The Three of Us

74. A Letter to Gilbert

So....about last chapter... :p I thought it would be creative to have like a little flash forward in time where we get to see that an older Anne is really attached to Walter. I thought it might brighten things up to skip ahead to see that, because right now we are in such a dark, sad time and we will be for quite a while. ...But all I did was make things sound super confusing lol! Sorry. If I ever do time jump thingies again, I will write them better I promise lol : )

Ok, back to the present! We are not in the future anymore :)

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Dear Gilbert,

I miss you. But don't come here.

The doctor let me go back to our boarding house now. I'm glad. Trying to sleep in a hospital is very hard, because there's always something happening. The bed at our boarding house is ever so much softer than a hospital bed, too. I haven't really walked around at all because they made me sit in a wheelchair to go across the street, and they still won't let me up except to take a bath. The doctor says I can't do much of anything yet.

Mrs. Lynde is staying here with us, on the sofa. I hope she isn't uncomfortable. I asked her if she'd like to share the bed with Marilla and I could take the sofa, but she wouldn't hear of it.

Now that I'm back at the boarding house, we have to have the baby here at the boarding house too. Walter John Shirley-Cuthbert. It's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? Later on, I thought maybe I ought to have used Matthew's name. But at the time- so soon after the birth, being asked what I wanted on his certificate- I honestly didn't think much about it at all, I only wanted to pick something quickly to be done with it, and Walter was the first thing that came to mind, so I said that.

And then I thought about how much I miss your father, and how kind he is to me, and I wanted so much to feel like he was here with me right now, so I asked the doctor to add John too.

Gilbert paused, taking a shaky breath. Anne's gesture touched him even more now that his father was gone. Even though he saw a tear fall onto the paper, he smiled, remembering his father's words- "this is a happy day".

I asked Marilla if she thought Matthew would feel slighted that I didn't use his name, and she said no. But I told her that if I was living in my own home, it would make sense to call a child after Matthew, but I'm not in my own house, I'm still in their house, and I thought of all these years I'll be living with Matthew and how calling out "Matthew!" in a house that already has a Matthew, well, I'd have to use some sort of nickname for the little creature to avoid confusion, and I didn't know if I would want to name it something only to call it something else- I really didn't give myself time to think about it. But my father isn't here, so it won't cause any confusion at all when I call out the name Walter.

And your father is here, of course, but since John is only his middle name, that won't create confusion, either.

When Gilbert read this, he paused, a heavy feeling settling in his chest. She still didn't know.

He read on:

I can't say I like having the baby here with me, but I'm certainly starting to feel better now that he's outside instead of inside! Having your body to yourself is a vast improvement over having to go around with a whole other person inside of you. I'm exceedingly glad not to have to share my belly with it anymore.

But I still don't feel like myself yet, for a long time after he came out, I hurt all the time. I still do. Marilla told me the doctor had to give me some stitches, but I guess I was quite out of it because I don't remember that at all.

Gilbert frowned. Miss Cuthbert hadn't told him there'd been any complications. Not that it was his business to know, of course, but...well, perhaps it was better she hadn't told him, just in case Anne didn't want it divulged- it was about her body, after all. He felt sorry for her; he had read that sometimes childbirth caused perineal tears that required stitches. He also remembered that when he first saw the diagram showing what a perineal tear was, he'd felt a wave of nausea come up that caused him to doubt whether he could become a doctor after all.

When I was little I asked one of the families I was with if they knew where babies came from. But the wife told me they grew out of the cabbage patch, and the husband told me the stork brought them. I figured they were both mistaken, since they told me two different things. What I could never understand is how they had five babies without knowing where they came from!

When I was with the Hammonds, I asked them too. Mr. Hammond said the doctor brings the baby with him in his doctor bag. But I looked in the doctor's bag and it was just all full of medical supplies. There wasn't room in there for a baby, let alone twins. And if the doctor brought the baby with him, then what was Mrs. Hammond screaming about? When I asked Mrs. Hammond, that's when she told me about the pet mouse.

So all I really learned is that grownups don't like to talk about where babies come from. ...And now I understand why. I better make sure Marilla doesn't look at this letter; she'd be ashamed of me writing such things.

But don't you think the cabbage patch idea would be a remarkable improvement over the current method? You wouldn't have to spend nine long, miserable months sharing your body with a whole extra person! And if you didn't want a baby in the first place, then you just wouldn't plant one.

...Although I guess if you really did want it, then you'd have to sit by the cabbage patch all the time to make sure nobody took yours.

Gilbert smiled at this. Anne always had ideas for improvement, didn't she? If she had been here, he'd have told her that he would sit by the cabbage patch for her so she could go on to do other things.

Marilla and Mrs. Lynde are helping me do everything. Every day is just all about trying to keep him from wailing. He cries a lot, and I don't like it, but Marilla says I have to be patient with him because he doesn't have any other way of telling us what he needs. And I know that, but I still don't like having to hear him.

She told me, "When he was still inside you, everything was taken care of for him- he didn't ever feel hungry, or too hot or too cold, or feel the prick of diaper pins. You must be understanding of him, he's having to adjust to living in a harsher world now that he's out!"

...And I suppose she's right; Walter and I are both unhappy where we are.

Gilbert knew it was silly- and he'd never tell anyone he did it- but when he reached the end of the letter- where she'd signed Love, Anne- he kissed it.