Swimmer in the Secret Sea (3 page)

'You can sit here,' said the nurse, setting a stool behind the table. Another nurse fixed the mirror that was above the table, so that Laski could see the area of birth.

'A clear picture?'

'Perfect.'

One of the nurses then brought a little sponge soaked with surgical soap, and wiped Diane's vaginal area.

'Oh, that feels good.'

'Has she had any anesthetic?' asked the other nurse.

'No.'

'Well, now, isn't she wonderful?'

Doctor Barker came and sat on a stool at the other end of the table. 'I'm going to drain your bladder.'

He inserted a tube into her urethra and a moment later her urine ran out of it, into a bucket at Barker's feet.

'I have a contraction,' said Diane.

'Go ahead and push.'

Laski could not reach her, and she lifted herself, working alone. When the contraction subsided, Barker said, 'I'm going to make a small cut. First, I'll give you something to numb it.' He inserted a needle at the edge of her vagina, making three injections. Then he pinched her skin with a tweezers. 'Do you feel that?'

'No.'

He made an incision, cutting sideways toward her thigh. 'Check the heartbeat.'

The nurse laid her stethoscope on Diane's lower belly and listened, timing the baby's heartbeat with her watch.

'Normal.'

'All right—push again.' Barker inserted his linger into Diane's vagina, feeling for the baby. When the finger came out, Laski saw more of the strange pink skin, and a thick dark substance.

'Don't let that worry you,' said the nurse to Laski. 'The baby's just had a bowel movement.'

'Push,' said Barker. Diane pushed and Laski could see the baby's rear end, at the doorway of the world, ass-backwards, thought Laski, but coming!

'All right, dear, push again,' said Barker.

She pushed and he put his long fingers into her vagina, moving them around and spreading her lips. Suddenly a foot appeared, followed by a long limp leg. Barker quickly brought the other leg down and Laski looked at it in wonder, at the tiny toenails and the perfectly formed little feet that had been developing all along within her about which he had dreamed so often, envisioning them in countless ways, and now the first step of those little feet into life had come before his eyes.

'It's a boy!' exclaimed the nurse.

Laski's heart filled with joy. Staring at the entranceway, he saw the tiny penis and a second later it squirted a jet of urine.

'I felt him pee on me!' cried Diane in wonder.

'Push,' said Barker. 'Push with all you've got.'

As she pushed he guided the tiny body out, all but the head, which remained inside. Laski stares in fascination at the dangling little creature, the skin gray and wet—his little son, coming at last.

Barker inserted the forceps. 'Once again.'

Diane pushed and Laski tensed as he watched Barker forcefully pulling with the forceps to release the head. My God, thought Laski, they handle them hard. And sudden-ly the head popped out and the child was free.

Barker's hands moved with incredible grace and swiftness, turning the baby in the air, holding him up like a red rose. Laski saw a face filled with rage, yet triumph-ant, the god of time and men, whose closed eyes looked straight into Laski's and said,
See, see, this!

'Cut the cord!'

The intern severed the cord and Barker carried the child with utmost delicacy in his two hands, moving quickly over to a table by the wall.

'The aspirator,' he said, sharply.

The nurse handed him an instrument that looked like an old car horn, a rubber bulb fitted on the end of it. He put it to the baby's face and squeezed.

The child lay perfectly still. Barker worked the pump, then touched the limp wrist, lifting it for a moment and laying it back down. One nurse massaged the feet, and the other handed Barker a length of fine hose which he inserted into the baby's mouth. He breathed into it, and Laski watched his son's chest rise and fall with the breath of the doctor moving inside him.

Barker stopped for a moment, wiped his brow, returned to the blowing-tube. Laski looked on, watching the lungs rise and fall again. The rest of the body lay perfectly still. How long his legs are, thought Laski—just like his mother's.

Barker removed the tube and put his mouth to the child's blowing into it with his lips pressed against the tiny mouth. The nurse continued to massage the feet. Laski looked at the clock on the wall: Four-thirty-five.

Barker stepped back, wiped his brow again, and Laski remembered moments from his own life, when he'd worked on things, and found them puzzling, and unyielding, and he'd wiped his brow that way. Barker put the aspirator back on the still little body, and pumped it, a little sighing noise coming from the rubber bulb.

'Is that the baby?' asked Diane.

Laski looked at her, and looked away, drawn back to his little son, to the little arm that rose and fell so limply in Barker's hand.

'Where's the baby?' asked Diane.

'He's over there,' said Laski softly.

Barker removed the aspirator and put his mouth to the child's again, blowing in and out, gently, evenly. He stepped back, wiped his brow, turned to Laski, and shook his head from side to side.

Laski nodded.

It was over.

He turned and sat down on the little stool beside the table. The intern was stitching Diane's opened vagina.

'Does that hurt?'

'No, she said, laughing nervously.

Laski looked at her flat stomach. How can she possibly hold together in the face of this? How do we tell her?

He turned to the table by the wall. The baby had been lowered into a glass case and he was on his side, eyes closed. Laski saw resignation in the little face, the express-ion of work completely done, like a man who has rolled over to sleep at the end of the day.

'Are you all right?' asked Barker.

'Yes,' said Laski.

Barker stepped over to the maternity table and looked down at Diane.

She raised her eyes to his. 'I know,' she said. 'I'm sorry.'

'It's not your fault,' she said, a sob breaking from her throat.

'The baby looks perfectly normal,' said Barker. 'There's no reason why you can't have another child.'

Laski listened numbly. He thinks that's what has been at stake, our wish for a child, any child, not this particular child who swung down the road between us. They can't know how special he is. They point to the future. But we're here, forever, now.

The nurse slipped Diane onto the wheeled table. 'I have a needle for you,' said the nurse.

'No,' said Diane, still refusing any anesthetic.

'It's to dry up your milk,' said the nurse, gently.

'There are no private rooms,' said the other nurse. 'We can put you in a semiprivate.'

'I can go to a ward,' said Diane. 'I only wanted a priv-ate room so I could keep the baby with me.'

'It would be better for you in a semiprivate. All the other babies will be brought into the ward for feeding, and they'll make you feel bad.'

'I wouldn't mind the babies,' said Diane, crying softly. 'But I'd probably make all the other mothers feel bad.'

They wheeled her through the dimly lit hallway and Laski walked beside her, to a room with two beds, both of them empty. They helped her into the bed and drew the covers over her.

'May I stay?' asked Laski.

'Yes, certainly,' said the nurse. 'Do you want to sleep on the other bed?'

'No, I'm not tired.'

'If you want to,' she said, 'just flop down on it. The nurse leaned over to Diane. 'These things happen. I'm sure you'll have better luck next time.'

Laski looked at the little handbag beside the bed, in which Diane had packed two baby wash-cloths, one pink, one blue, and he saw that it was the blue one he'd been using to mop her brow.

She looked quietly at him, and stroked his hair with her hand. He laid his head down on the bed beside her, as the full weight of his own weariness took him. The nurse came in again and said, 'Are you sure you won't lie down?'

'All right,' he said, and walked over to the other bed.

'Let me slip this sheet over it. I'm lazy. I don’t want to have to make it again.'

He crawled onto the top sheet and lay looking at the ceiling. Beneath his head he felt cement blocks. He drifted, into kaleidoscopic sleep, so filled with images he could not sort them into any recognizable dream, and they rushed over him like water.

He woke and saw Diane, looking at the ceiling. He got up and sat beside her again. The dawn was breaking. Through the window he saw another wing of the hospital, and beyond that the street, on which the gray light was falling. He watched the street as the sunlight fell upon it.

In the hallway the sound of dishes began. 'They're bringing breakfast,' she said.

The breakfast carts came closer, and an elderly woman entered, carrying a tray. She smiled at Laski. 'Well, it's a lovely day, isn't it?'

Diane ate cereal and toast, and sunlight found the room.

'They'll want me out of here soon,' said Laski

'Yes, the mothers will be feeding their babies.'

He saw the sorrow break over her for a moment, like a wave upon a cliff, but the wave washed away, and there was the cliff, which sorrow could not drown.

'I'll be back this evening,' he said. 'Visiting hours are at seven. Is there anything you want?'

'No, just you.'

He leaned over and kissed her, her tears going slowly down his cheek.

Laski drove over the bridge and out of town. As he crossed the railroad tracks that ran through the slum on the edge of the city, a delicate film of light came across his eyes, as if a shimmering translucent veil were covering the morning, and he knew that it was his son's spirit, riding with him. And then he saw himself running with his son, through the fields, leaping the old broken fences. They walked to the stream and dove into it, then danced upon it, then ran to the trees climbing up above the mist.

Laski drove toward home with tears streaming down his face, his spirit racing with his son through time, across the morning of the world, from place to place, in cities and in the lovely valley. The moment of their meeting was endless: they took a boat, and took a train, and saw the sights, and grew up together. It seemed to take years getting to the forest, and as Laski climbed the hills into the abandoned settlement, he felt the spirit of his son spreading out all around him. Spreading out as it did, into every tree and cloud, he felt it losing personality, felt it dissolving into something remote, expanded beyond his powers to follow. He's going now, thought Laski. He's grown-up and leaving me. Good-bye, good-bye, he called, looking out to the beautiful eastern sky where the sun was dazzling the trees.

You're free in the wind. You're great with the winds and sun.

Then it was over and Laski was alone again, bouncing along the old winding road through the forest.

Returning to the hospital in the evening, he got lost in the corridors beyond the lobby, none of it familiar to him anymore. He stood looking toward a staircase he could not remember climbing before. A strong voice came at his shoulder. 'Where are you headed for?'

'Maternity.'

'Follow me,' said a powerfully striding man in boots and ski-sweater. He took the steps as if they were a mountain trail and Laski kept the pace.

'What did you have?' asked the man, not looking back, keeping his eyes on the trail.

Laski hesitated as fragments of explanations rose in his mind—
the baby died, we had nothing
—but then he felt the spirit of the child again, suddenly surging in his heart, and he said, 'A' boy.'

'Congratulations,' said the mountain-man, as they reached the top of the mountain staircase, at the hall marked
MATERNITY
.

'And you?' asked Laski.

'A boy,' said the mountaineer, his voice filled with wind and stone and wild joy. He turned off to the left, and Laski went straight ahead, down the hall to Diane's room.

She was in bed, her eyes red, her face pale, the shock of the night still on her. He sat down beside the bed and took her hand. 'Was the doctor in to see you?'

'He said he examined the afterbirth and found that the cord had been connected to the edge of the placenta instead of the middle. It was a weak place and at the last minute the cord tore. The baby bled.'

Laski slowly nodded his head and looked toward the window. Through the other lighted rooms of the hospital he saw distant figures moving.

'He'd like to perform an autopsy,' said Diane.

'Is it really necessary?'

'It's up to us.'

'Do you want to let them?'

'I guess they always do it.'

Beyond the windows of the hospital, he could see the sidewalks and the snowy street. In the maternity hallway,
at the desk, the nurses were chatting and laughing together.

'He's in the morgue,' said Diane.

A nurse entered the room, smiling cheerfully. 'Time for your heat lamp.' Then, turning to Laski, 'Would you ex-cuse us for a minute?'

Laski stepped out into the hall. The doors of the other rooms were open and he could see women in their beds, visitors beside them. He lowered his eyes toward the floor and followed the sound of the waxing machine and the elevator and the visiting voices, all of it flowing like a stream in which he seemed to be floating. The second hand on the wall clock over his head was humming, round and round. The laughter at the nurse's desk con-tinued, and he realized it was New Year's Eve.
In a room on 91st Street in New York City, in the darkness of a little bed, while the bells rang and the sirens called, he held her.
The waxing machine appeared, its long whiskers whirring around and around over the tiled floor.

A snowstorm had begun in the city. The night was cold, and he was filled with tired thoughts. Twenty-five miles away, out in the woods, the house was waiting, empty and cold. A hotel would be warm and bright—a single room, table and a lamp on it, a bed. I could get some sleep and hang around town tomorrow until visiting time.

The traffic light turned green through the veil of falling snow, and he drove down the main street of town to the street of the hotel, where he parked the truck. The snow was coming harder. He walked along toward the hotel. It's not the best and that's all I need, just a flop for the night.