Brenna woke on Thursday with a ferocious headache, swallowed some ibuprofen and crawled back into her sleeping bag. She woke again an hour later feeling somewhat better and made some strong coffee as she waited for her blueberry bagel to pop up in the toaster. When it finally did, she smeared butter on it; an act Molly considered sacrilegious, being of the opinion that every good bagel deserves cream cheese. Pouring her coffee into a large blue mug, she went outside and, dragging her adirondack chair into the back yard, sat and had breakfast in the misty morning sunshine.
“You know, guys,” she addressed Olivia and Madeline, soaking up the rare sun while Tubby hunted for mousey presents, “I think you must be the laziest, luckiest animals in creation. All you do is lie around in the sun and occasionally give yourselves a bath. Oh, yes, and chase mice. Well, and Olivia wakes me up from nightmares. I guess that alone earns you guys a place of honor. Today you get to help me paint Molly’s room. Fun, huh?”
When Brenna heard Gary's mail jeep pull up, she walked around the corner of the house to see if she'd gotten anything other than junk mail. She pulled the small pile from her dented old mailbox and waved at Gary as he honked on his way down the road. Oh, yippee, her first phone bill. Oh, and let's not forget the electric bill. She frowned as she looked at the magazine on the bottom of the pile. Her nursing magazine, she had changed her address at the post office, but hadn't thought to cancel the magazine. She looked at the tiny baby on the cover, ventilator tubing in his mouth and miniature heart leads covering his chest. She could almost feel the tiny body and his tubing in her hands and smell the nursery, at turns strong with antiseptic or sweet with the odor of tiny clean diapers. As she passed her large trash can by the driveway, she opened the lid and dropped the magazine in. No more.
Brenna finished painting her guest room in one day, exhausted, but content with her work. She laid a floral carpet in shades of green, rose and yellow at the bedside and a white chenille spread over the box spring, still waiting for its mattress. Well, tomorrow would arrive soon enough and the new mattresses with it.
That evening, Brenna built a small fire as the spring air became chilly and some clouds rolled in. She settled on the couch to read, cats curling up around her. After nodding off one too many times, she stood up slowly, stretching muscles unused to the art of wall painting.
“Okay, time for bed.”
After poking the fire one last time, she headed up the stairs. Olivia trotted ahead while the other cats went to scope out the mice situation in the kitchen. She had laid her sleeping bag out on her boxspring, tired of the parlor floor, and now she burrowed into it and turned off the amber-shaded lamp on her nightstand. Olivia curled around her head and in less than a minute, they were fast asleep.
She sat in the rocker and unwrapped the package which had just arrived from Michigan. Her mother and sisters had been sewing and knitting since receiving news of the coming baby and they had mailed her what they had finished so far. She folded back the tissue paper and tears came to her eyes as she held up the soft, tiny gowns. Putting them aside, she lifted out a long, pure white christening gown with fine lace trim. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she beamed at the gown and stroked its soft folds. This, she knew, her mother had made. Mother had enlisted help in making the other tiny clothes, but the christening gown for her first grandchild was hers alone to make. She laid it neatly in the cradle which Martin had ordered from Portland on first hearing the news of their coming child. Withdrawing a tiny matching bonnet from the package, she placed it on the gown. She sat in her new rocker, tired after cleaning that afternoon. The baby was just a few months along, but already she could feel its vigorous kicks and rolls, especially when she sat down to rest. It had been an unseasonably warm day for February and a gentle breeze drifted through the half-opened window, fluttering the lace curtains and lifting the wispy curls escaping from her hair combs. She closed her eyes. Just a few minutes rest maybe...
Something was pushing on her head and weighing her down...she awoke to find Olivia kneading her hair and Tubby pinning her to the bed by draping himself across her back. Rolling over, she dumped him off and he nonchalantly curled beside her. “Good, guys, wake me up when I’m having a good dream for once.” She pulled her sleeping bag snugly around her.
The tears coursed their way down her face as she held the tiny white christening gown to her lips. All her hopes and dreams were being carefully packed into the box before her on the bed. The stacks of little gowns with their minute stitches, the quilts and baby blankets given to her by new friends here in town, the shawl she had knitted herself...she brushed a tear from the gown and, carefully folding it, put it in the box and covered it all with tissue paper. She tied the box closed with twine and, with drying eyes and a heavy heart, pulled down the stairs to the attic. Ascending the narrow steps, she placed the box near the trunk holding her wedding gown and veil, then turned and went back down. She pushed the steps back up to the ceiling; there would be no reason to go to the attic again, not for her. The doctor had said she would be unable to carry any more children. Devastated, they had gone to a specialist in Portland for a second opinion only to hear the same diagnosis and the words, “I’m sorry”. On the train home, Martin had held her close until their tears for that day had been cried out and then he'd told her they would make a full life together, just the two of them. They would enjoy their nieces and nephews to the fullest, but they would not let this destroy them. She hoped he was right. If anything was a test of love and devotion, it was this.
Tears rolled from her eyes as Brenna awoke to Madeline licking her wet eyelashes.
She had had a fair amount of nightmares since her parents’ plane crash, but they had accelerated in the last couple of years with increasing job stress. At least since moving, she seemed to have a greater variety of topics. Wiping her eyes, she snuggled back down in her sleeping bag and did her relaxation mantra, a simple act of counting from one to ten and relaxing her body as she counted. Thankfully, before ten, she returned to dreamless sleep.
Chapter 8