“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Torn between placating and defying, I chose both.
“My back is killing me and I’m taking my chair.”
She responded by reaching for her phone. “I’m calling the police.” I could see her fingers tap the nine and then twice on one.
“You don’t need to do that.”
“You are trespassing!”
“True!”
“Are you a complete and total sociopath?”
“I bought this chair! I need it!”
She spoke into the cell phone. “Can you send an officer to 3248 Colonial Avenue? My ex-husband just broke into my house.”
“There is no need to…”
“He’s still here…. No, he’s in front now.” She looked at me, holding the phone away from her mouth. “They want to know if you have a weapon.”
“True…”
Our nosey neighbor, Elizabeth, had come out of her house and was standing on her doorstep, poised in that stance of official witness for True.
“Not that I can see but I am concerned for my safety. 3248 Colonial. Cross Street is Palms. Thank you.” She clicked the off button, and then looked at me with icy coldness. “Take the chair out of the car.”
“It’s my chair.”
“Nothing belongs to you!” she screamed. “Nothing! You owe me three hundred thousand dollars!”
“You don’t want this chair, True. You don’t use it. I didn’t try to hurt you. Why do you want to hurt me?”
“You didn’t hurt me?!!! You didn’t hurt me?!!!”
“I said I didn’t try to hurt you!” Did I really think that this was a time to parse her sentence? Discuss semantics? Logic had left her. It was probably about time to leave me. I wheeled around to defiantly close the lift gate of the Volvo over the Aeron.
True reached to stop me, putting her hand under the edge of the lift gate, holding it open. I pushed down. She pushed up. My adrenalin had completely subsumed any resistance my sore back might have given to the motion and she was no match for my strength or my greater leverage. The door whipped down, wrenching her arm in the process. She cried in pain. I stopped before the lift gate latched. She grabbed her arm, shocked and disoriented with the pain and surprise. I removed my hand from the lift gate.
“Are you all right?” I asked, nonplussed. In all the confrontations of our married life, I never grabbed her, hit her, pushed her or pulled her. This breech was unintentional.
True didn’t say a word. She stood there with tears in her eyes. She had the bewildered air of a faithful dog freshly kicked by a drunken owner.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t…”
“Get out!”
“True!”
“The cops are coming. I need to go to class. Take the fucking chair.”
I closed the tailgate, got into the car and left her standing in the driveway. There was no reference to a police report on my restraining order, only to an alleged “physical assault,” so I presume that she left for class before the cop ever appeared. As my adrenalin wore off in the next hour, my own pain returned, doubled.
Chapter 4
In the fall of 1995, True was in her third trimester with Caleb. We had pretty much decided on the name. True liked Colby, which was her great-grandfather’s name, but I thought it was both cold and generically uptight. Colby sounded like a supermarket’s house brand for frozen food. Caleb had heart. It was biblical. Caleb was an attendant of Moses noted for his powers of observation. (Granted, we had to look that one up in the baby name book.)
We attended classes together on Monday and Thursday evenings at the Baba Yaga Yoga Center, a storefront on Main Street in Santa Monica. Marcy Lu, a certified midwife (whatever that meant, I never demanded to see her certificate), schooled us in the Bradley Method. It was there that we learned that only if we (I can say “we” because with the Bradley Method, the husband is an almost equal partner) maintained a united front by refusing painkillers and Pitocin, would we be assured of a naturally born and naturally perfect child.
We created a birth plan that specified that there would be no shaving of pubic hair (alas), no enemas, no episiotomy. We would be soothed with James Taylor, Nina Simone and Vivaldi. We did not want a fetal monitor unless there were signs of distress and there would be no intravenous injection unless True became seriously dehydrated. I would cut the umbilical cord. I was a tad nervous about it. True regarded it as a minimal investment considering her contribution.
We chose Santa Monica hospital for its earth-toned and unclinical birthing rooms replete with CD players and Barcaloungers. All of the benefits of high-end Los Angeles techno-hospitaling were a few doors away if the unlikely need arose. We had foregone amnio, not wanting to take the one in a thousand chance of an errant needle tip affecting our treasure, but True’s pregnancy had gone perfectly. Her weight gain was smack in the middle of the chart. She ate vegetables and protein, took her vitamins, and exercised gingerly. She had never smoked and had reduced wine to a few salutary sips with dinner. The ultrasounds had been perfect. Dr. Green glibly pointed out Caleb’s budding penis on the monitor and, while pleased, I reassured True that next time we would have a girl. I deeply felt something like God’s favor and that our next would surely be a girl because our life was about perfection.
As we approached the final weeks we considered ourselves to be something like the birthing equivalent of Whole Foods—thoughtful, healthful, enlightened, successful and diffidently upscale.
In the middle of the night on November 1st, I woke up to find the bed soaking wet. True was sitting silently on its edge. She had both hands over her belly.
“True?”
“My water broke.”
“Okay,” I said, stumped for a follow-up.
“I’m having really strong contractions. I’m going to take a shower so I can be clean for the hospital.”
She was surprisingly calm and matter-of-fact. It was a challenge for me to be likewise.
“Should I call Dr. Green?” I said.
“Let’s just wait a bit and see,” she replied.
“I’ll get dressed,” I said and got out of bed, noting 3 AM on the alarm clock. I heard the shower and then I heard a scream from True. I ran into the bathroom to find her doubled over in pain.
“It’s all right,” she said, grimacing like a dying cowboy. “It’s just a contraction.”
How did she know it was just a contraction? We really didn’t know anything for sure. This was all new.
“Breathe,” I told her. “Short quick breaths.”
I called Dr. Green’s number, got the exchange, and excitedly told the operator that we were leaving for the hospital. She said that Dr. Green would call me back soon on my cell phone.
True was standing up now.
“I’m okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She dressed herself mostly while sitting on the edge of the bed. I grabbed her packed suitcase with the flannel nightgown, slippers, her grandmother’s patchwork quilt, CDs and copies of the New Yorker and the American Educational Research Journal inside and put it by the door. My cell phone rang and before Doctor Sharon Green could say anything past her name I interrupted.
“Her water broke about half an hour ago. The contractions are about five minutes apart and regular and they’re lasting about a minute.” I wanted to be useful and precise.
“She’s right on schedule. I think it is very possible you guys might be having a baby today.” Her coyness annoyed me. “Bring her on in and then the hospital will page me as soon as I’m needed.”
Call me when you need me? I need you now. I need you here in the bedroom and in the car on the way over. I don’t even want birthing-coach-extraordinaire Marcy Lu. I want you, Dr. Green.
“I think she may be really close,” I pleaded.
“I’m a mile from the hospital. I can be over there in minutes.”
Okay. No sweat. We can do this.
At the hospital an orderly gre
eted us at the entrance with a wheelchair. Check-in was fast, friendly and efficient. We quickly were enveloped in the reassuring sand-and-taupe palette of Birthing Room C and in the large and competent hands of obstetrical nurse Bernice Alvarado, an expansive brown-skinned woman in her forties. It was soon clear that with her Guatemalan large-family upbringing and her nursing school education, she knew everything about giving birth and we knew nothing. Marcy Lu had given us the impression that we would be wholly responsible for delivering the baby by ourselves.
Bernice eased True into a gown, made the bed comfortable and then helped her onto it. True had a contraction immediately and gasped in pain. I took her hand and reminded her “short breaths.” Bernice had the grace not to treat us as ignorant parvenus as she noted the timing on the wall clock. “That’s very good,” she said. After the contraction ebbed she examined True.
“She’s at seven centimeters. That’s good.”
“Have you called Dr. Green?” I queried.
“Dr. Green likes us to call at eight centimeters if mom is doing okay.” She sensed my anxiety. “Don’t worry. She’ll get here. Doctors need to sleep so they can be good for their patients. And Dr. Green almost always comes herself.”
“Almost always?” I was thinking. Bernice managed my anxiety by giving me a task. “You guys did all your Lamaze, right?”
I nodded. I actually liked that she was handling me. It demonstrated competence and experience.
“Then you’re gonna help missus with her breathing, right? I have shaved ice and peppermints and everything you need. You want to do the natural childbirth, you gotta work at it. It’s not gonna be a party.”
The ob/gyn resident stopped in, introduced himself with zero eye contact as Dr. Zafardi, picked up True’s chart and examined her. He confirmed Bernice’s assessment of progress and said it would be a few hours before True started real labor. He left and said he would be close by.
Marcy Lu, if you are out there, I would like to tell you that the picture you painted for us of what our natural birth experience would be was at best a well-intentioned fraud. I am wiser now, and I do know that the responsibility for giving credence to unlikely promises lies with me, so I do not blame you. And if we disregard process, then we did just fine, for nobody can argue with the outcome. Caleb was pink, seven pounds, eleven ounces and effervescent with life. He passed his first exam with a boisterous “eight” Apgar score (with special commendations from the doctor for his outstanding reflex irritability). All of this was no doubt laying the essential groundwork for perfect SAT scores and admission to Stanford or my alma mater, Yale. (Q. How do you know when a man has gone to Yale? A. He’ll tell you.)
The route to the stellar Apgar was, however, sinuous and strewn with obstacles. Considering the fine result, I don’t want to make too much of this, but sweet Caleb did not pop out spontaneously in Birthing Room C. It was more like hiking into a box canyon with options diminishing as the trip progressed.
When True was ten centimeters dilated Bernice called Dr. Green who, good to her promise, appeared within fifteen minutes. She assessed that there was still about an hour before True needed to push. In fact, it was two.
But pushing yielded no result. True pushed and sweated and cried and screamed for hours in an effort to coax out our progeny-to-be. Bernice’s shift ended and she was replaced by Rosa, who tried in vain to mask her concern at the length of True’s labor. True had resisted the epidural despite Dr. Green’s advice that relieving her pain would help her focus on the delivery, but after four hours, in pain and exhaustion and full of fear, True consented to the shot.
After eight hours, True’s contractions, which had been strong and regular, began to ebb. Her muscles were simply tired from this goal-line push. Dr. Green, who had been a tireless cheerleader throughout the process, expressed concern for the baby and asked for permission to attach a fetal monitor. Perhaps if birth coach Marcy Lu was there giving birth, she would have had the will to refuse this dispiriting intrusion of high-tech medicine, but True and I were in no position to argue with Dr. Green, and she threaded in a small wire to relay unequivocally our precious one’s heart rate and breathing.
The hopeful news on the monitor was that the young Master Fourchette was breathing and beating like a baby starling and there was still time for True to marshal her strength and push him out. But after ten hours of effort True’s baby-expulsion mechanism was finally tapped out. Dr. Green confronted us with what we sensed already.
“You tried as hard as anyone could, True. Now’s the time to think about your health and the health of your baby. It’s time to do a Caesarian.”
I think True was glad to be relieved of the responsibility as was I. It could be argued we had given too much to begin with. Almost instantly a hospital orderly arrived, collected True onto a gurney, and wheeled her off into a nearby operating room. I stood frenzied in the hallway outside as nurses and an anesthesiologist zoomed past me.
After a fifteen-minute eternity of hovering at the door I was startled by the cry of a newborn. My chest began to heave and tears filled my eyes. My exclusion was unbearable. What could they do to me if I just burst through the doors? Then a nurse emerged with a warm smile on her face.
“Mr. Fourchette? Would you like to see your new son?”
“Is everything okay?” I asked as I followed her into the room.
“Your boy is fine and big and healthy.”
True was supine on an operating table, draped in green cloth with an anesthesia mask hiding her face. Dr. Green was bending over her midsection. Something wasn’t right. From what I knew about Caesarians she didn’t need to be unconscious. I felt discomfort in the pit of my stomach. Dr. Green, sensing my distress, turned to me and spoke from behind her surgical mask.
“Everything’s fine. We had to put True under a little deeper because I have a little repair work to do.”
True isn’t a truck and I wasn’t mollified by the notion of “repair work.”
“Your wife is fine. Don’t worry.”
My gaze was stuck on True when a nurse tapped me on my shoulder. I turned. She held a tiny, wrapped newborn in her arms.
“Here he is,” she said with a coy smile.
This moment has deeply etched my memory. The tiny, pink person I saw seemed quite perfect except for the clamped extension of umbilical cord extruded from his navel where the swaddling parted. Caleb was surprisingly unwrinkled (a benefit of the C-section), moist and glistening from the womb, his brown/blue eyes open and roving unfocused. Then his gaze seemed to fasten on me. I know according to the neonatologist establishment that’s unlikely, but that’s how I saw it. I was interrupted in my reverie by the voice of Dr. Green whose hands were busy at work inside True’s draped midsection.
“Does he have a name?”
“Caleb,” I replied, choked with emotion. Up to now the name was just a name.
Dr. Green looked to the nurse and directed her. “After you weigh Caleb and get him cleaned up, maybe Dad would like to hold his son for a little while.”
Dr. Green then turned to me. “True had some fibroids that were holding the womb out of position. That’s why she couldn’t deliver. I’ll be another fifteen minutes here straightening things out, but there’s nothing to worry about. Then we’ll bring her up to her room and let you know as soon as she wakes up.”
The nurse holding Caleb asked, “Would you like to hold your son?”
I looked at Caleb, tiny and perfect and ours. My preconception was that True would be on the bed in the warm confines of the birthing room. I would be holding her left hand tightly, lovingly. On her breast would be nestled our newborn son, contentedly napping after his recent strenuous journey. Nurses would pause at the door and admire the perfection of our triad. But True was out cold on a hard table and a stranger in a green smock held our baby. This was not fair to True. The mother has a deserved primacy. He should be first with True, then with me. But this would have to do. I think processing may have made me slow
to respond. I nodded to the nurse.
“I’ll meet you in the nursery in a few minutes,” she said.
I found the nursery a few doors down and was ushered by a nurse into a separate, smallish room with a few throw rugs over the linoleum floor and a wooden rocking chair in a corner. I waited a few minutes looking at the generic landscapes that decorated the walls, and then the nurse returned with a baby—not any baby—my baby, wrapped in white cotton. She presented him to me with a warm smile as she addressed the swaddled infant.
“This is your daddy, Caleb. Say hello.”
I took him from her, uneasy and overwhelmed. The nurse spoke to me calmingly.
“That’s good. Support his head. That’s fine. Would you like to sit down with him?”
I sat in the rocking chair and immediately began to rock. Rocking seemed primal, right and easy. His eyes were closed. He stretched in a kind of a yawn and his tiny arms and fingers extended. There was an ID tag around his ankle with his name on it. Caleb Fourchette. The nurse offered me a bottle.
“You can feed him some sugar water if you like.”
Sugar water? Is that really a healthy choice? What would True want? What would Marcy Lu say? I will just go with it. I am in good hands.
“Will he take it?” I asked dumbly.
“You can see. I know he’d rather have mama’s milk but he’ll get that soon enough.”
“Is this his first drink?” I asked in wonder.
“This will be his first.”
Oh my God. This is your Daddy bringing you your first sustenance out in the world. This may appear to be a mere disposable bottle with sugar water, but it is a holy rite and a sacred ritual.
Some Books Aren’t for Reading Page 5