Fiction

Malcolm: Part I

Alan Lewis was dutifully and very willingly present at the birth of their first child — a boy, they knew, from the modest genitalia that drifted into focus on the ultrasound seven months before. His name, once he appears, will be Malcolm — after the sole proprietor of their favorite bar on Haight Street.

Alan stood in the delivery room in scrubs and mask by Evelyn’s side comforting her, stroking her forehead, and whispering nonsense into her ear even though she was feeling very little pain due to the epidural block she’d demanded seven hours into her labor.

As paired humans go, Alan and Evelyn were uniquely compatible. They seldom if ever argued; both possessed a higher-than-average empathic quotient, (he possessing perhaps a bit more than she). They shared an equal appreciation for the arts, were fond of New German cinema, and listened almost exclusively to Jazz. They met eight years ago performing in Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano as part of small theater group. Now, she painted large, bright-colored representational canvases; he wrote droll, semi-autobiographical short stories. This — this birthing — would no doubt be reproduced somewhere, somehow, with names changed.

They’d spent the night at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, and while Evelyn slept peacefully, he stood at the window of her room overlooking the midnight traffic on Parnassus Street far below. As he listened to the steady march of Malcolm’s heartbeat on the fetal monitor, Alan savored the thought approaching parenthood. If this were 20 years earlier the term would more likely have been fatherhood. But this was 1986. He had matured on the left coast during the second wave of feminism and had a firm, male-feminist mindset. He knew, in fact, that if there were an ancillary component in the room right now, what with Evelyn and Malcolm so biologically entwined, it was him.

As the mood in the delivery room intensified, Alan whispered “I’ll be right back,” and moved to the actual scene taking place in front of Evelyn’s birth canal. He stood behind the ob/gyn and the birthing nurse waiting for Malcolm’s entrance. The ob/gyn was a young black woman with long corn rows hidden under her pale blue hair covering. The birthing nurse was a pleasant, slightly older white woman who appeared to have had a few of these moments of her own. The overriding sense at UCSF, a teaching hospital, was that the only ones who really knew what they were doing, had experienced numerous births, deaths, appendectomies, lumpectomies, diverticulectomies, colonoscopies, etc., were the nurses. It was they who appeared nonchalant in most circumstances, waited for just the right moment to mention an overlooked procedure, while adroitly hinting that this was obviously something the surgeon was planning to do anyway. The interns, on the other hand, tended to present forced smiles, wore brittle shells of professionalism, and performed even the simplest tasks as if defusing a cluster bomb.

Alan watched as the ob/gyn coached Evelyn: “Bear down, Evelyn! Push! Push! That’s it,” and congratulated himself on his lack of squeamishness. He’d seen this aspect of Evelyn thousands of times; had seen this aspect of several other women in the past as well. No big deal. It wasn’t fear or revulsion that Alan felt, but unbridled excitement. He understood that he was witnessing the most surreal moment one could experience without the aid of hallucinogens: the transformation of a thought, a desire, a year-long dream into squirming, sentient reality in a matter of minutes. This was nothing to fear, but to rejoice.

In the middle of Evelyn’s straining and grunting and the ob/gyn’s coaxing, a tall, spectral figure carrying a clipboard entered the delivery room. The spectral presence glided up to the gurney and stood silently peering down over all the activity like an obstetric god. Of course, due to his presence, the atmosphere of the delivery room grew even more tense. The ob/gyn moved with even more self-consciousness, announced her every thought, her every action. The nurse ignored all this and continued to assist when and where she was needed and otherwise chatted with Evelyn.

The ob/gyn announced: “The baby’s head is crowning,” and the spectral obstetric presence said, “Yes, crowning,” then scribbled something in his notebook. Alan watched intently as the top of Malcolm’s head began to extrude through Evelyn’s vaginal opening. He was not at all prepared for what he saw.

What he expected to see: A head. Specifically, the rounded, small, faintly furry human head of his son.

What he saw: An extruding tubular mass not unlike a liverwurst with hair on it.

This was not Malcolm. How had this not been predicted by the ultrasound? Alan imagined their tortured future doing their best to love and attend to — not a child — but a piece of hairy deli meat with a heartbeat. Would it have eyes? Would it learn to speak? Would they keep it in a crib or a cage?

Alan looked away, felt woozy, and had to move to the wall of the delivery room for support, being careful not to appear too startled for Evelyn’s sake. He stood, hand upon wall supporting his weight, looking at the floor, taking deep, slow breaths.

He knew it. He knew it was going too well. He’d always done this: adopted an overly optimistic view of life events. Had been over-confident. The classic Parsifal. A fully grown man as Pollyanna. Would he ever learn to worry instead of just assume shit doesn’t happen?

Alan looked at Evelyn, her face in a grimace as she bared down, and he felt sorry for her. And then he was overwhelmed with feelings of love for her, for them.

“The head is through, Evelyn,” he heard the ob/gyn say. “Now one more push to get the shoulders through.”

Head? Shoulders? It is human then?

“Yes!” the ob/gyn said. “Stop pushing now, Evelyn. Hold on. . . . Here he comes. . . . That’s a boy!”

And then the cries. It has happened — seconds ago there were only five people in the room; now there are six. Alan looked toward the ob/gyn. She seemed calm. The nurse seemed calm. The spectral obstetric presence looked at the clock on the wall and said, “The time is 6:43am,” then scribbled again in his notebook. “The father may want to cut the umbilical cord.” The ob/gyn looked up at Alan. “Do you want to cut the cord?”

“Um… sure,” Alan said, as if she’d asked him if he wanted a cookie.

The nurse handed Alan a pair of scissors. He was surprised how much they looked like standard scissors, nothing particularly surgical about them, maybe the kind used in a crafts class. The nurse held the umbilical cord taut and Alan snipped through it, sensing the strength of the tissues, the integrity of this lifeline, now severed. Beneath his mask, he smiled. He handed the scissors to the nurse. “Thank you.” She nodded and said, “Good job, Dad.”

The nurse took Malcom and placed him on the delivery table while she and the ob/gyn and the supervising physician conferred.

Conferring? What about? What could they be discussing? Was something missing? Was there something extra?

The nurse eventually swaddled Malcolm and turned toward Alan. “Do you want to see your son?”

“Yes!” Alan said. “Of course.” Malcolm was still crying. Though Alan had seen the overall form of him he’d not yet seen Malcolm’s face. He looked down at the tiny swaddled person in the nurse’s arms.

Again, he was not prepared.

What Alan saw: Not the angelic being he imagined, but his father-in-law in almost every detail.

Once more, he nearly swooned.

Served him right. Assuming all along that at this moment he’d gaze upon a more handsome, though admittedly smaller and not fully formed version of himself. How is it that he’d completely ignored the possibility of recessive genetic inheritance? Evelyn, too: she had surely believed that her father’s traits would somehow be filtered out of the myriad processes that formed their little one.

Alan took a deep breath and adjusted his mindset. We shall love him despite the fact that he looks like a bitter, self-absorbed, fifty-six-year-old Jewish restaurant supply salesman. We will shower him with enough love to transform him.

The nurse explained that Malcolm had a mild case of conjunctivitis and that he’d need to be kept in neonatal intensive care once he and Evelyn had made acquaintance with their otherwise perfect son.

At this point, the spectral presence made his exit.

The nurse gingerly handed Malcolm to Alan. He held the tiny, bundled weight in his arms and fell instantly in love. And, as if on cue, Malcolm’s cries stopped.

“Hello?” Evelyn waved from the gurney. “Over here!”

“Yes!” Alan said. He took Malcolm to her and laid him on her chest. “He looks like your father.”

Evelyn’s expression softened at the sight of him. “No he doesn’t!” she said. “He’s beautiful.”

Alan kissed Evelyn’s forehead, then together they gazed at Malcolm, fondled his miniature, wrinkled hands, fingered his fingers, stroked his cheeks and the cushiony top of his head.

This is what they’d been thinking about all those months. This was the body he’d felt at night rubbing up against his back from inside the uterine wall. This was what caused the indigestion and the fluttering in her stomach, the object that performed gymnastics inside her at random moments throughout the day and night.

To Alan, Malcolm no longer resembled his father-in-law. In fact, as he watched, Malcom’s faced morphed into a full cast of family members: his sister, his brother, Evelyn’s mother, a cousin here or there, the whole genetic code was playing itself out in time-lapse. He felt exactly as he had when on psychedelics years ago: the tingling sensations, the second-by-second morphing of his visual field, objects rimmed in multi-colored halos. He wasn’t tripping, only sleep-deprived and witnessing a universally transcendent life moment. Alan had always been a highly impressionable, feeling sort — which was one of the traits that attracted Evelyn to him. That, and his lack of Jewishness, and something about his cheekbones that reminded her of a subject in a Gauguin painting. What Alan responded to in Evelyn was, in no particular order: her breasts, her long curly brown hair, her delicate hands, her sense of humor, her full lips, large eyes, and her Jewishness.

The nurse interrupted them to say that Malcolm needed to be treated for the conjunctivitis right away and that it was time for Evelyn to complete this whole birthing thing and “pass the placenta.” Alan heard this as a request that could be made at a dinner table.

The nurse took Malcolm and disappeared through the delivery room door while the ob/gyn assisted Evelyn, encouraging her to “Push,” once again. And again, Alan watched. He had become fascinated by the birthing process, so much so that he almost entertained the idea of hanging out in the neonatal ward in his scrubs and sneaking into other mothers’ deliveries. As Evelyn pushed, there slowly appeared a bloody, gelatinous mass which the ob/gyn gathered and plopped into a surgical tray. She inspected it, poked it, flipped it over, and said, “Everything appears to be in order here.”

“That’s good,” Alan said. “Thank you so much. You did a wonderful job.”

The doctor looked up at him, then nodded toward Evelyn. “She’s the one who’s done all the work. Don’t forget, I get paid to do what I do.” He imagined her smiling beneath her surgical mask. He was in love with her. He wanted to be her. He was in love with everyone, wanted to be everyone. He was a sleep-deprived, garden variety neurotic flying high on oxytocin.

Alan returned to Evelyn’s side and hugged her, then peered into her face. “Congratulations, mother.” “Congratulations, father,” she said. They kissed. “Well,” he said, “I need to make some phone calls, Lenny needs walking, and I…” Alan sniffed his shirt. “…could use a shower.” Evelyn sniffed him, “Mmmm….”

Arrangements were made for him to return to the hospital and pick Evelyn and Malcom up around noon. It was just past 7:30 and he’d been awake all night.

He left the delivery room and stopped the first person he saw in scrubs and asked for directions to the acute care ward. “My son is there. He had a little conjunctivitis?” Alan pointed to his left eye. The nurse pointed down the hallway. “To the end of the hall, turn left, second set of doors on your right.” Alan thanked her and walked down the hallway, peering through the doors and windows of other birthing rooms as he passed, hoping to witness another blessed birth, but there were none.

Alan found the acute care ward and entered. In the small anteroom a woman sat in a rocking chair with a baby in her arms. He smiled at her and continued to another room where there were several enclosed incubators, only one of them with a newborn inside. A nurse came up to him. “My son? Malcolm?” He said. “Just born? Conjunctivitis?” The nurse pointed to the incubator with a baby bundled inside. Alan’s heart fell at the sight of Malcolm wrapped in a blanket alone inside a plastic box like a mummified child in a museum case. “Can I hold him?” The nurse shook her head. “No,” she said, “We can’t expose the ward. It’s just a precaution. We’ve put ointment on his eyes. He’ll be fine.” She led him to the incubator and demonstrated how the sleeves worked. She gave him latex gloves to put on first. “You just reach in,” she said. “You can handle him that way.” The nurse pulled up a chair for him. “I’m sorry, but we don’t want an outbreak.” Alan sat. “I understand,” he said. He inserted his hands and arms into the sleeves. How odd, he thought, to be handling one’s child as if he were a radioactive isotope. He gently touched Malcolm’s shoulder and spoke: “Hello little one…. How are you?” He gazed into Malcom’s face: so delicate, so well-formed, no longer resembling anyone in particular. He smiled at the little pink and blue cap on his head. “Nice hat.” Though he knew that Malcom would never remember any of this, Alan also knew how important it was that he feel the touch of another. This little act of caressing him and speaking to him seemed at once insignificant compared to a lifetime, and yet monumental considering that his life so far equaled slightly over an hour. Alan sat with Malcolm until he was at least partially satisfied that he’d made some connection, maybe imprinted a small signature of himself. “I’ll be back, Sweetie.” Alan pulled his hands out of the box and removed his gloves. The nurse pointed to a foot-operated trash bin. “You can put the gloves there. When you’re ready to leave we’ll bring him to his mother’s recovery room.” Alan thanked the nurse, took one last glance at Malcolm, and waved goodbye to him.

He left the hospital in a daze, a semi-delirious mélange of melancholy, fatigue, and profound satisfaction. The mood was reminiscent of mornings after partying all night with friends. Every pore of his skin effervesced as if he were swimming in seltzer. It was October — October 15 to be exact. Tuesday… no… Wednesday. The weather was typically pleasant for a San Francisco fall: no fog, no wind, temperature already in the sixties. Alan spun around as he looked at the sky above, filled with uniform blue. There is another Malcolm in the world, he thought. He made a mental note to buy a New York Times so that years later they could review what else happened on this day.

He stepped off the curb onto Parnassus Avenue, the same spot he gazed at the night before, paying no attention to the traffic because he simply assumed that there was none.

END