An Innocent, a Broad by Ann Leary

Author:Ann Leary [Leary, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Topic, Marriage & Family, Humor, Women
ISBN: 9780062032379
Google: 3uF3M35ePekC
Amazon: B000GG4FJK
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2005-04-12T04:00:00+00:00

VERY EARLY ONE morning, when Jack was just a couple of weeks old, I arrived in the unit to find that Stephen had gone home and a new baby, Alexander, had moved in next to Jack. Seated beside his isolette was a pretty young woman with long auburn hair. She was reed thin and wore trendy low-slung jeans and a tight-fitting top. We said hello and introduced ourselves—her name was Faith—and when I admired her handsome, full-term baby, she informed me that she had just delivered him earlier that morning. I was taken aback by this information. This woman’s baby weighed over eight pounds, but to look at her, you would never have known she’d been pregnant. Jack, on the other hand, weighed two and a half pounds, but looking at my body, you might suspect that he had a morbidly obese twin awaiting a later delivery date.

Faith’s intense beauty and mysterious ways were a source of constant fascination for me. She was as lean as a greyhound, but she swilled Coke and ate chocolate biscuits at six-thirty in the morning. Her handsome husband, who arrived later with their toddler, shared her casual demeanor and her affinity for candy and soft drinks. Faith spoke to her little boy, Max, in a calm, soothing manner. Max had a gorgeous round, pale face surrounded by light brown curls, and he would say things like, “May I have a biccy, Mummy?” or “May I give Alexander a cuddle now?” This child didn’t whine but spoke in such a sweet, plaintive voice that sometimes I’d blurt out, “Of course you can!” before his mother had a chance to answer.

Faith and I became friends, and we spent many hours admiring our babies and expressing milk together. I liked Faith, despite the fact that in her delicate presence I felt like a large, lumbering hillbilly. Faith’s movements were graceful and catlike. Walking beside her one day, I remembered that when I was a child, kids used to tease me about my walk, which is more of a saunter, really, as my shoulders and head are overly involved in each stride. Faith met each day with a serene, almost otherworldly calm, which I attributed to the Buddhism she told me that she and her husband practiced. Panicked mania was my overriding emotional condition, and I wanted what Faith had. Sometimes, while seated in the parents’ lounge, Faith would seem to be in a meditative state, and I would close my eyes as well and try to visualize myself walking along a warm, tropical beach. Unfortunately, I could manage only a couple of steps before my psyche would be catapulted back to cold, scary London, where my very ill baby was hospitalized.

One thing that worried me about Faith was that she seemed unclear about what exactly was wrong with her baby. She would say things like, “I thought they were going to let me bring him home today, but now they want to observe him for another two days.

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