Full of Life

by John Fante

  “Now, now,” one of the nurses said. “No more of that.”

  I got to my feet and kissed Joyce.

  “He’s my husband,” she smiled. “Isn’t he a darling?”

  The nurses were not impressed. They fussed over her, tucked the blankets around her, and wheeled her inside.

  The door closed before me. The room was number 1237. That was a good omen, for it contained my lucky number. I looked at my watch. It was 11:05. I went down the hall, passing many doors. Suddenly there was a hair-raising shriek. It came from a room up near the elevator, the cry of a woman in pain. A moment later I passed the room from whence the scream had come. Behind the door I heard a whimpering and crying, as if someone wept with her face buried in a pillow. It was a plaintive, pitiful lament, and it kept me worried, for I knew that this could happen to Joyce too.

  There were two other fathers in the waiting room. They were exhausted men, their collars open, their ties hanging loosely. They looked like two men who had been in a bloodless, interminable barroom brawl. Sprawled out in leather chairs, their hair disheveled, cigarettes dangling from their hands, they paid no attention to me. I picked up a magazine and sat down. One of the fathers got to his feet and began pacing up and down. He smoked the tiniest of cigarettes, so small it burned his lips as he kissed rather than sucked it. Now the other father rose and began to pace too. Back and forth they paced, oblivious of one another, in a fury of caged walking, their foreheads wrinkled, each man trapped within the tensions of his own throbbing skull.

  Around midnight, the taller of the two nurses who had attended Joyce appeared in the doorway. With the look of beaten dogs, the two fathers set their bloodshot eyes upon her. But it was me she wanted.

  “You can see your wife now.”

  The two fathers looked at me with open mouths, watched me cross the room and go out the door. It was as if they had seen me for the first time, and were surprised that I had been in the room with them.

  I followed the tall nurse.

  “You mustn’t stay long,” she said. “Your wife needs rest.”

  Joyce lay in a hospital gown that tied up the back. Her hair had been combed in a tight high knot. There were handle bars at the head of her bed. She smiled, her face hot, fear jumping from her eyes. I took her hand.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Wonderful. I’ve had a shave and an enema.”

  “Are they good barbers?”

  “They did a grand job. You’re going to like it.”

  I was glad to find her out of the apologetic mood. But there was very little to say. We held hands, smiled foolishly, and looked at one another. The tall nurse opened the door.

  “You’ll have to leave now.”

  I kissed Joyce and stepped out into the hall.

  “How long will it be?”

  “A long time,” the nurse said. “Why don’t you go home and get some sleep?”

  “I couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Don’t be silly. The doctor won’t be here until eight o’clock in the morning.”

  “You mean—she’ll suffer that long?”

  “She isn’t suffering. And there’s nothing you can do here. Absolutely nothing.”

  But a man cannot simply walk off and leave his pregnant wife alone in a room. It seemed an unheard-of, a crass and heartless thing. Even if the nurse was right, tradition insisted that I remain.

  “I’ll stay right here to the end,” I said.

  The nurse shrugged and made her eyebrows flutter.

  “Once in a while we get a sensible father, but not often.”

  I went back to the waiting room.

  The two self-mauled fathers had been joined by a fresh man. He was older, clean-shaven, neat in a brown suit. He gave off sweet vapors of comradeship and understanding. The haggard ones found him a sympathetic listener. Each took the floor to explain his troubles. The first man said his wife had been in labor thirteen hours. “Thirteen hours and forty-two minutes exactly,” he said, looking at his watch. The older man clucked his tongue sadly. The other man put away his watch, sat down, grabbed his hair and resumed his agony. The second father wet his dry, cracked lips and his bleary eyes floated to the older man, who turned now, all kindness and wisdom, to hear his story. “My missus has been in there sixteen hours and twelve minutes,” he said with a self-deprecating smile. This gave him a three-hour advantage over the first father, who hung his head in shame. But if the second father had a momentary taste of victory, it was quickly snatched away by the calm, older man.

  “When Billy was born—he’s our oldest boy—Mrs. Cameron was in labor fifty-three hours.”

  Mrs. Cameron’s record time was so crushing that the two haggard fathers quickly lost interest in the kindly older man, who now turned his generous smile on me. But I had heard enough. These men were bragging, finding absurd consolations in their wives’ anguish. The nurse was right. I decided to go home.

  It was 1:30 when I got to bed. Out of Papa’s room came the whistling snores. He didn’t know Joyce was at the hospital. It seemed best not to waken him. I smoked a cigarette in the dark, and felt the fingers of guilt prodding me. Had I done the right thing? Maybe the tradition was sound. A man’s wife lay in labor: should he not stay awake and contribute some small measure of self-inflicted pain as a symbol of his willingness to participate in their common heritage? After all, the tall nurse had nothing at stake here. She reasoned like a cold scientist. And in years to come, would it not fill our child with chagrin when he learned that his own father had slept soundly as he made the perilous passage from the womb to life on the earth? I rolled and fretted, grappling with matters until three o’clock.

  Then a fine and noble memory came back to me. I hopped out of bed and pulled my overnight bag out of the closet. In the side pocket I found it, a faded bouquet of sweet basil tied with red ribbon. I could not remember all of Mama’s instructions. I could only recall something about hanging the bouquet from my bed. I fastened it to the crossbar of the headboard so that it fell to my pillow. Then I lay there, breathing its sweet and piquant aroma, and somehow it was the perfume of my mother’s hair and her warm eyes smiled at me, and I began to cry because I didn’t want to be a father, or a husband, or even a man, I wanted to be six or seven again, asleep in my mother’s arms, and then I fell asleep, dreaming of my mother.

  Papa wakened me. It was seven o’clock.

  “Somebody wants to talk.”

  I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to the phone. It was the hospital. The nurse informed me that Joyce had not yet delivered the baby, but that she was doing fine.

  “Is she in pain?”

  “There’s always some pain.”

  “I’m coming right down.”

  “I think you should.”

  Papa stood there, listening.

  “The baby’s coming, Papa. Any minute now.”

  The cigar trembled in his mouth.

  “Where’s Joyce?”

  “The hospital. I took her there last night.”

  I rushed upstairs and dressed. When I went out to the car, there was Papa, waiting in the front seat. We drove to the hospital and took the elevator to the twelfth floor. A nurse ushered Papa into the waiting room. White-faced and frightened, he watched me hurry down the hall to Joyce’s room.

  She lay in a small ocean of pain, the vapors of her anguish clouding the room. She lay upon sheets wet and writhing with perspiration, her mouth distorted, her teeth clenched, her eyes like balls of white milk. At first she did not see me, but as I closed the door she lifted herself out of the waves of her suffering, her fingers clutching the iron bar across the top of the bed as she pulled herself into a sitting position. The white balloon was like an enormous blister, shimmering with pain, too heavy for the wild strength in her bloodless fingers. She panted in exhaustion, her breath coming in harsh jerks through lips twisted in torment.

  Then she knew I was there at the foot of her bed. She saw me with startled eyes. My
heart went out to her in pity for the blinding pain. I could not find words of consolation, only the cliches, the adumbrations and traps of futile language, the miserable inadequacies. As I stood there with a dry throat, pain seized her. Her knees came up and an animal cry, scarcely more than a suppressed howl, came from her lips. It had rhythm and could be measured, a thin coiling ribbon of noise drawn through her teeth. When it was over and the pain had spent itself, she sighed gratefully and pushed back a mass of wet disheveled hair, her eyes fixed at the ceiling. Then she remembered I was there.

  “Oh, I’m such a coward!” she moaned.

  “You’re nothing of the kind.”

  I went to her side. The bed was built like a large crib, with adjustable steel sides. As I bent over to kiss her, I saw her red mouth, the lips thick with the sensuality of pain. I saw the white avid eyes and her suffering overwhelmed me. But there was passion in her mouth, and she clung to me with such ferocity that it took all the strength of my thick wrists to break her arms away. She loved me, she moaned, she loved me, loved me, loved me.

  Then the pains took her again, sending her rolling from side to side, her knees up, her fingers pulling at the bar above her, the ribbon of anguish spilling out. As the suffering subsided, the white eyes beat about me like captured birds, and the pain reached me too, and I got a terrible stomach-ache. It nearly doubled me up. I backed into a chair and sat down. She was watching me.

  “You’re sick,” she said. “This whole thing has been too much for you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Drink this,” she panted, and she reached for a glass of water on the bed table. But the pains leaped at her as her hand went out, and she twisted and rolled, pouring out the ribbon of noise from her throat. It doubled me up in agony, but I didn’t cry out, I just moaned as a crazy upheaval went on inside me, the pain of green apples.

  “Darling,” she was saying. “Call the doctor. I know you’re sick!”

  “Me? I feel wonderful.”

  But I could see my reflection in the wall mirror, and I was white and popeyed and disgusted and enraged with myself.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she gasped. “I’m doing wonderfully. The pains have stopped altogether. Look!” She held out her arms, smiling.

  As I turned to see her, the pains were upon her again, and she struggled, her eyes softened now, full of tears, and when it was over again she covered her face with her hands and wept softly.

  “Oh, God!” she cried. “I can’t stand it much longer.”

  I would have done anything for her, my two arms, my feet, my hands, my life, all of it I would have given to lessen one pang of her anguish, but there I stood, unable to endure a spasmodic bellyache that finally sent me staggering, doubled up, into the hall.

  Coming toward me was Dr. Stanley, and a nurse carrying a trayful of bottles and hypodermics.

  They looked at me without speaking. Dr. Stanley took a phial of pills from the nurse’s tray and tumbled one into his palm.

  “Take this,” he said.

  I swallowed it in a fast gulp.

  “My wife’s in bad shape, Doc.”

  They sailed past me into the room. I waited. My bellyache subsided. In a few minutes they emerged, the doctor rubbing his hands.

  “She’s coming along beautifully.”

  “I tell you she’s suffering terribly, Doc.”

  “Nonsense. She’s had scopolamine. She won’t remember a thing. We’re taking her to the delivery room.”

  When they rolled her out of the room and down the hall, I hung back at first, pressed against the wall, afraid my presence would disturb her. But as she floated past I saw that she was asleep. They must have given her something, for her eyes were closed and her face was transformed into an image of white loveliness. I walked down the corridor at her side. Once she moaned. It was the murmur of one who had achieved ineffable peace after hours in the storm. It brought peace to me too. Now I knew that all was well, that the baby would soon be born, and Joyce would be all right.

  I turned back to the waiting room. Papa sat in one of the big chairs, his arms folded, an iron silence holding him.

  “Soon now,” I said.

  “What?” he whispered. “Nothing yet?”

  “They’ve taken her to the delivery room.”

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  “They’re doing all they can.”

  This made him growl, and I knew he felt I was conspiring with the hospital to keep the baby from being born. He stared ahead, saying no more.

  A new crop of fathers sat in the waiting room, but their words were the same, the old wives’ tales out of the mouths of baffled men. I couldn’t stay there. Thinking of coffee, I left Papa in the waiting room and took the elevator to the hospital restaurant on the ground floor.

  The place was full of nurses, doctors and internes. I sat at the counter and studied the menu. But I didn’t want anything. In spite of everything, I was deeply worried. I walked out the side door to the street.

  It was a dismal morning, the fog heavy and warm. I lit a cigarette and followed the sidewalk around the hospital grounds. The path was lined with tall eugenia hedges, immaculately clipped, a corridor of green that led to a garden where a fountain sprayed water among big red stones. I walked around the fountain, and the spray kissed my face with cool lips. Through the mist I saw the outline of a Gothic door. It was the hospital chapel. Suddenly, inexplicably, I began to cry, for here was the Thing I sought, the end of the desert, my house upon the earth. Eagerly I ran to the chapel.

  Pax vobiscum! It was a small place, with only a crucifix at the main altar. I knelt as a tide of contrition engulfed me, a thundering cataract that roared in my ears. There was no need to pray, to beg forgiveness. My whole being lost itself in the deep drift, like waves returning to the shore. I was there for nearly an hour, and full of laughter as I rose to go. For it was a time for laughter, a time for great joy.

  Ten minutes later I saw the boy. He lay naked in the arms of a masked nurse. I couldn’t touch him because they were behind a plate glass window. He was pinched and ugly like a gnome dipped in egg yolk. With a mustache, he would have looked just like his grandfather. He shrieked as the nurse exhibited him. I counted ten fingers, ten toes, and one penis. Certainly a father could ask for no more. I nodded and the nurse covered his dreadful little body with blankets and carried him somewhere into the complex machinery of the great hospital.

  Then they wheeled Joyce out of the delivery room. She was very tired, smiling heavily.

  “Did you see him?” she whispered.

  I squeezed her hand.

  “Don’t talk now, darling. Sleep.”

  “It was wonderful,” she sighed. “No pain, nothing.”

  She closed her eyes and they wheeled her down the hall.

  Papa was standing at the window in the waiting room. I put my hand on his shoulder and he turned. I didn’t have to say anything. He began to cry. He laid his head on my shoulder and his weeping was very painful. I felt the bones of his shoulders, the old softening muscles, and I smelled the smell of my father, the sweat of my father, the origin of my life. I felt his hot tears and the loneliness of man and the sweetness of all men and the aching haunting beauty of the living.

  I took him by the hand and we walked down the hall to the desk of the chief nurse. He covered his eyes with a red bandana into which his tears poured, and as he stood there crying, I told the nurse he wanted to see his grandson. He did not look at her, but his anguished joy was more than she could bear.

  “It’s against the rules,” she said, “But…”

  We followed her through swinging doors, Papa’s hand in mine. She disappeared and a moment later she was on the other side of the glass, her face masked, holding the baby. Papa did not see the baby, for his two hands in the red handkerchief covered his eyes, but he knew the baby was very near, and he was struck with reverence, as if afraid to look upon the face of God. Even if he had raised his eyes, he would not have se
en the baby for he was blind with tears. After a few moments the nurse took the baby away and I led Papa down the hall. He cried until we reached the car. The ordeal had drained all his strength. He was in a kind of stupor as I drove home, his head against the car seat, his hands limp in his lap.

  “I want to go home,” he said.

  “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “To San Juan. To Mama.”

  I looked at my watch. “The San Joaquin Daylight leaves in an hour. It’s a fast train.”

  “I’ll get my tools. You take me to the depot.”

  We drove on in silence. Gradually his strength returned. I parked the car in the street, before my house. We got out and he paused there to study the high peaked roof, the arched doorway.

  “Good house,” he said.

  “Floor sags a little.”

  “Pooh. Don’t mean nothing.”

  “We got a few termites.”

  “Everybody’s got termites.”

  “But nobody’s got a fireplace like mine.”

  He grinned and lit a cigar.

  “It’s a good one, kid. Plenty room for Santa Claus to come down the chimney.”

  “Papa, you know that piece of land near Joe Muto’s place? You think I should buy it?”

  “You stay right here and raise your family,” he said.

  We entered the house and I could hear him singing as he packed his things.