The Midwife's Confession

I remembered writing the words a few weeks after my second miscarriage. My second baby lost. Ted and I had lived near the campus then, and Noelle moved in with us for a couple of weeks to take over everything. She cooked and cleaned and, most important of all, listened to me grieve. Ted had run out of words to comfort me by then; he had his own grief to deal with. Noelle knew how badly I’d wanted those babies. Little more than a year later, I’d be holding Jenny in my arms. She couldn’t make up for the loss I felt—the loss I still felt when I thought of those babies I never got to know—but Jenny brought me back to life.

I held the card in my hand for a while. What was the point of keeping it? Of keeping any of the notes written to Noelle? Yet I put it back on the pile. I didn’t need to make any decisions right now.

I sipped my tea as I read through some of the letters. They were filled with happy words of gratitude, the sort of sentiments you wrote when you were bursting with joy, and I needed to read them after being broadsided by my own sad old card. I held the stack of letters on my lap, scanning most of them, reading every word of others, turning each of them upside down on the arm of the chair as I finished with it.

I came to a nearly blank sheet of notepaper and it took me a moment to recognize it as Noelle’s stationery. There was a familiar, faint peach-basket-weave pattern to the paper. I hadn’t seen her stationery in years—did anyone still write letters by hand?—but I remembered getting the occasional note from her on this paper. There was only one line on the sheet.Dear Anna,I’ve started this letter so many times and here I am, starting it again with no idea how to tell you

That was it. Just that line. Tell her what? Who was Anna? I sifted through the letters and cards looking for anything from an Anna. There was a card signed by an Ana. All she wrote was, “Noelle, Our family adores you! Ana.” Spelled differently from the Anna in Noelle’s letter. No surname. No date. There was a picture of a little boy attached to the card with tape, and when I pulled it off I saw a name written on the back: Paul Delaney.

No idea how to tell you.

The letter was old. The peach-colored paper was soft with age. What could it possibly matter now?

I shrugged off the unfinished letter and continued making my way through the pile, nibbling my scone and sipping my Earl Grey. It wasn’t until I reached the bottom of the stack that I found another partial letter Noelle had written, this one typed. It was a bit crumpled. I remembered needing to flatten it when I first stacked the letters. I read it, sucking in my breath and forgetting to let it out again, and I stood so quickly, so violently, that I knocked my cup of tea to the floor.

13

Noelle

UNC Wilmington

1988

The second day after the freshmen filled the Galloway dormitory, Noelle made her rounds, saving Room 305 for last the way she saved the blueberries for last in her fruit salad each morning because they were her favorite. She never felt anxious about those blueberries, though, and she was definitely feeling anxious about Room 305.

In the hallway, she heard laughter coming from the room even before she neared the open doorway. They were bonding, the two girls. Emerson McGarrity and Tara Locke. She knocked on the doorjamb, peering inside. The girls were sitting on the bed closest to the window, culling through a stack of record albums. They looked up at her and she knew immediately which one was Tara—the brown-eyed blonde—and which one was Emerson. Her hair was long, dark and curly. Noelle knew exactly how hard it would be to pull a comb through that hair.

“Hi.” She smiled. “I’m Noelle Downie, your Resident Assistant. I’m making the rounds to get to know everyone.”

The blonde hopped to her bare feet and held out a hand. “I’m Tara,” she said.

Noelle shook the girl’s hand, then turned her attention to Emerson, who had a stack of records in her lap and didn’t bother to get up. Noelle had to lean forward to shake her hand. “Emerson?” she asked.

“Right.” She had a nice smile, warm and encouraging, and Noelle had a hard time letting go of her hand.

“You want to sit?” Tara motioned to the desk chair and Noelle was surprised at her need to drop into it, her knees suddenly too soft to hold her upright.

“I could hear you two laughing like you’ve been friends for a long time,” she said. “Did you know each other before you got here?”

They laughed again and looked at each other. “It only feels that way,” Tara said. Of the two of them, she was clearly the more outgoing. You could see it in her bright eyes, hear it in the self-assured volume of her voice.

“We clicked right away,” Emerson said. “I mean, we talked on the phone once over the summer about what we were bringing and everything, but we didn’t know each other at all, really.”

“And then when we met yesterday it was like we’d known each other forever,” Tara said. “We stayed up all night talking.”

“That’s super,” Noelle said. “Doesn’t always work out that way.” Doesn’t always last, either, she thought. She hoped it did work out for these two. Already, she wanted everything good for Emerson. Her feelings scared her; they were so visceral, so deep. She had to watch what she said and did. She could lose herself too easily here in this room. She had to treat Emerson no differently than she did the other students.

She glanced at the dressers. Framed photographs stood on each of them. Testing her legs, she got to her feet and picked up one of a young man with dark hair so long it brushed his shoulders. He looked familiar. He had a symmetrically shaped face and that combination of blue eyes and black hair that was hard to forget. “Who’s this guy?” she looked from Emerson to Tara.

“Sam,” Tara said. “My boyfriend. He’s here. Prelaw.” She sounded proud of him. “He lives off campus.”

“Ah,” Noelle said. “I think I’ve seen him around. Will it be good to be closer to him?”

“Hell, yes.” Tara laughed as though it had been a stupid question and Noelle supposed it had been, but she was not thinking as clearly as she usually did.

“He cut his hair over the summer so he looks totally different now,” Tara said.

Noelle picked up the photograph from the second dresser. It was the one she was really after. The blueberries in her fruit salad. A family shot. Emerson with a man and woman. The woman’s hair was short, auburn, frizzy. She had a wide, wide smile and she looked young. Mid-to late thirties, maybe. Noelle looked at Emerson. “Your parents?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. No boyfriend, yet.” She laughed. “Gotta get me one of them.”