September - Last Words 5 страница

His grip on me changed, and he started to breathe erratically. "Frank, fuck," he said. He buried his face in my neck and I kept talking, even as he began to gasp and wheeze. I didn't remember him doing this to Lydia and I grew worried that something was going wrong. "Frank, I'm going to cry."

"It's okay!" I said, relieved that it was just that. "It's okay. It's painful. You can cry." Oh god, I wanted to cry too, but I bit my tongue and refrained from saying anything.

"No you don't understand," he told me, and then he let out a moan. He didn't end up crying with that contraction, but he kept a tight grip on me, using my body as his shield, almost, and battling through the pain. I thought of the things that he had told me about Vikings, and now this Orion stuff, and I imaged that when he closed his eyes, he saw this immense battlefield. I wanted there to be a piano here, and I wanted Cassandra to play that Valkyries song, because it would have been perfect. Just perfect for him and what he was doing.

He moaned and breathed and kicked until the contraction came to an end, and then he let out a breath into my neck. He moved his hand away from the death grip he had had, and then looked up at me. "Thank you," he murmured.

"No problem, you don't even have to say it."

"No, I do," he told me, and then we kissed again. I could feel and taste the sweat on him. His face was red and his small bangs were now plastered to his forehead. He pushed his short hair back, and it stuck up in some areas like a cowlick. He sat up straight, as straight as he could manage, and then he leaned forward. I thought he wanted me to rub his back like Lydia had been doing, so I went to go do that. He was going to say something, but then settled into the motions of my hands on him. My attention had been so focused on Hunter, that I didn't even notice Vivian and Gerard watching us. When I looked up, and she smiled, I turned my attention back towards Hunter. He needed me then, and I didn't care if I had an audience as we tried our best to take care of one another.

I had just moved my hands up to his neck, and began to rustle his hair and massage his scalp when he began to talk again. "Frank, I need your help."

"Yes? What?" I was too eager - or at least it felt like it. This was such a harrowing experience and I was so fearful; I thought helping him with anything he wanted would curb that. I needed to let my own emotions cool and maybe breathe like Lydia had instructed.

"Can you... help?" he asked, motioning with his arms. I had no idea what he meant at first, and then I saw it: the sports bra. He needed help taking it off. He couldn't do it with the position and pain he was in, but he knew that I could somehow manage to undress him without making him female in the process. I had been doing that ever since we were seventeen. I took a deep breath and began to slide my fingers under the elastic. I kissed where the fabric had been, and then as Hunter lifted up his arms to help, I took off the bra and tossed it on the back of the couch. I placed my hands around him, covering up what had just been exposed until he felt more comfortable.

"Careful," he told me, his skin extremely sensitive. I eased my grip, and eventually, took my hands away and placed them back on the small of his back. He leaned forward again, so I could continue to rub his back, and so he could cover his chest for a little bit.

As I touched his skin, I remembered back at The Bear when he had been so content around people naked. I thought of the swimming that day and I paid extra close attention to him now. I knew he was uncomfortable because of the birth itself, and Alexa's comment had spooked him a bit, but he would feel better. We were around the same type of community that we had had then. Though the society still existed outside, he was in a safe space. I needed to make sure he would feel better. He began to move and breathe heavily again, and muttered an, "Oh god," when he felt the contraction coming back again. He leaned back into me, now fully naked, and I clutched his body and we got through it. I told him we would always get through it. His breathing through this one was better, and he didn't appear to be in as much pain as before. When it was over, and he told me he needed to walk around, I kissed him quickly and let him go. He walked right over to Lydia, and the two of them began to murmur once again. He was doing better, I thought, but we were getting really close.

When Hunter came back in the room, I stood up as if on attention in the army as if I was just called to duty. He had had another contraction when he was with Lydia, but he was in the waiting period in between and doing much better.

"Walking helps me," he told me, and he continued to pace around for most of the next hour. Each time he came in, I would put all my attention onto him, and though he smiled, I knew that he wanted some distance. There were a lot of people around, and a lot of support units. Mikey had come upstairs at this point once he realized that was where Alexa was, and had taken a spot on the couch behind her. He rubbed her back as well as she fussed with her books, and seemed completely engrossed there. Hunter had been spending most of his time with Lydia, and that made sense, since it was her job. But I wanted to do what we had done together again, I wanted to be that close to him again and I wanted to absorb all of his pain into my body. I wished that I could be giving birth, and since I couldn't, and Lydia had told me not to use we, I focused all of my attention onto him, even if he only came into the room for a split second while pacing. He had needed me in that moment of uncertainty, and I liked to think I had given him strength. But now he walked around naked, bowlegged, and mingled among people when he could.

Vivian went downstairs to see Walter and get food for everyone at one point, and the spot beside Gerard had been vacated. Hunter had come in just as I was getting up to go sit with Gerard, and walked there himself. He was in between contractions, and still relatively present even though he looked tired and his face was still flushed.

"How are you doing?" he asked Gerard, and Gerard just shook his head. He put his hand on Hunter's stomach, and enunciated "You" a few times before he got his speech going again.

"How are you doing?" Gerard asked, and he and Hunter clasped hands. I was amazed at how quickly and intimately the two of them could connect, and I felt my stomach flop with a touch of jealousy. He was leaning his head into Gerard's neck, and Gerard kept one hand on his stomach, and the other on his thigh. He whispered in Hunter's ear, and I wanted to be a part of that, too. When the contraction came, Hunter was trying to be quiet to not upset Gerard, but he told him it was okay.

"It doesn't hurt me," Gerard insisted. "But you're in pain."

I nodded and felt my throat close up. It hurt so much to just watch the two of them interact, how close their bodies became and how extreme the two of them were. They connected on a level of perception that I did not understand. They both had broken bodies, broken minds, but they weren't broken at all. I thought back to the email and to Scott. The two of them had established intimacy, because they didn't believe they were sick. They were only different.

I knew I had to leave the room then; it was just too much to take. After the contraction had finished, I saw them grab one of Alexa's poetry books out of the corner of my eye. They had begun reciting "Sunflower Sutra" by Allen Ginsberg and my heart welled in my chest. "Ah, sunflower," Gerard whispered, and I left the room.

I ran into Lydia, who was adjusting some of the sheets and blankets, and generally making sure that the birth would be a sanitary one. She saw me and nodded, and then told me to come over and see her.

"How is it?"

"Okay. He was worried a bit about being naked, but I think he's okay now."

She smiled, and shook her head. "I know Hunter is well. How are you? How are you dealing with all of this?"

She must have seen the anxiousness in my stance. I was rocking back and forth, jittery, and almost ready to pace back and forth as Hunter had been doing during his contractions.

"You're allowed to be scared, though you're not the one giving birth," she informed me. "You will not feel what he feels, but you can know it and try to understand it. You're allowed to feel things too, though your experience of this event is very different. Don't forget that."

I nodded, unsure of what she wanted me to say. I was scared fucking shitless. I did confess that to her, and she nodded, and said it was normal. "The world is about to change, especially your world. It's been changing a lot, lately. You will be able to handle this one too." She paused for a moment. Then, asking coyly as if she already knew the answer: "How is that archive going? I saw it at the show, but I thought it was going to be the show. Are you still adding to it?"

I sighed, shoved my hands into my pocket. "You were right. It was not the best idea. If I add to it, it will be for us, now, and only us."

"It's still out there, Frank, for everyone to see and to know about, even if you only decide to keep it to yourselves. You've still released something into the world. Did you contribute something to it?"

I opened my mouth, but the words struggled to come out. "I tried, but it wasn't right. I was trying to make him dead and he wasn't dead. You were right about that."

She nodded, and then she took my hand. "You know, writing things down helps. In a way, it's almost like a birth."

"I did, sort of. I wrote a lot of letters and then I left them places in a thrift store. They were what I was angry about, you know, when Hunter..." I trailed off, and her eyes lit up, knowing where that story was going.

"Good. I am glad you did that. They're secrets - but they're not. It's a fantastic idea, leaving your own unwanted artifacts in a place where people go to drop off theirs. I think that was your real archive of feeling, Frank. Not anything else."

I nodded, but that didn't feel right. Although the show was done, and although the archive was sort of done (I was still printing off some emails, here and there, about the show to add to it), it didn't feel right yet. I knew I was still waiting for something to add.

She interrupted my thoughts, trying to focus on the present: "How are you going to remember this birth? This experience? Right now?"

Her question caught me off guard, and I started to tell her about the way that Hunter had been feeling, how I would remember being worried about him, taking off his sports bra, and then rubbing his back and my hand through his hair. "He loves it when I touch his head. He's had long hair for so long, the weight of it there is now relieved."

She smiled and nodded, but then pushed me on. She was still gripping my hand, and squeezed it a bit to get me to focus. "I need you to think of your point of view. I love that you care for Hunter deeply, but this is your birth, too. This is not your physical birth, that is why I don't want you to say we. But this experience? This is yours. Hunter has lots of support from people. Where is yours? Where are you going to slot your own memories?" She smiled again - a rare thing for her - as she played with my archive idea. She was a good woman, but she was especially good at sticking in meanings and words where there were spaces between left for interpretation. She let my hand drop, and then told me she needed to go prepare things. The conversation had been shut down, and I was pointed back towards the room which I had left, now struggling to find meaning of my own, when I was drowning in Hunter's experience. He was having another contraction when I came back in, the poetry book on the arm of the couch, splayed open on their page. Gerard was on one side, holding his hand, and then Vivian had taken position near Hunter's back. She was supporting him, rubbing his shoulders. Cassandra was there, too, and Hunter had been putting his foot against her hip. She seemed proud, as if she was holding up this strange architecture of people. When the pain passed, Hunter apologized to Cassandra for "nearly kicking through her."

"Oh come on," Cassandra noted. "I'm tougher than that. I think Noelle and I have done worse to one another."

Vivian rolled her eyes at her daughter, and Hunter laughed. He began to struggle to get up, and Cassandra appeared to offer him a hand. Once up, he leaned back towards Gerard and whispered something in his ear. He clasped his hand, and then they eventually let go. Hunter walked into the next room, with Cassandra following, wanting to continue her place as hip support. Noelle followed behind, knowing there would need to be another around.

"The Bible is so flawed," I heard Alexa comment, seemingly out of nowhere. She was still hunched over her books, pages and pages having been written, and it was the first time she had spoken since the beginning of the labor. I laughed, and she went on. "Like I mean I knew it was flawed before, but wow. The tarot, as much as I love it, as much as I love all of these books, it's hard to find yourself sometimes."

I nodded. I didn't think I had ever seen myself before in a novel or book. Pieces of me, here and there, and I had tried to hold them all together at once, but it was too much work. I knew if I wanted anything done for myself, I needed to do it for myself. That was what Lydia had been trying to get me to understand, and that was what Alexa was slowly getting, but in her own unique way. If it helped her conceive of her own life, then I encouraged it. Maybe she could sell her new astrology and tarot books to people, and add a little side venture to her business. She was getting more free time now with Jonah being able to walk and having more teeth than I thought possible in his tiny mouth. He had bitten me earlier when I had first entered the house, and I took it as a sign that he was no longer mine to hold. I would have my own baby, soon enough, and my own point of view to figure out. Alexa went back to her work, I was left with Gerard and Vivian, and they welcome me onto the couch between them. Though the rest of the house was booming with life, and most people were carrying on long and boisterous conversations, Gerard was still quite quiet. It had been Vivian who was offering me the seat, and then began to spout overdramatically about her own birth story.

"Gerard was here, for it, do you remember, Gerard? I woke you up at four in the morning when my water broke and I destroyed your canvas," she told him. He had locked his hand with mine when I sat down, and he nodded into my shoulder. He was paying attention to Vivian, but now that Hunter was gone, his attention had also turned outwards toward the room itself. Though he was quiet, he was alert. He kept watching everything, his eyes adjusting and cataloguing, trying to place faces and memories. He nestled close to me, but he didn't say much at all. Vivian's voice carried over the commotion happening around us, and I vaguely paid attention. I had heard him tell me about birth before, about Cassandra's, and this was a familiar thing to both him and to myself. The situation that we were in now was also familiar to him, though maybe not with this exact person, but he knew this. He would be okay. He already knew how to create his own experience of birth; he had painted a picture of it after the fact, his own recollection of Cassandra coming into the world. I thought of that painting, and how for once in his life, he painted himself at the peripheries, an outsider looking in. Now he was inside of it all. He was a part of it, and though he nodded along to Vivian's story, he was recreating this new one in his mind. I wished that I had access to his thoughts, an easier gateway, so I could solve my own dilemma. I looked around at everyone in the room, I heard the noises from downstairs, and I smelled the food that had been cooking and what Walter had finally brought over. I had heard that Walter had found vegan pizza for us and even though it was across town, made the trip for us. He definitely got bonus points for that, and when I knew there was pizza downstairs, I felt my stomach growl. I felt bad suddenly, thinking about things other than Hunter, when I remembered Lydia. It seemed feeble that my experience of birth right then was that I wanted and absolutely needed to eat that pizza, but I accepted it. I got off the couch slowly and squeezed Gerard's hand.

"You don't want to hear this, Frank?" Vivian said, pouting a bit. I had forgotten to mention anything to her as I left, and she was offended. Her feelings from before had gone back on themselves, and her own battle into parenthood was coming back. I had never realized how much Vivian had liked the attention being on her. I should have, knowing her drama influences in art school. She wanted to give her own monologue -- but she also needed support.

"No thanks, Viv," I told her gently. "Gerard told me this one a long time ago."

Hearing his name, and maybe even understanding the complexity of Vivian's feelings at that moment, Gerard shifted towards his old lover. She nodded to me and let me go as the two of them nestled close together and began to drift away into their past. I walked around the room, and like Alexa, tried to find my own experience inside of this room.

My stomach growled again. Maybe after pizza.

The place that the pizza had come from was called The Night Kitchen. Their logo of a little boy on an airplane stared back at me as I shoveled the food into my mouth without bothering to heat it up. I had not eaten since my lunch break at noon, and though it was only a little past six, that was a long time to me. My hunger had been completely numb the entire time while I was bouncing between Hunter and Gerard. Now that I was encouraged to be by myself, I could think of nothing but the empty gnawing in my gut. On the day that my daughter was apparently supposed to be born, I was shoving pizza into my face, right from a greasy box, and hanging out in the kitchen alone. I felt like a dead-beat dad, and I laughed at myself and how absurd this all was. Eventually, after my third piece, my hunger calmed down and I began to get out actual dishes and use the microwave to heat up my food. I felt a lot calmer having something in my stomach. So calm, that as I began to drink some coffee to keep myself going, I nearly forgot what I was keeping myself going for.

It came back to me with the ding of the microwave, and I took my food and sat at the table, only to have it stared back at me. I was relieved when Mikey came downstairs and decided to get something to eat as well. He went through the leftovers in the fridge instead, but he paused on the logo of the pizza place and smiled.

" Into the light of the Night Kitchen! " he said, smiling wide.

"What now?"

"It's a book I used to read Jonah - well, I read it to them all, but Jonah has been the most recent." He placed his stuff into the microwave, and leaned against the counter. He noticed me staring at my food, my stomach suddenly too full of emotions to choke it down at the rate I had been going before.

"It's finally hitting you, huh?" Mikey asked, his voice calm. I nodded. Now that I wasn't focusing on Hunter and it was my experience of birth, well, then. I was fucking terrified.

"I don't want to... "

"Fuck up?" Mikey suggested. He got his food from the microwave when it dinged, and then took his place across from me at the table. I had never really heard him use language like that before. At work, he was pretty good about how he presented his image and didn't want to swear around his kids either. I realized now that although he had given me work preps before, there was that sense of work always hanging over us, so those conversations had been brief and full of stock phrases of "you'll be a good dad" and "you know what you're doing, and if not, ask." Mikey was leaning in and eating his food, but he was also opening up the room for a better discussion.

"Yeah, fuck up," I agreed. I had been afraid of parenting before, but I would always put it out of my mind. Now I really couldn't anymore, and I was shaking through my skin. This was some pretty heavy issue, and though I knew I didn't want to run, and that deep down I was excited for it, I was also paranoid. I looked to Mikey for some sense of companionship and camaraderie. He was the most knowledgeable on this new position that I was about to be in; he had five of his kids here, and seven in total. That was a lot of fucking kids, I thought. Hunter and I had talked, in our own fantastical type of way, about having that many one day, but we knew we were kidding ourselves. More, yes, probably? I wasn't so sure anymore, especially if I got like this before each birth.

I was surprised, however, that instead of offering me sympathy, Mikey merely said. "You will."

"What?"

"You will fuck up," Mikey stated honestly. "It just happens. You try your best, and it's not like you fail, but something always goes wrong. I remember the first time I held William, I nearly dropped him. Even when I was around to watch them and super vigilant, they fell down. They hurt themselves. It wasn't my fault, but you know, you think it is at first.

"Even with my kids now I still fuck up. I still do stupid things with Jonah. Alexa does them too, this isn't just a paternal, or non-birth parent thing." Though he had to stop a bit to work through that sentence, I appreciated the effort he was going to, considering that one of the paternal parents here was the one giving birth. "Hunter will screw up too. There are instruction books galore, but they are all useless."

"Tell me about it," I said. How on earth were we supposed to find a parenting manual that told us how to explain that dad had given birth, dad used to go by this name, and papa was thirty years older than the other two parents, but everyone loved one another? Yeah, didn't think so. But that didn't mean we didn't exist, and didn't fuck up just as easily as anyone else. Mikey, in his monogamy, and many, many children from ages twenty months to twenty five, was telling me that even after all this time, things still went wrong.

"Kids are curious. They get into messes and come home with bruises or infections and you wonder what you could have done to avoid it. You blame yourself, but you can't keep kids in a bubble, and you also can't give up your whole life." He paused for a second, taking a few bites. I thought back to his failed first marriage, and how he had stuck around for the kids for so long. He left to have more, and to create a different life. He had followed his dream, even if it had not been his musical dream that he thought he would do.

"Rachel says she wants to learn bass," he mentioned suddenly. "Did I tell you that?"

I shook my head, and leaned forward, glad to hear about someone else right then. He shrugged, his smile becoming infectious and spreading to me. "I told her we would try it, and that I would see if it would come back to me. I know she's only ten, and last week she told me she wanted to be an astronaut, so who knows, next week she may forget the bass again."

"But you don't have to," I told him.

He smiled again, coyly, as if he had been waiting for me to say that. "I know I don't. That's the point, Frank. You don't have to give up the things you love when you have kids. I thought I did, and that was why that marriage failed. There were problems between us too, like I said, but it was really me. I thought I had to put all my energy there and it drained me. It affected my kids because I ended up resenting them and the situation I was in. I fucked up there."

Mikey nodded, really processing his guilt. He was still eating, but his attention waned.

"But you left," I reminded him. "That was good. You gave them a better life that way, and you got your kids from it, too."

"I know - and you know that about me. But I want you to remember this for your kids, however many you end up having. You will fuck up. I've been that dad, the one who destroys something, and then I've been the one that is amazing and wonderful. I'm not saying this, these praises and complaints are coming from my kids talking about me. I've had William and Andrew call me awful names, and even without my leaving and the huge circumstance like that, these types of events will still happen. It's happening now with Vivian and Cassandra. Those are difficult ages, as I'm sure you'll remember."

I nodded and sighed, laughing a bit at myself right then and when I was seventeen. "I was arrested. Yeah, I know it got pretty difficult for my parents."

"Exactly," Mikey said, smiling. "Your kids, or just this one, if you just want to have one - I'm so used to putting things in plurals." He laughed for a bit, then pushed his food out of the way and leaned closer to me. "Not only will you fuck up and feel as if you've made the worst mistake ever, whether or not it is objectively a mistake remains to be seen. But your kids will do and say awful things to you as well, that will make you feel as if you've completely fucked up. I'm not going to lie, but this is going to be hard."

I bit my lip, taking a deep breath. I had mostly been scared before about losing time to myself, losing the ability to create, and then the financial repercussions behind all of this. I had not thought of Paloma as herself, living and breathing just yet. I didn't want to worry myself too soon, but now, here I was. I was going to mess up, no matter what I did, and when I got older, she was going to tell me about the weird and terrible things I had done. She would be the one saying, "no, Dad, no, stop it, no, you're embarrassing me" and I didn't even know if I would be one of those parents who would deserve that, who would do embarrassing things. I had no idea what this whole experience was going to be like, other than hard. Mikey seemed to sense my acceptance, although it was rather depressing.

"Did Gerard ever tell you that quotation about children?" he asked, and then tried to summarize it, eliciting a smile from me.

"The Picasso one? Of course."

"Well, it's really like that, Frank. They really are little artists. Rachel wants to learn bass, and even if she forgets and moves onto something else, that excitement is amazing. I don't expect anything from her, and I don't think parents should, because that way they surprise you. And there are good surprises as well as bad ones. They're curious and they'll hurt themselves, but they'll also make you see things that you never considered before. They'll make you see things again that you forgot were there. It's amazing, because as they learn, you're learning too. I've read that story, In the Night Kitchen, so many times now. You would think it's gotten boring or ridiculous. There are some days where it's been too long and I struggle through it, of course, but I still read it. You'll figure it out...." he trailed off, getting up and taking our dishes to the sink. I had managed to finish my pizza and was now drinking my coffee, easing myself into this. Mikey began the dishes, still talking and formulating his thoughts. He was almost as long-winded as his brother, and his art references, though sporadic, were making me realize how much I had missed a dialogue like this.

"It gets easier. You talk to them, you listen to them. You smile and they will hopefully smile back. You treat them like a person, but know that they are their self and have no expectations of what that self will be like. You need to enjoy them. And then that way, when you do fuck up, you'll understand better that it's worth it." He paused again, looking at the logo of the box, and nodding his head back and forth to the same line of the story that he had read so much out loud, it had now become a part of him.

" Into the light of the Night Kitchen," he hummed, and the declared. "Yes, it's definitely worth it."

We went into the living room after that, mostly to see those kids Mikey loved so much and so he could have some time with them. Callie had been holding Jonah when Mikey came in, and eagerly passed him off to his father. The two of them now swept me away and demanded my attention, so I let Mikey go back to his own world. I heard the beginning of the story resound from Mikey's lips, and I smiled as Elizabeth was saying it with him. They didn't even need the book anymore to remember Mickey's flight in the bakery.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14