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sxdoukou — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:18:50 +0200

Love really is blind, at least when it comes to looking at others, US researchers reported.
　　College studentsed hardy women who reported they were in love were less likely to take careful notice of other attractive men or women, the team at the University of California Los Angeles and dating Web site eHarmony found.
　　"Feeling love for your romantic partner appears to make everybody else less attractive, and the emotion appears to enable you to push thoughts of that tempting other out of your mind," said Gian Gonzaga of eHarmony, whose study is published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
　　"It's almost like love puts blinders on people," added Martie Haselton, an associate professor of psychology and communication studies at UCLA.
　　Gonzaga and Haselton asked 120 heterosexual undergraduates in committed relationships to examine photographs of attractiveTiffany Key Ring members of the opposite sex from an eHarmony Web site.
　　The volunteers were asked to choose the most attractive photos, and write an essay either about their current romantic partner, or the subject of their choice.
　　While writing, the students were asked to forget the "hotties" from the Web site, but told to put a check in the margins if they did happen to think of the attractive photos.
　　The volunteers who wrote about their partners were six times less likely to admit to thinking of the attractive others than volunteers who wrote about random subjects.
　　And later asked to recall the cuties in the pictures, the students who wrote about their lovers remembered fewer details about the physical appearance of the attractive strangers.
　　"These people christian louboutinscould remember the color of a shirt or whether the photo was taken in New York, but they didn't remember anything tempting about the person," Gonzaga said.
　　"It's not like their overall memory was impaired; it's as if they had selectively screened out things that would make them think about the how attractive the alternative was."

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sxdoukou — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:27:50 +0200

Caroline waited, drinking coffee, until she heard the door slam downstairs and Lucy's car roar into life. Quickly, then, she picked Phoebe up and stood ray ban aviatorfor a moment in the doorway of the apart¬ment where she had spent so many hopeful years, years that seemed as ephemeral now as if they had never happened. Then she shut the door firmly and went down the stairs.
She put Phoebe in her box on the backseat and drove into town, passing the clinic with its turquoise walls and orange roof, passing the bank and dry cleaners and her favorite gas station. When she reached the church she parked on the street and left Phoebe asleep in the car. The group gathered in the courtyard was larger than sheM expected, and she paused at its outside edge, close enough to see the back of David Henry's neck, flushed pink from the cold, and Norah Henry's blond hair swept up in a formal twist. No one no¬ticed Caroline. Her heels sank into the mud at the edge of the side¬walk. She eased her weight to her toes, remembering the stale smells of the institution Dr. Henry had sent her to last week. Re¬membering the woman in her slip, her dark hair falling to the floor.
Words drifted on the still morning air.
February ig6^
ORAH STOOD,Tiffany Bangle BAREFOOT AND PRECARIOUSLY BALANCED,
: on a stool in the dining room, fastening pink streamers to the brass chandelier. Chains of paper hearts, pink and magenta, floated down over the table, trailing across her wedding china, the dark red roses and gilded rims, the lace tablecloth, the linen napkins. As she worked the furnace hummed and.strands of crepe paper wafted up, brushing against her skirt, then falling softly against the floor again, rustling.
Paul, eleven months old, sat in the corner beside an old grape basket full of wooden blocks. He had just learned to walk, and all afternoon he'd amused himself by stomping through this, their new house, in his first pair of shoes. Every room was an adventure. He had dropped nails down the registers, delighting in the echoes they made. He'd dragged a sack of joint compound through the kitchen, leaving a narrow white trail in his wake. Now, wide-eyed, he watched the streamers, as beautiful and elusive as butterflies, then pulled himself up on a chair and staggered in pursuit. He caught one pink strand and yanked, swaying the chandelier. Then he lost his balance and sat down hard. Astonished, he began to cry.
"Oh, sweetie, " Norah said, climbing down to pick him up.
"There, there," she Tiffany Atlasmurmured, running her hand over his soft dark hair.
Outside, headlights flashed and disappeared and a car door slammed. At the same time, the phone began to ring. Norah carried Paul into the kitchen and picked up the receiver just as someone knocked on the door.
"Hello?" She pressed her lips to Paul's forehead, damp and soft, straining to see whose car was in the driveway. Bree wasn't due for an hour. "Sweet baby," she whispered. And then into the phone she said again, "Hello?"

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sxdoukou — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:43:26 +0200

Caroline waited, drinking coffee, until she heard the door slam downstairs and Lucy's car roar into life. Quickly, then, she picked Phoebe up and stood ed hardy online for a moment in the doorway of the apart¬ment where she had spent so many hopeful years, years that seemed as ephemeral now as if they had never happened. Then she shut the door firmly and went down the stairs.
She put Phoebe in her box on the backseat and drove into town, passing the clinic with its turquoise walls and orange roof, passing the bank and dry cleaners and her favorite gas station. When she reached the church she parked on the street and left Phoebe asleep in the car. The group gathered in the courtyard was larger than sheM expected, and she paused at its outside edge, close enough to see the back of David Henry's neck, flushed pink from the cold, and Norah Henry's blond hair swept up in a formal twist. No one no¬ticed Caroline. Her heels sank into the mud at the edge of the side¬walk. She eased her weight to her toes,Tiffany Necklaces remembering the stale smells of the institution Dr. Henry had sent her to last week. Re¬membering the woman in her slip, her dark hair falling to the floor.
Words drifted on the still morning air.
February ig6^
ORAH STOOD, BAREFOOT AND PRECARIOUSLY BALANCED,
: on a stool in the dining room, fastening pink streamers to the brass chandelier. Chains of paper hearts, pink and magenta, floated down over the table, trailing across her wedding china, the dark red roses and gilded rims, the lace tablecloth, the linen napkins. As she worked the furnace hummed and.strands of crepe paper wafted up, brushing against her skirt, then falling softly against the floor again, rustling.
Paul, eleven months old, sat in the corner beside an old grape basket full of wooden blocks. He had just learned to walk, and all afternoon he'dTiffany Paloma Picasso amused himself by stomping through this, their new house, in his first pair of shoes. Every room was an adventure. He had dropped nails down the registers, delighting in the echoes they made. He'd dragged a sack of joint compound through the kitchen, leaving a narrow white trail in his wake. Now, wide-eyed, he watched the streamers, as beautiful and elusive as butterflies, then pulled himself up on a chair and staggered in pursuit. He caught one pink strand and yanked, swaying the chandelier. Then he lost his balance and sat down hard. Astonished, he began to cry.
"Oh, sweetie, " Norah said, climbing down to pick him up.
"There, there," she murmured, running her hand over his soft dark hair.
Outside, headlights flashed and disappeared and a car door slammed. At the christian louboutinsame time, the phone began to ring. Norah carried Paul into the kitchen and picked up the receiver just as someone knocked on the door.
"Hello?" She pressed her lips to Paul's forehead, damp and soft, straining to see whose car was in the driveway. Bree wasn't due for an hour. "Sweet baby," she whispered. And then into the phone she said again, "Hello?"

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sxdoukou — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:47:21 +0200

Every time the phone rang she started. But three days passed with no word from him.
On Thursday morning there was a knock on the door. Caroline hurried to answer hair straightenersit, adjusting the belt of her dress, touching her hair. But it was only a deliveryman, holding a vase full of flowers: dark red and pale pink in a cloud of baby's breath. These were from Al. My thanks for the hospitality, he'd written on the card. Maybe I'll see you on my next run.
Caroline took them inside and arranged them on the coffee table. Agitated, she picked up The Leader, which she hadn't read in days, slipped off the rubber band, and skimmed through the articles, not really taking in any of them. Escalating tensions in Vietnam, social announcements about who had entertained whom the previous week, a page of local women modeling the new spring hats. Caroline was about to throw the paper down when a black-bordered square caught her eye.
Memorial Service
For Our Beloved Daughter
Phoebe Grace Henry
Born and Died March y, 1964
Lexington Presbyterian Church
Friday, March ghd hair straighteners13, 1964, at 9 a.m.
Caroline sat down slowly. She read the words once and then again. She even touched them, as if this would make them clearer somehow, explicable. With the paper still in her hands, she stood up and went to the bedroom. Phoebe slept in her drawer, one pale arm outflung against the blankets. Born and died. Caroline went back into the living room and called her office. Ruby picked up on the first ring.
"I don't suppose you're coming in?" she said. "It's a madhouse here. Everyone in town seems to have the flu." She lowered her voice then. "Did you hear, Caroline? About Dr. Henry and his ba¬bies?
They had twins after all. The little boy is fine; he's precious. But the girl, she died at birth. So sad."
"I saw it in the paper." Caroline's jaw, her tongue, felt stiff. "I
wonder if you'd ask Dr. Henry to call me. Tell him it's important. I saw the paper," she repeated. "Tell him that, will you, Ruby?" Then she hung ed hardy discountsup and sat staring out at the sycamore tree and the park¬ing lot beyond.
An hour later he knocked at her door.
"Well," she said, showing him in.
David Henry came in and sat on her sofa, his back hunched, turning his hat in his hand. She sat down in the chair across from him, watching him as if she'd never seen him before.
"Norah put the announcement in," he said. When he looked up she felt a rush of sympathy despite herself, for his forehead was lined, his eyes bloodshot, as if he hadn't slept in days. "She did it without telling me."
"But she thinks her christian louboutinsdaughter died," Caroline said. "That's what you told her?"
He nodded, slowly. "I meant to tell her the truth. But when I opened my mouth, I couldn't say it. At that moment, I thought I was saving her pain."
Caroline thought of her own lies, streaming out one after the other.
"I didn't leave her in Louisville," she said softly. She nodded at the bedroom door. "She's in there. Sleeping."

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sxdoukou — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:09:23 +0200

"Someone was watching from a window downstairs. You sure I won't be causing you any grief, here?"
"That was Lucycheap christian louboutin shoes Martin," Caroline said. Phoebe had been stir¬ring, and she took the bottle from its warmer, tested the formula on her arm, and sat down. "She's a dreadful gossip. Trust me. You just made her day."
Phoebe wouldn't drink, however, but began to wail, and Caro¬line stood, pacing the room, murmuring. Al, meanwhile, got straight to Work. In no time at all he had pulled out the sofa bed and made it up, sharp military folds at each corner. When Phoebe fi¬nally quieted, Caroline nodded at him and whispered good night. She closed the bedroom door quite firmly. It had occurred to her that Al would be the type to notice the absence of a crib.
During the drive Caroline had been making plans, and now she pulled a drawer from her dresser and dumped its neat contents in a pile on the floor. Then she folded two towels in the bottom and tucked a folded sheet around them, nestling Phoebe amid the blan¬kets. When she climbed into her own bed, fatigue rolled over her like waves, and she slept at once, a hard and dreamless sleep. She did not ghdhear Al snoring loudly in the living room, or the noise of snowplows moving through the parking lot, or the clatter of garbage trucks on the street. When Phoebe stirred, however, some¬time in the middle of the night, Caroline was on her feet in an in¬stant. She moved through the darkness as if through water, exhausted and yet with purpose, changing Phoebe's diaper, warm¬ing her bottle, concentrating on the infant in her arms and the tasks before her—so urgent, so consuming and imperative—tasks that now only she could do, tasks that could not wait.
Caroline woke to a flood of light and the smell of eggs and bacon. She stood, pulling her robe around her, and bent over to touch the baby's tranquil cheek. Then she went to the kitchen, where Al was buttering toast.
"Hey, there," he said, looking up. His hair was combed but still a little wild. He had a bald spot on the back of his scalp, and he wore a gold medallion on a chain around his neck. "Hope you don't mind my makinged hardy women myself at home. I missed dinner last night."
"It smells good," Caroline said. "I'm hungry too."

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sxdoukou — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:53:43 +0200

They went into the living room and sat together on the sofa. For a moment it was like before, just the two of them, and the world around them was an ed hardy discounts understandable place, full of promise. Norah had planned to tell David about her plans over dinner, but now, suddenly, she found herself explaining the simple service she had organized, the announcement she had placed. As she talked she was aware of David's gaze growing more intent, somehow deeply vulnerable. His expression made her hesitate; it was as if he'd been unmasked, and she was talking now to a stranger whose reactions she couldn't anticipate. His eyes were darker than she'd ever seen them, and she could not tell what was going on in his mind.
"You don't like the idea," she said.
"It's not that."
Again she saw the grief in his eyes; she heard it in his voice. Out of a desire to assuage it, she nearly took everything back, but she felt her earlier inertia, pushed aside with such great effort, lurking in the room.
"It helped me to do Tiffany Key Ringthis," she said. "That isn't wrong."
"No," he said. "It isn't wrong."
He seemed about to say more, but then he stopped himself and stood up instead, walking to the window and staring out into the darkness at the little park across the street. "But damn it, Norah." he said, his voice low and harsh, a tone he had never used before. It frightened her, the anger underlying his words. "Why do you have to be so stubborn? Why, at least, didn't you tell me before you called the papers ? "
"She died," Norah said, angry now herself. "There's no shame in it. No reason to keep it a secret."
Slowly, slowly, as Paul nursed, as the light faded, she grew calm, became again that wide tranquil river, accepting the world and car¬rying it easily on its currents. Outside, the grass was growing slowly nnd silently; the egg sacs of spiders were bursting open; the wings of birds were pulsing in flight. This is sacred, she found herself think¬ing, connected through the child in her arms and the child in the earth to everything that lived and ever had. It was a long time before she opened her eyes, and then she was startled by both the darkness and the beauty all around: a small oblong of light, reflected off the glass doorknob, quivering onhair straighteners the wall. Paul's new blanket, lovingly knit, cascading like waves from the crib. And on the dresser David's daffodils, delicate as skin and almost luminous, collecting the light from the hall.
IV
NCE HER VOICE DWINDLED TO NOTHING IN THE EMPTY
parking lot, Caroline slammed the car door and started pick¬ing her way through the slush. After a few steps, she stopped and went back for the baby. Phoebe's thin wails rose in the darkness, propelling Caroline across the asphalt and past the wide blank squares of light, to the automatic doors of the grocery store. Locked. Caroline shouted and knocked, her voice weaving with Phoebe's cries. Inside, the brightly lit aisles were empty. A dis¬carded mop bucket stood nearby; cans gleamed in the silence. For several minutes Caroline stood silently herself, listening to Phoebe's cries and the distant rush of the wind through the trees. Then she pulled herself together and made her way to the back of the store. The rolling metal door off the loading platform was closed, but she walked up to it anyway, aware of the scent of rotting produce on the cold, greasy concrete where the snow had melted. She kicked hard at the door, so satisfied by its booming echo that she kicked it sev¬eral more times, until she was breathless.
"If they're still in there, honey, which I kinda doubt, they aren't ^oing to be opening up ray ban aviatoranytime soon."
A man's voice. Caroline turned and saw him standing below her, on the ramplike decline that allowed tractor trailers to back into the loading area. Even at this distance she could tell he was a large per¬son. He wore a bulky coat and a wool knit hat. His hands were shoved into his pockets.

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sxdoukou — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:12:01 +0200

The women laughed, relieved. Norah smiled too and opened the box, tearing the paper: a jumper chair, with a metal frame and a cloth seat, similar ray banto one she had once admired at a friend's house.
"Of course, he won't be able to use it for a few months," Sally was saying. "Still, we couldn't think of anything better, once he's on the move!"
"And here," said Flora Marshall, standing up, two soft packages in her hands.
Flora was older than the others in the group, older even than Ruth, but wiry and active. She knitted blankets for every new baby in the church. Suspecting from her size that Norah might have twins, she had knitted two receiving blankets, working on them during their evening sessions and the coffee hour at church, balls of soft bright yarn spilling from her bag. Pastel yellows and greens, soft blues and pinks intermingled—she wasn't about to lay any bets GHD MK4 Goldon whether they would be boys or girls, she joked. But twins, she'd been sure about that. No one had taken her seriously at the time.
Norah took the two packages, pressing back tears. The soft fa¬miliar wool cascaded onto her lap when she opened the first, and her lost daughter seemed very near. Norah felt a rush of gratitude to Flora who, with the wisdom of grandmothers, had known just what to do. She tore open the second package, eager for the other blanket, as colorful and soft as the first.
"It's a little big," Flora apologized, when the playsuit fell into her lap. "But then, they grow so fast at this age."
"Where's the other blanket?" Norah demanded. She heard her voice, harsh, like the cry of a bird, and she felt astonished; all her life she'd been known for her calm, had prided herself on her even tem¬perament,ray ban aviator her careful choices. "Where's the blanket you made for my little girl?"
Flora flushed and glanced around the room for help. Ruth took Norah's hand and pressed it hard. Norah felt the smooth skin, the surprising pressure of her fingers. David had told her the names of these bones once, but she could not remember them. Worse, she was crying.

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sxdoukou — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 04:57:15 +0200

Still, while Norah was grateful for Bree's support, she was, at times, also secretly uneasy. In Bree's world, which seemed mostly to exist elsewhere, ray ban sunglassesin California, or Paris, or New York City, young women walked around their houses topless, took pictures of them¬selves with babies at their enormous breasts, wrote columns advo¬cating the nutritional benefits of human milk. It's completely natural; it's in our nature as mammals, Bree explained, but the very thought of herself as a mammal, driven by instincts, described by words like suckling (so close to rutting, she thought, reducing some¬thing beautiful to the level of a barn), had made Norah blush and want to leave the room.
Now Bree came back in carrying a tray with coffee, fresh bread, butter. Her long hair fell over her shoulder as she bent to put a tall glass of ice water on the table next to Norah. She slid the tray on the coffee ed hardy discountstable and settled onto the couch, tucking her long white legs beneath her.
"David's gone?"
Norah nodded. "I didn't even hear him getting up."
"You think it's good for him to be working so much?"
"Yes," Norah said firmly. "I do." Dr. Bentley had talked to the other doctors in the practice, and they had offered David time off, but David had refused. "I think it's good for him to be busy right now."
"Really? And what about you?" Bree asked, biting into her bread.
"Me? Honestly, I'm fine."
Bree waved her free hand. "Don't you think—" she began, but before she could criticize David again, Norah interrupted.
"It's so good you're here," she said. "No one else will talk to me."
"That's crazy. The house has been full of people wanting to talk to you."
"I had twins, Bree," Norah said quietly, conscious of her dream, the empty, frozen landscape, her frantic searching. "No one else will say a word about her. They act like since I have Paul, I ought to be satisfied. Like lives are interchangeable. But I had twins. I had a daughter too—"
She stopped, interrupted by the sudden tightness in her throat.
"Everyone is sad,"ghd hair straighteners Bree said softly. "So happy and so sad, all at once. They don't know what to say, that's all."
Norah lifted Paul, now asleep, to her shoulder. His breath was warm on her neck; she rubbed his back, not much bigger than her palm.
"I know," she said. "I know. But still."
"David shouldn't have gone back to work so soon," Bree said. "It's only been three days."
"He finds work a comfort," Norah said. "If I had a job, I'd go."
"No," Bree said, shaking her head. "No, you wouldn't, Norah. You know, I hate to say this, but David's just shutting himself away, locking up every feeling. And you're still trying to fill the empti¬ness. To fix things. And you can't."
Norah, studying her sister, wondered what feelings the pharma¬cist had kept at bay; for all her openness, Bree had never spoken of her GHD MK4 Pinkown brief marriage. And even though Norah was inclined to agree with her now, she felt obligated to defend David, who through his own sadness had taken care of everything: the quiet un¬attended burial, the explanations to friends, the swift tidying up of the ragged ends of grief.

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sxdoukou — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 05:33:58 +0200

"She isn't here." David's voice was raw. "That's why. There's a cemetery on Bentley's family farm. In Woodford County. I asked him to take her. We caned hardy women go there, later in the spring. Oh, Norah, please. You are breaking my heart."
Norah closed her eyes then, feeling something drain out of her at the thought of an infant, her daughter, being lowered into the cold March earth. Her arms, holding Paul, were stiff and steady, but the rest of her felt liquid, as if she too might flow away into the ditches and disappear with the snow. David was right, she thought, she didn't want to know this. When he climbed the steps and put his arm around her shoulders, she nodded, and they walked together across the empty parking lot, into the fading light. He secured the car seat; he drove them carefully, methodically, home; they carried Paul across the front porch and through the door; and they put him, sleeping, in his room. It had brought her a measure of comfort, the way David had taken care of everything, the wayghd hair straighteners he'd taken care of her, and she had not argued with him again about her wish to see their daughter.
But now she dreamed every night of lost things.
Paul had fallen asleep. Beyond the window, dogwood branches, cluttered with new buds, moved against the paling indigo sky. Norah turned, shifted Paul to her other breast, and closed her eyes again, drifting. She woke suddenly to dampness, crying, sunlight full in the room. Her breasts were already filling again; it had been three hours. She sat, feeling heavy, weighted, the flesh of her stom¬ach so loose it pooled whenever she lay down, her breasts stiff and swollen with milk, her joints still aching from the birth. In the hall, the floorboards creaked beneath her.
On the changing table Paul cried louder, turning an angry mot¬tled red. SheTiffany Bangle stripped off his damp clothes, his soaked cotton diaper. His skin was so delicate, his legs as scrawny and reddened as plucked chicken wings. At the edge of her mind her lost daughter hovered, watchful, silent. She swabbed Paul's umbilical cord with alcohol, threw the diaper in the pail to soak, then dressed him again.
"Sweet baby," she murmured, lifting him. "Little love," she said, and carried him downstairs.
In the living room the blinds were still closed, the curtains drawn. Norah made her way to the comfortable leather chair in the corner, opening her robe. Her milk rose up again with its own irre¬sistible tidal rhythms, a force so powerful it seemed to wash away everything she had been before. / wa^e to sleep, she thought, settling back,Tiffany Paloma Picasso troubled because she could not remember who had written this.
The house was quiet. The furnace clicked off; leaves rustled on the trees outside. Distantly, the bathroom door opened and shut, and water ran faintly. Bree, her sister,

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sxdoukou — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 05:18:51 +0200

The glass door swung open, releasing a rush of light and warmth. The store was crowded. Shoppers spilled out, their carts piled high. A bag boyghd straighteners stood at the door.
"We're only still open on account of the weather," he warned, as she entered. "We're closing in half an hour."
"But the storm's over," Caroline said, and the boy laughed, ex¬cited and incredulous. His face was flushed with the heat pouring down over the automatic doors and spilling out into the evening.
"Didn't you hear? We're supposed to get hit again tonight, but good."
Caroline settled Phoebe in a metal cart and walked through the unfamiliar aisles. She pondered over formulas, a bottle warmer, over the rows of bottles with their selections of nipples, over bibs. She started to the checkout, then realized she had better get milk for herself, and some more diapers, and some kind of food. People passed her, and when they saw Phoebe they all smiled, and some even paused and moved the blanket aside to see her face. They said, "Oh, how sweet!" and "How old?" Caroline lied without com¬punction. Two weeks, she told them. "Oh, you shouldn'ted hardy discounts have her out in this," one woman with gray hair reprimanded her. "My! You should get that baby home."
In aisle 6, while Caroline was picking out cans of tomato soup, Phoebe stirred, her small hands jerking wildly, and began to cry. Caroline vacillated for a moment, then picked up the baby and the bulky bag and went to the restroom in the back of the store. She sat on an orange plastic chair in the corner, listening to water drip from the faucet, while she balanced the infant on her lap and poured for¬mula from the thermos into a bottle. It took several minutes for the baby to settle down, because she was so agitated and because her sucking reflex was poor. Eventually, however, she caught on, and then Phoebe drank as she had slept: fiercely, intently, her hands in fists by her chin. By the time she relaxed, sated, they were announc¬ing that the store was about to close. Caroline hurried to the check¬out counter, where a single cashier waited, bored and impatient. She paid quickly, cradling theGHD pure paper sack in one arm, Phoebe in the other. When she left, they locked the doors behind her.

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Everything was just as she had left it. The box with its cheerful red cherubs was still on the sofa; the baby, her hands curled into small fists by her chin, ray ban wayfarerwas still sleeping. Phoebe, Norah Henry had said, just before she went under from the gas. For a girl, Phoebe.
Phoebe. Caroline unfolded the blankets gently and lifted her. She was so tiny, five and a half pounds, smaller than her brother though with the same rich dark hair. Caroline checked her diaper-—tarry meconium stained the damp cloth—changed her, and wrapped her back up. She had not woken, and Caroline held her for a moment, feeling how light she was, how small, how warm. Her face was so small, so volatile. Even in her sleep, expressions moved like clouds across her features. Caroline glimpsed Norah Henry's frown in one, David Henry's concentrated listening in another.
She put Phoebe back into the box and tucked the blankets lightly around her, thinking of David Henry, edged with weariness, eating a cheese sandwich at his desk, finishing a cup of half-cold coffee, then rising to open the office doors again on Tuesday nights, a free clinic for patients who could not afford to pay him. The waiting room was always full on those nights, and he was often still there when Caroline finally went home at midnight, so weary herself that she GHD MK4 Blackcould barely think. This was why she had come to love him, for his goodness. Yet he had sent her to this place with his infant daughter, this place where a woman had sat on the edge of a bed, her hair drifting into soft piles on the harsh cold light of the floor.
This would destroy her, he had said of Norah. / will not have her destroyed.
There were footsteps, drawing nearer, and then a woman with gray hair and a white uniform very much like Caroline's stood in the doorway. She was solidly built, agile for her size, no-nonsense. In another situation, Caroline would have been favorably impressed.
"Can I help you?" she asked. "Have you been waiting long?"
"Yes," Caroline said slowly. "I've been waiting for a long time, yes."
The woman, exasperated, shook her head. "Yes, look, I'm sorry. It's the snow. We're short-staffed today because of it. You get as much as an inch here in Kentucky, and the whole state shuts down. I grew up in Iowa, myself, and I don't see what all the fuss is about, but ray ban aviatorthat's just me. Now, then. What can I do for you?"
"Are you Sylvia?" Caroline asked, struggling to remember the name on the paper below the directions. She'd left it in the car. "Sylvia Patterson?"
The woman's expression grew annoyed. "No. I am certainly not. I'm Janet Masters. Sylvia no longer works here."
"Oh," Caroline said, and then stopped. This woman didn't know who she was; clearly, she hadn't talked with Dr. Henry. Caroline, still holding the dirty diaper, dropped her hands to her sides to keep it out of sight.
Janet Masters planted her hands firmly on her hips, and her eyes narrowed. "Are you here from that formula company?" she asked, nodding across the room to the box on the sofa, the red cherubs smiling benignly. "Sylvia had something going with that rep, we all knew that, and if you'reTiffany Bangle from the same company you can just pack up your things and go." She shook her head sharply.
"I don't know what you mean," Caroline said. "I'll just go," she added. "Really. I'm leaving. I won't bother you again."

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sxdoukou — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:18:35 +0200

Consumed by this vision, she had applied, in a great rush of fer¬vor and excitement, to become a medical missionary. One brilliant late-summerchristian louboutin weekend, she had taken the bus to St. Louis to be in¬terviewed. Her name was put on a waiting list for Korea. But time passed; the mission was postponed, then canceled altogether. Caro¬line was put on another list, this time for Burma.
And then, while she was still checking the mail and dreaming of the tropics, Dr. Henry had arrived.
An ordinary day, nothing to indicate otherwise. It was late au¬tumn by then, a season of colds, and the room was crowded, full of sneezes, muffled coughs. Caroline herself could feel a dull scratch¬ing deep in her throat as she called the next patient, an elderly gentleman whose cold would worsen in the next weeks, turning into the pneumonia that would finally kill him. Rupert Dean. He was sitting in the leather armchair, fighting a nosebleed, and he stood up slowly, stuffing his cloth handkerchief, with itsTiffany Key Ring vivid spots of blood, into his pocket. When he reached the desk he handed Caroline a photograph in a dark blue cardboard frame. It was a portrait, black and white, faintly tinted. The woman looking out wore a pale peach sweater. Her hair was gently waved, her eyes a deep shade of blue. Rupert Dean's wife, Emelda, dead now for twenty years. "She was the love of my life," he announced to Caro¬line, his voice so loud that people looked up.

The outer door of the office opened, rattling the glass-paneled inner door.
"She's lovely," Caroline said. Her hands were trembling. Because she was moved by his love and his sorrow, and because no one had ever loved her with this same passion. Because she was almost thirty years old, and yet if she died the next day there would be no one to mourn her like Rupert Dean still mourned his wife after more thaned hardy clothing twenty years. Surely she, Caroline Lorraine Gill, must be as unique and deserving of love as the woman in the old man's photo, and yet she had not found any way to reveal this, not through art or love or even through the fine high calling of her work.
She was still trying to compose herself when the door from the vestibule to the waiting room swung open. A man in a brown tweed overcoat hesitated in the doorway for a moment, his hat in his hand, taking in the yellow textured wallpaper, the fern in the corner, the metal rack of worn magazines. He had brown hair with a reddish tinge and his face was lean, his expression attentive, assess¬ing. He was not distinguished, yet there was something in his stance, his manner—some quiet alertness, some quality of listening—that set him apart. Caroline's heart quickened and she felt a tingling on her skin, both pleasurable and irritating, like the unexpected brush of a moth's wing. His eyes caught hers—and she knew. Before he crossed the room to shake her hand, before cheap christian louboutin shoeshe opened his mouth to speak his name, David Henry, in a neutral accent that placed him as an outsider. Before all this, Caroline was sure of a single simple fact: the person she'd been waiting for had come.

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sxdoukou — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:29:09 +0200

Snow billowed, stinging her face, when she opened the car door. Instinctively, protectively, she curved herself around the box and wedged it into the backseat,ghd hair styler where the pink blankets fell softly against the white vinyl upholstery. The baby slept, a fierce, intent, newborn sleep, its face clenched, its eyes only slits, the nose and chin mere bumps. You wouldn't know, Caroline thought. If you didn't know, you wouldn't. Caroline had given her an eight on the Apgar.
The city streets were badly plowed and difficult to navigate. Twice the car slid, and twice Caroline almost turned back. The interstate was clearer, however, and once Caroline got on it she made steady time, traveling through the industrial outskirts of
Lexington and into the rolling country of the horse farms. Here, miles of white fences made brisk shadows against the snow and horses stood darkly in the fields. The low sky was alive with fat gray clouds. Caroline turned on the radio, searched through the sta¬tic for a station, turned it off. The world rushed by, ordinary and ut¬terly changed.
Since the moment she had let her head dip in faint agreement to Dr. Henry's astonishing request, Caroline had felt as if she were falling through the air in slow motion, waiting to hit land and dis¬cover where she was. What he had asked of her—that she take his infant daughter away without telling his wife of her birth—seemed unspeakable. But Caroline had been moved by the pain and confu¬sion on his face as he examined his daughter, by the slow numb way he seemed to move thereafter. Soon he'd come to his senses, Tiffany Bangle she told herself. He was in shock, and who could blame him? He'd deliv¬ered his own twins in a blizzard, after all, and now this.
She drove faster, images of the early morning running through her like a current. Dr. Henry, working with such calm skill, his movements focused and precise. The flash of dark hair between Norah Henry's white thighs and her immense belly, rippling with contractions like a lake in the wind. The quiet hiss of the gas, and the moment when Dr. Henry called to her, his voice light but strained, his face so stricken that she was sure the second baby had been born dead. She had waited for him to move, to try to revive it. And when he didn't she thought suddenly that she should go to him, be a witness, so that she could say, later, Yes, the baby was blue, Dr. Henry tried, we both tried, but there was nothing to be done.
But then the baby cried, and the cry carried her to his side, where she looked and understood.
She drove on, pushing back her memories. The road cut through the limestone and the sky funneled down. She crested the slight hill and began the long descent to the river far below. Behind her, in the cardboard box, the baby slept on. Caroline glanced over her shoul¬der now and then, both reassured and distressed to see it had not moved. Such sleep, she reminded herself, was normal after the labor of entering the world. She wondered about her own birth, if she had Tiffany Broochslept so intently in the hours that followed, but both her parents were long dead; there was no one who remembered those moments. Her mother had been past forty when Caroline was born, her father already fifty-two. They had long since given up waiting for a child, had released any hope or expectation or even re¬gret. Their lives were orderly, calm, content.
Until Caroline, startlingly, had arrived, a flower blooming up through snow.

Tiffany Brooch

sxdoukou — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:32:16 +0200

This baby was smaller and came easily, sliding so quickly into his gloved hands that he leaned forward, using his chest to make sure it did not fall. "It's a girl," he said, and cradled her like a football, face down, Tiffany Broochtapping her back until she cried out. Then he turned her over to see her face.
Creamy white vernix whorled in her delicate skin, and she was slippery with amniotic fluid and traces of blood. The blue eyes were cloudy, the hair jet black, but he barely noticed all of this. What he was looking at were the unmistakable features, the eyes turned up as if with laughter, the epicanthal fold across their lids, the flattened nose. A classic case, he remembered his professor saying as they ex¬amined a similar child, years ago. A mongoloid. Do you know what that means? And the doctor, dutiful, had recited the symptoms he'd memorized from the text: flaccid muscle tone, delayed growth and mental development, possible heart complications, early death. The professor had nodded, placing his stethoscope on the baby's smooth bare chest. Poor kid. There's nothing they can do except try to 'teep him clean. They ought to spare themselves and send him to a home.
The doctor had felt transported back in time. His sister had been born with a heart defect and had grown very slowly, her breath catching and comingghd hair styler in little gasps whenever she tried to run. For many years, until the first trip to the clinic in Morgantown, they had not known what was the matter. Then they knew, and there was nothing they could do. All his mother's attention had gone to her, and yet she had died when she was twelve years old. The doctor had been sixteen, already living in town to attend high school, already on his way to Pittsburgh and medical school and the life he was living now. Still, he remembered the depth and en¬durance of his mother's grief, the way she walked up hill to the grave every morning, her arms folded against whatever weather she encountered.
The nurse stood beside him and studied the baby.
"I'm sorry, doctor," she said.
He held the infant, forgetting what he ought to do next. Her tiny hands were perfect. But the gap between her big toes and the oth¬ers, that was there, like a missing tooth, and when he looked deeply at her eyes he saw the Brushfield spots, as tiny and distinct as flecks Tiffany Bangleof snow in the irises. He imagined her heart, the size of a plum and very possibly defective, and he thought of the nursery, so carefully painted, with its soft animals and single crib. He thought of his wife standing on the sidewalk before their brightly veiled home, saying, Our world will never be the same.
The baby's hand brushed his, and he started. Without volition he began to move through the familiar patterns. He cut the cord and checked her heart, her lungs. All the time he was thinking of the snow, the silver car floating into a ditch, the deep quiet of this empty clinic. Later, when he considered this night—and he would think of it often, in the months and years to come: the turning point of his life, the moments around which everything else would always gather—what he remembered was the silence in the room and the snow falling steadily outside. The silence was so deep and encom¬passing that he felt himself floating to a new height, some point above this room and then beyond, where he was one with the snow and where this scene in the room was something unfolding in a dif¬ferent life, a life at which he was a random spectator, like achristian louboutin scene glimpsed through a warmly lit window while walking on a dark¬ened street. That was what he would remember, that feeling of endless space. The doctor in the ditch, and the lights of his own house burning far away.

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sxdoukou — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:34:18 +0200

A passing image, perhaps a memory, but one that filled him simultaneously with ghd hair straighteners sadness and with yearning. The house was his but empty now, deserted when his sister died and his par¬ents moved away, the rooms his mother had scrubbed to a dull gleam abandoned, filled only with the rustlings of squirrels and mice.
He'd had tears in his eyes when he opened them, raising his head from the desk. The nurse was standing in the doorway, her face gentled by emotion. She was beautiful in that moment, half smil¬ing, not at all the efficient woman who worked beside him so qui¬etly and competently each day. Their eyes met, and it seemed to the doctor that he knew her—that they knew each other—in some profound and certain way. For an instant nothing whatsoever stood between them; it was an intimacy of such magnitude that he was motionless, transfixed. Then she blushed severely and looked aside.
She cleared her throat and straightened, saying that she had worked two hoursghd hair styler overtime and would be going. For many days, her eyes would not meet his.
After that, when people teased him about her, he made them stop. She's a very fine nurse, he would say, holding up one hand against the jokes, honoring that moment of communion they had shared. She's the best I've ever worked with. This was true, and now he was very glad to have her with him.
"How about the emergency room?" she asked. "Could you make it?"
The doctor shook his head. The contractions were just a minute or so apart.
"This baby won't ghd wait," he said, looking at his wife. Snow had melted in her hair and glittered like a diamond tiara. "This baby's on its way."
"It's all right," his wife said, stoic. Her voice was harder now, de¬termined. "This will be a better story to tell him, growing up: him or her."
The nurse smiled, the line still visible though fainter, between her eyes. "Let's get you inside then," she said. "Let's get you some help with the pain."
He went into his own office to find a coat, and when he entered Bentley's examination room his wife was lying on the bed, her feet in the stirrups. The room was pale blue, filled with chrome and white enamel and fine instruments of gleaming steel. The doctor went to the sink and washed his hands. He felt extremely alert, aware of the tiniest ghd ukdetails, and as he performed this ordinary ritual he felt his panic at Bentley's absence begin to ease. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to focus on his task.