Helen Phillips - Some Possible Solutions

“Daddy! Daddy!” the sons (twins) cry out as Steve Stanhope throws them again and again into the pool. I scoff at the irresponsible parenting — who lets their kids stay up this late? Sure, Lulu’s bedroom might be a cubbyhole carved out of our bedroom with a temporary wall, and sure, maybe I was a little wounded when Lulu proudly led a new friend into her room and the girl said, “Why is your room so dark and small?” but at least we put her to bed at a healthy hour, and read her print books beforehand, and give her a little bit of the special organic kids’ toothpaste, arm and a leg but worth it, god, well worth it, for her. And now I’m remembering the time a few weeks back when I happened to peek through the wall during the twins’ birthday party, and who should I see there but Marshmallow — looking maybe a little bit cleaner, sure, but skinny old Marshmallow nonetheless, marching wearily up and down that lawn just as he’d marched up and down the sidewalk for Lulu.

Right as I’m trying to get myself onto my high horse about what great parents Sarah and I are, Mara Stanhope steps out onto the patio in these soft gray harem pants, and I realize with a start that she’s pregnant, pregnant as a pumpkin but still somehow so lean, standing in the light of her double glass doors.

Three children. Imagine that. It was already a luxury to have two. Even if we could somehow get the money together again for the fertility treatments (which no way could we), no way could we afford a second. It had taken Sarah two years to conceive. “Plastics,” the doctors explained. So you go home and it’s like, the yogurt’s in plastic, the shampoo’s in plastic, the toothbrushes are plastic.

Mara Stanhope bore the twins surrounded by a pod of dolphins at sunset in the ocean off a black volcanic sand beach in Hawaii. The pics were gorgeous, and public, on the Internet, with her privates blocked out. DOLPHIN-ASSISTED CHILDBIRTH SUCCESS! DOLPHIN MIDWIFERY LEADS TO DREAM BIRTH! “It’s about coexistence,” Mara Stanhope was quoted as saying. “It’s about total relaxation.”

“Boys!” she says now, resting a hand on her pert belly. “Aiden! Landon! Bedtime!”

* * *

When Sarah waspregnant she would always say, “I’m starving for something but I have no idea what it is.” One night I spy Mara Stanhope lounging on the torch-lit lawn with a tray of small bowls, eating a bit from this or that with a tiny fork, but I can tell she’s just like Sarah was, starving for something that hasn’t yet been tasted by anyone on this planet. She reaches into the stainless-steel cooler, then settles back into her lounge chair with plain old Coca-Cola in a can.

“Hey witness,” Sarah says, coming up behind me.

I startle. It’s nearly midnight — Lulu has been in bed for hours, and so has Sarah. She’s wearing her great little blue robe.

“There’s a peephole here,” I say stupidly.

“I know.” Sarah smiles in the slight light. “Pretty fun, huh?”

I love my wife.

“She’s had some wild cravings,” she says. “All those capers.”

Above us a spot of light moves across the purple clouds.

“Another fucking searchlight,” she whispers. “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?”

* * *

Sarah and I,we get sad about different things.

Like that night, later on, I think about how Lulu doesn’t recognize stars except as a shape in coloring books and on stickers and stuff. I say that to Sarah. “Isn’t that sad?” I say.

“No.”

“It doesn’t make you sad?”

“Everyone has lots to learn about everything.”

* * *

When I gethome from work that Friday, Lulu is sitting on Sarah’s lap, helping her order the groceries. Lulu has outgrown this activity a bit, her legs splaying awkwardly over Sarah. I remember going to the grocery store with my mom, helping her choose the honeydew based on how hollow they sounded when you knocked on them.

“No, Mom!” she says to Sarah, both of them staring at the screen. “Rutabaga only gets two and a half stars this week.”

“It’s on sale, Lu,” Sarah says. “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”

Lulu jumps off Sarah’s lap and runs over to me.

“Daddy! Let’s search for something!”

This is it: getting home from work on Friday, better than cool water.

“Sure thing. Hmm, how about…”

“The world’s tiniest marsupial?”

“Sure thing,” I say.

“Okay, but after dinner,” Sarah says.

“Lemme guess,” Lulu says. “Rutabaga?”

“You bet,” Sarah says curtly.

After dinner Lulu and I search the Internet to find the world’s tiniest marsupial.

“Don’t touch,” I say when she goes to press her fingertips against the close-up of the creature’s fur. “You’ll leave marks.”

She pulls her hand away from the screen.

* * *

Sarah takes thetrash out after Lulu goes to bed but she doesn’t come back. After ten minutes I go to look for her. I find her in the concrete enclosure, face glued to the hole in the wall.

“Hey witness,” I say, pushing her aside so I can see.

“Hey addict,” she counters, pushing me back.

“Is that what I think it is?” Mara Stanhope’s low moan stretches over the wall, over the noise of the generator.

“No, sicko,” Sarah hisses. “You think I’d wanna watch that ?”

I arrange myself above Sarah, like the next head up on a totem pole, so that we can peer through the hole at the same time.

In the light of many moon-shaped paper lanterns, Mara Stanhope is crouched naked on all fours, clinging to the thick grass of the lawn, rolling her hips around and around, emitting groans that swing back and forth between pleasure and pain. A slender woman in a gray shift pours golden oil onto her back and kneels to rub it in. A second slender woman in a gray shift crouches in front of Mara, also on all fours, groaning along with her.

“Those are the doulas,” Sarah whispers. Sarah had wanted a doula (just one) for a hot second, until we learned how much they cost. Not a biggie , she’d said back then.

“I guess they got sick of the dolphins,” I say, hoping Sarah hasn’t noticed the rose petals floating in the pool.

I await her laugh but she ignores me.

“Wonder where he is,” I say.

Whatever else you might say about Lulu’s birth — that the nurses had cold and impatient hands, that the anesthesiologist didn’t inspire confidence as he poked the needle yet again into Sarah’s spine, that the doctor yawned seven times while stitching up Sarah’s vagina — I was there, instant by instant, and as she pushed Lulu’s head out I said to her, I didn’t think I could be in more awe of you than I already was.

Music swells up from the Stanhopes’ outdoor speakers, music that sounds like it was composed by the cosmos, and Steve Stanhope strides out of the glass door. Mara Stanhope’s moans unite with the chords of the music, and he comes over to her, and the doulas tactfully move aside, and he gets down on all fours facing his wife, and he too moans the moans of the universe, and believe me, I wish it was a laughable sight but somehow it’s not.

“You are now ten thousand times more relaxed than you’ve ever been,” the doulas chant.

If only Sarah would laugh. Instead she mutters something.

“What?” I demand.

“The rich still get to be animals,” she says.

* * *

Lulu emerged withthe assistance of K-Y Jelly, but the Stanhopes’ daughter is born into a rush of imported organic olive oil, the doulas pouring cupful after cupful of it to serve as lubrication, and as the baby’s head emerges onto the candlelit lawn, Mara Stanhope seems to be having the deepest orgasm of her life, and I’m ashamed by my hardening, but more ashamed by the way Sarah waggles her butt against me to acknowledge the hardening, but mainly turned on by the idea of going inside with Sarah and filling her up with triplets.