We Could Get By

xxxv.

The bedroom was unusually still. Not even the sound of the waves crashing outside seemed to be able to make it through the walls. After all the nerve wracking screaming (on Nellie's part, for hours and hours on end and then, at last, on the baby’s part as well, picking up where his wife had left off), the quiet seemed thick and foreign to him. His ears rang, but Sweeney Todd could not stop looking at the bundle in his arms. The scrunched, rosy face. The tiny dimpled hands balled into fists. Lindy. Her name, really, was Linnet (“like the bird,” Nellie had said, as if Sweeney did not understand her the first time), but he knew neither of them would ever really call her that.

She already had quite a bit of hair, dark fuzz sprouting across her downy head. Her eyes were squeezed shut. He had a difficult time looking at her without feeling like he might cry. He wouldn't, of course, because Sweeney Todd was not a man who cried, but just the feeling was strange and unwelcome.

He just wished that Nellie could see her, too. The watery beginnings of excitement that had stirred in him did not manage to make their way to his face, but Nellie would be absolutely over the moon, he knew. It was difficult to envision her doing anything in that moment, to attempt to paint her in a soft smattering of good health. His gaze shifted from the new baby to Nellie's shape lying still beneath the blankets. She was significantly smaller, deflated and flat and almost grey, as if the life inside her had all gone to Lindy and left her none of her own. Her lips were dry and cracked. Even her curls looked wilted. Her plain white nightgown drooped off her shoulders and puddled around her arms. The dim lamplight did nothing to ease the concern that had settled itself heavy in the hollow of his throat like a lump; it cast her in shadows, painting her like a caricature of a corpse.

The doctor had used words like “fatigue” and “shock”, talking circles around poor, bewildered Mr. Todd though he had pressed heavily on the assurances that it “happened all the time, certainly” and that Nellie would be “perfectly fine”. But the water Sweeney had brought her stood untouched on the nightstand. The water was probably stale, now, he thought. He shifted Lindy in his arms and reached hesitantly for Nellie's hand. It felt hollow, fragile like the skeleton of a baby bird. It scared him, and he let it drop back to lay lifeless atop the quilt. She was normally such a robust woman. He half expected her to be startled, to sit up and demand that he let her hold the baby, to scold him for not waking her, but she only wrinkled her forehead- a little reflexive twitch of movement that didn't mean anything one way or the other. He had hoped that Lindy would start fussing, that the noise of it would awaken Nellie from whatever deep slumber plagued her, but in the few hours that she had been among the living, Lindy had already proved to be the most serene baby Sweeney had ever seen.

The barber got to his feet, shifting Lindy to the crook of his arm. His hands were trembling. Even his knees seemed to wobble as he paced the space between the foot of the bed and the window. Sweeney’s throat was dry; he longed for the comforting sting of gin. Lindy’s slight weight suddenly felt much too heavy, too real. Nellie, laid out like a queen, did not seem real enough. Sweeney thought, for the briefest of moments, that if he crawled into bed beside her, she might bloom like a flower unfurling its petals in the pale morning. She was likely in far too much pain to do anything but shove him off the side of the bed and onto the floor if she did come to at all.

Sweeney Todd did not like the feeling of utter helplessness that he wore on his stooped shoulders like a wet coat. He did not want to look at Nellie, but he could hardly help himself not to. She looked haggard, bedraggled in a way that he had never seen before. There was nothing for him to do but pace and stare and wonder about what was to come. Toby was tucked away in his bedroom, or perhaps in the parlor. He did not want to see Nellie like this, so unlike herself. Neither did Sweeney, but he was decidedly not going to leave her.