Drugged on her breast milk, he slumped like a marionette whose manipulator had relinquished their grip on the control bar. Carefully, so as not to startle him awake, she laid him in the bassinet and beamed over him, focusing on the tiny folds of his sleeper that stretched and coiled with every breath. Their son. Their miracle.
She let herself linger a little longer, before turning to attend to the soiled diaper on the changing table. So automatically now she performed the routine, having perfected her technique over the last two weeks. Rinsing it in the toilet, until the mustard seeds diffused away, then ringing it out, she pivoted to toe the foot pedal, lifting the lid off the plastic tub, and dropped the soggy, wadded cotton cloth into it with a little splash. The chlorine in the diluted bleach stung her nostrils....
...for just six months, why couldn't he have given up the pleasures of the hot tub--for her. For them? It could have been the reason his sperm count was so low. The doctor had said so. Or the fact that he had to get high nearly every night. That too, they were told, was another cause for male infertility. But he wouldn't quit. Not for her. Not for them.
It didn't seem fair. Mary and Giovanni had gotten pregnant after a miscarriage. So had Sara and Peter. In fact, they had had two children since their miscarriage, and Peter had made an appointment for a vasectomy, marking the end of his procreative life. But she and Paolo just couldn't conceive again.
For months she had bourn the grief of that awful day, when her supreme happiness was dashed, shattered like a priceless porcelain vase knocked accidentally to the tile floor. Once her sorrow had finally abated, she became infused with that woman's need again. She had become seductive with Paolo, making love daily or, occasionally, twice a day. But when that didn't yield results after two months, she immersed herself in "How To" books, became obsessed with measuring her basal body temperatures, and maniacally checked her cervical mucous so they could save themselves for the optimal time of the month for love. But months of scientifically timed sex hadn't succeeded either. In contrast to her relentless pursuit, she thought Paolo had become apathetic in the quest for a baby. It was her idea, she recalled, that they see a doctor about it.....
A tapping sound--was that Peter knocking? No, just a chickadee cracking a sunflower seed against the wooden bench outside the window. Time for her to get to the other chores before her precious babe would awaken again and demand more of her intoxicating elixir.
With her forearm, she pressed twice on the pump, dispensing the soap, and used her elbow to turn on the water. After she finished washing and drying her hands, she mentally scanned the "to-do" list. Last night's dishes, she decided upon, and ambled to the kitchen. Rudely greeted by the cold water that the dishes were soaking in, she shuddered...
...why didn't he ever warm that thing? Running it under hot water for a few seconds or even holding it in his hands, would have made the insertion of the speculum, prying her labia apart, a little more of a sensual experience. As intelligent and successful a man as he was, Paolo just didn't have the sensitivity to things like that. But maybe this task was just outside his comfort zone. Or perhaps he thought that his frozen, concentrated sperm would have been stressed if the gangplank were too warm. Or who knows what else may have been going through his mind as he prepared to thaw the vial in his left hand, and then to shakily suck its contents into the syringe with his right.
They were to make love once the sperm was squeezed onto her cervix, the stainless steel removed from her vagina, and he was undressed.
She recalled the last time, which was like the first--and most of the others in between. She had stayed on her back, and he had laid on top of her. They kissed until he achieved a hard-enough on, then he worked his erection into her vagina, and pumped away, his bony hips rocking against her amply-padded thighs and abdomen, reaching the harmonic frequency of the mattress that made the bed creak and groan. Minutes later he came, gasped out the perfunctory "Love you, love you," and then collapsed onto her chest, breathing deeply, sweaty and warm.
As he was due at the airport the next morning at 8:00, he didn't have time for a lengthy afterglow, and he rolled off her, turned over, and was soon breathing in sonorous sighs. She had reached down inside herself to find his warm residue, and brought up a two-finger dollop through her nether lips to her clitoris. Encircling her womanhood, to suffuse it, to nourish it, to make it swell into a taut-skinned berry, she had then crushed it with her fingers against her pubic bone, stiffening in jerks and tightening in spasms of pelvic contractions while she imaged the sperm being sucked up into her willing and waiting womb. And it had worked! The rest was history--natal history, that is...
She glanced at the wall clock--almost 10:00. When did Peter say he was coming over today? Eleven, she remembered. Today was Thursday, his day off, and as he had seen her baby only briefly at the hospital, and then among a throng of congratulators the following week, today would afford him the luxury of time to hold little Pietro, and to watch him suckle, and maybe even to change his diaper...
...They had grown close in those years after her miscarriage; so patiently had he listened to her as she perseverated on her loss, their failing attempts to conceive again, Paolo's this and Paolo's that, her proffered certitude, her hidden doubts. She smiled at the recall of the first time he had placed her hand between both of his as she lamented how everyone had children so why not them? "We've done nothing to deserve this," she had wailed.
As she had evolved from woe-are-we to working through this curse as if it were a strait to negotiate, he sat transfixed at her stories of wifely wantonness, at those escapades of alluring Paolo with a stiff bustier, lacy lingerie, and liberally applied mascara, blush and eye shadow. Again, when her efforts had ended in tears of disappointment, Peter had been there. They had hugged. A lot. Which gave her the encouragement to go on.
It was he who had suggested Take Charge of Your Fertility, and she, devouring it like an Agatha Christie mystery, became convinced it was the answer. But it too, failed to bear her any fruit. And when month after month of getting her period had repeatedly pushed her over the edge, he was there to catch her at each free fall, with a tender embrace, a kiss, and....
She squeezed out the sponge and wiped the counter crumbs into her palm, raised the compost lid and deposited them. Time for a quick shower. She picked up the baby monitor and carried it with her to the bathroom. He was still sleeping--his respirations clearly amplified through the device. What did mothers do before these gadgets, she marveled.
Naked, she surveyed her olive-tinted complexion in the mirror. Without makeup, her eyes had color, but it was from the bluish hue of sleep deprivation beneath them, and the pink glow produced by repeated rubbing. Her arcing nose remained unblemished, but her mouth still lacked that prominent "cupid's bow" which helped to further the careers of her idolized cinema stars.
Her gaze tracked from chin to neck to her now gargantuan breasts, with rich brown areolas and cobblestone nipples, milk droplets beading up on them then dripping to the floor--and those prominent veins. She grimaced at her belly's paunch, zigzagged by ruddy stretch marks, both bold reminders of the size she had once swollen to. The full extent of her generous thighs was interrupted, fortunately, by the mirror's edge, and she broke away from her critique and turned to adjust the water temperature, reassured herself once more by listening to Pietro's breathing pattern, and stepped behind the vinyl curtain.
