Michael Bishop - Ancient of Days

“Surely, one of those hotshots up at Emory has an opinion on the matter.”

“I’m sure they do, Paul, but we haven’t asked them. We think I’m close. Habilines may carry their offspring no more than five or six months, maybe even less. They’re small, you know.”

“Yeah. Even when they’re wearing platform heels.”

“That’s to help him reach the brake and accelerator pedals, not to pamper his vanity. Even so, we had those pedals lifted about four inches from the floorboard.”

“Jesus.” I gazed into the glowering pewter sky. “A thirty-six-year-old madonna on the brink of water-burst and an East African Richard Petty who can barely touch his brakes!”

“You gonna keep ’em out here all afternoon, Mistah Paul, or can they go inside to field your cuss-’em-outs.”

I waved everyone inside and sent Livia George to the kitchen for coffee and hot chocolate. It was still a couple of hours before my dinner crowd would descend.

“Why didn’t you telephone? I might not’ve even been here.”

“You’re always here, Paul. The West Bank’s what you do.”

“Yeah, but why didn’t you phone?”

“I always see Edna Twiggs sitting at the switchboard when I dial a Beulah Fork number, AT&T reorganization and all. I don’t trust the phones—not after last summer.”

“So you’d risk turning Adam into your obstetrician?”

“Absolutely. Adam and I have decided: I’m not having this baby in a hospital.”

Unable to help myself, I rolled my eyes.

“Stop it. You belittle everything you don’t understand.”

“You planning a hot-tub delivery? That’s one of the latest crazes. Mama pretends she’s a porpoise in Marineland.”

“Paul—”

“Birthing stools. That’s big, too. You have the kid squatting, like a football center pulling the pigskin out from under his jersey.”

Adam looked at his crooked hands on my new mint-green tablecloth. RuthClaire spoke through clenched teeth: “I’ll never understand how we got married. Never.”

Knowing I had gone too far, I apologized.

“Neither of those methods is as absurd as you make them out to be. Underwater delivery is nonstressful for mother and child, and a birthing stool gives a woman a degree of control over a process that’s rightfully her own, anyway. If your consciousness is ever raised, Paul Loyd, it’s going to have to be with a block and tackle.”

Livia George came back from the kitchen with our hot drinks. “Had six babies ’thout a doctor ’round,” she told us. “In a feather bed in my own house. Oldest done hit six-foot-four. Youngest ain’ been sick a day.”

Adam made a series of gestures with his hands, which RuthClaire translated: “Adam says to tell you that we want our baby born at Paradise Farm. We’ll even pay for the privilege. It’s important to us.”

“But why?” I asked, almost—but not quite—dumbstruck.

“As soon as I check into a hospital, the media will descend. It’s understandable, I guess, but I can’t let them turn the birth of our baby into an international circus. Paradise Farm’s already got a good security system, and it’s far enough from Atlanta to thwart a few of the inevitable busybodies.”

“RuthClaire, why not fly to some remote Caribbean island? You can afford it. It’s going to be butt-bruising cold here in Beulah Fork—not like in Zarakal or Haiti, kid.”

“Don’t you see? I’ll be comfortable out there. And what more fitting place to have Adam’s child than the place where we first met?” She turned an admiring—a loving —gaze on the habiline, and he responded with one of intelligent steadfastness.

Discomfited, I said, “You can stay out there, Ruthie Cee, on two conditions.”

“ Two !”

I stood. “Just listen. They’re easy. First, you don’t pay me a dime.” Adam and RuthClaire exchanged a look, the meaning of which was obviously both gratitude and acceptance. “Second, let me find a discreet, reputable doctor to help with the delivery.”

“No! An outsider would needlessly complicate things, and I’m going to be fine.”

I told her there was still a possibility she might need help. How could I live with myself if anything went wrong? She replied that for the past six months Adam had been reading—yes, reading —every tome on childbirth he could find. It was also his opinion that the unborn infant’s gracile body— gracile , for God’s sake!—would ease its journey through the birth canal. Ruthie Cee, a birddog bitch dropping puppies.

My forefinger made a stabbing motion at Adam. “It’s hard for me to credit his coming so far in six months. Forgive me if I’m skeptical of his medical expertise.”

“He’s brighter than most, Paul, and he had a head start on Montaraz that nobody chooses to acknowledge.”

“But he’s not a doctor. And that’s my second condition.” RuthClaire stood. Adam stood. For a moment, I feared they’d leave, and I cursed my show of intractability. I was about to rescind my second condition when Livia George gave me a face-saving out:

“S’pose I midwife Miss RuthClaire’s little ’un? How that be?” She fluttered her hands before her. “I got lots of s’perience birthin’ babies.”

Hallelujah. RuthClaire, Adam, and I all did double takes. We all liked Livia George’s proposal. There was something about her turn of phrase, her cunning self-mockery. Our conflict thus resolved, we four took turns embracing as we had earlier done on the sidewalk.

I sent the Montarazes out to Paradise Farm with a set of keys. Livia George and I finished decorating and greeted the dinner crowd. Hazel Upchurch and Nancy Teavers came in at 4:30. By recent standards, business was slow and the evening dragged. At 11:30 I roared up the highway to see how my new lodgers were doing.

They had not yet gone to bed. I found them in RuthClaire’s old studio.

Often over the past few months, I had entered the untenanted loft to stand in its memory-haunted emptiness imagining just such a reunion. Now she was really back, my lost RuthClaire.

Adam, of course, was with her, sitting cross-legged on the drafting table opposite RuthClaire’s Naugahyde sofa, a book between his legs and gold-framed granny glasses clamped on the end of his broad, flat nose. The sleeves of his baby-blue velour shirt were rolled up, and he’d unzipped it to the midpoint of his sternum, revealing a flannel-y nest of reddish-black chest hair. He saw me before RuthClaire did.

“Still reading up on childbirth?” I asked him.

He bared his teeth—a smile, not a threat or an expression of fear—and lifted the book so I could see it. RuthClaire pulled herself to a sitting position with my nappy beige rearing-bear blanket around her shoulders. By the door, I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. Then I crossed to the drafting table to find out what Adam was reading. A small, slick paperback: The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis.

“C. S. Lewis?” I said incredulously, turning to RuthClaire. “A habiline holdover from the Pleistocene’s reading C. S. Lewis?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

I took the book from Adam. “Your husband—the living descendant of a bunch of East African mole people—is busily ingesting a work of theology?”

“Do you believe he can read?”

I glanced sidelong at Adam. I knew he’d mastered sign language, I had seen him driving a car, and his eyes were appraising me with a pause-prompting keenness.

“Sure,” I grudgingly admitted. “Why not?”

“Then why find it hard to believe he’s reading C. S. Lewis? The man wrote for children, you know. He even wrote science fiction .”

I changed tacks. “He ought to be reading, uh, Midwifery Made Easy , or Benjamin Spock, or something like that.”