The Birthdays

by Heidi Pitlor

  He was sitting on the floor like a wounded child. It occurred to him he lacked a protective skin around his emotions. They seemed to him more raw than other people’s, closer to the surface and more urgent.

  He stood, smoothed his shorts and placed his feet hip-width apart, grounding himself. He was a man, not a child. He was a successful man at that, and he had an incredible wife—beautiful and virtuous and smart and fun, and as for the tornado of needs they’d soon face, well, they had both wanted children from the beginning, he reminded himself. It’d been something he’d always known he’d wanted. When he first met her she was forthright about it and he appreciated this. She’d said, on one of their first dates, “How many children do you want?” and he’d said, without much thought, “Two.” Maxims flooded his head now: Beware of what you wish for; Que sera, sera. Of course they never helped much, these words.

  He looked out the window at the top of the rosebushes. The only actual, concrete problem was that Liz had just caught him going to town on himself. She was probably repulsed by him right now, despite her nonchalance (undoubtedly feigned) in the moment.

  But he was human, after all, and so goddamned what if he’d indulged? She hadn’t touched him in weeks, no, months. It wasn’t such a terribly big deal. For that matter, he might as well finish what he started. Emboldened, he rushed to the underwear drawer, burrowed beneath his socks, grabbed the magazine with the twins on the front and went to sit on the bed. Liz coughed and he heard her footsteps approach. Losing his nerve, he quickly shoved the magazine under his pillow and walked into the hallway, where she stood, pulling towels from the linen closet. He kept his eyes on the floor, brushed past her, continued on through the living room and on out of the house again, to where, he wasn’t quite sure. But he felt certain he needed to be moving. Liz hollered something to him, but he didn’t slow down to listen. He needed a minute to himself, at least a minute to decide what he would say to her now, and he rushed down the back path, down to the beach, and when he finally stopped moving, he looked around at the ocean and the gray sky, and sat down on the sand.

  He picked up a pebble and tossed it forward. What was she thinking right now? What would he have thought if he’d walked in on her doing the same? He smiled. That never would have happened—especially now. She was not and had never been a person driven by sexual desire, and again, it was one of the things that initially impressed him. She seemed above this, above temptation of all kinds. She never drank in college, never smoked. She was an excellent student and such a promising artist—her drawings had even been displayed in the library during their final year. And she had friends, so many friends who seemed to adore her. Jake had always wanted to be someone like this—someone good and admirable and talented, someone genuinely liked by a group of people, and when she came up to him and asked to borrow his notes after their psychology class, when she said she’d meet him at his dorm later to return them, that she’d buy him an ice cream to thank him, he felt he had won some sort of lottery.

  Later, he’d been so proud to introduce to her his family, especially Daniel, who’d never met any of Jake’s girlfriends. Liz engaged them all in easy conversation, bantered with them, even joked with them about Jake a little, something that at first made him prickle. But in the end, he was just glad that she meshed with them so well. In a sense, he became more a part of his family when she was by his side.

  —

  A few blocks past Books & Beans, Alex pulled his car into a dirt driveway. Tucked behind the shops was a tiny white house, its paint chipped on its clapboards. The front lawn was all dead grass and dirty toys and rusted bicycles. He turned off the ignition, and Hilary, a little surprised by the condition of the place, followed him around the back of the house. The air smelled of cigarette smoke, and she heard the buzz of a radio struggling to receive a station. He led her down cement stairs and into a dark room where she heard the sound of panting. When he switched on the light, an enormous black Lab lunged forward and lapped at her belly.

  “That’s Rita,” Alex said.

  Hilary tried to fend off the dog when Alex disappeared into the next room. Around her were piles of books, magazines, clothes strewn across sagging or torn furniture. The walls were covered in tilted posters, enormous photographs of mountains and water and trees.

  Rita had fastened her teeth to Hilary’s shoe and was chewing and yanking, a low rumbling rising from her throat. Hilary tried to kick her away as she went over to what looked like an easy chair beneath a pile of shirts and a hammer and a camera and a cardboard box. She set these things on the ground and eased herself into the chair.

  Alex appeared in the doorway holding two glasses of water. “Drink?” he said, and handed her a glass. He sat down on the floor in front of her, evidently unaware that his dog was now mangling what looked like one of his socks with her teeth.

  “She your girlfriend?” Hilary asked.

  “Funny.” He reached over and stroked Rita’s head. “She’s my baby. I’ve had her since I was a kid.”

  “She’s something.”

  “Indeed,” he said. He pulled the dog onto his lap and vigorously scratched the top of her head. She squealed and licked his lips.

  Hilary looked away. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what she would tell George about this place and this person. Young, aloof, outdoorsy—your typical Berkeley type, she’d say, and George would ask her why she spent so much time with him, and she’d say, I don’t know, something just kept me there, and quickly change the subject. George didn’t know she was pregnant. She hadn’t been down to San Diego in months, and she hadn’t been able to figure out a way to tell him, or even whether to tell him at all. Now she imagined breaking the news to her family. You’re what? And no father for it, they’d say. How could you let this happen? You’re too old for such irresponsibility. Haven’t you grown out of this stage yet? They still treated her like the baby of the family. They still assumed she had no idea how to be responsible. Every other month Jake sent her books about investing money. Her father assumed she had no idea how to take care of her car or computer and asked her, whenever they spoke, if she’d been changing the oil, checking the tires, backing up her documents. You can’t be both a child and a mother, they’d all think when they saw her, all of them except Daniel.

  Rita looked up at Hilary with widened jaws, as if she were smiling, and began slapping Alex’s nose and mouth with her pale pink tongue. He turned and gazed at Hilary with a blank expression, blissfully blank. His hair curled in boyish waves around his face. His eyes were dark, his lips full. He was handsome, objectively handsome.

  “I’m beat,” she said, tentatively at first. “I’m absolutely fried. Maybe I should lie down for a little bit.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “All right.”

  “Bedroom in here?” Hilary asked, pointing to the next room. “You mind?”

  He shook his head but stayed where he was.

  With great effort, she pulled herself from the chair and lumbered into the next room, just as squalid as the other. A mattress lay on the floor covered with clothes. The room smelled of unwashed bodies. If her mother could see her now, or Jake.

  “Families make you uncomfortable,” George said about a year ago over the phone.

  “Not yours.”

  “Yes it does. You don’t want to be a part of something so traditional.”

  “Yours isn’t traditional. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, George.”

  “Still. You like being on your own. You like to think you’re making your own decisions, that you’re not being swayed by people around you who expect certain things,” she remembered him saying. “You hate having to live up to expectations.”

  She set her hand against the wall and lowered herself slowly onto Alex’s mattress. Knots of clothes pressed into her back.

  “That’s why you don’t want to move down here,” George said.

  “You know that’s not true. Can you honestly see me living in that sort of
environment? With all the blondes and the sun and the surfers? I’d hate it. I’d go crazy.”

  “Yes, I can see it.”

  She pulled a pair of shorts from beneath her back and tossed them on the floor.

  “No you can’t.”

  “You would laugh at them just like you laugh at those kids demonstrating in Berkeley and the healthy couples riding mountain bikes in Marin.”

  It was cement, the mattress, and she tugged the clothes away as she rested her head on a stained pillow with no case. The room reminded her of college, of the boys freed from their families to neglect their laundry and diet and hygiene. She’d been in rooms like this many times before, but not in years. This could have been the last time she’d find herself in such a place.

  “Okay. And what would I do for work?”

  “Anything. It doesn’t matter. You could work at a little gallery. You could work at a bookstore. Something laid-back, something more you than filing papers for some company.”

  “You know I hate all that sun. It makes bad moods impossible. It doesn’t allow for sloth or irony or nastiness or anything good, really. People would hate me there, and I would hate them. It’s nothing against you and Camille. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  “Right.”

  “George.”

  “You don’t like expectation. You don’t like families.”

  “I’ve never been too good at being a part of one. Mine can attest to that. Have I told you how many times I ran away as a kid?”

  “You’re thirty-five, Hil.”

  “Twenty-six times. Of course most of the time I just went to the woods in the back of the house, but later I took a bus into Boston. Twice I hitchhiked to New York.”

  “Should I pity you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “When was the last time you ran away?”

  “I suppose when I moved here thirteen years ago.”

  “I rest my case.”

  “George. I’m sorry, but I’m just not moving down there.”

  There was silence, a swallowing and a fizzing on the line, and then the dial tone. She looked up at Alex’s ceiling speckled with mildew and closed her eyes.

  *

  Alex stood above her, Rita by his side. “Everything okay in here? You’ve been out for a while. You want to keep sleeping?”

  “No,” she said. Her head was heavy, dizzy, and she blinked several times.

  He sat down on the end of the mattress. “How you feeling?” he asked. He looked at her belly.

  She screwed up her face. “Oh my God, I think it’s coming. I think my water broke!”

  He froze, then jumped up. “What should I do? What should I do?”

  She smiled. “I’m kidding. I still have three more months to go. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Sure it is,” she said, and gestured for him to sit down again. “You’re not used to being around pregnant women.”

  “This is true.”

  “You want to feel it, the baby? It’s moving now—here, give me your hand,” she said, and reached forward.

  His hand was clammy, and he seemed jumpy as she tugged him toward her, lifted her shirt a little and placed his palm against the side of her stomach. The baby turned and elbowed what felt like her kidney. “Is that it?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “What’s it doing?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Feels like ballet, huh?”

  He smiled. “It’s pretty incredible. Does it hurt when it moves around like that?”

  “No. Sometimes it’s kind of uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t say it hurts.”

  He pulled his hand away.

  “What do you think of this big belly?” she asked, edging up her shirt a little more, careful not to reveal the stretch marks at her sides. “You think it’s ugly?”

  “No, not at all,” he said, glancing at her lap.

  Rita whined and nuzzled her head against Hilary’s leg. She patted the dog stiffly. “You can touch it again,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

  “How much bigger will you get?” He reached over and pressed his palm against her stomach.

  “Hopefully not too much. I don’t think I can stretch much more. You know, I used to be fairly thin.”

  “I can imagine,” he said. He moved his hand across the top of her stomach, down one side and up toward the middle. “This is so weird.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Not you, not your stomach. I mean this situation. Sitting here, doing what I’m doing right now. I mean, I barely know you.”

  She nodded. “True. But I don’t mind it.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No. I kind of like it, really.”

  He stopped moving his hand. “What’s your middle name?” It was the sort of question a teenager asked in order to quickly establish intimacy before making a move.

  “Jane,” she said, smiling. “And my last name is Miller. You?”

  “Walter, last name Kerwin.”

  “What else do you want to know about me?”

  He paused. “Here’s a question: what are we doing right now?” He took his hand away.

  “Well, just now you were touching my pregnant stomach and we were sitting here talking.”

  “Very good. But I think you know what I mean.”

  She sighed. “I guess I do. To be honest, though, I’d just rather not have that conversation right now, if that’s all right. I’d really rather not dissect this moment because I was kind of liking it just as it was. I was enjoying your sitting here next to me with your hand on my stomach, and I wasn’t minding the fact that I don’t know whether maybe you snore loudly or have a stash of wives somewhere or that maybe you have a secret arsenal of guns. I’m okay with not knowing these things.”

  “I don’t snore loudly,” he said.

  “Thank God for that.”

  “It’s funny. You say the sorts of things that I’d say.”

  “You mean in this type of situation that you’ve been in so many times, except never with someone who’s pregnant?”

  “No, I mean … well, maybe. Not exactly, it’s just that—”

  “Alex?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like it if you put your hand back on my stomach,” she said, and slowly, tentatively, he did. “And now I’d like it if we could change the subject.” She shuffled closer to him. “I’m glad these kinds of thoughts occur to you, I really am, but I just don’t think that people always need to have this conversation.”

  “I guess the conversation does tend to put a damper on things.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “We can have a conversation later,” he whispered, and she said, “If we need to.”

  “So you’re all right with this?” he asked, and moved his hand around her stomach.

  “Yes.” She took one of his hands and led it around her back. He ran two fingers up her spine and across the back of her neck.

  “How’s this?”

  “Good,” she said. She smiled, and leaned forward to lift his T-shirt over his head. “And this?”

  “Just fine,” he whispered, and then, “You sure you’re okay with this?” as he unclasped her bra. She nodded, and he moved his face toward hers, then lowered it to her neck. He breathed against her collarbone, then kissed it slowly, firmly, and made his way up to her chin, her mouth. “You still doing all right?” he said into her ear. He slid his hands around to her front, and ran his fingers over her nipples.

  “Yes,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  “Just tell me when you want me to stop.”

  “I will.”

  He lifted her shirt over her head, then pulled off her bra and cupped his hands under her breasts. She should pull back, she suddenly thought, slow things down. Maybe he was right, maybe they should at least discuss this, but then the thought passed, and as he pushed his warm chest against her side and kissed her earlobe, her awarene
ss seemed to empty of everything but a keen floating sensation and a tingling in her chest.

  *

  Alex guided Rita into the back seat of the car, where she lay across piles of paper and books. He left Hilary to seat herself.

  “Thanks for being such a great tour guide.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “What do I owe you?” she asked, smiling.

  “It’s on me.”

  “Well, thank you. You know, I feel like I have a much better sense of this place now.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “And the people. I like the people here. They’re awfully hospitable.”

  He rolled his eyes, and turned on the ignition.

  She noticed that the daylight had faded and the temperature had dropped. What would her family do without the sun and the beach? Her father would hide in the corner reading. Her mother would try to engage them all in strained conversation by telling them about this friend and that, this relative, that book. Daniel would doodle or read. Brenda would talk work on the phone, maybe plan her next trip. Jake would be in constant motion, trying to please them all. More coffee, tea, a blanket? Liz would join him, straightening every household item they moved. They would all press each other flat. And this would occur, of course, after they’d each had a small heart attack upon seeing her pregnant.

  They drove past the shops and Books & Beans, and she directed him to Jake’s house. She peeked at the sharp lines of his profile, at his small nose and scruffy hair.

  “Am I going to see you again?” he asked.

  She couldn’t read from his tone whether in fact he did want to see her again. And anyway, what would be the point? She’d only be here for another two days. “I don’t know. I’ve got family stuff all weekend.”

  “Well, if I see you, I see you.”

  Did he actually want to see her again? And if he did, why? “You don’t want to get mixed up with some pregnant woman.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “And I don’t want to get mixed up with some guy who works in a coffee shop.”