The Midwife’s Playlist: A Now Entering Hillford Novel Read online

  “No, brother.”

  “You riding with?”

  I nod and follow the stretcher. My body moves on its own. I don’t know if it’s excitement or shock, or where either is coming from—the birth, seeing Easton, or both.

  “Ford?” Caroline calls.

  “Right behind you. I won’t go anywhere, don’t worry.”

  “Is Easton coming too?”

  “Uh...I don’t think so. I mean, now that the storm’s over—”

  “Can you ask her, please?” The worst of it all may be over, but Caroline’s voice chokes up more than when she was in labor, and I know I can’t possibly say no.

  The worst of it all. Right.

  This is far from the worst of it. Having that kid was the easy part. Caroline’s got eighteen years of Worse ahead of her. Alone.

  “I’ll ask,” I promise, and turn just in time to catch Easton rushing through the mist to her car.

  Other than the ankle-deep strip of water I step in, you’d have no idea we were just in the middle of a flash flood warning. Fifteen minutes ago, it looked like we were all stuck in this ferry terminal for the night, every road to Hillford flooded or turned to mud.

  Now it’s a mild night, the smell of rain everywhere, stars breaking through the clouds. It’s got to be some kind of sign. Maybe things won’t stay as bad as they seem. For Caroline, or for me.

  “Easton,” I shout.

  She pauses, hand on the door handle, but doesn’t turn when I skid to a stop behind her.

  “Hey, I was wondering if you—”

  I guess, for me, things won’t stay as bad as they seem. If history has taught me anything, it’s that they’re always bound to get much, much worse.

  Because as soon as I speak, Easton spins on her heel, stares me dead in the eye, and slaps me.

  Two

  The first time I saw him, I hated that boy.

  “Don’t say ‘hate,’ Easton.” My mother held out her hand; I passed her a bobby pin, stifling my complaint as it stabbed into my skull. “What’s the Bible say about hate?”

  “He flipped the bird at me! I wasn’t even doing anything, Mama. I was just reading on the tire.”

  “I’m sure you misunderstood something, honey. Hold still, I’m almost finished.”

  I rolled my eyes. There was no “misunderstanding” what I saw. The new neighbors bounced into the driveway in their truck with a hauling trailer early this morning, and a boy my age stood up in the bed. I spun my tire swing around to see him better.

  He had on a jean jacket without a shirt, and lines on his face from the pleating of the truck bed, like he’d been sleeping back there. I watched him look around the neighborhood with one foot on the tire well, hand braced on his knee. A faint look of disgust painted his face.

  Then he took a breath, hocked back, and spit a giant loogie right on our fence.

  “Hey! Don’t do that, my daddy just painted that!” I scrambled my way out of the swing, walking it back on my tiptoes until it was angled enough to free me.

  When it swung back, though, I hadn’t gotten out of the way; it hit me on my butt and knocked me right in the dirt.

  The boy was smiling when I looked up. Not a laugh, and not even that big of a smile. Just a tiny, tilted grin.

  “Ought to spit on you,” he drawled. He jerked his head at the dust across my knees and stomach, the mud that painted my palms. “You need a good bath.”

  “Shut up.” I stooped to gather my book: Frindle, my favorite. I practically had it memorized. While I shook the dirt from the pages, I added, “Least I have clothes. Where’s your shirt? You think you’re too cool to wear one?”

  The boy cocked that smile again and gave me the finger as he turned away, busying himself with some tie-downs like I wasn’t worth one more second of his time.

  Uh-oh: I felt it bubbling up, that sass my mother always warned me to keep in check.

  “Or you just too poor?”

  It was mean. Horrible. I would feel bad about that joke for years—wish over and over, in the gray cicada rattles of every summer to follow, that I could take it back.

  But in that moment, it felt so good to jab this boy the way I did. And just for fun, I nodded at the trash bags of stuff his father was lugging into the house. I didn’t have to say it for him to know what I meant: Can’t even afford boxes.

  He straightened his body, looking more like a small man than a boy, and stared at me. It was this face that would haunt me most: this sad kind of hold in his eyes that said, Fine, treat me like dirt. Everyone else does.

  I didn’t know that then, of course. It would be years before I learned to find the hurt in somebody’s eyes like that.

  “He’s a jerk,” I told my mother now, as we crossed the little strip between our house and the neighbors’. It was the dumbest building idea I’d ever seen: six acres, divided down the middle by two sisters decades ago, with a pointless fence between their side-by-side homes. They’d wanted their own privacy and space…just not much of it.

  Of course, it wasn’t six acres anymore. My dad sold one as soon as he bought the place, before I was born, and the property next to us had been parceled out in half-acres long before that.

  It still looked odd, though: all the other houses on our road had big, open spaces between them, while ours sat close enough to whisper.

  “I miss the Malleys,” I whined, while my father held the gate for us.

  “I do too,” my mother said quietly, “but they’re happy in Massachusetts, and we’re happy to have new neighbors. Understand?”

  I vowed to never be happy about these neighbors. Not as long as that boy had anything to do with it.

  That proved impossible fast, because Mrs. McLean was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. In real life, in magazines, in movies: she beat them all. She had honey-colored curls and a bright red bandana, steely blue eyes that sparkled when she laughed, and a beauty mark above her mouth that looked like God Himself drew it on.

  But her voice…that was the most beautiful thing about her.

  Most voices looked the same to me. Men’s tended to be a burnt yellow color, like wet hay. Women’s voices were coffee with a lot of milk. Only the vaguest wash of unique color—purple, magenta, blue—could distinguish one person from another. And the ability was fading, every year; I now had to concentrate to pick out the bending shapes and stained-glass colors that sounds used to detonate in front of my eyes like flash bombs.

  All appeared like undulating ribbons. If the person was shouting, the ribbon looked rough, like flattened clothesline rope. Whispers produced gossamer threads, as though someone compressed a spider’s web into a strip. Normal speaking voices looked like...well, normal ribbon. Solid and a little satiny.

  The only time I could really see the vibrancy in a person’s voice—that vague color ripening to something bold and beautiful—was when they sang.

  My mom had a baby blue voice that, for most of my life, was my favorite color. Dad: deep orange. Grandma: a deeper blue than my mother’s, with a rippled texture on top.

  I’d grown to prefer music to conversation early in life, because of it. Music was purer. Brighter.

  But that was the most wonderful thing about Mrs. McLean: when she spoke, I saw the ribbon of her voice in rich, royal purple, like Patsy Cline when she sang. And here she was, just speaking, bringing me this color. I prayed I’d get to hear her sing someday, because I could only imagine how pretty that sound would look.

  “Well, aren’t you a sweetheart!” she gushed, when I handed her the windflowers Mom made me pick. Now I was glad she’d made me, and grateful she didn’t tell Mrs. McLean it wasn’t my idea. “Reese, Ford, come down and say hello!”

  We heard a man’s footsteps, then two reluctant plunks and the sound of feet dragging from upstairs.

  “Reese, this is Jason and April Lawrence—they live next door. Jason, April: this is my husband, Reese.” Mrs. McLean turned her smile on me again, and I was so happy I didn’t even remembe
r to scowl when the boy appeared on the stairs, just behind his dad. “And this is their daughter, Easton. That’s Ford, pretending he’s shy back there.”

  The adults shook hands and chatted while the boy picked some dirt under his nails and wilted against the banister, sighing. Like he was too good for me, this house, or all of Hillford. Jerk.

  “Ford, honey, we’re going to show the Lawrences the backyard—why don’t you and Easton go explore the attic? The landlord said there’s toys up there you can have, you know.”

  Ford scowled at her, and I hated him even more. How could you be anything but happy with someone like her for your mother? She even turned on a radio as she breezed out the back door, spinning the volume dial way up, like she wanted the whole neighborhood to hear. It was how I liked my music, too: so loud, you drowned inside it.

  “Attic’s this way,” he muttered, and dragged himself back up the stairs so slowly, I had to take them one at a time, both feet, to keep from stepping on his heels.

  Their home’s layout was identical to ours, complete with a stairwell to the attic instead of a ladder. The only difference was that ours had a light; the McLeans’ did not.

  “Will you quit walking so close?” he hissed. “You’re going to make me trip.”

  “It’s dark.”

  “So? Baby.”

  “It’s not being a baby to be scared of rats,” I countered, but he just sighed, shook his head, and kept climbing.

  The attic itself had better lighting, the windows at either end opened to let in the breeze. Ford lay down on a broken patio chair and shut his eyes, half his butt touching the floor through the ripped canvas, so I decided to explore on my own.

  There were toys: an entire fruit crate of old tin ones. I dug through the box, but couldn’t find a key to fit them.

  “They’re probably rusted on the inside.” Ford watched me line up the toys on the windowsill. When the crate was empty, I flipped it upside-down and shook it. No key.

  “I think they’ll work. I just need to wind them up.” I rattled another crate, set precariously on top of some Rubbermaid containers. “Do you think there’s a key in this box?”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t care. As soon as your family leaves, I’m going back to my room.”

  The train creaked in my palm as I picked it up, readying to toss it back in its crate. If he didn’t care about them, why should I?

  Even so, it felt wrong to be rough with them; they seemed too friendly.

  Not that I dared say this to Ford. Seeing sounds as colors was bad enough, but inanimate objects having personalities? The circus would snatch me up in a heartbeat.

  “What grade are you going into, in September?” I asked quietly, pretending I couldn’t care less while I polished a robot and set it next to a soldier. Downstairs, the radio started playing Elvis. It was a song I didn’t know, but it had the deep maroon wash I liked most about his music.

  “Third.”

  “Me too.” I paused. “Maybe we’ll have class together.”

  “Hope not.”

  There it was again, that sass bubbling up. Good thing my mother was outside, busy advising Mrs. McLean on the vegetable garden the Malley family left behind.

  “I hope not, too. I would hate having class with an asshole like you.”

  I set the crate of toys on the floor (not even my fury could make me slam it) and strode to the stairs. Inside, my blood rushed with anger at Ford, and excitement over cursing at someone.

  “Hey,” he said, and this funny little jump happened inside my heart, like an extra beat in the rhythm.

  When I turned, he was lacing his boots, face neutral. My insult hadn’t affected him at all, and the relief almost outweighed the disappointment.

  “I met this kid at a diner, on our way here, who told me you have a thing.”

  “A thing?” I repeated, disgusted. We were at that age when “thing” still meant “penis,” so I automatically tugged the hem of my sundress lower.

  Ford pulled a face and explained, “A thing with colors.”

  “Oh.” My grip on the dress relaxed. “What kid? Hudson Barringer?” The Barringer family owned Spoonbread, the only diner on the road from Filigree to Hillford. He sat behind me in class and frequently brushed his eraser shavings into my hair. I never could tell if he did it on purpose or not.

  “Didn’t get his name. But he said you told your music teacher her voice was blue.” From behind the hair that fell over his forehead, Ford studied me, like I was suddenly interesting. “Can you really see that? What color sounds are?”

  The attic dust caked my throat. I nodded. “It’s called synesthesia. Mine’s with sound, but some people have it with letters and stuff. And some people don’t see colors and shapes. They taste things, instead.”

  Ford nodded to himself and resumed lacing his boot. Strangely, he didn’t seem overly fascinated by my abilities, like most people—but he also wasn’t treating me like some sideshow act, either, like most of my classmates. At age six, just two days after my diagnosis from a doctor in the city, I’d been interviewed by The Hillford Times. After that, everyone in town knew.

  “What color is my voice?”

  This was not, by far, the first time I’d gotten this question. Adult or child, mocking or interested, it didn’t matter: everyone always wanted to know their color.

  For their sake, I embellished what I saw. I’d learned the hard way “pale yellow” or “light brown” were unexciting, so instead I gave them whatever faint wash of color I could see overtop.

  But Ford’s voice, like his mother’s, didn’t have a wash to cover the mundane or downright ugly. His was bright blue-green, somewhere between mint and teal depending on his tone. I’d noticed it as soon as we were in the darkness of the attic stairwell.

  He didn’t deserve such a beautiful color.

  “Brown,” I spat at him. “Like shit.”

  His face darkened. Finally, I’d gotten revenge. I flipped my hair off my shoulder and started downstairs.

  My confidence unraveled, caught on the nail that was Ford’s tight, muttering laugh, as I reached the halfway point to freedom.

  I paused. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. I was just remembering when the tire swing knocked you on your face, that’s all.”

  I was convinced there was actual fire in my gut, and every word he said was a splash of gasoline.

  “I hate you,” I declared, but never once looked back. I made sure my footsteps hit those stairs in an even, calm metronome, all the way to the bottom.

  For years, that’s how Ford and I would operate: a bedrock of glares and sighs, the occasional snide remark or insult.

  But more than anything, we were silent. In church. Neighborhood potlucks. Movie nights with our parents at the Hillford Drive-In. Sometimes I caught myself forgetting what he even sounded like.

  If only it would stay that simple.

  Three

  My palm on Ford’s face makes the best sound I’ve heard in years.

  Okay: that’s not true. The best sound is the squall after silence, when a baby’s brought into this world and you’re all waiting for it—the sign things are all right. Their first little war cry.

  Next best is music. When you sync a song to your mood and everything about it, from the drumbeat to the lyrics, to a pealing guitar or bending melody, settles right in your soul...you don’t need anything else.

  I also like dress shoes walking across wood floors, and rain on a tin roof, like the carport at my grandma’s old house where I used to sit on an overturned bucket and watch the storm crawl closer.

  So, no, slapping Ford isn’t the best sound. But it is satisfying, and the sting that shoots through my wrist afterwards is pretty damn satisfying, too.

  He steps back and wets his lips. I expect him to cover his face, but he doesn’t—just stands there and lets the spot on his jaw redden, like he knew it was going to happen.

  “I was wondering,” he says, slower, tenser,
“if you would follow us to the hospital. My sister wants you to be there.”

  My anger stutters, but I don’t dare let it go. “Yeah, right.”

  I grab my door handle. Ford grabs my wrist.

  When I look at him (more specifically, this absurdly bold vice he’s put on me like a handcuff), he lets go, hands up in surrender.

  “Trust me,” he laughs airily, “I would never approach you if she hadn’t asked me. Not in a million years.”

  I turn. He relaxes.

  “Where are they taking her?” I ask. “Memorial?”

  He hesitates, like he thinks I’m testing him. Maybe I am. He knows I hate that hospital.

  At least, he should know.

  “Yes,” he says quietly. “Memorial.”

  I nod and climb into my car. In my periphery, I see him mouth, “Wow,” to himself, wide-eyed, before sprinting to the ambulance.

  Wow. Like he has anything to be surprised about. The only shocking development of the night is that I’m actually following him somewhere. My instincts are a busted tornado siren, wailing at me to gun it in the opposite direction.

  You’re just checking on Caroline, I remind myself. She’s nervous, jittery from the birth: a few kind words and peek at her baby will be more than enough. Then I can leave Memorial and never come back. Never have to look at Ford again.

  My Rainy Day playlist is still going: Conor Oberst, some Dallas Green, Joshua Radin. It feels wrong now, clunky and mismatched, either because the rain has stopped, or because my mood has completely flatlined.

  I punch the Power button to the radio. Better to drive in excruciating silence than let Ford ruin any more songs for me.

  Memorial Hospital rises out of the horizon like a pop-up book. The lights of the new heart health wing seem to wink as the ambulance winds past it to the front entrance. I park while they unload Caroline and the baby.

  The maternity ward is slow tonight, the norm. Most people have their babies in the city. New equipment, bigger rooms, and more staff makes the lengthy drive worth it.

  It’s not like Memorial is a ghost town, though: after nodding hello to some nurses I recognize, I look through the security glass of the nursery and find every isolette occupied. Three are triplets, tiny celebrities in a tiny town.