Chapter 15: The First Night

The obstetrician cleared me on Thursday at four o'clock, and I made her put it in writing.

"Six weeks tomorrow," she said, signing. "Go slowly."

"That's the plan."

"Is it?" she said, and handed me the form without looking up.

The charge nurse arrived at eight with a casserole and a bag of knitting.

"Go," she said, taking my daughter out of my arms. "I'm on until midnight, and I've raised three of these."

"I'm only going upstairs."

"Of course you are, honey."

I took a long shower and put on nothing but a robe.

My body looked like someone else's.

My stomach was soft and striped with silver lines, and my breasts were heavy and tender.

I stood in front of the mirror and could not find one thing I wanted him to see.

Then, at nine o'clock, someone knocked on my bedroom door.

Two soft raps.

I opened it.

Ansel stood in the hall in a clean white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow.

He had shaved, and he held nothing in his hands.

"I knocked," he said.

"I heard."

"You open it, or I go back downstairs and read about spleens."

I stepped aside.

He came in and shut the door and stood there with his back against it.

"I'm not the woman you met," I said. "My body is a different shape."

"Good."

"Ansel."

"You think I've been sitting at that kitchen table all these weeks hoping for the old one?"

He crossed the room in two steps and put his hands on either side of my face.

"I want this one," he said. "The one who held my arm until it bruised."

He kissed me.

It was slow, and the robe came open under his hands.

Then his palms were on my ribs, and then on my stomach, and he went down on his knees in front of me.

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