BIRTHDAY Wednesday, September 5-Thursday September 6, 2001 (Henry is 38, Clare is 30)

BIRTHDAY


Wednesday, September 5-Thursday September 6, 2001 (Henry is 38, Clare is 30)

HENRY: Clare has been pacing around the house all day like a tiger. The contractions
come every twenty minutes or so. “Try to get some sleep,” I tell her, and she lies on
the bed for a few minutes and then gets up again. At two in the morning she finally
goes to sleep. I lie next to her, wakeful, watching her breathe, listening to the little
fretful sounds she makes, playing with her hair. I am worried, even though I know,
even though I have seen with my own eyes that she will be okay, and Alba will be
okay. Clare wakes up at 3:30.

“I want to go to the hospital,” she tells me.

“Maybe we should call a cab,” I say. “It’s awfully late.”

“Gomez said to call no matter what time it was.”

“Okay.” I dial Gomez and Charisse. The phone rings sixteen times, and then
Gomez picks up, sounding like a man on the bottom of the sea.

“Muh?” says Gomez.

“Hey, Comrade. It’s time.”


He mutters something that sounds like “mustard eggs.” Then Charisse sets on the
phone and tells me that they are on their way. I hang up and call Dr. Montague, and
leave a message with her answering service. Clare is crouched on all fours, rocking
back and forth. I get down on the floor with her.

“Clare?”

She looks up at me, still rocking. “Henry...why did we decide to do this again?”

“Supposedly when it’s over they hand you a baby and let you keep it.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Fifteen minutes later we are climbing into Gomez’s Volvo. Gomez yawns as he
helps me maneuver Clare into the back seat. “Do not even think of drenching my car
in amniotic fluid,” he says to Clare amiably. Charisse runs into the house for garbage
bags and covers the seats. We hop in and away we go. Clare leans against me and
clenches my hands in hers.

“Don’t leave me,” she says.

“I won’t” I tell her. I meet Gomez’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“It hurts,” Clare says. “Oh, God, it hurts.”

“Think of something else. Something nice,” I say. We are racing down Western
Avenue, headed south. There’s hardly any traffic.

“Tell me...”

I cast about and come up with my most recent sojourn into Clare’s childhood.
“Remember the day we went to the lake, when you were twelve? And we went
swimming, and you were telling me about getting your period?” Clare is gripping my
hands with bone-shattering strength.

“Did I?”

“Yeah, you were sort of embarrassed but also real proud of your-Setf- ?.. You
were wearing a pink and green bikini, and these yellow sunglasses with hearts

molded into the frames.”

“I remember—ah!—oh, Henry, it hurts, it hurts!”

Charisse turns around and says, “Come on, Clare, it’s just the baby leaning on

your spine, you’ve got to turn, okay?” Clare tries to change her position.

“Here we are,” Gomez says, turning into Mercy Hospital’s Emergency Unloading
Zone.

“I’m leaking,” Clare says. Gomez stops the car, jumps out, and we gently remove
Clare from the car. She takes two steps and her water breaks.

“Good timing, kitten,” Gomez says. Charisse runs ahead with our paperwork, and
Gomez and I walk Clare slowly through ER and down long corridors to the OB wing.
She stands leaning against the nurses’ station while they nonchalantly prepare a room
for her.


“Don’t leave me,” Clare whispers.

“I won’t” I tell her again. I wish I could be sure about this. I am feeling cold and a
little nauseous. Clare turns and leans into me. I wrap my arms around her. The baby is
a hard roundness between us. Come out, come out wherever you are. Clare is panting.
A fat blond nurse comes and tells us the room is ready. We all troop in. Clare
immediately gets down on the floor on her hands and knees. Charisse starts putting
things away, clothes in the closet, toiletries in the bathroom. Gomez and I stand

watching Clare helplessly. She is moaning. We look at each other. Gomez shrugs.

Charisse says, “Hey Clare, how about a bath? You’ll feel better in warm water.”

Clare nods. Charisse makes a motion with her hands at Gomez that means shoo.

Gomez says, “I think I’ll go have a smoke,” and leaves.

“Should I stay?” I ask Clare.

“Yes! Don’t go—stay where I can see you.”

“Okay.” I walk into the bathroom to run the bathwater. Hospital bathrooms creep

me out. They always smell like cheap soap and diseased flesh. I turn on the tap, wait
for the water to get warm.

“Henry! Are you there?” Clare calls out.

I stick my head back into the room. “I’m here.”

“Stay in here,” Clare commands, and Charisse takes my place in the bathroom.
Clare makes a sound that I have never heard a human being make before, a deep
despairing groan of agony. What have I done to her? I think of twelve-year-old Clare
laughing and covered with wet sand on a blanket, in her first bikini, at the beach. Oh,
Clare, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. An older black nurse comes in and checks Clare’s cervix.

“Good girl,” she coos to Clare. “Six centimeters.”

Clare nods, smiles, and then grimaces. She clutches her belly and doubles over,
moaning louder. The nurse and I hold her. Clare gasps for breath, and then starts to
scream. Amit Montague walks in and rushes to her.

“Baby baby baby, hush—” The nurse is giving Dr. Montague a bunch of
information that means nothing to me. Clare is sobbing. I clear my throat. My voice

comes out in a croak. “How about an epidural?”

“Clare?”

Clare nods. People crowd into the room with tubes and needles and machines. I sit
holding Clare’s hand, watching her face. She is lying on her side, whimpering, her
face wet with sweat and tears as the anesthesiologist hooks up an IV and inserts a
needle into her spine. Dr. Montague is examining her, and frowning at the fetal
monitor.

“What’s wrong?” Clare asks her. “Something’s wrong.”


“The heartbeat is very fast. She is scared, your little girl. You have to be calm,
Clare, so the baby can be calm, yes?”

“It hurts so much.”

“That is because she is big.” Amit Montague’s voice is quiet, soothing. The burly
walrus-mustachioed anesthesiologist looks at me, bored, over Claire’s body. “But
now we are giving you a little cocktail, eh, some narcotics sonic analgesic, soon you
will relax, and the baby will relax, yes?” Clare nods, yes. Dr. Montague smiles. “And
Henry, how are you?”

“Not very relaxed.” I try to smile. I could use some of whatever it is they are
giving Clare. I am experiencing slight double vision; I breathe deeply and it goes
away.

“Things are improving: see?” says Dr. Montague. “It is like a cloud that passes
over, the pain goes away, we take it somewhere and leave it by the side of the road,
all by itself, and you and the little one are still here, yes? It is pleasant here, we will
take our time, there is no hurry....” The tension has left Clare’s face. Her eyes are
fixed on Dr. Montague. The machines beep. The room is dim. Outside the sun is
rising. Dr. Montague is watching the fetal monitor. “Tell her you are fine, and she is
fine. Sing her a song, yes?”

“Alba, it’s okay,” Clare says softly. She looks at me. “Say the poem about the
lovers on the carpet.”

I blank, and then I remember. I feel self-conscious reciting Rilke in front of all
these people, and so I begin: “ Engell: Es ware ein Platz, den wir nicht wissen—”

“Say it in English,” Clare interrupts.

“Sorry.” I change my position, so that I am sitting by Clare’s belly with my back
to Charisse and the nurse and the doctor, I slide my hand under Clare’s button-
strained shirt. I can feel the outline of Alba through Clare’s hot skin.

“Angel!” I say to Clare, as though we are in our own bed, as though we have been
up all night on less momentous errands,

Angel!: If there were a place that we didn’t know of and there,

on some unsayable carpet, lovers displayed

what they could never bring to mastery here— the bold

exploits of their high-flying hearts,

their towers of pleasure, their ladders

that have long since been standing where there was no ground, leaning

just on each other, trembling,— and could master all this,

before the surrounding spectators, the innumerable soundless dead:


Would these, then, throw down their final,
forever saved-up, forever hidden, unknown to us, eternally valid
coins of happiness before the at last
genuinely smiling pair on the gratified
carpet?


“There,” says Dr. Montague, clicking off the monitor. “Everyone is serene.” She
beams at us all, and glides out the door, followed by the nurse. I accidentally catch
the eye of the anesthesiologist, whose expression plainly says What kind of a pussy
are you, anyway?

CLARE: The sun is coming up and I am lying numb on this strange bed in this pink
room and somewhere in the foreign country that is my uterus Alba is crawling toward
home, or away from home. The pain has left but I know that it has not gone far, that it
is sulking somewhere in a corner or under the bed and it will jump out when I least
expect it. The contractions come and go, remote, muffled like the peal of bells
through fog. Henry lies down next to me. People come and go. I feel like throwing up,
but I don’t. Charisse gives me shaved ice out of a paper cup; it tastes like stale snow.
I watch the tubes and the red blinking lights and I think about Mama. I breathe. Henry
watches me. He looks so tense and unhappy. I start to worry again that he will vanish.
“It’s okay,” I say. He nods. He strokes my belly. I’m sweating. It’s so hot in here. The
nurse comes in and checks on me. Amit checks on me. I am somehow alone with
Alba in the midst of everyone. It’s okay, I tell her. You’re doing fine, you’re not
hurting me. Henry gets up and paces back and forth until I ask him to stop. I feel as
though all my organs are becoming creatures, each with its own agenda, its own train
to catch. Alba is tunneling headfirst into me, a bone and flesh excavator of my flesh
and bone, a deepener of my depths. I imagine her swimming through me, I imagine
her falling into the stillness of a morning pond, water parting at her velocity. I
imagine her face, I want to see her face. I tell the anesthesiologist I want to feel
something. Gradually the numbness recedes and the pain comes back, but it’s
different pain now. It’s okay pain. Time passes.

Time passes and the pain begins to roll in and out as though it’s a woman standing
at an ironing board, passing the iron back and forth, back and forth across a white
tablecloth. Amit comes in and says it’s time, time to go to the delivery room. I am
shaved and scrubbed and moved onto a gurney and rolled through hallways. I watch
the ceilings of the hallways roll by, and Alba and I are rolling toward meeting each
other, and Henry is walking beside us. In the delivery room everything is green and
white. I smell detergent, it reminds me of Etta, and I want Etta but she is at


Meadowlark, and I look up at Henry who is wearing surgical scrubs and I think why
are we here we should be at home and then I feel as though Alba is surging, rushing
and I push without thinking and we do this again and again like a game, like a song.
Someone says Hey, where’d the Dad go? I look around but Henry is gone, he is
nowhere not here and I think God damn him, but no, I don’t mean it God, but Alba is
coming, she is coming and then I see Henry, he stumbles into my vision, disoriented
and naked but here, he’s here! and Amit says Sucre Dieu! and then Ah, she has
crowned, and I push and Alba’s head comes out and I put my hand down to touch her
head, her delicate slippery wet velvet head and I push and push and Alba tumbles into
Henry’s waiting hands and someone says Oh! and I am empty and released and I hear
a sound like an old vinyl record when you put the needle in the wrong groove and
then Alba yells out and suddenly she is here, someone places her on my belly and I
look down and her face, Alba’s face, is so pink and creased and her hair is so black
and her eyes blindly search and her hands reach out and Alba pulls herself up to my
breasts and she pauses, exhausted by the effort, by the sheer fact of everything.

Henry leans over me and touches her forehead, and says, “Alba.”

Later:

CLARE: It’s the evening of Alba’s first day on earth. I’m lying in bed in the hospital
room surrounded by balloons and teddy bears and flowers with Alba in my arms.
Henry is sitting cross-legged on the foot of the bed taking pictures of us. Alba has just
finished nursing and she blows colostrum bubbles from her tiny lips and then falls
asleep, a soft warm bag of skin and fluid against my nightgown. Henry finishes the
roll of film and unloads the camera.

“Hey,” I say, suddenly remembering. “Where did you go? In the delivery room?”

Henry laughs. “You know, I was hoping you hadn’t noticed that. I thought maybe
you were so preoccupied—”

“Where were you?”

“I was wandering around my old elementary school in the middle of the night.”

“For how long?” I ask.

“Oh, god. Hours. It was beginning to get light when I left. It was winter and they

had the heat turned way down. How long was I gone?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe five minutes?”

Henry shakes his head. “I was frantic. I mean, I had just abandoned you, and there
I was just drifting around uselessly through the hallways of Francis Parker.... It was
so...I felt so..” Henry smiles. “But it turned out okay, hmm?”


I laugh. “‘All’s well that ends well.”

“‘Thou speakest wiser than thou art ware of.’” There is a quiet knock on the door;
Henry says, “Come in!” and Richard steps into the room and then stops, hesitant.
Henry turns and says, “Dad—” and then stops, and then jumps off the bed and says,
“Come in, have a seat.” Richard is carrying flowers and a small teddy bear which
Henry adds to the pile on the windowsill.

“Clare,” says Richard. “I—congratulations.” He sinks slowly into the chair beside
the bed.

“Um, would you like to hold her?” Henry asks softly. Richard nods, looking at me
to see if I agree. Richard looks as though he hasn’t slept for days. His shirt needs
ironing and he stinks of sweat and the iodine reek of old beer. I smile at him although
I am wondering if this is such a hot idea. I hand Alba over to Henry who carefully
transfers her into Richard’s awkward arms. Alba turns her pink round face up to
Richard’s long unshaven one, turns toward his chest and searches for a nipple. After a
moment she gives up and yawns, then goes back to sleep. He smiles. I had forgotten

how Richard’s smile can transform his face.

“She’s beautiful,” he tells me. And, to Henry, “She looks like your mother.”

Henry nods. “There’s your violinist, Dad.” He smiles. “It skipped a generation.”

“A violinist?” Richard looks down at the sleeping baby, black hair and tiny hands,
fast asleep. No one ever looked less like a concert violinist than Alba does right now.
“A violinist.” He shakes his head. “But how do you— No, never mind. So you are a
violinist, are you now, little girl?” Alba sticks out her tongue a tiny bit and we all
laugh.

“She’ll need a teacher, once she’s old enough,” I suggest.

“A teacher? Yes...You’re not going to hand her over to those Suzuki idiots, are
you?” Richard demands.

Henry coughs. “Er, actually we were hoping that if you had nothing better to do...”

Richard gets it. It’s a pleasure to see him comprehend, to see him realize that
someone needs him, that only he can give his only granddaughter the training she will
need.

“I’d be delighted,” he says, and Alba’s future unrolls in front of her like a red
carpet as far as the eye can see.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001 (Clare is 30, Henry is 38)

CLARE: I wake up at 6:43 and Henry is not in bed. Alba isn’t in her crib, either. My
breasts hurt. My cunt hurts. Everything hurts. I get out of bed very carefully, go to the


bathroom. I walk through the hall, the dining room, slowly. In the living room Henry
is sitting on the couch with Alba cradled in his arms, not watching the little black and
white television with the sound turned low. Alba is asleep. I sit down next to Henry.
He puts his arm around me.

“How come you’re up?” I ask him. “I thought you said it wasn’t for a couple of
hours yet?” On the TV a weatherman is smiling and pointing at a satellite picture of
the Midwest.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Henry says. “I wanted to listen to the world being normal for a
little while longer.”

“Oh.” I lean my head on Henry’s shoulder and close my eyes. When I open them
again a commercial for a cell phone company is ending and a commercial for bottled
water comes on. Henry hands Alba to me and gets up. In a minute I hear him making
breakfast. Alba wakes up and I undo my nightgown and feed her. My nipples hurt. I
watch the television. A blond anchorperson tells me something, smiling. He and the
other anchorperson, an Asian woman, laugh and smile at me. At City Hall, Mayor
Daley is answering questions. I doze. Alba sucks at me. Henry brings in a tray of eggs,
toast, and orange juice. I want coffee. Henry has tactfully drunk his in the kitchen, but
I can smell it on his breath. He sets the tray on the coffee table and puts my plate on
my lap. I eat my eggs as Alba nurses. Henry mops up yolk with his toast. On TV a
bunch of kids are skidding across grass, to demonstrate the effectiveness of some
laundry detergent. We finish eating; Alba finishes, too. I burp her and Henry takes all
the dishes to the kitchen. When he comes back I pass her to him and head to the
bathroom. I take a shower. The water is so hot I almost can’t stand it, but it feels
heavenly on my sore body. I breathe the steamy air, dry my skin gingerly, rub balm
on my lips, breasts, stomach. The mirror is all steamed up, so I don’t have to see
myself. I comb my hair. I pull on sweatpants and a sweater. I feel deformed, deflated.
In the living room Henry is sitting with his eyes closed, and Alba is sucking her
thumb. As I sit down again Alba opens her eyes and makes a mewing sound. Her
thumb slips out of her mouth and she looks confused. A Jeep is driving through a
desert landscape. Henry has turned off the sound. He massages his eyes with his
fingers. I fall asleep again.

Henry says, “Wake up, Clare.” I open my eyes. The television picture swerves
around. A city street. A sky. A white skyscraper on fire. An airplane, toylike, slowly
flies into the second white tower. Silent flames shoot up. Henry turns up the sound.
“Oh my god,” says the voice of the television. “Oh my god.”

Tuesday, June 11, 2002 (Clare is 31)


CLARE: I’m making a drawing of Alba. At this moment Alba is nine months and
five days old. She is sleeping on her back, on a small light blue flannel blanket, on the
yellow ochre and magenta Chinese rug on the living room floor. She has just finished
nursing. My breasts are light, almost empty. Alba is so very asleep that I feel
perfectly okay about walking out the back door and across the yard into my studio.

For a minute I stand in the doorway inhaling the slightly musty unused studio odor.
Then I rummage around in my flat file, find some persimmon-tanned paper that looks
like cowhide, grab a few pastels and other implements and a drawing board and walk
(with only a small pang of regret) out the door and back into the house.

The house is very quiet. Henry is at work (I hope) and I can hear the washing
machine churning away in the basement. The air conditioner whines. There’s a faint
rumble of traffic on Lincoln Avenue. I sit down on the rug next to Alba. A trapezoid
of sunlight is inches away from her small pudgy feet. In half an hour it will cover her.

I clip my paper to the drawing board and arrange my pastels next to me on the rug.
Pencil in hand, I consider my daughter.

Alba is sleeping deeply. Her ribcage rises and falls slowly and I can hear the soft
grunt she makes with each exhalation. I wonder if she’s getting a cold. It’s warm in
here, on this June late afternoon, and Alba’s wearing a diaper and nothing else. She’s
a little flushed. Her left hand is clenching and unclenching rhythmically. Maybe she’s
dreaming music.

I begin to rough in Alba’s head, which is turned toward me. I am not thinking
about this, really. My hand is moving across the paper like the needle of a
seismograph, recording Alba’s form as I absorb it with my eyes. I note the way her
neck disappears in the folds of baby fat under her chin, how the soft indentations
above her knees alter slightly as she kicks, once, and is still again. My pencil
describes the convexity of Alba’s full belly which submerges into the top of her
diaper, an abrupt and angular line cutting across her roundness. I study the paper,
adjust the angle of Alba’s legs, redraw the crease where her right arm joins her torso.

I begin to lay in pastel. I start by sketching in highlights in white— down her tiny
nose, along her left side, across her knuckles, her diaper, the edge of her left foot.
Then I rough in shadows, in dark green and ultramarine. A deep shadow clings to
Alba’s right side where her body meets the blanket. It’s like a pool of water, and I put
it in solidly. Now the Alba in the drawing suddenly becomes three-dimensional, leaps
off the page.

I use two pink pastels, a light pink the hue of the inside of a shell and a dark pink
that reminds me of raw tuna. With rapid strokes I make Alba’s skin. It is as though
Alba’s skin was hidden in the paper, and I am removing some invisible substance that
concealed it. Over this pastel skin I use a cool violet to make Alba’s ears and nose
and mouth (her mouth is slightly open in a tiny O). Her black and abundant hair


becomes a mixture of dark blue and black and red on the paper. I take care with her
eyebrows, which seem so much like furry caterpillars that have found a home on
Alba’s face.

The sunlight covers Alba now. She stirs, brings her small hand over her eyes, and
sighs. I write her name, and my name, and the date at the bottom of the paper.

The drawing is finished. It will serve as a record—I loved you, I made you, and I
made this for you—long after I am gone, and Henry is gone, and even Alba is gone. It
will say, we made you, and here you are, here and now.

Alba opens her eyes and smiles.