Little Disasters Read online

  That was the last good lay. Rebecca and I discussed this, in tones serious and somber. We discussed that I’m finding it difficult to view her vagina as an orifice designed for pleasure when it is now preparing itself to be an orifice for procreation. Those are her words, incidentally, cribbed from a baby book, recited with solemn understanding. I tried to protest (“No … !”), but if that were a reason she’d accept as justifiable, I’d cop to it. Since then, Rebecca will initiate sex and I’ll respond, softly poking at her. She moans and grunts and says words of encouragement, and I can tell she’s faking enthusiasm; sex for her now is like having an itch that I pat gently instead of scratching. That will change. I promise myself to take whatever journey I need to take in order to return us to the days when she’d wax for me.

  I hang a left on Eighth Avenue. We’re in the posh part of Park Slope now, a neighborhood whose pretensions we mock from the comfort of our kitchen. But we’re also a block away from Prospect Park, its lush green scent wafting in through the vents, triggering fantasies in Rebecca of our son ambling down the hills by the baseball diamonds, shrieking with laughter at dogs swimming in the filthy pond that’s always pudding-skinned with algae.

  We turn onto Seventh Street. The hospital stands on both sides of the block. Rebecca sucks in breath as if through a straw. Her mouth goes tight and her eyes clamp up. I quickly veer the truck over to the side, stick it in front of a fire hydrant.

  “Hey.” I make her turn to me. “This is happening.”

  “I know,” she says, and the waterworks start.

  “He’s coming out, it’s time.”

  “I know.”

  “And he’s coming out in a good hospital, with a doctor you trust.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve done everything right. All the vitamins and the bed rest and the exercises. Reading to him, playing him music. Of course he doesn’t want to come out yet. You’re too good a hostess.”

  She giggles a bit through tears. “I know.”

  “But this is happening, no way around it.”

  She wipes her eyes. “I know. I know. Thank you. I don’t know what this is. I’m not sad or scared, it’s just …”

  “It’s a stressful fucking day,” I offer.

  She nods. “It’s a stressful fucking day.”

  “You’re going to push a baby into the world today.”

  “Our baby.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She rubs my hand. “Thank you. I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

  I pull into the circular driveway and help her out of the truck. An orderly comes out with a wheelchair and Rebecca considers it, shrugs, and sits down. I bend over and give her a deep, lingering kiss. “I love you,” she says into my mouth.

  It takes me another five minutes to find a space, something that isn’t in front of a hydrant or someone’s driveway or too tight because three hybrids are parked far enough apart to fit a sectional couch in between their bumpers. I luck out when an SUV pulls out of a space down the block. I grab it and start walking back toward the hospital.

  I want to stroll into the waiting room and have a kindly, plump nurse straight from central casting tell me, “Mr. Gould, your wife went into labor and delivered a healthy baby boy. Mother and son are doing great. Let’s get you scrubbed up so you can come see them.” I want it to be over and done with by the time I cross the street and go through the revolving doors. I want to take all the stress out of today, all the doctor periodically sticking her head out into the waiting room to tell me how many centimeters my wife’s cervix is now dilated, leaving me to nod, as if I know whether that’s eye-of-a-needle width or canyonesque and to hide how I have little medical or practical knowledge of how a woman’s anatomy functions. I want that nurse to grab me in the lobby and lead me upstairs, telling me as I go that my son is in all the highest percentiles and nowhere near the autism spectrum and will do fine on all standardized tests and not be the smelly kid in class or the stupid kid, will never get called a faggot on the playground or call some other kid a faggot, will date a few good-looking girls who won’t crush his self-esteem or make him feel like his body needs to be gym-hardened in early adolescence and won’t make him self-conscious about the size of his cock, whether it’s too small or too big or just bent at some odd angle, and that he will have a choice between some good state schools or a few decent liberal arts colleges, and that his wife will be a good partner who has roughly similar goals in life and his kids will look up to him with the same adulatory eyes that he uses to look at me.

  I want that. All of it. I want it so badly that if the hospital had a karmic trading post I’d hand over one of any organ I have two of in exchange for any one of those things to be positively true.

  At the corner of Seventh and Seventh, still across the street from the hospital, I walk into a froufrou market. It’s essentially a bodega, but they added a few prepackaged vegan entrées in plastic clamshells and slapped FARM on the awning outside to give the aura of freshness. I don’t need to go through the aisles to find what I’m looking for. I go straight to the counter and grab a pack of peppermint gum, then point behind the cashier.

  “Camel Lights,” I say.

  His hands run across the Camel suite before settling. “Yeah, those. And a book of matches.” I tuck the gum into my pants and the smokes and matches into my backpack, in a different compartment from everything else. There’s no way I’m getting through today without smoking, and while Rebecca would forgive me for it, I’d rather not ask her to.

  Paul Fenniger

  Present Day: July 19, 2010

  8:26 AM

  It was difficult to leave this morning. Jenny said to go, and she said it in a reassuring voice loaded with the insinuation that she would still be there when I got back and that we would talk more. I’ll cook and she’ll sit on the counter, tell me about her day. I love that Jenny tells me about her day in such detail, even when it doesn’t involve leaving the house. She tells me about everything she’s read, all of the tin-eared sentences in the papers she edits, funny stories about typos, then all of her thoughts big and small. I’m not going to have a fun day at all; the office doesn’t provide those. I don’t need to relive my day by talking about it. Hearing the calming canter of her voice is better than a massage. I’ll chop vegetables and savor her words, and once we’ve had a few drinks we’ll continue our conversation from last night.

  And it’ll be okay.

  The conductor has cranked up the air-conditioning on the L train this morning. It keeps everyone a little more sane at rush hour. We’re packed in, my crotch at the head level of a man lucky enough to be sitting, reading The New Yorker and patently ignoring the people around him, lest he look up and notice we’re all pregnant women and he’s the jerk who won’t give up his precious seat. It’s okay, though. The heat makes everyone cranky, a little more aggressive to push their way into or out of the train car, a little less likely to listen to the conductor’s aggravated pleas that there is another train right behind this one. No one ever believes that there is another train behind this one. There is only this train, this one solitary train to take us to the island of Manhattan.

  When the train pulls into Bedford, the last stop in Brooklyn before crossing underneath the river, the doors open and a few tattooed bodies nudge their way out before a sea of people floods in. I glance in both directions to see if I can shift my body, shrink myself to make room for others. The doors open and shut repeatedly into people who can’t fight back, who push against the rubber strips that slam them from both sides to no avail. At the last second one more lucky person slips into the train car, everyone else left on the platform. This last person is like me, a guy in a suit that already shows the wrinkles of being sweat through. He looks around the car in solidarity but gets glares in response. It’s his fault this ride will take an additional ten seconds. But we’ll forget—aggression dissipates like steam in the subway, white-hot one moment and gone the next.

  The train slows
, then stops, somewhere under the East River. Some mornings I zip through the tunnel without raising my eyes from a script. Not today, though. I turn my eyes up, let the pause gift me a moment.

  There’s an audible exhalation all around me, a collective shrug. Ladies and gentlemen, we are delayed because of train traffic ahead of us. We apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for your patience. That’s the automated voice. Strong, male, authoritative. The intercom clicks on and the conductor gives a sharp intake of breath, then it clicks off again.

  Ladies and gentlemen, we are delayed because of train traffic ahead of us. We apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for your patience. I wonder if it’s a button that the conductor pushes from a console of prerecorded statements or if it’s all computerized, a synapse between the signals we pass and the speed of the train. After another minute or two, a few arms drop around me. Then a few more. A minute later I let my own fall to my side, nursing the circulation back in. BlackBerrys emerge. People remove earbuds, loop them around their neck, and wait for the next announcement. We wait for the train to churn itself back to life and pull into First Avenue, where virtually no one will get off but dozens more will try to filter on, the remnants who couldn’t get onto the train in front of ours, who have to rely on faith that there is, in fact, another train right behind. I wait to get to the office, put in my eight hours, and then rush home to Jenny.

  Ladies and gentlemen, we are delayed because of train traffic ahead of us. We apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for your patience. New Yorkers roll their eyes. What choice do we have, we think. We get on the subway and we are at its mercy, a show of faith we perform every day.

  We wait.

  Paul Fenniger

  One Year Ago: July 18, 2009

  I make egg whites for Jenny. Scrambled egg whites and turkey bacon, extra crispy. She fantasizes out loud about breakfasts of Bloody Marys and pots of coffee, real coffee, caffeinated coffee. She talks about eating undercooked meat and raw, egg-based sauces. She stares in the windows of liquor stores, mixing drinks in her head. I bought her a breast pump in preparation, a gift she nearly cried over because of the freedom she claims it will provide. I love her for her reckless enthusiasm. This is the last morning, she decrees, that she will ever drink herbal tea.

  She comes into the kitchen, already dressed, rubbing the sleep from her dormouse eyes and crinkling her nose at breakfast. “I’m not hungry,” she says.

  “Come on, just a bit.”

  She holds two fingers up, no space in between them. “Just a bit.”

  “Last day you’re eating for two,” I remark.

  When I sit down at the table she comes around behind me, lays her head on top of mine. I tilt my head back and she kisses my forehead. “Tell me you love me,” she says.

  Easiest thing to say. “I love you.” That gets her to sit down, and she soon finishes her eggs and bacon and half of mine.

  We stand outside in the rising heat and Jenny’s hands twitch and click. She still hasn’t gotten used to standing in one place and not smoking, all these many months later. I gave her rubber bands to fidget with but that’s cold comfort. Her bag sits at my feet. “Did you pack anything for yourself?”

  “I’ll keep myself occupied,” I promise.

  “Fenn,” she whines my nickname. “It will take hours.”

  “It’s okay,” I insist. She pulls a face at me. “It’s okay. I’m very patient. I’ll sit in the waiting room and come up with names.”

  “I don’t like the names you pick.”

  “Seymour … Max … Rupert …”

  “Those are awful names.”

  “Harrumph.” I kiss her neck.

  “Those are all dog names.”

  “Not all of them. What about Fido? Or Sir Barks-a-Lot? Sir Barks-a-Lot is a great name for a boy. Strong.” She giggles and nuzzles me on the cheek. Comedy isn’t my strong suit, so when I make her laugh I feel godlike. I look down, and her hands have stopped twitching.

  We get in the black sedan, and when I tell the driver the name of the hospital he turns in his seat and looks at Jenny. “You sure you don’t want an ambulance?” he says nervously.

  “She’s not in labor,” I reply, before Jenny can get cranky with him. He shrugs and starts off toward Park Slope.

  The most difficult part of being a father will be having to share my wife. That seems so petty a thought that I don’t say it out loud, especially not to Jenny. For the longest time it’s been the two of us, getting to live selfishly. I’m going to be a good father, though. For the first year it’s all processes anyway: changing diapers, scheduled feedings, scheduled naps. It’s repetition and mechanics—that I can handle easily. I think that’s the part Jenny is most worried about, those years before our son is ready to have a conversation. So we make a good couple. I’ll handle the diapers, and once he’s potty trained and starting to speak in sentences, she’ll take over.

  When we arrive at the waiting room, Jenny sits down next to me. Her hands are back at it, her mouth puckering every few seconds. I rub out the tension from the back of her neck. She purrs in appreciation. I love her sighs of contentment, how she vocalizes happiness. Then the nurse comes to take her back to see Dr. Mulitz, and she gives me a look as she stands, to remind me that I should wait right there. “I don’t need you all aflutter doing, Fenn,” she instructed me when we got the appointment. “There will be people doing in the delivery room. Let me have my people.” I had hopes, or thoughts, that the first person our son would see would be me. I know that he’ll be virtually blind, that I would at best be daddy shapes, but it would have been something to tell him later, that mine was the first face. Instead it will be the doctor, and that’s okay. The doctor, then Jenny, then nurses, in some order. Down the line, daddy shapes. Jenny turns and gives me a smile as she’s being wheeled away. When she’s gone, I get to have my own jitters. Now it starts.

  Before a show, we have exercises to keep ourselves loose, to keep nerves to a minimum. I sit on the floor of the waiting room and breathe, visualizing the air looping underneath my diaphragm, filling me, and rushing out, taking all of my stress with it like the tide. Some nurses look over, probably to check if I’m about to pass out, but I’m in my own happy world, meditating my way into a placid state, completely unself-conscious.

  I’d know what to do if I were back in the delivery room with her. Scrub in, mask over my face, then keep out of the way. If I could, I’d hold her hand and let her seethe at me, whisper back words of encouragement, a background noise underscoring the doctor’s instructions. No one trained me to do that, I just think that it’s innate human knowledge. When another pregnant woman rolls by, I give her a small smile and she returns it. Her child will have the same birthday as my child. So many children will be born today, and mine will be one of them. For a split second, my child will be the youngest child in the world, just like his mother and his father were.

  A man, about my age, comes and sits down near me in the waiting room. He pulls a granola bar out of his backpack and wolfs it down. I’m tempted to start a conversation with him but then he pulls out a book, thick as an almanac, and starts reading. He doesn’t acknowledge me at all.

  So I wait. I wait for my son to be born. And it’s okay.

  Michael Gould

  Present Day: July 19, 2010

  9:03 AM

  Oh this clusterfuck of streets. Spoil me with a grid system and I can find my way in the dark. I try to double back, to retrace my steps back to the subway that took me here, but I’m lost in New York. On the island of Manhattan, where it’s virtually impossible to get lost. Fort Tryon Park isn’t some byzantine labyrinth—the streets seem to lead somewhere—but in a near sprint downhill, beads of sweat hanging from my eyelashes, I can’t see through the trees to where I exit. The run-down amphitheater area that I passed on my way up the mountain is nowhere to be found, and instead I jog over a bridge I know for a fact I’ve never been over before. Those few other people—the stroller walk
ers, the tourists, the park weirdos—have all vanished. I am the only man in Fort Tryon. Even the expanse of the Cloisters is once again hidden behind foliage.

  I finally come upon a man walking a beagle. “How do I get out?” I huff. My wind sucks, I can’t run more than a quarter mile on a good day; today it’s like wading through soup. He points behind himself, doesn’t want to address me more than he needs to. I thank him and I’m off again, feet slapping the ground.

  When I emerge, it’s in an entirely new place, a cul-de-sac where, again, I have never been. But I no longer need a map or a guide, there’s the blessed green plinth of a subway marker. Once I’m underground, I can get anywhere.

  I’m confronted by a bank of elevators, signs instructing me to take the elevators down to the platforms, and for a moment I have forgotten how to operate them. When one opens up, seemingly on its own, I get on and wait, but the doors don’t close. Finally, an older woman steps on as well, eyeing me with mild discomfort, clutching her wire mesh rolling cart close, ultimately deciding I’m not a threat, heaving and sweating profusely in the corner. She presses a button clearly marked PLATFORM and the doors close.

  The platform itself is near empty, which always frustrates me, because it usually means a train has just left. I wait among the scattered few, people spaced out from one end of the tunnel to the other, all of us craning our necks and peering down the tracks to seek out the lights of an oncoming train, reassure ourselves. I check my phone for more texts from Jenny but there aren’t any, and I neglected to charge last night, so I’m running on a battery one-third full. I did remember to charge my iPod last night, but that’s still plugged into the charger, attached to a wall. I’m completely without external stimulation—no podcast to distract me, no music to measure time by, not even a book to stare at numbly. Only my thoughts, all of them anxious, waiting for this fucking train.