The Name in the Thursday Paper
Her chin shook, once, and she steadied it.
“I’d like Wyatt to have it,” she said. “When he’s grown. If you’ll let him. It can wait in your dresser. I just want somebody to tell him whose it was.”
The church was so quiet I could hear the radiators.
I looked at Josh. His eyes were wet and he was not hiding it. He nodded at me, just barely.
I took the watch from her hand. It was warm from how long she had been holding it. I put it in the pocket of my cardigan and kept my hand on it.
“We will tell him,” I said. “Every time he asks.”
Then I did something I had not planned. I took Wyatt out of Josh’s arms, in all that long white lace, and I held him out to her.
“Sharon,” I said, “will you hold him at the font?”
She looked at me like she had not heard right. Then she looked at Pastor Lund, who was smiling the way he smiles at weddings, and then back at me.
“Me?”
“You,” I said. “His grandma.”
She took him. She held him low and sure, his head in the crook of her elbow, the gown spilling over her arm almost to her knees. Grandma Ruth’s lace lay across Sharon’s navy sleeve.
Pastor Lund dipped his hand in the bowl.
“Wyatt James,” he said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Three times, the water ran over that little head. Wyatt squalled like a calf. Sharon laughed, a small wet surprised laugh, and bounced him, and said, “Oh, I know, I know, Wyatt, I know,” and the whole church let out its breath at once.
When I sat back down in the fourth pew, Grandma Ruth reached over and squeezed my knee, hard, the way she used to when I was little and had done my piece at the Christmas program without forgetting it.
During the prayers, Pastor Lund read the list. When he got to us, he read it slowly.
“For Wyatt James Brandt, baptized today,” he said, “and for his family. And we give thanks for the life of Harold Brandt, whose watch is going to wait for him.”
Behind me I heard somebody blow their nose. I think it was Bev Hartley. I think it was half the church.