The Summer Guest Page 39

  And my mother? After my father died, she stayed in Big Pine awhile, almost three years. But I knew she was lonely, and Florida had always been his idea, not hers. Eventually she moved back to Maine, rented an apartment in Portland, and bought a little café near the harbor, which she rechristened Alice’s. Deck had died ten years before, but May was still in town, living just where she always had—a woman of over eighty years, still spry in the way that only old women from northern climes can be, though she used a cane to get around and was half blind from glaucoma. My mother began stopping by her house once a week to read her the Sunday paper, and the two became fast friends; they even took a trip to Europe together, a bus-junket tour of twelve cities in fourteen days, and the following winter went on a cruise to South America. Last year, when May’s eyesight failed completely, my mother gave up the apartment and moved into her house. I thought this meant no more trips, but I was wrong: last I heard, they were deciding between another cruise, to Alaska this time, or else Australia. They must seem a curious pair—this old, old woman with a cane and a huge plastic shield over eyeglasses thick as cut crystal, and my mother, who is still quite young really, and looks it. I keep waiting for her to invite me along on one of these trips, but so far she hasn’t, and I think I know why: for now, and for a little while longer, she gets to be the daughter.

  I had delivered over a hundred babies, so when I became pregnant in the fall of ’03, Jordan and I decided to go about our lives as usual as long as we could. We both knew the risks: if anything happened, there would be no other doctor around, the hospital was an hour away, and I had a family history of miscarriage, preeclampsia, and premature labor. But I was young and healthy, and taking everything into consideration from both a personal and professional point of view, I saw no reason why we couldn’t plan to stay at the camp until I was within a week or so of my due date. I took my blood pressure each morning before I saw my first patient, cleared out an hour in the afternoons so I could rest, filled my office fridge and glove compartment with snacks and bottled water, and in general went about my business as if nothing were out of the ordinary. And for a long time, just about thirty-seven weeks, nothing was.

  On a night in late April, Jordan and I were watching television—we’d sprung for a satellite hookup to watch the Sox—when I began to feel contractions. Nothing regular or strong, just a quick tightening across the belly, and because I was eight months along, I thought little of this; having a few contractions every now and then was completely normal, the body’s way of preparing itself for the big show. The week before, I’d driven to my OB in Farmington, and as far as either of us could tell, the baby hadn’t even dropped yet. They didn’t hurt at all, nothing more unpleasant than the feeling I might have gotten from doing a sit-up. I even placed Jordan’s hand over my belly so he could feel them, though he said he couldn’t; the sensations were inside. We watched the rest of the game, cursing ourselves for staying up so late when the Sox had lost again, and went upstairs to bed.

  Sometime around four in the morning I awakened with a start: something was wrong. I felt it then, a contraction so intense it seemed to shove all the air from my chest, and in the dark I fumbled for Jordan, unable even to cry out. I told myself to count the seconds, but somewhere after thirty I gave up—the pain was too strong.

  Jordan flicked on the light and sat up beside me. “Kate, what is it?”

  I took a deep breath to calm myself. I tried to speak but couldn’t, and when I opened my mouth a wave of nausea seized me; I tore back the sheets and raced from the room, barely making it to the toilet in time for dinner and the ice cream we’d eaten during the ball game to come up.

  Jordan was kneeling beside me. “Kate, tell me what’s going on.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.” I gripped the sides of the toilet as another contraction surged through me. I felt my water break, a warm wetness that soaked my nightshirt and the backs of my thighs, and behind this, unmistakably, the urge to push.

  “Oh, Jesus, I think the baby’s coming.”

  “Tonight? You’re only eight months.”

  “Not just tonight.” I heard myself hiccup, the sound ricocheting inside the porcelain bowl. Strange, but it was the hiccup that made me understand. “Right now.”

  Jordan dashed to the phone. In a wink he was back at my side, helping me to stand. “I called the ambulance. They’ll be here in thirty minutes.”

  “Too long,” I managed to say. “You’ll have to do it.”

  “Deliver the baby? You’re kidding.”

  “It’s your baby, Jordan. Who else is there? Oh, Christ . . .” I braced myself against the bathroom wall; the contractions were barely thirty seconds apart, not even, and hard as a vise. My head swarmed with panic. What was supposed to take twelve hours or more was happening in ten minutes. With my family history, I was going to have a baby an hour from the nearest hospital. How could we have been so dumb?

  “Get me to the bed,” I said.

  He helped me down the hall. The room seemed changed somehow, both the place where I had slept for years and someplace entirely new. Jordan stood at the foot of the bed in his boxers and T-shirt; his face was pale with fear.

  “Tell me what to do, Kate. I don’t know what to do.”

  “She’ll be little.” It was the only thing I could think of. “Get some blankets from the nursery.”

  “Jesus. What about you?”

  “I’ll be fine.” I folded his hand into mine. I was shaking, though I didn’t feel cold. “You’ll be fine. My body knows what to do. Just take care of our baby.”

  I closed my eyes, let the next contraction take me, felt my knees rising to meet my hands like the ends of a circle joining. She is coming, I thought, she is practically here. We would call her Josephine, our little baby Joe. There would be blood, a lot of blood. I’m sorry for the blood, Jordan. I bore down and time stopped.

  “Oh, God, Kate. I can see her.”

  I released my knees, felt the baby creep back up inside me. The pain was so vast it had become something else, a pain too large for one life, one person. It filled me like a kind of love. I’d barely caught a breath before the next contraction came.

  Seconds passed, minutes, hours. I pushed and pushed and pushed. Like love, I thought, and that’s what I was thinking when I heard it: the sound of Jordan’s happy weeping, and the sharp music of a child’s first cry.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many individuals offered their expertise in the research and writing of this book. My thanks to: Tom Barbash, James Sullivan, Paul Molyneaux, Annette O’Connor, Craig Pendelton, John Baky, Anthony Kurtz, Tisha Bridge, Andrea McGeary, Anne Marie Risavy, Margo Lipschultz, and Skip Graffam.

  The battlefield events described in the prologue are loosely based on the experiences of my wife’s grandfather, Herbert William Mauritz (1916–2002), who served as a technical sergeant with Baker Company of the 612th Tank Destroyer Battalion and was wounded by sniper fire at the Battle of Normandy. His eulogy, written by my father-in-law, Gary Kurtzahn, was instrumental.

  For financial support during the writing of this manuscript, I am indebted to the College of Arts and Sciences of La Salle University, the Pew Foundation, and the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation.

  Special thanks, now and always, are owed to the two heroic women of my writing life: my agent, Ellen Levine, a tireless advocate and true friend; and my editor at The Dial Press, Susan Kamil, whose brilliance with the page is matched only by the warmth and generosity of her spirit.

  This is a love story, and it’s a story about fathers and daughters. This is stuff you can’t make up, and I’m the luckiest man alive, because I didn’t have to. From the bottom of my heart, I thank my wife, Leslie, for all the nights of talk when we figured out this book together, and Iris, for teaching me what it means to be the father of a daughter. This book is theirs.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born and raised in New England, Justin Cronin is the author of the novel-in-stories Mary and O�
�Neil, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Stephen Crane Prize. Other awards for his fiction include a Whiting Writer’s Award, an NEA fellowship, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He is a professor of English at Rice University and lives with his family in Houston, Texas.

  Also by Justin Cronin

  MARY AND O’NEIL

  THE SUMMER GUEST

  A Dial Press Book / July 2004

  Published by The Dial Press

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2004 by Justin Cronin

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  The Dial Press is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9-780-44033-5-009

  ISBN-10: 0-440-33500-0

  Published simultaneously in Canada

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