“No, well, did he tell you why? That I’m going to have a baby?” She smiles and for a second looks like the Holly who had come to town.
“I didn’t know people could have babies if they weren’t married.”
“Oh, people can do a lot of things without getting married.”
“Don’t you want to? Get married?”
The woman stands up, her hand on her stomach, and paces the small room. “No. I mean, you don’t need to. Frank and I love each other. I mean, there are people out there who tell you things, but they don’t know. People who try to run your life, you know?”
Suzanne nods, turning over her cookie.
“Sesame seeds, if you’re wondering. And sunflower.”
Seeds like the birdseeds in Mrs. Reidel’s feeder.
“Do people ever try to run your life? I’m sorry . . . what should I call you, Suzanne?”
The girl shrugs. “People call me lots of things . . . too.”
“I’ve heard names. Why do they call you those things, Suzanne?”
“They don’t mean anything. Even Mrs. Reidel calls me Little Sue sometimes. It’s just a name.”
“And Fire Engine Sue? That’s just a name as well?”
Suzanne shifts uncomfortably. This is getting near the edges of her secret. She promised Papa. “People say stuff ’cause they don’t know me. What are you going to call your baby?” ’
The cookie is tastier than she thought it would be, the raisins soft.
“Names?” Holly laughs. “We haven’t talked about it yet. The baby is only about this big right now.”
She holds her fingers apart to reveal an alarmingly miniature imaginary baby. Suzanne blinks. Baby always means Carla, Carla in her crib while the home fills up with smoke. This is hardly real. How can Holly believe it?
“How do you know?” Suzanne reaches for another cookie.
“Well, that’s how long it takes. I won’t have the baby for months and months, and it will be growing all along, and then I’ll be this big.” She holds out her arms around a huge air stomach. “Did you ever see a pregnant woman? Really big?”
Suzanne gulps down a chunk of cookie. She can almost remember her mother tottering around with a tummy balloon, a green top covering it like a grassy hill. Her mother lying on her side, and the hill so green and safe. Carla.
Suzanne visits Holly often over that season, pressing her hands up against the growing baby through the filmy Indian cotton shirt. Sometimes Holly is resting when she arrives (Frank has given the child a key), and she sets about dusting or tidying up the cramped apartment. Once she finds a striped baby set—pants, top and a little bonnet. She wonders whether Holly found it in the city, or whether someone sent it as a gift. She hopes it is a gift.
Time goes slowly, then more quickly. School ends. Suzanne is once more free, and she can visit both Mrs. Reidel and Holly on the same day. The houses dress for summer, with hanging plants, trimmed hedges and bird feeders. There are sprinklers on many front lawns. A person can stay entirely wet all summer if they know where to go. On Suzanne’s own property, a spitting sprinkler sprays a semi-circle of grass. No one turns it to water the other half. No one seems to notice or care. The lawn responds with a rich green crescent that is kind of like a filled-in fairy ring.
Robert Cardinal’s summer allergies have worsened; his eyes are always red, and his nose runs. He sits indoors at the kitchen table doing crossword puzzles or playing solitaire. Sometimes he reads the paper. In the evenings he might take a walk, and his daughter goes along with him.
He never speaks to her about the secret, his or hers. They are two spies, tight-lipped, too clever by far to risk untold danger by opening their big mouths. So they stroll along, listening to the peepers and the bullfrogs, the man listening only to the noise, and the child to the song. One evening, fireflies. One evening, june bugs, attracted to the street lights, their bodies clicking on the pavement as they fall. He points above him and tells her of planetary dust, of polestars and the naming of stars. And he says, “I don’t know if your mother will go away.”
The words hang there, like fireflies flashing. It is dark, but she sees his face every time they pass under a street light. He has a long, thin face, her Papa. Longer and thinner than ever.
“She might. She might go. I don’t know,” he says.
The bugs crawl to the light, flitting their wings. Suzanne puts her hand into the clammy hand of her father, and they walk as far as the deserted ballpark before turning back toward the house.
Adele Cardinal does not go away, though observers might debate this, for she works late three nights a week and is distracted when she is at home. When Suzanne tells her a story about a river and a canoe, she stares right through the girl as though the river and the canoe and even Suzanne do not exist. When Robert Cardinal holds the chair for her at supper, she doesn’t even acknowledge the chair, let alone the gesture.
They are three people with their secrets. It is like the TV show, like the Cone of Silence on Get Smart, where the Chief can’t hear what Agent 86 is saying. Aunt Sophie calls in the evenings, and Adele goes into the bedroom with the phone, the extension cord stretched so tight around the door that there are no more coils in it.
One evening when they are home, the feeling comes again. Suzanne is playing with her horses: all five plastic horses are in this game, and the kleenex box corral is on her bed, so she is fenced in. This makes her laugh, because it is just like that song she heard, and she sings “Don’t Fence Me In” as she puts up her makeshift barriers. She doesn’t know what all the words mean: cottonwood, though it is supposed to be some kind of tree; cayuse, no idea. She wonders about the Western Sky, and whether it is the only place you can wander over yonder.
And then it is upon her. She is not allowed out at night except with a parent, and she has promised and promised. She looks at the horses. Her baby doll pyjamas are too lightweight, so she pulls her pedal-pushers over them and throws on her squall jacket. Her window is next to the tree. She has done this before, though never at night.
Lifting the window sash, she edges across the frame and feels with her foot for the crook in the tree. Yes. The rest is a blur as she pushes off into the tree and wriggles down the trunk. She’s cut her leg; she can feel it. Dropping to the ground, she is already running, racing along, sockless in her sneakers, past Mrs. Reidel’s house, past the IGA, to the apartment on top of the hardware store.
She bangs at the door, trying to catch her breath, bent over from the exertion. The door opens slowly, and Frank’s bushy head peers around.
“What the . . . what are you doing here, Suzanne?” He holds the door wide for her, and she tumbles in. “You’re a pleasure always, but I have to say this is a little inconvenient. Holly is asleep, and I was just about to head off myself . . . Hey, what’s wrong?”
Suzanne speaks slowly, fighting the words every step of the way.
“Holly’s got to go to the hospital.”
Frank pulls a cigarette paper from the packet. “What, now?”
“When . . . when she has the baby. She has to be in the hospital.”
Frank shakes his head. “You know how she feels. She wants to have this baby naturally. None of that pumped-up crap for her. She’s a natural woman, and she . . .”
“Frank!”
Frank stops. The little girl is crying. She is frantic. She is Fire Engine Sue.
“Why? Can you tell me that? Why, Suzanne?”
“She’s gonna need