September - Last Words 4 страница

I wrote some more, mostly pleasantries and the nice brackets that people tended to put around emails as if to ease themselves into human communication. I didn't think I needed it, I didn't like it, but I knew there was no point in changing people' minds. I wanted them in my life and I was willing to ease them into this change if it meant they could see my daughter. After I hit send, I felt this huge wave of relief wash over me. I had done the hardest thing, it felt like. I was being honest, and then letting people make up their own minds. It was restricting and freeing and I was getting used to the contradictions. I got attached to people, even when I didn't want to. The Professor would still come and go in my thoughts and he still maintained space in my mind. He was important, but what was more important was when I began to refer to him, and his wife Melinda, by their first names. It made me stop and think, wondering if this was a better change.

I had been thinking about sending Ken an email to come and see my show for a few minutes when the phone rang. I jumped up and held the receiver to my ear.

"Hello?"

"Hi there, Frank," Vivian answered, her voice sly. My heart started to pound in my chest. Oh, fuck, I thought. I knew her well enough to know what this meant.

"Is he...?"

"Yes, his water just broke and Lydia is here. I think you better -"

She had rambled on for a few seconds more, but I had already disconnected the phone. I needed no more information. I was going to run out the door, but instead I ran upstairs and into Mikey's office. He was in the middle of doing book balancing and jumped when I came into the room. He looked up, saw my expression, and then just told me to go.

"I'll talk to your supervisor. They know. Go home, Frank. Why did you even come up here?" he asked, shaking his head. He had been prepping me for this the past week when I had been anxiety ridden at my desk, and now that the moment had finally come, I had forgotten everything he told me. "It's not about you, it's about her... him," seemed to be the only lesson I remembered, and now, there really wasn't anything else to tell me.

"Birth is intense. It's a change. One moment you're not here, and then you are. It's so traumatic we don't remember it ourselves. Now go and be not here so you can remember it." Mikey smiled, getting up from his desk. He pointed to the hallway, and nudged me to.

"I will see you later tonight," he offered from behind me. "All of you."

I began my descent down the stairs, my legs shaking, and my mind spinning with possibilities.

Chapter Three

Everyone who could make it was already at our house when I got there. Instead of Hunter having the overnight bag and going to the hospital, everyone else had their overnight bag and came to us. We needed more hands in the house in order to take care of him and Gerard at the same time, along with keeping things that a house generally needed going. Callie and Dean were already there making food when I got in, Cassandra was on her way, and Noelle was in the living room with Mikey's kids. Alexa was upstairs with Lydia and Hunter, and had been busy vacuuming the floors, setting up the blankets and other provisions that Lydia had put aside. The bathroom floor had also been washed by her in order to ensure that all surfaces were as clean as possible. Callie said she was going to do the kitchen floor after she and Dean finished making food. He nodded and said they were almost done and threw himself back into his current task. He held out a huge cookbook and began to read the instructions very meticulously. I could tell he was slightly flustered; the collared shirt that he had now taken to wearing was rolled up to the forearm and un-tucked. He went to chopping vegetables for their chili into fine pieces instead of dwelling too much on the fact that the same floor he was standing on may be used to give birth on later that night. The kitchen was a "just in case" measure since that was a bigger surface, so I doubted that Dean's potential fears would come to light. Hunter had already been up and down the stairs a few times, seeing if it helped to walk off the contraction pain, but he hadn't stayed too long each time. His bedroom and Paloma's room were the main areas of focus, and Lydia and Hunter occupied them both with their supplies, materials, and animated voices. The living space adjacent to those rooms was also prepped, but that was going to act as our own hospital waiting room for the people who were around and helping us. Noelle was only with the younger of Alexa's children - Elizabeth and Jonah. The other three were just getting off of school and Cassandra had the duty of picking them up and informing them what they were going to be doing that night. Luckily for us, their elementary school was within walking distance of our house and it was a gorgeous day outside. All of this meant that Cassandra was most likely going to miss a piano lesson, but Vivian assured me that she would not be too thoroughly pissed.

Hunter had called Vivian in the morning and told her that he had been having contractions at night. I wondered why on earth I had not been informed, and Vivian had tried to calm me down. "It's hard when it's your first. You may think it's nothing, and then suddenly it's everything," she explained to me, and then I reminded her that she had only had one kid, so she only knew her first. She waved a hand in my face and just carried on with her story. "His contractions weren't too bad then, but I still told him I would take the afternoon off work so at least he could just relax and I would be with Gerard."

Vivian had got there around noon, brought food, and when Hunter couldn't eat, it seemed like this was the real deal. When a pregnant person couldn't eat, then it was definitely the real deal.

"They were still pretty far apart, though. We called Lydia an hour or two later, she came, and then, well, now you're here, Frank. Trust us. You didn't miss much." She kissed the top of my head dearly, and then told me that she was going to go back to Gerard. He had been in his room the entire time, and I began to feel worried. Sometimes, especially when there was an unanticipated schedule change or we ourselves were emotionally charged, he just shut down, and there was nothing we could do about it. I worried that on this of all days it would be one of those times. He had been wonderful for the gallery opening, but were we that lucky twice?

I followed Vivian upstairs, needing to make sure that Gerard was all right before I headed to Hunter. He had Lydia and Alexa to keep him company. I heard Cassandra arrive as I headed up the stairs, and her and Noelle reunite along with the passel of kids that were now all together again. We were only waiting for Mikey - everyone else was where they needed to be. Walter had called Vivian and said he would possibly bring food by later for everyone else, and when Vivian had given him a list of allergies and vegan things to avoid, he had not batted an eye and said it was no problem.

"He's finally getting it," Vivian told me when I went upstairs to check on things. "He realizes that just because people are different from him, it's not a point of argument or an attack on himself. He also doesn't need to alert them about better financial planning. It's fantastic!" I smiled, welcoming the change of topic and distraction and thinking about what had happened earlier that day with Professor Smith.

"I hope things work out for you two, then," I encouraged.

"Me too, my dear, me too." She said it in a hopeful, yet drained tone of voice. She was usually exuberant when speaking of Walter, especially now that he had been to the art show and not run away. Ah, I said to myself. That was it. Vivian's slightly jaded attitude with relationships probably stemmed from Cassandra's father leaving. Gerard had told me the story lots of times before, and I wondered if this whole experience today was bringing her back to that. I asked if she was okay, and she smiled, surprised that I cared about that section of her life. "It was so long ago now, something you were never even around for."

"Of course I care," I said.

"Well, then, thank you, honey, but I think we have a lot of other things to worry about right now other than my little old story. It's the past. I have my beautiful daughter, and I think you two should go and see the process of yours."

She opened Gerard's bedroom door, and I found myself holding my breath. He was sitting on his bed, fully dressed - in the dove jacket, naturally, even in the heat of the afternoon in the stuffy room - and his back was to us. As we said our quiet greetings and got closer to him, I noticed that he was reading the archive. His white board had been updated with the statistics of the day, but there was no mention of Hunter anywhere, or why the house was full of people. Gerard seemed distant, I noticed, but it was not his shutting down type of distant. When we got close to him and he wanted to be alone, he usually told us to fuck off. He was quiet as we approached. He was shaking now, just barely.

"Hi Gerard," I told him. I sat down on the bed gingerly and touched his back. He acknowledged me, but didn't look up from the book. The room was quiet, and we could hear the faint murmuring of kids yelling downstairs, and then Hunter swearing and moaning as another contraction came. Gerard moved his head, as if he heard the distant sounds of grief from Hyacinth. I rubbed his back, and kissed the side of his face.

"Do you know what's going on?" I asked him, and then, before he could answer me, I told him: "You're going to be a dad today. Are you excited?"

He took a deep breath, and though he didn't answer me, he took my hand. We turned to face one another, and I told him that I was going to be a dad too. "Daddy Frank, perhaps," I corrected myself, shrugging my shoulders. "I'm still not too sure yet. But I know you're Papa. Papa Gerard."

He nodded then, and we kissed briefly with our foreheads touching afterwards. I wanted to hold onto that moment, that intimate space, and capture it so I could have it later on. But we heard the distant wail of another contraction, so we got up together. Vivian passed us his cane, and following close behind, we went down the stairs. He used his cane in one hand, and grabbed onto me with the other. When we got to the bottom, he used his cane predominantly, and then gripped my hand with his. There was no comical walking and jokes tossed between us. But we looked one another in the eye and a thrill ran through my entire body. I was glad that I had avoided Hunter's room when I first got home; part of me felt bad, as if I was shirking my responsibilities as a father, but I knew I had been waiting for this. I had not wanted to be a father yet, sure, but that was because I hadn't wanted to do it without Gerard. He had been avoiding the room all day, too. Not because he was confused, I realized, but because he was waiting for me, too. None of this felt right without the other, and now as we held hands and descended the stairs, we accepted our responsibility.

"You ready?" I asked him just before the threshold of the door. He leaned forward and kissed my forehead, and I took that for a yes. We were as ready as we ever would be.

Hunter's floor of the house was crawling with people, it felt like. The duties of watching the kids had been passed off to Callie and Dean as soon as Noelle and Cassandra were reunited, and the extra two people on this floor seemed to burst the rooms open. There was no door that was closed; the bedroom, Paloma's room, and the bathroom were all flung open and people passed between them easily. The only barricade was the one we had just stepped through, and Vivian closed as she entered to give the room some privacy. Hunter was near naked, walking from his bedroom into the baby's, pacing, his hands on his back and pushing his stomach forward. Lydia was by his side coaching him through the pain, telling him that pain was merely a manifestation of the mind.

"I know you're feeling a lot right now, but pain is different. Pain is not the agony you feel. Before they had anesthetic, they used hypnosis for patients. They made them believe they were okay and they were. Pain is an idea and always a choice. I don't doubt you're feeling all of these sensations, Hunter. There is the pushing, the moving, the stinging, the shifting. But pain? Pain is a choice," Lydia reiterated in a calming voice. She was getting him to breathe in and out slowly, and talked to him more about his own control of the situation.

"Fucking bullshit," Hunter articulated as he breathed out. Lydia only smiled.

"It's your birth, Hunter. Your body. I'm just telling you what I know and you can pick and choose what works for you." She rubbed Hunter's back, stopping on certain areas and massaging deeply with the tips of her fingers and the base of her palm. He leaned into her, and their two faces brushed up against one another in exhaustion.

I had done some reading about this experience, and I knew that dreadful Miracle of Life video that everyone in high school saw, but I had definitely romanticized this too much in my head. A couple of labored breathes, some gooey bits, and it would be done. I knew there was pain, and I knew there would be blood, but now that I was standing on the edge of all this feeling, I was overwhelmed. I watched as Hunter's face twisted in exertion until he finally turned himself into Lydia's neck and buried his face as if he could hide from what was happening. I had seen Hunter in pain before, and I knew it took a lot to get him to respond at all. He had dropped a large textbook on his foot in first year and barely blinked a few tears before he realized three of his toes were broken. I had never seen his face with this shade of red and his voice hold this much agony. I didn't even know what to do with myself. But Lydia was standing tall, absorbing all of this without flinching. She was dressed in different clothing than I was used to seeing her in. She usually wore bright colors, and ever since spring had been tying her hair back with flowers. Now it was completely wrapped and away from her scalp, as if she was totally bald, or her hair was made of fabric. It made her sharp features stand our more prominently, and with her poised nature around Hunter's agony, she stood out even further. She was quite beautiful, her small wrinkles around her nose and eyes only becoming visible when she smiled. I had no idea how old she was, but she looked to be both the youngest and oldest woman in the room. Her clothing, this time in a pattern that repeated itself, was wrapped closely around her body. There was not a loose bit; she had to be on guard and ready to go. She nodded to me when I came in, but continued to embrace Hunter.

"I know, I know," she told Hunter. "I have not given birth, but I know it hurts. A lot of things hurt. You know how much pain you need, Hunter, and only take as much as that."

He coughed and groaned again, and said, "I will take whatever I want."

"Good. That's a fantastic attitude," Alexa said, cheering him on. She appeared at the edge of the living area, and then stepped fully into the birthing circle that was forming. "I felt too guilty my first child in the hospital, as if I was making too much noise. But you know what? Fuck that. Scream Hunter. Scream if you want! We're all here, and I bet my kids, at least Elizabeth, will try and match you."

Hunter moaned a bit, but he didn't scream. The contraction had passed for the time being, and he moved himself away from Lydia. Alexa came forward more, trying to help Hunter by sharing more of her birth stories. She had done them all in the hospital, and said she was envious of this experience. Even when she knew enough about home birth to do it for Jonah, things had been difficult, and she needed to be operated on. The scar was shown again, and Vivian rushed past us to share her own experience with Cassandra, and to help Hunter become more comfortable with his own. I knew he would be all right; he had been reading so much about birth since he was no longer at work fulltime, but knowledge seemed to do nothing in extreme circumstances. He would need people to lean on and support him. Though I felt odd, watching him lean into Lydia for care, I had not wanted to rush in and stop it. Hunter was tough. He knew what he was doing, and if he wanted Gerard and I to come over and be with him, then he would ask and we would be there in a second. It felt odd, watching something that I was so linked with from afar still, but Lydia, who had finished adjusting herself, nodded to us. With a wave of a hand, she ushered us forward, inviting us into the birthing circle.

"Contractions are still somewhat far apart," she said. "This could take all night, or it could take a few days. Either way, I am here until it happens. Hunter's last check up was fine, and the ultrasound said the baby was in the right position. There should be no complications."

"Thanks," I said. I felt better knowing that Hunter was in good hands and having already seen what she was like around him. Gerard nodded, taking everything in. His eyes went around the room, as if he was trying to commit every last detail to memory that would hopefully last.

"You don't have to thank me. It's my job." She smiled a bit, and then motioned to Hunter who had moved to the couch. "He's been doing most of the work, after all. I'm just overseeing all of this. As much as I like you all, I'm merely a bird watching from a power line. Continue as you all wish without me."

Gerard and I exchanged glances, impressed with the metaphor she was using. The metaphor and the right pronouns, I thought to myself. Other than Alexa, Lydia probably understood this process the most and had been the most accepting of these two contradictory elements: a man who was now about to give birth.

"I've done this before," she said, noting my expression and referring to Hunter.

"You have?"

She nodded slowly, then went on. "It is the same process for any person with a baby inside. The only real thing that changes is the baby, how healthy they are, how many problems there are, and whether or not the birth is difficult. All else is language. It's how we communicate with one another and understand. I change one thing, one word, and I make this process so much better. So of course, I do that. There is no other way."

She smiled and I nodded in agreement. With a few simple changes, the entire reality was new again. The words that Lydia was using were portraying Hunter as how he knew he was, and needed to be seen, despite the fact that he was giving birth. I took Lydia's advice from before, and placed my focus on him. He was across the room now, sitting on the couch with Vivian and Alexa. Cassandra and Noelle were nearby, but they were talking to one another. Hunter was leaning back, his hand on his forehead and he was breathing in and out. He opened his eyes when Vivian addressed a question to him, and then our eyes met across the room. He smiled, and I felt my heart well up inside. This was us, this was him, and he was about to do this. Lydia had already lectured me on the problematic of using 'we' when it was quite clear that Hunter was doing all the work. So I switched that language, and I watched him, from afar, and marveled at how all of this was happening.

I began to walk closer to him, and Gerard followed closely behind. He was still depending on me for a lot of support, and I knew he couldn't stay on his feet much longer. As I approached, Vivian was talking to her daughter and her daughter's partner, while Alexa had begun to read out loud from some of the books she had brought. It was a large book dedicated to the mythos of the Tarot, and she had begun to read the write up for The Empress card.

"The Empress. Often based off of Demeter from the ancient Greek Pantheons, but she can represent any archetypal mother figure in myth. In this card, she is full of life; her body abundant and overflowing. She wears fabric draped over her ample figure, both hiding and accentuating the look and feel of her with a child inside. She is sitting on her throne, as she awaits the gift of life. She rules by a sceptre that contains the female symbol as its decor and the outside world around her is one that is decorated by fields of wheat. She is the goddess of the harvest, since food is the other source of life like herself. She is both mother and child, one person and two, natural and abhorrent, and both food and starvation. She holds the powers of the world in her hands and balances these extreme in and out of her body," Alexa went on, reading from the book. I had gotten caught up in her interpretation of the card, and I found myself thinking of Vivian and her birth story. But when my eyes fell on Hunter, and I could see the pain in his face, I knew it was not from contractions. Alexa was meaning well, and was a good story teller, but this was not helping the very unique situation we had on our hands

I snapped at her, possibly too aggressively, "Very nice, except we have right here a man having a baby, and that doesn't really apply."

Alexa stopped reading, looked up, and then shut her eyes in exasperation as she declared, "Fuck." She closed the book and then touched Hunter's shoulder, wanting to make sure he was okay and apologizing profusely. He shook his head, and tried to play it off as nothing, but I knew it had hurt. He was in an extremely emotional state right then. If he had not been giving birth and about to become one of those extremes, he would have been able to brush off Alexa's story or been able to come up with one himself. I thought back to all I had learned about the past few weeks, seeing if I could argue for him, but I couldn't. Not because I didn't remember, but because there was nothing there for me to take from. Though there were cultural representations of in-between gender transitions all throughout history, none of them were coupled with birthing stories. Not one virago had bore children from that same body that transgressed gender boundaries. It was as if they were supposed to die off, I thought and scanned Alexa's face, realizing that she was coming to the same conclusions that I was.

"I was going to move onto the Emperor, who was right after, and then tell you all about him and their union together, but that doesn't help much either, I guess?"Alexa explained quickly. "I'm sorry. I should have researched this better, instead of trying to do a hybrid."

Hunter laughed, his sarcasm coming out, and shook his head. "I love you and all, but seriously. Not the time to be telling me bedtime stories. Fuck."

I smiled at Hunter, and Gerard and I shook our heads. Alexa sighed a bit and closed her book in her lap. She laughed a bit, and then began to consider our small conflict on a larger scale.

"No bedtime stories right now, but we'll need them all eventually. I hate having absences in myths and tools like this. It's one of the reasons I generally like myths - they have basic plot points, but they all eventually get updated." Her eyes flickered. " I need to update this. I've been meaning to do some same-sex astrology couples for years, but this is urgent. There is a whole section here left unexplored."

Her use of the word 'urgent' made me smile, but she was quite serious. Discarding the book for now, she began to dig through her bag and grabbed a pencil. She began to make notes on some stray sheets of paper, leaning forward and using the coffee table as a type of desk. She eventually went to sitting on the floor cross-legged and writing down her ideas furiously, while the rest of us went back to these matters.

I looked over at Gerard and he shook his head. He was not always vocal, but I knew he was still there, and I knew what he was thinking about Alexa. I had begun to understand her fascination with these matters, and I understood that her knowledge went far beyond the mythic and the occult. She knew a lot about psychology and how these stories affected our brain and how we learned information. I began to tell Gerard some of what she had taught me about memory, particularly, about the grand palace that we all had inside of ourselves. He nodded along, appreciating the extravagant nature which I was using to explain this to him, complete with fluid hand motions as if to demonstrate our house as this place. I stopped before I could convey all that I wanted to because I realized I had been resorting to the same technique Alexa had been doing. We were distracting ourselves from the matter at hand and trying to tell stories instead of creating one in that moment. With a small kiss, I stopped speaking about the palace that we could all become lost in, and I heard the murmurs and the knocks of Mikey who had now shown up. I could hear him come inside, and then rush over to meet his kids. He would mostly be down there awhile, giving Dean and Callie and break, but he was here now, too. There was no one left to wait for, unless I counted Walter. I did want to count him. Though he was more so our message person and connection to the outside world during this highly charged night, I knew I would be grateful to have him around whenever he came. He would be bringing us food later on, and maybe relieving Vivian for a bit, but for the most part, that was it.

Now that we were all here, things were about to change drastically. I held onto Gerard's hand with anticipation, and gave him a final quick kiss before the two of us parted. Vivian helped him sit down with her and Cassandra, while I made my way over to Hunter.

"Hey," I said. I sat down in the space where Alexa had been, and she scooted further forward to give me more room, still engrossed with her work. Hunter greeted me with the same smile he had given me across the room. He turned his body into mine, and I tried to hold him the best I could. His skin was hot to the touch, but under the hair at the back of his neck ran chills that he and I both got. He was not wearing anything on his lower half, and I was impressed by the fact that the room of people didn't seem to notice it at all. Even Noelle and Cassandra were handling the situation with a maturity beyond their years. Cassandra had a few times declared that this was the best birth control ever, but she was just doing what she normally did. Anytime Hunter made a noise or moved, I could see her eyes going over to see if he was okay. The whole room was focused on making him feel better, even if there were a few misdirected hits. I didn't even know what I could offer in comparison.

"How are you feeling?" I asked feebly.

He turned his face up to mine, and began to kiss me feverishly. His stomach and legs seemed to shift all over onto my side, and I touched him gingerly, as if I was afraid that even the slightest bit of pressure would suddenly ricochet him into an explosion of pain. He was still wearing his sports bra, but he whispered to me that his breasts were hurting, and he'd have to be naked soon. Lydia had suggested having a shirt around in case he got cold, but we had cranked our heat to counter that. I offered to turn it down again so he could wear more clothing, but he shook his head. His skin was flushed and sensitive; he would need to be naked for physical comfort (as comfortable as he could be then, anyway). While the pain of labor was a good distracter, his emotional discomfort about being naked around this many people and not having the ability to use to clothing to gender himself was distressing. He kept kissing me, after his admission, and I knew he was scared. I had no idea how to make it better, but I knew it would be okay.

"We know who you are," I told him. "We don't need to see visual confirmation. We know, and we trust you."

He nodded, and I hoped that I had done something right. He bit his lip, and then I realized that another contraction had started. He gripped my shirt heavily and dug his nails, what little of them that were there, into my arm. I rubbed his leg and told him to breathe. I tried to parrot what Lydia had been saying earlier, but I knew that was impossible. I had to tell him something that I knew because he knew me well enough that he would latch onto the insecurity in my voice and internalize it. I need to tell him something that would make him feel better.

"Do you remember Orion?" I asked him, and then went on as if he had nodded. "He's the hunter, the constellation that always follows you. He's you, Hunter, and you can do this. Orion can do this. Remember at The Bear? You told me you were made of Orion star stuff. Gwen said we're all star stuff in the end, but you're Orion star stuff. It's different. It's important. Come on, Hunter, you're going to be okay."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14