In the labor suite, another nurse was telling red-faced Rebecca, “Okay, my dear. We’re going to have a birthday. What’s his name going to be?”
Becky said, “Jesus.” The nurse didn’t laugh. “Not really! Patrick.” She gathered herself again, her yell guttural and sustained. The nurse whisked a pile of bedding under Becky’s rear.
“Okay, Becky, I’m right here,” I said. “Squeeze my hand as hard as you can.”
She did, and in minutes, literally no more than four minutes, there he was.
“What a pretty baby,” the nurse told Becky, as she cradled him close.
“It’s you and me, fella,” Becky said to her son. He was beautiful, rosy and big with masses of dark hair. We each took turns holding him, Stefan in the stereotypical stiff comic panic, as if Becky had handed him a bundle of burning rags.
Weakly, Stefan said, “I’ll always be grateful for those tires.”
I told Becky that I would be back to give her a ride home in the morning and that I would bring a change of clothes.
“But wait,” she said. “Wouldn’t you two like to be Patrick’s godparents?”
“We’re Greek Orthodox,” I told her. “Wouldn’t we have to be whatever…you are?”
“I’m not anything. I was Catholic as a child. Patrick can be Greek Orthodox. I think that would be colorful. And I have this great baptismal gown I shouldn’t let go to waste. Do you know a priest who’d baptize him? It’s all superstition anyhow. We just need all the luck we can get.”
“Mom, please don’t say true thing that,” Stefan warned me. “It’s becoming a tic.”
“True thing that,” I said.
“As for me, I am a veteran godfather,” Stefan said, referring to my sister Phoebe’s baby Gus. “I would be happy to do it. I’m not sure I can offer guidance but I intend to excel at that one day. I’m very good at presents.”
Stefan also agreed to lean on Father Kanelos, who got so many compliments on the landscaping of the church that he would be helpless to refuse.
“You’re supposed to have family for this,” I reminded Becky.
She said, “Maybe that’s my choice. And maybe I do.”
* * *
That night, just days before the anniversary of Belinda’s death, Jill called out of the blue and asked to meet with Stefan and me, because, after much thought and prayer, she had decided to forgive him, and how could we refuse?
After her call, I stood on my porch in the dark and thought about where life had taken us, which felt something like a circle.
As Iris Murdoch said, human arrangements are nothing but loose ends, and time, like the sea, unties them all.
17
So what did I think would happen, people ask me. I don’t know the answer to that; I only know that, if you had given me ten tries to predict what did happen, not one of them would have come close.
When I talked things over with Julie, two days before we were to meet Jill, she implored me to stop thinking of this event as momentous. It was a formality, putting a frame around feelings already experienced, like marriage put a frame around love. After this meeting, nothing in Stefan’s life or mine would change. For his part, Stefan thought the request was impressive. He remembered, during his first nights out of prison, the strong desire he had to see Jill and talk to her—the desire that had led, in part, to The Healing Project. For Jill to do this, it seemed to him, was exceedingly brave and benevolent.
The date she set was the fourth anniversary of Belinda’s death, a Monday at three in the afternoon at the cemetery. It wouldn’t be dark yet, but, she said, and I agreed, a Monday was best because none of us needed an audience. Don’t share any of this with the press, she cautioned me, and I said that of course, I would not. “I don’t want there to be any perception that I don’t believe in the work of SAY,” she said. “I believe in that work more than ever, and I hope it goes on.”
I said, “I think it will, Jill.”
She said, “I am not so sure.”
I had mixed feelings about meeting at Belinda’s grave. It was not that I didn’t understand or consider the place appropriate. But what could be more upsetting and poignant? I wanted to suggest the cherry tree planted for her in Whitehorse Park; but I was in no position to suggest anything. Only Jep wholly disapproved. He wanted to come with us, only because he thought he might be able to bring the thing to a speedier conclusion. “This can’t go on forever, Thea,” he said.