Red Leaves

‘Hi, Evie. It’s me,’ she said brightly. Evelyn cried harder.

‘Nice welcome,’ Kristina said, sitting on the bed next to the girl and patting her belly. ‘How are you holding up?’

Evelyn couldn’t talk.

‘Come on, honey, come on, girl. Hang in there. Only a few more weeks to go.’

‘No more weeks to go,’ Evelyn sobbed. ‘My show fell out.’

‘Oh wow,’ Kristina said excitedly. ‘Oh wow.’

Evelyn grabbed Kristina’s hands. ‘Krissy, please talk to my mom, please! I don’t want to give up my babies!’

Evelyn had told Kristina about her parents, who had lived in Lyme their whole lives. They had simple dignity and pride, and they could not allow their only daughter to have a child out of wedlock at fifteen. That would be a first in seven Moss generations. For Donald and Patricia Moss it meant having to send their daughter to Red Leaves and telling all the neighbors she had gone to visit a sick aunt in Minnesota. Evelyn couldn’t very well return from Minnesota with two babies who did not know their father. Evelyn had confessed to Kristina during one of their many weepy talks that Evelyn herself was not precisely sure who the father was, though she had a couple of strong hunches. When both boys were individually confronted by Evelyn’s parents, they denied any impropriety, admitting, however, that if there was any impropriety, it was all Evelyn’s. The two boys were scared and didn’t want to get married at fifteen. They wanted to finish high school.

Kristina knew it wouldn’t help to talk to Evelyn’s parents. ‘Evie,’ she said gently, ‘I’ll try to talk to your mom next time she comes, okay? I’ll talk to her.’ She paused. ‘But Evelyn, even if they are adopted, it’ll be okay. I promise. They’ll be so loved.’

‘Oh, please!’ Evelyn snapped. ‘Don’t you understand anything? I don’t want to give them up!’

Kristina patted the girl’s belly. ‘I do, Evelyn, I understand everything,’ she said quietly.

Evelyn tried to move away from her. ‘How could you possibly?’

What could Kristina tell this grieving, crying girl? ‘Evelyn, they’ll be loved,’ she repeated. ‘And you’ll have a life. They’ll have wonderful parents. They’ll have two grown-up, wonderful parents -’

‘I don’t want them to have parents!’ Evie cried. ‘I want them to have me!’ Evelyn was sitting on the bed in front of her, looking flushed, uncomfortable, and heavy. She was breathing hard.

‘Evie, don’t get yourself all excited,’ said Kristina, trying to calm the girl down. She smiled and tried to make a joke. ‘I don’t know how to deliver babies.’

‘Betty does,’ Evelyn replied seriously. ‘She delivered a baby once when her car broke down and they couldn’t get to the hospital in time.’

Kristina knew about that. But they hadn’t broken down, they had been in an accident. The baby had not been saved. And Betty had suffered a spinal injury that had left her with a permanently bad back.

‘Can we have some sanity here? Nobody but the doctor is going to be delivering your babies.’

‘That’s right. My babies.’

‘Evelyn, please.’

Evelyn fell back on the bed. Her large belly remained up, nearly perpendicular to the rest of her body.

‘I want them to stay inside me forever,’ she whispered.

Kristina took off Evelyn’s socks and started rubbing her feet. ‘When I was a young girl,’ she said quietly, ‘I thought that was possible. I thought babies just stayed inside you until you wanted them to come out.’

Evelyn went on plaintively, ‘Just stay inside me forever, never leave me, never leave their mommy…’ She started to cry again. Her belly heaved. It was the only thing moving in the small bedroom.

‘You know,’ Evelyn said, sniffling, ‘I’ve even been thinking of names for them. ‘Joshua and Samuel. Josh and Sam. Do you like that?’

Kristina wanted to tell Evelyn what Betty had trained her to say when counseling pregnant teenagers about giving their babies up for adoption: that one was never supposed to give the baby a name or think of it in personal terms. One was never supposed to buy the baby anything, or knit anything, or think of spending the first few days with the baby. Josh and Samuel. Well, wasn’t that just cozy? Josh and Sam were the two boys who had dallied with Evelyn Moss and then refused to own up. Kristina thought Evelyn was insane for even thinking about them.

‘Did your parents come yesterday?’ asked Kristina.

Evelyn nodded. ‘Mom said it will all be over soon, and then we can go back to being a family again.’ She wiped her face.

Kristina wanted to say having babies changed everything forever, but she just rubbed Evelyn’s belly, feeling little legs and feet push against the skin.

Then it was five o’clock and time to go.

Downstairs she thanked everybody again for her cake and purse and left.

About to get into her car, Kristina heard a tapping from one of the second-floor windows. She looked up. It was Evelyn, who opened the window and shouted out, ‘Krissy, are you going to come to the hospital when I have my babies?’

‘Sure I will, Evie,’ said Kristina. ‘Sure I will.’

‘Good,’ Evelyn yelled out of the window. ‘You’re not going away for Thanksgiving, are you? I’m going to go into labor any minute!’

Going away for Thanksgiving. Well, today was already Monday. Tomorrow was the last full day of classes. The chances of going away anywhere for Thanksgiving were looking slimmer and slimmer. The odds against it were lengthening like the pre-dusk shadows. Kristina knew Evelyn could use her support.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going to stay put. Have Betty call me as soon as you go into labor. I’ll come to the hospital.’

‘And hold my hand?’

Kristina nodded. ‘And hold your hand,’ she said softly.

Evelyn blew her a kiss and disappeared from the window.

* * *

Usually, Kristina drove home down Route 120 and made a left onto East Wheelock and a right onto College Street to get to Tuck Mall, but today she went a little farther west in Lebanon and made a right onto Route 10. It was a nicer road during the day, and in the summers she regularly took Route 10. She liked the view from the road. Tonight it was dark, though, and she didn’t know what had made her drive down to Route 10, except maybe she was thinking about Evelyn and adopted babies, and her mind, distracted from being in ten different places at once, hadn’t thought quick enough to make a right onto Route 120. Kristina made her way on Route 10 at thirty miles an hour down the winding two-lane road as she thought of Joshua and Samuel. And subsequently Albert and Canada. Albert was right. Canada would be wonderful. Like Edinburgh.

The three months they had spent at Edinburgh in the spring of 1991 had been the happiest months of her life.

They had no money, the dorms were old and cold, and they got no studying done. Kristina lost fifteen pounds in Scotland, eating soup mostly and spaghetti. They saved their pennies to go out to the pubs on Friday nights. Kristina remembered the cobblestone streets, the Tudor houses, the churches, the first she’d been to on a regular basis, and the Mull of Kintyre. They went there for New Year’s Eve, staying in a tiny bed-and-breakfast, got drunk on bitter and ale with the locals, and then spent New Year’s Day by the stark Irish Sea. She remembered the mountains, she remembered the lakes, the dandelions and daffodils coming to bloom. She remembered herself and him at Edinburgh. She remembered most of all how she had felt then - no hopelessness, no despair, no shame. Just the two of them, freed by their anonymity.

Until one day, as a lark, they stopped by a street fortuneteller and gave her two quid to read Kristina’s palm. Kristina went behind the dirty paisley curtain, and the hunched woman grabbed her hands and turned them over. Kristina tried to pull her hands away, but it was no use. The hag was strong. The old woman’s heavy Gaelic brogue Kristina barely understood, but the contorted expression of horror on her face was etched into Kristina’s mind. The expression of horror she understood well. She’d seen that expression before. The old witch wouldn’t let go of Kristina’s hands; she kept mumbling, then yelling; she became frenzied. Finally Albert stepped inside and pried their hands apart. As they hurried away down the street, Kristina could still hear the old woman holler shrilly after them. The fortune-teller was the only thing that had marred their one-hundred-and-thirty-day idyll.

The wind was howling outside, and it was very cold. Route 10 had no streetlights, only oaks and maples and plenty of American mountain ash, whose leaves were so delicate and pretty and yellow in autumn. Now, three nights before Thanksgiving, the trees were mere silhouettes on the side of the road.

Kristina drove with her mind in Edinburgh. In the moments before the curve near the reservoir, she was thinking about going to Scotland to live. Deeper in her subconscious, she was thinking of Thayer dining hall and whether they would have macaroni and cheese tonight as they always did on Mondays or whether they would go on some unspecified and certainly unjustified holiday schedule when they only served hamburgers and heroes.

The radio’s country station was playing ‘We Just Disagree.’

And do you think That we’ve grown up differently? Haven’t been the same Since you lost your feel for me…

As she went around the bend in the road, she saw an oncoming car, and because it was dark, and she judged the narrowness of road conservatively, Kristina instinctively turned the wheel to the right. But the lights were rushing headlong toward her. The other car still seemed perilously close. She turned the wheel a little more and heard the noise of her right tires hitting gravel. The Mustang bobbled, and the wheel became unsteady in her hands. To compensate, Kristina quickly turned the wheel to the left.

She overcompensated.