Pressure Drop (9 page)

She staggered outside. A cab shimmied over to the curb. Nina got in and and gave the address to the driver.

“Fucking shit,” he said.

Too late, Nina realized the air-conditioning wasn't working. She closed her eyes. She felt the car move, stop, move, stop. From time to time the driver said, “Fucking shit,” again, but Nina didn't open her eyes to find out why. Then, in the thick of a noxious crosstown traffic jam, Nina felt something for the first time: movement in her womb. It was a little rolling movement, as though a sleeper had changed positions in the middle of a long night.

Nina placed her hand gently on her strange, round belly, hoping for more. “Are you okay, baby?” she said.

“Huh?” said the driver.

Her womb was still.

The class was held at the West Side Women's Reproductive Counseling Center. Every woman except Nina had brought a man. The men were either soft and round or long and skinny; the women had pink faces and mottled skin. They sat in a circle on blue gym mats, like Brownies and Cub Scouts at their twentieth reunion. “Who's afraid of pain?” asked the instructor, who looked slim and snappy in culottes and a tank top.

Hands went up. Various deodorants warred in the still air. “Not you?” she asked one of the soft men, whose hand had remained at his side.

“I've got a high tolerance,” he replied.

The instructor smiled at him. “Imagine you had to defecate a watermelon,” she said. “Think you could tolerate that?”

The man blushed and looked down at the mat. The instructor was used to whipping rogue males into line. “Today,” she continued, addressing the group, “we're going to begin learning techniques for mastering pain while resorting as little as possible—preferably not at all—to potentially harmful drugs and medical procedures. We'll start by working on awareness. First let's establish the difference between discomfort and pain. I want all you labor coaches to pinch the biceps of your expectant partners. Expectant partners, close your eyes and concentrate on your physical feelings. All set? Oops. Hold on a sec.” Nina found that the instructor's quick eyes were on her. “You haven't brought your coach?”

“I'm still interviewing.”

The instructor didn't laugh. Neither did anyone else. “I'll do the honors,” said the instructor, coming around and sitting beside her. “Ready? Go.”

Then Nina felt bony fingers on her right biceps. They squeezed—until the word “squeeze” no longer applied and had to be replaced by “dug into”—Nina's flesh, causing shooting pain up and down her arm. Nina had a mad vision of punching the instructor squarely on her bobbed little nose. The vision sustained her until the bony fingers went away.

“Tweet,” said the instructor, calling a halt. “Now then, what did we learn about pain?”

“That it hurts?” an exhausted-looking woman suggested tentatively.

“Very good. And what about discomfort?”

“It doesn't hurt?”

“That's right. What does it do?”

Sucks, Nina thought.

“Bothers?” said another woman.

“Excellent. Today we learn to turn pain into bother.”

They turned pain into bother. This was accomplished by sniffing-and-blowing, huff-huff-huffing-and-puffing, tune-tapping and several other techniques Nina forgot immediately.

“Tune-tapping?” someone asked.

“Especially recommended for the second stage,” the instructor said. “Think of a favorite tune and tap out its rhythm on the sheet. Put your whole self into that finger, into that rhythm, that favorite song. It's important to have the song selected well ahead of time, just as it's important to have a full tank of gas and a packed ditty bag.”

The couples conferred.

“‘When a Man Loves a Woman'?”

“‘Last Train to Clarksville'?”

“‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down'?”

“‘In-a-Gadda-da-Vida'?”

They resolved to return in three weeks with their selections set and ditty bags organized. Nina left with a bruise purpling on her arm and the realization that she wouldn't be back. On the street a tall, well-dressed old man carrying shiny new garden shears passed by, glancing quickly at her belly.

The Cub Scouts and Brownies filed out behind her. “Chosen a name yet?” one asked.

“Anton,” replied another. “Ophelia, if it's a girl.”

Nina went home and had a cold shower. Then she lay down on her bed and thought about names. None appealed. She would call it Henrik, for now. “Kick me again, my little laureate,” she said, looking down at her belly and speaking out loud for the second time to a fetus that couldn't possibly hear her. It was a Saturday. There was work to do at the office. But Nina stayed on the bed, doing nothing, thinking nothing, waiting without boredom or impatience for Henrik to kick again. After a while he did. “Good boy,” she said.

A month later, the Sunday that
Living Without Men and Children … and Loving It
first hit
The New York Times'
bestseller list, Nina got a call from a woman at the public health department.

“Ms. Kitchener?”

“Yes.”

“I understand you are no longer attending the West Side Women's childbirth clinic. Are you having any problems with your pregnancy?”

“No.”

There was a pause. “I trust you understand the importance of good nutrition and health practices during pregnancy.”

“Of course.”

“Smoking and drinking alcohol can cause severe birth defects.”

“I know that,” said Nina, who had just opened a bottle of champagne sent over by womynpress. “What's this all about? There's no law that you have to go to childbirth class, is there?”

“No. This is simply routine. I'm so glad everything is all right.” The woman hung up.

Nina drank a glass of champagne and half of another. Then, still a little annoyed, she called the West Side Center and got the instructor's home number.

“Do you always inform on anyone who drops out of the childbirth class?”

“What are you talking about?”

Nina described the phone call.

“We have no connection with the public health department,” the instructor told her. “None at all. What was the woman's name?”

But Nina hadn't gotten a name. Had the woman said she was a nurse? Nina couldn't remember. She hadn't sounded like a nurse: a little too old, perhaps, old and upper-class. Nina pictured a grandmother, the kind of grandmother who might have tea at the Carlyle and own a house in the South of France. She apologized to the instructor and said goodbye. What was happening to her? She had learned to talk like an idiot to a fetus, but she'd forgotten how to get the facts straight from a simple phone call.

Nina drained the glass and poured another. Henrik gave her a kick, the hardest one yet. She put the glass down.

9

One day the white ceiling moved.

“Do you think it's all right?” asked Mother, somewhere out of sight.

“Not to worry,” said the medical man, drifting into view. “He's completely stabilized. The fresh air'll do him good.” The medical man looked down at him with a too-big smile. “Hello, Happy,” he said. “Dr. Robert, remember? It's a beautiful day. Feel like going outside?”

All the while, the ceiling kept moving. He lost sight of the molding, the spider web, the spider. Of course the ceiling wasn't moving: he was. He could hear wheels turning beneath him as he passed under a lintel, then under a cream-colored ceiling that went on and on—he was in the first-floor hall in the old part of the house: he'd been in the nursery the whole time!—and finally under another lintel and out. Out beneath a blue sky that was beautiful, as Dr. Robert had said, beautiful beyond anything he'd ever seen. Blue itself was beautiful. Blue saturated his senses. He could feel blueness and even taste it. The taste made him thirsty. He longed for a drink, a tall blue drink with bobbing blue ice cubes. How long had it been since he had drunk anything? He had no idea.

A crow flapped slowly across the sky: Happy could see its yellow feet tucked up under the tail, and hear the beating of its heavy wings. High above, towering white clouds floated by like weightless icebergs. The whole earth was alive, a living thing. Its electromagnetic force tingled in every inch of his skin.

“Do you think he understands anything?” Mother said in a half-whisper.

Dr. Robert sighed, then spoke at normal volume. “The tests still aren't conclusive. There may have been some memory loss, but if it's true locked-in syndrome, then yes, it's possible he understands. It's even possible that he understands everything. But there is some indication of damage above the lower brain stem. We're still back-and-forthing on that. If it turns out to be the case …”

“Then what?” asked Mother, speaking still more softly, perhaps in an effort to get Dr. Robert to whisper too.

But he didn't take the hint. “Hard to say,” he replied.

Mother spoke again. This time Happy could hardly hear her. He thought she said: “How does all this bear on the prognosis?”

“In what respect?”

Mother answered inaudibly.

“Oh, it has no effect at all,” Dr. Robert said. “The chances of that are nil, I'm afraid, barring some miraculous advance in medicine.”

Then he was rolling again. Trees loomed overhead. Maple, beech, elm, poplar, all crowned in autumn colors. They cut sharp-edged red and orange holes in the blue sky. He thought: Modern art isn't modern—it's been here all the time; and lost himself in the patterns. Lost himself until he had another thought: Autumn. How could it be autumn? And of what year?

Those were questions Happy would have liked to ask. But he couldn't ask, and even if he could, no one seemed to be around. Not Mother, not Dr. Robert. He was alone with the sky, the trees and a metallic clip-clipping sound that came closer and closer.

Then a rose appeared, inches from his face. A white rose of purest white, whiter than anything he had ever seen. Whiter than the clouds, whiter than snow, whiter than chalk. The petals fanned out in fleshy concentric circles, heavy, moist, sensual. A red bug no bigger than a pinpoint skittered toward the depths of the flower. And the smell: he had no words to describe the smell. It was the smell of the living planet.

Then he saw the hand holding the rose: a big, veiny hand, the skin old and liver-spotted. He wanted time to think about that hand, but before he could, a voice said: “Do you like this rose?”

Fritz. The gardener. Memory loss: he had almost forgotten Fritz. Fritz's face came into view: a bony face with eyes almost as blue as the sky, and hair almost as white as the rose. Fritz was old. He had always been old. Now he must be very old—eighty-five? ninety? more? But Fritz was up and sinewy, and he was down.

“I bred it myself,” Fritz said. “From an unusually white Athena and a hybrid of my own invention.” Fritz's face came closer and Happy saw his sun-damaged skin, mottled, wrinkled. “Breeding is half the battle,” Fritz said. “The other half is weeding. Breeding and weeding. Do you understand?”

Was he waiting for an answer? There was no answer. Fritz produced a pair of shiny garden shears, snipped the rose off the stem and stuck it in the lapel of his old tweed jacket. “I know you understand,” he said. “You're a smart boy.”

Boy?

Fritz was gone, and the rose-smell gone too. Happy looked up at the sky. He almost lost himself in the sight. Then he began to see a suitcase tumbling through it. He felt cold and wanted to go back inside. He waited for someone to take him.

10

Krio, dreadlocks swinging in the candlelight, sang in his soft baritone and strummed his sun-bleached guitar. He was sitting on a bar stool, shirtless, barefoot, but still wearing his apron. Moxie stood behind the bar, holding up a pretzel and trying to get Chick to talk. “Say ‘son of a bitch,' Chick. Say ‘son of a bitch.'” Chick stared straight ahead and said nothing. Matthias sat at a corner table, sorting through piles of charge slips and entering figures in a ledger. All the guests—the main house was full, as were all the cottages except 6, which had the toilet problem again, and 8, where the cockroach incident had taken place—had gone to bed.

“Power be comin' on?” Moxie said.

Krio stopped playing. “It always do,” he said. He struck a match and lit a fat joint. The joint moved back and forth across the bar, passed from one brown hand to another. It was offered to Matthias. He shook his head: he didn't want the numbers to start swimming across the page.

“Pressure,” sang Maxie, off-key.

“Oh pressure,” sang Krio, drawing out the last note. Then it was quiet, except for the sea, stirring restlessly on its bed.

“Say ‘son of a bitch,' Chick,” Moxie said. Chick did not respond.

Matthias held up a salt-stained slip. “What did the Lorings do today?”

“Loring?” said Moxie.

“The couple in Two.”

“She the one who puked in the pool last night?” Krio asked.

“No,” said Matthias. “The one whose husband sent the wine back.”

“Oh yeah,” said Moxie. “I took them to the Joulter reef.” A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He suppressed it.

“What's so funny?” Matthias said.

The smile, liberated, spread across Moxie's face. “First ting, I give the warning. You know—I be pointing to the fire coral, waving no no.”

“And?”

“The man he dive down, break off a piece and stick it in his pants.”

Krio laughed, shooting a smoke ball into the air. The lights flickered and came on.

“Son of a bitch,” said Chick, flapping his green wings.

“Power,” said Moxie, popping the pretzel in Chick's beak.

“To the people,” Krio said, leaning across the bar to blow out the candle.

Matthias totaled the dive charges for the day. The barge,
Two Drink Minimum
, had taken twelve divers to the coral heads off the Bluff. 12 × $40 = $480. Moxie had taken the Lorings in
Who Cares
to the reefs off the Joulter Cays, with picnic lunch. 2 × $75 = $150 + $25 = $175. The two divers from the Baltimore Dive Club, in Cottage 4, had taken four tanks and
So What
to the drop-off. 2 × $50 = $100 + $150 (for the boat) = $250. Matthias charged them $175. He liked having good divers at the club.