Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

The women lay on the blue industrial carpet like a string of little islands, their bellies swelling toward the ceiling and trembling slightly as they panted and exhaled. Nicholas was late for Lamaze class. In fact, although it was the seventh class in a series of ten, it was the first he’d attended, because of his schedule. But Paige had insisted. “You may know how to deliver a baby,” she had said, “but there’s a difference between a doctor and a labor coach.”

And a father, Nicholas had thought, but he didn’t say anything. Paige was nervous enough, whether or not she chose to admit it. She didn’t need to know that every night so far during the third trimester, Nicholas had awakened, sheets soaked in sweat, worrying about this baby. It wasn’t the labor; he could deliver a baby with his eyes closed, for Christ’s sake. It was what happened afterward. He had never held an infant, except for his routine swing through pediatrics as an intern. He didn’t know what you did to make them stop crying. He didn’t have the first idea how to make them burp. And he was worried about what kind of father he would be-certainly absent more than he was home. Of course Paige would be there day and night, which he far preferred to the idea of day care-at least he thought he did. Nicholas sometimes wondered about Paige, doubtful about the kinds of things she might be able to teach a child when she herself knew so little about the world. He had considered buying a stack of colorful books- How to Make Baby Talk, 101 Things to Stimulate Your Baby’s Mind, The PARENTS’ Guide to Educational Toys -but he knew Paige would have taken offense. And Paige seemed so distressed about having the baby that he had vowed to stick to safe topics until she had given birth. Nicholas gripped the edge of the doorway, watching the Lamaze class, and wondered whether he had actually become ashamed of his wife.

She was lying in the farthest corner of the room, her hair spilled around her head, her hands resting on the huge round mound of her stomach. She was the only person there without a mate, and as Nicholas crossed the room to join her, he felt a quick stab of remorse. He sat behind her quietly as the nurse teaching the class came over to shake his hand and offer him a name tag. NICHOLAS! it said, and in the corner was a chubby, smiling cartoon baby.

The nurse clapped her hands twice, and Nicholas watched Paige’s eyes blink open. He knew from the way she smiled at him, upside down, that she had not really been relaxing at all. She was faking it; she’d known the very second he’d entered the room. “Welcome,” she whispered, “to Husband Guilt Class.”

Nicholas leaned back against pillows he recognized from his own bedroom, listening to the nurse recount the three stages of labor, and what to expect during each one. He suppressed a yawn. She held up plastic-coated pictures of the fetus, arms and legs crossed, its head squeezing through the birth canal. A pert blond woman on the other side of the room raised her hand. “Isn’t it true,” she asked, “that your labor will probably be a lot like your mother’s?”

The nurse frowned. “Every baby’s different,” she mused, “but there does seem to be a correlation.”

Nicholas felt Paige tense at his side. “Oh, well,” she inñ well,” swhispered. He suddenly remembered Paige as he’d seen her the night before when he came home from the hospital. She’d been sitting on the couch, wearing a sleeveless nightgown although it had been cold outside. She was crying, not even bothering to wipe the tears from her cheeks. He’d rushed to her side and taken her into his arms, asking over and over, “What is it?” and Paige, still sobbing, had pointed at the television, some insipid Kodak commercial. “I can’t help it,” she had said, her nose bubbling, her eyes swollen. “Sometimes this just happens.”

“Nicholas?” the nurse said for the second time.

The other fathers-to-be were staring at him, smirking, and Paige was patting his hand. “Go ahead,” she said. “It won’t be so bad.”

The nurse was holding up a padded white bowl-like thing crossed with straps and ties. “In honor of your first class,” she said, helping Nicholas up from the floor. “The Sympathy Belly.”

“For God’s sake,” he said.

“Now, Paige has been toting this around for seven months,” the nurse scolded. “Surely you can make do for thirty minutes.”

Nicholas shrugged into the armholes, glaring at the nurse. It was a thirty-four-pound contraption, a soft false belly whose insides sloshed from side to side unpredictably. When Nicholas shifted, a large ball bearing dug into his bladder. The nurse fastened the straps around his waist and shoulders. “Why don’t you take a walk,” she said.

Nicholas knew she was waiting for him to fall. He carefully raised and lowered his feet, undaunted by the shifting weight and the strain in his back. He turned back to the crowd, to Paige, triumphant. The nurse’s voice came from behind him. “Run,” she said.

Nicholas spread his legs wide and tried to move faster, half jogging, half hopping. Some of the women began to laugh, but Paige’s face remained still. The nurse tossed a pen onto the floor. “Nicholas,” she said, “if you wouldn’t mind?”

Nicholas tried to ease toward the ground by bending his knees, but the liquid in the Sympathy Belly swished to the left, knocking off his sense of balance. He fell to the floor on his hands and knees, and he bowed his head.

Around him, laughter swelled, vibrating against his knees and ringing in his ears. He lifted his chin and rolled his eyes. He scanned the other husbands and wives, who were clapping now in response to his performance, and then his gaze fell on his wife.

Paige was sitting very quietly, not smiling, not clapping. A thin silver streak ran the length of her face, and even as he watched, her palm came up to wipe away the tear. She rocked until she was on her knees, then she heaved herself up to a standing position and came to Nicholas’s side. “Nicholas has had a very long day,” she said. “I think we’ve got to go.”

Nicholas watched Paige unfasten the Sympathy Belly and slide it over his shoulders. The nurse took it from her before she could support the full weight. Nicholas smiled at ghtñs smiled the others as he followed Paige out the door, and followed her to her car. She wedged herself behind the steering wheel and closed her eyes as if she was in pain. “I hate seeing you like that,” she whispered, and when she opened her eyes, clear and cerulean blue, she was staring right through her husband.

I gave birth in the middle of a class four hurricane. I was just at the end of my eighth month. All day long I had sat on the couch, weary from the sluggish heat, and listened to news reports of the coming storm. It was a freak weather pattern, a string of odd monsoon rains across the Northeast, coming three months too early. The weatherman told me to tape my windows and store water in the bathtub. Ordinarily I might have, but I did not have the energy.

Nicholas did not come home until midnight. The wind had already picked up, howling through the streets like a child in pain. He undressed in the bathroom and slipped into bed quietly so he wouldn’t wake me, but I had been sleeping fitfully. I had a low, moaning backache, and I’d gotten up to pee three times. “I’m sorry,” Nicholas said, seeing me stir.

“Don’t worry,” I told him, rolling myself into a sitting position. “I might as well hit the bathroom again.”

As I stood, I felt drops of water at my feet, and I stupidly assumed it was the rain, somehow come inside.