16
Light! There was light! Windows—with sun!
Even from the partly cloudy sky which was the aftermath of the daily scattered showers came the curative emanations of sunlight. I could almost feel the Vitamin D frosting in my bloodstream. It was wonderful, this journey through Blown Away Memorial’s window-strewn halls to Maternity. Like any large hospital, the halls snaked through the building with no logic. Alternating with the glorious windows were prints of lithographs, matted and framed and bolted to the studs in the walls they adorned. For some reason, Chaz made sure I was stopped at each one to study it, like she were leading an art tour. There was the Madonna of Port Ligat, by Dali; then Nursery Decoration, by Miro; then a few childbirth renderings from gratuitous realists. And the closer we got to Maternity the more troubling the works became: Hide and Seek, by Tchelitchew; Echo of a Scream, by Siqueiros; and Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef, by Bacon.
Chaz made me look long and hard at each one. She held me firmly in front of each one, as if I were to gain a valuable insight before being reunited with Abby. Abraham’s Test, by Mull, was a gruesome depiction of God forgetting to step in on Isaac’s behalf. Herod Wins, artist unknown, showed how Herod dealt with his infantile insecurities. Bulimic Zeus as Birthfather, by Katz, was the last one, thank goodness.
The ubiquitous music overhead the whole time was, what best I could discern, a Punk-Muzak/Rap-Opera hybrid. Or at least I thought so, my first exposure to punk and rap a layer or two before I had originally met Abby. Maybe this whole episode of bizarre bombardment of my senses wasn’t really surreal; maybe I just wasn’t dealing well with joining the real world. Maybe I was crazy.
Crazy or not, here I come.
“Can we move on?” I asked Chaz when she stopped me in front of a painting called Children Raising Children, by Samneric.
“It’s like the Stations of the Cross,” she said. “I think it’s helpful to take each in before welcoming in any new babies.” Then she struck me on the side of my head with her knuckles. “C’mon, crimp, keep moving.”
We arrived at a nurse station, nurses in red and white of course, snapping to attention with Sister Chaz’s appearance. “Where is the Bennigan woman?” Chaz asked. “Is she still where I left her?” Her voice was gravelly as ever. Bennigan: Abby (still Abby) was no longer Bentley.
The nurse whom Sister Chaz had asked was almost pretty except for all of her abuse bruises. “You need to leave that guy,” I told her, surprising her to distraction.
“But then who would nurse me when I’ve gone too far on myself?” she asked back, Sister Chaz glared in disapproval of any dialogue with me. “Sorry, Sister…just thought it important to espouse self-flagellation when I can.” She straightened up her act. “Uh, um,” she muttered, flustered, “Bennigan’s still in the Midwifery Section, Room 3, where you left her, lying in and lying out.”
“Let’s go,” Sister Chaz said to me, gesturing with a dart of her recessed eyes. I was ready. This was a big moment for me.
I thought about myself with sudden awareness. Me, a miserable heap of hopeless organism, ready to kill myself, ready to kill somebody else—sounds like ready to fit right into this world—I was going to meet my love for the first time in many ordeals. I was to welcome my baby, a child aborted innumerable times in other layers. And I knew just what that meant to me. I wasn’t crazy! I declared in my mind. I was the luckiest sane man on this Earth or on any Earth, and prepared to receive the greatest gift of all, Abby’s love and the next generation that was a result of and which sprang from that love.
I suppose there were times in that dark hole when I had felt no love, either to give it or to receive it. Now I know how ludicrous that was. And my suicide plan—how ludicrous that, too. Now I clearly understood how suicide could only be a final solution to temporary problems.
True, my problems were doozies: like just being a reasonable person in an unreasonable world; or not knowing how I was going to get back to a reasonable world with myself and now my family; or even how I would convince my laboring Abby that I’m not the shithead sleazebag scuzbucket pop-up she knows in this layer, but that it is really me.
I was decidedly a new man.
I now rolled along in compulsory cadence with my sectarian monolith to the exciting sounds of fetal heart tones heard in the distance. They were the sweetest sounds I’d ever heard, even if the amplifier made them sound like a Maytag in an unevenly loaded spin cycle. My own heart raced to match that sound, until my own and my child’s hearts beat as one. The rhythm became louder and louder as we drew nearer. The anticipation became overpowering as I braced myself for my reunion, and I began to cry with happiness.
“Be a man!” Sister Chaz thumped, and my skinny body was jolted, my bones rattling with the shock.
“You mean like you?” I said, angry with her for ruining my reverie. Another thump on the head. I got off easy for that one. By now no orderlies accompanied as they had dropped off inconspicuously along the way. Just me and Chazzy. We turned the corner into the labor room.
It was a small room, but still it had three gurneys in it, only one of them occupied. The color scheme on the white ceramic tile was due to the interior decorators who were previous patients. Hanging from the ceiling were aluminum poles with hooks, one of which held a bag of intravenous fluid, its tube—which my eyes slowly followed—leading down to the sole patient.
And there, just as I had remembered her, she lay in her beauty. Last time it was on the moving table of the big magnet; this time on the platform of a labor bed.
I had that fleeting moment to consider her beauty, albeit more buxom in physique, before she would notice me. It was her. Truly. It didn’t matter that she probably looked identical to other pop-ups who had graced this layer—I just knew. In spite of the impossibility of not noticing the entire pregnant woman, it was her face I was fixed on. Sister Chaz stomped her foot to announce our arrival. Abby turned her head from the monitor to see who had arrived. Now she reciprocated my fixation by looking me right in the eyes. Her reflexes had her shrieking before her brain could order her vocal cords via due process. She obviously didn’t have the instinctive gift of recognition that I had.
“Get him out of here! I want him gone! I didn’t even want him to know when I was having the baby!”
“Abby, it’s me,” I explained from the doorway.
“I know it’s you, you bastard! Get out! I’ll kill myself and the baby before being with you!”
Wait a minute! I thought, unnerved. I was so worried about how to convince her that I was my truly existing self that I didn’t consider that she might not be her truly existing self. I doubted my instinctive gift of recognition. Just because this was the first layer with her pregnant again, I now painfully realized, didn’t mean there weren’t several skip areas of layers with pop-ups pregnant.
“Abby?” I offered again. Sister Chaz loved it.
“Get out—I mean it,” she hissed. (I don’t know where the expression, “Did anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful when you’re angry,” came from. Indeed I loved her, but how anger can distort the image I loved!) I tried again with proof.
“Abby, I’m really me. Your me. I followed you through the big magnet. I’ve hunted you down.”
Every scorn-producing muscle in her face quivered in hesitation, then relaxed. She seemed almost blasé, but I hoped it was a transient stunned look. Next, her expression slowly turned to one of ecstatic relief, which told me, thank God, that she was my Abby. Her tears streamed, confirming my finest wish had come true. I left the Chazbeast’s side and ran to Abby. Our embrace and stroking warmly reconciled the distances we had been separated.
“Oh Rocky, Rocky,” she cooed. There was a sound of disgust heard from Chaz.
“The name’s Ralph again,” I informed her. “Has been for awhile.”
“I don’t care,” she said, kneading me. “You’re my rose by any other name.” She pulled away suddenly to study me. “Oh, Rocky—Ralph, you look awful.”
“I’ve been admitted to Psychiatry—to Psychiattritian—for observation,” I explained. Her sorrowful smile indicated that the explanation was sufficient.
“Under, uh, cleaner circumstances,” she offered, “I might like your beard.”
“Do you know it never did itch?” I said. She ignored the remark. She suddenly wore a worried look, staring right past me. I whirled around in expectation of some nemesis, but there was no one new. Just Chaz was standing there stolidly.
“Oh,” she grimaced, holding her belly. “Oh, oh, oh...” I had forgotten that she was in labor. This was the nemesis.
“What can I do?” I asked, helpless.
“Just...don’t...slide,” she responded, her words punctuated by facial contortions and panting.
“No, no, my love,” I said to her, holding her hand and squeezing it tightly, loosening it only as her own discomfort seemed to be easing. Suddenly the door to the small labor room closed shut; a bolt was thrown. Sister Chaz had left but had locked us in. That was O.K. I—we weren’t going anywhere.
We smiled at each other, digging the hell out of the fact that we were together again. Adrift but together.
Another contraction. They seemed to be about six or seven minutes apart. She continued a plan for her relief that involved her sitting up and me firmly rubbing her lower back in downward strokes at the peak of the contraction.
“They say this is still early labor and that I haven’t seen anything yet,” she said. Then she laughed. “They don’t know that I’ve seen more than I ever want to see.”
“Sorry. Thanks to me.”
“Oh, no, baby.” She would have none of the self-chastising, about as useful as the self-flagellation I met minutes earlier. “I’m glad I’ve seen all of this,” she explained. “How many people get to see themselves in all sorts of ways?”
“But you stayed the same; it’s the worlds that have changed.”
“Ralph, you can see yourself in a place that’s used to dealing with you as you were. It’s sort of backwards insight, but just as clear.”
“I suppose,” I mused, half hypnotised by the sound of my son or daughter on the monitor, “Snap out of it,” she commanded with the brusque tone a labor contraction can invoke.
“O.K., O.K., sure,” I said, jumping, responding to the curtness as if in shell-shock.
“That’s O.K., baby, really, I’m sorry,” she said, recouping her affectionate tone and rubbing her belly, hitting the monitor belt which made quite an audible racket. “You’ve been held for a long time, huh?” she asked.
“Yes. A few months,” I said. She continued to rub her belly until Chaz intervened, opening the door again, objecting to the artifacts that blurted from the speaker of the monitor.
“Leave the monitor alone!” she shouted. Abby retracted her hands with immediate obedience. I looked away from her and studied the room. “Boy, everything is so clean and bright and cheerful in here.”
“In here? Ralph, are you sure?”
“Yes, it’s really quite wonderful.”
“Ralph, it’s as shabby as you’d expect coming this way—with everything getting worse and all.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “I guess I was in the gloom for so long.”
“You poor baby,” she said, and she rubbed my head.
“Me? What about you?”
“That’s what I was explaining. I’ve had the privilege of seeing me in all those ways.”
“With backwards insight.”
“Yea. I’ve seen all of the different aspects of me, the worst facets, the most troubling hidden emotional disturbances I never knew I had. All my little faults were exaggerated—like looking into your soul with a microscope.”
“So you don’t think that you are you, and these other ones are spontaneous replacements to fill voids in distorted shadow-worlds?”
“The shadow of what? One true world? Ralph, these are all part of the one true world. I have seen all of the girls that are me, all of the cowards, the selfish ones, the bitches.”
“No good ones?” I asked.
“Of course not. Not in this direction. If I can ever go the other way, I’ll see those.” She paused. “That is why you’ve come, isn’t it? To take me the other way? I’m ready. Our baby’s ready—” Then she stopped speaking suddenly, attentive to a premonition that the next contraction was about to start building. She prepared for it silently. When it came, this one seemed a little harder. Actually, a lot harder.
“Ow!” she shouted. “Rub harder, harder! C’mon, do it,” she said tensely, seeming angry. It was almost like a pop-up had popped in while she was sliding away.
“Abby?” I asked frightfully after it was over, checking to see if it were she.
“I’m O.K.,” she reassured me. “Oh those pains are bad—make me crazy.” She was still here, thank goodness. I was a little concerned that she may ebb out on some next magnetic wave, still victim of the wake. I had to promise myself I wouldn’t assume any sliding just because of how she might sound during these pains.
I considered what she had said. She sounded a lot like Ava, with this total existence-type philosophy. And Ava? Where might she be now, I asked myself. Was my out-of-body experience real? Was she in it really, and Abby, too? I had to know.
“Abby,” I asked. Did you see me, really me, before—a while back, in a dream, or in any state?”
She thought about it. Then she had another contraction. It passed after a full minute and she answered.
“I dreamed about you a lot, baby. I had one dream in particular that involved me, but not really. Almost like I was in my dream but had an out-of-body event.”
“Yes!” I almost shouted.
“No, I mean I, while dreaming—my dream-self had an out-of-body experience in the dream. And I saw my body fighting with you. I think I was seeing what my replacement in this terrible world was like. Or—this is the scary part—what I could do to your replacement here.” She paused. “But, it was just a dream.”
“Maybe,” I said. But it was close enough for me to be reassured Ava had some perspective of things where she was, for she had left her body, too, dream or not. I couldn’t quite figure all of the pieces, but they hovered close enough together to work as a real meaningful event. And somehow that night we had all helped each other.
I helped Abby again with another contraction. It became harder and harder to get her to catch me up or to philosophize as she became consumed by this labor business. I did get out of her the state of affairs of this seeming end-layer for her: that there was still religion here, but Christ was gone, or had never come—not yet, anyway; what a thing to contemplate!
There was still justice, but usually as equal revenge—governmentally sponsored or individually enacted and then substantiated to the authorities; that there were just a few Jews left, as the Nazis, very nasty genocidal politico-cultists who I had first met several layers ago in my Survey, had just about succeeded further down the line in doing what they had set out to do. And Japan existed now only as the radiant moonscape that honored the series of World War II nuclear persuasions.
“Enough, O.K.?” she asked, irritated, panting again. “Don’t you know what’s happening here? I’m in labor, alright?” So much for philosophical ruminations. I resumed the back-rubs with loyal fervor.
“I’m sorry again, Ralph,” she said during the refractory interval between contractions, “it really hurts.”
“That’s alright,” I said. “I love you. You’re right. What’s the matter with me, anyway? We’re going to have our baby, and all I do is try to catch up on history. It’s just that I was finally able to slide to where you were still pregnant, and then bam! they snagged me and threw away the key. I’m the one who’s sorry.” I paused, and again I said happily, “we’re going to have our baby.” I smiled at her. She squeezed my hand tenderly, then tightly.
Then really tightly as her newest contraction peeked. I didn’t care. This was nothing; I was with her. We got down to business; we got into the labor. I was continually thrilled by the sound of the fetal monitor.
The private intensity we shared was suddenly broken by the door opening once again. In walked Sister Chaz with of all people, ol’ man and ol’ lady Ebe. Except they looked younger than the day I nearly gave the big-haired old coot a heart attack. They were still pretty old looking, though.
“Hello,” they said together, with cutesy waves that involved flexing only the last joint of each finger.
“Who are they?” Abby asked.
“Those are Ava’s in-laws,” I responded.
“Who’s Ava?” she further asked.
“Ava’s this woman--older woman, much older woman—that helped me look for you.” I paused nervously. “Uh, can I explain this later?” But Abby was off handling another labor pain.
“Oh, I remember when I was pregnant for you,” ol’ lady Ebe said to me teasingly.
“Me?” I said, incredulous.
“Of course, you, silly,” she laughed.
“That’s right, son,” her husband added. I turned to Abby to give her a “they’re out of their minds” look.
“Look, I’m afraid you both are going to have to leave,” I told them.
“But son,” the old woman said, hurt.
“Look—Mom, Dad?” I tried, winking at Abby. “Could you give us some privacy?” It worked. They turned to the door and dutifully went out. Sister Chaz, who had been standing just outside of the door, replaced them.
“You cold-hearted bastard,” she called me. The she snapped back around and closed us in again.
“You don’t know those people? They aren’t your parents here?” Abby asked.
“No. Forget them. Let’s have a baby.”
Another contraction. These things must have been very ugly pains indeed.
“I don’t know how much more I can take,” Abby said to me, beginning to wear down.
“Shouldn’t there be a doctor or something?” I asked her.
“Midwife,” Abby replied. They only call doctors if there are complications. That’s what I could afford.”
Ride of your life or guaranteed destination.
“So where’s the midwife?” I asked her.
“She’s right outside the door. She brought those people in.”
“Sister Chaz?” I asked.
“Yes,” replied Abby.
“Yes?” Sister Chaz responded, opening the door when she thought she was being called. Abby took advantage of the misunderstanding, seizing the initiative.
“Sister Chaz, I’d like something for the pain; it’s really getting to be too much.”
“Be a woman!” she reprimanded her. Abby just sighed, but this was cut short by the next contraction. Sister Chaz left at its peak, closing the door behind her once again, and I could have sworn that I heard a snicker from her just before she was gone.
The fetal heart tones did a funny thing after the next contraction was over. They got slower. Normally it was a heart rate at about 140 a minute. It dropped to almost sixty, but then went back up. Then this started happening in between all of the contractions.
“Is that normal?” I asked Abby.
“I don’t know. It goes back up, so I guess it’s O.K.” This was the way it continued for almost an hour. I didn’t even notice it all that much because of what Abby and my hand were going through. I helped her as best I could, resuming the back-rubbing, but to no avail. She suffered pretty damn good. The contractions were almost every two minutes by then, not much time in between for her to rest. We weren’t talking to each other a whole lot by this time but were just weathering it out. Suddenly she raised her voice in alarm.
“Ralph!” she shouted. She felt between flexed knees and pulled back up a hand red with blood. I was horrified by my ignorance of its significance. She started crying loudly. “Oh no, oh no,” she cried. But the tears were abruptly stopped by the biggest contraction she had had yet. And it didn’t go away. Abby hung in there for about two minutes, but by the third minute she was hopping fitfully with the pain. The baby’s heart tones had dropped to sixty again but stayed there.
“Sister Chaz!” I hollered. The door flew open shortly. Chaz saw the situation and walked to a cardboard box. She pulled out a large plastic glove and donned it. She chased Abby’s gyrating pelvis all over the bed and then examined her roughly, her inserted hand apparently holding her in place. After her evaluation she popped off the glove down to her index fingertip, and using the elastic stretch she was able to produce, she fired it all away across the room into a trash can that was in a corner. Little blood droplets were flung onto the walls en route, adding to the decor on the white tiles. She then reported her observations to me.
“She’s not going to deliver anytime soon. The baby’s in distress. Only a C-Section can save it,” she told me.
“Do it, do it,” I snapped. I looked at Abby. The contraction was still there, and the baby’s heart was still slow. Amidst her turmoil and tossing I thought I saw a superimposed shudder, raising my worst fears.
“Don’t slide!” I ordered her. “Don’t do it!” She kept her eyes closed the remainder of the contraction which finally let up after four more minutes. As my worst torture, the heart tones remained slow for a time, but finally they rose to about a hundred but without much variability. Abby’s eyes were still shut tight, as if she were still not finished suffering.
“The baby’s still in serious trouble. Shall I prepare for the C-Section?” she asked Abby. Abby suddenly opened her blood-shot eyes—they were the same sudden eyes that confronted me during the Ava double-exposure before my escape in the Piranha. But this time I was sure they revealed a wild look of malevolence and rage—at me!
“A C-Section? For what!” she shouted. “For his kid?” Oh my God, I thought. I tried to slide to catch her quick in another layer but was immobile, trapped here with the pop-up she left behind.
“Shit!” I said to myself. “Just what is the problem?” I tried again. Nothing. “Please, Abby, save our baby. Have the Cesarean,” I pleaded, more and more alarmed by the sickly steady heart rate.
“Get him out of here,” Abby shrieked in pain and fury, as well as in victory over who would decide what for her body. I received the complimentary shoulder grasp from Chaz and was promptly tossed out, the door shutting me outside. I had grabbed for my stashed gun but had reconsidered. After all, what would I do, threaten to shoot Abby if she were to refuse the surgery?
Through the door I heard the next big contraction, longer than the last one, accompanied by this Abby’s screams which deteriorated into whimpers of exhaustion. In the background, well submerged, was the baby’s heart rhythm, slowing even more.
Slower and slower it became, until it was no more.
I slouched down the wall into a heap. I could still hear Abby’s moans but didn’t much care. Was my very own unborn child a true exister, moving on with my Abby wherever and leaving a pop-up baby in the womb of this pop-up Abby? A dead baby? And regarding this, too, I didn’t much care, because somewhere where the birds were chirping and all that jazz this baby was mine. Right here, this baby was mine...somewhere. I know that didn’t make sense, but I didn’t much care about that either. I cared that the girl in there was going to give birth to a dead baby that never had a chance—true exister or pop-up—never a chance.
And then out of my throat bellowed a most terrible noise—a roar that was a railing against hopelessness, the force of which could beat back the ill-wind itself. It was an enactment only a parent who had lost a child was capable of. From an elevator a long time ago.
I heard God-knows-what happening behind the door. It was a homogenous clamor involving patient, midwife, and processes. I stank of worthlessness crumpled in my heap. I guessed that ol’ lady and ol’ man Ebe, even here, younger, trying to be my parents—I guessed that they had lost their grandchild after all, as versions of them had told their daughter-in-law, Ava, that day.
I languished in my collapse of limbs and psyche for about another hour when I heard a different kind of screaming and shuffling of furniture that could only mean the birth of the dead child. I cried into the palms of my hands, and soon this was the only sound I could hear.
After a brief period of time, Sister Chaz opened the door to exit. She carried with her a baby-sized effect completely surrounded in a white blanket. I jumped up to follow her, for I wanted to see the child, even though I knew what she carried was lifeless. This strong desire to see the child, to meet the child, was the only thing that kept me from storming Abby’s room, taking my gun, and...well, I made the right decision, even in my unbridled anger, even in this nadir that was my grief, even in my shattered essence.
Chaz passed a nursery of crying babies with the antithesis she herself carried. Borne by Chaz, born of Abby, born still. I picked up my pace until I was right behind her. She knew it, too.
“I want to look at the baby,” I told the back of her head, keeping up with her. “I want to see my child.”
“Congratulations, it’s a boy. Your son,” she called back without interrupting that famous stride of hers. She stopped and turned around, “Your dead son. Let’s see, what did Landrick call you? A roach! That’s right, a mote-eating roach. And now you see, she should have had that abortion—it would have been like stomping on just another little roach. Now, megassinine, just look at what you have. It’s dead—stomped dead. Really, what’s the difference?”
As she resumed her walk, I lunged for her. I grabbed her shoulder. She spun around, halfway by my pull, the other half on her own, her face irked by the affront of contact. She extended her forearm abruptly to stiff-arm me with a rigid open palm to my face. My left hand was fingering the gun in my back but sprang to block her strike by chopping her arm upward.
I struck her with my hardest-hitting knuckles, and I kicked repeatedly at her shins. I gave her the beating of her life that I had been dying to give her. I jabbed her in her neck and slapped her in her head with all of my might. Then I hooked her with a right, hard, slugging her good. I pummeled her.
She just laughed.
Like the fire hydrant that she was she just stood there inert. The baby was firm in her pigskin grasp, not the slightest bit jostled. We stood face-to-face in a stand-off. This was her move, because if she decided to get as rough as I knew she could, I was prepared to blast her. Showing her teeth, with stiff, tight lips, she snarled.
“You’re in big trouble, Ebe.” She snapped around and continued walking with my son. I followed. She hung a right through swinging doors into a little fluorescent-lit room. There stood a small, cold, metal examining table with dirty crumpled paper on it. She lay my child on it, still covered in the blanket as shroud.
“He’s all yours,” she said to me scornfully and stormed out.
“You sure are right,” knowing that this poor little thing belonged to no one else in this world but me. He didn’t even belong to his mother who deserted him and couldn’t even jumpstart him with his life at the very beginning of his human race.
I had heard that one should look at one’s stillborn child—that it’s supposed to help in accepting the tragedy. I lingered. The small little package lay so bizarrely motionless on the table, completely hidden in his pall. Finally, though, I knew it was time to meet him. I reached over and gingerly lifted a crucially tucked corner of white blanket and the other three corners fell away. Even though he had this sort of baby grease all over him, I could tell he was beautiful.
He was so beautiful, my son was. There was a serenity in his little face, a calmness with which I was familiar. This little face was now reposed and beside itself, beside the turbulence from which he was cast. Where before had I seen this calmness arising from turmoil? Where before had I seen this tranquility that was the victory mask signifying the prevailing over the struggle?
Maybe in myself. Maybe in anyone who has finally come to be at peace with himself for doing his finest. Maybe in persons like Les who arise every day to the same restraints life has fettered them with, but who nonetheless go at it with the most optimistic of resolve. And all of these things in that calm little face, my son’s face, made me proud of him.
I fell in love with him in that small room and I fell in love with him somewhere else, also. Somewhere he lived, my son. And for a fleeting moment this almost made it alright about him here.
I studied him. I put my finger into the palm of his little blue, cold hand and his absent grasp nearly killed me. I picked him up and clutched him to me, crying as I did.
I did seem to cry a lot these days.
“You live, my son. Somewhere you live. Somewhere you are sucking milk from your mother’s—a loving mother’s—breast. I don’t know where, but somewhere. Somewhere a good, gentle nurse is bringing you to your lucky parents, and they are grinning at each other like fools—like the happiest fools in the world. Oh God, I love you,” I said meaning it for both this little lifeless part of me as well as for the God above, who I missed terribly. Cu
I heard the creak of the door. In came the Ebes I had chased out of Abby’s labor room earlier. And I thought I was sad. Ol’ lady Ebe hugged me with the baby between us hard enough to smother a living child. So strong was that hug of hers—strong on purpose to reach through three generations. That was a good feeling, a family feeling. It was the same feeling I felt when my pregnant Abby had hugged me high above the ill-wind, when I could feel our child moving between us. I caved in. I sobbed so hard to her. She stroked my head. Ol’ man Ebe just stood there respectfully silent. I didn’t have the heart to refuse their misguided parental identities.
“Mom,” I said, playing the part (and it felt good), “I am so sad over this.”
“I know, son, I know,” she said. I then felt a hand on my shoulder. It wasn’t the forced march grasp of Chaz, but a comforting paternal hand instead. I turned to ol’ man Ebe. He spoke as I lay my son down. My hand was on my son’s shoulder as ol’ man Ebe’s steadied mine, and he spoke as I gazed at my beautiful child.
“You know, son,” he started, “a lot of things in this life don’t make any sense. People step on each other to get ahead..or even just for convenience. Or even to be just plain mean. The government doesn’t care about us. Your fellow man doesn’t, either. When it comes right down to it, the only ones you can count on are your family. And when you lose your son I share that grief. Not so much because I’ve lost a grandson, but because my son has lost his son.” I swallowed hard.
“You two are the nicest people in this whole horrible world,” I said, stunned by the spark of compassion that perverted this entire horrible layer.
“What do you expect, son,” ol’ lady Ebe said. “We’re your parents.”
And I remembered how the pain of today had been finally eased for them after the many years by the time they, or some like them, had been visited by an older Ava but the same me, in another layer. And it was only to have Ava rip open the scar by referring to me as the other grandson. She had no idea how in that mildly unreasonable layer of many more severely unreasonable layers to come she had maybe been unreasonable. But then she herself had the blinding prospect of a sudden lost son to contend with—sudden oblivion for her son, Les, at the hands of people who felt like these two did the how many years earlier which was now.
Everyone hurting everyone—it was a God-awful mess.
“Go to your son’s mother,” ol’ lady Ebe said. “That’s where you belong. We’ll take care of these arrangements.” I kissed both of them goodbye and walked out, but before I did I turned to once more look at my still son, my serene son. I became moved all over again. I broke down again. My parents were there for me again. So hard was I heaving my sobs that even I myself did not notice my tremor that was lost in the upheaval of my sorrow. These two pushed me out of the door and into the hall. Strange, I thought, but it did get me out of there and on my way.
I felt I was stalking my prey as I retraced the journey back to the labor room. I grew angrier and angrier with “my son’s mother.” An ill wind blew past me—through me. Fuckin’ pissfuck-bastardcockfuck and other sentiments, I churned. My teeth were grinding.
A gun, I found out, is a very dangerous thing indeed: sooner or later you just feel like you want to blast somebody. Sister Chaz would do. So would Landrick or Landry or whatever the hell his name was. And so would that piece of shit that killed our baby!
“You killed our son!” I shouted at her as I burst into the labor room, pointing the gun at her from my outstretched arm. Abby shimmied up her headboard, hurting as she did so from her fresh delivery. She was terrified, her eyes doing the screaming. She prepared to die, pinned to her bed by her condition.
“Wherever you are, Ralph, I love you,” she said to me as her last words.
“Oh sweet Jesus, I thought you were the one who killed our baby,” I said, knowing I had my real Abby, meaning that I had slid too.
I ran to her and embraced her, reassuring her as quickly as I could. “It’s me. It’s me...again.”
“I thought you were the Ralph here, with that gun and all,” she cried.
“No, no, I’m yours.”
“The Ralph here refused to sign the consent for a C-Section.”
“Why didn’t you tell them to just do it? Screw me!”
“Because the consent had a promissory note in it. They said that he—that you were going to refuse to pay the bill if I had the operation—that you had to sign first. They said they wouldn’t just do it anyway, because surgery for this emergency wasn’t mandatory—that anything done for the unborn is elective. They didn’t want to get gypped out of their bill.”
“The bill! Oh, please no, not for the money.”
So I had just left a dead son by her hands back there, and now I commiserated with my real Abby over our dead son by my hands over here. We just held each other.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I whispered.
“I know,” she whispered back as her eyes closed, and she fell off into exhaustion with no resurrection in sight at least until the next morning.