Private Practices (5 page)

He could see the top of the baby's head, its matted hair a mound of black twisted seaweed. But it had stopped its voyage through her vagina. He ordered forceps and began pulling down on the head, directing Diehl to cut the episiotomy while he braced himself against the baby's stubbornness. Then suddenly he had a firm hold on the baby and he maneuvered its head half out, working now with his hands alone. The head was slippery but he held it and at last eased out a shoulder. There was a torrent of fluid and a second later he was grasping the baby by its heels, sucking mucus from its sticky face, and hitting it hard, waiting for the belligerent world-hating cry and the bellicose red color to come. But the baby merely whimpered, made no warrior cry, and although when the cord was clamped his small penis swelled, his color didn't come.

Troubled, but trusting that the infant would soon enough perk up, he handed it to Diehl and directed him to start the required measurements of heart, muscle tone, and breathing. In the meantime, he concentrated on the afterbirth.

It was coming rapidly. He helped Annette deliver it, pushing on her stomach, then quickly checked to see if it had all come out. When he heard Angela at his elbow saying something to him, he asked her to wait a second, and completed his careful examination of the placenta. Then he heard Angela whisper loudly, “It's Apgar three,” and knew that Annette's baby had not turned red.

When he had finished with Annette and she was being sponged and dressed, he went over to take a look at the infant. A pediatric resident had been called and the baby placed in an isolette. It was breathing oxygen, its small stomach rising and flattening laboriously. “It's hypoxic,” the pediatrician said. “We'll have to hold it here for a while.” He sighed and looked uneasy. “Do you want to tell the mother?”

Annette Kinney was lying flat when he got down to her room, but she was already whispering animatedly with a woman in the bed next to hers. Tired but triumphant, she reminded him of a schoolgirl still awake at dawn after a New Year's Eve date. He wished she didn't look quite so joyous. Pulling the curtain around her bed so they could have privacy, he began, “Where's Frank?”

“Home. We thought it would be best for the kids if he stayed with them.”

“Have you called him yet?”

“No. I was just about to.”

Ben bit on the inside of his cheek. “We're going to have to keep the baby on oxygen for a day or so.”

He hadn't expected her to take his report calmly, but he was unprepared for the way her forehead suddenly gashed into great, deep wrinkles. “He'll be fine. You'll see,” he went on, trying not to let her see his own anxiety. “He just needs a day or two of special care. He's a little hypoxic, but he'll flourish rapidly on oxygen.”

Annette sank down onto the pillow, her gaiety gone. “Really just a day or two?” she asked doubtfully.

“Really. I'm sure of it. I've seen these things often. Have I ever lied to you?”

“No, never,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “But there's always a first time.”

“Trust me,” he said. “And relax. And after you call Frank, try to get some rest. Who knows? You might even get the baby by afternoon.”

He felt a power in his voice, saw how she relaxed her forehead, hypnotized by his drawl, and he left right afterward, promising to see her later on in the day. It seemed to satisfy her.

But he himself was beyond consolation. He had been asleep and oblivious and to cover up that first unfortunate error, he had had Annette's labor slowed down. It should have gone all right even so; most of the time a little slowdown produced only a negligible effect on labor. But Annette's baby had responded by getting altogether sluggish. It had tarried in her vagina and been poisoned by inadequate air. He felt monstrous, ashamed.

On his way out of the hospital, he stopped in front of the darkened gift shop, and, peering into the display window, wished the shop were open so that he could buy something for Annette. A plant. A bottle of perfume. A book. Anything. Then he pushed past the window, abashed, recognizing the irrationality of his urge to buy Annette a gift. It was audacious to imagine that there was anything he or anyone else could give her to make up for what would, most likely, soon be taken from her.

He made his way out into the street and, too angry with himself to permit himself the solace of sleep once again, went over to his office where he read until dawn and called the pediatric intensive care unit several times to check on the Kinney baby's progress. But each time he called, the resident on duty informed him that there had been no improvement yet.

Cora was the first person to arrive in the morning. She saw his light on, tapped on the door, took one look at him and said, “What's the matter? You look terrible.”

“It's nothing,” he answered, not wanting to talk about the Kinney baby. “When's Sidney expected?” Above all, he wanted to avoid Sidney just now. Seeing Sidney, who had never compromised a birth, would just make him feel worse. If he could feel worse.

“Not till late,” Cora said. “He's in Washington.”

“Oh. Right! I forgot!” Relieved, he washed and shaved in the office bathroom and prepared himself to start seeing his patients. He was sure that once he was busy he would forget about Annette Kinney for a while. But he couldn't forget about her. As each new patient arrived, he kept seeing Annette's disappointment anew, kept seeing disdain in each woman's face and himself for the failure he had become.

All morning he was regretful and disgusted with himself for having indulged in the extra pills just because Claudia and Sidney had made him feel so left out. If only he could relive last night. If only such second chances were possible. If they were, he thought once, he could have called Naomi instead of taking the extra pills.

When the office emptied out a little he took his lunch break. Cora brought him a hamburger and a milkshake and before unwrapping them he called Pediatric Intensive Care again. But the resident's voice was flat and thin as he said, “Still no change.”

“Well, let's give it twenty-four hours,” Ben said. “It's still too soon to be sure the oxygen won't make a difference.”

“Sure,” the resident agreed. But when Ben hung up the phone he couldn't bring himself to eat.

Cora, returning to clear away his lunch, insisted on his having the milkshake at least. Her face was wind-reddened and she looked angry and disapproving as she fussed over him, ripping open the paper bag and forcing a straw into the thick, dark liquid. “You need to get out more,” she muttered. “To think about other things besides work.”

She came in again when he had seen his last patient. He was sitting at his desk, his head in his hands. Cora reminded him that he had promised her the day after Lincoln's Birthday off because she was going skiing and told him that she had found a good replacement for herself while she was on holiday. But when he simply nodded and seemed uninterested in who it was, she began to grow fiercely maternal. “You should take days off sometimes too,” she said. “All work and no play—”

“I know,” he said.

“Dull boy,” she finished.

When she was gone he put his head and his arms down on the desk, not expecting to sleep but intending merely to rest. He was too upset to sleep, he thought. In a few minutes he would go over to the hospital again, check with his own eyes on the progress of the baby and pay his promised visit to Annette Kinney. But fatigue overwhelmed him. Without any exertion of will, his eyes started to shut, and his ears ceased to register Cora's footsteps in the hallway. Instead, in his mind, he kept hearing the voice of his mother, Sara. She was talking to somebody he couldn't recognize and she was crying and saying, “He's dull. Let's face it. Let's just face up to it.”

Poor Sara, Ben mused, and sat with his head buried in his arms. Whenever he thought of his mother, he felt sorry for her. Drowsy, he remembered how she had told him that when she was young, she had always dreamed of marrying a prince. An immigrant, she had learned English late in childhood, read fairy tales well into her teens, and fantasized overlong about princes charming, bewitched and benighted.

The man she had married, Samuel Zauber, Ben and Sidney's father, had clearly been no prince. An accountant for the Mid-Hudson Dairy, he spoke with an accent, smoked cigars whose odor Sara detested and left his socks strewn about the living room floor. After his death, Sara complained about him incessantly. But while he was alive, Ben imagined, she must have kept her complaints to herself, for she had made an alteration in her fantasies and Samuel was necessary to that alteration. She had decided that although she had not married royally, she might, instead, produce a prince for herself.

Sara tried, from the first month of her married life. In bed with Samuel she smelled his feet, was aware of the odor even when he had bathed them in the porcelain tub. She herself felt hot, sweaty, sunstruck. He would ride her, straddling her and galloping, a courier who did not know the errand he was on, the reason why she lay so willingly beneath him though he rode and rode her to exhaustion. And she never told Samuel how she felt. Feelings as a matter of display between husbands and wives were invented later, when Sara was already an older woman. In their midnight rides across the bed, physical presence was all.

Then at last Sara became pregnant and rejoiced, never once doubting that the weight within her was a son, a prince. But after six bloodless months she awoke screaming and bleeding in the night and Samuel called their doctor, the only Jewish physician in Poughkeepsie, and he came and took Sara in his black Ford to the hospital and she was assured, when she was sent home several days later, that there was no cause for the miscarriage, that there was nothing wrong with her, that it had just been an idiopathic event. She was urged to try again.

And she did try, and did try, and for the next eight years she was pregnant seven times and seven times Samuel telephoned in the night for the doctor and Sara was taken to the hospital and then returned home to try again. She began to believe that God had forsaken her, and grew depressed and stayed at home, friendless. And then, on her ninth effort God decided in her favor and let her have Sidney. Or so it seemed to her. That he was God-given she never questioned, and, even more than most Jewish women of her age and background, treated her first son as a being at whose feet both she and her husband should worship.

She knitted and embroidered and sewed and fed him, first with her breasts and then with an ornate spoon, a large never a small one. She kissed and bathed and caressed him and put him to sleep, once he reached the age of nightmares, in her own fluffy bed, urging Samuel to settle down on the couch. She taught him to read and recited her fairy tales to him and told him he must be a doctor when he grew up, and help God help poor women like herself, and she sat him on her knees for piano lessons before he was three years old. He was everything she had ever wanted in life.

In a way the second baby, Ben, was superfluous. She had had all her prayers answered by Sidney. Ben was an afterthought, God's postscript.

Still, she had done her best to love them equally. She was indefatigable and exquisitely fair. It was not her fault that Ben was a much more lethargic baby than Sidney, undemanding, absorbed in his own fingers and toes and unimpressed by rattles and colored wooden beads. Not her fault that Sidney, at two, had memorized his picture books, whereas Ben, stubby-fingered, could barely manage to turn pages one at a time. Not her fault that Sidney, at three, could print his name in great wobbly, giant strokes, whereas Ben clutched a pencil in his chubby palm and tried to make the eraser write. Worst of all, Ben did not speak until he was three or at least spoke only nonsense words, meaningless to the entire family. Sara lost interest in Ben.

Not so Samuel. Ben could still remember how his father had spent hours tutoring him, trying to teach him to speak, holding him on his lap and saying over and over, “Mommy. Dadda. Sidney.” It was his last memory of his father. Samuel had died when Ben was three and Sidney six, and Ben had learned to speak only after his father's death and only as Sidney's pupil. His mother still told the story of how it had happened with wonder and adoration in her eyes.

She had awakened early one morning shortly after Samuel's death and heard loud sounds from the boys' room. Ben was shouting, “Maddern gail,” and Sidney was shouting back, “Sailboat, moron! Say, ‘Gimme the sailboat!'”

A moment later Sara heard a loud, thunderous crack and a rain of whimpers and Ben sobbing, “Maddern gail thina rihm!” and she had hurried to the door of the boys' room just in time to see Sidney stomping the wooden sailboat she had just given Ben for his birthday. He was in tears. On his knees. Clutching at slivers of wood. His groping hands were dangerously close to Sidney's still-stomping shoes. Sara had started to rush for her youngest son when, his voice in a howl, his fingers pinioned, he had shrieked, “Gimme sailboat, moron.”

Suddenly both Sara and Sidney stood still, and then Sidney lifted his foot arid freed Ben's fingers and Ben grabbed and cradled the mangled boat and Sara ran across the room. Scooping up Sidney, she hugged him. “You made him talk!” she cried. “You make him talk!” Ben was howling “Gimme sailboat, moron,” and at last Sara hugged him too and kissed his throbbing fingers.

Shortly afterwards Sara felt able to move with the two small boys to Brooklyn, where her husband's brothers owned a mirror business and had offered her a job. She had delayed the move, ashamed of Ben, but now she was no longer ashamed. Little by little he had begun to make sense and by the time they moved and he met his uncles, Sidney had taught him to shake hands and say, “Gimourning.”

Soon after they moved, Sidney started school. Ben stayed at home with a housekeeper and waited impatiently all day for three o'clock when he and the woman could go to the schoolyard to pick up Sidney. He would hold the housekeeper's hand tightly until he saw Sidney's class come into the yard in size place order and then he would run with flailing arms and tripping feet to greet his brother, shouting “Gimourning! Gimourning!” But Sidney, fourteenth in line, with knickered boys in front and in back of him, would say loudly, “Jerk” and “Shithead” and “Gedoudahere,” and after a while Ben knew those words too, and by the time he was ready for kindergarten he spoke quite well, albeit at first with a bothersome, rattling stutter.