Falling in Love with Natassia

by Anna Monardo

  “Tiny screw,” whispered a nurse next to Christopher, “screws into the baby’s head.” Christopher had to sit down. “Don’t worry, Dad, really. They do it all the time.”

  When he looked up, someone was adjusting an elastic strap around Denise’s thigh to gather up and hold the wires from the fetal monitor. A blood-pressure cuff was attached to Denise’s arm. They were conducting a perverse bondage ritual. She’s in a sci-fi movie.

  Watching Denise, Christopher saw it in her face, the disappointment. Denise hadn’t wanted any of this—the IV, the nurses, the drugs. In The New Our Bodies, Ourselves, another of Denise’s bibles, the childbirth chapter said that, without the interference of an IV, the mother in labor is free to drink fruit juice and tea with honey. Since the lying-down position works against gravity, the mother should walk around, squat, take a shower, ask people to hold her, rub her, massage her. Christopher had been apprehensive about the holding, rubbing, massaging; he had counted on the neighborhood friends to do that. But, in general, he’d understood the kind of delivery Denise had had in mind.

  Now this. A screen was put up below Denise’s shoulders so she couldn’t watch what was happening, but Christopher could see in the mirror as they shifted her onto her side. It turned out that one of the guys standing around the table was an anesthesiologist. He inserted a catheter at the base of Denise’s spine and started the drugs for the epidural. Denise was now facing Christopher; her hospital gown had slipped, revealing her shoulder. Careful not to touch skin, Christopher covered her, raised the blanket. It was so cold in this damn operating room, and there was so little comfort he could offer.

  Through the past weeks, Christopher had begun to feel great affection for Denise. As the due date got closer, his allegiance to her and the baby had grown so much, he’d left the city and spent most of his time in Nyack, in a frenzy of fixing Denise’s house for the baby’s arrival. But at no point had Christopher felt a sexual draw to Denise, a corporal tug. What he felt was something like his attachment to his sisters, but without the guilt he felt with his sisters. Watching Denise being prepared for surgery, as each new element of technology was introduced, he felt really bad for her. She was so alone in this, even with him standing there. How much Denise must miss her husband right now. Don. Hey, man, I’m doing the best I can. But Christopher knew he couldn’t do enough. Again, he felt like a boy, miserable and shy. Even standing here watching felt a little obscene. If there’d been time, he could have run out into the hallway to call one of Denise’s girlfriends from the neighborhood, her AA sponsor, her brother and sister-in-law in Erie, Pennsylvania. All those people were supposed to have been here if things had gone normally. None of this was normal.

  “You’re completely numb, aren’t you?” the doctor asked. “Denise, feel nothing?”

  “No.”

  “Go-od. Good girl. Now”—Dr. Baerent threw her voice toward Christopher—“I’m making the incision. Nice cut.” She knew he did medical illustrations and assumed he wanted all the details. He forced himself to watch in the mirror a small horizontal cut appearing low on Denise’s abdomen.

  “It’s so small,” Christopher whispered to a nurse, “the baby can’t fit.”

  “What?” Denise said very loudly, in a blur. “What’s too small?”

  The nurse touched Christopher’s arm, and the doctor told Denise, “It’s fine. It’s a beautiful incision. You’re doing great, Denise.”

  Mute but palpable shame hung over the whole procedure, and the doctor and nurses and all the technicians were drawing Christopher into collusion with them.

  The doctor’s eyes were almost invisible between mask and cap. She was short and bent very low over the incision. Denise’s feet in the stirrups were in flannelette socks. Christopher had never noticed before how wide her feet were. He’d never seen her so close to being naked. She’s got big bones. Christopher was still worried that the baby would be too big for the doctor’s small incision. “You okay?” he whispered to Denise. At least he was holding her hand, her cold fingers.

  “Listen, don’t let me sleep,” she ordered him. Her voice was blurry but strong, and full of trust in him, but a reluctant trust, trust that understood there was no choice.

  “I won’t let you sleep. You’ll see everything.”

  “I have to hold the baby as soon as—”

  “Relax, honey,” a nurse told her. “It’s better for Baby if you’re still.”

  “Shut up,” Denise said to the nurse, then added, “please.”

  In the mirror, Christopher saw layers pulled away, the baby lifted out, saw his son a second before his first cry, which panicked Denise. “He’s okay? Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Nothing’s wrong! A boy,” the doctor announced. “Healthy, a perfect baby boy.”

  “Don,” Denise demanded in a tired, pained voice. “Do-on,” she said, her arms out.

  “Just a minute,” Christopher told her. He was holding her shoulders, because she was trying to lift up.

  “Do not make quick moves,” a nurse ordered. “Doctor’s not done yet.”

  “Give me my baby!”

  Christopher was watching a nurse suction the baby’s nose and mouth, and Christopher watched as his son was placed on Denise’s chest.

  The baby, the baby.

  Baby Don was crying like crazy and seemed to be really angry, and Christopher was afraid of him. Every picture Christopher had imagined of the baby-to-be was obliterated by the reality in Denise’s hands: a long, writhing, red animal body. Her hands were wrapped around something that looked like a rib cage, but the limbs were floppy, the head was lolling. Christopher was sure there was no skeleton beneath the flesh. The baby was nothing but a swollen red scream.

  “Christopher, is Don okay? You have to check if he’s okay.”

  “He’s healthy, Denise. He’s perfect.” But Christopher could see the mark on the infant’s head where the monitor had screwed in. Nothing about any of this looked good.

  The doctor was still busy inside Denise’s abdomen. Christopher looked up at the mirror and saw the doctor lift up a mass, a mess, drop it into a basin. “I just took out the placenta. Denise, just a little longer, then you can—”

  “Is that epidural still holding for you, Denise?” a nurse asked as she checked the blood pressure for the millionth time.

  Everything happening at Denise’s abdomen had nothing to do with the expressions on Denise’s face, or with the emergency-alarm cries coming from the baby. The blood-pressure and oxygen and heartbeat monitors were getting lots of attention from the nurses. Christopher was crying soundlessly while the baby cried loudly.

  “Thank God,” Denise was whispering over and over, which made Christopher whisper, “Thank God.”

  “Hold still for me, Denise,” the doctor said. “We’re not quite through here yet.”

  “When can I feed Baby Don?” Denise muttered.

  “Relax, Denise,” the doctor said firmly. “There’s two layers of stitching here to do. You want this done right.”

  The nurse: “You don’t want to be rupturing a week from now.”

  “That’s for sure,” another nurse said. “You don’t want any infection setting in.”

  “Or hemorrhage.”

  Next to Christopher, a nurse whispered, “Everything’s fine, Daddy. Perfect. Why’re you crying so hard?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But he did know, he just couldn’t say. I miss Nora so much. I miss my wife.

  THE MORNING after the day of the birth, though, as soon as he was awake, Christopher remembered—he loved remembering it again and again—The baby is here, the baby is healthy and he’s here.

  Christopher’s bed was the daybed in Denise’s study, and before he got up he reached for the phone on her desk and dialed the hospital. Waiting to be connected to Denise’s room, he stared at the rows of ultrasounds pinned to the bulletin board above her computer: the first dark dot that was the yolk sac, then the larger yolk sac, then the picture
of the heartbeat, then the head and digits and limbs and body that were now Baby Don.

  And then, over the phone, there was Don’s full, hardy cry. And Denise’s uncharacteristically welcoming “Hello!” Before he said anything, Christopher savored the deep relief of knowing that the two of them had made it through the night.

  Without coffee, without breakfast, as soon as he pulled on his T-shirt and work pants, Christopher turned to the first job of the day. The baby’s early arrival meant ten fewer days for preparation, but Christopher was still determined to put shelves up in Don’s nursery so Denise could display his books and stuffed animals. The cut shelves were in the garage (where Christopher had painted them, so the smell wouldn’t irritate the baby), but now, due to the recent rain, the wood was swollen, so Christopher had to make several trips back and forth, from baby’s room to garage, to measure and trim and trim and measure, until the shelves fit perfectly. There were nine shelves to put up on three different walls, so he had to find studs in the walls to drill in the braces to hold up the shelves. Then the vacuuming and dusting when the job was finished.

  The room had to be immaculate.

  One of Denise’s friends had, two days before, brought over a wooden rocker from a garage sale. Christopher insisted that, before the chair made its way into the baby’s room, the padding had to be torn off, the chair scrubbed with Lysol and then reupholstered. He did the job quickly, gluing in new padding, covering it with clean, soft cotton and thumbtacking it down. The chair looked nice, not great, but at least he knew it was clean.

  There was more to do.

  Christopher still had to go to the Grand Union to buy a long list of groceries. He also wanted to do laundry and make up all the beds with clean sheets. He wanted to vacuum all of Denise’s upholstered furniture. As he changed the Brita filter, he remembered that Denise had no extra furnace filters, so he went downstairs to check the size, then added furnace filters to his grocery list. He wanted to scrub the bathtub and the shower tile (a little filmy). But then, standing in the hot shower, he asked himself, Why am I doing this? It would be years before Baby Don would be taking a shower. And that’s when Christopher knew it was time to go to the hospital.

  WAITING IN THE HOSPITAL LOBBY for the elevator, he jiggled his key ring; the hole in his jeans pocket was much larger than it had been three days earlier. When he got upstairs and down the hallway and was finally standing in the threshold of Denise’s room, there was Baby Don lying on her chest, and there was Denise smiling and smiling and smiling.

  “Hey, Daddyo’s here! Look at Baby Don, Christopher, look!”

  “Yeah, yeah, let me look.”

  The baby was warm and surprisingly squirmy in Christopher’s arms, and Christopher knew instinctively to keep his hold light but secure. This is easier than I thought it’d be. He just kept thinking about the baby’s reality—He’s so tiny, and he just got out of his mother’s stomach—and then Christopher felt he knew exactly what to do.

  Baby Don still had that beleaguered old-man look on his face. Denise said, “It’s weird, but he really looks like my husband.”

  To Christopher, the baby looked like no one. Maybe, if anyone, he looked like Mary Mudd: his not fully opened eyes gave Don a slightly Asian appearance. Then, looking at Baby Don and thinking about Mary, Christopher remembered. Baby Natassia.

  The memory of France hollowed him out like a bolt of nausea—he probably squeezed a bit, because the baby grimaced (Oh, baby) until Christopher’s hold softened again—but he resisted the urge to hand the boy back to his mother. Holding his son and remembering rosy, plump Natassia and what he had done to her, Christopher knew he was now a different man. He felt it in his arms first, in his hand full of the baby’s head, his other hand full of baby feet. Then he felt it in his heart, the deep conviction that his purpose on earth from now on was to help keep this boy safe. Though new, this emotion within Christopher was profound, as powerful as the surety of death, and it far outweighed any fear of himself that might make him want to run.

  He wouldn’t have been able to verbalize it yet, but inside himself Christopher knew he had done the right thing in helping Denise have a baby, this baby. He knew why he had done it, and he prayed that Nora would eventually understand.

  CHRISTOPHER STAYED at the hospital all day and into the evening. Five or six of Denise’s neighbors and her sponsor, Carole, visited. Then the announcement came over the PA system that visiting hours were over. “Okay, Denise,” he said, rolling her bedside table back into her reach. “Water pitcher’s full. TV remote handy. Call if you or Baby Don need me before tomorrow morning.”

  As he leaned over to peck her cheek and to kiss the baby’s head, Denise told him, “Well, buddy, we did it.”

  “Okay, Papa, let’s go.” A nurse was at the door. “Mama and Baby need their rest.”

  Christopher’s own exhaustion never hit him until he was back at the house, brushing his teeth and taking off his clothes. As he closed the venetian blinds, he saw how dusty they were. “Shit.” He wouldn’t have time to take them all down and scrub them. The baby was coming home tomorrow morning.

  CHAPTER 23 :

  DECEMBER

  1989

  The first thing Denise saw when she entered the house with her new baby was the framed photo of Don that always greeted her from the front-hall table as soon as she walked in the door. Husband. That’s what she used to call him, and now she said to herself, Husband, where are you when I need you? Just the short drive from the hospital had sapped her completely of all her goodwill. She’d been such a good citizen since she and the baby had come out of the surgery alive. Now, as Christopher was steadying her, walking her toward her living-room couch, she scolded him, “Don’t let go.”

  “No, no, I’m not.”

  For two days, as a new mommy on morphine, Denise had been happy, happy, happy, but since this morning, when she’d taken off the hospital gown, showered, put on underwear for the first time in days, and dressed in her own clothes, she’d begun to feel like a sick person. Within the regime of hospital life—with bars on each side of her bed, painkillers dripping into her arm, forbidden even to take a pee without help from someone—in the hospital, where so little was expected of her, she’d done fine. It had been a shock this morning when she realized they really expected her to go home within a few hours. And they were sending her home with the baby.

  They’re nuts.

  Christopher was doing more for her and her baby than anyone could have expected. But it scared Denise. He could leave at any moment. She had to be prepared for that. She had to believe that if he left—when he left—she and the baby would be okay.

  She didn’t believe that at all.

  Baby Don was in his bassinet in the living room. Christopher had just helped Denise take off her coat, helped her sit down. She couldn’t even do that alone. Pain was stitched tight across her abdomen. As a drunk, she’d been clumsy. Stitches in her skull once. Broken bones in her shoulder. Nothing, though, had hurt as much as this cesarean.

  Now here was Christopher again, his arms full of her suitcase and her junk, his face as excited as a boy’s. “How’s it feel to be back in your house?” he asked.

  “It’s so clean in here,” she complained. She’d never be able to keep up the good order he’d established.

  When he had put everything away and checked on the baby, he came and stood in front of her. “So, Mama, how do you feel?”

  “Like shit.”

  “Lie down, Denise. You really should be lying down.” Again, he had to help her, lift her feet onto the couch. She couldn’t lower her body without gripping his arm. Across the lower part of her abdomen, the incision burned, made her catch her breath.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Christopher said, “we forgot your belly pillow.” When he handed it to her, she grabbed it, the rolled-up-sheet cushion she’d fallen in love with at the hospital. She wanted that wad of flannel close to her right now more than she wanted her own child, who had begun to cry
with a shrillness that seemed to be focused directly at her, something he’d never done at the hospital.

  Christopher lifted Prince Charming. “You hungry? Hey, little bruiser, what’s up?”

  “Here,” Denise said, “give me.” Thank God that when the baby was in her arms her love locked back into place. “My baby guy, my tiny boy.” She covered his forehead with kisses, ashamed of the lapse of affection that had just shuddered through her.

  Christopher hustled around getting pillows, cracking jokes. It broke Denise’s heart the way he always smelled so good. Even after emergency surgery, three days’ hospital duty, and getting her house ready, his voice was still kind. Christopher hadn’t slacked yet, not once. She felt jealous of his consistent goodwill. She knew he had it in him to be moody, but he’d learned how to tackle that impulse. She didn’t feel worthy.

  Husband, I found us the right father. She’d found him, but she doubted her ability to keep Christopher from running away from her and the baby very soon.

  AFTER BREASTFEEDING for fifteen minutes, Baby Don still cried.

  “It’s not working, Christopher,” Denise said; then she tried to take the blame out of her voice. “I wonder if I’m doing something wrong.” Lord, grant me the serenity.

  “Well, the baby—it’s a big change for him, too, being home and all. No, you’re doing it all perfect. He’ll just need time. Listen, you need to eat. I’m going to make you lunch. There’re all kinds of casseroles and stuff in the freezer from your friends.”

  “Get me anything. I just realized I’m starving.”

  Half an hour later, with the baby still crying, still hungry, and not nursing well, Denise reminded Christopher about the casserole in the oven. When he lifted it out, he found that the dish had cracked.

  “Oh, shoot.” They had promised each other not to swear in front of the baby.

  “You didn’t put that casserole straight into the hot oven from the freezer, did you?”