by Joe Meno
* * *
Sophie surprises me by getting a number of used baby books—books that tell you the fetus is now the exact size of your fingernail or that its ears have finished developing. We read them together at night and I ask Sophie if she has talked to the baby today.
“No way,” she says as if I am crazy. “Are you crazy?”
She actually asks me this.
But I know why she doesn’t talk to it. She is afraid something bad is going to happen if she starts, like she will jinx herself maybe. I tell her I think we ought to at least make the kid feel welcome and then I lie down and place my lips against her belly and tell the baby we are really excited and can’t wait to meet it. I sing a song to it, something from the Beatles, and Sophie rolls her eyes. In secret, I feel so sensitive I think I might start crying.
“Why don’t you ever sing to me anymore?” Sophie asks.
“Because you’ve already made your mind up about me,” I say.
After the first few weeks, we both start to refer to the baby as “the bun.” I ask, “How is the bun doing today?” or Sophie says, “Look at this crib we should get for the bun.” It feels good to have this joke just between us. I even get a little baby-size T-shirt made that says The Bun right across the middle.
“It’s cute,” Sophie says. “But my kid isn’t ever going to wear something that corny.”
I am surprised, but we still get to have sex, which is something I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to do. It feels weird to me, not doing it with a rubber now, because I have been trained by my older brothers since even before I understood sex to never mess around without one. It feels meaningful, having sex like this, like we are for real, like we are in a movie about true love.
When her mother calls, bellowing in her Russian accent, I try to be decent. When she asks me when Sophie and I are going to get married, I say goodbye politely and then I quickly hand the phone to Sophie.
* * *
At work, I do the layouts, full-page spreads exploring the variations of Norwegian, oak, cherry, maple. Against my will, I begin to understand the notion of grain, of knots, of bark, of sapwood and heartwood. I ignore the random looks of despair on my coworkers’ faces. I ignore the pathetic flicker of the fluorescent lights overhead. I ignore the man in the cubicle next to me who spends his days dreaming of a Korean mail-order bride. I do my best, working without thinking, trying to be selfless, behaving the way I imagine an expectant father should.
In our closet, Sophie has a collection of all the saddest things in the world. It is part of an art installation she has been planning for years, which we both know will probably never happen. On the weekends, Sophie drags me to all kinds of garage sales, yard sales, estate sales; it is her thing, looking for other people’s diaries, answering machine tapes, journals, letters, anything that tells someone else’s tragic story. She has boxes and boxes of that kind of junk, everything from war letters to miserable-looking family photo albums of people she has never met. When we first started going out, I asked her, “Why do you collect all this junk?” and she told me it was her way of understanding that life was one continuous tragedy. We were sitting on her small bed and I was just noticing the smell of her hair when she opened up a photo album from the ’70s and showed me a photograph of a girl who was maybe eight or nine at a zoo, standing beside a beautiful, velvety fawn. In the photograph, the girl was crying and holding her left hand. “It bit me,” Sophie whispered, pointing to a small white scar on the knuckle of her left hand. She kissed it and placed her knuckle against my lips. I felt like I understood something about her then, something that was both incredibly attractive and incredibly sad. I had never met anyone as sure of the imminent end of the world before, and for some reason I found it very reassuring.
We wait for the baby together now, sorting through some of Sophie’s collected tragedies. We listen to the dozens of answering machine tapes she has collected, one of which goes like this: “I just wish you knew what you mean to me. You’re like a forest. You make me feel larger than life. You make me feel invincible. When I’m with you, I can do anything. Please, please, please, please call me back. I’m sorry for what I said to you. You’re just so much smarter than me. If you don’t call me, then I’ll know what your answer is. But my flight is at 11. I hope to God you change your mind. You’re not going to change your mind, though, are you? Jesus … that’s exactly what I love about you.”
We lie on the floor and listen to these tapes, over and over again, before placing all but one of the boxes in the trash, making room in the apartment for the crib Sophie has picked out already.
When we first met, people introduced Sophie to me as Natasha Rostova: I had just so happened to have read War and Peace when I was an undergrad, or at least parts of it, so I knew it was a joke. You can imagine what I thought later when I found out her real name. What I thought was that Sophie was a snob, someone who walked around with French novels in her purse, which she did. She had on a black turtleneck and an orange skirt—it was at a small gallery show which I went to against my will, because everyone I knew then was trying to become famous for doing nothing. Guys who had been sketching dirty pictures in the corner of their math homework suddenly wanted to be considered serious artists. I thought Sophie was part of that crowd. The first things I noticed about her were her eyes, which were violet, then I noticed that she had cut her own bangs; they zigzagged in an imperfect dark line across her forehead. I got introduced to her that night through a friend and was surprised when she gave out her number so quickly.
When I asked her what her real name was on our second date, she told me it was a secret she would keep until death. We ended up sitting on my fire escape, staring up at the moon, pretending like we were the only ones looking. A couple of days later, we had done it twice already and were already walking around the city holding hands. That’s when she told me her name was Sophie. She made me promise not to tell anyone because she said she was an escaped Russian princess. I believed that for a little while, a few weeks maybe, because I had never met a girl like her before and so I thought it was completely possible she might be escaped Russian royalty. By then, it didn’t really matter though. We were head over heels, and going out every night with each other, and then she moved into my tiny place without even asking, which is not how these things go usually.
Sophie had been pregnant once before, when she was nineteen, but decided she wasn’t ready at the time and so she had an abortion. She told me about this a week after she had moved in with me and we both ended up crying. I looked in her violet eyes which were cobwebbed with black mascara and told her I didn’t think it was such a big deal; I knew a lot of girls, including both of my sisters, who had gone through the same thing. That night, when we had sex, I was afraid I was going to get her pregnant, even though I was wearing a rubber. I decided I never wanted to put her through that again and even after she told me I didn’t need to wear a rubber anymore, I say it was okay. I said it was no big deal. But after a few weeks, we fooled around once or twice without one, and then poof: a baby.
Sophie calls me from work every day at 11 o’clock to tell me she how she is feeling. Eleven o’clock is when her boss at the gallery usually goes outside to smoke. Today Sophie says she wishes she were a deer. When I ask her why, she says it’s because she feels as big as an elephant.
At lunch, I walk across the street to the park to eat alone. Sitting on a park bench, I notice a group of kids waiting for the bus at the corner. They are in school clothes and have backpacks. For some reason it puzzles me. I wonder, Is summer already over? Has school started already? and then I realize it is the beginning of September. The baby is coming in six months. That is it. The number sounds unbelievably small to me. I look up and watch the school kids joke and shove one another. A girl with a pink hair clip finds herself in a headlock within the arms of a chubby boy. The boy grabs her book bag, then turns her loose. Holding the bag over her head, he opens it. She screams, though secretly I can tell sh
e is happy for the attention. The boy pulls out a pink notebook, spilling the rest of the bag’s contents on the curb. The girl screams again, this time not so happy. The boy flips the notebook open and begins to read out loud, shouting something so all the other kids at the bus stop can hear. The girl is desperate now and puts her hand over the boy’s mouth. It’s obvious they are trying to figure out if they are maybe in love. The boy plays keep-away with the pink notebook, the girl chasing him with loopy giggles. Finally the bus arrives, drawing up to the bus stop. The girl grabs her book bag, packs up her spilled books and pens, then, ignoring the boy, she climbs aboard the bus. The boy gets angry for some reason, maybe because he is being ignored. He grabs his own bag, then throws the pink notebook in the trash can near the corner. He runs back, climbing aboard the bus just in time. From behind the bus windows, I can see the girl slapping the boy’s head. The driver is shouting at them.
As the bus pulls away, it looks as if the young couple are smiling madly at each other. When I finish my lunch, I stand, look around to be sure no one is watching, and then I walk over to the garbage can. The pink notebook is lying on top. It is unopened. On the cover, in silver marker, it says, Observations: by Rafaela. I pick it up and begin to flip through it. Each entry is carefully dated and mentions the author’s mood in one simple word: June 5, Angry, or, July 28, Depressed. Beneath the headings are detailed entries, thoughts, poems, drawings of horses with wings being impaled, sketches of enchanted castles on fire, and a number of unsent letters like, Dear Mom, why are you such a bitch to me? and, Judy, I know you think you’re something special but you are not. On the back cover, the girl has written in large, bold letters: It doesn’t ever happen the way you think it will. I close the notebook and decide this is something that Sophie would love. I carry it inside the building, close to my chest, hiding the cover.
When I make it back to the office, I put the pink notebook in my briefcase. I look up at the clock on the wall and see that I am late. The stranger in the cubicle next to mine is giving me a dirty look, pointing at his watch, asking me when he can expect the birch layout to be finished. I tell him soon, very soon, then hurry to begin designing a spread where strange white trees cross one another in perfect silence and harmony. The title of the piece is this, sadly: Birch-watching.
It is 4 o’clock when Sophie calls again.
I pick up the phone at the corner of my desk and ask her what’s up and I can tell she’s upset for some reason. She whispers something so soft that I’m sure I’ve heard it all wrong: “I think I have to go to the hospital,” is what I think she says. I press the phone harder against my ear, trying to understand. I know that something must have happened to someone we know, that someone we love has died, that there’s been an accident of some kind, her mother or aunt, my dad maybe.
But then Sophie says it again: “I think I have to go to the hospital. I’m having some bleeding.”
“Okay,” I say, “I’ll be right there.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, I’ll go …” I say, but already she has hung up.
I do not tell anyone I am leaving the office. The birch trees in the layout I am supposed to design will remain only faded black lines against snow. It takes forever to get to the gallery through the afternoon traffic. When I pull up in our ruined little car, Sophie is outside waiting for me. She looks terrified and really lovely. There is the small bump at her middle. Sophie is tall and usually looks like a stringbean to me. Now she is like a snake who has swallowed something—a lopsided watermelon maybe. When she gets into the car, she is silent. I drive us toward the hospital as carefully as I can. I do not think I have ever driven this carefully in all my life. I am like an aging driving-school instructor. I go ten miles an hour less than the official speed limit. I do not know why I drive so slow: Cars are behind us honking and beeping. It suddenly feels like we are both made of glass—that if I make a turn too quickly, we might fall apart. As we make our way toward the emergency room, I consider the look of absolute terror on Sophie’s face. I watch the shape her mouth makes, the size of her eyes, wondering what, if anything, it might all mean.
A nurse in triage refuses to look us in the face. As soon as Sophie begins to explain her symptoms, the nurse folds her bottom lip in, her gaze no longer meeting ours. The nurse has curly red hair and has seen it all, probably. She has already made up her mind about us and the rest of the world and everything. With her age-spotted hands, she jots down the appropriate information. Then she adds, “I want to warn you, this doesn’t sound good.” Sophie gets her temperature taken. I find this particularly strange, that something as ancient and childlike as a thermometer is somehow going to save us from what we most fear. We are told everything else looks okay. We are then told to wait, which we try to do, calmly.
“It’s probably no big deal,” Sophie says. “We’re probably just overreacting.”
I nod, unsure of what to say.
“I’m so hungry I’m losing my marbles. I didn’t have time to eat lunch today,” she says.
“I can get you something out of the vending machine. What do you want?”
“Surprise me.”
“Okay.”
I stand and walk across the emergency room to the two vending machines. The rest of the waiting room is nearly empty at this hour of the afternoon. It smells like artificial pine trees. The fluorescent lights are tricky: Everything beneath them immediately becomes blue and sad. A Mexican family sits together, waiting for news about their grandmother. An epic gladiator movie, dubbed into English, plays on the emergency room’s two TVs. I actually begin watching it: Hercules and Jason are searching for the Golden Fleece. I know everything will work out for them because it is on TV. I put some change into the vending machine and get Sophie two packages of Pop-Tarts, then sit beside her. She tears the packages open and quickly gobbles up the dry pastries. I stare at her, surprised, and she frowns and says, “So what? I was hungry.”
Another nurse, a young Asian woman with painted turquoise fingernails, calls Sophie’s name. We stand up, confused, like we have just won something.
We are led toward a small yellow examination room. I take this as a bad sign for some reason, that we are being put in here alone, because someone, some doctor, has already noted our tragedy. Outside the door of the small room, a prisoner is awaiting medical treatment. He is handcuffed to a silver gurney. A police officer waits beside him reading a dirty magazine.
“I was shot,” the prisoner explains as we pass. “Twice. In the leg.”
“And you were lucky,” the cop says.
We step inside the examination room. Sophie climbs onto the hospital bed. The nurse gives Sophie two hospital gowns to put on, then disappears. The gowns are gray-blue and ugly. They have been designed in the color palette of a corpse. I help Sophie tie the knots in back.
“We could just walk out right now,” Sophie mumbles to me.
I cannot tell if she is trying to make a joke.
“We could just pretend everything is okay,” she whispers again.
“That’s probably not such a great idea.”
“No … Hey,” she says, “are you scared?”
“No. Are you?”
“No,” she says, then a moment later,
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
The nurse returns and asks Sophie why she is here. Sophie explains she is bleeding a little. The nurse tries to find the baby’s heartbeat using a fetal heart monitor, a tiny blue device which she holds in the palm of her hand.
“Sometimes this doesn’t work, so don’t get worried,” she says.
She searches and searches, pressing the pad against Sophie’s bare belly.
There’s nothing. We get scared. I begin to feel tears in my eyes. Sophie and I look at each other, then away very quickly.
“Like I said, this thing never works,” the nurse explains, then disappears behind the door again. We don’t see her for another hour. When she enters, it is like she has never met
us before. She tells us the doctor will be with us in a moment and closes the door.
The ER doctor actually comes in right after that. Sophie and I roll our eyes at each other. He looks like he might be a guitar player in a college jam band. He looks like he is nineteen. He looks like people call him “Bro” or “Weasel.” His shoulder-length hair and youngish face make me even more worried. He talks to us but I don’t hear a word he says. Finally, I understand that he’s ordered an ultrasound. He asks if he can do anything else for us.
“Please, we just want to know, if you could, please don’t keep us waiting,” Sophie says. “Either way, we just …”
“I’ll do everything I can,” he replies, and suddenly, for some reason, I feel like he means it.
An elderly black man with a deck of cards in his front shirt pocket wheels Sophie down the hall, into an elevator, and then to the basement of the hospital. I follow them down another long hallway to the lab, where I am told to go sit in another waiting room. I do not argue. I think that if I do what I’m told everything will work out okay. I give Sophie a kiss on the forehead and momentarily watch her vanish into a room at the end of the hallway.
On the TV in the ultrasound waiting room, a court show is playing. I can’t watch it. The other people in the room argue with the people on the TV. I watch the glass door, waiting for the attendant. I realize I have my coat and Sophie’s purse in my lap. I feel awkward with the purse there, like it’s obvious how wrong things are because I have my girlfriend’s purse, sitting there like that, in my lap. Ten minutes go by. A half hour. When the attendant returns, nodding at me, I hurry out.
“What happened?” I ask. I look at Sophie, then at him.
“The doctor has to read the results,” the attendant says. “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right.”