Swimmer in the Secret Sea (2 page)

An elderly nurse came out of the delivery room. Laski looked at her, but she gave him such a blank cold stare all questions dissolved in his throat. He listened to her footsteps going away down the hall, and then he walked over and peered through the porthole window in the delivery room door. The hall beyond the porthole was dimly lit and empty.

He paced back again, past the leather chairs. The alcohol-medicine smell of the hospital filled the air. The floor was squared tile; he stepped between the cracks with each foot. His boots were still wet with snow. The dark tips of them looked at him, worn-down and scarred from the forest.

He reined himself around, came back the other way along the floor. The door swung open again. A young nurse appeared, smiling. 'We're just getting your wife ready,' she said. 'You'll be able to join her in a few minutes.'

Diane was sitting up in bed. He went quickly to her, searching her eyes, which showed the same mixture of fear and calm he'd seen all night.

'The baby's upside-down,' she said.

The air seemed dreamlike, a dream in which he could make things take any shape he liked. But he was standing in a hospital room and their baby was upside-down. 'It'll be all right,' he said, touching her folded hands.

'Doctor Barker says he doesn't want you in on a breech birth. I told him I understand, and that I hope he'll change his mind.'

Her face suddenly changed as the contraction came on and she began her breathing as they'd practiced it, inhaling rapidly and evenly. She closed her eyes, her brow in wrinkles as she grimaced with pain. He stood, powerless, watching the hand within her clenching itself tightly, until her face was one that he had never seen before, a screwed-up mask of desperation which suddenly and slowly relaxed, wrinkles fading, eyes opening, as the contraction subsided.

She looked up at him and smiled. 'He must have turned around last week. Remember the bump we felt high on my stomach? That was his head.'

'We'll be swinging him down the road soon,' said Laski.

Her smile suddenly disappeared as the next contract-ion came. She went into her rapid breathing and he willed her his strength, trying to make it pass out of his body and enter hers.

The nurse came in as the contraction subsided. 'How're we doing?'

'All right.'

'Let me have a look.' The nurse lifted Diane's gown for a moment, then lowered it. 'You're dilating beautifully.'

Diane's smile was once again ruined by the return of a contraction.

A young intern entered and stood at the foot of the bed, waiting as the contraction worked toward its peak. He looked at Laski and asked politely, 'Would you mind stepping outside a moment while we examine her?'

Laski went out into the hallway. What do they do to her that I can't be there? Does he think I've never seen my wife's body before? Don't send bad vibrations. They're running this show. He walked up and down the hallway, feeling like the odd man out.

The door opened; the intern came into the hallway and nodded at Laski, who went back in and joined the nurse at the foot of the bed.

'You're fully dilated,' said the nurse to Diane. 'You can start pushing anytime you want.'

Diane nodded her head as the next contraction hit. Laski went behind her, lifting her up from the back, as they had practiced. He lifted and she hauled back on her knees with her hands, bending her legs and spreading them apart, pressing down within herself. He held her up for the length of the contraction and then slowly let her down.

'Very nice,' said the nurse. 'Keep up the good work.' She smiled at them and left the room.

'Would you wet a washcloth and put it on my fore-head?'

Laski got a washcloth out of her bag and wet it in the bathroom sink. He wiped her brow, her cheeks, her neck. 'Where's the doctor?'

'He's sleeping in a room down the hall. They'll wake him up when it's time.'

'How do you feel?'

'I'm glad to be pushing.'

The contraction came and he lifted her again, his face close to hers. The wrinkled brow and tight-closed eyes formed a face he'd never dreamed of. All her beauty was gone, and she seemed like a sexless creature struggling for all it was worth, laboring greatly with the beginning of the world. Their laughter, their little joys, their plans, everything they'd known was swallowed by this labor, a work he suddenly wished they'd never begun, so contorted was she, so unlike the woman he knew. Her face was red, her temples pounding, and she looked now like a middle-aged man taking a shit that was killing him. This is humanity, thought Laski, and he questioned the purpose of a race that seeks to perpetuate itself in agony, but before he had his answer, the contraction had passed and he was lowering her back to the pillow.

He took the washcloth, wet it again and wiped her perspiring face. 'Relax deeply now. Get your energy back. Spread your legs—relax your arms.' He talked softly, smoothing out her still-trembling limbs until she finally lay quiet, eyes closed.

The wave came again and carried them out onto the sea of pain, where he wondered again why life ever came into the world. The loveliness of the highway night, when all the stars seemed watching, was now drowned in sweat. The most beautiful face he'd ever seen was looking bulbous, red, and homely.

The tide that drew them out into the troubled waters once again spent itself and they floated slowly back, resting for a minute or so, only to be dragged out again. He held her up while she contracted and pushed inside herself, trying to open the petals of her flowering body. He'd thought that such a miraculous opening would somehow be performed in a more splendid fashion. But she was sweating like a lumberjack's horse after a summer morning of hauling logs.

He lifted her, trying to free the load she was struggling with, but she was straining against the traces, getting nowhere, her eyes like those of a draft horse—puzzled, frustrated, and enslaved. He could see the strain pulsing in her reddened temples, just as he'd seen it in the workhorses when he thought they would surely die of a heart attack, racing as they did through the woods with huge logs behind them, jamming suddenly on a stump, the reins almost snapping and their mighty muscles knotting against the obstacle. Who would choose this, thought Laski, this work, this woe? Life enslaves us, makes us want children, gives us a thousand illusions about love, and all so that it can go forward.

He felt the supremacy of life, its power greater than his will. I just wanted to be with you, Diane, the two of us living easily together and here we are, with your life on the line.

She was coming down the staircase of a brownstone building. She wore a long purple cape with a high collar turned up around her neck. The cape flared out as she touched the sidewalk and he stood rooted and stupid, struggling to speak. She must have felt it, for she turned and looked his way.

Her face contracted again, her eyes closing tightly and her mouth bending into a mask formed by the pain that came on her again. He held her up, feeling the strain in her muscles and the fever in her skin. The short ringlets of hair at her neck were soaked and glistening. A wet spot was spreading across her back.

The intern and the nurse returned while they, were out upon the waves, struggling together, pushing together, sweating together to bring the thing to completion, and when the contraction ended the intern did not ask Laski to leave while he made his examination. 'You're showing some progress now.'

'You can see the baby,' said the nurse.

Laski looked down, and in the shaved and sweating crack he saw something pink and strange, a little patch of flesh he could not comprehend. All he knew were the waves that took them out again, where they were alone in love and sadness that none else could share, alone and clinging to each other in the reality they had long prepared for, for which no preparation was ever enough.

'I've seen you before,' he said, stopping her on Broadway.

'Have you?' she said, the slightest touch of flirtation in her voice, just enough to keep him coming toward her, out of his deep embarrassed nature.

Back they drifted, to the green room in the sleeping hospital.

Hardly had they rested when the waves carried them out again, like a nightmare that repeats itself over and over through the night, and over and over again through the years. Back and forth they went and he feared that her strength could not hold. He had no confidence, not in himself, nor in her. He felt like a helpless child, and Diane seemed helpless too, their long struggle getting them nowhere, only repeating itself—contraction, release, con-traction again. But the nurse and the intern seemed unconcerned by it all, were cheerful and confident. And the doctor is down the hall, sleeping. He's not worried. If there were anything wrong he'd be here.

She dressed by the window of his tiny room, slipping slowly into tight knit slacks and sweater. Her short hair needed no combing or fixing, and she was the most natural thing he'd ever seen unlike his previous loves, who'd always thrown him out of the room while they dressed and primped or put curlers in their hair.

Her gown was wringing wet, her hair plastered down, as if the sea had broken over her. She closed her eyes and crows-feet came there, linen he'd never seen before, lines of age, and he knew that ages had passed. 'Again,' she said, her voice almost a sob now, but not a sob, too tired for tears. And he lifted her up as the tide carried them out again, into the wild uncharted waters.

He held her, his love for her expanding with every tremor of her body. It seemed he'd never loved her before, that all of their past was just rehearsal for this moment in which he felt resounding inside him all the days of her life, days before he'd known her, days from the frightened child's face he saw before him, and days from the wise woman's ancient life that came calling now to give her unknown strength. All the frustration of Diane's thirty years was present, and she seemed to be making a wish in the well of time, that everything should finally come out all right, that finally something she was doing would be just as it should be.

'I can't have a baby,' she said, 'because of the shape of my womb.'

'Bullshit.'

'He's a Park Avenue gynecologist.'

Well, thought Laski, it took us ten years but we finally made one. He lowered her back to the bed, wiping her brow with the washcloth. She smiled, but it again was a mask, formed by momentary release from her anguish. In it was none of the flirtation, none of the peace, none of the things he usually saw in her smiles. But he knew she'd made this smile for him, to ease his worry. She's seeing into me too; maybe she sees all the care of my days, as I am seeing her. He felt them together, then, on a new level, older, wiser, with pain as the binder in their union. We came more than fifty miles tonight; we've crossed the ocean.

Her smile suddenly drew itself up beyond the limits of smiling, became a grimace, and he lifted her up. We're not across the ocean yet.

'Gee-yup, Bob!' The great horse pulled, his hooves scraping on the forest floor, sending moss and sticks flying. The tree creaked and swayed and fell and Bob-horse ran with it, dragging branches and all.

'I guess we can get Doctor Barker now,' said the intern.

The nurse went out of the room. Laski wiped Diane's brow and the intern stood at the foot of the bed, watching. 'You've been pushing for nearly three hours,' he said.

'That's too long, isn't it?' she asked.

'It's because the baby's weight is up instead of down.'

And suddenly they were out again, in the tempest. Laski held her up, pouring himself through his fingertips into her, as she lifted her legs and pushed.

The nurse entered with a tall young man in white uniform. He stood at the foot of the bed with the intern as Laski and Diane held on, out upon the sea, love-blown sailors lost in fathomless depths of time and destiny, coming now slowly back to a room of strangers who seemed eternal too, in a never-ending play. 'If you'll just step outside a minute,' said Doctor Barker.

Laski went into the hallway and gathered himself together in a single prayer without words, offered to the ocean.

The door swung open. The young doctor stepped out and said, 'Things are developing now. We'll be taking her down to the delivery room.'

Laski went back to Diane. She was bent up, contracting alone, and he went to her.

'You're baby's on the way now,' said the nurse, smiling cheerfully at Laski.

He suddenly remembered the baby, the little swimmer in the secret sea. He's struggling too, struggling to be with us, struggling just like we are.

Laski's heart became an ocean of love, as nine months of memories flooded him, and the baby was real again, real as in the night when Laski felt tiny feet kicking inside Diane. Our baby, our little friend, is being born!

And this, thought Laski, is why we labor, so that love might come into the world.

The contraction passed, and he and Diane were washed back, limp like sea-plants when the waves abandon them on the shore. 'It looks very good,' said the intern.

The nurse came in, wheeling a stretcher. 'All set?'

'Yes,' said Diane. They slid her from the bed onto the stretcher and they all walked beside it down the hallway toward the delivery room. Doctor Barker was being put into a white gown. Laski leaned over and kissed Diane.

'Aren't you coming in?' she asked, her voice filled with longing.

The nurse continued wheeling her into the delivery room and Laski stood in the hall outside. His will, his speech, his guts were gone. Barker stepped over to him. 'The nurse will give you a cap and gown and you can watch from behind the table.'

Laski's strength came back in a whirlwind as a great smile crossed his face. We're going all the way together! He stood, watching the doctor and the intern wash their hands in a nearby sink, washing them again and again, in slow methodical manner. The nurse came to him and held up a gown. He slipped his arms into it and she tied it in back. She gave him a white cap which he fastened over his ears. Then he and the intern went into the delivery room, where Diane lay on the central table, her legs in stirrups, her wrists strapped down.