Chapter 18
SIMON, BLAISE, AND Salima went to Bordeaux to visit his uncle and cousins in July. They had a wonderful time and they stopped in Paris on the way back. Salima had never been there before, and they took her everywhere, and she loved it. They walked all over Paris, went to Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur, the Louvre, Versailles, ate lunch in bistros and walked through the Tuileries Gardens and Bois de Boulogne and went shopping. And Salima slept in her own room at the Ritz. They didn’t take Becky. It was a family trip, and she went home to New Hampshire for three weeks while they were away.
Blaise had told Salima about the baby in June, and she was wonderful about it and promised to help. She was thrilled when Simon came back. And just before they left for Europe, she got accepted to Juilliard. She and Simon both had new adventures to look forward to in September, and the baby right after that. The network was fine about the pregnancy, and wanted Blaise to take at least four weeks off after the birth, and she negotiated them down to three. She had already hired a baby nurse who was going to sleep in the room next to Becky’s, and she had offered to help with Salima too. But Salima didn’t need a lot of help, and she would be busy at school. And she and Simon argued about a guide dog on the plane on the way back. They were an even match. And he was with Blaise too. After the trip, he had promised to teach them both French, and teach Salima to cook. They each brought something to the table, their special talents and gifts.
August whizzed by, with a heat wave that made Blaise uncomfortable as she got bigger. She was determined to work as hard as ever and continued taping interviews. She even impressed Zack with her energy and determination, despite her pregnancy. She finally admitted to it on air during one of her morning segments, and the network was flooded with gifts for the baby, which really touched her.
Simon, Blaise, and Salima rented a house in the Hamptons and went out every weekend. And some weeks, Becky and Salima stayed there and had a ball. And Becky was off on Saturdays and Sundays, which gave her time to spend with a new boyfriend she had met while they were in Europe. He was a struggling artist and a very nice guy, and Salima liked him too.
Simon started his new job at the end of August, before Salima began at Juilliard. It was very exciting for him. The school was in the Bronx. The students were from age three to twenty-one, and Simon worked with the older ones, which was his strength, as he had demonstrated with Salima. The program was more extensive than what he had been able to do at Caldwell, and he showed Blaise and Salima around the second week he was there. He was ecstatic and he could hardly wait for the baby to come. His life was complete, with Salima and Blaise, their baby, and his new job.
The week after he started at the New York Institute for Special Education, Salima started at Juilliard. She had a wonderful adviser whose main job was to keep Salima from signing up for every class they offered. She signed up for a heavy course load, and Becky took her to school on the bus every day. And Salima used her white cane while she was there and didn’t care. All she could think of were the music classes she was taking, two of them with Lucianna, who was incredibly proud of her. She joined a church choir in Harlem for extra course credit, and she was so busy with classes and after-school activities that Simon and Blaise hardly saw her. And she had a thousand new things to tell them every night.
Blaise was still working at the network on her due date on the first of October, and she felt huge by then. The baby was a good size, and in the last days of her pregnancy, she looked like she was going to pop any minute.
Simon happened to be watching her morning segment before he left for school, on the baby’s scheduled due date. She was talking about a recent scandal in the Senate when he saw an odd expression cross her face. She maintained her concentration, but he had the sense that something was wrong, and called her immediately when she came off the air. She answered her cell phone as soon as she saw it was him.
“Are you okay?” he asked, feeling nervous, about to leave for school, but he wanted to be sure she was all right first. She had looked odd to him.
“I think so,” she said hesitantly. “My water broke while I was on the air. I was going to call the doctor in a minute. I’m glad you called.” And he was startled to realize she sounded scared. It was so unlike her that all he wanted to do was get to her and reassure her and take her in his arms.
“I’ll be right over,” he said immediately. He had already warned the school that they were expecting a baby any day, and they had been very nice about it.
“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Blaise said in a strained voice. “I don’t know what happened, but I’m having contractions every four minutes.” He tried not to panic when she said it, and made an effort to sound calmer than he felt, for her.
“That’s okay, sweetheart. Get Mark or Charlie to take you to the hospital with Tully. I’ll meet you there in ten minutes. Have Mark call the doctor. Right away!”
“Okay,” she said meekly. She was having trouble talking through a contraction, and Mark appeared as it was happening and was terrified at the look on her face as she handed her BlackBerry to him and Simon told him what to do.
“Call the doctor and bring her to the hospital immediately. She’s having the baby,” he told Mark with a calm he didn’t feel, as he ran out of the apartment, and Mark promised to get her to the hospital as fast as Tully could drive them there.
Everyone who saw her leave cheered as Mark and Charlie led her away, and Blaise waved and smiled wanly. She really had stayed until the last minute.
“Christ, were you planning to have it at your desk between meetings?” Charlie scolded her as they crossed the lobby and found Tully outside. But Blaise didn’t say a word. She was in too much pain. It had all happened so fast. And on his way to the hospital, Simon called Becky and told her to pick up Salima at Juilliard. She wanted to be there too, and after some hesitation, Blaise had agreed.
After that Simon got minute-by-minute reports from Mark in the car with her, while Tully drove through midtown morning traffic as fast as possible, praying he wouldn’t have to deliver the baby. Mark told Simon the doctor was on her way.
It took them twenty minutes to get to the hospital, and Simon was on the sidewalk waiting for them when Tully pulled up and Mark hopped out immediately, looking panicked.
“Get a doctor fast! She’s going to have it really soon!” Blaise could no longer walk or talk by then and looked relieved when Simon got in the car with her and gently helped her out. Mark had gotten a nurse with a wheelchair, who sized the situation up immediately and literally ran the wheelchair with Blaise in it into the building, saying only, “Let’s get you upstairs,” as Simon ran beside them and Blaise clutched his hand in a viselike grip.
“I love you,” she managed to say between contractions.
“I love you too,” Simon said, trying to reassure her. But everything was happening so fast it was hard to say anything. The doctor was waiting for them when the elevator opened at labor and delivery. She took one look at Blaise, and they took her straight to a birthing room, and Simon and a nurse had her clothes off in less than a minute. There was no time for drugs or an epidural, explanations, or anything except Simon telling her he loved her and Blaise moaning with the pain as they got her on the delivery table, and the doctor checked her with a look of satisfaction, and smiled at Simon and Blaise.
“I think we’re ready for a birthday party,” she said, and told Blaise to push as Simon watched in wonder and Blaise gave a terrifying scream, as their son’s head emerged from between her legs, and he looked at his parents with surprise. He was born with the next contraction, as Simon and Blaise cried and laughed and watched with amazement as the doctor lifted him onto her stomach, and the baby looked around as the doctor cut the cord. The baby was beautiful, looked like Simon, had Blaise’s red hair, and was totally alert. Less than an hour before, Blaise had been on the air. None of them had expected him to come so fast, and he weighed just under nine pounds. Salima arrived just minutes after he’d been born, and Blaise was holding him by then. A nurse led Salima to her mother, and she cried when she kissed her and touched the baby’s cheek.
“I came as fast as I could,” she said apologetically.
“If your mom had done this any faster, she’d have had him during a commercial on the air,” Simon said, still in awe of the miracle they had just seen. They took Blaise to a room a little while later, and the three of them spent the day together, taking turns holding the baby. And in between the baby nursed.
Becky came to take Salima home that evening, and Simon spent the night with Blaise, and in the morning they went home. They were a family and had welcomed Edmond Charles Ward into their midst. He was named after Simon’s uncle in Bordeaux.
The apartment was filled with flowers when they got home, and gifts continued to arrive all day. The network had sent her an antique bassinet filled with baby clothes and teddy bears. Harry had sent enormous flowers and balloons. The baby’s birth had been announced on the evening news. As a result, there were so many gifts and flowers in the apartment, they could hardly walk around. Teresa the housekeeper, Natalie the baby nurse, and Becky were in the kitchen, Salima was hanging out with Simon and her mother in the bedroom with the baby, and by dinnertime, Simon had realized the obvious.
“I think we may have to move,” he said to Blaise with a look of astonishment. They were exploding out of her pristine apartment, and she laughed.
“I thought we might.” She looked peaceful and ecstatic as the baby nursed, and Simon lay next to her to admire them both. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
Simon’s mother waited until the day after they got home to come and visit them from Boston. Simon’s father was too busy, but he promised he’d come to meet the baby soon. The minute Isabelle walked through the door, she commented that they were living like gypsies and she hoped they were planning to move.
“We just figured that out ourselves,” Simon said. The apartment was bursting at the seams. But his mother looked awestruck when she saw the baby, and smiled proudly at her son. She had been knitting tiny blue booties and caps for the last month and had written him a poem that had no point and made no sense, which she read them that afternoon.
She held the baby and he slept peacefully in her arms, and when she handed him back to Blaise, she spoke to Simon in a disapproving tone.
“I hope you’re planning to marry her now,” Isabelle said about Blaise, as though she weren’t in the room. She looked sleepy as she nursed.
“I thought you thought she was too old for me,” Simon teased his mother.
“You have a child now, Simon. You can’t just live together like artists or poets. She has a respectable job, and so do you.”
“Don’t be so bourgeois, Maman. What kind of bohemian are you?” he said, and laughed as she sat down on the bed next to Blaise, whom he loved with all his heart, even if she was not his wife. They hadn’t gotten married, and didn’t see why they should, despite what his mother thought. Or if they decided to, they would do it in their own time, for reasons that mattered to them.
“It’s a shame the baby has red hair,” Isabelle said wistfully as she gazed at him. “Let’s hope it turns dark.” Blaise laughed. The comment was so like her.
“We can always dye it,” Blaise suggested.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Isabelle said in a worried tone.
The baby nurse and Teresa were trying to get organized. Becky was helping wherever possible. And Salima picked the baby up as soon as Isabelle set him down. It was easy to tell that he was always going to be in someone’s hands. He had doting parents and a loving sister, and a grandmother who loved him despite the color of his hair. Isabelle held him in her arms again before she left the next day.
“At least his hair is not quite as red as yours,” she said to Blaise reassuringly, looking at her daughter-in-law affectionately. Isabelle was thrilled with her new grandson. And she reminded them again to get married, as though they might forget. Blaise and Simon didn’t share her concern. “L’amour n’a pas d’âge,” she said, referring to Simon and Blaise. Love has no age. And she looked pensive for a moment as she said goodbye to Blaise.
“Do you realize that when Simon is fifty-five, you’ll be seventy years old?” Isabelle said to her. Blaise had just turned forty-eight and Simon thirty-three that summer. And the fact that they were together and had Edmond was miracle enough for Blaise. They didn’t care about the math.
“We can all count, Mother,” Simon said with a look of exasperation as he escorted his mother out. And Salima bent over the baby to stroke his cheek again. She loved holding him and feeling his face next to hers.
“And when you’re eighty-five, I’ll be a hundred,” Blaise whispered to Simon with a grin, when he came back into the room and she was nursing his son. Edmond looked drunk with delight and his father grinned.
“That sounds good to me,” he said, smiling at her. They had each found the person that they had always wanted and needed. It had just come in a different package than they’d expected. They had been wise enough to see it, and brave enough to grab it, and know it was a gift. The numbers were of no importance. Only the people and the love they shared.
Simon had given her everything she’d ever wanted and longed for in her life. And Blaise was the woman he’d been looking for and hadn’t known it till he saw her. They completed each other, and each was better and had a fuller life because of the other. And with all the humanity that made it special and unique, it wasn’t perfect, and they didn’t need it to be. But it was very, very close to perfect. It was exactly the life they wanted it to be.