Late at night he sat with the cats at the bar in the basement, sipping another glass of wine and taking one-shot hits of marijuana. Upstairs, in the bedroom, she waited. If he held out long enough, she’d be asleep. Tomorrow was her teaching day. He’d only have Max, laundry, bills to pay, dishes, Sarah to amuse after school, dinner. He could walk around in a fog if he had to. Do you really need to do that? Lauren had said when he slid toward the basement.
The bar—which they hadn’t touched since moving in—had a mirrored back bolted onto black glitter board. THE CAPTAIN’S RULE IS LAW, declared a sign nailed to one of the cabinet doors, COCKTAIL HOUR ABOARD: 7:00 A.M. TO 6:59 A.M. DAILY AND SUNDAYS. He swiveled on the pink stool. He loved this bar. He pushed himself off and reached behind the counter and brought out a pack of light cigarettes. He and Elizabeth used to shoplift LifeSavers together from the Acme on Woodbine, when he was six and she was ten. In a hideout by the creek, they’d re-count their loot and divide it. Ten years later they planned an elaborate tour of Europe together. They took a train all the way from Germany to Greece, boarded a ferry to an island, climbed steps to a white villa, purchased rooftop accommodations for fifty cents each. When he was in college in New Jersey, he visited her once every few weeks in New York, where they ate and drank in tapas bars and he pretended that he liked her friends from work. One New Year’s Eve they dressed up and went to all the parties, told everyone they were each other’s dates. That kind of crap.
Before he was born, an uncle whom he would be named after lay dying of cancer, his brain growing mish-mashed. Close the Venetian blinds, he’d ask, when he meant: Turn off the television. His wife, sweet faced, utterly gentle, attended him. They were childless. “A man as sick as I am,” he managed to say once, quite clearly, “does not tell his wife his thoughts.” What did that mean? Martin now wondered. Regret? Bitterness? Hatred? What would be left between him and Elizabeth if he stood beside her a last time? Would all the accrued memory feel something like mercy, or was mercy the release from exhaustion and pain? Couldn’t denial—the instinct that even as you slipped under you still might emerge again—be merciful? Was grace acceptance or wishful thinking? He wanted to know. He couldn’t know.
He drew on the cigarette, in the mirror watched himself fill with smoke, then clouded the basement. The cats snarled and chased each other over stalagmites of toys. “Mel,” he warned. “Chance.” They ignored him. “Are cats smart?” his mother once asked him, after a weekend of baby-sitting while he and Lauren had visited London. “I mean, they don’t come when you call them.” “I don’t know,” he’d said. “Well, I don’t think they are,” she’d said. He’d scooped up Max and sat at the kitchen table. They’d arrived only a few minutes ago. “Daddy,” Max said, “I miss you.” “I missed you, too,” he said. “I missed you terribly.” “Daddy,” Max said, “I miss you tewibly, too.” The boy put his damp face into the hollow of Martin’s neck and rested there.
Now he crushed out the almost-whole cigarette and looked at himself in the bar back. Past midnight and he was alone. Past midnight, and upstairs she slept. In London another day had gone by, there was another day to get through. He couldn’t imagine what it was like.
You keep trying, is what you do. You listen to the numbers when they’re good, and ignore them when they’re bad. You do flushes and decide that the pieces and chunks and stones in the toilet bowl afterward are the it of it coming out. You let the shamans and healers take you wherever and however you can. You lie to yourself. You tell yourself the truth. You touch his hand whenever you can, you follow the crease of his collar to the soft belly of his throat, you crumple his earlobes between your fingertips whenever he comes in late from a course or a meditation and you tell him how glad you are that he is growing in all this. You get up every morning and go after it. You try not to call everybody all the time. You stay within yourself. You get out of yourself as much as possible. You deny the self. You are all self. You swim in a flood of meditation, constructive reading, and organic vegetables. When he’s left you for another night of Epiphany or yoga and you can hide it from yourself, you sneak a bite of chocolate, a slice of steak, a dab of pâté, a sip of wine, hours of television. On the Internet you surf the humor sites and send a selection every Monday to the e-mail list of your mother, brother, sister, cousins, old colleagues, friends. You crawl into bed every night and hunt for pockets of energy that you forgot to burn. You lay awake long after he has fallen asleep. You use the toilet six or seven times. You wonder what God will look like. You listen, breath held, for the phone to ring and then you will answer it and the voice on the line will say whatever you most need it to say. There’s been a mistake, and you don’t have what they told you you have. Or, You’re going to be a mother. Or, I love you, we love you, everyone loves you. Or, You can rest now. Go ahead now, rest. And then you will. Although for a few minutes after the phone still hasn’t rung, your heart will beat too rapidly, and sweat will trace its way along the lifelines of your palms and in the creases under your knees. And then you will. You will rest. It won’t be a rest like the rest you used to have, if you can remember what that felt like. It will be a rest from which you will wake unrested and hoping to discover that it’s all been a dream, just a mistake, just a nightmare. The dream is the tremor of the it in you, and the sleep around the dream is as shallow as the bed you are in, and you wake—what?—almost disappointed to find that you are still alive and that you haven’t arrived at some new, daring, dazzling, endless world.
Later still, he found himself swaying in the kitchen, feeling for the phone, opening the refrigerator and dialing in its light. Her voice. How are you’s. Questions about the kids, how she missed them and loved hearing stories about them and would he please please please send some pictures or a video. Stuff they always said.
“I want you to know we’re thinking about having a baby for you,” he heard himself say. He’d had more than he could count and he looked at his near-empty glass, puzzled by what he’d just offered.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Elizabeth said incredulously.
“Isn’t it—” He gulped the rest of the drink. He’d forgotten he’d switched to vodka. Not much resistance there. Maybe if he’d chosen scotch he could have shut himself up. “—What you want.” He fucking wished he could put the phone down and yet he noticed how exhilarated he was beginning to feel.
“What?” she said. “What?” She lowered her voice.
“A baby,” he said, his voice brimming and spilling over. “Lauren wants to. You know. Have it for you.” He reached for the bottle. “It’s not like we could adopt it for you and give it to you. But we figured, you know, with Richard … Lauren could … the whole artificial thing. We’re thinking about it.”
“But I never asked you,” she said. “I mean this is fantastic, it’s so selfless. Idealistic. Overwhelming. Definitely an out-there idea. But. Can I speak to her?”
“She’s asleep.” His words were slurred. “They’re all asleep.”
“You’re very weird,” she said.
“Just thought I’d let you know.”
“But you are so good to me,” she said.
“I know.”
“I know you know, but I need to say it.”
“Umm.”
“Should I tell Richard?”
“Just that we’re thinking about it. Just tell him that.”
“Call me tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay.”
He hung up and staggered up the dark stairs. What had he done? What had he done? Boy, that was stupid. Boy, was it dumb.
“I heard you,” Lauren said.
She was sitting up in bed.
“You oughtta be asleep. It’s after two.”
“Now we have to,” she said, “if she wants to. If they want to. Which is fine with me. But now we really have to.”
“Okay, okay.” The room was turning a little. So that was how much he’d drunk. He was a drunk idiot. “Can I get some sleep? I just want to sleep.”
He couldn’t even get out of his clothes, he was that tired.
“It’s fine with me, you know,” she said again. He felt her touch him on the shoulder. “You knew I wanted to.”
“Uh-huh.” Now his face was in his pillow. Now she’d be quiet. Now he could get a little sleep. And after, he could start hating himself.
ANTHROPOLOGY
So you’re going to do it?” Martin’s mother said, her voice filled with disbelief and even perhaps awe.
“I guess so.” He heard his own hesitation and tried to ignore it. “I mean, I said we would. Of course we will.”
“Well,” she said. She paused, swallowed. Every time he talked to her on the phone she seemed to be eating. She swallowed again. “Even if it doesn’t happen, I’m proud of you two.”
That was unbelievable. That was unheard of. In his entire life he’d only heard that once from his parents—from his father, when he and Lauren had bought the house. That had infuriated him, it was so … so full of a kind of middle-class mind-set. This time was different. It scared him.
“Of course, I also think you’re crazy,” she said.
“Thank you,” he said.
He set the phone down and sat at the black desk in their bedroom, in the corner between the windows. Outside, the A.M. kindergarten was having their recess. He knew when the first grade was out and the second grade and the third grade, when Mrs. Lowe ran other outdoor activities, what time of the day she climbed up onto the flat roof and threw down all the lost balls, when she began to gather the bases and bats and hoops and put them in the metal pushcart to wheel inside. Often when Sarah’s class was out, he would watch by tipping back his chair. Some days she stood flat against the brick wall and sucked on the loose strands of her hair, other days she ran around aimlessly, unable to decide which group to join or unable to find a group that would have her, and sometimes she led her own pack of kids and he was happy for her. He couldn’t remember when he began hating recess, when he saw how slow and uncoordinated he had become compared to everyone else, when he wasn’t growing as fast. Lauren had told him she’d been the same. The whistle blew and the A.M. kindergarten raced to their yellow-paint marks at the curb.
He turned to see one of the cats gnawing at the corner of the bed frame.
“Git!” he shouted. It scampered. Hard to tell which one it was, they both looked exactly the same, one the mother, the other the son. But the son was twice as large. He wondered if they had sex. He and Lauren hadn’t, since his declaration.
Then the phone rang, and it was the hospital calling, apparently to tell Lauren that Richard’s stuff had arrived. “Just have her call us,” the woman said for the second time, after Martin had prodded again for the reason for her call. He left a message on Lauren’s voice mail.
“Richard.”
It was her calling him. It was him calling himself. Wasn’t he asleep? Didn’t he have to get in early tomorrow? Didn’t he have another evening course?
“Richard.”
It was her. “What?” he said. “What is it?”
“I am,” she said. “I am feeling better. A lot better.”
“I know.” He reached and held her hand. She was sweet. She was brave. She still should have told Martin and Lauren about the last tests. They should know. They should know everything if they were really going to inject his swimmers in her. Hard for him to believe, actually. Maybe they wouldn’t. They probably shouldn’t.
“I’m going to call that guy tomorrow,” she said. “Or today.” She laughed. “Whenever.”
“What guy,” he yawned. It was impossible to keep up with all the people she had to see and all the people there remained to see and the pools and pools of unknown people that she hadn’t even dipped into yet. It was quite a little industry, all these people. Not that they weren’t good. Even the guy with the pendulum who dowsed their house pinpointed the exact reason why all the food molded on the western quadrant of the kitchen counter. Elizabeth found and went to only the good people, only the people who charged a small fortune, only the people who weren’t covered by their insurance. Not that that was a problem. It wasn’t a problem. It was just making them skint, was all. Now he was waking up. He didn’t want to know what time it was. It wasn’t time.
“That ayahuasca guy,” she said forcefully.
“Oh.” He was all for that guy—he was offering some kind of medicinal hallucinogen. It sounded kind of fun. It sounded like it could be an opening. He was all for openings. None of this closing-you-down nonsense. There were lots of openings left. She still looked pretty great. Just a bit of a slide here. “I’m all for that,” he said.
They squeezed hands.
“I’m afraid I really have to get some rest, sweets,” he heard himself murmur. “Epiphany again tonight, you know.”
“If we all go through with this,” she said, “which room do you think should be the nursery?”
“Whichever you like.”
“Orange or yellow or peach?”
“Don’t know.”
“I think I want to get up,” she said.
“Sweets.” From his point of view it was just too soon, yet here she was, keeping him up another night, or dragging him from sleep, or whatever was happening. She had to speculate—which kind of nappies, which kind of formula, which kind of ointment, which kind of changing table, which kind of crib, which kind of carpet, which kind of window dressing, which kind of wall clock, which kind of night-light. He’d always wanted a child, and when he saw that they couldn’t, he’d wanted them to have as much comfort and pleasure as possible. Now there was little of either, and they might after all have that baby. It was actually kind of exciting. Cripes. “Sweets, I can’t do this again,” he said.
“I’m not asking you to.” She was already out of bed and pulling on her robe, the one her sister had given her for the wedding shower in New York. He’d thought those were awful days, in that tiny condo with the sole window onto a brick wall. He hadn’t known what an awful day truly was. “I’ll be in the kitchen,” she said.
When he finally got up and jammed himself into his slippers and pulled on a sweater and sighed down the stairs, it was just past four o’clock and she was sitting at the kitchen table moving around cut-up pieces of paper on a larger sheet of paper. One of the pieces was marked CRIB, another DRESSER, a third CHANGING TABLE, a fourth ROCKER, a fifth PLAY TABLE.
“What are you doing?” he said.
She barely looked up at him. “The nursery.”
When she finally did turn from her work, he saw her skin was again tinging yellow and the wells around her eyes were even deeper and darker.
He touched her shoulder. “Look,” he said, “you need to take care of yourself.”
“I know,” she said.
“You need to sleep, Elizabeth.”
She shrugged off his hand. “I don’t want to sleep too long,” she said. Her shoulders shuddered. She moved a piece off the sheet of paper entirely. “I’m so tired,” she whispered. “Nearly all the time. I need to do something.”
He rubbed her back.
“Really clean out my system.” She was teary.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He knelt and put his arms around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder. “Whatever you want.”
In the late afternoon, from work, he called their house. Lauren answered.
“I … I wanted to thank you guys. It’s really wonderful what you’re thinking of doing,” he tried.
“Richard? How are you? Your—your package arrived yesterday,” she said.
“It’s actually a little bit of a mess,” he said.
“What? What’s going on?”
“There’s something you both need to know, that Elizabeth couldn’t bring herself to tell you on the weekend. Her last tests weren’t terribly good. Just now she hasn’t been feeling her best.”
“I think we knew that.”
“She’ll probably have to go away for a while. She’s got some things she needs to wo
rk out.”
“And?”
“Well, you know, if you want to delay your … you know … I’m sure that would be fine by her.”
“Do you not want the baby?” she said softly.
“Of course we want the baby. It’s just, we can’t be hiding anything from you, is all.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she said.
“I’m not. We’re not.” He ought not to have called, but he was glad to hear how dead set on it she was. “What you’re doing, it’s remarkable. Wonderful. It’s a real gesture of… love. I guess I should run. Work and all. Thanks.”
“We’ll call soon,” she said.
He replaced the phone, looked at the computer monitor. He really should have said something more. Mr. Not-Terribly-Present (wasn’t that how Elizabeth’s mother referred to him?) getting a last go at lineage. The little inlaw baby. Nothing too horribly wrong about that. He should have told Lauren something about all the ways they had tried to get pregnant, but Elizabeth had said it was better just to let it play out, that this was a real chance. Lauren would probably think he was pushy. She’d probably think he was getting cold feet. She’d probably think he was wary of being more tied to that whole uptight family. So odd how it was all about reproduction and nothing about sex. So odd how they’d spent a small fortune trying to determine their own way in this, and then these guys parachuted in with hormones and a turkey baster and suddenly it was a whole new day. So odd how involved and outside of it he was.
It was his teaching night, and after the artificial insemination procedure at the hospital, she alone fed the children and bathed them and read to them and put them to bed. Max called for another story, then called for water, then called for a half cup of dried Cheerios. Sarah lay in bed for an hour reading, and at lights-out continued to read in the dark.
“How do you do that?” Lauren asked her, standing in the doorway.
She shrugged. “I just do.”
When Sarah was finally asleep, Lauren poured herself a glass of wine—the doctor said it would have no effect—and set it on the counter, then gathered the cats and carried them one by one into the basement. Sometimes at night she could hear them all the way from the bedroom, knocking over piles of toys and colliding into the wood paneling. She shut herself in with them and went to the basement bathroom to refill their water dish. When she turned the water on, the faucet shot up and chunked against the rafters and the water sprayed from the open line. She was instantly soaked, and the water did not stop. She snatched up the faucet and through the rush of water tried to screw it back into place. It shot up again and ricocheted off the ceiling. Below the sink the only valve was connected to the toilet bowl, and when she turned it, it did nothing. Now she was standing in several inches of water, and it had spilled out into the rest of the basement. She shouted up the stairs, hoping that Sarah would hear her, but no sound came from the upper floors.
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