* * *
As quickly as I’d decided to move in with Louisa—or she’d decided it for me—I’d decided to move back. And I was resolute about that much. That’s not much of a Plan. Didn’t you claim to be the sensible one? You emptied out your house, didn’t you? Where exactly are you going to go? I imagine you’re muttering all that right now. I was going to have to come up with a Plan, true enough, and I couldn’t see expecting Louisa to be a whole lot of help with that right off the bat, but I’m sensible, and even if I don’t lay out a huge Plan the way Louisa does, I don’t drink special tea in the late afternoons with Marvelle and the girls—meaning the chickens, remember—although I’ll admit it’s not bad, and now and then I join them.
Energized by my decisiveness, I marched through the kitchen and thought to check out the living room window. Really, I expected Gary’s church van to be gone. It was there, and not only that, he had the back passenger side open and was bent at the waist leaning far into it, his elbows sawing back and forth, clearly working on something, although I couldn’t imagine what. I watched, trying to keep back enough to stay out of sight if he looked at the house.
He straightened up and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm, looked sideways at the house. His face wasn’t clear, but I thought he looked upset. Then, a moment later, the upper half of his body disappeared back into the van.
Isn’t it amazing how we can be completely derailed, slip from one track right onto another? Gary is easier for me than for his mother, so perhaps you’ve already guessed that I opened the front door and started toward him without another thought.
“Gary? Are you all right? What’s the matter, honey?”
“Oh, Aunt CarolSue. I could really use a hand,” he called back, pointing into the back seat.
As I got close to him, I saw his face was bleary with sweat, his eyes bloodshot.
“What’s happened?”
“Someone has left her baby at the church and I need help taking care of it—her, I mean—while I find the mother and minister to her. So she takes her baby back. Like God wants.”
Sure enough, there was a baby in the back seat, in a baby carrier. I heard her whimpering before I saw her, sweaty, overdressed, with a blanket on her in this heat! A pink hat! I pulled off the blanket and saw the problem. Gary had been trying to change a dirty diaper. Clearly he had no idea what he was doing.
“Oh honey. Oh honey. Okay, let’s get her cleaned up, and we’ll call Gus. Or did you do that already?”
“No! We’re not calling Gus. It’s not a police matter. It’s a church matter.”
“Gary, sweetheart. You can’t. She wasn’t even belted in a safety seat right. You can’t do this. What do you have for her?”
“That stuff,” he said, pointing to a couple of diapers and a bottle on the seat next to the baby carrier. “Pretty much nothing.” Gary’s curly hair was sticking to his forehead and neck. The back of his plaid shirt stuck to his skin. If it hadn’t been so hot, I’d have thought he’d been crying.
“Don’t you see? You can’t—” I shook my head and didn’t argue more then, seeing how his face turned to stone, glistening with sweat or tears. “Let’s change her and cool her down.” The baby had to be taken care of. Louisa could talk sense into Gary. “She’s a mess. Run into the house and get me two wet washcloths. Ring them out well. And a plastic bag. Make that two old plastic bags. I don’t suppose you know her name?”
“Gracia.”
“Gray-see-a? Is that like Grace or Gracie?”
“Close enough. I like that,” my nephew said.
While Gary jogged for the house, I soothed Gracie as best I could. She was a beautiful baby—well, aren’t they all?—but she really was. Tiny, with lots of dark hair and those navy-blue eyes they’re all born with. I couldn’t pick her up without covering myself with poop, which Gary had done an astonishingly inadequate job of cleaning up with tissues, smearing it hopelessly up her belly and down her legs. I held her tiny fingers and talked to her, stroked her head. She looked at me, right in the eyes it seemed, and quieted. “You’ll be all right, honey, listen to me, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be fine, don’t be scared, it’s all right, it’s all right,” I crooned. I hoped I wasn’t lying to her. I so wanted to be telling her the truth. I had to believe I was.
Gary came back with the wet washcloths I’d sent for, having forgotten I’d told him to wring them out well, and not had the sense to think that an infant shouldn’t have the shock of cold water on her skin regardless of how it might feel to a grown man. I sent him back. When he reappeared with lukewarm ones, I used the first cloth on Gracie, lifting her legs and cleaning the folds—of course her onesie was dirty. “What else do you have to put her in?”
“Ah, just the two more diapers. Wait, this is with the diapers.”
“Bless your heart, you’re not serious? That’s an undershirt. Give it to me.” I bit my tongue. He’d had a baby, lived with one of his own. Had Nicole done everything or had he blotted out all memories of Cody to endure his grief?
I finished cleaning the baby with the second washcloth, after taking off the messy onesie, and put both cloths and the onesie in one of the bags. I put the dirty disposable diaper and all Gary’s used tissues—picking them up gingerly from the floor mat he’d left them on—and put them in the second. Gracie waved her arms and fussed mildly, turning her head side to side. “She’s hungry,” I said. “I think she’s looking for a bottle . . . or her mother’s . . . um . . . do you know how she’s fed?”
“I got one bottle.”
“ONE? Bless your heart, how long do you think that’s going to last? Oh Lord, let’s get her inside, it’s too hot out here for this.” I picked the baby up, put her over my shoulder, and headed for the front door. “God help you with your mother,” I said to Gary, who still stood by the open van door, his mouth opening to say something. “Shut your mouth now, honey, and shut the van, pick up those bags, bring the bottle, and come on.”
* * *
I was sitting in my own armchair from home, cradling Gracie in one arm, giving her the bottle. Marvelle stared at us suspiciously from her perch on the back of the sofa, but Jessie lay at my feet, her nose on her paws, contented. Outside, I could hear Louisa reading Gary the riot act, doubtless getting the chickens all stirred up, and she hadn’t even been inside to see the reality yet. “. . . lost your mind . . . it’s not about Jesus . . . call Gus . . .” (The business about calling Gus, by the way, is because out here in rural farm country where there’s not much of a tax base, the sheriff’s department is pretty much the emergency social service system, too.) I caught snatches when Louisa went into her playground control voice. Meanwhile, Gracie was looking into my eyes and I into hers. She was such a sweet little girl. Does it sound like a cliché to say her mouth was like a little rosebud? It was, though, and her eyes searched mine in such a trusting way, the same way the fingers of one of her hands latched around my right pinkie as I held her bottle.
I had to take it away halfway through to burp her, I knew; she fussed a little, but then nestled in over my shoulder, her head in the crook of my neck. I patted her back and sang a little, and she rewarded me with a huge, satisfying belch. “Good girl, that’s my good, good girl,” I cooed, before I laid her back and gave her the nipple again.
She was so easy to smile at while outside the argument went on. Her eyes grew heavy and she fought sleep, sucking, stopping, sucking again. I pulled the bottle away with a couple of ounces remaining, and shouldered her again,