Future Home of the Living God(39)
I turn away, stunned, and cannot answer. I rise before him in my beautiful bulk. I tear up, but can’t speak. I begin to straighten things. I’ve found it difficult to get through my day unless the things in the house are put away in their places and perfectly aligned—somehow they never stay quite right. Oh, I don’t use a ruler or tape measure. I can do it all by eye, but it has become important to me that the little world in which I carry you is nicely maintained.
“How messy I’ve let things get,” I say calmly. “Me in my elephant suit.”
“Everything looks perfect,” he says. “Cedar, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what made me say that.”
“Maybe it’s the real you. Maybe you aren’t who I think you are.”
Phil comes over to me and tries to hold me in his arms. I hate him. I feel a sting of disgust because the jacket he wore falls to the floor and he bumps the chair into misalignment with the table, but then his arms are holding me and I’m enveloped in his human presence. My heart pumps faster and I grab him and hold on. I try to absorb his reality, his normalness, his non-pregnantness. I try to forgive his short temper and his maddening mobility. Besides, I know something’s wrong with my thinking. I just can’t tell exactly what it is since I am, of course, inside of my thinking.
“We’re going to get out of here,” he says.
I bury my face against his chest, run my hand along the collar of his shirt. His thick black hair is growing so long it is starting to flop over his forehead.
“Here.” He holds my hand and takes something from his pocket and before I know it he has slipped a golden ring onto my finger. “And I’ve got one, too.” He puts his ring on and then grins at me with that big, sweet, wide Phil smile. “There. Married. Hi, honey, whadja cook?”
My head clears suddenly. I know he’s kidding and I cling to that.
“I forgot to cook.”
“That’s my baby, and it’s okay. I scored crackers and cheese.”
“Crackers and cheese?”
I’m looking straight at Phil. My eyes brim over, I’m crying all of a sudden, my face is streaming, my nose is running, the tears that have been pressing up behind my face all day let go in a burst that seems to crack my chest open. My heart hurts like it was punched. I can’t bear it—crackers and cheese! It reminds me of all the wonderful, normal times that I have eaten crackers and cheese with my parents or friends. So many times in my past life and I’ve never appreciated how comforting and convivial those times were. Phil takes my hand and leads me to the bedroom and shuts the door. He pulls back the covers and helps me get comfortable against the pillows. I’m still crying, hiccuping, choking on my gallons and gallons of tears. I’m ashamed of my overflow, but helpless to stop. I keep apologizing and Phil says it’s all right, it’s all right, but after a while he becomes very solemn and says would I please consider that he was an asshole. I am not an elephant. And we now have conjugal duties to perform and with my permission he’ll commence what is after all a very important part of all marriages.
“Plus, voilà! The rings! We’ve got the rings!”
He waves the tiny box. We put our hands together. Mine is like a paw, chubby from my baby weight and dimpled at the knuckles. But the ring still fits.
“It’s a very beautiful ring,” I finally say, “and I think that we’ll be all right.”
Phil climbs into bed beside me. As we begin to touch I feel the rightness between us return. It happens slowly, look by look, question marks and kisses. I don’t think you’re ever going to read this. Honest to god. I doubt you’ll even want to. But if it turns out that you do, I can always tear out this page where I talk about making crazy passionate love while pregnant, can’t I, because I suppose it might traumatize you in the event that things turn out in some way where psychic trauma still has meaning.
September 18
You now weigh as much as eight or even twelve sticks of butter, and you open your eyes from time to time. You must know when I face the window; perhaps a soft radiance envelops you. I wonder if you feel the way I do on some mornings, waking, stretching to the light in warm physical joy. Yesterday I actually felt you hiccuping. If you are a baby boy, watch out for migrating testicles; they are now on their way from their place near the kidneys, moving through your lower body to their perfect scrotal placement. If you’re a girl, your clitoris is right out there, obvious, although your labia are very small yet, tiny flower. And you’ve got better lungs. You’re losing that bizarre lanugo hair. I know that all this keeping track of your development is a big assumption, maybe wishful thinking, on my part. I know all bets are off and I should form no expectation. But I am your mom and keeping track is what moms do.
September 21
In the middle of the night, we are awakened by someone tapping on our window. The wind is scraping the branches together and a low voice burbles behind the glass. I roll out of bed and crouch on the floor, my dreams still heavy, some sort of endless chase, dramatic and confused. We don’t dare look outside. Phil puts his hand on my back and whispers, “Stay down.” I hear him take the loaded Rossi out of the bedside table drawer. He sneaks into the kitchen. The wind shuts off. Someone’s talking. Then I recognize Eddy calling out, “It’s me, Eddy,” and “Me and Sweetie are looking for Cedar.” Phil crawls back to me—I am hiding in the closet. “It might be Eddy,” he whispers. And I say, “Of course it’s Eddy,” because I knew somehow that he and Sweetie would come.