The End of Men

by Karen Rinaldi

  “Absolutely not,” Anna said when Isabel told her over Thanksgiving dinner that she planned to make an appearance at the office after the weekend. “The doctor said bed rest, Is, and he meant it. Why would you jeopardize the health of your baby for that schmuck?” The entire family agreed.

  “She’s not going in, don’t worry. I’ll be home to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Sam said.

  “I don’t have a good feeling about this, Sam,” Isabel protested. “Is there some way he can use this against me?”

  “Sweetheart, no. He can’t. But if he tries, we’ll sue his ass. Doesn’t he have a kid of his own?”

  “Yes, but when his kid was having emergency surgery just days after being born, he came into the office to show his fucking devotion.”

  “Forget it. He’s not your problem, baby. You rest.”

  For two weeks, she did little but eat and sleep. She kept up with work e-mails and calls from the apartment. Sam arranged to work by video conference from his New York office so he could be close by in case Isabel went into labor again. When she reached the thirty-six-week mark they visited the doctor. He told her that their baby was out of danger and that Isabel could return to normal activity.

  After the doctor’s appointment, Sam and Isabel walked home through Central Park. Other than Thanksgiving dinner, she hadn’t been out of the apartment for the past two weeks, and in that time her world had shifted from impermanence to something grounded and solid. The imminent birth of her son and the presence of her husband anchored Isabel to a different set of priorities, priorities that didn’t put her first, and she welcomed the shift away from solipsism to something bigger.

  It was a soft but sunless December day, much milder than it looked from inside. The park, cozy and protective, muffled the sounds from the city streets. Although the city was festive with holiday shoppers and revelers, the park was empty, and for a few blissful moments she imagined Central Park was theirs alone. When they reached Fifty-Ninth Street, they hailed a cab in front of the Plaza Hotel and headed home. Isabel followed Sam into their bedroom, where they made love slowly and carefully.

  For the first time in a long time, she felt that they were family. Sex between her and Sam was a gift shared, one of love, between husband and wife, father and mother. With Christopher, over the past months, she had been selfish and reveled in her own satisfaction. She and Sam, on the other hand, had made a life together, and everything they did together became something stronger than her will or her ego. Her time with Christopher helped her to relinquish the individual claim she’d held on her life. It was a relief and a blessing.

  ISABEL DECIDED SHE would go back to work until the baby was born. The Christmas season kept work blessedly quiet. She was able to clean up a few loose ends she’d left behind when she’d gone on bed rest. Sam and Isabel both thought it would be fine for Sam to go back to Chicago for a few days, since signs were that the baby had decided to go the distance after all. So on Thursday evening, just four days before the New Year, Sam headed to the airport again, and Isabel made plans to have dinner with Anna in Brooklyn. Just as she was about to hail a cab, she was hit with a small contraction. Even as the pain waned, Isabel found herself in a highly concentrated state. She called Anna to say she wasn’t up for dinner and didn’t offer more. The outside world receded and she had that same animal directive she’d felt the first time she went into labor, that urge to go to a safe place and wait alone as her body prepared itself.

  Isabel made it to her apartment in a state of suspended consciousness similar to what she’d experienced four weeks before, with no recollection of how she’d gotten there. She lay down in the dark bedroom.

  “I should call someone,” she said aloud, but she didn’t want to move.

  The contractions came in waves. She timed them: twelve minutes apart. Plenty of time, she thought, to rest a bit. Isabel would pick up the phone when she had to, but until then she simply wanted quiet and solitude. She closed her eyes and breathed through the otherworldly feeling of her coming labor.

  ISABEL CAME TO when her water broke. With a renewed sense of urgency, she called the doctor, who told her to meet him at the hospital right away. She left a message on Sam’s cell phone—he was already in flight. She called Anna next. Jason had run out for a few hours and Anna was home with the children, so she wasn’t able to meet her. Isabel promised to keep her posted. Beth was next. She called a neighbor to come by to stay with Jessie, then hopped in a taxi to meet Isabel at the apartment. By the time Beth arrived, Isabel had packed a small bag and held a towel by her side.

  Beth held the door to the taxi she had waiting outside. “Your chariot, my hussy.”

  “Seriously, Beth?” Isabel huffed.

  “Okay, seriously. How are you doing?” Beth asked as she held Isabel’s hand.

  “I’m fine. This all seems anticlimactic after all these months of pregnancy.”

  “Oh, this calm feeling you’re having is all just practice,” Beth assured her. “Pregnancy and birth are a cinch compared to knowing that you can’t protect your child every moment of the day from the second he’s born. So enjoy the next few hours. This is as peaceful as it gets.”

  It was one of those times when Isabel appreciated Beth the most. Words that might have seemed harsh to others were the perfect antidote to Isabel’s anxiety about giving birth. The pain came and it grew and Isabel welcomed it as good pain, the kind that meant something wonderful was on the other end, as opposed to something broken or gone. By the time they got to the hospital, Isabel had already dilated to six centimeters.

  Beth had disappeared to track down Sam using Isabel’s cell, and by the time she got back, Isabel was already set up in a delivery room.

  “I just spoke with Sam,” Beth told Isabel, who vomited into a bedpan with each wave of nausea. “Geez, Is, you don’t make it easy on yourself . . .”

  “That’s helpful . . . What did he say?”

  “He never left O’Hare and he’s on the next flight back. I’d say hang on for him, but I don’t think that’s happening.” Beth raised her eyebrow. “The doctor said you’re getting close to ready . . .”

  Isabel felt her face fall. Sam had waited for this moment and she wanted to share it with him. She was ready now for her singular and independent life to become part of a family of three.

  Beth voiced her friend’s regret aloud: “I’m sorry Sam isn’t here to see your little guy come into the world, but I get to be here with you, best friend. We’ll get you through this together . . .”

  “Were you sick when you were delivering Jessie?” Isabel managed between breaths.

  “No, I actually thought it was kind of fun. Frankly, I was so relieved that Jessie and I weren’t HIV positive, I thought it was all gravy.”

  Isabel wasn’t having any fun because she continued vomiting with each contraction. Beth held the bedpan for her and fed her ice chips during lulls from the pain. “You know, Is, you can do this the easy way and get an epidural.”

  “I know, but I want to try to do this without drugs. I don’t want to miss any of it. If it gets too bad, I’ll let you know.”

  Isabel breathed into another contraction. Beth winced and actually said “ouch” aloud. Isabel had the wherewithal to laugh. It helped that Beth had been there before her.

  When the pain grew to the point where it threatened to drown her in its intensity, Isabel asked for the anesthesiologist. First, her ob-gyn checked her out. “Too late,” he said. “You’re already at ten centimeters. Time to push.”

  Beth let Isabel squeeze her hand, and breathed with her friend through the pushes. Isabel grimaced and sweated but didn’t once complain. After fifty minutes of pushing, the baby’s head crowned, only to disappear again into the birth canal. Beth watched as the doctor sliced open Isabel’s perineum, not to Isabel’s knowledge, this last insult minor compared with the rest of the physical trauma of bearing her child.

  At last the baby burst out from Isabel’s womb. Amniotic fluid an
d blood sprayed the room, a scene to make Sam Peckinpah proud. The doctor caught the baby in midair. Beth cut the umbilical cord and cried with her happy, spent friend.

  “You’ve done it, Is,” Beth said, delighted. “Another man in the world, created by a woman. And no one can say it’s otherwise.”

  The sound of her son’s cry, one that she would come to feel as much as hear, was beautiful, dissonant music to her ears. His eyes were too swollen to open and his nose looked broken. Not more than one minute old and he already looked as if he’d been in a fight.

  “He may not be pretty, but he’s mine,” Isabel said when the doctor held him up for her to see. Love wasn’t quite what she felt at that moment—rather she felt an uncharacteristic shyness in meeting her newborn son. Now that he had separated from her own body, she would get to know him on his terms. The power of that helpless, bloody creature held before her was undeniable and humbling.

  Isabel wanted to maintain a sense of whatever it was she felt at the moment. She would recall it as peace, this visceral knowledge and unqualified acceptance of the irreversible shift away from life as she had lived it.

  Sam arrived just as the nurse was bringing Samuel Jr. to Isabel for his first feeding. The infant had been cleaned up and swaddled in a white cotton blanket with blue and pink stripes. Sam Sr. walked gingerly across the room as if to protect the silence there. He instinctively held out his hands toward Isabel to accept the alien bundle and choked up as he gazed into the face of their newborn child.

  Sam held him confidently, reverently, as he put his nose and mouth against the baby’s head and breathed in the scent of new life. Isabel pushed aside her dressing gown to expose a nipple as Sam placed their son against Isabel’s breast. Sammy took to the task like he was born to it, and Isabel smiled in wonder at her body’s response to perhaps the second most basic act in nature. This simple act of nursing her son brought her grace. She’d never known it before.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Beth

  WHEN SAM ARRIVED at the hospital, Beth went downstairs to get some coffee and to call home to tell Jessie the news of baby Sammy’s arrival. Realizing that she was no longer needed, she took the elevator back up to Isabel’s room to tell her she’d be back later that day. Isabel was sound asleep, her newborn son beside her in a small trolley crib. Sam stood at the foot of the bed gazing at his wife and child. Beth stood silently next to him and he put an arm around her shoulders. Sam turned to give her a full hug and she saw he was crying through his smile.

  “You would have been proud of her, Sam. She handled it like a warrior,” Beth whispered.

  “I have no doubt,” Sam said, holding the embrace. “Thank you for being here with her.” Sam kissed the top of Beth’s head.

  The moment held the weight of their shared love for Isabel. “She’s lucky to have us both,” Beth said, not entirely with humor.

  No sooner had she witnessed the birth of her friend’s baby than she received the message she’d been dreading for a long time. Paul had slipped into another coma, caused by another respiratory failure, and there was little hope that he would awake from it this time.

  Beth rushed off to meet Helen at a coffee shop near the hospital where Paul lay dying.

  “You can’t see him, Beth. Mom is up there,” Helen warned as Beth sat down in the booth across from her.

  “She can’t stay there forever. I’ll wait until she leaves. Will you call me? I want to bring him a card Jessie made. I know he’s not conscious but I promised her. Besides, I need to see him too.”

  Beth didn’t want to upset Helen any more than she was already, but Beth had long grown sick of the family’s paranoia perpetuating the myth that she was responsible for Paul’s demise. “I am going to see him before he dies, Helen. I think he would want that.”

  “He would . . . he does,” Helen said. “Just please, wait until I give you the all clear so that you and Mom don’t cross paths.”

  Helen left the coffee shop and headed to the hospital. Just thirty minutes later, Beth received her text: “You have an hour with him.”

  Paul’s private room had flowers spilling from the windowsill and a crowded corner table, above which floated red Mylar balloon hearts gathered with silver string. The only sounds were the hiss of the respirator and the subtle beep of the heart monitor. Nurses quietly padded in and out, but there was no one else around. Beth wondered what kind of warning Helen had issued to clear the family for her visit. She thought of the scene from The Godfather when Michael visits his father in the hospital after he’s been shot in a failed assassination attempt. The room is left unguarded and Michael realizes his father’s enemies are about to try again. The nurse, believing Michael is disturbing his father, tries to get him to leave the room. He tells her: “You know my father? Men are coming here to kill him. Now help me. Please.”

  Now Beth recast the famous scene, changing the dialogue for Paul’s unconscious benefit: “You know my son? His ex-wife is coming here to help him. Kill her. Please.” She giggled at her silly joke and thought she saw the slightest smirk on Paul’s otherwise expressionless face.

  Beth felt a sense of calm resignation as she sat next to Paul on the bed. She knew it was the last time that she would see him alive.

  “Oh, Paul. I am so sorry you are going to die. You know, I would have loved you from the beginning just as much as an openly gay man. I hope you can know that in your heart before you disappear from your sorrowful life on earth and into the next.” She squeezed Paul’s hand as she said this, hoping for some sign of acknowledgment, but there was nothing.

  She pulled out Jessie’s card.

  “This is from Jessie. I promised her I would share it with you . . . On the cover is a colored pencil drawing of a bearded man in a flowing robe with a brown dog by his side.” Beth turned the card toward Paul to show it to him, although his eyes were now forever shut to the world outside.

  “Inside the card,” she told him, “Jessie wrote in purple pencil: ‘Pop, I knew a boy who believed in God, but he didn’t believe in dingoes. I hope where you’re going you will find both God and dingoes.’” Beth laughed aloud as she read Jessie’s message. She hadn’t seen the card before Jessie had stapled it closed.

  Jessie was referring to a funny little refrain the three of them had shared, based on something a boy told her in first grade. She’d come home from school one day and told Beth over dinner: “I met a boy today who said he believed in God but he didn’t believe in dingoes.” Such a bizarre notion, they had turned it into a little ditty the three of them sang together: I knew a boy . . . who believed in God . . . but he didn’t believe . . . in dingoes!

  “Did I ever tell you Jessie’s other God story?” Beth said now as she held Paul’s hand. “She and five of her classmates were discussing God and Santa over lunch one day close to the holidays. One of the kids asked the question ‘Do you believe in God or Santa?’ As they went around the table each kid responded. When Jessie told the story, she said, ‘Every single one of them said they believed in God, but not one of them believed in Santa.’ So I asked her, ‘What did you say?’ And Jessie said, ‘I told them that I believed in Santa, but not in God.’

  “Clearly, Paul, you imbued your daughter with a curiosity about the mysteries of the divine and a sense of humor to go along with it. Well done.” Beth knew Paul would be proud of their daughter’s fearlessness in expressing a contrary view. He would appreciate the various symbols of faith as well, uncertain as he was at times about his own.

  Beth sat silently with Paul for the rest of the hour. She finally arose and slipped the card Jessie had made for him under his pillow. On the back of the folded paper Jessie had drawn a picture of the three of them sitting by the Portofino wharf in the rain.

  Beth kissed Paul one last time before turning to leave. “I’ve loved you all along, Paul. And while I’ve had a hard time completely forgiving you, I’ve never stopped trying.” She squeezed his leg gently in a quiet and final good-bye.

&nbs
p; Beth left Paul’s room and traveled across town to visit Isabel, at home now with Sammy Jr. She needed to witness a new life, one safe from the specter of death, at least for now. It would give her the ballast she needed to go home to Jessie and tell her about Paul. As she rode the subway downtown, she debated whether it was wise to let Jessie see him one last time. Her daughter seemed so grown-up, even though she’d only just turned eight, and Beth had to remind herself that she was still a little girl. By the time she got home that evening, she’d decided that it would be best for Jessie to remember him as she last saw him, rather than comatose in a sterile hospital room with tubes protruding from his body. The situation with Paul’s family didn’t make it any easier. Jessie didn’t need any part of that insanity.

  Helen called Beth the next day to give her an update. Her voice sounded lighter than it had in years to Beth. “Mom saw the card Jessie made. It caused quite a stir in the hospital room.”

  “How so?” Beth asked, amused. She hadn’t even considered the discovery of the card, only that it should be with Paul until the very end.

  “Standard Mom. She said it was proof of your godlessness—she really couldn’t wrap her head around God and dingoes! She finally landed on ‘God will get her for this!’ What was that about anyway?”

  Beth explained the card to Helen, who found the story hilarious. “I think your visit gave Paul a moment of strength. When I saw him later last night, he was breathing easier than he had in days. He did always love you, you know that, right?”