The First Bad Man

CHAPTER NINE

All the women in Clee’s birth class were in their twenties or thirties, except the teacher, Nancy, who was my age. Whenever Nancy referred to what obstetricians were like twenty years ago, when she had her children, she would look at me; it was impossible not to nod in agreement, as if I were remembering. Sometimes I even chuckled ruefully with Nancy, and all the young couples would smile respectfully at me, a woman who had been through it and now was supporting her striking but sadly single daughter. We were given color-coded handouts to refer to during the birth in case we forgot how to time contractions or what to visualize for relaxation. We learned how to push a baby out (like urinating), what to drink in labor (Recharge and honey) and eat after birth (your own placenta). Clee seemed to be feverishly recording every little detail, but a closer look at her notebook revealed pages of bored loop-di-loops.

In the last trimester the musculoskeletal and hematopoietic systems completed themselves and Clee stopped moving. She lowered her immense body onto the couch and stayed there, wanting everything to be brought to and taken from her. Princess Buttercup.

“Remember what Nancy said in birth class,” I warned.

“What?”

“About how important it is to stay active. I’m sure the baby’s parents would appreciate you not watching TV every second of the day.”

“Actually, this is their favorite show,” she said, turning up America’s Funniest Home Videos. “So I should get the baby used to it.”

“Whose favorite show?”

“The baby’s parents. Amy and Gary.”

She laughed at a dog walking around with a can stuck on the end of its nose.

“You’ve met them?”

“What? No. They live in Utah or somewhere. I just picked them off the website.”

It was called ParentProfiles.com; a woman from Philomena Family Services had sent her the link a few months ago.

“Why Amy and Gary?” I clicked through pages and pages of clean, desperate couples. “Why not Jim and Gretchyn? Or Doug and Denice?”

“They had good favorites.”

I clicked on their favorites. Amy’s favorite food was pizza and nachos, Gary’s was coffee ice cream. They both liked dogs, restoring classic cars, and America’s Funniest Home Videos. Gary liked college football and basketball. Amy’s favorite holiday tradition was baking gingerbread houses.

“Which favorite was your favorite?”

She looked over my shoulder.

“Was there something about ducks? Scroll down.” She squinted at the screen. “Maybe that was someone else. Gingerbread houses — I like those.”

“That was the deciding factor?”

“No. But look at that barn.” She touched the image in the masthead.

“That’s a stock photo — it’s on every page.”

“No, that’s their barn.” She tried to click on the barn. “It doesn’t matter, they’re already official.”

“You e-mailed them?”

“Carrie did, from PFS. I don’t have to ever meet them.”

She’d really done it. Forms had been filled out.

“Did you go to an office and sign papers?”

“Carrie e-mailed me a thing. I did it all online.”

A snail was crawling up the bookshelf. I put it in Rick’s bucket.

“Did you put who the dad is?”

“I said I didn’t know. There’s no law that says I have to say.”

I clicked on Amy and Gary again. They looked nice, except for Gary. Gary looked like he was wearing sunglasses even without them. A cool customer. I clicked on “Our Letter to You.” “We realize this must be a tremendously difficult time in your life. The love and compassion you are showing for your child are immeasurable.” I looked at Clee.

“Would you say this is a tremendously difficult time in your life?”

She looked around the room, checking to see if it was.

“I think I feel okay.” She nodded a few times. “Yeah, I’m doing all right.”

I frowned with pride. “That’s the hormones.”

I was good at this. I was a good mother. I wanted to tell Ruth-Anne — it was agonizing that she didn’t know. But maybe she did. Maybe I was still under her gaze somehow. I tucked my hair behind my ears and smiled at the computer.

“Go to Grobaby.com,” said Clee.

I fingered Embryogenesis. “We should get through the musculoskeletal system. Wouldn’t want to skimp on that.” But she was due in three weeks. Even with no guidance her body could probably finish it off from here. I clicked on Grobaby.com. “ ‘Talking, singing, or humming to your baby is a fun way to bond during pregnancy. So warm up those pipes and get your Broadway on!’ ”

“What if you don’t want to bond with the baby?” she said, staring at the TV.

I hummed a little, clearing my throat. “Do you mind if I give it a try?”

She changed the channel on the remote and lifted her shirt.

It was really huge. There was a disturbing dark line coming down from her belly button. I put my lips close enough to feel its radiant heat, and she flinched a little.

I hummed high and I hummed low. I hummed long, sustained notes like a wise person from another country who knew something ancient. After a while my deep tone seemed to split and harmonize with itself and I thought for a moment that I was doing that beautiful throat singing the people of Tuva do.

Her eyes were on the TV, but her lips were pressed together and she seemed to be trying to match my pitch. And she was scared, that was suddenly obvious. She was twenty-one and any day now she would give birth, in this house, probably on this couch. I tried to hum reassuringly. Everything will be fine, I hummed, nothing to worry about. Clee’s stomach lurched against my lips — a kick; we raised our volume in surprised unison. I wondered if there would be an awkward confusion about how to end this but the hum simply grew fainter, as if it were leaving on its own, like a train.

IN BIRTH CLASS WE LEARNED that her face would swell up when the time was near. Or she might begin scrubbing the walls with a fierce nesting instinct. That one was hard for me to picture — how would she know where I kept the sponges?

She rose at dawn, certain a cat had pissed in the house.

“Smell over here,” she said, sniffing my bookshelves. I couldn’t smell it. She followed the invader’s invisible tracks around the house. “It must have come in, peed, and left.” She whipped aside the shower curtain. “All we can do is look for the hole it came in through.” So we spent the earliest hour of the day searching for the hole, until she suddenly sat down on the couch with a gasp. She put both hands under her stomach and looked up at me with amazement. A contraction.

“Maybe there’s no cat?” I said.

“Yeah, no cat,” she said quickly, as if I was way behind.

I called the midwife immediately, describing the cat pee, the hole, and now the contractions. All the information was valuable, not to a doctor, but certainly to our wise midwife, who had fifteen years of experience. “Do you think it’s time to come over?” I tried not to sound too desperate. “Or is it too early?”

“I’m in Idaho,” she said. “But don’t worry, I’m coming back immediately. I’ll drive as fast as I can.”

“Drive?”

“I’m bringing a friend’s car back to Los Angeles for her.” Before making a snap judgment, I tried for a moment to put myself in her position. What was she supposed to do, not drive the car back? What kind of friend would that be? The kind of friend who is a midwife.

“I guess we’ll go to the hospital.”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, everyone always thinks the baby is about to come out. That baby isn’t going anywhere for at least twelve hours. The good news is, you can call me as much as you want. I’m completely available by phone.”

I told Clee not worry, the baby wasn’t coming for twelve more hours.

“I can’t do this for that long,” she groaned. She was scraping the couch with her fingernails. “We should call Carrie from PFS, she has to tell the parents.” A weird low noise came out of her chest and her eyes bulged.

“Maybe we should call your parents?” I suggested.

“Are you kidding?”

The contractions seemed closer together and longer than they should be, but I wasn’t sure we were measuring them right. And you weren’t supposed to time them in the beginning anyway; the blue handout from class suggested having friends over, going to a movie or dancing. It would be the first time we’d ever done any of those things, but I mentioned them to Clee.

“Do any of those sound good?”

She shook her head and moaned in a terrifying way. I skipped ahead to the pink handouts. We tried one of the visualizations from class — each contraction was a mountain. “Picture the mountain, you’re halfway up, now you’re at the top, now you’re coming down the other side and it’s easier, almost over.”

“I can’t hold it in my mind,” she whispered. “I’m not a visual thinker.”

I tried to make it more real, describing the craggy peak, its majesty. “Think of the picture on the one-dollar bill, the mountain.” I got out my purse. There was no mountain on the one-dollar bill — it was a pyramid. “Focus on this, you’re at the base of it,” I said, holding the dirty money in front of her face.

“Okay.” She glued her eyes to the tiny pyramid. “It’s starting.” I used a bobby pin to trace her progress up the steep side. “Too fast,” she said. The pyramid was so tiny that it was hard, at first, to go slow enough. But soon we had it down and each time a new one came she would pick up the dollar and thrust it at me and we’d make our way up to the floating eye. It was a tool the government gave out for women in labor; it could be spent again and again but only to buy a contraction.

At seven o’clock Rick let himself in with his key. We were in the middle of the pyramid so I ignored him. He used the bathroom and watched us from the doorway. Once Clee was down the other side she told me to tell him to leave.

“I’ll just be in the yard,” he said, trying to slip back out.

“I don’t want him to hear me,” Clee whined. “Or see me through the windows.”

Rick crumpled and shuffled away. My cell phone rang.

“It’s me,” said the midwife. “How’s she doing?”

“Okay. We’re using visualization.”

“That’s good, that’s perfect. The flower opening?”

“No, the mountain.”

“There’s a lot of great mountains around here. Have you ever been to Idaho?”

“You’re still in Idaho?”

“It’s beautiful but not in an obvious way, you know?” It sounded like she was trying to open a package of chips with her teeth. “I once had a boyfriend who lived out here. Much too rural for me. I wonder what ever happened to him.”

She was bored. She was calling because she was bored.

Clee thrust the dollar at me and I hung up. The journey was getting slower and harder.

“I can’t do it anymore,” she said.

“Just make it to the eye. See what it says at the top? ‘Annuit Coeptis.’ ”

“What’s that?”

“ ‘He favors our undertaking.’ God does.”

She breathed out fiercely. “I’m not kidding, I really can’t.”

Her face looked crazy and swollen. Her blond hair had darkened with sweat and was sticking to her face. She clumsily pulled off her shorts; I looked away and spied Rick tiptoeing into the bedroom. Why was he still here? I skipped through the pink handout to the white ones.

“You’re in transition,” I said. The teacher had told us about this — it was a good sign.

“What do you mean?” It was almost like she hadn’t attended the class with me.

“This is the worst you’ll ever feel.”

“Ever?”

“Well, maybe not ever in your whole life. We don’t know how you’re going to die — that might be worse.” I had veered off course. I put my face right in front of hers. “You can do this,” I said. She looked at me like I knew everything. She was hanging on my every word.

“Okay,” she said, suddenly clamping her hands to my forearms. “It’s starting.”

Now the dollar was cast aside, spent. For the length of each contraction she lived in my eyes, never blinking, never looking away, gripping my arms like they were steel supports. I wasn’t strong enough for this but that was a problem for later.

“Shouldn’t she be here?” Clee wheezed. I had been telling her the midwife was on her way, which wasn’t untrue. I was waiting for a break, during which I would explain the situation, we would calmly discuss the options, and then we’d go back to having the baby.

“She’s driving her friend’s car from Idaho to California. She won’t make it in time. We have to go to the hospital.”

“Really? Is that really true?”

I nodded.

She was crying, and now another contraction was starting. “They’ll cut me open, I don’t want to be cut.” She began to pee. Then, with the pee still running down her thigh she lowered her head to the floor and threw up. She was exploding and disintegrating. I tried to clean her off but she rolled against the wall. “If we don’t go, does it mean the baby will die?”

“No, no. Of course not.” She said thank you; the only thing she cared about was not going to the hospital. If I had it to do over again I would have said Probably. It might live, but probably not. Also, I would have dragged her to Dr. Binwali the moment the midwife said Idaho. Because now it was getting away from us; the hospital seemed like a rest stop we had missed hours ago. Clee let out a bellow. “Should I push?”

“It feels like you want to push?”

“I have to.”

“Okay, just a little. Let me call the midwife.”

But she wouldn’t let me leave until the push was done. The midwife had the radio on very loud — a country song, it sounded like.

“What do I need for the delivery?” I yelled.

“She’s progressed? You need to go to the hospital.”

“She’s pushing. We’re having it here. Do I need to boil water? What do I do?”

She turned the radio off.

“Shit. Okay. Bare minimum, you need three clean towels, some olive oil, a bowl of hot water, some sanitary sharp scissors, and a clean piece of string.”

I was running through the house, grabbing the things as she said them. Rick was in the kitchen, pouring boiling water into a mug.

“I need that water!” I yelled.

He bent down and calmly unlaced his tennis shoe. “There’s already hot water in the bedroom,” he said, dropping his shoelace in the mug. “I don’t think you have any string, but this will do.” He was rolling up his dirty sleeves and washing his hands at the kitchen sink with brisk authority.

Clee bellowed in the other room.

“Do you really know how to do this?”

He nodded modestly. “I do.”

I studied his face. It was not soft or deranged; his eyes were clear, his brow almost hawklike, though overly tan from outside living. A fine surgeon who fell from grace — malpractice, destitution, homelessness. I didn’t verify any of this, just followed him into the bedroom. He gently placed the mug on my dresser, beside a steaming bowl. The scissors and olive oil were waiting, and a stack of towels. The floor was covered with black plastic garbage bags. I smiled weakly with relief.

“You’ve done this before.”

His brow furrowed and he started to speak, a response that already sounded terrifyingly longer and more complicated than Yes. Clee screamed, crawling into the bedroom on her hands and knees.

She was yelling that its crown was showing. A royal baby. She meant he was crowning, but he wasn’t.

I explained about how we were in Rick’s hands and also how he had washed his hands. I hoped she wouldn’t notice the swarm of doubt flying around the room. But she was past all that.

“Can I really push now? I want to get it out.”

My heart jumped. It. I had forgotten about the baby. Until then she had been giving birth to birth — to contractions and noises and liquids. There was someone in there.

We gave her water and Recharge energy drink and a little bit of honey. I had forgotten these things earlier but with Rick here it was easier to think. He suggested I wash my hands before the next contraction. But it was too late. She squatted and with an unearthly scream her legs slowly split apart to reveal a perfect wedge of head. Clee reached down and touched it.

“There’s no face,” she said.

Rick took my palms and squirted Purell into them. He waved his hands in the air to indicate I should do the same. We flapped our hands. Clee suddenly reclined and seemed to fall asleep. I raised my eyebrows at Rick and he made a smooth gesture with the flat of his hand, indicating that this was normal. He put his face in front of her and in a low, unfamiliar voice he said, “It comes out on this push.” Clee opened her eyes and nodded obediently, as if they shared a long history.

“Big breath in,” said Rick. She took a big breath in. “Release it with noise and push. Harder.”

It came out with a gush of fluids and Rick caught it. A boy. He looked dead, but I knew from the birth videos we watched in class that this was normal. The silence was terrible, though. And there was a foul smell. Rick tipped the baby to the side and he coughed. And then he squawked. Not like a person making his first sound ever, but like an old crow — a bit tired, a bit resigned. Then silence again. Rick lay the baby on the floor and cut the umbilical cord with a seasoned swipe of my nail scissors. He tied his sanitized shoelace onto the baby’s stub. Clee tried to stand and fell into a convulsive squat. A pile of gizzards dropped from between her legs. The placenta. She leaned back against the bed. “You take him.”

He weighed almost nothing. His legs were covered in green slime, like pea soup, and his eyes rolled upward like a drunk old man trying to get his bearings. A pale, drunk old man with floppy arms and legs.

“He’s pale, isn’t he?” I said.

I looked at Clee’s skin, tawny even now.

“You’re not pale. Is his dad pale?”

I tried to think of all the very pale men in Clee’s world. The baby was so fair it was almost blue. Who that we know is blue? Who, who, who do we know that’s blue? But this question was just a funny costume, a silly clown nose on the real thought I was having.

“Call 911,” I said.

Clee lifted her sleepy head and Rick froze.

The phone was by his knee; he picked it up slowly.

“Pea soup. We learned that in class. It means something bad. Call 911.”

The baby was darker blue now, purple almost. Seconds, I was thinking, we’re down to seconds. Suddenly there was a feathery sound like giant wet wings unfurling — it was Clee’s body unsticking from the plastic garbage bags. She was standing. Her big hand tore the phone away from Rick. She dialed and said the address, she knew the zip code, she knew the cross street, the dispatcher was giving instructions, she clearly relayed each one—“wrap him in a towel,” “cover the top of his head,” and I completed each task with an unusual fluidity, as if we’d been working on this scenario for years, this baby-saving simulation, and now was our chance to perform it. Rick watched from the corner, disheveled and shrunken; he was the homeless gardener again.

The ambulance people yelled and threw equipment around like a swat team. A beige blanket was wrapped around Clee. An athletic-looking older woman was counting over the baby. Maybe keeping track of how many seconds it had been since he’d died. She would never stop, she would count forever if that’s how long he was dead for.

Rick handed me a Tupperware container just before I got in the ambulance.

“I washed it off,” he cried. “It’s clean.”

Spaghetti, I thought. Kate’s spaghetti in case we get hungry.