Christopher Ransom - The Birthing House

It was like before. When he had woken up on the floor of the bathroom. The skin of his penis was chaffed, stinging and sore in the right places. What did that leave? A nocturnal emission? Fucking the pillows?

Probably. Yes, definitely.

But when he lifted the plastic cup of warmed-over tea from the nightstand to his nose, he could smell her. He remembered feeling the warm blood on her breasts. Then he saw the evidence. Not blood. In the morning light his fingers were chalky, dry, crackly white. He put two in his mouth without thinking and the texture was brittle, sweet. You don't remember, but you know.

A mother's milk.

24

'So what've you been up to?' he said, filling his coffee cup from the Bunn machine in the Grums' kitchen. The coffee was thick, as if it had been sitting all morning, the way he liked it. Nadia was sitting on one of the stools at the kitchen island, flipping through the paper, sipping from a Winnie-the-Pooh mug and pretending he wasn't there. 'You feeling all right? Nadia?'

'Sleeping a lot. I feel like shit.'

Her flannel shirt and shorts clung to her plump curves and he searched her body for something that would affirm his suspicions - a scar, a line, the coarser hairs at the tops of her thighs - something to jar his foggy memory of the flesh he had cupped and caressed some thirty-six hours before.

'Everything okay with the baby? Did you call your doctor?'

She winced but did not look up from her paper. 'I can handle it.'

'Your parents would want me to ask. When are they due back, anyway?'

'Four or five days.'

'I'm behind on my chores.'

'I got the mail,' Nadia said, the sarcasm blatant. She slipped off her stool and went around the corner to the living room.

Conrad sipped his coffee. This didn't fit. She was not acting in any way clever or seductive. If she was playing games and sneaking into his house at night, she was one messed up girl. He went into the living room. Nadia was tucked under an orange Ralph Lauren blanket. He could see the little man on the horse near her feet. She unpaused the DVR.

'What's on?'

' March of the Penguins .'

He looked at the TV. Hundreds of the fat little birds were huddled together while the frozen wind whipped around them. Close-ups of the birds squatting on their eggs on the ice. It looked impossible.

He said, 'If I was a penguin I would leave. Go to Mexico.'

'Don't be an ass. This is amazing.'

'What part is amazing?'

'All of it.'

He watched their fat bodies hunker down, a community under the dark wind. They appeared miserable.

'What part do you like best?' he said.

'They share responsibility. They take turns until the baby is hatched.'

'Is that the one--'

'Shut up.'

He shut up and watched the penguins tough it out. Morgan Freeman explained how, when the mothers are away getting more food, the fathers take over and sit on the eggs. The fathers did their best, but sometimes they fucked up and the eggs rolled away and died. The mothers returned with food to feed the fathers, and they traded places. Sometimes, when one of the mothers returns and finds out her egg has died, she tries to steal another mother's egg. But the community won't let her. She is grief-stricken, inconsolable and ostracized.

'That's so sad,' Nadia said, sniffing.

He watched the broken egg on the ice, the little dead bird inside. 'What happens when the mother goes away and doesn't come back? What does the father do with the egg then? Find another mother, or just take care of it on his own?'

'I don't know,' she said, looking up at him with glassy eyes. 'What happens?'

He was still formulating his answer when the phone rang. She looked away, wiping her eyes. After three rings he said, 'What if it's Mom and Dad?'

'Knock yourself out.'

Conrad went to the kitchen. 'Grum residence.'

'Yeah, where's Nadia?' The guy on the other end sounded startled, out of breath. His was the panting of a wired, anxious little man.

'Who's calling?'

Nadia padded in and poured orange juice. The carton said NO PULP! 50% More Calcium!

'I said who's calling, please?'

'Chuh!' The spitting sound of incredulity. 'Who's this, the neighbor guy?'

'My name is Conrad.'

'Where is she?'

'If you tell me who's calling, I'll see if she's home.'

'Eddie. I know she's there.'

'Okay, Eddie, please hold.'

Conrad held the phone out. Nadia shook her head slowly.

Conrad experienced a ridiculous, eleventh-grade thrill. 'I'm sorry, Eddie, she is unavailable. Can I take a message?'

'She won't talk to me?'

'She's not available, Eddie. Would you like me to tell her you called, or is there some other message?'

Eddie breathed into the phone. 'Are you f-f-fucking her now?'

Conrad resisted the urge to laugh. The boy's emotionally induced stutter induced pity and he did not want to be cruel. Well, not in front of her.

'You know, Eddie, I realize at your age that must be the most important thing in the world. But girls don't like it when boys talk out of school. So what do you say, guy, think you can rise above it?'

Nadia frowned and Conrad made a 'chill, it's under control' wave of his hand.

'Oh, you f-f-fucker,' Eddie moaned. 'Y-y-you are! And if you aren't, you're t-t-tryin' to! You f-f-fuckin' asshole!'

Something banged in the background and Conrad pulled the phone away from his ear. 'Hey, hey. That kind of language is uncalled for. Now it's none of my business, Eddie, but if you two aren't exactly best friends these days, this temper of yours might be part of the problem, you know what I'm sayin'? If she wants to talk with you, she'll call. Personally, I'll advise her not to, but she's a big girl. She can make up her own mind.'

Eddie's breathing filled the line before he cranked up again. 'PUT NADIA ON THE PHONE, YOU MOTHERFUCKER! ' Sans stutter. 'I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU IF YOU DON'T PUT HER ON THE PHONE!'

Nadia reached for the phone, but Conrad waved her off. He wanted to own this little shit now. Reach through the phone and break his skinny red neck.

A repeated banging sound on Eddie's side.

'Eddie?' Conrad said. 'You want to stop pounding your fist into your trailer wall for a minute?' The pounding stopped. 'You're taking out your frustrations on your wall because it's that cheap wood paneling they put in doublewides like yours. That's right, I know where you live. You make a threat like that, normally it's none of my business. But the Grums hired me to watch out for their things while they're away and Nadia happens to be one of those things. So for a few more days, guess what, it is my business.'

'Asshole, asshole, asshole--'

'Now I want to give you a piece of advice. Are you listening? Eddie, are you listening?'

'Yes!'

'Good. Now, when you make a threat. The first thing you have to do is stay calm. Because when you sound like a hysterical little bitch, no one takes you seriously. The person you're yelling at thinks, no, this guy sounds like a girl, he's just blowing off steam, he ain't gonna do anything. Are you with me, Eddie?'

'Yes.'

'Rule number two. Make sure you know something about the person you're threatening. This is very important because the last thing you want to do is make a threat you can't deliver on. Now, I haven't exactly kept my fighting weight over the years, but I'm capable, Eddie. Last asshole who threatened me, in front of my wife? Well, I plumb went sideways, Eddie. Put his head through a window at Ruth's Chris in Westwood. Paramedics had to pull glass out of his neck. Why do you think I had to leave LA? The stress, Eddie.'

This was fiction, of course. But it seemed to be working. Eddie was silent. Nadia watched him with her arms crossed.

'B-b-bullshit.'