March 1964.
The snow started to fall several hours before her labour began. A few flakes first, in the grey afternoon sky, and then wind-driven swirls around the edges of their wide front porch. He stood by her side at the window, watching the sharp gusts of snow outside, all around the neighborhood lights flicker on, and the naked branches of the trees turn white.
After dinner he built a fire, venturing out into the harsh weather for the logs he had piled against the side of the garage from the previous autumn. The kindling in the iron gate caught fire immediately once he sat to light it, cross-legged, adding logs and watching the flames leap, blue-edged and hypnotic. Outside, the snow continued to fall quietly through the harsh darkness. By the time he rose and looked out the window, their car had become a soft white hill on the edge of the street. Already his footprints on the driveway had disappeared.
He brushed the ashes from his hands and sat on the couch beside his wife, her feet propped up on the cushions, her slightly swollen ankles crossed, with a copy of The Manner Born balanced on her belly. Absorbed, she licked her index finger absently each time she turned a page. Her hands were slender, her fingers long and graceful, she bit her bottom lip lightly, intently, as she read. Watching her, James felt a surge of love and wonder: that she was his wife, and their baby, due in just three weeks, would soon be born. Their first child, and they had been married just a year.
Norah looked up, smiling, when James tucked the blanket around her legs. "You know, I've been wondering what it's like." she said. "Before we're born, I mean. It's too bad we can't remember." She opened her dressing gown and pulled up the top she wore underneath, revealing her swollen belly that her husband had grown to love and cherish over the last few months. She ran her hand across it's smooth surface, the firelight playing across her skin, with not a stretch mark in sight. "Do you suppose it's like being inside an orb? Or a chinese lantern? The book says light permeates my skin, that the baby can already see."
"I don't know," James said. She laughed, that soft laugh that he could never get enough of. "Why not?" she questioned him. "You're the doctor."
"I'm just an orthopedic surgeon," he reminded her. "I could tell you the pattern for fetal bones, but that's about it." He lifted her foot, both delicate and swollen inside her light blue sock, and began to massage it gently. Her breathing filled the quiet room as her foot warmed in his hands, and he imagined the perfect, secret, symmetry of bones. In pregnancy, she seemed to him, beautiful but fragile. Fine blue veins faintly visible through her glowing skin.
It had been a smooth pregnancy, excellent in James' opinion, without medical restrictions. Even so, he had not been able to make love to her properly for several months. He found himself wanting to protect her instead, to carry her up flights of stairs, wrap her in blankets and bring her cups of tea. "I'm not an invalid." she protested each time, laughing. Still, she was pleased by his attentions. Sometimes he woke and watched her as she slept; the flutter of her eyelids, the slow even movement of her chest, her outflung hand, small enough that he could enclose it completely with his own.
The snow fell. For the next few hours, they read and talked. Sometimes she caught his hand and put it on her belly to feel the baby move or kick. From time to time, he got up to feed the fire, glancing out the window to see three inches of snow on the ground, then five or six. The street had gone quiet, with very few cars driving past.
At eleven, she rose and went to bed. He stayed downstairs, reading the latest issue of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. James was known to be a very good doctor, with a talent for diagnosis and a reputation for skillful work. He had graduated first in his class. Reading well past midnight, until the words shimmered senselessly on the crisp white pages, he tossed the journal onto the coffee table and got up to tend to the fire. Opening the damper fully and closing the brass fireplace screen. When he turned off the lights, shards of fire glowed softly through the layers of ash as delicate as the snow piled so high now on the porch railings and darkened bushes.
The stairs creaked with his weight. He paused by the nursery, studying the shadowy shapes of the crib, the stuffed animals and books arranged on the shelves. On impulse he went into the room and stood before the window, pushing aside the sheer curtain to watch the snow again, now nearly eight inches high on the lampposts, fences and roofs. It was the sort of storm that happened in Lexington, and the steady white flakes, the silence, filled him with a sense of excitement and peace. It was a moment when all the disparate shards of his life seemed to knit together, every past sadness and disappointment, every anxious secret and uncertainty hidden underneath the soft white layers. Tomorrow would be quiet, the world subdued and fragile.
He stood there for a long time, until he heard Norah moving quietly. He found her sitting on the edge of their bed, her head bent with her hands gripping onto the mattress. "I think this is it." she said, looking up. Her hair was loose, a strand caught on her lip. He brushed it back behind her ear. She shook her head as he sat beside her. "I don't know. I feel strange. This crampy feeling, it comes and goes." He helped her lie down on her side and then he laid down too, massaging her back. "It's probably just false labour." he assured her. "It's three weeks early, after all, first babies are usually late." This was true, he knew, he believed it as he spoke, in fact, he was so sure of it that after a time he drifted into sleep.
He woke up to find Norah standing over their bed, trying to shake his shoulder, Her dressing gown, her hair, looked nearly white in the strange snowy light that filled their bedroom.
"I've been timing them. Five minutes apart. They're strong, James. I'm scared."
He felt an inner surge then; excitement and fear tumbled through him like a tidal wave of emotion. But he had been trained to be calm in emergencies, to keep his emotions in check, so he was able to stand without any urgency, take the watch and walk with her, slowly and calmly, up and down the hall. When the contractions came, she squeezed his hand so hard he felt as if the bones in his fingers might snap. The contractions were exactly as she said, five minutes apart, then four. He took the bag from the closet, feeling numb suddenly with the momentousness of these events, long expected but a surprise all the same. He moved, as she did, but the world seemed to slow to stillness around them. He was acutely aware of every action, the way breath rushed against his tongue, the way her feet slid uncomfortably into the shoes she could still wear. When he took her arm he felt strangely as if he was suspended in the room, somewhere near the light fixture, watching them both from above, noting every nuance and detail: how she trembled with a contraction, how his fingers closed so firmly and protectively around her elbow. How outside, still, the snow was drifting down.
James helped his wife into her navy blue coat, which hung unbuttoned around her belly. He found the leather gloves he'd been wearing when he first saw her, too. It seemed so important that these details be right. They stood together on the porch for a moment, stunned by the soft world.
"Wait here," he said, and went down the steps, breaking a path through the drifts. The doors of their old car were frozen, and it took him several minutes to get one open. A white cloud flew up, glittering, when the door at last swung back, and he scrambled on the floor of the backseat for the ice scraper. When he emerged, Norah was leaning against a porch pillar, her forehead on her arms. He understood in that moment both how much pain she was in and that the baby was really coming, coming that very night.