Midwives (1997) Page 11

  --from the notebooks of Sibyl Danforth, midwife

  MY MOTHER DID SIGN the affidavit. My father tried to stop her, telling the troopers, "She'll be happy to sign it once our attorney has reviewed it," but my mother believed that she had done absolutely nothing wrong.

  "I'll sign it," she said to my father, and she did, scrawling her name in large, proud letters along the bottom of the eleventh page.

  Saturday morning my parents were up and around well before me. I struggled downstairs in my nightgown sometime around eight o'clock, and my mother and father were already fully dressed and finishing breakfast. Unlike most Saturdays, my father was wearing slacks and a necktie, and my mother was wearing a skirt and a blouse. She was sitting with her right leg stretched out straight, and even through her thick wool tights I could see how swollen her ankle had become.

  "How did you sleep?" my mother asked me, her voice a forced attempt to be cheerful.

  "Okay," I mumbled, noting through my own morning fog that neither she nor my father looked particularly well rested. I imagined they had slept, but it had been fitful at best.

  "Up to anything special today?" she continued.

  I shook my head, suddenly self-conscious as I stood before them beside the refrigerator. Quickly I reached for the milk and a box of cereal and joined them at the kitchen table.

  At that point I knew the basics of my parents' agenda for that day, but none of the details. I knew they were seeing lawyers, little more. As they sipped their coffee, I was able to pick up the rest.

  Friday night my father had spoken by phone to attorneys at three firms, two in Montpelier and one in Burlington. The pair of attorneys in Montpelier were casual friends of our family, the sorts of people my parents would see at big Christmas parties and town-wide summer picnics and whose company they probably enjoyed. But we weren't especially close to either one, so my father's phone calls had probably caught them off guard the night before. Nevertheless, each lawyer was happy to meet with my parents and try and understand if he could help them.

  The third attorney was Stephen Hastings, a friend of Warren Birch, one of the Montpelier lawyers my parents were visiting that morning. Hastings was a young partner in a Burlington firm, and Birch thought he was an excellent criminal lawyer--something Birch suggested he himself wasn't.

  And so my parents' plan was to meet with the two Montpelier-based attorneys before lunch and then see Hastings at his firm in Burlington in the afternoon. They left soon after I'd finished my breakfast, and I spent most of that day in a daze.

  Tom Corts and I had been going steady by then for close to four months, although we hadn't formalized the arrangement with anything as symbolic as an ID bracelet or ankle chain. In our part of Vermont, ID bracelets were passe by 1981, and the only girls who wore metal around their ankles were a trio of especially fast young things led by a newcomer to the Kingdom from Boston.

  Tom and I were supposed to have gone to a dance together Friday night, a shindig at the American Legion post in Montpelier of all things. The Legionnaires had been holding "alcohol-free" dances every other Friday that winter for the high-school kids, hoping to decrease the number of us who drank too much before rolling our daddies' pickups into ditches, or slamming our already-dented Novas into trees. Obviously I was years away from driving that spring, and the privilege still eluded Tom by five months. And, of course, we were nowhere near old enough to drink legally in Vermont.

  But Tom's friends in the tenth and eleventh grades had discovered that while the dances may have been alcohol-free in the Spartan dance hall inside the Post, there was almost always at least one unemployed quarry worker from Barre or laid-off lathe operator from the furniture factory in Morrisville hovering around the nearby convenience store who would buy a kid a six-pack if he could keep one or two of the beers for himself. And so small groups of us would stand in the shadows of the Legionnaires' Post or the convenience store, stamping our feet to stay warm and holding chilled beers that were nowhere near as cold as the night air around us.

  Usually one of my parents or Rollie's mother would drive us to the dances that winter, but we always had one of Tom's older brothers pick us up. We feared our breath or my babbling would give our drinking away. I've never held alcohol well, and in eighth grade it only took a beer and a half to give me the giggles.

  I had not gone with Tom to the dance that Friday night, however, because I had suspected in school that I had best be home in the evening. By the time most of us started piling into school buses to go home at three, Tom had heard that one of Sibyl Danforth's mothers had died. We discussed it briefly before each of our last classes began, and his take was at once characteristically prescient and prickly:

  "That preacher's probably upset, but it's the doctors who'll come after her. Doctors think they know everything."

  And then after a long pause, he added, "They scare me, doctors do. They're like pack animals. Wolves. They surround their prey and go right for the throat."

  Tom had called me late Friday night, close to eleven, from the pay phone in the convenience store's parking lot. He said our line had been busy most of the night, and I explained to him that my father had been talking to lawyers. I could tell he'd been drinking, but he was still far from drunk. He said he couldn't come by my house Saturday morning because he'd agreed to help an older cousin move into a new apartment in St. Johnsbury, but he said he'd be by in the afternoon. I told him that would be fine.

  When my mother and father left for Montpelier Saturday morning, they told me they wouldn't be back until late in the day, and that I should screen incoming calls: As a midwife, my mother had probably been one of the first people in the county to purchase an answering machine, and so our family had used one for years. I was an old hand at screening phone calls.

  They were concerned that newspaper reporters would phone us, and their fears were well founded. The Burlington Free Press, the state's largest daily paper, was the first, but the reporter who called only beat the Montpelier Sentinel and the Caledonian-Record by minutes. A fellow from the Associated Press in Montpelier left three messages, and I will always believe he was the person who then called every ten minutes until lunch, hanging up each time when the answering machine's recorded message clicked on.

  I spent most of the day in a fog, listening to the messages reporters and family friends and other midwives would leave on the answering machine, and waiting for Tom to come by. Usually if I was expecting Tom when my parents weren't home, I'd anticipate that we would wind up quickly on the couch in the den, where we would neck until Tom would start trying to pull up my sweater and I'd have to slow the proceedings. We both knew it was only a matter of time before I'd finally take off my sweater and let him do battle with my bra, but we hadn't reached that point yet.

  The Saturday that my parents went searching for a lawyer, however, the idea that Tom and I might make a beeline toward the couch never even crossed my mind. I knew I was happy Tom was coming by, and I knew I was scared--scared as if one of my parents were desperately ill. But I had no concept of how the two emotions might overlap when Tom finally appeared at our front door: Was he supposed to hug me or bring me a beer? Was he supposed to grill me for the details of what I knew or mindfully talk about everything but home birth? And if he happened to be at our house when my parents returned, would either of us have the slightest idea what to say to them--especially to my mother?

  Just before lunch Rollie came over, and for about an hour the two of us listened to the calls coming in to the answering machine. Had my parents even imagined the dozens and dozens of people who would use the phone to besiege me, they might have taken me with them and then sent me shopping in Montpelier and Burlington while they met with their lawyers. But none of us expected the deluge that began just after nine o'clock:

  "Good morning, my name is Maggie Bressor, I'm a writer with the Burlington Free Press. I would like to speak with Mrs. Sibyl Danforth as soon as she returns, please. I'm sorry to bother you, b
ut I'm writing a story about the ... the birth up in Lawson, and I only need a few moments of your time, Mrs. Danforth. I am on a deadline, so I may try you again this afternoon. My number here in Burlington is 865-0940. Thanks a lot."

  "Hi, Sibyl, hi, Rand. Molly here. I heard about the, um, tragedy, and I'm thinking of you. Travis and I both are. Call us when you feel up to it. And let us know if there's anything we can do. Bye for now."

  "Hello, I'm looking for Sibyl Danforth. This is Joe Meehan with the Sentinel. Just thought I'd see if you were home. I'll call back."

  By the time Rollie arrived, I'd had to put in a second cassette tape to preserve the messages. And still people called.

  "Sibyl? Are you there? If you're there but not picking up, please pick up! It's me, Cheryl. I have a whole file of legal stuff from MANA I want you to see. It's huge! Okay, you're not there, I believe you. But call me when you are. Or maybe I'll just drop the stuff by. There are even the names of some lawyers in it--all, of course, in places like Maryland and New Mexico--but they might be able to give you the name of one in Vermont. A good one. If you need one. Talk to you soon."

  Rollie sipped her soda and asked me what MANA was.

  "It's one of Mom's midwife groups. They're in the Midwest somewhere," I answered. I learned soon that the acronym stood for the Midwives' Alliance of North America, the closest thing lay mid-wives had then to a national trade association.

  "Hi, guys, Christine here. Call me. I'm worried about you."

  "Sibyl. Hello. This is Donelle. I know another midwife I want you to talk to. She witnessed a mother die in a home birth, so she understands the pain you're probably feeling. She lives in Texas, and I know she'd be happy to talk and listen all you wanted. Bye-bye."

  "Timothy Slayton with the Associated Press. Thought I'd try again."

  It really was endless. Eventually even Rollie grew tired of listening to the calls, and went home about one-thirty. Tom didn't get to our house until close to three, and in the hour and a half in between I continued to stare at the answering machine and watch its red eye blink when the tapes for incoming and outgoing messages weren't turning. Only once did I pick up the receiver and talk to someone, and that was when I heard my father's voice speaking from a phone in the attorney's office in Burlington.

  "How are you doing?" he asked me.

  "Oh, fine."

  "What have you been up to?"

  "Reading," I lied. I was afraid he and my mother would worry if they knew the truth and envisioned me sitting with my arms wrapped around my knees, transfixed by the telephone answering machine.

  "Schoolwork?"

  "Yup. Schoolwork."

  "Well, it's Saturday, so don't work too hard. Life goes on. Have you been on the phone?"

  "A little, I guess."

  "Any calls for your mom?"

  "A few."

  "Friends or reporters?"

  "Both."

  "Okay. When your mom and I are done with Mr. Hastings, we have one more stop. Since we're in Burlington anyway, we're going to go by the hospital to get your mom's ankle X-rayed." He had tried to downplay the importance of the hospital visit, implying that they probably wouldn't have bothered with an X ray if they hadn't been in Burlington anyway, but it's hard to make light of a visit to the emergency room.

  "It still hurts her?" I asked.

  "A bit," he said.

  I think the only time I moved between the moment Rollie left and the moment Tom arrived was when I stood up to see what the small thuds were in the kitchen. It turned out to be one of those normally wondrous harbingers of spring: A male robin had returned to the bird feeder outside one of the kitchen windows after a winter away, and the fellow was doing battle with his reflection in the glass. That Saturday, however, the robin's homecoming was merely an irritation, just another mesmerizing example in my mind of the idiocy of the natural world: Birds banged into glass, mothers died giving birth.

  I probably looked like eighth-grade hell to Tom when I opened the door for him. I was as vain as any girl just shy of fourteen, but I hadn't combed my hair once that Saturday, and I don't believe I had remembered to brush my teeth. I had gotten dressed shortly before Rollie came over, but I certainly hadn't dressed for Tom Corts. I was wearing jeans that were much too baggy and loose, and one of my mother's old hippie sweaters that she had knit herself. She had used perhaps eleven shades of yarn, and while the effect was supposed to be psychedelic, even she used to say it was merely chaotic, as if the colors had been chosen by a preschooler.

  But if Tom was appalled by what he saw when I opened the door, he kept his disappointment to himself. And I was indeed glad to see him. He wrapped his arms around the small of my back and pulled me to him, and gave me a kiss on the lips as gentle and chaste as the first one we'd shared a year earlier in the mud of the McKenna family's small paddock.

  And then he just rocked me for a long moment, an awkward sway that felt just right for that time. I pressed my forehead against the cotton from his shirt that peeked through his partly zipped parka, lulled if not wholly reassured. I don't recall how he finally separated our two bodies and moved us inside, but somehow he managed without traumatizing me.

  It was quickly apparent that Tom, like me, had absolutely no idea of how much or how little he should speak of Mrs. Bedford's death or my mother's involvement. He understood a hug would be good, but the spoken sentiments he'd have to ad-lib as he settled in for his visit.

  "My cousin lives in a pit," were his first words to me after we had walked into the kitchen. "That boy is as stubborn as a pig on ice, so there was no changing his mind. But, my God, has he moved into a dump."

  "What's so bad about it?"

  "Aside from the fact it's got about two windows and they're only as big as record albums, nothing. Except, maybe, it's only two rooms and a bathroom, and the floor's about rotted out in the bathroom. And I could only find one outlet in the whole darn place."

  As we walked through the kitchen to the den, he stopped before the refrigerator. "Can I get myself a soda?"

  "Sure."

  "I just have no idea what that boy thinks he's doing," he went on as he reached inside the white Kelvinator for a Coke.

  "Is the apartment in town, or outside it?"

  "It's in a house by the maple syrup company. The one that cans all the stuff from Quebec."

  "A nice house?"

  "Hah! 'Bout as nice as a car accident. It's dark and old and in need of either a good carpenter or a well-placed bolt of lightning."

  He sat down on a corner of the floor by the stereo and began thumbing through the record albums and tapes lined up to one side.

  "How's your mom today?" he asked, careful to look intently at an album cover instead of at me.

  "I think her ankle hurts more than she'll admit."

  "Her ankle?"

  I told him how in addition to everything else she had endured up at the Bedfords', she had injured her ankle.

  "She picked out a lawyer?"

  "I don't know."

  "How many are your folks seeing?"

  "Three."

  He nodded approvingly. "My cousin said he guessed your parents make too much money to get a public defender. But he said he had a good one once."

  We may not have had particularly crisp reception back then in our part of Vermont, but I had nevertheless seen enough television to know what a public defender was.

  "He did?"

  "Yup, in St. Johnsbury. He said the guy was real sharp."

  "What'd he do?"

  "My cousin or the lawyer?"

  I shrugged. "I guess both."

  "My cousin was drunk and stole a car to go joyriding and then hit a telephone pole. Wrecked the thing."

  "Whose car?"

  "Belonged to a guy from Boston. A Saab. Problem was, it was the second time he'd gotten smashed and taken somebody's car. So he ended up spending thirty days in Windsor. But he said it would have been a lot worse than thirty days if his lawyer hadn't been such a fast ta
lker."

  "Stealing a car when you're drunk gets you thirty days?" I asked.

  "That's what it got my cousin."

  In the kitchen the phone rang, and when I didn't move to answer it, Tom looked up at me and offered to get it.

  "Let the answering machine deal with it," I told him, and explained how up until perhaps an hour earlier, the phone had been ringing nonstop. Not surprisingly, it was merely a reporter calling yet again.

  "There'll be a lot in the newspapers tomorrow, won't there?" Tom said.

  "I guess."

  "Has your mom spoken to any newspapers yet?"

  "I don't think so."

  He sighed and looked down at the pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket of his shirt. I could tell he wanted one, but he wasn't allowed to smoke inside our house.