Part 11 (2/2)

What do you mean, Okay? Okay? the editor says We'd like to publish your book next year the editor says We'd like to publish your book next year

That's good, I say, poking as one piece gushes white goop, so I pass over it

You don't sound very excited, she says

I' a baby, I say drearown ht this second?

Soon, I say At that instant, ernail punctures chocolate and hits caramel What does she need froh to blurb it A dust-jacket photo laying around

I chew my caraood nor ill can reach i Who is there?IWho is I?ThouAnd that is the awakening-the Thou and the I-Paul Valery Women in my bloodline don't pop out babies like pieces of toast We're narrow-hipped Birthing tends to drag on-long days of false labor followed by a good twenty hours of exorcism-quality dis flat on our back is anatheht that his father-during a grisly period called transition transition that involvesMother into the roo him and God and most of the nurses Mother stood bedside a few , saying, Look at this cute little purse I bought that involvesMother into the roo him and God and most of the nurses Mother stood bedside a few , saying, Look at this cute little purse I bought

At which, my sister screamed, Get her the fuck out of here!

Mother, later outraged at Lecia's overreaction, said, I was just trying to take her mind off it

In my case, delivery takes a full twenty-two hours-forty-four if you count the false labor that kept ht like soure in a horror movie At the hospital, they inject variousme I'll be asleep in athe word pain pain in favor of in favor of disco the hospital's need to deal with it while treating the mother like a piece of furniture

In natural childbirth classes, o ht in the car going home, Warren said, When are we supposed to learn the stuff that stops the pain?

We already have, I said That's what the breathing exercises are

My God, he said, that won't acco

Aled, hallucinogenic state that causes the roo at the calico curtains hung against the vo roo Oscar Wilde's last words: Either this wallpaper goes, or I do Either this wallpaper goes, or I do

The big disappointment? The needle painfully jabbed into my spine to block pain quote-unquote didn't take didn't take

This is the breezy parlance of the anesthesia dude He stands in the door with clip-on sunglasses flipped up from his specs He's clearly on his way out

Whaddayou mean mean, I roar at him, whaddayou MEAN it didn't take! didn't take!

I' without exclaraphical inflation In between cogent sentences, the nurse with the tiny white head and gargantuan blue eyes-real crocodile-sized peepers-leans over , Breathe Breathe

Warren's head appears alongside hers, his face bulging forward like a drop of water squeezed from a turkey baster Breathe Breathe

I holler, DO IT AGAIN!

The nurse is telling ht not take, I say You saidYou promised promisedYou PROMISED I'd be numb nu on a thigh My LEG is like a rump roast rump roast!!

Not , I need a sandwich

WHAT! I say A fucking SANDWICH? fucking SANDWICH?

It won't take long, he says He's gone for what see stretch but can't be even an hour

He coled and undraped down a public hall, with ht ht et, followed by, to Warren, Where the everloving fuck were you? Where the everloving fuck were you?

Sleeping, it turns out, on the front lawn of the hospital after a turkey sandwich He's now loping alongside urney toward the delivery room, his face masked

An eternity later, I feel a cataclysmic movement, and-in one massive thunderclap of pain-all my innards seem to exit I feel abruptly vacated Warren shouts up atwhile soets hit, and there's an interval of quiet, then the baby's throaty cry All the attending humans seem busily focused elsewhere till they hand Dev to me-short for Devereux-a family name of the Whitbread's This new Dev is squinty and crimson, and they've stretched a little white knit cap on his head

As he leans over me, Warren's face is damp, too, and his ocean-lit eyes fixed on me ondrous attention, and in that interval I first hold our bundled son, I feel us all stitched inside a glorious tapestry, breathing the same antiseptic air, cool as pine-a rare atmosphere conscribes us-the fae from Warren and I both address Dev in coos and smooches and clicks

Dev squints up with dark blue eyes as if trying to aze brushes by h bea focus for another living creature I can't stop looking at him Joy, it is, which I've never known before, only pleasure or excite, because its focus exists outside the self-delight in so I feel such untras

Back in ain, and boy, is he hollering to blow the hair off your head

This one has a set of lungs, the nurse says, and a strong opinion

But soon as I opensnaps off Dev nuzzles toward the only spot on h to accommodate him, and blessed silence ensues

Look at him latch on, Warren says

My hand cups the duck-fuzzed head-such a strong pulse against my hand, faster than my own, but they syncopate soes

The pediatric nurse says, This one's e call a sucky baby

I finally ask, What do you think he's thinking?

You know the static channel on the TV? she says

It's almost like he knows you, Warren says

The nurse says, I think they can s, You're my creme brulee, my chocolate shake, ling the white cat he once so spoiled-boon co at hiaze on him, to seal him in the safe bubble of it, and so also to sear into my own head every iota of him

Warren comments that he does look an awful lot like Winston Churchill Put a cigar in his ue, I say At some point the woman in the next bed comes over to show us her boy, and when she peels aside the blanket to reveal his face, I have to stopbaby