Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

They had to cut him out. I had to keep a straight face — a happy one, even — for her. I was all she had to look at. So at the same time, I saw her eyes and her ovaries, her restless, questioning lips, and her blood. Then my boy — his perfect, unsqueezed head. They handed him to me — balls first. I must have waited an instant too long to take the bloody, mucousy thing. “It’s okay. Hold him. He’s yours.” But I wasn’t afraid of that. In fact, I felt that I should be the only one, in that room full of white people, to hold that dusky purple boy. And that made me of two minds: one was waiting for something to go horribly wrong; the other scanned time, scrolling forward to the future when everything would go wrong. I was premourning him and premourning his loss of me. And then, as best I could, I banished those thoughts from those minds and then banished those minds. They gave him to Claire. She got it. It was simple. That was her boy. She loved him. He was beautiful. The only significance — the umbilical cord, which the doctor, scissors in hand, asked if I wanted to cut.

They tried to take him to the nursery to allegedly weigh and test and measure him all over again. I tried to insist that I go with them. Claire had muttered something like “. . no bottle. Nipple confusion. .,” but I waited with her until they got her into a room and had the morphine pumping. Then I went up. The nurse was changing his diaper, handling him like a frying chicken. I pressed up to the glass. She put him down, almost naked, in the warming bin. His eyes were closed. I watched him startle, grabbing at imaginary things, spasming in fear. The nurse came in with a bottle and roughly jammed it into his mouth. I knocked on the glass. She came outside.

“Yes, daddy?” she said sharply with a lispy accent. I think she was Korean. She stood in front of me as though we were about to each take our roles in the bizarre deli wars between her people and mine.

“My wife doesn’t want him to have a bottle, nipple confusion, you know.”

“He’s startling.” She slowed her speech as though she was considering something. “Sometimes a baby startles when the mother takes drugs.”

I walked past her, entered the nursery, and took my son. She protested and tried to block the exit, but when she saw that I wasn’t going to stop, she moved. I walked briskly down the hall. I didn’t know where I was going. They caught me waiting for the elevator.

“Daddy, you can’t do that.” She’d recruited three black women to do her dirty work. This nurse, thick bodied and smiling, cooed calmly. The other two nodded and smiled along with her. One of them had a cart. She gestured for me to put the boy inside.

“Hospital rules. Babies have to ride. You can take him, but he has to ride. Okay, daddy?”

Claire was whacked-out on morphine when I found the room. Nurses from other departments peeked their heads in to get a glimpse of the renegade father, and that kind of got me through the day. They made fun, but they were kind. But when night fell, they stopped coming. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. I was fixed on his breathing. New-borns, ugh, it seems to be such a struggle for them — sometimes panting shallowly, sometimes taking one short breath and then waiting, then one brief exhalation, then waiting. I couldn’t stand it, so I spent the evening wheeling him around the hospital, skating under the fluorescents, atop the buffed bright floor. Skating the glowing, waxed hallways, the light so bright that it threatened to flash us into oblivion.

I got us out of there as soon as I could, got Gavin’s harsh jalopy and loaded them in. Me, my bride, and our boy, going home in a borrowed car — bad shocks — over and into potholes. Bang! Claire screaming again and again like she was being torn apart repeatedly. The three of us, some lost little tribe, descending, like it was the first time, into Brooklyn.

When the revolution comes, they might be coming for me, too. If they cut me open, they’d find that undigested prime steak in my stomach. I find a deli tucked in the middle of the block, Broome between Hudson and West Broadway. I go in and start grabbing things in a rush, then I remember the list, which of course I can’t find. I replay each interaction: one black tea, four regular coffees, four buttered rolls, one toasted bagel. It all goes rather smoothly. I even get extra sugar and milk and such and get out without a hitch — back down Broome to Greene — when I realize I don’t have a key or a phone number or a phone to call with. There’s no buzzer, either. But of course, she’s there, this time with a yoga mat and water bottle. She’s also found her sunglasses.

“We meet again.” I don’t know why, but I expect more from her. I know, for some reason, that she has more to say. Then I think that maybe she does — just not to me. I don’t seem to make her nervous, and she probably figures she hasn’t any reason to fear or respect me. Basic politeness is enough. Any acknowledgment should be enough.

When I don’t answer, she wrinkles her brow and bends toward me slightly as though she’s peering into my consciousness.

“Bad day?”

I shrug my shoulders.

“Break time?”

“Yes.”

My neutral accent betrays me — makes her straighten — reexamine me from a new point of view.

“How many breaks do you guys get?”

I pretend not to understand. She sees through this. I’ve equaled the stupidity of her opening line. We’re even.

“Who’s the general contractor?”

“John Leary.”

“Is he a smallish man who drives a fancy truck?”

“Yes.”

She feels better about my speech now, comfortable. The gopher bags and the voice — doesn’t seem to bother her, as though the disconnect hadn’t occurred to her at all.

“How is he? Is he good to work for?”

“I just started. I don’t really know.”

I’m only able to spot the worst dye jobs, so I can’t tell if her hair is natural. It’s streaked — red and blonde in a majority of long, auburn curls — but some of it is wavy and it makes her appear to have an elegant mess of carefully coiffed snarls. There’s a hint of sun on her head now, just one side. It makes the color of the darkened side rich, gives her hair a depth and volume that makes me want to touch it. Fortunately, she speaks.

“I don’t care much for him.” She pauses. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to bias you.”

She changes her tone, brightening.

“Are you a carpenter?”

“I was.”

“Oh,” she nods — now she understands. Her eyes are dark brown, and, juxtaposed to her lighter hair, pale skin, and orange freckles, seem incredibly deep. There’s the first hint of the pull of wrinkles at their corners. Knowing her age would dramatically alter her face, aging it or making it younger.

“Would it be insulting to ask if you’d like to do extra work — for me?”

I have no choice but pretend to be puzzled.

“I phrased that poorly. Were you a good carpenter?”

“Yes.”

“Would you be willing to help me with some things in my place? I was going to ask your boss, but. . It isn’t much and like I said — well, they’ve been working there for a long time and haven’t gotten much done. I know Beth isn’t very happy with the work — or lack thereof.”

She stops, as if she needs to check in.

“Have you met Beth?”

“No.”

“She’s the owner. She’s very sweet.”

There’s a silence between us now. A bad one, as though neither of us can make sense of what she’s just said. She points at the tray.

“You’d better get that stuff up. You don’t want to mess up — being it’s your first day and all.”

She opens the door for me.