The Glass I Stood At for My Son

The Glass

I had my whole hand flat on that window like I could push through it.

The glass was cold enough that my palm fogged a little ring around itself. On the other side of it, in a plastic bassinet with a blue card clipped to the end, was a baby I was almost sure was mine.

I could not get close enough to read the card. A woman in a long tan cardigan stood between me and the bassinet with her back to the hallway, and I knew that cardigan.

I had seen it across a thousand kitchen tables. It was Lynette.

She did not turn around. She knew I was there. A person always knows when somebody is standing eight feet behind them with a hand on the glass.

Lynette had always known exactly where I was in any room. That was how she kept herself between me and her daughter.

I was still in my work coat. I had come straight off the truck.

There was a smear of grime on the cuff from the propane rig, and the collar still smelled like the cold. Under those hospital lights I looked like exactly what she told everyone I was.

A rough kid off a delivery route who had gotten her Brianna in trouble and would be gone by spring.

The maternity hall was quiet the way hospitals get at night. A cart wheel squeaked somewhere down by the linen closet.

A phone rang twice at the desk and stopped. Behind me there was a row of waiting-room chairs the color of old mustard.

I had sat in one of them for most of two hours before I got up and walked to the glass. Sitting had started to feel like agreeing with her.

My son was being born down that hall, or had just been born, and I was out here in a coat that smelled like propane. I did not have a name for how wrong that was.

I only had my hand on the window, and I kept it there.