Gould

by Dixon, Stephen

  The last was when his wife was still walking with a cane, or a cane mostly but often with a walker and sometimes she needed a wheelchair to get around. They had two children and nearly three years after the second was born—that was the spacing they used between the first two and she became pregnant in a week—he said “What would you say to our trying to start having a third and what I promise will be our last child?” and she said she knows how much he wants another one—that he always wanted three—but she doesn’t see how she could have one in her condition, which he knows that unless the present drug works or some other new drug suddenly turns up, is only going to get worse. “I could get pregnant—I don’t believe that’s stopped in me; having my periods regularly certainly hasn’t. And if I was very careful—staying in bed through a lot of the pregnancy and taking extra good care of myself—not falling, staying off stairs—I could probably deliver it without a hitch. But what would I do with the child once it was born? I’d nurse it, if the doctors said I could after all the toxic medicines I’ve taken, but after that though they’d take me off those medicines if I became pregnant. Would probably have taken me off them months before we started to try to have the baby, to avoid complications in the pregnancy, and because of that, who knows?—my condition could deteriorate even faster than it’s been doing. But after that it’d be too difficult taking care of the baby the way I’d want to and you already have your hands full with the girls and your job and the house,” and he said “I wouldn’t mind doing more. I’d love to—really, my kids are everything to me. You’re everything too and I’d devote all my free time to the three of them and you. I’d make more free time for myself to do it—I know how to: just cut out just about everything else but them and you, which wouldn’t be a big loss, though also making sure the toilets and kitchen floor and such are cleaned every so often. And I bet getting pregnant and then lactating, or they go together—I forget, what do you do, start with the milk at conception or three or so months into the pregnancy or even just when you give birth or right after? But the doctors have said that could happen with your illness, that pregnancy often arrests and even corrects some of it, and we’ve seen what being pregnant does to women already healthy—you with Fanny and even a little bit with Josephine,” and she said “I don’t remember that,” and he said “It’s true, take my word, it made you healthier and more energetic and I swear, even more erotic, and everyone kept saying you looked much better, more beautiful and so on,” and she said “The better-looks part happens with most pregnant women, maybe to compensate for the swollen body but which I’m sure comes from the glow of knowing you’re carrying and has little to do with physical health other than you’re supposed to be less disposed to colds,” and he said “The point is that it’d work and you’d be healthier and I’d see to it that it did,” and she said “It also wouldn’t be fair to the girls. I’m barely half a mother to them now and with an infant around I’d be a quarter of a half the first year or longer,” and he said “So? Say a year, say two, but they can make that sacrifice also to have another sister or a brother,” and she said “You forget that to most children an infant sibling is an intruder, the worst sort of nuisance-scourge—stealing your parents and making you double up in your room with your sister or even worse in your sister’s room because for a while this ugly stinky baby’s got to have her own space and all the other folks mewling and drooling over it,” and he said “Not our kids; they’d love it, I know them, and they’d be helpful, learning how to change the diapers and burp it and so on—you’ll see,” and she said “Besides, much as I’d love to give you another child, two’s more than enough for us at our age and perhaps the planet’s and when you consider college and who knows what else for them—shoes, piano lessons, a word processor each—” and he said “Nah, never them with computers,” and she said “Hey, turn around and face the future—anyway, practically all we can afford.” Some days when they wanted to make love she said “I’ll put my diaphragm in,” and a couple of times he said something like “If you think you’re so close to having your period where you’re not even sure you need protection, don’t bother: you’re usually more precautionary than you have to be,” and once when he walked into their bathroom and found her drying herself after a shower he said “So, what do you say? No diaphragm or anything—just stand where you’re standing and grab the grab bars and I’ll come into you from behind. I’m that ready to go and the kids will be home soon with their school bus tooting so we have to do it fast,” and she said “I still have it in from last night. You really want to get me pregnant, but I’ve told you: I can’t chance it; an abortion could cripple me faster than the normal speed of the disease.” About a year later putting in the diaphragm became so difficult for her that she instructed him how to do it and then she’d check to see if it was in right. “You don’t trust me, eh?” he said once and she said “Matter of fact, I don’t. Not only because you haven’t had years of practice at it and that you admit to being clumsy with your hands, but when we start doing this you’re always too much in a hurry and you want another child so much that you might leave it somewhat askew so a little of you leaks in.” Sometimes he couldn’t get the diaphragm in right no matter how many times he tried and he’d pull his hand away and she’d say “You got it?” and he’d say “It feels okay,” and she’d feel it and say it wasn’t and that he should just give up and get inside her and then finish his sex on her stomach or someplace, “but please pull out in plenty of time and keep your cock away from my cunt when you come,” and he said “Ah, now that’s a familiar line from my youth or sometime after, or maybe I only heard it once when I probably rejected using a scumbag, as we called it then, and the only other way was on the girl’s stomach or where she’d jerk me off till I did it in the air,” and she said “With my hands stiff and uncoordinated the way they are I doubt I could even do that to you now,” and he said “I wouldn’t choose it over the stomach anyhow, but then, you know, when I could do it two to three times a night, who cared if I wasted one?” One night he didn’t pull out in plenty of time but let a little of it dribble inside her—he could control it like that—and after when he thought enough had dribbled in for her to conceive but not so much where she’d feel or later notice the semen, he pulled out and made all the noises of orgasm on top of her, though he didn’t feel anything when he came, and she got pregnant, he was sure she did by the swell of her belly a month or so later, so it was because of that one time when he dribbled or maybe some other time around then when he’d unintentionally inserted the diaphragm in wrong and when she checked it had felt all right to her, though with her hands shaking and there being less and less feeling in them, did she even know for sure what she felt with them anymore? But the belly. One night, about a month after he’d dribbled into her—on that particular night a month ago he’d wanted to get her pregnant; other times when they made love the thought didn’t occur to him or if it did it was that he didn’t want her getting pregnant because of the harm she said it could do her or because what the medicine she was taking would do to the fetus and once they found out then what they’d have to do to the fetus or that they already had two kids, more than enough, and if they had another even nine months from now he’d be close to his mid-fifties when it was born and when it was ten he’d be in his mid-sixties and when it was thirty and getting married, let’s say, or having its first child he’d be an old man, possibly doddering or senile and very sick . but he lost it. Go back. Her belly. He was watching her, she was undressing, he liked to watch her undress, especially when she had her back to him—well, he liked to watch her stepping out of or kicking off her underpants from the front too, or trying to kick them off, getting them caught on her toes and then having to sit down to take them off—but best when she had her back to him, sitting on the bed or standing up, but was a little turned so when she took off her shirt or unhooked her bra and pulled it from around her arms a little of her breast showed.