Spirals by Joan Gould

Author:Joan Gould [Gould, Joan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82645-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-26T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

I’ve been to the doctor,” Karen said on October fifth. “The cervix is effacing. I’m dilated two centimeters.”

“The cervix,” she said, not “my cervix,” as if it belonged to someone else.

“You can’t be early. You promised.” When she was twelve, she worried for a week about visiting the orthodontist to have a mold made of her teeth before she got braces. Would it hurt terribly? she wanted to know. Terribly, Ted assured her. She’d probably vomit. Lots of kids did. But she wouldn’t vomit if she thought of it as a big fat mouthful of pink bubble gum.

“I promised?” Karen said. “Well, all I know is that the head’s engaging.”

“She won’t be early. I’ll bet on that,” Ted volunteered.

“And how do you know?”

“She’s too much of a camel. Remember the car trips we took when we were little? She wouldn’t go to the toilet for days and days, I think it was two weeks once when we drove through France, because she couldn’t find a place that was clean enough to suit her. Without footrests and a hole in the floor.”

Felicia turned toward me. “First children are always late, aren’t they? Wasn’t Ted?”

“I’m not sure.”

“She’s not sure because she’s always late herself. If I’d showed up on time she wouldn’t have been home yet.”

“Twilight sleep was the big thing in those days. The doctor knocked you for a loop as soon as you came through the door of the hospital. You were supposed to go home and tell your friends ‘I don’t remember a thing after I took my clothes off.’ ”

“Twilight sleep as distinguished from midnight sleep or noontime naps?” Ted wanted to know.

I went to sleep and had a dream, and when I woke up a child was handed to me. The story of the stork had to be the true one. This couldn’t be anything I had done myself. But forever after, between that child and me, a gap existed, a gap of wonder and undeserving that was central to our lives. It was my child who was the older of us two, the proficient one, the creator who stayed awake, and did his job, and created me a mother while I slept.

“Doesn’t sound like a bad idea,” Felicia murmured. “Twilight sleep.”

“Personally, I’d rather let a junior associate do it,” Kurt broke in.

“You going to have the lithotomy position?” Ted asked his sister. “It’s only for your doctor’s convenience, you know. Shows he’s boss.”

“Even if my doctor’s a woman?”

“She’s going to have a baby, that’s what she’s going to have,” Felicia snapped.

“Your doctor says it’s all right to go to your office when you’re already dilated?” I asked Karen.

“Of course. Don’t fuss. I could go on like this for another two, three weeks. Besides, my doctor’s still in Switzerland on vacation and won’t be back until the fourteenth. She was supposed to go last month, but an emergency came up and she had to postpone her trip, so I’ve been seeing the woman who covers for her.

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