Fetal Position
“Tell me why.”
The doctor wore no nametag. He stood over Rudy Teague, shaking a handful of sunflower seeds in his left hand, occasionally popping a few into his mouth.
“I need to lay on my side,” Rudy said. “Please.”
The doctor, younger than the rest of them, shrugged. “Tell me why.”
“God, please. I just — my stomach itches and I can’t reach it this way. It’s driving me crazy.” A funny phrase to use, since Rudy’s hands were tethered to his sides, his legs slightly apart so his ankles fit in the strong canvas stirrups at the bed’s foot. A dark gray strap kept him from lifting his head.
“I think you’re lying,” the doctor said.
“No—”
“I don’t believe you.”
“What the fuck does it matter? Why can’t I lay on my goddamn side?” Tears, sweat, and snot sluiced down Rudy’s cheeks, painfully tickling his ears and adding to the stains on the yellowed bed sheets. His belly itched like a son of a bitch. He just wanted to lay on his side. That was all. They could truss him up like a hog if they were so afraid of him. He didn’t care. Just so he could lay on his goddamn side. He felt his navel grow red and swollen like a tiny puckered mouth waiting to suckle.
The doctor sighed. He tilted his head back and tossed in a few more sunflower seeds. He looked thoughtful as he chewed and swallowed them. Then his voice softened, his tone lowering an octave. “Don’t you want to see your son?”
All of Rudy’s muscles constricted as if he’d been hit with a jolt of electricity. He began to hyperventilate.
“Mother,” he hissed. “Mother…”
The doctor dragged a heavy wooden chair over to the bed and straddled it. He popped a few more seeds into his mouth and chewed. He placed the back of his right hand gently on Rudy’s cheek, leaned down to his ear, and whispered, “Tell me why.”
Rudy calmed slightly. “Because—” He spat out a bubble of snot that had collected between his lips. “Because it’s my goddamn birthday.”
Exactly one year before, Elaine was seven months pregnant as Rudy drove over the freshly plowed two-lane highway to his mother’s house. Snow piled high on the shoulders, and the sky was a harsh crystalline blue. The shadow of the minivan wavered alongside like a parasitic phantom.
Rudy almost reached over to push the long dark hair out of his wife’s eyes, but decided not to wake her. She looked so beautiful sitting there. He hoped it wasn’t a mistake bringing her along, but he no longer had any choice. The time had finally come.
Elaine shifted in her seat. “What’s bothering you,” she asked, startling Rudy. She rearranged the pillow behind her neck.
“Nothing. I thought you were sleeping.”
“Every time we go to see your mother, you’re like this. What’s the deal?”
“There is no deal.” He switched the radio on and fiddled with the tuner until an oldies station came in, the static making all the old crooners sound like they sang around mouthfuls of crushed glass.
When they pulled into Catherine’s driveway it was already dark, the maple trees lining the long driveway gaunt and brittle. Her house was a large old colonial, the porch lined with wicker chairs turned upside down. Even though it was early March, Christmas lights still hung from the gutters, the red blinking bulbs like tiny pinpricks in the light blue paint of the exterior. The forlorn silhouette of an artificial Christmas tree stood still and quiet in the living room window.
Rudy took a deep breath. “Ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Rudy knocked first, then opened the door. This was the house he grew up in, and it always felt a little strange going back, as if all the years he’d spent as an adult were an illusion. It was like time was a cord that had twisted back upon itself.
Catherine hovered over the kitchen sink, her bony, wrinkled hands full of suds. She looked up from the dishes and cleared her throat. “Rudy. Elaine. I didn’t hear you come in.” She dried her hands on a dishtowel and hugged Elaine carefully around her protruding belly. “It’s so good to see the both of you.” She coughed lightly into her fist and frowned. “I have an apple pie in the oven,” she said, motioning them into the living room. “Make yourselves at home.”
Already, Rudy didn’t think he could handle this. Catherine kept the thermostat high and he felt he’d suffocate if he didn’t get some air. He jerked his thumb back toward the door. “I’ll get the bags.”
Outside, he leaned against the minivan and gasped, the air like cold nails hammered into his lungs. The urge to race back inside, grab Elaine and drag her the hell away from there nearly overwhelmed him. How could he tell her? Even while they said their vows less than a year ago, even as he leaned over to kiss his new bride, he knew this day would come. He’d have to tell her the truth about Catherine, about the secret he shared with his mother.
“You can do this,” he whispered, watching his words disappear into the raw night air like an apparition. “You can do this.”
He opened the van’s side door and grabbed hold of their luggage, yanking it out into the cold.
When he re-entered the warmth of the house, suitcases in tow, he felt better. Catherine kneeled in front of Elaine, patting her belly. She leaned forward and put her ear to it, her head bobbing with a slight tremor. “He’s coming along just fine.”
“He?” Elaine laughed hesitantly. “Is there something I don’t know about?”
“Oh. I thought—” Catherine looked up, her gaunt cheeks coloring slightly. “I’m just guessing, of course.” She rubbed Elaine’s belly in a soothing circle. “But everything is fine, yes?”
“So far, so good.”
Rudy watched his mother. Catherine glanced up at him and smiled. “It’s going to be fine,” she said, and Rudy knew she wasn’t talking about the child floating peacefully in Elaine’s womb.
“I’ll take these to our room,” he said.
Catherine slowly stood, her joints popping. “I’ll slice up some pie.”
Rudy placed the suitcases in the guest bedroom, then walked as quietly as he could up the stairs and over the creaky wooden floor to the room he’d occupied as a child. There was a single bed in the corner covered with a blue quilt Catherine made for him when he was five. The top of his old dresser served as a runway for numerous model airplanes. Maps of different countries hung on the walls, and an open closet door revealed a heap of dirty old sneakers, above which hung the stiff wool suit he wore at age eleven to his father’s funeral. Rudy remembered the way the collar had scratched unbearably at his neck.
Above the suit was a plain wooden shelf. He reached up and felt to the back of it. At first he thought perhaps his mother had moved it, feeling only clumps of dust and distressed wood, but then his fingers felt the small wooden box he was after. He pulled it out and blew dust off the top, revealing his name he’d carved long ago with a Swiss Army knife.
He lifted the lid; reached in and pulled out what looked like a thin delicate rope. He handled it gingerly, making sure not to break it, then gently placed it back in the box before closing the lid.
“What’s that?”
Rudy swirled around, his mouth gone dry. Elaine stood in the doorway, watching him.
“It’s nothing. Just something I made when I was a kid.”
“Can I see it?”
Rudy held the box out to Elaine but kept his fingers tight on the lid.
“I’m impressed.”
Rudy pulled it gently away from her. “We better go have some of Mom’s apple pie if we don’t want to upset her.”
“I wouldn’t want to upset her.”