"It's okay," I said. "I've seen it before." Amanda dropped on her knees again, and I climbed to the narrow bank. I gathered the baby into my arms and whispered to him while Barry made his way in the direction from which I'd come. I found a dry place to sit. I held my grandson to my chest, his milk-soft scent working its way up my neck and into my nose, his sobs moist and hot on my shirt. I rubbed his back under the blanket and hummed in his ear. Barry's voice mixed with Amanda's drifted over the gurgling creek. They were laughing, but I couldn't tell about what. When the baby fussed again, I stood up and rocked him. I sang, "you are my sunshine," as my grandmother had sung to me. In a few minutes, his eyes were closed and he was asleep. Amanda and I left the salmon to their fate in the river and drove back down the gravel road late that September afternoon, Barry behind us in his own truck. Sun-drenched, tired. I was hungry and wanted my own kitchen, my own bed. Amanda, next to her son in the back seat, spoke quietly so not to disturb this latest nap. She talked about the fish that had drawn her in-the one she couldn't stop watching. The one that had rested in the branches then burst out again for the work it was most driven to do. "It reminded me of labor," Amanda said, her voice thick. "It brought all of it back again." If such a thing was possible, my heart both lifted and sank. Lifted because she was fu ll of life and awareness and a desire to grapple with motherhood. Sank because her stir of emotion had nothing to do with our reconciliation, hers and mine. I watched in the rearview mirror and had my first jealous surge-strange as it sounds-of my own grandchild. He got to start clean with her. No history to contend with. No past. Nothing between them but possibility and love. But then I glanced up again and saw Amanda gaze into her son's face with utter, complete adoration, just like a mother should look at her child, and was suddenly aware of the self-indulgence that had been at work in me all day. It was time for Amanda to have her own
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DEBRA GWARTNEY