“Thanks for that,” he says. “This is my second kid. And I happen to be potty trained myself. I can’t believe you talked me into letting you stay.”
He did let me talk him into letting me stay. Maybe it was the promise of another shoulder rub. Maybe it’s the fact that Mrs. Gottwald is still running a fever and Ezekiel’s nanny, due back today, called in sick. The guy is feeling overwhelmed.
“You’re feeling overwhelmed,” I say.
Mr. Gottwald lifts the baby and crosses the loft to some high windows that look out on a cobblestone lane, starts humming a lullaby, or not really a lullaby, but an ancient and soaring power ballad I recognize from high school days. Soon the baby’s wails turn to burpy moans. He’s nearing sleep. Good going, G.
We’re about the same age, I realize, maybe not that different after all, probably got drunk at the same kinds of Saturday night deck parties, pumped our fists at the same dumb arena shows, parked behind the Burger King and watched some version of unattainable beauty hand sacks of french fries into cars. So he went to college, business school, and I stayed parked behind the Burger King. So he got rich, got married, sired a child he sings to about steel horses, and I bounced around, took a chance at city life, fell into some jams. We’re still the same ordinary Joes, at least now, here, both of us just trying to cope.
“That song!” I shout. “I know that song!”
The baby jerks awake, bawls.
“Sonofabitch!” says Mr. Gottwald. His lower lip twitches up little droplets of drool.
I’ve seen worse. I’m seeing worse right now, namely Baby Gottwald.
Picture a red onion with a mouth that isn’t even a mouth, but more some kind of incredibly loud air horn used by Satan to signal his peons to mop up all the infernal poop and gunk that spills forth from his fiery pan-gendered holes as he gives birth to every evil in the world. It’s a lot to picture, I know, and some of it isn’t a picture at all, but you get the idea.
“We’re all going to die here,” says Mr. Gottwald.
“You’ve got to relax,” I say. “It’s a process.”
“You’ve got to be the worst fucking doula in the world.”
“O,” I say.
* * *
I’m washing dishes, folding up the pizza box, when Mr. Gottwald comes in and hands me his phone. It’s Monica Bolonik. I’m decertified. I guess it doesn’t require that much paperwork. If I remain on the Gottwald premises, Monica warns me, she will call the police. On the other hand, she adds, she may call the police.
“You have no jurisdiction,” I say, but Monica’s gone.
“So, that’s goodbye,” says Mr. Gottwald.
“Goodbye? Because of a lousy piece of paper? Did a piece of paper educate you on newborn care? Did a piece of paper keep all the balls of nurturing in the air?”
“Balls of nurturing?”
“Gentle now, guy.”
“What say we call it even,” says Mr. Gottwald. “What say you just leave and I don’t press charges.”
It’s hard to hear him because of Baby Gottwald, who hasn’t really stopped wailing since I woke him, but I think I get the gist. I get a better sense of it when Mr. Gottwald leaves the kitchen, comes back with a few throwing stars jutting from his fist.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I say.
“You came highly recommended. That woman Fanny Hitchens sent us a fabulous letter.”
Thing is, I’m touched by this, because I wrote the letter, and I guess I really nailed it, even got Fanny’s signature right, which is famous and appears on the jacket of her book.
“Why don’t you put that ninja crap away,” I say. “Press what charges?”
“Endangering the life of a child, for starters.”
“A child who, by his very definition, is endangered,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” says Mr. Gottwald. “Excuse me?”
“This life,” I say, and my arm does this kind of grand sweepy thing I’m not quite able to control. “This thing we so blithely and with a detestable dearth of gravitas call life, it’s not all cuddles and fluff, you know. It’s also, methinks, a boat. And so we must ask ourselves, who’s got the helm? Where’s the skipper? Doth a proper pilot dwell upon this heap?”
“What the fuck are you—”
“Here comes the dock! Look out, man!”
I Frisbee the pizza box at Mr. Gottwald, bolt. Mr. Gottwald and a squealing Ezekiel scramble after me, but I’m already there at the corner rack, the nunchucks up in full, fearsome bolo over my head. I slide-step over to Mrs. Gottwald, who shrieks, shields the baby. Mr. Gottwald assumes a fighting stance, cocks a throwing star behind his ear.
“Barry, don’t!” cries Mrs. Gottwald. “You’ll hit Prague!”
“Prague?” I say.
“That’s the baby’s name.”
“Prague?”
“We love the city. Now step away from my wife.”
I lift Mrs. Gottwald’s swollen breast from her nightgown.
“This is going to hurt,” I say, “but we’ve got to clear those ducts.”
I lean down, suck hard. Mrs. Gottwald stiffens. My arm is going dead, and I begin to sense the nunchucks, our invincible cocoon of buzzing wood, slowing down, but in a moment it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, the milk is sweet, drips thick in my mouth as Mrs. Gottwald’s hind ducts open and all that deep cream starts to flow and I am suddenly every tiny helpless thing that ever wanted nothing but to survive another hour in this foolish, feckless universe. I am one particular tiny, helpless thing, too, namely Mitch, mewling newbie Mitchell Malley, latched onto his lovely and exhausted mother, the mother of his alternate reality dreams, the mother who will welcome wounded dugs, exult in throb and split, the mother who will spurn the antiseptic credos of the medical-Madonna complex, who will love her little Mitchell no matter what fate forces him to become, who will cherish his butter-colored teeth and ratty (vintage) buckskin jacket.
I guess it’s probably a good thing that my true, non — alternate reality mother’s not around to witness this. How could she, though? She’s in Montana with Vance and Tina. She’s on life support, if I heard my sister’s message right, though a part of me is still convincing the rest of me that I didn’t hear the message right.
Everybody thinks I hate my mother, that all of my so-called shenanigans can be traced back to some primal trauma. But though I’m not a rabid Vance fan, I love my mother. Like I said, she did the best she could. That’s what I’m trying to do, too, as I raise my lips from Mrs. Gottwald’s nipple and press Baby Gottwald’s mouth there. The hungry worm starts feeding and Mrs. Gottwald groans sweetly and I get to work on the other breast.
“Zekey,” whispers Mr. Gottwald, “nine one one.”
“Did it,” says the boy in a faraway voice.
When Fanny was dying in her apartment uptown, I sat with her most days and nights. I’d hold her birdlike hand, not that her hand looked like a bird, it looked more like a very old and sick hand, but I’d hold it as she whispered the Wisdom of the Doulas one last time.
“Mother the mother,” she said. “Mother the father. Mother the room.”
“Nurture,” she said. “Nurture, nurture, nurture. Plus nature.”
“And remember, don’t spring for the pizza.”
Okay, that last one was mine, but what I’m trying to say is all I ever wanted was to carry on Fanny’s legacy, be part of a loving continuum.
There’s a thud in the pillar near my head. An iron star quivers in the wood. Now comes the sound of many men in non-nurturing boots. I can see them from the corner of my eye, padded black turtlenecks, batons. One stomps over, jabbing at the air with a weird-looking gun. He seems very judgmental.
My story won’t end here. I’ll start my own foundation, certify myself. The American League got a late start, but don’t they win their share of all-star games? No more forged letters from Fanny, either. I’ll find the families that need me, appreciate my craft. I’ll start with my building, Paula the Crackhead down the hall. There’s no question she’s knocked up, and I’d wager she could stand for a little doulo-style tenderness.