Pamela Erens - Eleven Hours

Sucking now, numbing her mouth, she draws a drop from an ice shard, holds it like a cold jewel, then swallows. Suck, hold, swallow. Time slows to this rhythm, the pull of her tongue, the slow warming of the drop. Nothing can happen while she sucks and holds, holds and swallows. How clever of her — to slow time, to make it wait. She pokes at another chip and pops it into her mouth. Her limbs are already forgetting the pain. But Franckline says, arranging the cushions, “The baby is determined now.” Franckline seizes time by the scruff, shakes it out of its stupor, sets it going again. She seats herself on the bed. “It wants out.” The clock on the wall has moved forward only a minute, to Lore’s alarm and outrage. The baby froze her face coming out .

What was that? Who said that? Lore smells leaves burning in old metal trash cans, sees opaque skies heavy and wet around a brick school building. Tricia. She has not thought of it in years. It was when she and Tricia were in fifth grade. Tricia was telling about her big sister. Her sister’s mouth and eye were pulled down forever on the right side, because the sister’s baby had crushed some nerves coming out. That was how Tricia explained it. That side of the mouth and the eye would never move with the other side again. Lore saw the sister once when she dropped in for a visit, and the face was worse than she had imagined: it looked as if the still side had been smashed in a door. But Tricia said her sister said it was all worth it to have gotten Ryan, who was now three years old and knew his whole alphabet. Tricia made up a game and insisted that Lore play it: What was a baby worth more than? Was it worth more than your leg? Your eyesight? All the money you could ever get?

“It wants out,” says Franckline again. But why must you repeat yourself! cries Lore silently. It, he, she — who are you, tiny destroyer, tiny suffering thing? When the sonographer asked her at twenty weeks did she want to know the sex, she said no. Let the child retain its mystery, she thought, let it be free for a while longer from life rushing in, however well-meaning, with its dreams and plans: a bow in the hair, ballet lessons, a red fire truck. She, he, it. A student she had three years ago, a second grader whose parents were Senegalese, was called Soleil. A dreamy boy who could not distinguish between his “th”s and his “d”s and who drew wonderful pictures of million-windowed buildings poking high into the sky, stick figures in every window: waving, laughing, boxing, dozing. It seemed a beautiful name for a child, boy or girl: the sun that rises to give warmth and light, a ball of burning fire.

When he learned of the baby, Asa left his messages. Lore got rid of the answering machine, deleted his e-mails without reading them. Helen Fox, Asa’s mother, whom she’d always liked — formidable Helen, with her white hair and her work editing thick books on sociology and anthropology, who’d once put her veined hand on top of Lore’s and said that Lore made Asa happy — Helen sent checks to her at P.S. 30, with notes in her tiny handwriting pleading with Lore to phone her, to be in touch, to say that she was all right. The checks tempted Lore, but they also humiliated her, and she threw them away. She’d wanted to reply, but what could she possibly say? That Helen had been her other mother, the one who survived? The one who taught her things about history and dance, and whom she’d liked to imagine making a grandmother? She had pictured that preoccupied, severe face broken up in fond smiles. Lore was the one who would cause that to happen.

If Asa wants to speak to me, Lore thought, he will find my address and come in person, he will take the dreaded 7 train that Manhattanites hate to take, and he will wait for me. Eventually he appeared. It was late September; he sat on the steps of the three-story building where she now lived. When he stood up he was somehow less imposing than he had been six months before. She would have said he’d lost weight except that in fact he looked bloated. She’d always liked Asa’s size, the bulk of him, liked being with a man bigger than herself — taller and broader and even denser, it seemed. His largeness and solidity pinned her more securely to reality, made her feel more there . But now he looked hollowed out.

The evening was mild and windy; they watched a man parked near her entrance get into his car and drive away. Asa spoke carefully, evenly — he was greatly agitated. He said that she might not believe him but he’d come around to being happy about the pregnancy; he’d always wanted them to have children. She had been very wrong to keep the news from him. Naturally he would be financially responsible. More important, he would be a father to whatever degree Lore would allow. He would be part of the baby’s life. He would ask nothing and give anything — except that he would not give up Julia. He kept his eyes on Lore’s belly. Lore, frightened, felt him in fact capable of loving this child he had not chosen. What a temptation, to feel Asa’s love, just a little, through that.

“It’s not your child, Asa.”

“Yes, it is. It’s as much mine as yours.”

“I’m saying it’s not yours . When you were in San Francisco, I went out one night. I met a guy.”

“Come on, Lore. Where did you meet this guy? What was his name?”

“I don’t need to tell you.”

“You’re making this up. You met a guy? You, what, went back to his place? I don’t believe you.”

“Think what you want.”

They sat in silence.

“There are tests that would tell,” said Asa.

“So get tested,” said Lore. He would never follow through, she was convinced of it. He was here to prove he was not altogether bad, that he could still do a right thing, and maybe he could. But he would bring the scent and touch and vibration of Julia with him, and this Lore could not bear. Julia’s hair on his collar, the smell of her grassy perfumes, her laugh.

Asa was weaker than he realized. If she gave him this out, he would never seek to know for sure.

“Where is the pain mostly?” asks Franckline. “In the front or the back?”

Lore startles. The pain? Ah. “The back. All in my back.”

“I can massage there for you. Along the spine, especially, and right above the sacrum. You can direct me.”

“I think we should call Dr. Elspeth-Chang again.”

“Soon. Let’s see how quickly the next one comes.”

Lore puts down the cup of ice. Her mouth aches with cold. She watches the clock. Six minutes since the last contraction. Seven. She needs me more , Asa said to her, the night that he told her about himself and Julia. He sobbed, saying that he couldn’t deceive Lore any longer, it was too wrong, Lore was the best thing that had ever happened to him, but things with Julia went way back, he didn’t claim it was healthy or right, just that it was. They were like siblings, like twins, but even more than that. They understood each other, they saw the world through the same eyes. It was as if someone had married them, long, long ago, before they could even know what that meant. He didn’t know what to do! He loved Lore! But Julia!

Lore cut him off. How long had he been sleeping with her?

Nearly three years.

Asa said: “We all love each other. I know we can work it out.”

“No,” said Lore. “We don’t all love each other. Work it out? ” She now saw why he had confessed — not so he could make a choice, but to get her permission not to. He wanted things to go on just as they had, but with Lore knowing and agreeing to it. He wanted Lore’s reliability and sanity, the ease of their life together. And he wanted her so that Julia would not leave him again for the fourth or seventh time. Oh, Asa and Julia did go far back. Asa had kissed her behind the piano in kindergarten. They had slept in each other’s rooms when they were in grade school. He had dropped her half a block from her apartment one night. She needs me more . Julia had bought Lore as a pimp might, made a gift of her to Asa, to them both. How stimulating it must have been, Lore thought, the three of them strolling along Columbus Avenue or sunning at Jones Beach or driving up to Bear Mountain for a hike, how Lore’s love for them must have acted like a revivifying draft for their old, tangled romance. How deliciously illicit it must have made their need. And how stupid and arrogant Lore had been, to believe that she could take her pleasure of both of them, yet Asa could remain completely her own. The bliss, for so long, of that self-deception. Julia and Lore spooning atop a pile of coats at a party, dozing, while Asa talked on in the living room. Or Asa would say something that annoyed Julia, and Julia, slender Julia, would tackle him; he’d fake a fall, Lore would pile on. They’d roll and punch at each other like preschoolers, laughing, grabbing hair, baring teeth. Asa’s hand on Julia’s belly, Julia’s fingers grazing his mouth: were these knowing promises of what would be redeemed on another day?