Kids These Days

by Drew Perry

  “Weird how?” Varden asked her.

  “Weird like something was going on, I guess.”

  I said, “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “You were at work. It didn’t seem like a big deal.”

  “Isn’t it a big deal now?”

  “And here you are,” she said.

  “We’re alright,” Varden said. “Really we are. I don’t think we need to get too fired up about this yet.” He stood up and opened a cabinet, got out a fetal Doppler. “Let’s dial the little one in for a minute,” he said.

  “Ours still hasn’t come,” Alice said, meaning the machine.

  He ran a couple of sliders back and forth. “I don’t know why these people can’t be in a better hurry. We’ll send you home with this one, alright? Give you some peace of mind. If yours ever turns up, just ship it back.”

  “Thank you,” said Alice.

  “It’s what we do,” he said, waving us off. He slid another switch and traced the wand over Alice’s belly. Varden was tanner than the last time we’d seen him. He was like something browning in the oven. He held the wand near her left hip, closed one eye, tuned the thing in, and then there wasn’t any mistaking the heartbeat, the staticked wow-wow-wow-wow. He smiled. We all did. “A mile a minute,” he said. He looked at the display. “High 150s. Perfect. Would you like to hold it, Dad?”

  “Sure,” I said. I was wanting to get his questions right this time.

  “Well,” he said, “come on over.”

  I took it from him, held the thing in place while he marked Alice’s chart. He pulled a cardboard wheel from a drawer, spun it around, said something about due dates. Then he set the clipboard on the counter, slapped his hands on his thighs, and said, “Folks, we could do a quick ultrasound if you like, but I think that guy in there’s telling us just about everything we need him to. That right there is a textbook beautiful heartbeat. Listen to him go.”

  “Him?” I said.

  “Figure of speech. He, she, it, whatever you like. Animal, vegetable, mineral. It’s not on the chart, so I don’t know. Anyway, let’s run through a few possibilities here.”

  Alice sat up and pulled down her gown.

  Varden said, “One thing that can happen with our older mothers—which doesn’t mean one thing, except you waited until you were ready—is that sometimes we get a few adventures. Not complications, necessarily. Just a few more balls in the air. So, for instance, that cervix in there—” He pointed at Alice’s belly. “That guy’s a little bigger around than we’d like him to be. There’s a condition we sometimes see where the cervix wants to go ahead and open up too soon, which is not what we want. Think of it like a door on a submarine. We want that sucker good and closed until the end.”

  We nodded. We didn’t know what else to do.

  “So here’s a ridiculous term, OK? Incompetent cervix. I hate that phrase, and I still don’t think it’s us yet—”

  I said, “What kind of cervix?”

  “It only means it might not be doing its full job. In a very, very few cases, we need to go in with a stitch to hold things shut.”

  “A stitch,” said Alice.

  “But listen.” Varden held his hands out. I felt like we were at the mechanic, and he’d taken us into the shop, stood us under the lift, pointed up at things we didn’t know the words for, and started telling us how bad things weren’t. How much worse they could be. “We’re not there yet,” he said. “And probably won’t be at all. This is more than likely just a hiccup. I want you to know that. You’ll come back in ten days, and everything will probably be all settled and lined up exactly like it should be.” He was talking more quietly, taking us into his confidence. “That’s what I’m expecting, anyway.”

  “We come back in ten days?” I said.

  “That’s best for now, until we get everything calmed back down in there.” He pushed his stool closer to the wall. “The most important thing for you both to know is that you’re fine right now. And we’ll send you home with the Doppler so you can tune in any time you’re feeling hinky. Crank that bugger up and listen in. Does wonders to calm the nerves.” He smiled. “And one last thing. I’d like to have us on pelvic rest, see how that goes.”

  “Is that bed rest?” Alice said.

  “No, no. You can be up and around. You should be up and around. Pelvic rest means no sex.” He winked at me. “Sorry, Dad.”

  “It’s OK,” I said.

  “Sex can inflame the cervix. So let’s lay off until you come back in. And maybe no heavy lifting,” he told Alice. “Nothing you wouldn’t normally pick up. Just relax a little more. Notch it back a speed.”

  “I can do that,” she said.

  “Of course you can. Look. Both of you. This happens. I don’t mind a little blood. I don’t even mind a little cramping. What I do mind is if we get those things at the same time. That happens, I need you to call me.”

  Alice said, “Is that going to happen?”

  He said, “I can’t tell you yes or no, but I think all we’ve got here is the body saying, ‘Hey, now, let’s take it just a smidge easier.’ And the body knows. The body always knows.” He looked at us each again, made sure to make eye contact. I wondered if he might have a list of rules in his desk drawer. Affirmations and reminders. Smile. Eye contact. Be positive. “What I always tell my pelvic rest patients is that they should use this time for other kinds of intimacy. Massage is good. Or just listening. Charting your fears.” He walked over to the door. He had other ports of call. “Any questions, you two?” he said. “Anything at all?”

  He’d bulldozed us. I felt like we were at the go-carts, maybe, like I should be on the lookout for sucker-punching fathers.

  “You’re doing a beautiful job,” he said. “Just beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” Alice said.

  “We’ll see you in ten days,” he said.

  “Ten days,” Alice said, and then Varden was gone, and the nurse went with him, and we were alone in the room. There was a yellow biohazard container on the wall. Underneath the BIOHAZARD lettering, it said BIOPELIGRA. That’d be a name. Alice nudged one of the stirrups back and forth. I got her jeans. “Pelvic rest,” she said. “And what kind of cervix?”

  “He said he didn’t think you had that.”

  She said, “He might be a little intense.”

  “He knows things,” I said.

  “He’s supposed to know things. He’s a doctor.” She was dangling her legs off the side of the table. She looked like a kid in a swing. “Do you want to know what I want?” she said.

  “Are we charting our fears?”

  She balled up the paper gown, held it there in her lap. She looked strikingly beautiful to me in that moment. She said, “You think I’ve got it all figured out.”

  “I really don’t,” I said.

  “I just want to be pregnant. I want to get to be pregnant and not have to fight about it and not have to keep coming in here.”

  “I want that, too,” I said.

  “Do you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  She got down, got dressed. “We need to go home,” she said. “I’m tired. Let’s go home.”

  “Alright,” I said.

  “We’ll go home and not have sex and not drink wine.”

  “Sounds relaxing.”

  “I have to call Carolyn. She’ll be freaking. Like she needs one more thing.” She’d forgotten to put on her shoes, was holding them in one hand. “We need to find out what they want to do about Olivia. I don’t know what the hell they think they’re doing.”

  “You don’t want to do it? I thought you guys had a thing.”

  “It’s you two,” she said. “You’re the one who talks to her. And it hardly matters what anybody wants. They’re family.” She stared at a poster that was all about making sure your baby slept on her back. She said, “I’m sorry I made us come in.”

  “We needed to come in,” I said. “You heard him.”

  “I just want it to
be easy,” she said. “Is that so much to ask?”

  I said, “I never once thought it would be easy.”

  She kissed me then—a quick, dry kiss. A competent kiss. She said, “And boy were you right.”

  I pointed at her shoes, and she put them on. Somebody paged a nurse over the intercom. We followed the maze of hallways back out, scheduled our next appointment, left through the sliding doors. Like that, we were in the world again. Still pregnant. Still chugging along. I wondered if they measured that way, if back inside the office some bell was ringing. We’d get to keep our names up on the tote board one more day.

  I hated above all else the crushing uncertainty—if you had to be pregnant, I thought, you should at least get to know that everything in there was dividing and conquering according to plan. You should get to have regular, normal terror. We drove back south with all the sun everywhere making the interstate look even flatter, and what I started wanting—what I thought might really help—was some kind of converter for the Doppler, some way we could plug it into the cigarette lighter and ride along with the heartbeat keeping its own kind of time. Or better: Pipe it into bullhorn speakers we could mount on the roof of the car, play it for the whole world. Then everyone would know how we were holding up. Everyone would know exactly where we were. I felt certain that would make things better. I wanted to tell Alice, but I wasn’t sure if she’d trust it. I didn’t know if I did. But there it was anyway, a new idea taking up residence, something else for which there was no room.

  Three days of no bleeding, no cramping. Three days of breaking the Doppler out as needed, Houston to Tranquillity, to check in and make sure. The BOJ slept and spun, made ear tubes, made retinas. I held just outside of Alice’s orbit, tried to get her things she needed. I tried to keep us each calm. Monday night we went over to the castle to talk through the prisoner exchange. Alice said I wasn’t allowed to call it that. The twins were at a friend’s house for a sleepover. Carolyn and Mid took turns reading Maggie down—stories about pigs, stories about foxes driving delivery trucks. That went on for an hour. I looked for corners to hide in while it lasted. I couldn’t find any. I ended up on the sofa, with Delton, while she flicked through channels on the TV.

  “You’re leaking,” she said, without looking at me. On the screen: an ad for a station wagon that looked like a spaceship; a show with ten kids living in a house; ice skating.

  I said, “I’m what?”

  “You’re leaking. You’re like, not totally put together. That’s what we say now.”

  “We?”

  “We,” she said. “The youth. You’re leaking.”

  “The youth,” I said.

  “I’ll behave. In case you’re worried about that. I won’t light anything on fire or smoke or sneak out the window.”

  “I’m not leaking,” I said.

  “You completely are. But it’s OK.”

  “How can you tell?” I said.

  “It’s what we do.”

  “The youth,” I said.

  “Right,” she said. “Something like that.” She turned and looked at me, and for half a second I thought she was about to tell me that this too might pass, or maybe even tousle my hair—but instead she just seemed to be on input, or at least that’s what I decided. She was taking it all in, making note of the gory details so that she could repeat it, chapter and verse, the next time she had somebody good to tell it to. That’s what I would have done at her age. Check this out, you guys. Wait till you hear this.

  “Restriction, is how we see it,” Mid said. We’d made it to the kitchen table, and we were working through a lasagna Carolyn had found in the freezer. Delton was hunched into a chair, folded hard in on herself. She’d been alright before, when it was just the two of us, but now, in the spotlight, she looked like she’d rather be hiking across the face of the moon. Carolyn looked like she might have wished Delton was doing that, too, and that she’d taken Mid with her.

  I said, “Does restriction still exist? People still call it that?”

  “I don’t know, but that’s what we’re calling it.”

  The deal they’d arrived at was this: Two weeks. That was all. She wanted out, and she was getting it, at least in part. The rules: She could come and go from the condo, but only to specific, preordained places. She could hang out with Nic, but only in restaurants and coffee shops, and not after dark. She could see her other friends, but not after ten p.m. Nothing after ten p.m. By then she was supposed to be home, doing whatever it was she did. Texting. Interneting. Reinventing electricity. Mid had climbed up into the attic, found a little television she could set up in our nursery, which was where she was staying. There was still a single bed in there. Delton was saying she wanted to help paint the room whatever color we wanted, that she could help us get ready for the baby. “I know how to paint,” she said. “I’m really careful.”

  Carolyn said, “Sweetie, I’m not sure they need your help, OK?”

  “Mom, I’m just offering. God.”

  “We’d love that.” said Alice. “That would be a big help.”

  “See?” Delton said.

  “And if she doesn’t follow those rules,” Mid said, pushing ahead with his terms, “then she comes back here. Simple as that.” He turned to her. “Does that sound like what we talked about?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Those are rules you can abide by?”

  “That’s such a Dad move, saying that. Abide by.”

  “That’s the move I’m trying to make,” he said.

  “We’re having a little trouble with authority,” said Carolyn.

  “I am,” Delton said. “We’re not.”

  “I rest my case,” said Carolyn.

  “May I be excused?” said Delton. “I need to pack.”

  Mid said, “You’re already packed.”

  “I need to pack more.”

  “Go ahead,” Carolyn said, and she let her get all the way to the stairs before she said, “Your plate won’t clear itself, you know.” Delton came back, every movement just barely exaggerated—enough to show injustice had been visited upon her yet one more time, but not quite enough to elicit any sanction. It was a perfect tightroped teenage line. She banged her plate into the sink, left again. “Leecy,” Carolyn said, quietly, “You guys are really up for this?”

  “Of course,” Alice said, but she didn’t sound totally sure. She’d been on edge since Varden, waiting for the next thing.

  “She’s not like this normally,” Mid said. “She’s having a bad summer.”

  “Except she isn’t.” Carolyn rubbed at one eye. “She’s having a terrific summer. The Summer of Nic. We’re the ones having the hard time.” She looked at Mid. “Well, you are, anyway.”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “You’re anything but.” Things were definitely broken between them. Delton might have been the only thing keeping that from being on fire. Maybe we shouldn’t take her, I thought. Maybe we should leave her behind to give them something to do.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Alice said. “It’ll be good for her.”

  “You’re both sure?” Carolyn said. “You promise?”

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into,” Mid said.

  “Don’t say things like that,” said Carolyn.

  “It’ll be like a tryout,” I said, which was the safest version of where Alice and I had landed. We didn’t know her. She didn’t know us. But what the hell. If she thought she liked us, we could be those people.

  Mid said, “It’ll be like something.” He opened the fridge and stared in. “Fifteen. Jesus Christ. Maybe I don’t understand anymore. Maybe that’s my problem.”

  Carolyn said, “That’s not your problem.”

  “What is with you?” he said.

  “Really?” She held her hands out at an imaginary pile of things on the table. “Pick. Pick anything.”

  Alice said, “Fifteen was hard.” She was trying to bring them back from the cliff. “It was awfu
l, really.”

  “I liked it OK,” said Carolyn.

  “You got to go first. You were older.”

  “Shouldn’t that make me like it less?”

  Alice said, “It wasn’t easy. That’s all.”

  “Is it ever easy?” Carolyn asked.

  “When you’re eight,” I said.

  Mid said, “When’s eight? Is that second grade?”

  “You play kickball,” I said. “A ton of kickball. And you turn in reports on birds of prey.”

  “Maybe second grade’s easy for boys,” said Carolyn, “but it’s a nightmare for girls.”

  “Why’s that?” Mid said.

  “Every grade is a nightmare for girls,” Alice said. “First it’s clothes, and then it’s boys and clothes.”

  I said, “That seems a little broad.”

  Alice shook her head. “It’s easy for maybe five seconds when you’re with one other friend. But then you get a third girl in the mix, and two of you have to gang up on the other one. Or they gang up on you. It’s some kind of rule.”

  “But even in second grade?” Mid asked.

  “Especially in second grade,” said Carolyn. “How do you not remember the twins? Second-grade girls are awful.”

  “Let’s have a girl,” I said. “Let’s have two.”

  “Probably better than a boy,” Mid said. “With boys, it’s just shouting and breaking shit until they’re old enough to be jerking off into a sock.”

  “Nice,” said Carolyn. “Lovely.”

  I said, “Maybe we should forget the whole thing and get a puppy.”

  “They chew your table legs,” said Mid.

  “So do boys,” said Carolyn.

  “So do girls,” he said, and brought a few beers over to the table. He poured one for himself, one for me. I let mine sit there and tried to remember the second grade, but I could only come up with one or two names. Our teacher broke her ankle at the skating rink. I knew that. The ambulance came. It was a hell of a thing to see your second-grade teacher loaded onto an ambulance. The BOJ would be in second grade. She would have a lunchbox. She would have friends. She would be working very hard on becoming her own disaster.

  “Mom?” Delton called down the stairs. “Have you seen my yellow shirt?”