The Birthing House

'Because I don't want you to.'

'Why not?'

'I don't want to say it.'

'Say it, or so help me I will drive there tonight.'

'I can't stand you right now.'

'Nice, Jo. Real nice.'

'I need space.'

'What does that mean?'

She wasn't crying. Not even close. She sounded like a woman he had never met.

'I'm not coming home and I don't want you to come here because I don't want to see you. Do you understand?'

'Ever? What the fuck? Jesus, who's in your room, Johnny Depp? Does he have, a what, a fucking earring, too?'

She didn't say anything for fifteen seconds. Was she trying to make him suffer? Make him go off?

So be it.

'You don't want to see me ever again. You're leaving me, the dogs, the house? And what is this, "I can't do this right now" shit? Are you thinking about having an abortion?'

He'd never even thought of that until just this second and now it was like a neon sign in his brain - SHE'S GOING TO KILL YOUR BABY - while he stood here in a fucking birthing house. If she did not answer soon he would start screaming and not stop until someone jammed a needle in his arm.

'You bitch--' he started, and then she did scream. No, it was yelling. Like his father speaking at some terrible hoarse volume, controlled and therefore twice as scary.

'You fucking asshole! Are you out of your mind? I'm pregnant with your child! I just moved across the country with you because you decided to buy a house without even asking me! I'm in training for eight weeks, I miss my home, I miss my dogs and, yes, until tonight, I missed you. I can't deal with work and being pregnant and your insecure bullshit about one stupid night that I passed out after talking - TALKING - to your friend. So, no, not now, do you understand? '

'I'm sorry,' he croaked.

'I'll be home in five weeks and then we can worry about whether or not we have the baby, but right now I am trying to follow through on a commitment and I NEED TO GET THROUGH THIS ALONE!'

The same sexless voice said, 'Do you want me to go?'

'No,' she said.

'Who's that--'

'Night, Conrad.' She hung up on him.

So arrived the night that Conrad Harrison learned, to his utter amazement, that there are certain times you don't want to see a young woman's breasts.

As Big John showed him the plants to be watered, the windows to shut when you ran the a/c, and the ladder and tools for the gutter repairs, Conrad felt something was eating the big man - something other than the hope his wife was packing in her Samsonite. Like, for instance, leaving his obviously troubled and not at all unattractive pregnant daughter with an older male he hadn't had time to get to know over bocce and a six-pack.

Conrad did his best to ask questions and nod his head with a vigor that suggested he was memorizing all this just fine, thank you, no need to write it down. The truth was, all of Big John's directions were going in one ear and out the other. He was still obsessing about Jo. Someone had been in her room.

'I want to be clear on the roof access here.' They stopped at the end of the second-floor hall facing the street. Conrad was staring off into space when Big John slapped him on the shoulder. 'You still with me, bud?'

'Yeah, sorry, John. Been a long day.'

'You got that right. Now, when you go out to clean the gutters over the porch, do not attempt to use the ladder from the yard. Because it is not long enough, and you will fall and break your neck and then Gail will never let me hear the end of it.'

'Right. No ladder.'

'I don't expect you to do the top gutter - there's only one and I'm pretty sure it's clean - but if you do get a wild hair up your ass, bring the small ladder up here, use the ladder into the attic, open the front-attic window. Using a broom you ought to be able to reach anything on that last stretch of roof, but I repeat. Do not crawl outside of the attic. That little patch needs new shingles. Unless you want to do a Greg Louganis into Gail's ferns, stay inside, got it?'

'Of course,' Conrad said.

There was an unlatching sound as the bathroom door opened. Nadia exited wearing a navy blue towel around her waist like a man in a locker room. Her damp blonde hair clung in sticky whorls to her frost-white and drip-drying back. The curves of her wagging hips held the towel low, revealing the dimple above her butt cleavage as she crossed the hall to the linen closet.

Conrad sucked air through his teeth.

She didn't see them standing in the hall until her father barked, 'Nadia, for goodness' sake!'

Nadia did a half-pirouette, covering her breasts with one arm as she looked over her shoulder and scowled, her eyes darting to Conrad and back.

'Daddy, you scared the crap out of me,' she yelped, slipping through her bedroom door at the end of the hall.

Conrad looked away . . . too late. Before the dewy daughter had made her escape, he'd glimpsed one heavy breast squeezed up in the hook of her arm. True, all he spied within the fold was pale flesh (by chance the nipple had been sheltered), but the exposure of the stretch-marked topography of her pregnant belly and milk-laden (bosom, they were called bosoms or teats back then!), breasts set off an uncomfortable male charge between father and neighbor.

'She thinks she's still living in her damn dorm room,' Big John said.

Conrad kept his eyes averted. He didn't want Big John thinking he was a willing participant in this impromptu peep show.

'They got steers and heifers sharing showers up the school. Can you imagine what that's like?'

'Oh, yeah, they do that now, I guess,' Conrad said, legs literally shaking.

'Well, that's pretty much the whole shootin' match, anyway. Let's go see what Gail's gone and zapped for ya.'

As they moved down the hall, the soapy smell of the girl rode out on a wave of shower steam and settled upon his neck, mingling with the beads of sweat, and he entered the kitchen with a cluster of stubborn girl molecules working its way into his pores.

Gail handed him a plate of angel hair pasta with home-made pesto that burned his sinuses. Conrad ate standing over the kitchen counter while Gail wrote down the emergency phone numbers. He saw Steve Bartholomew's name and another he did not recognize. As he was leaving, Gail gave him at least three more hugs and thanked him.

'No, thank you,' he said, light-headed from the meal, the girl.

'What for, putting you to work?'

'For making me feel at home.'

'Aw.' Gail tilted her head in sympathy. He hadn't meant for it to come out that way. 'You miss her.'

'I don't know what I was thinking letting her go.'

Nadia Grum.

MySpace. Her space.

Pink and black frames, looping cursive text for font. Blank spots popped to life while cell phone snapshots of the girl next door looking younger and not yet pregnant filled the screen: with her friends in the woods, standing on a car, on the football field, in her bedroom, sitting on the bed, a bandana on her brow. Hugging various girlfriends, their faces plastered with clown make-up. Nothing gratuitous, nothing revealing, but he was transfixed. The candor with which she displayed herself and the details of her life made him feel like a creep. He learned more about his neighbor in fifteen minutes than he learned about high-school classmates he had known for three years. No wonder parents the world over were terrified.

In a box decorated with flowers and hearts, guitars and guns, her profile:

Her cliche answers and trumped-up confidence were empty calories, leaving him hungry for more. The most pressing questions - Who is the father of your baby? How has the pregnancy changed your life? What are you going to do now? - would have to wait.