While Nichelle told Emma all her concerns about natural childbirth, Apollo made the mistake of finally looking down at his menu. There were three appetizers on the table, already finished. The oysters cost thirty-two dollars. The mushrooms were forty-two. Forty-two motherfucking dollars for a small plate of mushrooms. He couldn’t guess what the hell the last plate had been—there was only a white soup dish with some broth in it now—so he couldn’t figure what the price might be. But why not be conservative and guess twenty-two? Twenty-two dollars for a dish of broth might not even be a joke in a place like this. That meant this meal already cost nearly one hundred dollars. He and Emma were down fifty bucks, and he hadn’t even eaten anything yet.
Apollo finished the wine to calm himself; an exquisite Chablis. How much could it have cost? The wine list hadn’t been left at the table. If he’d known, just then, that this Chablis Grand Plus cost three hundred and seventy-five dollars per bottle, what would he have done? Run screaming, probably. His thirty-eight-weeks-pregnant wife up on his shoulders.
Writing for television sure had to pay better than an independent bookseller and a part-time librarian ever made. At least Emma, his beautiful and thoughtful wife, drank only water tonight.
Perrier, he corrected himself. Not tap water. And just how much in sweet black Jesus did Bouley Restaurant charge for sparkling mineral water? Did they infuse it with fucking diamond dust before they served it? The women turned their attention to Apollo only when he audibly whimpered in his seat.
Emma leaned close and touched his back gently. “I know you’re hungry,” she said. “Let’s get the waiter over here.”
Nichelle ordered the Organic Long Island Duck (forty-five dollars). Emma the Organic Colorado Lamb (fifty-three dollars). The waiter then faced Apollo.
Apollo handed over the menu. He pointed at the empty little basket in the middle of the table. “I’ll just have more bread.”
BY THE TIME the second bottle of Chablis had been finished, Nichelle practically levitated from her chair. She’d cycled from tipsy to tornado. She spoke loudly enough now that Mrs. Grabowski and her son might’ve heard her out in Queens. The surest sign that she’d become truly drunk was neither her slurred words nor her lack of bodily control—though there was a little of both—but the way she’d stopped listening to the others at the table. Tipsy people are chatty, drunks harangue.
This wasn’t so bad, though, because by ten o’clock both Emma and Apollo had lost their ability to make conversation. Emma, hardly napping at all these days, had drifted into the half sleep of her long nights. She “slept” propped partway up with pillows in their bed, so it wasn’t all that different to drift in her seat at Bouley. Apollo, meanwhile, had ingested nothing but tap water and the restaurant bread. While the bread tasted magnificent, it wasn’t enough. By dessert, Apollo and Emma had low batteries, but Nichelle seemed wired to a generator.
“Limbo? Coolimbo? I can’t remember what the damn thing was called,” Nichelle said. She’d ordered port to go along with her Hot Caramelized Anjou Pear. Emma asked for the Amaretto Flan, though she swore she wanted only one bite. Apollo didn’t know what either cost because by then his vision had gone fuzzy. He couldn’t have read the menu if he tried. He only hoped there wasn’t such a thing as a “second dessert” or a “digestif tasting menu” or some other high-tone shit that might require him to go into their savings just to pay for it.
“This girl tried to get me to watch a movie about a slave uprising when I was busy trying to figure out how to marry that boy out of New Edition.” Before Apollo could say anything, she waved her hand dismissively. “No, not Ralph or Bobby. I liked Michael Bivens. He could ball.”
A pause during which neither Apollo nor Emma seemed to blink or breathe.
“Quilombo!” Nichelle said, slapping the table hard enough to knock over her port. “Oh damn,” she muttered, then looked to the waiter and signaled for another, though, really, there had hardly been enough left in the glass to make a spot the size of a nickel.
“I watched that movie one time with her and about ten minutes in I’m like, ‘What the hell kind of English is this?’ Emma says it’s Portuguese. I took the headphones off and left her right there by the VCRs.”
Emma finally took a fork to her dessert. “You liked Bye Bye Brasil.”
“Betty Faria,” Nichelle said, puckering her lips and shutting her eyes.
The new glass of port arrived. Emma bit into her flan. Despite his exhaustion and his terror of the upcoming bill, Apollo felt a blush of happiness. He liked to think of these two women as girls in Boones Mill, Virginia, lucky enough to find each other, to love each other.
He’d made a friend, a fellow book dealer, not too long ago. Patrice Green, an army vet who’d gone into the trade when he came back to the States. Usually they were the only two black book men at local estate sales. They might as well be two unicorns that happened into the same field. Of course they’d become close. Thank God for friendships, that’s what he sat there thinking. Nichelle and Emma, Apollo and Patrice. Before he could talk himself out of the gesture, he raised his hand for the waiter and ordered a glass of bourbon.
By the time the drink arrived, Emma huffed quietly beside him. Apollo worried for a moment, but she was touching her throat, not her belly.
“That flan wants to come back up,” Emma said quietly. Nichelle suggested water, but that would only make it worse. “I’ll find the bathroom,” she said.
Apollo helped her up and watched her shuffle toward their waiter. The waiter nodded quickly and led her out of the dining room. When she’d disappeared, Apollo looked back to Nichelle and found her watching him with an unnerving seriousness. It was as if her drunkenness had all been playacting, and now she had dropped the play.
“There’s a nude photo of your wife in an art gallery in Amsterdam,” Nichelle said.
Is there a proper response to such a revelation? “Color or black and white?” Apollo asked. It was the best he could do.
“You know she went to Brazil. She told me how you waited for her at the airport when she came back. Very sweet. Big points for you. While she was down there, she had a few adventures. I’m sure she told you about some of them.”
“The red string. She told me about that one.”
“Three wishes!” Nichelle shouted, as if someone had just brought out a birthday cake. “Yes. That was a bold move you made, Apollo, let me tell you. I liked that.”
“I kept the string,” Apollo said. “So I wouldn’t forget my promise.” Right then it was tucked flat inside his wallet, right behind his driver’s license.
Nichelle nodded, but he couldn’t be sure she was listening. Too drunk, but still she smiled playfully. “By the way, you should be proud. You’ve given her two of those wishes already. She never told you what they were. Bad luck. But I guess it’s okay now.”
Nichelle lifted her right hand in a fist and raised the pointer finger. “A good husband,” she said.
She raised the middle finger. “A healthy child. That reminds me. Do you know the sex? Emma said you all didn’t want to find out, but come on, you can tell me.”
“We really don’t know,” Apollo said. “We want to find out together, right when it happens.”
Nichelle shook her head. “I never met black hippies. I didn’t even know there were black hippies, but I guess there’s at least two.”
Nichelle still hadn’t lowered her hand. Apollo stared at the third finger, Nichelle’s ring finger. It trembled as if about to rise and reveal the third wish, but then Nichelle opened her hand wide, all five fingers out in display.
“About a month before she came back to the United States, Emma met this Dutch photographer down there in Brazil. It’s while she was in Salvador.”
Apollo’s bourbon matched the color of his sudden mood. He instantly forgot about the third wish.
Dutch photographer?
Dutch fucking photographer?
“Emma and this photographer get on real wel
l, and the two of them start going around Salvador together taking pictures of everything. The photographer keeps trying to get Emma into the photos, but she doesn’t want to do that. She wants to learn how to shoot the photos, not how to be in them.
“One trip they take is to some abandoned factory that looks kind of romantic and decayed. They spend most of the day there. But at some point the photographer has to go and pee, so Emma’s alone with the equipment, and this is when she decides to finally be in a photo. But it’s one she’s going to take herself. By herself. This is high-grade camera work, so it’s not just digital shit with your phone. Emma’s smart, though, and she’s learned enough by now to set up the shot on a timer.
“She makes the shot in front of a wall that’s been half torn down so you can see she’s standing inside a man-made building that’s gone to the dogs, but over her right shoulder you can see the forest that surrounds this factory. Two worlds at once. Crumbling civilization and an explosion of the natural world.
“Emma walks into the shot, and just before the shutter clicks, she pulls off her dress and takes that photo nude!”
Apollo found himself nodding, though he couldn’t say why. Nichelle hadn’t said anything that required agreement. Instead it was as if he was testing to be sure his head remained on his neck. Apparently it was there, but Apollo still didn’t quite believe it. Better down all this bourbon to be sure.
“She didn’t even tell the photographer she’d done it. It would get developed later, in a darkroom, and the fate of the picture had nothing to do with her. The point was just that Emma Valentine had done it. You see? She has always been like that, ever since she was a girl. If she sets her will on something it is going to happen, believe me. You like to think you chose to wait for her at the airport when her plane arrived late, but I’m telling you different. She was on that plane, like, willing you not to leave. You couldn’t have gone home if you tried. I know how that sounds, but I believe it.”
Nichelle nodded for a few moments longer than necessary, enjoying the movement more than anything else. Then she jumped back into the story of Emma and the photo.
“Well, that Dutch photographer didn’t even develop the film until returning to Amsterdam. But it was clear that shot was worth keeping. Had it framed and included in a show, and the gallery owner bought it and never took it down. I’ve never been to Amsterdam, but Emma showed me the JPEG. I think the owner even included the shot in the gallery’s catalogs.”
“And?” Apollo asked, his throat too dry to say more.
He scanned the corner where his wife had gone to use the bathroom. How different would she seem when she reappeared because of this story Nichelle decided to share? And why had she shared it? Just because she was drunk?
“Emma has never been a big girl, you know? But down in Brazil she looked lean, not weak. Muscle and bone and those big eyes of hers, that’s all she was. Wiry and fierce, naked and unashamed. She’s looking into that camera lens like she can see you, whoever you are, wherever you are. She looks like a fucking sorceress, Apollo. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”
Nichelle stopped there and looked at the port glass in her hand with surprise. She gulped it all and chonked the glass onto the table, upside down.
“And the Dutch guy?” Apollo asked. “What was his name?”
Nichelle watched him quietly for seconds. She narrowed her eyes when she spoke. “I’m trying to tell you something important, and you are focused on bullshit.”
“If it’s bullshit, then you can just tell me about him,” Apollo said.
Now Nichelle reached across the table and dug her nails into the backs of both his hands. “I’m trying to tell you about Emma’s third wish,” Nichelle said. “In a way that won’t break her trust. Because it’s the only wish that hasn’t come true yet.”
At this Apollo felt hit, hurt. He fell back into his chair as if Nichelle had kicked him. “Okay. I’m listening.”
But before anything more could be spoken, by either of them, their waiter appeared. The man had been sprinting. He reached the table. He didn’t speak—he roared.
“Your wife!” he said. “Your wife needs you!”
THE QUESTION NICHELLE never got to ask Emma and Apollo—though she’d been trying, in her way, to lead to it earlier in the night—was why? Why on earth had Apollo and Emma decided to do a home birth when they seemed like such sane people? They weren’t third-world peasants. They weren’t wealthy white folks or anti-hospital-industry kooks. So what the hell happened?
The concern felt truly pressing as Nichelle settled the bill with the waiter. She’d been signing the credit card receipt when Apollo appeared again holding Emma under one arm. Emma looked so red and exhausted that Nichelle had her phone out to call 911 as the waiter took the check away. Emma told Nichelle to stop dialing, and Apollo tried to give her money for the bill. She told Apollo she’d been planning to cover the tab ever since she’d made the reservation—told Emma as much when they first sat down—and simply forgot to repeat the news when Apollo arrived. He could’ve eaten! As it was, the only stuff in his stomach was bread and bourbon. He’d never expected to be tipsy during the birth of his first child.
Harder for Nichelle to handle was the fact that Emma didn’t want an ambulance called. As they left Bouley—rushing as fast as a nine-months-pregnant woman could move—Emma reminded Nichelle they were having this baby at home. Ambulances weren’t some private car service, they would take her to a hospital, not her apartment. In the apple room Nichelle offered to at least hail a cab, request a Lyft, but this offer too was denied. They were way downtown, on Duane Street, on a Friday night. The best a car could do was hit the West Side Highway. There they’d find the kind of traffic only Beijing or Mumbai would recognize. An hourlong trip by car to Washington Heights from here, maybe longer.
Meanwhile the Chambers Street station lay only four blocks away. They could catch an A train and be home in thirty-five.
Nichelle walked alongside them to the corner of Church Street. She couldn’t contain her vexation. “Why are you doing this?” she shouted on the street. All the liquor had loosened her volume knob. “What is wrong with you!”
As they crossed Reade Street, Emma spoke. “Call Kim,” she said.
Apollo already had the phone out. Older sister; trained midwife. Kim Valentine on the speed dial. “Kim!” Apollo shouted in a moment. “Emma’s having contractions.”
On the other end of the line, Kim spoke so quietly, the street traffic made her impossible to hear. Why was she whispering? Emma walked slowly but soldiered forward. Nichelle trailed them by half a block shouting words so slurred they became an invented language. Pregnancy is hard on women, and it can be tough on their friends, too.
“Stop shouting,” Kim whispered on the phone. “I’m in a movie. Hold on.”
They reached the train station. Apollo wondered, for no good reason, what movie Kim had been watching. “It’s a little early,” he said.
They were at the top of the station stairs. Nichelle caught up and clutched at Emma in a sloppy hug. “She’s only thirty-eight weeks!” he said, sounding as if he was pleading with Kim to put the labor on hold.
“Stop shouting,” Kim said. “Maybe it’s a false labor. Could be Braxton Hicks.”
Apollo looked to Emma, who’d collapsed onto Nichelle, heavy breathing into her old friend’s neck. They looked like some sloppy prom couple. Apollo didn’t care if this would turn out to be a false labor, just a test run. He wanted Kim to leave her movie and get her car. She kept her birthing equipment in the trunk at all times. He wanted her driving north no matter the traffic. They might get to the apartment before her, but soon enough she’d be there. She could mock them all she wanted if this whole thing went in the Braxton Hicks direction. He’d endure the taunting to ensure her arrival. Imagine him and Emma birthing this baby in their apartment alone. Kim had prepared them for this possibility, but that didn’t mean he ever expected it to actually happen.
The idea was so laughable, it almost made him scream right there on the street.
“We’ll meet you at home,” Apollo said, hoping he sounded assured and not panicked. “Get your car.”
“I love you,” Nichelle said as she clutched at Emma. “I love you.”
Emma touched Nichelle’s head and stroked her hair. “We’ll be fine, Nichelle. I promise you. We’ll be fine.”
“You shouldn’t be comforting me!” Nichelle cried, then sort of laughed.
“Your hotel’s very close,” Emma whispered though the words came out pinched. “Can you make it there?”
The Bradley Method classes had taught Apollo that if Emma could carry on conversation, then she wasn’t in true labor yet. This eased him slightly. Even as Nichelle hugged him goodbye and he led Emma down the stairs into the station, he was thinking ahead to the steps awaiting him at home. Inflating the plastic tub rapidly with the electric air pump, putting the plastic liner in, attaching the hose. Apollo knew every step, had practiced each half a dozen times in the last month. He knew his job, and that calmed him.
Apollo hadn’t hung up his cellphone yet. Kim could be heard shouting from the receiver. He tapped the speakerphone. Emma clung to the handrails as they descended.
“We’re going down,” Apollo said.
Kim, caught midsentence, stopped shouting to register his words.
“I’m on speaker?” she asked. She didn’t wait for confirmation. “Emma!” she shouted. “I’m on my way. Stay strong! You can handle this!”
Reception died after that.
And there, finally, was the reason that Apollo and Emma were having their baby at home. Kim Valentine had switched from being a pediatric nurse to a midwife in a kind of midlife conversion. Like most converts, she proselytized hard. Kim called on friends and old co-workers, cousins and random women riding in elevators. She’d even accept calls from telemarketers just so she could chat them up about home births. So when her sister got pregnant, it was without question that Kim would be the midwife and this delivery would happen at home. Kim had never had children of her own, but she’d raised Emma since the age of five. That had to count. Becoming an aunty would be one hell of a milestone for her. Natural childbirth for Emma; Kim as midwife. That was that, the decision clear. They informed Apollo over brunch at the diner on Fort Washington Avenue. He had questions, but it was only curiosity, not resistance. By the end of the day, he’d been on the computer researching inflatable birthing pools. Kim promised she could get him a discount.
The Changeling Page 5