Saïd Sayrafiezadeh - New American Stories

Because Naomi and Margaret were arriving at nine to show off this baby of theirs, that was why not.

But anyhow, what on earth was he thinking?

Still, at least he could apologize to William. He was himself, but at least he could go fling that inadequate self at William’s feet!

No. At the very least he could let poor, deserving William practice undisturbed. He’d wait — patiently, patiently — and when William was finished, William would come downstairs. Then Otto could apologize abjectly, spread every bit of his worthless being at William’s feet, comfort him and be comforted, reassure him and be reassured…

At a few minutes before nine, William appeared, whistling.

Whistling! “Good practice session?” Otto said. His voice came out cracked, as if it had been hurled against the high prison walls of himself.

“Terrific,” William said, and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

Otto opened his mouth. “You know—” he said.

“Oh, listen—” William said. “There really is a baby!” And faintly interspersed among Naomi and Margaret’s familiar creakings and bumpings in the hall Otto heard little chirps and gurgles.

“Hello, hello!” William cried, flinging open the door. “Look, isn’t she fabulous?”

“We think so,” Naomi said, her smile renewing and renewing itself. “Well, she is.”

“I can’t see if you do that,” Margaret said, disengaging the earpiece of her glasses and a clump of her red, crimpy hair from the baby’s fist as she attempted to transfer the baby over to William.

“Here.” Naomi held out a bottle of champagne. “Take this, too. Well, but you can’t keep the baby. Wow, look, she’s fascinated by Margaret’s hair. I mean, who isn’t?”

Otto wasn’t, despite his strong feelings about hair in general. “Should we open this up and drink it?” he said, his voice a mechanical voice, his hand a mechanical hand accepting the bottle.

“That was the idea,” Naomi said. She blinked up at Otto, smiling hopefully, and rocking slightly from heel to toe.

“Sit. Sit, everyone,” William said. “Oh, she’s sensational!”

Otto turned away to open the champagne and pour it into the lovely glasses somebody or another had given to them some time or another.

“Well, cheers,” William said. “Congratulations. And here’s to—”

“Molly,” Margaret said. “We decided to keep it simple.”

“We figured she’s got so much working against her already,” Naomi said, “including a couple of geriatric moms with a different ethnicity, and God only knows what infant memories, or whatever you call that stuff you don’t remember. We figured we’d name her something nice, that didn’t set up all kinds of expectations. Just a nice, friendly, pretty name. And she can take it from there.”

“She’ll be taking it from there in any case,” Otto said, grimly.

The others looked at him.

“I love Maggie,” Naomi said. “I always wanted a Maggie, but Margaret said—”

“Well.” Margaret shrugged. “I mean—”

“No, I know,” Naomi said. “But.”

Margaret rolled a little white quilt out on the rug. Plunked down on it, the baby sat, wobbling, with an expression of surprise.

“Look at her!” William said.

“Here’s hoping,” Margaret said, raising her glass.

So, marvelous. Humans were born, they lived. They glued themselves together in little clumps, and then they died. It was no more, as William had once cheerfully explained, than a way for genes to perpetuate themselves. “The selfish gene,” he’d said, quoting, probably detrimentally, someone; you were put on earth to fight for your DNA.

Let the organisms chat. Let them talk. Their voices were as empty as the tinklings of a player piano. Let the organisms talk about this and that; it was what (as William had so trenchantly pointed out) this particular carbon-based life-form did, just as its cousin (according to William) the roundworm romped ecstatically beneath the surface of the planet.

He tried to intercept the baby’s glossy, blurry stare. The baby was actually attractive, for a baby, and not bald at all, as it happened. Hello, Otto thought to it, let’s you and I communicate in some manner far superior to the verbal one.

The baby ignored him. Whatever she was making of the blanket, the table legs, the shod sets of feet, she wasn’t about to let on to Otto. Well, see if he cared.

William was looking at him. So, what was he supposed to do? Oh, all right, he’d contribute. Despite his current clarity of mind.

“And how was China?” he asked. “Was the food as bad as they say?”

Naomi looked at him blankly. “Well, I don’t know, actually,” she said. “Honey, how was the food?”

“The food,” Margaret said. “Not memorable, apparently.”

“The things people have to do in order to have children,” Otto said.

“We toyed with the idea of giving birth,” Margaret said. “That is, Naomi toyed with it.”

“At first,” Naomi said, “I thought, what a shame to miss an experience that nature intended for us. And, I mean, there was this guy at work, or of course there’s always — But then I thought, what, am I an idiot? I mean, just because you’ve got arms and legs, it doesn’t mean you have to—”

“No,” William said. “But still. I can understand how you felt.”

“Have to what?” Margaret said.

“I can’t,” Otto said.

“Have to what?” Margaret said.

“I can’t understand it,” Otto said. “I’ve just never envied the capacity. Others are awestruck, not I. I’ve never even remotely wished I were able to give birth, and, in fact, I’ve never wanted a baby. Of course it’s inhuman not to want one, but I’m just not human. I’m not a human being. William is a human being. Maybe William wanted a baby. I never thought to ask. Was that what you were trying to tell me the other day, William? Were you trying to tell me that I’ve ruined your life? Did you want a baby? Have I ruined your life? Well, it’s too bad. I’m sorry. I was too selfish ever to ask if you wanted one, and I’m too selfish to want one myself. I’m more selfish than my own genes. I’m not fighting for my DNA, I’m fighting against it!”

“I’m happy as I am,” William said. He sat, his arms wrapped tightly around himself, looking at the floor. The baby coughed. “Who needs more champagne?”

“You see?” Otto said into the tundra of silence William left behind him as he retreated into the kitchen. “I really am a monster.”

Miles away, Naomi sat blushing, her hands clasped in her lap. Then she scooped up the baby. “There, there,” she said.

But Margaret sat back, eyebrows raised in semicircles, contemplating something that seemed to be hanging a few feet under the ceiling. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, and the room shuttled back into proportion. “I suppose you could say it’s human to want a child, in the sense that it’s biologically mandated. But I mean, you could say that, or you could say it’s simply unimaginative. Or you could say it’s unselfish or you could say it’s selfish, or you could say pretty much anything about it at all. Or you could just say, well, I want one. But when you get right down to it, really, one what? Because, actually — I mean, well, look at Molly. I mean, actually, they’re awfully specific.”

“I suppose I meant, like, crawl around on all fours, or something,” Naomi said. “I mean, just because you’ve got — But look, there they already are, all these babies, so many of them, just waiting, waiting, waiting on the shelves for someone to take care of them. We could have gone to Romania, we could have gone to Guatemala, we could have gone almost anywhere — just, for various reasons, we decided to go to China.”