The Towers of Babylon

by Michelle Kaeser

  HIS COCK IS weak tonight. It takes almost fifteen minutes of Karen’s stroking and nibbling and sucking to get it to stiffen, and when it does, he perceives a lingering softness at its core.

  It’s not just because he’s already given it two workouts today. Even if he’d abstained, he’d be having trouble right now. With his wife. For the first few minutes, Karen is attentive. She kisses his neck and says things like, “Yeah, baby, yeah, you feel so fucking good,” but her words are empty. She’s not into it either. The sex is unsexy.

  It happens like this most nights now. He’d rather just skip it altogether, but she’s ovulating soon, so sex is mandatory. He closes his eyes and thinks about Lou’s pink panties, reaching into them, his fingers drenched. That’s what comes to mind. That works. Yannick picks up some steam and pushes into her harder.

  “Hey,” Karen says. “Oh hey.”

  Her voice intrudes on the fantasy. It’s like she knows. Like she can tell he’s thinking about someone else. But does it matter? The aim of this exercise is pregnancy, not pleasure. “Mm?”

  “Hey, did you put out the garbage?”

  “What?”

  “The garbage?”

  “The garbage?” He drops onto his elbows and digs his thumbs into his eyes. “No, not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  He keeps pumping, leveraging from his elbows. “The raccoons. They’ll knock it over if it’s out overnight.”

  “But if you don’t put it out tonight, you’ll forget again.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Just put a rock on the bin. It’ll be fine.”

  “Raccoons can knock a rock over, Karen.”

  “I think you should put it out.”

  His dick is turning into a sponge, so he says “okay, okay,” and returns to Lou and her pink panties.

  “You’ll do it?” Karen asks.

  “Sure, sweetheart. I’ll do it.”

  Jesus. The sperm he’s got lined up right now can’t possibly be vigorous enough to launch a successful campaign. It’s no wonder she hasn’t gotten knocked up yet. They’ve made the process a chore, part of the nightly regimen. Brush teeth, wash the kid, impregnate the wife, take out the trash.

  When they first started trying for a second child, he wanted it. He really did. One child is lonely. He can’t imagine not having a sibling … even if that sibling is Joly. What shit it must be to grow up alone. How could he dump that on Yvie? For a good stretch, he and Karen were on the same page: kid number two.

  But then, last year, Karen did get pregnant. And there were difficulties. The foetus was abnormally small. The doctor explained that Karen would either miscarry, or … or … or what, doctor? … or there might be, well, problems. A kid with problems. That struck the fear of Christ in him. How would he handle that? Not well, that’s how. It’s hard enough (way harder than he thought) having a healthy kid. But crippled? Wheelchair-bound? Unable to feed or clean itself? Or mentally challenged in god knows what ways? It must take a goddamn saint to undertake that. So he was heartbroken, sure, but also swept up in a goddamn tidal wave of relief when Karen miscarried. Since then he’s been much less keen to try again. Karen’s already thirty-seven. They’re pushing their luck.

  But here they are. He’s pumping into her and pulling up the shape and shade, the particular pattern of folds, of Lou’s cunt.

  “Did you call the dishwasher guy back?” Karen asks, her voice muffled under his chest.

  “Karen. Seriously? Can we talk about this stuff later?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure. Sorry.” She bucks her hips up against his. “You like that? You feel so good.”

  He can’t concentrate like this. He rolls onto his back and hoists her up on top of him and grabs her hips. He’s always liked the feel of her wide hips in his hands. She anchors her hands on his chest and gets going with a good—or good enough—bit of rocking.

  “It’s just, we should have the dishwasher fixed before my parents get here.” With her arms in front of her, locked straight and close together, he can’t even get a good lock at her tits. “Or I’ll never hear the end of it. My mother will go on and on about it.”

  “Okay! I’ll call the guy.”

  Back into a rhythm for almost a minute … but oh, wait. “And you’re picking them up tomorrow, right? My parents?”

  “Uh-huh. Sure.”

  “Good.”

  Adele and Joe are coming down from Thornhill for Yvie’s baptism—and for the series of functions leading up to it. There’s some event involving Yvie’s dress. And a rehearsal on Friday (a rehearsal! for a baptism!). Although Thornhill is just a half hour drive from the city (less with no traffic), an easy commute that thousands of people make every day, Adele and Joe have decided the journey is far too big to undertake more than once a week. Instead they plan to install themselves at the Danforth house for the few days leading up to the baptism “to avoid all those pesky back-and-forths.”

  “Wait, shit,” says Yannick, his voice hiccupping out of him between weak thrusts. “We’ve got interviews tomorrow. I can’t.”

  “But you said you could.”

  “Sorry. I must’ve mixed things up.”

  “But I’ve got the showing in Don Mills. At Elliott and Louise’s place. That could be a big commission for me. I can’t cancel.”

  “Can’t you go pick them up after?”

  “What if the showing goes long? What if the buyers like the house and want to put in an offer? I don’t want to drive up to Thornhill in rush hour.”

  Yannick keeps rocking Karen’s hips, moving her up and down his cock, but the operation is absentminded … and absent sensation.

  “Joly. She can pick them up,” he says.

  “She’s working now too, remember?”

  “Fuck, right.”

  “And I don’t want to ask her to take time off. We should be encouraging her to work.”

  Even the grim rocking has dissipated into barely a sway. This isn’t sex, this is a conversation. He just happens to have his dick inside of her while they’re having it.

  “Shit. Can they take the train maybe?” he says.

  “You know how they are.”

  He does know how they are. Taking a train? Or any public transit in a city where they have family? Out of the question. Makes them feel like “unwanted tourists,” Adele says. And they can’t just drive down themselves, like ordinary people, because Joe lost his licence last year (DUI), and Adele won’t drive in big cities (“not with all those maniacs on the road!”).

  “What if I pick them up on Friday instead?” he says.

  “But Mom’s coming to Yvie’s dress fitting tomorrow. Yannick, we talked about this. You said this wouldn’t be a problem.”

  “I know. Okay. Fine. I’ll pick them up. I’ll work it out somehow.”

  This is all they talk about anymore. Logistics. For years it’s been nothing but logistics. Logistics about their wedding, the house, the pregnancy, Yvie. They must have had more substantial conversations when they were first dating. But it’s hard to remember. What he does remember is that she was smart and beautiful and everyone liked her and he was grateful when she agreed to marry him. He loved her then. He’s sure he did.

  For several minutes she doesn’t say anything more, no questions or demands, and the blessed stretch of silent fucking allows him to build up some real pressure in his balls. Not enough to come yet, but he’s making progress. And she must notice, because she leans over him, and with her head a few inches from his, she says, “Are you almost there?”

  “Uh … hang on.” He flips her back over and ramps up his speed and as he closes his eyes, he thinks of Lou’s face and her smell and her fingers in his hair until he at last manages to come inside his wife, a lame, unsatisfying ejaculation that he can’t imagine has force enough to penetrate her uterus. It trickles rather than spurts from his cock. No way is this a winner.

  He’s fucking exhausted. He collapses onto the bed beside her and watches as she slips a pillow
under her hips and pulls her legs into her chest to encourage impregnation. She keeps an eye on her watch to make sure she holds this position for at least five minutes. That’s how long her books say. Her expression is steady and focused, like if she just concentrates hard enough she can will his sperm into her egg. He’s disappointing her. Night after night. Month after month. He reaches out a hand to her cheek.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Nothing. You look beautiful.”

  She turns her head to smile at him. “I feel good about it this month. I just have a feeling.”

  She says this every time she’s ovulating. She’s had a lot of good feelings.

  “Me too, sweetheart,” he says. “Me too.”

  5

  IN THE MORNING, very early in the morning, Yvie hurtles into their bed, scrambling over Yannick to settle in the middle, where she glues herself to Karen’s back. It’s 5:53. Yannick closes his eyes and tries to get the extra seven minutes of sleep he’s due before the alarm goes off, but Yvie’s little feet keep kicking at him and kicking at him until she pushes him right out of bed.

  If it were up to him, he wouldn’t let the kid do this co-sleeping in the mornings. But Karen says it helps establish a sense of security, which helps with brain development. An obsession with Karen: boosting the kid’s IQ. But Yannick has yet to see any tangible results from her efforts. Yvie still eats dirt, given the chance. She shoves objects—keys, pencils, beads—up her nose. She licks anything with a curious texture. After years of play, she’s still no good at hide-and-seek, neither the hiding nor the seeking. Yannick loves the little meathead, but he’s not convinced that any trick of the parenting trade will make a genius of her.

  He showers. He shaves. He pushes through an exhaustion that isn’t ever eased by the night’s sleep. When he selects a shirt for the day, he makes sure it’s plain white—anything more colourful will draw judgmental commentary from Adele—and he pairs it with a dull grey suit. Then he goes downstairs for breakfast.

  “DID YOU KNOW that candle makers use more than a billion pounds of wax a year?” Joly says, jumping right into her breakfast chatter, this daily recitation of random useless facts.

  She’s already up and eating. She’s always up early, always already in the kitchen by the time he comes down. He can’t figure why she gets up this early when she doesn’t have to. He’d prefer to eat breakfast alone, a slice of quiet to start the day.

  He stuffs a pod into the coffee machine. “No. I didn’t know that.”

  “Seem like a lot, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  “That’s just in America.”

  “Is there a point to this, Joly?”

  “They’ve got me writing up blurbs about scented candles at work. I came across some stats. I don’t know … I guess it’s not that interesting.”

  She’s been employed for a week. It would be better if the job weren’t junk. Short-term contract shit at a giftware company. The pay is garbage. Not rent money. Not money enough for her to pack up and get out. But he’s almost stopped hoping for that. She’s been here so long now she’s become an unfortunate but accepted fixture, like the water stain on the brick wall out back or the neighbourhood raccoons that knock over his garbage cans.

  He pours himself a bowl of Cheerios and waits for her to drop her next factual deposit onto the breakfast conversation. But she keeps quiet in front of the laptop. The silence, even momentary, is unusual. She’s been mopey lately. Since the split with Babylon Ben. She’s been less chatty, less excitable, less herself, and Yannick doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to have to be concerned.

  “What’s the latest on your stories?” he asks, gliding onto the stool beside her. “What are you working on these days?”

  She pushes her Cheerios around in her bowl. “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. You’re always working on something. Let’s hear it.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know … I went over my archives last week …”

  “And?”

  “And … everything just seems a bit … ho-hum.”

  “Ho-hum?”

  “The stories aren’t as funny as I remember.” She smacks her spoon against the Cheerios, creating small splashes. “They’re … kind of dumb, actually.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? They’re hilarious.”

  “Meh.”

  Yannick flicks her temple. “What, you don’t have a sense of humour anymore?”

  She bats his hand away and produces a half-assed shrug. Her face stays glum as they work through their breakfast. It only flickers to life when Yvie rockets into the kitchen, slides across the floor in her socks, and crash-lands into Joly.

  “Yvie, hey!” he says. “No sliding! How many times do we have to tell you?”

  “Oops.”

  “You’re gonna knock yourself out one day.”

  The kid is clumsy and the floors have a slippery finish. They’ve told her a hundred times about sliding around in her socks, but she’s always in a rush, though she has nowhere to go.

  Yvie vaults onto Joly’s lap, who accepts the intrusion with a gentle pat to the kid’s head. From her perch, the kid inspects her own socks, like she just can’t understand how these awesome socks with the blue whales across the top of the foot might land her in trouble. They were a birthday gift from Adele, a great gift from Yvie’s perspective, because she’s big into whales, but a terrible gift from Yannick’s perspective, because now the kid never wants to take those goddamn socks off. She sleeps in them. Insists on it. They have to peel them off her to wash them. It’s a bad idea to get kids things they like. They get attached.

  “Morning, Yvie-bird,” Joly says.

  “What are you looking at?” says the kid. She shoves her little head at the laptop screen, as though proximity to words will reveal her hidden literacy.

  “Stats.”

  “What’s stats?”

  “Nothing. Nothing interesting.”

  Yvie doesn’t buy it. She leans in for a closer inspection of the indecipherable text, her face just a few inches from the screen, and she’s still pretend-reading when Karen arrives in the kitchen.

  “Hey,” Karen mumbles, dragging her feet, demonstrating for them all how tired she still is.

  “Bad sleep?” asks Joly.

  “It’s the A/C. It’s still not working right. I can’t sleep in the heat.” She pulls her jar of bone broth from the French-doored fridge. The broth, apparently, helps prep the body for pregnancy.

  “It’s not so bad,” says Yannick.

  “It’s sweltering. Especially with a toddler attached to your back. We might need to get a new system, Yannick.”

  “Summer’s almost over. We can talk about it next year.”

  They keep pouring money into this house. There’s always something to repair or renovate or upgrade. Even now, after having renovated almost the entire place, Karen can still find problems. She’s been making noise about moving. Which would mean upgrading, not downsizing.

  “Okay. But we’ll have to do something.” She sets the broth in the microwave and waits for it to heat. “What do you want for breakfast, Yvie? Toast or Cheerios?”

  “Ummmm … toast!” says the kid. But then she looks at the bowls in front of both Joly and Yannick and caves to conformity. “No, Cheerios!”

  Karen does up a bowl for the kid, retrieves her own breakfast of broth from the microwave, and joins them at the island. “You’re wearing that shirt today?” she asks Yannick through a yawn.

  “What’s wrong with this shirt?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it. I just thought you could wear the white shirt. With the French cuffs.”

  “This is a white shirt.”

  “It’s cream. And it doesn’t have the French cuffs.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “It’s different. And you can’t wear cufflinks with that shirt.”

  “Why do I have to wear cufflin
ks?”

  “Because you’re picking up my mom. She bought you those silver cufflinks. It’ll make her happy to see you wearing them.”

  “Fine. I’ll change.”

  “If you’re not wearing them, she’ll ask me why not. She’ll assume you hate them.”

  “Okay.”

  “And it’ll be a whole thing.”

  “I said fine.”

  “You’re going up to Thornhill today?” Joly asks with a sudden interest in this morning conversation. “What time?”

  Yannick glances at her, annoyed. “Afternoon. What do you care?”

  “Just wondering. About your schedule.”

  “Why do you keep asking me about my schedule lately?” Every day there’s some question about his whereabouts.

  Joly meets his eyes, then looks over at Karen, then down at her cereal. “No reason,” she mumbles.

  “Nonna’s coming?” cries Yvie.

  “You know that, Yvie.” Karen blows on her bone broth. “Nonna and Grampa are coming for your baptism. Daddy’s going to pick them up.”

  “Can I come too? Can I?”

  “To Thornhill?” Yannick asks. He looks at the kid bouncing around on Joly’s lap. It’s unclear sometimes whether she says things because she means them or because she just likes to hear herself form sounds. “You want to come?”

  “Yup yup yup,” she says in a sing-song that doesn’t make the sincerity of her position any clearer.

  “Yeah, all right,” he says. He prefers this actually, the kid makes a good buffer between him and the in-laws. “I’ll pick you up after lunch.”

  “Yannick.” Karen’s waking up now. “She’s got school today.”

  “Summer camp, you mean.”

  He doesn’t like the summer camp program. They send home report cards, actual report cards, for a three-year-old. Each of these reports has noted that Yvie “displays an excellent ability to follow directions,” but has also noted that she “is still learning to grow in independence.” She’s clingy, but obedient, that’s how Yannick reads it. Karen zeros in on the “excellents” without ever considering that a kid who is excellently obedient might not blossom into the kind of leader she’s trying to coax Yvie into becoming.