Evening arrived in spurts. A flurry of activity in getting Seth moved, his knee set by the doctor who arrived on horseback from a neighboring farm and who smiled indulgently at me when I refused to give up Seth's hand, who called me Seth's wife and whom no one corrected. A parade of well-wishers and food dropped off by Cathy, who had made enough to feed five armies and who I could have sworn winked at me as she left—I got the distinct feeling the offending spooked horse would be getting extra oats tonight, as much thanks for not killing Seth as for facilitating this.
Finally, everyone left, and Seth and I were alone in the house, Seth propped on pillows in his own bed, unfairly resplendent in his underthings, his sleeveless shirt a crisp, startling white against his sun-darkened skin. I brought him soup and resisted the urge to feed it to him, had to keep reminding myself that he wasn't actually an invalid, that he wasn't actually dying.
"Thanks," he said softly, and took a few bites in a silence so pure I could hear the broth sloshing around in his mouth, a sound that made me unbearably anxious, not least because the sounds of people eating grated on my ears.
I opened my mouth several times to say something to fill the void, but couldn't think of anything to say. I was stuck here, in soup hell, listening to him eat, and he did so resolutely, as though he knew the silence was physically paining me and enjoying it.
The baby, perhaps roused by my anxiety, roiled in my belly, and I gasped softly, looked down as my hands flew by themselves to rest on the mound beneath my nightdress. The baby rolled, slow and deliberate, as though he or she wanted to make sure I didn't miss this.
The baby moved all the time. This was no different, except that it felt like perhaps it was. Seth was eyeing me carefully, and I nodded at him, watched him set his bowl of soup on the nightstand and reach out a hand to place it, warm and heavy, on my belly. His eyes grew wide, seemed to light from somewhere within, as he felt our baby move, strong and sure, under my skin, and suddenly, we were both laughing, as much from joy as, I think, and at least in my case, relief that what had happened earlier hadn't been much, much worse.
Eventually, the baby settled in, rolled over once more, slow and languid, and went presumably to sleep. I imagined them sucking a minute thumb, lips pursed. I looked up, and Seth was studying me, silent, but his eyes were still bright, the hint of a smile still playing at his lips, and I realized suddenly that in my mind, our baby had the same mouth, that everything I imagined about our baby was Seth.
"That first time," I said suddenly, "Were you as nervous as I was? Were you scared?"
To his credit, if Seth was taken aback or caught off guard by this abrupt question, he didn't let it show. "I knew you would be beautiful," he said softly, and I smiled, just a little. "That was a requirement. Beautiful and brilliant. I think most of our leaders could've done without the brilliant part, but I wanted…" he trailed off, wiped at his mouth with an idle hand as he considered his next words. "I had grown up with Scots coming in and out of the lodging house, and she was the first girl I'd ever met who looked every single person who ever talked to her square in the eye, like she wasn't scared of nothing."
I smiled at that, remembering, because Scots had been that way—assured and steady and calming, a balm in the lodging house whereas I often felt like a wrecking ball, smashing through walls and generally causing chaos with what felt like my ineptitude.
"I remember you were already mad at me," he said, smiling like the memory was sweet as opposed to bitter, and I remembered suddenly that I had, furious, called myself his whore, that he had reminded me that he hadn't made this deal, and suddenly, the whole thing seemed utterly ridiculous.
"Can you even believe we truly thought that arrangement was the only way to keep ourselves safe?" I asked, because now, with distance, here in this place, it seemed so painfully stupid. "I can't even believe we still thought someone would start a turf war with is, as though anyone's had a turf war in decades."
"It's the way it was," he said simply, and I nodded, because just like he had accepted that fact of leadership, so had I.
"I'm…" I began, paused and cleared my throat, "I'm glad, at least for…" I waved my hand vaguely, indicating myself, him, this, us, this baby, everything that we'd created from the depths of that odious deal.
"Are you?" he asked, and tilted his head at me. I knew without asking that he was thinking of Ben, of everything we'd lost because of what we'd done together, because I couldn't let go of him even when I probably should have.
"I think—" I stopped. Breathed for a moment, because it was impossible to reconcile the idea of having loved them both in perhaps different or maybe the same way, and impossible to accept that I would probably never really, truly know. But I did know one thing, one small, golden, utterly imperative thing. "I think we're supposed to be here, together, with our baby. I think whether or not any of the rest of it was….was God, or destiny, or whatever else it may have been is meaningless. I think things happen, that terrible things happened to us and that we did terrible things to each other and to other people, and maybe we don't deserve happiness, or maybe we've earned it, because I think we always tried to do the right thing, and—"
"Lydia, Lydia," Seth interrupted, placed a calming hand on my shoulder, cutting me off mid-ramble. "What are you saying?"
"I'm—I'm saying I don't know why everything else happened. But I think we were meant to. I think you're…" and I was embarrassed already, making a fool of myself for the millionth time, "I think you're supposed to be mine."
Seth wasn't the type to jump up and down—not that he could have in the first place—and wasn't even the type to shout out laughter or joy, and the only reaction he gave me was a slight shift of his lips, a quirk of the corner of his mouth and a raise of his brows.
"Aren't you supposed to be mine?" he said, low and calm. "I'm the man, after all."
"That's not how this works," I said, feeling a smile creep its way across my own lips, and this time, he did chuckle.
"It never has been," he answered, and pulled me in.
This kiss was different, I think, than any other we'd had. It wasn't angry, or full of teenage lust. It wasn't secret, or sad, or filled with rage and grief.
It just was.
It was us, here in this place with our baby sleeping inside me, and he was alive, and so was I, and after everything else, after all the shit and all the fucking terrible loss, the gift of being here, together and whole and gorgeous and alive, able to press ourselves close together and know that somehow, we'd come out alright, that was everything.
…..
More quickly than I could have possibly imagined, our baby was suddenly due to make their appearance. Then, more slowly than I could have possibly imagined, our baby was taking their sweet time, and I was a week and a half late, and miserable. It was growing colder, but I was still running too many degrees warm, forcing Seth to sleep in a frigid room and which he claimed was going to permanently damage his knee, though the doctor, when he came to check Seth's healing, told me that was ridiculous.
One morning, waking up yet again to a crisp late fall with no baby, I succumbed to the most bitter tears, feeling like a complete fool, which only served to make me cry that much harder because I am, at my more, an insane person.
"Lydia," Seth said, waking next to me and swinging his newly-healed leg around to he could face me, "Come on, it's okay," he soothed, petting my hair like I was an errant puppy, "The baby will come. It kind of has to, eventually."
"What if it doesn't?" I wailed, knowing I sounded stupid but relishing the relief that crying gave me, how it eased the clench of impatience and pain and discomfort in my chest. "I read once about this woman who went into labor in hospital and got scared, left, and never gave birth, and sixty years later they pulled this hunk of dried baby out of her."
I had in fact read such a thing, but in a magazine known for its outlandish and firmly untrue stories, though Seth certainly didn't need to know that.
"Our baby is not going to become a dried hunk in your belly," he said evenly, and I started to laugh, wiping at my tears and looking up at him through heavy lashes.
"I don't want to be pregnant anymore," I said pathetically. "I hate it."
"I know you do, angel," he said, and I didn't miss the patronization in his tone that crept in whenever he called me that.
"I hate you," I said, and tried to lean forward to crash my face into his chest, where I could presumably stay for the rest of my life, but my giant mound of a belly got in the way, and I tipped forward only a few pitiful inches before the air was pressed from my lungs, and Seth was laughing at me, his entire face lighting up, and I couldn't do anything but join him, still pouting, because he was exquisite and I was a mess.
"I have a surprise for you today," he said, and got up, pulling me out of bed. He refused to tell me anything while I got dressed in my largest and most comfortable dress, while I set my hair and applied cosmetics, clinging to normalcy even though I felt like a circus tent, while I put my boots and shawl on and we walked to the main house.
As we ascended the steps, I moved to threatening his life, but Seth was impassive as ever, only smiling vaguely as he pulled open the door and waved me inside. I punched him in the chest as I went, but his smile didn't falter.
"What the fuck are you doing to me?" I snapped, losing what little grip on myself I had, and I heard, from the sitting room, a familiar voice.
"That fuckin' mouth."
"John?" I whirled, came face to face with Skittery, who stood in front of the rest of them: Panic, Mugger, Sprint, Water, David, Mush. "I—"
And without warning, I burst into tears again.
…
The reunion was just getting into full swing, my friends from the City meeting my friends from the farm, when I felt a creeping, aching burn work its way around the small of my back and into the middle of my pelvis. It lasted only briefly, and faded away, and I, preoccupied with hearing tales of the girls back at the lodging house and the time Water had accidentally delivered mail to the entirely wrong neighborhood because he had been hungover, ignored it.
But it kept flickering back, waves of heat and pain that clenched at my muscles and bones and seemed to snake its way into my blood, and Seth quickly noticed the look on my face.
"Are you okay?"
"I think I'm…" I squirmed a little, went to stand and felt a rush of warmth, wet, run down my legs, and oh fucking hell, had I peed myself? A scent rose, like popping corn and sugar, and Cathy, who was sitting near me, looked down, into my face, at the wetness on my skirt, and broke into a beaming, wide grin.
"Did your waters just break?"
"It that what—I'm—I've never done this before!" I said, and another wave of pain overtook me, stronger this time than the last, and I drew in breath, or tried to, hunched over and found Seth's hand clenching my own, saw out of the corner of my eye how Panic had moved to support me but pulled up short when she realized Seth was already there, ready.
….
It's a wonder I didn't die, really.
Cathy said the birth was a straight-forward one, but there is nothing, I'm sure, straight-forward about your body wrenching itself apart, in wetness and blood and screaming, in the way the yells forced themselves out of my body in ways I couldn't control or how I begged them to let me stop, thought perhaps they could knock me over the head and we could finish this later, when I was ready.
But there was no later, only that moment, then, and I had strained and shouted and clung to Seth's hand, and he had, to his immense credit, refused to leave my side though Cathy told him he could wait with the others, like most fathers did, but Seth and I, we had figured this thing out, realized that life went better when we held onto one another, and so he didn't leave, though his face went pale at the sounds of my screaming.
When the baby came, he came in a flurry of limbs that so surprised me I cried out, sharp and sudden, before collapsing back on the bed.
It was shocking truly and utterly shocking, at how immediately the pain dissolved. It did not fade, like normal injury, didn't ebb itself into nothingness with time and pangs of lessening intensity, but disappeared like smoke out the chimney, here in one moment and invisible the next.
Cathy deposited him—of course him—on my chest, and I looked into his tiny face, took in his minute features and decided he did, in fact, look exactly like Seth. He peeked open big almond eyes and looked at me, and in that moment, I knew him: knew everything about this small human who had grown from nothing within my body, and just as suddenly, I fell, deeply and irrevocably, in love with him.
"My god," I whispered, because he was: a tiny god, created from the universe of blood and veins inside my body. Holy.
"He's—" Seth began, and faltered, and I tore my eyes away from the baby to take in his father, whose eyes were sparkling with something that looked an awful lot like tears, and I watched as he placed a hand on the baby sandy hair, as he let his fingers trail down the mottled, still-purpled skin and felt the silk of brand-new, perfect softness. "You made that," he said, and I caught his hand in mine.
"We did," I said, and he looked into my face, kissed my sweaty hair.
"What do we name him?" he asked, and I stared at the baby in my arms, knew but wasn't sure what to say. Seth touched a soft finger to the baby's lips, ran it over hands so small they seemed impossible, fingernails so infinitesimal it was almost too much to bear. "Benjamin," he said finally, and something loosened in my chest.
"Benjamin," I repeated, and it felt right.
Seth tucked an errant lock of hair behind my ears, gently scooped our baby off my chest and cradled him, wrapped in a small blanket, against his wide chest.
"You were a fucking warrior." He said, "But I think you kind of always have been."
…
End.
*Happy birthday, Jess.