“You did that beautifully,” comments Franckline, who is at the couch now, removing its cushions and stacking them at the foot of the bed. “Try leaning over these next time. They’ll take the weight off your wrists.” She buckles on the fetal monitor — it’s past time, she says — and offers Lore a cup of ice chips. Lore fishes out the slivers to suck on, touches her forehead with her cold, wet fingers. The universe cannot be good. A good universe could not include the forcing of her child half inch by half inch down the birth canal, its soft head squeezed misshapen by the hugging walls; could not include her own grotesque and agonized prying-open. These last months Lore has often woken in the morning aware of some fearsome fact she cannot quite place. She has groped uneasily until finally, with a stab of fear, she remembers again: The baby will have to come out. It will have to come out that way. She has showered and put out the things for her breakfast — toast, jam, one scrambled egg — in an attempt to blur with the ordinary facts of the day the distinct, inconceivable truth.
Sucking now, numbing her mouth, she draws a drop from an ice shard, holds it like a cold jewel, then swallows. Suck, hold, swallow. Time slows to this rhythm, the pull of her tongue, the slow warming of the drop. Nothing can happen while she sucks and holds, holds and swallows. How clever of her — to slow time, to make it wait. She pokes at another chip and pops it into her mouth. Her limbs are already forgetting the pain. But Franckline says, arranging the cushions, “The baby is determined now.” Franckline seizes time by the scruff, shakes it out of its stupor, sets it going again. She seats herself on the bed. “It wants out.” The clock on the wall has moved forward only a minute, to Lore’s alarm and outrage. The baby froze her face coming out.
What was that? Who said that? Lore smells leaves burning in old metal trash cans, sees opaque skies heavy and wet around a brick school building. Tricia. She has not thought of it in years. It was when she and Tricia were in fifth grade. Tricia was telling about her big sister. Her sister’s mouth and eye were pulled down forever on the right side, because the sister’s baby had crushed some nerves coming out. That was how Tricia explained it. That side of the mouth and the eye would never move with the other side again. Lore saw the sister once when she dropped in for a visit, and the face was worse than she had imagined: it looked as if the still side had been smashed in a door. But Tricia said her sister said it was all worth it to have gotten Ryan, who was now three years old and knew his whole alphabet. Tricia made up a game and insisted that Lore play it: What was a baby worth more than? Was it worth more than your leg? Your eyesight? All the money you could ever get?
“It wants out,” says Franckline again. But why must you repeat yourself! cries Lore silently. It, he, she — who are you, tiny destroyer, tiny suffering thing? When the sonographer asked her at twenty weeks did she want to know the sex, she said no. Let the child retain its mystery, she thought, let it be free for a while longer from life rushing in, however well-meaning, with its dreams and plans: a bow in the hair, ballet lessons, a red fire truck. She, he, it. A student she had three years ago, a second grader whose parents were Senegalese, was called Soleil. A dreamy boy who could not distinguish between his “th”s and his “d”s and who drew wonderful pictures of million-windowed buildings poking high into the sky, stick figures in every window: waving, laughing, boxing, dozing. It seemed a beautiful name for a child, boy or girclass="underline" the sun that rises to give warmth and light, a ball of burning fire.
When he learned of the baby, Asa left his messages. Lore got rid of the answering machine, deleted his e-mails without reading them. Helen Fox, Asa’s mother, whom she’d always liked — formidable Helen, with her white hair and her work editing thick books on sociology and anthropology, who’d once put her veined hand on top of Lore’s and said that Lore made Asa happy — Helen sent checks to her at P.S. 30, with notes in her tiny handwriting pleading with Lore to phone her, to be in touch, to say that she was all right. The checks tempted Lore, but they also humiliated her, and she threw them away. She’d wanted to reply, but what could she possibly say? That Helen had been her other mother, the one who survived? The one who taught her things about history and dance, and whom she’d liked to imagine making a grandmother? She had pictured that preoccupied, severe face broken up in fond smiles. Lore was the one who would cause that to happen.
If Asa wants to speak to me, Lore thought, he will find my address and come in person, he will take the dreaded 7 train that Manhattanites hate to take, and he will wait for me. Eventually he appeared. It was late September; he sat on the steps of the three-story building where she now lived. When he stood up he was somehow less imposing than he had been six months before. She would have said he’d lost weight except that in fact he looked bloated. She’d always liked Asa’s size, the bulk of him, liked being with a man bigger than herself — taller and broader and even denser, it seemed. His largeness and solidity pinned her more securely to reality, made her feel more there. But now he looked hollowed out.
The evening was mild and windy; they watched a man parked near her entrance get into his car and drive away. Asa spoke carefully, evenly — he was greatly agitated. He said that she might not believe him but he’d come around to being happy about the pregnancy; he’d always wanted them to have children. She had been very wrong to keep the news from him. Naturally he would be financially responsible. More important, he would be a father to whatever degree Lore would allow. He would be part of the baby’s life. He would ask nothing and give anything — except that he would not give up Julia. He kept his eyes on Lore’s belly. Lore, frightened, felt him in fact capable of loving this child he had not chosen. What a temptation, to feel Asa’s love, just a little, through that.
“It’s not your child, Asa.”
“Yes, it is. It’s as much mine as yours.”
“I’m saying it’s not yours. When you were in San Francisco, I went out one night. I met a guy.”