Counting to Perfect Page 10

  Finally Julia caught my eye.

  “Call Mom and Dad?” she said. “Cass, I got this.”

  I nodded.

  “What did you get all upset about? Did you think I wasn’t coming back?”

  I swallowed hard.

  “Why would you even think that?”

  I glared at her.

  “Oh. Yeah, I see.” She looked down. “I would never leave Addie. And I would never leave you. Not really. I also wouldn’t leave you with something you couldn’t handle. You did fine. Addie’s fine.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. I wanted to cry more. More and more and more.

  Julia returned the now-sleeping Addie to the Pack ’n Play.

  She came back to our bed. “Aw, Cassie-girl.” She cuddled me. “You have to trust me.”

  “Why should I?”

  She stiffened. Her breathing sounded deep and halting, like she was trying not to cry, too.

  She hugged me tighter.

  After a few minutes, I said, “Who’s going to turn off the light?”

  And Julia laughed.

  In the morning, I woke up to see Julia sitting at the end of the bed so she could look into the Pack ’n Play.

  “She okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” Julia stood and picked up Addie. Addie was awake, too.

  Julia set her on me. Addie cooed softly. Like any other morning. I nestled her into the crook of my arm so she could relax.

  “She’s cool,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Julia said. “I took her temperature. It’s normal.”

  “Do we have to go to the doctor?”

  “The fever was low, so no. So low, it could just be a little bug or even from her teeth. If it gets higher or comes back and sticks around, then we’ll go.”

  “Okay.”

  “We have to be at breakfast at nine. You want to get her dressed while I take a shower?” She handed me a diaper and a clean outfit of a onesie and little blue shorts.

  “Sure.”

  * * *

  —

  No lumberjack for us, like Julia had said. But the breakfast was good, some sort of eggy-blueberry French toast thing baked in the oven. And there were other people there. About twelve of us at the table.

  Everyone was talking, asking each other about their trips.

  “And what about you? Are your parents sleeping in?”

  “No, we’re on our own,” Julia said. She had Addie sitting in her lap, facing the table, where she’d scattered a handful of Cheerios. Addie was concentrating on picking them up, but only half of them were making it into her mouth.

  “That’s interesting. What sparked the trip?” one of the women asked.

  “Sisterly bonding time,” Julia said. Not the whole story, but enough.

  “Isn’t that the sweetest thing?” the woman said.

  “How old is your baby?” asked another.

  “Six months.”

  “She’s adorable.”

  “Thank you,” Julia said.

  Not enough people told her Addie was cute. They all spent so much time looking at Julia, trying to figure out how old she was. Like her age got in the way of all the normal, polite things people said to each other.

  After we escaped from breakfast and went back to our room, Julia said, “We aren’t packing today. I’ve booked us another night.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Figured we could use a rest day after that bad night. The bed was nice though, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It felt like floating.”

  “Except, you were sleeping.”

  “Except, yeah, I was sleeping. And…” I’d woken a few more times. Each time, I’d gasped, and then found that it was okay, that Julia was still there next to me, just like she’d been the last time I’d fallen asleep.

  “And what?”

  “I think I was looking for you.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “I was right there.”

  “I…I know. So, what are we doing today?”

  She tossed me another brochure. “How ’bout a hike? There’s a waterfall. We’ll put Addie in the chest carrier; we can take turns.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Julia drove us to the start of the trail and we hiked out to the waterfall. She brought bottles of water and packets of crackers for us, a jar of plums for Addie.

  When we got to the waterfall, I was the one wearing Addie on my chest, facing out so she could see.

  “Here, turn around.” Julia held up her phone. “Smile.”

  She took our picture. We were always taking pictures of Addie at home. But we’d been keeping our phones off so much, we hadn’t really been taking them, except for the one-a-day.

  Julia stood next to us and snapped a selfie of the three of us. She tapped around a bit. Sent it to Dad.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Think he’s mad?” I asked. “He’s been giving us the silent treatment. He asked me to call, but he’s not picking up. No one is.”

  “Maybe he’s just giving us the space you asked for.” Julia turned her phone back off.

  You did have to be quiet to listen.

  But if you never said anything back, how did the other person know you’d heard them?

  It was a Saturday—December 17—when Addie came.

  I had been looking forward to Saturday all week. Not because of Addie, of course. We didn’t know she was coming that day. Because we were finally going to decorate for Christmas.

  Despite the fact that my family had gone all funny, I was excited about Christmas. I’d written a wish list full of stupid things. A sheet of paper front and back. I’d gone to the mall and noted everything that looked mildly appealing. I mean, I deserved all those things, didn’t I? I’d been good. I’d been staying out of the way and not doing anything bad.

  We hadn’t gotten the tree up until late. Julia had stopped going to school after Thanksgiving, having become too fat and uncomfortable, and Mom was taking her to the doctor like every week. Nobody bothered to go to the tree lot.

  Finally, on a cold weeknight, I asked Dad, “Aren’t we celebrating Christmas? Can’t we get a tree?”

  “Of course! Of course we’re celebrating Christmas.” He looked across the table to Mom. “We’ll go pick something out tonight?”

  “You two go,” she said. “I’ll stay here with Julia.”

  Julia rolled her eyes.

  “Did you want to go, honey?” Mom asked.

  Julia thought about it. “Not really. It’s freezing out and I can’t zip my coat.”

  She could snap it shut at the top, and then it hung wide and open toward the bottom. The argument over whether to buy her a maternity coat for the few weeks she would need one had been loud. She’d said no to almost any suggestion of maternity clothes all fall. She’d only put up with some very plain shirts Mom had bought without her and just put in her room. Otherwise, she’d been in big sweatshirts and sweatpants. Some of them were probably Carter’s. Her wearing his clothes, even more than having his baby in her stomach, made him feel omnipresent. He was around a lot anyway, worrying and trying to take care of her when we could do that for her just fine.

  “Okay, sport, just you and me,” Dad said to me.

  There was no one else out shopping for trees that night. I guess most people did that as a family, on the weekend. The way we always had before.

  So we got the tree, and the next night Dad put it up, and then for a few days no one even bothered to get out the decorations. I had to beg again, on Friday night, because I was worried we’d get all the way to Christmas with a naked tree. Mom and Dad finally got the boxes from the attic. I untangled the lights, and Dad strung them on the tree.

  Julia sat through all of this. She was tired, she said.


  Mom dumped a basket of pastel clothes in front of her.

  Julia stared at it.

  “You wash the clothes ahead,” Mom said. “So they’re ready. You can fold them while you sit.”

  Mom left to do more laundry, and Dad had disappeared, too, so it was just me and Julia.

  She picked up the tiny feety pajamas, some with little pink pictures on them and some with blue, but a lot with yellow or green or purple. Every once in a while, she would pause, holding up a little onesie.

  “Those are so small,” I said from my tangle of garlands on the floor.

  “They better be small,” she said. “The thing still has to come out of me.”

  We stared at each other for a minute. Then she looked away, and went back to folding.

  My stomach knotted.

  I got up. “I’m putting on Christmas music.”

  But in the morning, Julia seemed somehow happy, and busy. Mom and Dad were still in bed, but I was up, opening all the bins of ornaments and sorting through them. Julia was helping me, even though it was hard for her to bend over. She kept wincing and putting her hand on her back.

  “Look at you, when you were a little dope.” She handed me a laminated-construction-paper ornament I’d made in kindergarten. They’d given us a copy of our school picture, so I’d glued mine in the middle of a star and circled the whole thing in about a pound of glue and glitter. In the picture, I was grinning with no front teeth and my hair was all messy because I couldn’t keep it nice between Mom fixing it in the morning and me getting my picture taken after recess.

  “I believe this one is yours.” I tossed a 3-D geometric construction at her.

  “But that’s not embarrassing. I made that last year in math class.”

  Hm. I dug through the boxes. There was nothing embarrassing to Julia.

  She used the cardboard top of one of the boxes to make a tray full of sparkly glass ornaments and carried it over to the tree. She had only reached to put the first one on when she asked me to take the tray from her. The tone in her voice made me hurry. She put her hand on her back again.

  “You okay?”

  “I want to sit down.”

  I helped her to the couch. I stood there for about five minutes, and then she said, sounding out of breath, “Can you get Mom?”

  I ran.

  Mom and Dad seemed nervous but cheerful—pretending to be calm?—and then there was a lot of activity: Mom sitting with Julia on the couch but timing something on an app on her phone, Dad making coffee, Mom getting up to check that Julia’s bag was all packed the way they’d planned and putting it by the front door.

  By the door. Julia’s hospital bag. I stared at it.

  “Sit with her a few minutes,” Mom said to me.

  I did.

  “Hold my hand?” Julia asked.

  I did, but I was afraid to. She squeezed mine suddenly, for like a whole minute, and then she eased up.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “No problem. Should we, um, tell Carter?”

  “We will,” Mom said, sweeping back into the room. “When we’re sure it’s time.”

  Dad showed up from the kitchen with a plate of orange smiles. He handed it to Julia. “They won’t let you eat, love, once you get there, so try to have something now.”

  We used to sit outside in the summer and eat those orange smiles on the porch. I remember being really little; it could even have been my earliest memory, because Julia had me in her lap and my feet stuck straight out in front, so we might have been like two and eight. We would put the slices in our mouths way up to the rinds, and smile these big orange smiles at each other and laugh and laugh.

  And suddenly I pictured another baby who was not me sitting in her lap, eating oranges and giggling and smiling up into Julia’s beautiful, happy face, and Julia wasn’t a little girl anymore, but grown up.

  Mom and Dad were out of the room again.

  “Julia?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re going to do great,” I said.

  Then it seemed like two minutes but it was two more hours and the three of them—four of them, if you included Addie still inside my sister—were out the door on the way to the hospital.

  I was by myself, staring at the mess of the living room that I’d wanted to turn into Christmas, bubble wrap and tissue paper strewn all around.

  The house felt so quiet and empty.

  I thought first to call Grandma. She lived far away, but she’d probably want to know that the baby was coming. Had Mom and Dad already called her? Or did they not want to worry her? Julia could still get sent home, they’d said, but maybe the hospital would keep her, just because she was young.

  But I didn’t need anyone to talk to. I was fine by myself. Fine.

  I kicked one of the ornament boxes.

  I would have Christmas, even if my family had left. I would show them.

  I started with the ornaments Julia had picked out, in the little cardboard tray. And I thought of her as I hung each one.

  Please, let her be okay. Please.

  And I put up all our stupid homemade ones from when we were little. And not so little.

  I set out Mom’s favorite candles on the red runner on the side table. I put the Advent wreath—which had missed most of Advent, for the first time ever—on the dining room table. I couldn’t reach to put the star on the tree and the last thing we needed was me in the hospital, too, from falling off a ladder, so I decided that would have to wait. I turned my Christmas music up loud. I wondered if it would be okay for me to make cookies, and decided it would. I followed a recipe in Mom’s floury book, and got more flour all over me and the floor, but who cared?

  And then when I cut out the gingerbread men with their little-boy shapes, I thought about how waiting for Christmas was all about waiting for a baby.

  * * *

  —

  Dad called, a bunch of times.

  “How’s Julia?” I asked, again and again.

  “Everything’s going fine,” he would say.

  But that didn’t answer my question, not exactly. I wanted to know how she was. Things going fine didn’t mean she wasn’t hurting or scared.

  “Everything fine at home?”

  “Oh yeah, everything’s fine.” I’d burnt some of the cookies, but not all of them. I was trying to figure out how to make frosting with color dyes. The tips of my fingers were stained rainbow.

  “Maya’s going to come be with you later.”

  “Dad, I don’t need a sitter.”

  “Yeah, I know, sport. Call if you want, okay?”

  “Sure, Dad.”

  * * *

  —

  He called me back when it had been dark out for hours and hours.

  His voice sounded different. Worn out but entirely happy.

  “You’re an auntie!” he said.

  And Julia felt a million miles away.

  Because she was a mom now.

  “What is it?”

  “A girl! Adele Cassandra.”

  My eyes filled up.

  Why would Julia put my name in the baby’s name?

  “They’re doing great. Don’t worry, okay? Mom’s with her. She and I are going to stay here tonight, so Maya’s going to come spend the night with you. Tomorrow, you can come meet your niece, okay?”

  We finished our day in the B and B pool.

  “No pizza,” Julia said when we talked about dinner.

  “What, then?”

  “Let’s go to the little town, maybe we’ll see something we like.”

  So we got back in the car again.

  We found an Italian place. “I guess you can get pizza,” Julia said. “But I’m going to order some spinach or salad for the table. Actually, how ’bout an artichoke
?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  She ordered pasta and I ordered a personal pizza. Julia gave Addie a short piece of plain noodle to gum.

  “Was today the best day you had in a long time?” I asked.

  “You know, I’ve been having a lot of good ones recently. Tomorrow, no pizza.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Arrooo!” Addie shrieked.

  “What are you, a werewolf now? Werebaby?”

  “How many good days has it been?”

  “I think maybe six.”

  I tried to count it. “Lumberjack. Lumberjack with beans. No lumberjack. Lumberjack. No Lumberjack. Five days.”

  She threw a chunk of bread stick at my forehead.

  “Trust you to count it by food.”

  “How would you have counted it?”

  “I might have counted it—and I would have expected you to count it—by stops on the great swim tour.”

  “Oh, you mean like this: hotel pool, mountain lodge pool, shining lake, pretend-natural pool, pretend-natural pool?”

  “Yes, something more like that.”

  “Arrooo!” Addie shrieked again.

  “Toss your werebaby another noodle.”

  Julia pinched off another piece. “What do you think she’ll be like when she’s older?”

  “I don’t know.”

  When everyone had said Your sister’s having a baby, I’d pictured her like that, just a baby, forever. I never thought about Addie getting older. But it was true, in a year my sister would have a toddler, and then a couple years after that she’d have a kindergartner.

  “Think she’ll be like you, or like me?”

  “You mean, will she count her days by breakfasts or swims?”

  “Maybe.”

  I separated all the rest of my tiny pieces of pizza. “Julia? How would you have counted your days? The breakfasts and swims, those are both Cassie things.”

  “Isn’t everything Cassie-centric?”

  “No. It really isn’t.” Nothing had been Cassie-centric for ages. “What’s the Julia-centric counter for days?”

  Julia thought. She thought and thought and thought. She twisted her pasta on her fork, and absentmindedly stripped another noodle and handed it to Addie.