Ramona Ausubel - Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

There had been a long break between mailings while the desk had sailed across the ocean. Fern had thought of it, crated up in the belly of a ship, rocking against the waves. Her own belly had grown enormous. She could hardly fit in the car anymore and baths were impossible, half of her sticking up out of the water. Then the correspondence resumed: I’m here in New York. Then, days before her due-date, two men knocked on the door, tall men with thick blond eyebrows and matching blue worksuits.

“We have come with your desk,” the first man said. The dog barked at him.

“Flower, shush,” Fern said.

The men had suitcases and another bag full of tools. The crate was on wheels, and they brought it in. The two men looked tired and thirsty, so Fern waddled into the kitchen and offered juice in juice glasses and slices of cheese and crackers on a plate. “Sit down a minute,” she said, “before you begin unpacking it.”

“Thank you. It was a long journey.” They had to fold themselves up carefully to fit at the table.

“Where are you coming from?” she asked, thinking of a shipping hub in a nearby city.

“Stockholm,” they said, surprised. “We traveled, with the desk.”

“You traveled with the desk from Stockholm?” The shipping costs made a new kind of sense.

“An American would do wrong setup.”

Fern looked at the clock. She was glad that Cricket was at preschool. Edgar would be home in a few hours and she wanted very badly for him not to walk in and discover that his wife had bought a completely unnecessary piece of furniture from across the world, and accidentally ordered two blond men along with it. “Shall we get to work then?” she asked. Another thing: she had begun to feel contractions. They were mild enough if she breathed right.

The Swedes looked too big for the house, for the chairs. She imagined that where they lived, everything must be much larger. Larger table, larger chairs, larger juice glasses, larger wives.

“It’s a big desk?” she asked.

“It is a Swedish desk,” said one of the men, revealing his yellow teeth. “It is right size.”

“So,” she said, trying to make conversation but not wanting anyone to get talking too long. Her body cinched up. She could feel the babies pressing down. The dog circled her as though she knew what was going on.

“We began the first day much early,” the yellow-toothed man explained. “Travel by train.” He smiled, waiting to see if she understood him. “That day was a cold day. How do you say this weather, like rain but not rain?”

“Fog?” she asked.

“Fog?” he asked back.

“Fog,” she said to confirm, and he repeated the word again.

For such big men, they took surprisingly small sips of their juice. Fern said, “I’m sorry, I think I am in labor.”

“For the baby?” said one.

The other Swede continued the previous conversation. “The last herring, we ate in the train. After, only bread and butter and meat from a can.”

“You have some herring?” the yellow-toothed man asked.

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t have any herring. Only meat from a can. Very old meat from a can,” Fern said, hoping to discourage them from wanting anything else to eat. She breathed through a wave of what was now definite pain. The two men watched her patiently. One went over to the crate, knocked on it.

“I should call my husband,” Fern said but when she dialed Edgar’s studio number it just rang and rang.

“We can help,” said yellow tooth.

Fern watched the clock, had to kneel while the pain peaked. She remembered this pain now — how could she have forgotten it? She also remembered that it went on and on, and figured that she had many hours to go. Flower whined with her. When Fern was back in her chair the first man said, “London was nice city. Having bad weather, but having good time.” Did the men have return tickets? Fern wondered.

“There are many dark people here in America,” one Swede said. “Do you feel fear of them?”

“Of the dark people? The black people?” Fern stumbled. “No, no, we like them.” It came out sounding wrong, as if they were a kind of animal some people thought of as pests and others found sweet.

“But not in this neighborhood,” the second man said.

“No,” she said, “not so much in this neighborhood.” Pain and shame peaked at the same time.

Finally, finally, yellow tooth stood up and stretched. He gave the small chair a dirty look. Fern wanted to defend it — we Americans can fit in chairs that size. We are not being cheap. He came to stand beside her and wiped her forehead, which was sweating. “You have a cloth? I can make it cold for you.” He wet a red gingham dishtowel in the sink, squeezed it in his big hand and draped it over Fern’s forehead. The contractions were closer together but she could not keep track of the time and survive at the same time. She kept expecting Edgar to walk through the door and drive her to the hospital.

The two blonds began to unfasten the nails in the crate, pulling at them with the back of a hammer. Boards fell away. It was like excavating a tomb. Musty, woodsy smell came out when they opened the door panel and the inside of the crate was so dark. The bigger man reached inside and pulled at a handle. Inside was a ramble of wool blankets.

Tape was cut and the two blonds pulled the blankets off, revealing the desk. Just a desk. It was rectangular and sleek and the wood was rich and marbled like meat. But it was only wood, not some precious material. It seemed now like a very strange thing to do — spend money to have some nailed-together boards brought from the other side of the ocean, complete with two handlers. And there was no assembly. All the Swedes had to do was take it out of the crate and run a soft rag over it to remove the shipping dust.

When Fern was between waves, yellow tooth pulled one of the kitchen chairs over to the desk and said, “Sit down.”

The desk was big. It was technically too big. Fern felt like a little girl sitting at it. She thought of her father at his big desk in his big study, a fat novel in front of him and a red pen.

Fern dialed Edgar again and again he did not answer. She finally called her doctor and he could hear in her voice that she was very far along. “Why didn’t you call earlier? I’m coming over.”

“You are?” she asked. “Don’t I have hours to go?” Only poor people and hippies had babies at home. Fern wanted the hospital. She wanted the drugs.

“I don’t think we have time to move you.”

While Fern rocked on her hands and knees, sat back up and rocked again, the Swedes drank coffee and found and ate cans of tuna fish to which they added a smear of butter. Fern, in a lucid moment, said, “Is that customary? Is it always done that way?”

“Never,” said one. “It has never been done that way.”

It was so hot in the house. Fern said, “I have to push now,” as much to herself as the Swedes. The dog paced.

“We understand,” said the yellow-toothed man. “You must lie down. Don’t worry, we understand what to do.”

The doctor would arrive just after the two boys had been safely delivered into the hands of the yellow-toothed man, wrapped in blankets by the other Swede and placed on Fern’s chest on their sides so their lungs could drain. The Swedes had waited until the cords stopped pulsing and then cut them with kitchen shears. One man had given Fern ice chips to suck on. The doctor said, “Oh, hello.” He had not expected this particular kind of company. The towels the Swedes had put under Fern were soaked with blood and fluid. “Thank you,” he said. They had done exactly what they were supposed to do. The babies, two boys, were scrunched but beautiful, one slightly larger than the other, and Fern was fine. Everyone was absolutely fine.