The others, laughing, pried into Mark’s car and drove away from the two absorbed autophiles-in-embryo.
The car pulled over onto a pine flat halfway back from town and the triumphal mailing of the manuscript. This was the parting place. Davy would follow later with the pickup.
“It’s over,” said Meris, her shoulders sagging a little as she put Lala’s small bundle of belongings into Valancy’s hands.
“All over.” Her voice was desolate.
“Only this little episode,” comforted Valancy. “It’s really only begun.” She put Lala into Meris’s arms. “Tell her good-by, Lala.”
Lala hugged Meris stranglingly tight saying, “Love you, Meris!”
“Love you, Lala!” Meris’s voice was shaken with laughter and sorrow.
“It’s just that she filled up the empty places so wonderfully well,” she explained to Valancy.
“Yes,” said Valancy softly, her eyes tender and compassionate. “But, you know,” she went on. “You are pregnant again!”
Before Meris could produce an intelligible thought, good-bys were finished and the whole group was losing itself in the tangle of creek-side vegetation. Lala’s vigorous waving of Deeko was the last sign of them before the leaves closed behind them.
Meris and Mark stood there, Meris’s head pressed to Mark’s shoulder, both too drained for any emotion. Then Meris stirred and moved toward the car, her eyes suddenly shining. “I don’t think I can wait,” she said, “I don’t think-“
“Wait for what?” asked Mark, following her.
“To tell Dr. Hilf-” She covered her mouth, dismayed.
“Oh, Mark! We never did find out that doctor’s name!”
“Not that Hilf is drooling to know,” said Mark, starting the car, “but next time—”
“Oh, yes,” Meris sat back, her mouth curving happily, “next time, next time!”
The next time wasn’t so long by the calendar, but measured by the anticipation and the marking time, it seemed an endless eternity. Then one night Meris, looking down into the warm, moistly fragrant blanket-bundle in the crook of her elbow, felt time snap back into focus. It snapped back so completely and satisfyingly that the long, empty time of grief dwindled to a memory-ache tucked back in the fading past.
“And the next one,” she said drowsily to Mark, “will be a brother for her.”
The nurse laughed. “Most new mothers feel, at this point, that they are through with childbearing. But I guess they soon forget because we certainly get a lot of repeaters!”
The Saturday before the baby’s christening, Meris felt a stir of pleasure as she waited for her guests to arrive. So much of magic was interwoven with her encounters with them, the magic of being freed from grief, of bringing forth a new life, and the magic of the final successful production of Mark’s book. She was wondering, with a pleasurable apprehension, what means of transportation the guests would use, treetop high, one wheel spinning lazily! when a clanging clatter drew her to the front window.
There in all its glory, shining with love, new paint, and dignity, sailed the Overland that had been moldering behind Tad’s barn. Flushed with excitement and pride, Tad, with an equally proud Johannan seated beside him, steered the vehicle ponderously over to the curb. There it hiccoughed, jumped, and expired with a shudder.
In the split second of silence after the noise cut off, there was a clinking rattle and a nut fell down from somewhere underneath and rolled out into the street.
There was a shout of relieved and amused laughter and the car erupted people apparently through and over every door. Meris shrank back a little, still tender in her social contact area. Then calling, “Mark, they’re here,” she opened the door to the babble of happy voices.
All the voices turned out to be female-type voices and she looked around and asked, “But where-?”
“The others?” Karen asked. “Behold!” And she gestured toward the old car where the only signs of life were three sets of feet protruding from under it, with a patient Jemmy leaning on a brightly black fender above them. “May I present, the feet, Tad, Davy, and Johannan?” Karen laughed.
“Johannan is worse than either of the boys. You see, he’d never ever seen a car before he rode in yours!”
Finally everyone was met and greeted and all the faces swam up to familiarity again out of the remoteness of the time Before the Baby.
Lala-forever Lala in spite of translations!-peered at the bundle on Valancy’s lap. “It’s little,” she said.
Meris was startled. Valancy smiled at her. “Did you expect her to un-English forever?” she teased. “Yes, Lala, it’s a girl baby, very new and very little.”
“I’m not little,” said Lala, straightening from where she leaned against Meris and tightening to attention, her tummy rounding out in her effort to assume proportions. “I’m big!” She moved closer to Meris. “I had a birthday.”
“Oh, how nice!” said Meris.
“We don’t know what year to put on it, though,” said Lala solemnly. “I want to put six, but they want to put five.”
“Oh, six, of course!” exclaimed Meris.
Lala launched herself onto Meris and hugged her hair all askew. “Love you, Meris!” she cried. “Six, of course!”
“There has been a little discussion about the matter,” said Valancy. “The time element differs between here and the New Home. And since she is precocious-“
“The New Home,” said Meris thoughtfully. “The New Home. You know, I suspended all my disbelief right at the beginning of this Lala business, but now I feel questions bubbling and frothing-“
“I thought I saw question marks arising in both your eyes,” laughed Valancy. “After church tomorrow, after this cherub receives her name before God and the congregation, we’ll tackle a few of those questions. But now-” she hugged the wide-eyed, moist-mouthed child gently “-now this is the center of our interest.”
The warm Sunday afternoon was slipping into evening. Davy, Tad, and Johannan were-again-three pairs of feet protruding from under the Overland. The three had managed to nurse it along all the way to the University City, but now it stubbornly sat in the driveway and merely rocked, voiceless, no matter how long they cranked it.
The three of them had been having the time of their lives.
They had visited the Group’s auto boneyard up-canyon and then, through avid reading of everything relevant that they could put their hands on, had slowly and bedazzledly come to a realization of what a wealth of material they had to work with.
Tad, after a few severe jolts from working with members of The People, such as seeing cars and parts thereof clattering massively unsupported through the air and watching Johannan weld a rip in a fender by tracing it with a fingertip, then concentrating on the task, had managed to compartmentalize the whole car business and shut it off securely from any need to make the methods of The People square with Outsiders’ methods. And his college fund was budding beautifully.
So there the three of them were under the Overland that was the current enthusiasm, ostensibly to diagnose the trouble, but also to delight in breathing deeply of sun-warmed metal and to taste the oily fragrance of cup grease and dust.
Mark and Jemmy were perched on the patio wall, immersed in some point from Mark’s book. Lala was wrapped up in the wonder of Alicia’s tiny, flailing fist, that if intercepted, would curl so tightly around a finger or thumb.
Meris smiled at Valancy and shifted the burden of ‘Licia to her other arm. “I think I’d better park this bundle some where. She’s gained ten pounds in the last five minutes so I think that a nap is indicated.” With the help of Valancy, Karen, and Bethie, Meris gathered up various odds and ends of equipment and carried the already sleeping ‘Licia into the house.
Later, in the patio, the women gathered again, Lala a warm weight in Valancy’s lap.