I realized that I really did want to be where I was—with Stash, in this hovel. I ran through all the parts of my life, trying to figure out which thing in particular wasn't working for me. I supposed I could get a nose job and take one of those courses that teaches chutzpa. (I had read the leaflet on it in the supermarket.) But would this make me a more spiritual person? I doubted it. It was hard for me to keep up with all the various aspects of reality. Finally I figured it out: I wanted a baby.
Obviously, based on this evening and others like it, I wasn't meant for any glamorous night life or fast lane, but I would be a good mother.
I pictured myself with a giant Buddha baby with a fat belly, a shock of blond hair, and a surprised expression. I would give it baths in a basin and wheel it around the block in a little go-cart, speaking to the other mothers. Stash could take it to openings strapped on his back. I had often seen men doing this in art galleries and nightclubs. Finally, when it grew up, it could tell me how wonderful I was. Stash and I would finally be bonded and we could have a joint checking account and I wouldn't have to be so worried about finances. These weren't such great reasons, but what counted was the unconscious level—the feeling that something was missing from my life, and I had finally guessed what it was.
I went out into the bedroom—anyway, the end of our apartment where the bed was. "Listen, Stash," I said. "I've been thinking. You're middle-aged, and I'm not so young, either. It would be a good time to have a baby. We've been kidding about it for a while, but let's be serious." Looking at him, I knew our baby would be cute, though if it inherited Stash's chest hairs and my head hairs it would practically be a gorilla. There wouldn't be one hairless inch.
"What are you, drunk?" Stash said. He was lying on the bed, watching a Frankenstein movie on TV, Andrew alongside him. "You can't bring a baby into this world. At least not in the city. Didn't you hear the news before?"
"I was brushing my teeth."
"This forty-nine-year-old widow was walking down the street and all of a sudden a forty-ton crane toppled over and hit her. She was pinned under it for more than six hours, partially crushed, just like that. That's why you can't have children in New York." Stash looked as if he was ready to kill me. It was hard for him to believe that a person could be so stupid. I knew I irritated Stash in the same way that my brother used to irritate me when I was kid. Roland's foot tapping used to send me into a rage, I would start to scream at him when he wasn't even aware of what he was doing. Now I knew what it was like to be the source of irritation, without being irritated in return: I looked at Stash with the same puzzled, hurt expression that my brother had when I lashed out at him for no good reason.
"I'm taking the dog out," I said. "Come on, Andrew." Andrew shot up and plunged up and down at my feet. Every time he went out he acted as if he had been locked up in a kennel for a year. His whip tail slashed my legs. Unfortunately, this was the only time he ever paid any attention to me, even though I had been with him since he was only a year and a half old. He was Stash's dog. I had worked hard to make him love me. He was wearing a collar I had designed just for him— plastic dinosaurs, turtles, and square, varicolored rhinestones which I had attached to the leather with little grommets. I had done all kinds of things for Andrew. I decorated him, sometimes with baseball caps, sometimes with slogan sweatshirts I cut down from Woolworth's boys' department, and once I painted additional spots on him with food coloring. Well, Andrew wasn't the brightest of dogs, but he did have a sense of humor and a certain dappled elegance.
It was late at night, and I didn't bother to put him on the leash. He sniffed the stunted trees and the metal signposts with the utmost of delicacy, as if he were rooting for truffles. A fishy wind blew off the Hudson. Stash was probably feeling guilty and would be nice to me. Probably I had made the right choice. If I had gone off with Samantha and taken drugs I would have shifted into higher gear, but how long could I keep that up?
"Get over here, Andrew," I said. I wanted to go upstairs. "Hurry up." Of course he wouldn't move. He was deaf when he wanted to be. I gritted my teeth, annoyed. He went on calmly rooting as if I wasn't even there. The rotten animal obeyed Stash, but not me.
Finally he followed. The elevator was broken and we had to walk up seven flights. I'm not in such great shape. Believe me, I'd like to be one of those women with all the muscles, but frankly I don't like the idea of doing all that work. Once I took an aerobics class—I thought it would give me more energy— but every day I had to come home after class and sleep for a couple of hours.
When we made it back to the apartment Stash was standing near the window with a funny look on his face. "You wouldn't believe what just happened," he said.
"What?" I said.
"A transvestite and a john came over to the bushes under the window. Well, I don't want transvestites and tricks in our courtyard. So I went to the sink and took the spaghetti pot and dumped the water in it onto them. A direct hit!"
I started to laugh, involuntarily, but I stopped. "Stash," I said.
"Well, I didn't know that there were things in the pot," Stash said. "I really was mad and I just dumped the whole soapy contents out and I didn't realize there were some spoons and a bowl in it."
"My Russel Wright dish!" I said. "Stash, how could you do such a thing?"
"What do you mean?" he said. "You were out there with Andrew. Something could have happened to you. I wanted them to get the idea they can't come around here."
"What happened when the water hit them?" I said.
"They just walked away, shaking their heads."
"You could have killed someone," I said. I felt very badly for the transvestite: she was just trying to get along in the world and had ended up covered with soapy, greasy water, spaghetti water, and would probably be freezing cold for the rest of the night.
"The bowl hit the trees, it didn't hit her," Stash said.
"It's not your job to throw water on people," I said. "You should either have yelled something to get them away, or called the guard."
"I did feel sort of demonically possessed when I did it," Stash admitted. "What do you want? I'm only a mindless Neanderthal." I could tell he would have liked to have undone it as soon as the water was halfway down, but it was too late, as had been demonstrated in another age by Galileo, who threw some stuff off the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I suddenly wished I could go back to school and take physics again; I knew this time I would understand it. The notion of random particles, random events, didn't seem at all difficult to comprehend. The whole business was like understanding traffic patterns, with unplanned crackups and hit-and-run accidents. Somewhere I read that increasing the rate of collisions between positrons and electrons will result in interesting "events" that physicists can study. Quarks, quirks, leptons, protrons, valance electrons, tracers, kryptons, isotropes—who knew what powerful forces were at work? I saw how emotions caused objects to go whizzing about. If I had gotten into the limousine earlier that evening I'd be in the same mess, only in a different neighborhood; at least in this place I had love, a feeling that came at a person like a Dodgem car in an amusement park, where the sign says proceed at own risk.