Christopher Ransom - The Birthing House

A house to call a home.

She slept on the couch that night, and stayed with him for the next sixty hours. The incident with the dogs had put them together and unlocked a hidden need to abandon reality, together. He supposed she was interested in more than money for a plane ticket. Maybe not a father for her unborn child, maybe not yet.

But if circumstances made it possible, the next days made it real. What was once a hidden thought, a phrase tinted with flirting, a lingering question, now became a tactile sensation, the electric of the boundary pushed.

There were no long conversations or weeping confessions. They did not make love physically.

Instead, theirs was a time of domestic gestures and offerings. The bump of the hip while he cooked over the stove. The looking out the window saying nothing, seeing how it felt to stand side by side. Once, when he had come down from a shower dressed in a clean shirt, she squinted and plucked lint from his shoulder. It was a small thing done like she'd done it a hundred times before, almost simian in its normalcy, but it was a statement. The female claiming a small right. After seeing the baby's room prepared that way in the warm light, she moved through the house no longer a guest, but a new resident.

They woke late the next morning. She was at the refrigerator, searching, grumpy.

He understood what to do. 'Stay here. I'll be right back.'

Into the bloody car to fetch real groceries. He spent three hundred dollars on good food and fell in love with feeding her. He prepared omelets with mushrooms and tomatoes, flipping them in the pan like a pro while she watched. Hash browns he'd shredded himself. Buttered toast. Fresh juice. What else did she like?

The stint as a prep cook in college came back. He cooked three meals a day. She would sit and watch him move around the kitchen. Never seen a man cook, she said, fascinated. He put things together she'd never eaten: Thai green curry and miso soup, green chile stew with warm tortillas, London broil with twice-baked potatoes and asparagus sauteed in olive oil. Salmon filets, sweet beets, mesclun greens with walnuts and Michigan cherries and crumbled blue cheese. Dozens of rolls and a loaf of home-made bread from the wedding present breadmaker. Cheesecake, pound cake, pecan pie and strawberry ice cream. Her appetite was astonishing. She ate for two, then three and sometimes four. She smiled the most after finishing a meal.

She helped him change the bandages around the dogs' legs. He could not be sure, but it seemed that the cuts were healing almost despite the sutures. The dogs no longer limped or slept all day. They acted like they had never been wounded. He was reminded of the quick healing in his hand, but he did not dwell on the idea that had struck him since he first moved in.

This is a healing place, and we are healing .

They lounged, watched movies, soap operas. He hadn't seen Days of Our Lives since high school, when Holly had forced him to watch it with her after school. Usually he would indulge her for half an hour, then get restless, horny, until Holly caved in and they had sex. Holly. They had been the craziest couple in high school - or the only real one. Watching TV with Nadia was different. It was a way to be together without doing anything. It was safe. Nadia said her feet hurt and he rubbed them from the other end of the couch until she fell asleep in the late afternoon.

The clock ceased to matter. They stayed up late, woke early, napped. They played Scrabble through the afternoon thunder-storms and she surprised him by beating him two out of three.

She slept on the couch even when he offered her the upstairs bed, insisting he would behave and stay in another room. She refused. On the second day he came down to find her lying still like one of Laski's kids. He sat on the couch next to her and she sat up suddenly, startled, then pressed her mouth to his. He tasted her morning breath and she pulled his hair. They pushed against each other's mouths for fifteen minutes without anything else. He somehow knew to keep his hands down, and that was better. She moaned when they kissed, and he stopped, thinking her crying again. But she wasn't. Nervous, excited, don't want to talk about it. He couldn't remember if Jo had ever been so moved by a kiss. Nadia would kiss him that way for ten minutes, then push away. She would disappear into the bath for half an hour and resurface wearing his old tees and boxers. She came down one time in his Sebadoh and he thought that was perfect.

The dogs were warm to her, but he sensed they knew. He would catch them looking at him and he would think, They know. They know she is not Jo and something is wrong with this picture.

The second night he could not sleep and he went to her on the couch. She was sleeping. He sat next to her on the couch and watched her. He placed a hand on her swollen belly - she must be seven months now - and she woke to his touch. He did not pull his hand away and she left it there, looking up at him. I'm falling for this whole deal, he thought. The woman and everything inside her and what it will cost. When she sat up he said sorry, but she said it was okay, she just had to pee.

When she returned she held the blanket open for him and the morning passed in a cocoon of unmoving, unsleeping silence. Two bodies learning something before their brains could catch up.

He was dozing spoon-to-spoon when she said, 'I don't know why, but I feel safe with you.'

'You are.'

She sighed heavily with contentment, and he felt now was the time to ask.

'Nadia,' he whispered.

'Mh-hm.'

'Is that why you tried to run away? Because you weren't safe with Eddie?'

'Yes.'

'He is the father.'

'Yes.'

'Was it here? In this house?'

A minute passed before she answered. 'The Laskis moved out over a year ago. The house was empty last fall and winter. Eddie and I . . . we had nowhere else to go. I'd spent so much time here growing up, it felt almost normal, like I deserved to be here. We spent the afternoons hiding out in the rooms, drinking wine, smoking cigarettes. For a while we were both happy, but kinda out of control. But then it happened, and my parents would not allow us to see each other again. Eddie was always wild, but he got mean after that. How did you know?'

'It just makes sense. The house wants life.'

'Does it? Because sometimes I feel like it doesn't want me here.'

'Why would you think that?'

'I dunno. Maybe because I've always been an intruder.'

'No.'

'It's true. First I was the babysitter. Mrs Laski was always suspicious of me, and I saw the way Mr Laski looked at me.'

'You are beautiful enough to halt birds in flight. Can you blame them?'

'Then I was with Eddie, when no one owned the house, and I became pregnant. I was never really frightened here, not during those afternoons, but I always knew I was breaking the rules. I always felt like I was angering her somehow.'

He did not think to clarify whether if by 'her' Nadia meant Mrs Laski, the house itself or someone else.

'I thought about getting rid of it. Eddie asked me to. But I kept putting it off and putting it off. And then one day I didn't care what anybody else wanted. It was like the time I was babysitting, when the zeks came for me. I'd already lost it once, and I couldn't go through that again. This baby is my baby, but now I am an intruder again.'

'You're not. I invited you in.'

'But I am not the woman of the house.'

'Is that something you heard from Laski?'

'I don't remember. It just feels that way.'

'Well, it's my house now. And I want you to stay.'

He kissed her neck, fell asleep in her hair.

On the third morning he woke to find her in the kitchen banging around, looking for a pot. He made her peaches and cream oatmeal and he could tell something was gnawing at her.