father, whose boat had never returned; she saw his ghost, his double, everywhere.

      As in Gloucester. With Tristan’s pregnant friend.

      When they’d all crossed the dry grass, left the grave site and the casket, exited the cemetery enfolded by security, Tristan and the young woman merged with them. Dru stopped, handed him the crumpled piece of paper. “I read that.” Cameras, their ceaseless motors winding, advancing shutters falling on her sorrow.

      Tristan circled her shoulders with his arm, his free hand touching the pregnant woman, assuring her presence. Or assuring her of his. “Look, I’m sorry, Dru. She was in Conway’s Tavern. She needed help. Her name’s Oceania. She’s deaf. She reads lips some. I brought her here so you could help her with her birth. You are a midwife. You didn’t go to school for six years to pretend you’re not.”

      She’d also attended workshops, earned continuing education units. She’d done everything to keep her certification current. Even attended two births.

      Oceania. She must have renamed herself.

      “She should go to a hospital. Or to Keziah.”

      Tristan shook his head. “She’s afraid СКАЧАТЬ