I doubt I'll inherit anything, he says. There are six children. Just drop it, Mare.

I can't accept the fact that Warren's family ethos reflects Andrew Carnegie's old saw about how inherited money has to be held back at the risk of withering ambition, but I sit in silence.

The plane flies on, carrying us in its hull. Warren stares off into the distance the rich enter when talk of money comes up.

But a woman whose third eye has begun to stare at some invisible baby is incapable of dropping the subject. So at the Labor Day clambake in the Rhode Island beach house-itself four times the size of what I grew up in-after intermittent nagging from me, Warren walks up to the white wicker chair containing his father and asks the old man about helping us when I get pregnant. Only on the drive home will Warren even say aloud that the talk took place. But any details about it stay sealed in that head of his.

He'll help us, Warren says.

The car pa.s.ses a long stretch of beach roses in bloom.

How? I say.

I don't want to go into it. It's private.

I'm your wife, I say.

At a stoplight before the freeway, he puts the car in park and stares at me, saying, You got what you wanted. Now get off my back.

(Don't think he spoke to me this way often. He didn't, which is why-unfairly-it sticks.) At that instant, I stop drinking cold turkey. I don't remember it being hard. In fact, it's the last easy quit I'd have. I give up liquor and cigarettes to purify myself for the baby taking cherubic shape in my head long before my body gets to it.

In some ways, I believe conception will be hard for me. One of G.o.d's little prototypes One of G.o.d's little prototypes, Hunter Thompson once said of some ne'er-do-well pal-never even considered for ma.s.s production. I pore over books about getting knocked up as if it weren't standard order for every creature from cat to c.o.c.kroach. Warren knows I'm logging my morning temperature, a sharp rise being a sign that you've dropped an egg into the chute. The first slightly overheated morning, it so happens that Hurricane Gloria has ripped down the phone lines on our block and shut down the library. Warren takes the bus home early like a man summoned to battle, and a month later, I miss my period.

Already? he says, staring at me across the huge steaks I've splurged on, the half-empty bottle of nonalcoholic wine.

You're not excited, I say.

He considers the burgundy fizz in the gla.s.s. Tastes like grape syrup.

Not about the wine, you bonehead, I say. About the bun in the oven.

Baby Otis? Warren says. It's great.

Pouring him more nonalcoholic wine, I say, You're upset. You're not excited.

He stares across the candlelit table.

No, he says. I mean, yes. It's just...

I've Ziploc-bagged the telltale pregnancy thermometer and stuck it in a vase between us, tying it with a ribbon like a daisy. He touches it with a finger as if it might be hot, saying, How reliable is this? I mean, should you go to the doctor or something?

Despite his slight remove, I think what a perfect dad he'll make, tempered as he is by gentleness. He once quoted to me Henry James's three rules: Be kind, be kind, be kind. I've observed him with his sister's kids, patiently tossing the whiffle ball underhand. They climb into his lap for stories.

But few men-no matter how tenderhearted-go so gaga over the unborn as an inseminated woman will. At night I read one baby book after another, and most spare weekend hours I spend pawing through garage sales for cast-off cribs and baby clothes. And so begins what I see as his slow fade from me. We talk less and less, and since we both grew up in houses schooled to letting people vaporize into their own internal deserts with alacrity, we each let the other get smaller.

At Christmas, his father says he knew I was pregnant when I said no to wine, and many toasts are drunk to my health and the baby's. My mother-in-law promises to ante up all the baby clothes and linens, and Mr. Whitbread says he'll cover my half of the rent. But driving home, Warren's silence fills the car.

What is it? I say.

Nothing, he says. It's nothing.

You're looking at me so sternly, I say. And truly staring at him, I see in his green eyes that some metal doors seemed to have slid shut.

Buckle your seat belt, he says. You need to start wearing a seat belt.

The car continues down the snowy and narrowing road.

I eat: french fries with gravy. Liver with greasy heaps of onions. Dried strawberries smudged with gorgonzola cheese, crackers slathered with fig jam. Stepping on the scale, I hear my doctor admonish that I'll gain fifty pounds if I don't slow down, but I couldn't care less. How proud I feel shoving that giant globe of a belly through the subway turnstile.

But the more heft I have, the more elusive Warren seems to become, the more transparent, retreating into a void I stare into, studying him while he reads, repeatedly poking my head into his office the weekends he works.

Maybe he's having an affair, Mother says. That's how some guys react to fatherhood.

Mother! I say. Warren's not like that.

Has he started drinking more? she asks, adding, His daddy could sure put it away.

Not everybody's a sot, I say. More than two drinks and Warren gets pukey.

One night he leaves a message not to hold dinner, he won't be home till ten. The car pulls into the garage, and he finds me sitting on the back steps.

Where were you? I say, reaching for the stair railing to pull myself up, belly first.

He unfolds from the hatchback, arms laden with books. School, he says.

What school? I say. For what? (Had we really not discussed this? Surely we did, but I don't recall it that way.) I told you I was starting school for my master's. It's paid for through work.

I thought next fall, after the baby came, I say.

You shouldn't be out here without a coat, he says.

Don't you think it's bad timing? I say.

You're one to talk, he says, gesturing to my belly.

Can you at least not take summer cla.s.ses? The baby'll come in June.

He sighs. Maybe this year. But I want to get it over with.

During the week, he leaves at eight in the morning, and three nights a week, he gets in after ten. Weekends, he always seems to be working on papers or that literary magazine he cofounded.

Lying next to him, my body swells as if hooked to a bicycle pump, and with each inch of girth, he floats further, and I began slowly to shift my gaze away from his back. I start to stare inward to the pearlescent mystery I'm carrying. Some nights I tell myself the birth will bring Warren back to me.

(And maybe-in his version of events-he'd report that I'd studied baby books with a Talmudic intensity, hardly reading anymore the poetry he was devoted to. The bigger I got, the lower my IQ, I swear. It's not politic to say so, but hey. Maybe Warren was telling himself the birth would bring me back to him.) One day, as I meticulously fold and refold minuscule T-shirts and onesies in the trance of the deeply unprepared, the phone rings. And a woman's voice says the sentence I've been waiting to hear for so long, I'm almost deaf to it. So obsessed am I with the upcoming birth that she has to repeat it several times.

I said that we'd like to publish your book of poems.

Okay, I say, having become a farm animal at this point. With the phone to my ear, I slide the top off a box of chocolates my sister sent and start poking them in search of caramel.

What do you mean, Okay? Okay? the editor says. We'd like to publish your book next year. the editor says. We'd like to publish your book next year.

That's good, I say, poking as one piece gushes white goop, so I pa.s.s over it.

You don't sound very excited, she says.

I'm having a baby, I say dreamily. And truly the notion of a book has grown misty.

Right this second?

Soon, I say. At that instant, my fingernail punctures chocolate and hits caramel. What does she need from me? The names of anybody dumb enough to blurb it. A dust-jacket photo laying around.

I chew my caramel, satisfied as a brood sow in a mud wallow. Neither good nor ill can reach me.

15.

Journey of the Magi Who is there?I.Who is I?Thou.And that is the awakening-the Thou and the I.-Paul Valery Women in my bloodline don't pop out babies like pieces of toast. We're narrow-hipped. Birthing tends to drag on-long days of false labor followed by a good twenty hours of exorcism-quality dismay. We're less known for patience than drive, and being flat on our back is anathema. Lecia's own son took so long to find daylight that his father-during a grisly period called transition transition that involves much howling-excused himself, sending Mother into the room as backup. Lecia had been cursing him and G.o.d and most of the nurses. Mother stood bedside a few minutes, then-as Lecia huffed for air-held up her handbag, saying, Look at this cute little purse I bought. that involves much howling-excused himself, sending Mother into the room as backup. Lecia had been cursing him and G.o.d and most of the nurses. Mother stood bedside a few minutes, then-as Lecia huffed for air-held up her handbag, saying, Look at this cute little purse I bought.

At which, my sister screamed, Get her the f.u.c.k out of here!

Mother, later outraged at Lecia's overreaction, said, I was just trying to take her mind off it.

In my case, delivery takes a full twenty-two hours-forty-four if you count the false labor that kept me manically rocking in a chair all night like some bulbous figure in a horror movie. At the hospital, they inject various mickeys into my IV, telling me I'll be asleep in a minute, but that's only one of many lies-like banning the word pain pain in favor of in favor of discomfort discomfort, conveniently reducing the hospital's need to deal with it while treating the mother like a piece of furniture.

In natural childbirth cla.s.ses, with women sprawled around the room on wrestling mats, the men had seemed mystified by the process. One night in the car going home, Warren said, When are we supposed to learn the stuff that stops the pain?

We already have, I said. That's what the breathing exercises are.

My G.o.d, he said, that won't accomplish anything.

Almost two days into my own marathon, I enter the half-drugged, hallucinogenic state that causes the room I lie in to bulge like a fishbowl around me. Staring at the calico curtains hung against the vomit-green walls to make the birthing room look homey homey, I keep echoing Oscar Wilde's last words: Either this wallpaper goes, or I do Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.

The big disappointment? The needle painfully jabbed into my spine to block pain quote-unquote didn't take didn't take.

This is the breezy parlance of the anesthesia dude. He stands in the door with clip-on sungla.s.ses flipped up from his specs. He's clearly on his way out.

Whaddayou mean mean, I roar at him, whaddayou MEAN it didn't take! didn't take!

I'm incapable of speaking without exclamation points and italics and any available typographical inflation. In between cogent sentences, the nurse with the tiny white head and gargantuan blue eyes-real crocodile-sized peepers-leans over me, saying, Breathe Breathe...

Warren's head appears alongside hers, his face bulging forward like a drop of water squeezed from a turkey baster. Breathe Breathe...

I holler, DO IT AGAIN!

The nurse is telling me it's too late.

You didn't say it might not take might not take, I say. You said...You promised promised...You PROMISED I'd be numb numb from the WAIST DOWN!! from the WAIST DOWN!!

I bang on a thigh. My LEG is like a rump roast rump roast!!

Not much later, Warren's face leans down through the haze, saying, I need a sandwich.

WHAT! I say. A f.u.c.king SANDWICH? f.u.c.king SANDWICH?

It won't take long, he says. He's gone for what seems a long stretch but can't be even an hour.

He comes back just as they start wheeling me spread-eagled and undraped down a public hall, with me saying, No man gets to see this who hasn't bought me dinner No man gets to see this who hasn't bought me dinner-a joke the doctor doesn't get, followed by, to Warren, Where the everloving f.u.c.k were you? Where the everloving f.u.c.k were you?

Sleeping, it turns out, on the front lawn of the hospital after a turkey sandwich. He's now loping alongside my gurney toward the delivery room, his face masked.

An eternity later, I feel a cataclysmic movement, and-in one ma.s.sive thunderclap of pain-all my innards seem to exit. I feel abruptly vacated. Warren shouts up at me, It's a boy. I lie there throbbing while some s.p.a.ce bar in the action gets. .h.i.t, and there's an interval of quiet, then the baby's throaty cry. All the attending humans seem busily focused elsewhere till they hand Dev to me-short for Devereux-a family name of the Whitbread's. This new Dev is squinty and crimson, and they've stretched a little white knit cap on his head.

As he leans over me, Warren's face is damp, too, and his ocean-lit eyes fixed on me with wondrous attention, and in that interval I first hold our bundled son, I feel us all st.i.tched inside a glorious tapestry, breathing the same antiseptic air, cool as pine-a rare atmosphere conscribes us-the family I've pined for, an end to the perennial estrangement I've powered through the world running from. Warren and I both address Dev in coos and smooches and clicks.

Dev squints up with dark blue eyes as if trying to make us out through smoke, and from the instant his gaze brushes by me, some inner high beams flip on. Never have I felt such blazing focus for another living creature. I can't stop looking at him. Joy, it is, which I've never known before, only pleasure or excitement. Joy is a different thing, because its focus exists outside the self-delight in something external, not satisfaction of some inner craving. I feel such untrammeled love for these two beings.

Back in my room, the nurse hands Dev to me again, and boy, is he hollering to blow the hair off your head.

This one has a set of lungs, the nurse says, and a strong opinion.

But soon as I open my seersucker gown to his velvety face, the crying snaps off. Dev nuzzles toward the only spot on my body soft enough to accommodate him, and blessed silence ensues.

Look at him latch on, Warren says.

My hand cups the duck-fuzzed head-such a strong pulse against my hand, faster than my own, but they syncopate somehow like tom-toms from far off villages.

The pediatric nurse says, This one's what we call a sucky baby.

I finally ask, What do you think he's thinking?

You know the static channel on the TV? she says.

It's almost like he knows you, Warren says.

The nurse says, I think they can smell their mothers.

I smooch his little hand, cooing, You're my creme brulee, my chocolate shake, my bear claw. You're my-in a flash, I think of my daddy snuggling the white cat he once so spoiled-boon companion.

With Dev tucked under my arm, I set to staring at him as if to emboss my gaze on him, to seal him in the safe bubble of it, and so also to sear into my own head every iota of him.

Warren comments that he does look an awful lot like Winston Churchill. Put a cigar in his mouth...

Bite your tongue, I say. At some point the woman in the next bed comes over to show us her boy, and when she peels aside the blanket to reveal his face, I have to stop my own recoil, for that is one unfortunate-looking baby.