Ty cradled the baby’s head as it came out. “Grace! Look at his face!”
Yeah, yeah, plenty of time for that later. I needed my vagina back. Now. I pushed.
“Hold on, stop! The cord—”
“What?”
Ty pulled the umbilical cord over the baby’s head and out of the way, and then I didn’t have to push anymore, he rotated on his own and rushed out of me.
He slipped through Ty’s hands, and I will never forget him floating there for a moment, arms and legs spread-eagled, like a wrinkly, naked little astronaut still attached to the mother ship.
Jake’s water world
.
Ty scooped the baby up and he blinked, taking us in. Totally unimpressed.
“Jacob!” I gasped. “You’re here!”
Ty was crying. He laid this strange, incredibly solid little person on my belly and I held him with both hands. His skin was so hot! And purplish white. The umbilical cord was pulsing. We felt it with our fingertips and looked at each other like
what a weird dream
.
Ty laid a towel over the baby and I tucked it around him and held him to my breast. He was so calm! He lay there blinking and we watched, fascinated, as he gradually noticed the nipple under his cheek. He rubbed his mouth over it thoughtfully, intrigued. He was clearly trying to figure out the situation, as if there was a vague memory lurking on the edge of his brain. Then the light suddenly came on—we saw it happen. He chomped down on me and noisily, ferociously sucked. The intense tugging made me gasp.
Ty laughed. “All right, that’s my boy.”
We watched him nurse and uncovered him and softly touched him and looked at all of his little moving parts.
“Ty?” Jean’s voice, coming up the stairs.
“In the bathroom!”
She came to the doorway and saw me and Jake in the bath and Ty beside us, and she burst into tears and laughter. She came in and knelt and hugged Ty and kissed me and touched the baby’s head. “Oh!” she said. “Look what you did! Look!” She crawled to the door. “Clarie, they’re up here!”
Clarie, a smiling, quiet woman in khaki shorts and sandals, came in and opened up a bag of midwife things and totally took over. She clamped the umbilical cord and gave Ty a pair of scissors to cut it; then she wrapped Jake in a clean towel and Ty held him while she examined me.
“You didn’t even tear,” she said. “That’s great!”
“Next time, you’ll believe me,” Ty said.
“Could we not talk about next time, just yet?”
Clarie massaged my belly. More contractions, and pretty soon the placenta popped right out. She held it up and examined it. It looked like a big, bloody, blobby brain. Very sci-fi.
“Damn,” Ty said. “That makes me think of—what was that movie, where the little dude busted out of the guy’s stomach?”
“
Alien
,” I said. Great minds.
Jean helped me clean up and get into one of Nathan’s big, soft old T-shirts and into the bed in Ty’s room. She had made it up with fresh, soft sheets and layered it with clean towels. It was heaven to lie down. I was sore, exhausted, emptied out.
“Hello?” Nathan, downstairs.
Ty and Jean took the baby down to him for a few minutes. Then my husband brought my son back to me and laid him in the crook of my arm, and we slept.
supercollider
While I was asleep Ty called Julia, Dan, Beck, and Bogue. He called Peg, in California, and left a message for Ed, who might still be in Croatia. He called Dave.
The baby dozed beside us while we had dinner in bed. Huge steaks with baked potatoes. Grilled veggies. Chocolate cake. I ate all my steak and large portions of everything else. On top of all that, since my milk hadn’t come in yet and there was no chance of intoxicating the baby, I drank a beer.
It was a bit much after the day’s exertion; I spent the hour after dinner burping. A lot. Fortunately, the guy I married thinks that kind of thing is funny, especially coming out of a girl. Turns out it was a major form of entertainment and competition when he was a kid. The baby slept on, unperturbed.
Jean came and took away our dinner trays and Ty settled in next to me. He handed me a small, familiar box. “Think you might wear these now?”
I lifted the lid. The pink diamond earrings. “I remember these!”
“When you wouldn’t take them I left them here with my mom for safekeeping. Remember, our wedding night I told you I had something for you?”
“I’d rather have them now.”
He helped me put them on. “You did so good, Gracie. I think I was more scared than you were.”
“Yeah, I think so, too.”
“Usually it’s the other way around.”
“I know.”
“What happened?”
“I stopped thinking. I think.”
“It was awesome. And funny!”
“Hilarious! Certainly the most I’ve ever laughed while pushing a football-sized person out of my vagina.”
He looked a little concerned, but patted my hip. “Hey, don’t worry about that, you know they say that everything will tighten back up.”
“I know you hope so.”
“Fun as it was, next time, for my mental health, we will have some sort of professional there with us.”
“Again, can we talk about next time a little later?”
We uncovered our sleeping child. How to describe the newborn wonder of him?
He had thick, fine, angel-soft auburn hair that stood straight up from his head in the most touchingly comical way. We cupped his warm little tummy with the palms of our hands, encircled his arms with our fingers, kissed his tiny toes. We watched him breathe. He had a rosebud mouth that screwed up in the funniest way in his sleep. He was miniature, living perfection.
Ty looked at me. “Jacob?”
“Jacob Graham Wilkie.”
“Jake.” He smiled. “Yeah.”
How strange, at first, waking to a fussing baby every couple of hours. He was in the bed between us, and the first few times we both sat up and Ty helped me figure out the best way to hold him. I wondered how long it would be until my milk came in and Jake would get fed. Soon, probably, given his ferociously determined sucking.
At the 4:29 wake-up I said to Ty, who had groaned but not yet mobilized, “I’m going to try this lying down.” I turned on my side and pulled Jake close and gave him the bed-side boob. It worked great, except that my nipples were starting to feel just a wee bit abused.
I fell back asleep and woke in daylight to find Beck leaning over me, studying my sleeping baby. Actually watching him like a hawk.
“Hey,” Beck said quietly, when she saw that I was awake. “Did it hurt?”
“Um, yes. But I don’t know if I’d call it pain, exactly.”
She sat beside me on the edge of the bed. “What then?”
“It was more like . . . an undertow. Did you ever get caught in one, in the ocean?”
“Yeah, down the shore a couple years ago.”
“You can’t fight it, you know? It’s too big.”
“Mom said you named him Jake.”
“Jacob Graham Wilkie.”
“Jacob.” She reached across me and cupped his head gently. “Sweet little Jakey. No one is
ever
going to fuck with you while I’m around.”
Nathan and Jean went out and bought diapers, clothes, a stroller, and a car seat for Jake, and that morning we drove back to the city, straight to our pediatrician’s office. She looked him over thoroughly and confirmed what we already knew: Our son was in perfect newborn health.
When we got home, I called and made an appointment with my doctor for the next day. Then, for the fifth time since dawn, I nursed my son. He fell asleep, and Ty took him from me carefully and put him in his crib in the bedroom. I waddled to the bathroom and had a long, warm soak. Sitting on my sore bum in the car for two hours had been brutal.
After the bath I pulled on one of my now-baggy sundresses and reclined on the couch with bags of frozen peas on my breasts.
In the books and magazines, they warn you that nursing a baby is going to take a little getting used to. They say it will make you sore for a couple of weeks. They don’t tell you that you will feel like someone has been industriously scrubbing your nipples with heavy-grade sand-paper and then spritzing them with salty lemon juice.
And that you will wish for morphine. Or heroin. Or coma.
Ty sat down in the armchair and picked up his guitar and contentedly strummed a little ditty. His nipples were not aflame.
“Ty.”
He stopped playing.
“Would you go down to the drugstore and get me some nipple cream?”
He made a mildly cringey face. “Couldn’t I buy you some tampons, instead?”
I started to cry.
He put the guitar down and stood up. “Grace! I’m going! What brand do you want?”
“How the hell do I know?” I bawled. “Buy everything!”
While he was out I called my mom and filled her in on all the minutiae and gruesome details that Ty had left out. She was fascinated and amazed that we had birthed him at home, by ourselves, and no one was deformed by the experience. We agreed that tomorrow morning she would come and stay with us a few days.
I called Dan and gave him the whole story, too. He asked if he could come right over. I said yes, of course. Didn’t even hesitate.
Other people began to arrive uninvited. First Bogue and Allison rang the buzzer, waking Jake. They brought champagne and diapers. Then Dave showed up carrying a little stuffed lamb. Ty’s drummer Kyle, who lived a few blocks over, came with flowers for me and a box of cigars for Ty. This was the point at which I realized we were having a party and picked up the phone and ordered food.
Dan slipped in and quietly sat beside Jake and me on the couch before I even knew he had arrived.
“Oh, hi!” I said.
My father was looking at my son. I pulled back the blanket and showed off all of Jake’s special features. The bright eyes and increasingly alert expression. The neat little toes, lined up like tiny pink peas in a just-opened pod. The downy, gravity-defying hair. The shriveling stub of umbilical cord.
You’d think I’d have wept a little in this moment, but no. My father did. I’d never seen such a thing. Dan was always all calm, smiling, quiet composure. He took Jake from me and held him and his face didn’t change, he still smiled and talked to me and Jake. But tears streamed down his cheeks.
So maybe that’s where I got the crying gene. Ty came over and sat beside Dan and gave him a napkin to wipe his face.
“Thank you for my grandson,” Dan said.
I showed Dan the wedding pictures Beck had taken. Then I excused myself and went to the bathroom, closed the door, and just sat there for a while. I was not exactly in party mode. There were too many sore parts on my body, and I’d had so little sleep. I was still bleeding. I also felt a little blue.
I came out and went to the bedroom, thinking no one would mind if I just lay down for a few minutes before the next feeding.
Ty was changing Jake’s diaper on the bed. “Your mom called, she and José just came through the Holland Tunnel. They’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“What? Oh. Ha ha. Funny.”
He gave me a bemused look. “I’m not kidding.”
“Yes, you are. You are.”
“Uh-uh.”
I clutched my chest. “Oh
God
.”
Ty gripped my arm “Baby, what is it?
“It’s
Dan
!” I hissed. “What do you think it is? Oh
shit!
What do I do? Do I ask him to leave?”
Ty scowled. “No. You don’t.”
I got down on all fours and started looking for shoes. “I’m going out for a while. Say I went to the store.”
“Grace.”
I came up from under the bed with a pair of flip-flops, but Ty took them from me.
“You’re going to be here when your mom sees Jake.”
“Ty, you do not understand. It will be awful. Apocalyptic. Earth-swallowing black holes may form.”
“So let them.” He tossed the flip-flops back under the bed.
“You are really bugging me.”
“You don’t have to fix this. It’s their shit. Let them deal with it.”
I clutched my stomach. “Do we have any Tums?”
Though he was being completely insensitive, Ty could not force me to witness the initial moment of confrontation. He took the baby to the living room and I stayed in the bedroom and listened.
Sounds of entry. Julia and José, saying hello to everyone. I recognized the convivial rise and fall of my mother’s voice. She was in social-queen mode. I waited for dead silence to follow when she spotted Dan. It never happened. People just chatted away.
I crept down the hall and took a peek. There they were, the two of them, on the couch. Dan still in his spot, Julia now sitting beside him, holding Jake. Ty was standing in front of them, smiling at something one of them said. I walked over and stood beside Ty. I felt shaky, so I slid my hand into his and leaned against him. He was so solid. I wanted to hide my face against his shoulder, but I resolved to be brave.