Early Warning (53 page)

As if by common agreement, the conversation backed away from these subjects. Michael said that he expected Braniff to shut down, then that the market had closed at 807 (“But not before I sold a lot of GM stock—no one is buying cars anymore”), crude prices were sinking, gold at 345 an ounce, blah, blah, blah, and then Richie felt a splash. As he bent down to look under the table, Loretta half rose out of her chair, and Ivy said, “What?”

Michael said, “Did your waters break, babe?” And he said it calmly. Loretta said, “Worse than that.”

“What?”

“I feel like pushing.”

“Pushing what?” said Richie.

“Pushing the baby!” shouted Loretta, who then closed her eyes, stood up, and staggered toward the doorway. Ivy went after her. She said, “Have you been in labor?”

“I don't know. I don't know. Maybe. I've had Braxton Hicks for days.”

Ivy grabbed her shoulders and steered her toward the bathroom. Richie and Michael followed. Richie felt that he was gaping. He said, “Didn't you guys go to some kind of class?”

“Kind of,” said Michael. “We kept forgetting. We went the first time. It was stupid. Hh-hh-hh-hh, a-a-a! We couldn't stop laughing, so they asked us not to come back.”

Where had Richie heard this before?

Ivy said, “I worked on a book a couple of years ago about nonviolent birth and baby massage. It said the baby should be born into water. Like in a bathtub.” She steered Loretta to the tub, and began stripping off her pants. Richie said, “I'm calling an ambulance!” As he left, Ivy shouted, “Don't forget to tell them about the stairs!” Michael followed him, and Ivy slammed the bathroom door.

The whole time Richie was looking for the phone book, then leafing through to the emergency page, then realizing that all he had to do was dial 911, then dialing 911, Michael was practically on top of him, not saying a word. As he gave his address, said “unexpected labor,” described the stairs, then repeated, “Okay, maybe ten minutes, thanks,” Michael looked unlike Richie had ever seen him, struck dumb. Richie bumped against him, experimentally. No response. He said, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I can't believe she's having a baby.”

“What did you think was in there, a pillow?”

“I can't believe it. I have to call the nurse.” They had arranged for a nurse for the first six weeks. But Michael made no move. He said, “I don't have her number. Loretta has the number somewhere.”

Richie said, “I had no idea you were such a fucking idiot.”

Michael gazed at him.

He nudged Michael back toward the bathroom door, but when they got there, he knew in his very being that neither of them wanted
to open it. They stood. From inside, Richie could hear the sound of the bathtub faucet as well as Loretta's cries and Ivy's lower, reassuring tones as she said, “Bite this washcloth. It's clean.” Then a more muffled grunt, then the sound of the tap being turned off. Richie was used to thinking of Ivy as knowledgeable and competent, but he knew for a fact that she had never assisted in childbirth before. Then a siren sounded in the distance, came closer. Richie bumped Michael gently on the shoulder. “Go downstairs and let them in.”

“Where's the freight elevator?”

“There is no freight elevator.”

“You're shitting me!” Now Michael looked very white and close to panic. But the howl of the siren retreated and disappeared. Richie said, “Just go. Maybe you can wave down a cop car or something, if the ambulance doesn't get here.”

Michael nodded. Loretta gave out a cry. Ivy mumbled something, then said, “It's nice and warm. Just relax. Try to reeeellaaaxxxxx. There you go. Mummble mumble.” There was another cry, but softer, less desperate.

“Go down,” said Richie.

“Shout if something happens.”

“Why should I do that?”

Michael gaped.

“I'm joking! Go!”

Michael sailed out of the apartment, leaving the door wide open. When he had pounded down at least a flight of stairs, Richie gave in to his curiosity and slowly turned the handle. Loretta was sitting naked in the tub, huge and pale, her breasts resting on her belly. She had a washcloth in her mouth and her head was back, but as she cried out again, it tilted forward. Ivy was on her knees, leaning over the rim of the tub. On the toilet lid, she had set several folded towels. Loretta cried out again, a rich, even scary, vibrato howl. Richie looked at his watch. There was no more, and maybe less, than a minute between the cries. According to every movie he had ever seen, that was a bad sign if you were waiting for an ambulance and three guys to carry a stretcher up and a mom down lots and lots of steps. He said, “Can I do anything?”

Ivy turned and looked at him. “Where's Michael?”

“Watching for the ambulance.”

“I can feel hair.”

He said, “What?”

“I can feel the baby's hair. There's a lot of it. It's right there.” Loretta's head fell back and she groaned. Ivy said, “Oh, shit!” and leaned forward. Richie stepped into the bathroom and stood on his tiptoes. Loretta said,
“Ohhhh Goddddd helppp meee!”
and here it came, dark hair, dark squinched face, little crossed arms, little chest, first slowly and then shooting out, completely under the surface of the water, and therefore ripply and strange. Ivy half rose, leaned way over, and slipped her hands under the baby, back and shoulders and head; then, very carefully, sort of hooking her thumbs under its armpits, she lifted it out of the water, hair, forehead, nose, mouth, chin. The water sluiced over closed eyelids, plump cheeks, and full lips; then the mouth opened, silently. Then it let out a cry. Without being asked, Richie opened one of the towels and held it toward the baby. But there was a problem that they hadn't foreseen. Richie and Ivy exchanged a look, and then Ivy leaned forward and bit the umbilical cord in two, spitting out a little blood. Richie wrapped the baby in the towel. It was tiny, much tinier than he had expected. He opened the towel again, just for a look, and said, “Boy.”

Now Loretta, who had seemed to pass out, her arms spread over the rim of the tub and her head dropped back, sat up. She said, “Is he okay?”

As if in answer, the baby opened his mouth again and wailed, a healthy and not painful sound. Ivy said, “He seems fine.” She pulled the plug. The red, bloody water began to drain away. When it was all gone, she laid another of the towels across Loretta's thighs, and handed her the wrapped-up baby. Richie had to admit that he was sorry to give him up: he wasn't the mother or the father, but somehow that tiny face, with the dark hair and the bowed lips, was imprinted on him. Moments later, Michael burst through the door, saying, “They're here, they're coming up!” And then he stood there, his eyes wide, his arms dangling at his sides. Richie said, “What's his name?”

Michael and Loretta, both now staring at the tiny wrapped thing, said, simultaneously, “Chance.”

Ivy said, “You are naming this baby ‘Chance'?”

Michael took a deep breath. “Loretta's grandfather was named Chance. Jonathan Chance. He was a cattle rustler.”

“He was not!” exclaimed Loretta. “He was a perfectly respectable businessman.” But she was grinning from ear to ear. She said, “Chance Markham Langdon. What a boy.”

Michael stepped forward, and Richie stepped back to make way. Moments later, a medic appeared in the doorway. He called out, “Looks like we're too late again, Benny!”

—

IT WAS HOT
. The worst winter Henry could remember (worse even than the winter of '78, which drove him out of town), fifty-nine inches of snow, into April—his daffodils had worn snow hats for three days—had given way to the hottest summer. All he was doing lately was sitting around in his shorts, drinking ice water with lime juice and trying not to look at the thermometer. But how could he help himself? He had never seen it hit 108 before, much less for three days running. And at his place, he had a little bit of a breeze off the lake. He was almost ready to keep his air conditioner on all day, though so far he had limited himself to nights, spending at least some of the day at the Lee Street Beach, under an umbrella, where he was now, or in the water. He had also given himself express permission to do absolutely nothing. In his entire life, Henry could not remember doing nothing. His present exile in Chicago was his own fault, since he was the one who had talked Philip (they had resumed their relationship, but only as friends) and Philip's current lover, Yves, who taught at the university in Rennes, into taking their little tour in June, to avoid the August crowds. Two young men escorting a fifty-year-old all over Cathar country, Narbonne to Béziers to Mazamet to Carcassonne, then Tarascon to Montségur, to Foix to Mirepoix, one slaughter after another, rolling fields and vineyards giving way to precipitous mountains and perfectly groomed beaches. Philip, whose specialty was structuralist criticism, and Yves, whose specialty was Baudelaire, had been genuinely shocked at Henry's tales—Simon de Montfort slaughtering all the inhabitants of Béziers, even the Catholics who were seeking sanctuary in the cathedral, which he burned to the ground, saying, “Kill them all, God will recognize His own.” Subsequently, Simon's head was smashed to bits by a stone catapulted from inside the walls of Toulouse by “ladies and girls and women.” A fitting end, they all thought. It was admittedly strange to drive
through such a beautiful landscape and contemplate decades of religiously inspired cruelty and horror, but Henry had enjoyed himself.

He thought that Philip deserved someone like Yves. Philip was thirty-six now, tenured, published, often asked questions about incomprehensible subjects like semiotics and post-structuralism, which he answered with musical good nature. Metacriticism was much more glamorous than etymology, of course. Yves had reservations about Lacan and Saussure and approached Baudelaire with a more generalized perspective, situating him in his historical moment and cultural milieu, writing articles about the various ways in which Baudelaire and his contemporaries had infused this and that. Yves was twenty-nine, but well on his way from Rennes to Paris or Columbia. Henry was like an uncle to them (maybe a great-uncle to Yves), but they put up with him, and moderated the speed of their chatter in French so that Henry could understand most of what they said. The other thing Yves did was live in a large house between Rennes and Fougères. If you wanted medieval, you could hardly ask for anything more wonderful than the former frontier between Bretagne and France—with castles every few leagues—and then on down to Aquitaine, with its fortified hill towns, and below that, of course, Navarre, Ariège, Languedoc. His colleagues vacationed with their families on a continuum between Ottawa and Minneapolis; Henry flew off to Manhattan and Toulouse.

But he felt apocalyptic anyway, and it wasn't only the heat and the contemplation of Pope Innocent III. One thing Philip and Yves had talked about as they drove around was what was happening to friends of theirs, strange lesions in their mouths, weird infections, night sweats, swollen glands. Henry had eavesdropped, only asking a question every so often. He knew, though, that as he talked about Pope Innocent III, who had sicced Simon de Montfort on the Cathars (who held unorthodox Gnostic and Manichean beliefs, didn't give oaths, engage in marriage or reproduction, or eat meat), they were both wondering about curses, about such mysterious and medieval illnesses as the bloody flux, St. Anthony's fire, St. Vitus' dance, the ague, leprosy, the black death. Narbonne, Carcassonne, and Foix put them in the mood—God's curse, bodies piled upon bodies, the sense of one citizen recoiling from another only to flee into the wilds and be eaten by wolves. Henry was sure that Philip's and Yves's residences
had seemed as welcoming upon their return as his little duplex had to him.

Now, though, in the midst of all this heat and ennui, there was a name. Not the curse of God, but “acquired immunodeficiency syndrome,” every word easily sourced, three from Latin, one from Greek, a stiff, dry phrase, not medieval at all, but right up to date. Henry was falsely soothed by this phrase, somehow. It didn't seem possible, now that he knew it, that he could go into the bathroom to brush his teeth, as he had a day or so after getting home from France, look in the mirror, see a blue lesion on his gum right above his incisors, and nearly jump out of his skin, practically dying of a heart attack before touching the bump and realizing it was a bit of a popcorn husk that he had carelessly missed when brushing his teeth the night before. He felt now that he could somehow review his own immune system, and establish in his own mind whether it was functioning up to capacity: Coughs? Two yesterday, three the day before. Sneezes? Only when confined in the same room with the air conditioner. Skin? No sores, no blemishes. Aches and pains? Nothing mysterious—a filling that needed to be replaced and an occasional migraine (thank God for the telltale flashes and halos). Bowel movements? Regular and consistent in every way.

Henry was not ready to give thanks for his lifelong abstemiousness—even in the last couple of years of comparative excess, he had mostly observed and analyzed rather than partaken, but wasn't his whole life about going to France in June rather than August, dressing neatly rather than beautifully, loving wisely and never too well? Speaking of Baudelaire, the first sight of
a fleur du mal
would have sent Henry quietly out of the room, not once tempted to take a whiff.

His thoughts returned to the Cathars. He wished he remembered what they'd called themselves; perhaps it was “Parfaits,” or “Perfected Ones”? In years of eyeballing religion from a greater or lesser distance, which was something you had to do if you read twenty thousand books about the history and culture of Europe, he had never encountered one that drew him at all, but there was something about the Cathars' rejection of earthly filth, their revulsion at the wealth and corruption of the Church, their belief in the equality of the sexes, and their disparagement of the importance of the Crucifixion that appealed to him. He had never been able to imagine himself as a Mercian
or a West Saxon—he'd loved them for their strangeness—but he could imagine himself as a chaste vegetarian who considered the God of the Old Testament a satanic usurper who in six days created a Hell on Earth. The evidence of that was everywhere.