Charles Baxter - Saul and Patsy

“Where were you?”

“I went out for a ride on your motorcycle. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Saul, it’s raining. Why are you naked?”

“It’s raining now. Not when I started.”

“Why are you standing there? You don’t have any clothes on.”

“I saw something. I can’t tell you. I think I’m not supposed to tell you what I saw. It was an animal. It was a private animal. Patsy, I took off my clothes and lay down on the lawn in the rain, and it didn’t feel weird, it felt like just what I should do.”

“Saul, what is this about? I need some idea right now.”

“I’m not sure.”

“Try. Try to say.”

“I think I’m pregnant.”

“What does that mean?”

“I think it means that whoever I am, I’m not alone with myself.”

“I don’t understand that.”

“I know.”

“Come to bed, Saul. Get in under the sheet.”

He climbed in and put his leg over hers.

“I can’t quite get used to you,” she said. “You’re quite a mess of metaphors, Saul, you know that.”

“Yes.”

“A man being pregnant.” She put her hand familiarly on his thigh. “I wonder what that portends.”

“It’s a feeling, Patsy. It’s a secret. Men have secrets, too.”

“I never said they didn’t. They love secrets. They have lodges and secret societies and stuff. They have the CIA.”

“Can we make love now, right this minute? Because I love you. I love you like crazy.”

“I love you, too, Saul. What if you make me pregnant? It could happen. What if I get knocked up? Is it all right now?”

“Yeah. What’s the problem?”

“What will we say, for example?”

“We’ll say, ‘Saul and Patsy are pregnant.’”

“Oh, sure we will.”

“Okay, we won’t say it.” He had thrown the sheet back and was kissing her on the side of her knees.

“Are you crying? Your face is wet.”

“Yes.”

“But you’re being so jokey.”

“That’s how I handle it.”

“Why are you crying?”

“Because. .” He wanted to get this right. “Because there are signs and wonders. What can I tell you? It’s all a feeling. In the morning I’ll deny I said this.”

“So like a man.” She was kissing him now, but she stopped, as if thinking about his recent sentences. “You want to make me pregnant, too, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not afraid? Of diapers, exhaustion, sullenness? Fatigue, indifference, hostility, silence, boredom, quarrels, rage, infidelity?”

“No.”

“You’re a brave man. I’ll give you credit for that. One more little ambassador from the present to the future. That’s what you want.”

“Sort of.” He moved up and took her fingers one by one into his mouth and bit them tenderly. Patsy had started to hum. She was humming “Unchain My Heart.” Then she opened her mouth and sang quietly, “Unchain my heart, and set me free.”

“I’ll try, Patsy.”

“Yes.” A moment later, she said, “This won’t solve anything.”

“I know.” He felt as though he heard someone wailing softly in the next room. Still he continued. “Patsy,” he said, “the window. We should stand by the window.”

“Why?”

“To try it.” He disentangled himself from her, stood, and brought her over to the window. He opened it so that the droplets of rain blew in over them. “Now,” he said. There was a bit of lightning, and he lifted her. She held on, arms clasped behind his neck. He felt as though a thousand eyes, but not human eyes, were looking in on them with tender indifference. They were and were not interested. They would and would not care. Finally they would turn away, as they tended to turn away from all human things, in time. Saul felt Patsy tremble, a slight shivering along her back, a rising in tension before release. More rain came in, spattering lightly on his arm. He felt Patsy’s mouth passing by his hair, recently cut by Harold. She was panting in time with his own breathing, and for a split second he understood it all. He understood everything, the secret to the universe. Then, after an instant, he lost it. Having lost the secret, forgotten it, he felt the usual onset of the ordinary, of everything else, with Patsy around him, the two of them in their own familiar rhythms. He would not admit to anyone that he had known the secret of the universe for a split second. That part of his life was hidden away and would always be, the part that makes a person draw in the breath quickly in surprise and stare at the curtains in the morning upon awakening.

Saul, Patsy thought, was like one of those pastries you couldn’t get enough of at first — you’d gorge on them. And then, it seemed, once you’d had enough of them, you wanted to get rid of that addiction, but you couldn’t, there was no way to stop. You were always going to have those jelly doughnuts in your life because you had once craved them. Slowly but surely, they would put weight on you.

Mornings, on her way down to the mortgage department at the bank, where she had become — at last — an assistant loan officer (she admitted to herself, and to no one else, that she liked to be around places where money was — it even had a smell to it she liked), she would pass by school-bus stops and nursery schools. Sometimes, on lunch breaks, she would park the car near the curbs and watch the little people, three- and four-year-olds, holding hands or holding on to delicate ropes to keep them all together as they progressed down the sidewalks. She loved seeing children lined up in their school clothes and backpacks, waiting for the bus. They yelled at each other. They fell into the dirt and mud. They were beautiful.

A week after her baby was due, she would drive around on her lunch hour just looking for children, hoping her labor would start out of sympathy. And on a Tuesday, as she sat parked across the street from a play-ground, watching a softball game, her water broke. On the way to the hospital that evening, she remembered to thank the moon, which had been shining in the daytime sky above the playing field, though it was invisible by nightfall, having gone on its lunatic way.

The labor room: between contractions and the blips of the fetal monitor, she was dimly aware of Saul. He had donned his green hospital scrubs. They hadn’t let him wear his Detroit Tigers baseball cap (too unsanitary), but he was holding her hand and his eyes were anxious with nervous energy as he sat at her bedside. He thought he was coaching her. But he kept miscounting the breaths, and she had to correct him.

After two hours of that, she was moved into the huge circular incandescence of the delivery room. She felt as if she were about to expel her entire body outward in a floorflood. With her hair soaked with sweat and sticking to the back of her neck, she could feel the unsteady universe sputtering out for an instant into two flattened dimensions. Everything she saw was painted on a flat surface in front of her, and she felt herself screaming self-consciously, as if she were screaming performatively when she was both screaming and doing something else, the serious work. Then she swore — she had learned to swear like a man from her father, who was only eloquent when he cursed — and she loosened her hand from Saul’s — his touch maddened her — and swore again. She looked at Saul with a deep hatred. He had gotten her into this mess, and now he was dumbly watching her trying to get herself out. Terrible, unforgivable words, slightly out of her control, came out of her mouth directed toward Saul. Wrath, bitterness, and then some screeching. The seconds blew themselves up into hours, with time seizing up, thickening and slowing as if the river of it had turned to offal, ordure, and slush.