Casey stared at Irene’s flour-sack body stretched across her mother’s left shoulder. Ella’s comment was probably true, but it annoyed her. The length of the baby’s spine was scrunched, and her small bottom rested on Ella’s left forearm. But Irene hadn’t changed Ted, Casey wanted to argue, or had she? Had Irene’s birth made Ted fall in love with Delia? Sabine’s husband, Isaac, once said that when a child was born, his birth signaled that you were dying. Grim. So instead of choosing his child and what her life required, had Ted chosen himself—his life and his pleasure? With Ted, it was never easy for Casey to be fair, to be compassionate. But she could think exactly like him, and it scared her.
“Would you like to hold her?” Ella asked.
“Yes, please.” Casey reached out her arms. She was still holding Virginia’s letter with her left hand. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, look.” She shoved the letter into her bag, then folded Irene into her arms. Ella smiled at her kindly, and in her tender expression, Jay’s mother, Mary Ellen, came to mind: her clear patrician voice, her long-suffering genteel poverty, the endless supply of compassion. Both Ella and Mary Ellen had been left by their husbands. Why did men leave? Maybe if that kind of humiliation didn’t make a woman furious, it made her sympathetic. Casey hoped that with all his work and earnings, Jay would alleviate his mother’s disappointments. She hoped Mary Ellen would finish her biography of Dickinson and it would win a big prize instead of the volume being carted off to the dusty stacks. Why did Ted have money and choices, and Mary Ellen have to work for a dozen more years for the prospect of a librarian’s meager pension? It was hard not to be cynical about Keiko—Jay’s fiancée. Her family money and connections would help Jay in the world. He was marrying up. And why not? At school, he used to talk obsessively about who had family money and who didn’t. It didn’t surprise Casey that he’d found a girl who had a college gymnasium–giving kind of bankroll, but she couldn’t help being saddened by it. Maybe Keiko’s money hadn’t mattered. But she knew it had. Jay had cared about the golf courses, the fancy skiing trips, and the country houses. All of it—he had always noticed all of it. Before he would earn his own, he’d use hers. Was it possible to resist the desires of your heart? Casey couldn’t possibly have helped him socially or financially. Then she finally got it: On separate occasions, he’d felt no compunction about forcing himself on her mother and father, almost bullying them into an introduction, not just because he was angry with her for hiding him from them, but because they weren’t important. They were nothing socially. And if her parents were nothing, she was nothing, too. But how could she be angry with him? That’s just who he was. She was also someone who’d needed helping herself. On that score, she understood.
Casey kissed her goddaughter—her eyes dark as olives. A delicious scent of biscuits and toast came from her hair. That Ted could leave her made sense then. How did a person take up this kind of responsibility, anyway? To care for this beauty and perfection with fragrant black hair in tiny pink clips? Just holding her filled Casey with a sense of the child’s needs. She didn’t want to make her cry or to drop her, and she wasn’t sure how to comfort the tiny person. In her sleepy little face, there was no similarity with either Ted or Ella. Dr. Shim had claimed that Irene looked a great deal like his own sister, an aunt of Ella’s who had died young.
Her arms empty yet feeling content, Ella let out a sigh. She stretched her back, wiggling her shoulders, cracking her neck to and fro. She floated her long arms upward, then returned to sitting, her straight back in line with the plush sofa. The way Casey looked at Irene with love and pleasure made her feel cared for somehow. It was a precious gift when another person loved your child. You yourself felt loved.
Casey glanced up. Her friend’s posture was erect, her smile stoic. To her surprise, she felt a kind of repulsion. How odd it was that she’d felt more love for Ella when she’d overdosed on the codeine. She’d seemed more human then. I’m being unfair, she thought. Ella was just trying to get through it, be tough for her child—Ella, the girl who’d never had a mother and was now one herself. And though Casey respected that, Ella’s stance felt superior and untrue. She’d never once called Ted a bastard when he was truly that. Then at that moment, Casey felt everyone’s brokenheartedness, including her own, and she agreed with Ella: Love did not end. How could it? But Jay was marrying someone else. That was reality, too.