Paul, who despite my protests insists on sleeping in the basement behind a sheet pinned to a clothesline and so tends to stay out of our hair, as it were, would probably not partake in the col-loquium anyway, as he has more serious things on his mind than prickly domesticities. Just before Rita arrived for her Saturday visit to cook and clean a bit and then take me away for a night, he departed as he does each morning for St. Jude's Hospital, where in the preemie unit his son and my grandson, Barthes Tae-jon Battle, all 4 pounds 8 ounces of him, sleeps inside a clear plastic boxed crib. Twice a week I'll make the trip with him, but of course he goes every day, sometimes returning home and going back at night, and from what I can see and hear talking to the nurses, he has the same routine each day. He'll stop by the cafeteria first and get a large tea, and if the baby is sleeping or in a state of "quiet alert" he'll read aloud from the pile of books he brings in his knapsack, hours and hours from volumes of poetry or novels or the literature-studies journals containing critical es-says of Theresa's, these last of which I can hardly understand but like to listen to anyhow in the same way I suspect the baby is not knowing but still listening intently, the purely plucked tones of Paul's calm writerly voice like an incantation, like a spoken dream. He'll read until the baby wakes, and then rock him and play with his unworldly tiny fingers and toes, small and tender enough to appear nearly transparent, hardly seeming to qualify as bone, and then get the boy suckling from an equally diminutive bottle, which the kid has always taken to quite well, vora-ciously in fact (indication enough that he's ready for Battle).
Whenever I'm accompanying, Paul will hand him over to me for a stint, and though without fail I'll play the ham-handed dolt for the cute, hefty nurses there's zero chance that I don't know what I'm doing. When I cradle his body in hardly two hands it seems to me I'm holding a refinement rather than something premature, too young or too small, a perfection of our kind that needs no more special handling than an unwavering attention, which m ght be object lesson enough. Each time I'll examine him closely, and note that his pixie face is distinctively un-Caucasian, not much of a beak to speak of, the eyes almost like stripes in the skin, and the only thing that makes me pause for a half second is not that he doesn't look anything like me, which is how it has to be, but that I can't quite see his mother in him either, not yet, anyway, as he is an exact replica of the infant Paul's parents have shown us in pictures from his baby album. But maybe it's better this way for Paul and the rest of us, and that she's somewhere there, but not there, maybe mercifully good that in this one expression she's presently demurring.
But then the sweet runt will cry out (more like intensely mewl), or loudly crap in his diaper, and know some opinion's afoot. For some weeks now the baby has no longer been aided by any breathing apparatus or fed intravenously, but for another couple weeks will still be monitored round-the-clock for steady vitals and the right mix of blood gases and sugars. Then, if all looks cheery and flush, and he puts on weight with the formula, Paul will finally bring him home.
Naturally, the all-agreed-upon plan is to ensconce Paul and the baby in the master, jack and Eunice to sleep on the pullout in the family room for however long it takes for the second master bedroom addition to be completed, which by then should be close.
Jack has been directing the construction, the final project in the books for the venerable firm of Battle Brothers Inc., est. 1938, and which promises to be a sizable loss. But no mind. I told Jack to build it the way he wants, with the grade of finishes that will make him and Eunice happy and comfortable, and that whatever Richie Coniglio couldn't slush into the larger write-off of the business, I'd absorb. Jack, however, has done the whole job straight off the shelves at Home Depot and Lowe's, Eunice ordering the sale fabrics and furnishings from Calico Corners and Pot-tery Barn, the sort of floor-sample fancy just about anyone should be able to appreciate, and certainly counts as deluxe for me.
On this score I'm damn proud of Eunice, for it seemed like she was constantly wincing at the start of construction as she flipped through the catalogues of mass-produced and marketed items but is now (perhaps with regular bathroom duty on her mind) celebrating availability and easy-care use as her primary design considerations. She was pretty depressed to have to move out of their house at Haymarket Estates (Jack found a Danish corporate executive on assignment to take a three-year lease on the place for $6000 a month, fully furnished, which will cover the mortgage and taxes plus), but she's no dummy and as Theresa said is genuinely devoted to Jack, duly remaking her bed minus all the silk shams and throws. The plan, I suppose, is that they'll use the time to regroup and reload and maybe in three years return to the château, assuming Jack is back earning. But I'm hoping things will go well enough here at our busy little ranch and maybe they'll have refigured their aims and priorities and decide to stay on longer, just renting their mini-mansion out again. The truth (which I'm sure Jack and Eunice already know) is that the chances of Jack's making the kind of dough he was paying himself are as slim as some homeowner adding a 20 percent tip to a Battle Brothers contracting invoice, and why I was the one first championing the bedroom addition, to make it as easy as possible on them to stay, my secret plan being that not too far down the road Jack will take over the house permanently and still have room for their kids and Pop and Paul and Barthes, and that I, with whatever luck is left to me, will find my closing digs elsewhere, such as Rita might desire.
Slim chances there again, champ.
At least this is what Pop tells me after lights out. With the kids in the third bedroom, we're bunking together, the space between our twin beds just wide enough that we can't simply reach over and nudge/hit each other. This is a good thing, I suppose.
The other night he was snoring again with such a tortured, bes-tial rage, as though his body were trying to force his tonsils out through his nose, the wracked growls alternating with nearly minute-long cessations of breathing (Rita says it's sleep apnea), that I had to toss a slipper at his hulking mass, and wake him.