The Residue Years (16 page)

The infant attraction ain't new. That's always been me, the one who turns colicky babies into cooing machines, who attracts the little ones like the North Pole magnetic pull. My mom said it's cause I got a good soul, that babies can see though your blunders and masks right into the maw of you, but little multisyllable, he must not sense my intentions, the visions I've had of discarding one last life.

A duo manages the front desk, a twosome I'd bet not more than a few years removed from bittersweet sixteen, one of them
wearing earrings big as bracelets, the other with a set of flushed cheeks. Kim says she's thirsty and sends me to the cooler. She swigs what I fetch as if dying of thirst. Meantime, my nerves are straight anarchy! How, I say to myself, how, self, did we ever end up here? I ask this knowing full well the answer: Last week she asked what I had planned on this day at this time, knowing good and motherfuckin well I don't plan much of nothing outside of school, then said, Well, since you're not busy, why don't you come to the appointment? She granted me all of a nanosecond to grab a wispy excuse (I didn't) before ambushing me with one of those two-part gold medal questions only a half-wit botches: Don't you care about me? Are you concerned with our baby?

And let it be known for the lifetime ledgers, I may be a whole bunch of things, but believemewhenItellyou, a superfool ain't one of them!

Well, not always. Well, not then, at least.

Still, a baby don't calibrate with me, not now, and maybe not ever, which is why these last few weeks I've been wrecked, one of those freeway accidents it makes you shiver just to see, which is why I've spent whole days consumed with finding just the right thing to say, just the right time to say it.

Let's talk

Speak.

Are you sure?

No, I'm not.

Then we should wait, babe.

You think so?

No, I know so. Timing.

As I said, Mom's a Mother Teresa type, magnanimous as they come, but me benevolent? In a world remade to my selfish specs,
just that easy, Kim would concede, lay her aquiline cheek against my chest, and have a different kind of appointment by day's end. But who am I supposed to be fooling? This is the first time
ever
she asked me to attend a visit, the first time
ever
that appointment wasn't at a clinic besieged by around-the-clock picketing, the first time
ever
we've treaded anywhere near a second trimester.

Translation: These are desperate days.

Urgent days indeed.

I don't know how it is where you're from, but around here, the words
planned pregnancy
might as well be some kind of next millennium Martian language. Around these parts, it ain't but three types of men:

Dudes who didn't want to be fathers and made convincing cases otherwise.

Dudes who didn't want to be fathers and got bulldogged into becoming them anyhow.

Dudes who didn't want to be fathers and pulled Copperfieldish escapes before or right after their baby's birth.

A nurse steps half in, half out of the lobby and calls a name. The pregnant woman labors out of her seat and totters with her charges trailing her. I watch the new foursome disappear.

Look at that. That can't be me, Kim says. I would never do this alone.

How do you know she's alone? I say. Could be the dad couldn't make it. Stayed in the car. This place ain't exactly male-friendly.

You see a ring? she says. Where was the ring?

One has to know when is when and when is now, so not another word from me. Instead, I grab a magazine. The cover girl is a pregnant girl wearing a bikini. She's posed with an arm above
her belly and another near her navel and her smile's a normal smile on narcotics. This is the kind of picture that misleads, that makes pregnancy seem like one glorious journey for all parties involved. I peek up from the cover and see another couple enter, the man carrying a detached car seat, AKA a walking, toting sign.

As if I need one.

Every week she announces what's new: He's got a brain and spinal cord; by now he's got hands and webbed feet; he's not an embryo anymore, he's a fetus. Updates I'm guessing are meant to beguile, but instead keep me awake late nights, staring at the swell of her belly, the broadening of her dark areolas, that, many-a-night, have shot me out of bed in sweats, my heart sailing like a souped-up metronome.

Right, my silly ass should've seen this coming.

Right, my silly ass didn't see this coming. After she'd broke it off with her ex, after she and I began claiming one another (I shouldn't have to tell you what a big step that was!), she duped me with that line of questioning that has sent many a believes-he's-keen young skirt-chaser hightailing for an exit. We were at the open-air hot tub spot where I'd taken a few prime prospects, drinking white wine from smuggled plastic cups.

Are you the type of man to leave after the chase? Is this all about a challenge? she said.

No, not at all, I said. I really like you.

You do? she said. How long does that last?

Saecula saeculorum, I said.

What's that? she said.

Forever and ever, I said. To the ages of ages.

And peoples, let's admit that line sounded real slick, ultra-suave
if I do say so myself, which I do. And where I'm from, the suavest shit you ever said to a chick is a superhero's superpower.

Kim rummages in her purse and I scan the office playing the game where I imagine lives for absolute strangers. The guy in the mesh hat was a high school football star stiff-arming his way to the NFL till word leaked of test scores even a D-1 coach wouldn't fix. Now homie hangs drywall to pay the rent and scrimps all year for fishing trips. The chick in the corner answers phones at a downtown dentist office, drives a minivan, cooks her husband two unappreciated meals a day, and sends him to work with a slapdash sack lunch and, every season or so, a shot of half-ass head! The female by the cooler is a former coed who volunteers at shelters and spends her weekends rock climbing, kayaking, hiking the Cascades.

I'm just about to dive on someone else when another nurse pushes through the door and calls Kim. We follow the nurse to a scale in the hall and afterwards to an empty waiting room, where Kim climbs on the table and kicks the shoes off her swollen feet.

Have you started prenatals? she says.

Yes, Kim says.

Great, she says. Concerned today about anything especially?

No, not that I can think of, Kim says.

The nurse checks the rest of her vitals, marks them in her chart, and sets the chart on the counter. She fishes a gown from a top drawer and tells us the doctor will be right in. Kim strips, folds her pants and top, and gives the neat stack to me. She turns in the mirror in her bra and panties and it reminds me of the cover girl. Before this, seeing my girl in any degree of naked would
excite me to off-the-Mohs-chart stiffness, but today she inspires not even a tingle. She puts on her gown, unhooks her bra, slips out of her panties, and I'llbedamned still nothing.

Why are you so quiet? she says.

There a law against quiet? I say.

You aren't any other time, she says. Why now?

Let's not do this here, I say. Not now.

You almost don't hear the doctor come in. The doc's got silver hair above floppy ears but most noticeable is that he's huge. I'm talking retired-hooper-big, alien hands and feet.

How's my favorite patient? he says.

Hey, Doc, she says. I'm great.

And you must be Shawn, he says. I've heard good things. Good, good things. Doc seems intent on turning my fingers to mush, waits waaaaaay too long to let me loose. He stoops to tie a faded off-brand running shoe, and a thatch of surly chest hair sprouts from the V of his V-neck. He picks up the chart and reads. Okay, okay, okay. All is well, he says. You're a few pounds off weightwise, but no worry.

So, Shawn, he says. How're the studies?

Good, I say. Pretty good, I guess.

Looking forward to the Christmas break? he says. You two have any plans for the holidays?

Just dinner, I say.

Nice, he says. I love holiday meals. So, Kim tells me you finish this year. Have you decided on a grad school yet?

Not yet, I say. Not sure about grad school.

He gazes at me through what must be the clearest Aryan blue eyes in the hemisphere. You should make that a surety, he says.
You know a bachelor's is just the start these days. Besides, this new life will need an example. Gorgeous girlfriend, new baby, you are one lucky young man, my friend. He stuffs his hands (it's miraculous they fit) into a pair of rubber gloves. Enough about school, he says. Let's have a look at that uterus. He turns his head and slips under her gown. Ahh, this feels like ten weeks, he says. Feels like eleven weeks, he says. Maybe twelve.

Sixteen weeks, state law, twenty-four if there's a grave risk to the mother. This kind of info is everywhere in those cheerless clinics. We last visited one not enough months ago. I dropped off Kim, gave her a knot of fifties, and, with a tornado whipping my guts into a FEMA site, waited some safe blocks away. They called for pickup, and I drove to the clinic's back lot, where a frowning woman wheeled Kim down a ramp and helped me load her into the car. Kim grabbed my arm before we left. That's it, she said. That's it and I mean it. No more.

Doc snaps off his gloves, trashes them, marks notes. Well, we're far enough along, he says. How'd you two like to hear the heartbeat? Kim, of course, says we'd love to, and while the doctor is gone, she puts on her pants and inspects herself in the mirror. She catches me gazing. In truth it is half at her and half at what could be the rest of our days.

Please tell me why you don't seem excited, she says.

You're excited enough for us both, I say. But I don't know.

Don't know what? she says.

About this, I say.

You are
not
sayin what I think you're sayin, she says.

Life has options is what they preached in my old youth program, but to keep it all the way funky, options are forevermore my trick knee.

But like I said in so many words, maybe my affliction's a product of genes, biology.

Dude was a magician, my biological pops, showed up when Moms was in labor but when it came time to sign the birth certificate: POOF! For the better half of my life the nigger was a hocus-pocus Harry Houdini. But check it, don't throw me no pity parade, nor chasten Pops too tough. There's no doubt at all a third baby in less than a year was not, if dude had any, part of his plans; plus, with the efficacies of Big Ken, there's a chance things worked out fine, finer, the finest.

The silence is an overripe piece of fruit between us yearning to be split wide. Let's talk, I should say, gash the gushy quiet right down the center and seize this fleet-footed moment before it puts on track shoes and sprints off.

They've told me for most of my life that my life is optionful, but what they should've said was this: You've got a choice, youngin, till you don't.

Doc tugs in the Doppler (it's a machine resembling an oversized CB), and tells Kim to lie down. He spreads gel over her taut belly and circles it with a wand. He turns a knob and the room fills with a
swoosh-swoosh, swoosh-swoosh
.

Now, there's a healthy heart, he says.

We listen. The light in her face says it's an all-around charm for her. It's a charm for me as well (how could it not be, this living being that we made?) but also a dread.

Doc kills the Doppler, scrawls more notes, tucks Kim's file under his arm. You be sure and take good care of her, he says. You be sure and take great care of her.

No hype, there might be a curse in how hard he slaps my back.

My girl sits up, yearns her head at me. Her eyes could spark flames.

Say it, she says. Go ahead and say it.

There are options. There are choices. There are chances. There are last chances. There is the last chance of the last chances—the end.

Outside, a hall scale clanks, a baby wails, someone calls a name.

Look, I'd like to believe that about mines, about the one who'd burst squalling and splashing into the world, that we (me and you, you and I) could bet breath, that I'd be no spine-chilling or mind-bending nothing, no part voila or poof, not one scintilla of abracadabra alakazam.

Or would I be?

Or would we all?

Can I ask a question?
—Grace

Some people are latecomers to themselves, but who we are will soon enough surround us.

Kim stands back. She's wearing pajamas and an apron over them that reads CHEF. STAND BACK. She wishes me a merry Christmas and helps me with my bags—the gifts and desserts. Soon as my hands are free, I hike for the bathroom, where I run the sink till the water steams and run my hands in the hot stream and rub my hands on my face to unthaw. When I come out, she's laid my desserts on the counter. She stands by the stove with a rolled bundle under her arm. She snaps it open, shows off an apron that says NUMBER ONE CHEF.

How about that? I say.

I've been making holiday dinners since Mom was alive, and I wonder when was Kim's first dinner, how much she knows about these kinds of meals.

I should get to it, I say. Or we'll be eating at midnight.

Don't you need help? she says. I was hoping I could help, she says.

Later, I say. I do my best work alone.

Don't mean to exclude but what could she know about the frying or baking or broiling, what it means to season with heart? Go
ahead and rest while I get things going, I say. She skulks into the front room and sprawls on the couch and powers the TV (the screen's so big the actors are life-sized!) and raises the volume to a level that might peeve the neighbors. Champ lazes in a commercial or so later wearing long johns with his hands dug in his crotch. He stoops by Kim and whispers in her ear and she sits up and shakes her head. He calls me into the room and I take seasonings out of the cupboard and follow him. He mutes the TV and throws his eyes, those big innocent eyes, from me to Kim, from Kim to me. Kim has something she wants to tell you, she says. We have something we'd like to tell you, he says. He pushes Kim closer and takes my hand and lays it on her stomach. Feel, he says. Can you feel it?