“That’s when we go to the hospital?”
“Is that what it is?” she asked quizzically.
“No, I was asking.”
“No, I call at ten minutes. I think that’s what it is.” She decided to lie down — but she couldn’t move. She suddenly felt convinced that if she kept still, the pains wouldn’t come anymore. But I want them to come, she argued to herself. I want to get this over with.
“Ten minutes!” he exclaimed, and walked farther in. His nervous energy had returned, his eyes flickering with schemes, irritation, plots, and feeling; emotion appeared on his face as though he were a transparent man. She loved him because of this quality, so different from herself; often she couldn’t show what trembled inside her even when she wished to. Especially happiness — the pleasant mask of her features would stubbornly resist being stretched into an ecstatic smile and she’d offend gift givers, lovers, praising parents with her content, but unexcited, face. She marveled at the rapid play of Eric’s feelings — drop a tiny pebble into the pool of his soul and watch the magic ripples appear, extend, and glide out into the world, spreading his joy or his fury. When she married him and kissed his pale face, drawn at the awesome prospect of eternity with her, and saw the color return while they danced surrounded by friends, she knew she could trust him; that when he stopped loving her, the sorrowful finale would reverberate on his face’s sounding board for everyone to hear. “Ten minutes!” he exclaimed again with worry and disapproval. “That doesn’t sound right.”
“Look in the notebook,” she said, nodding at the dresser.
He opened the steno book where she had written all the information they had been told by the doctor and the midwife at the childbirth classes. He hunched over to read, lowered his head, and stared at the words. “Ten minutes.” Eric was disgusted, as though he had lost a bet. “How long are they?” he asked, looking up at her.
“I told you — I don’t know. You’re in charge of timing them.”
He nodded and pushed his sleeve away to look at his watch. “When was the last one?”
“I don’t know!” she shouted.
“Sorry.” He put a hand up to deflect her furious words. He leaned against the dresser and continued to glare at his timepiece.
She laughed at the sight. He was capable of remaining in that position, awaiting her next spasm, for hours.
Eric ignored her amusement. “Ten minutes doesn’t seem like much time.”
Now she really began to laugh and then choke as she tried to talk: “It’s not — it’s not how much time there is — not how much before the—”
“I know that!” he protested, looking up. “But ten minutes apart can be only an hour or so before delivery.”
She shook her head no. He nodded yes. She repeated her negative motions, closing her eyes while she did, as if another contradiction would be too much to bear.
“Most of the time it’s much longer, but I read that sometimes, sometimes, it’s only an hour away.”
“That’s with second and third children.”
“What are we arguing for?” he squealed to the ceiling, his hands out in frustration. He went back to his watch.
“I can’t eat,” she said after a few moments.
“I don’t blame you,” he said with a grunt.
“No,” she corrected. Talking took too much energy. “I’m not allowed to.”
Eric picked up the notebook again and flipped it open.
“Only soup,” she said. “Clear soup,” she added, hoping to stop him from searching for information she already knew.
It didn’t. Eric leafed through the notebook deliberately until he found the right page. “Clear soup,” he said, as though this were the first time it had been mentioned. “Are you hungry? Do you want me to get some?”
“Get some?” she asked, baffled.
“Is that because of anesthesia?”
“Yes.”
“From the store.”
“I feel like I’m stoned,” she complained, and shook her head. “Is it me or you?”
Eric looked at her, smiling broadly, his big, wide mouth showing small, brilliant teeth. “It’s both of us,” he said, laughing. “We’re scared to death. I can’t remember the goddamn breathing, I can’t remember the name of our doctor, I can’t remember the name of the hospital — I can’t remember your name!” He pushed himself off the dresser and fell to his knees in front of the bed. Eric put his head on the bedspread next to her feet and stretched his long arms out with the weird extension of an ape. He stared at her thighs; his hands ran over her knees and then moved down to her feet. The strong fingers felt good, restoring sensation and warmth to her numbed and tired legs.
“It’s up to you, Bear,” she called down to him softly. “You have to help.”
He picked his head up slightly. His forehead crinkled when he raised his eyebrows to look at her. “Why? This was your crazy idea.”
“Liar,” she said pleasantly, wistfully. “I want clear soup,” she added with a smile.
“Do we have any?” he asked. “What is clear soup?”
“Plain soup — broth with nothing in it. Nothing solid.”
Eric sighed. He rose to his feet slowly and shuffled out, head bowed, shoulders hunched, his walk exaggerated to mimic a burdened old man.
He’ll be fine, she thought. Eric’ll be fine? she repeated, amazed. Why am I worried about him?
Please don’t let me die, she said silently to the ceiling, with no panic in her, just a simple request.
There was a crack running across the middle where there had once been a light fixture. We should have painted, she sighed, before the baby came. In her mind, once the birth occurred, they would be imprisoned in the apartment, their life and things frozen in place until baby left for college. She had tried, bolstered by the so-called nesting instinct, to make a few cosmetic changes in the apartment, but she had let so many obvious things — such as painting — go undone. She imagined there would never be another chance. Motherhood seemed so awesome from reading the books, a kind of tightrope act across the chasm of time from birth to maturity: tilt to one side and the child would be cast into the gloom of permanent trauma; lean in the other direction and the abyss of self-abusive permissiveness was there to swallow her. There couldn’t possibly be time left over for things like painting apartments.
Eric appeared again, a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup in his hand. “This?”
She nodded. “You have to strain everything but the soup.”
He listened to this seriously, digested it, nodding, and then walked back to the kitchen.
From the floor, reverberating through the bed, she felt the distant thunder.
Eric reappeared with the can of soup and a colander. “Strain it with this or with a strainer?”
The middle of her body went — seized by an invasion, the nerves cut from her brain’s control. She started to rub the shaking territory, quelling the rebellion, breathing out, counting.
“Oh, my God,” Eric said, and dropped both items. The colander clattered; the can hit with a dull thud. She glanced at the floor to see if it had burst. Eric rushed to the dresser where he had left the notebook and looked at his watch while his hand fumbled for a pen in his shirt pocket.
There was a piercing stab in her spine. “A colander is a strainer!” she shouted through the momentary agony. It was gone, a candle snuffed out, with no smoky trace of its fiery presence.
He was writing. “That’s what I thought,” he said good-naturedly. “Was that one bad?”
“Just at the end. It’s hurting my back.”
He paled. He had remembered from the classes, she knew, even before he asked: “You don’t think it’s back labor?” the way one might inquire if a lump was cancerous.