Offbeat: Uncollected Stories Read online

  And as I sat waiting, I thought of how it had begun; in our apartment about one month before; May 10, 1975.

  She stood facing the window. Angry words still hovered above us. I stepped behind her, closed my fingers on her arms.

  “Baby, let’s not quarrel,” I said.

  She twisted a little in my hands.

  “Oh, Davie,” she said. “Why is it like this?”

  No words could capture the reasons. I could only stroke her arms and kiss her hair. She clasped her hands beneath her chin and I watched the knuckles grow white.

  “You’d think we were asking for the world or something,” she said. “A little new furniture. A few new clothes . . .”

  She sighed.

  “And we want to have a baby,” she said. “What do they call that; sterility of the budget?”

  I had no answer. I felt ashamed to have promised once and not fulfilled.

  “If I could sell an arm,” I said seriously, “or a leg. Maybe my lab would like a . . .”

  “Stop talking like that,” she said peevishly, “that doesn’t help.”

  I put my arms around her. She held on to my wrists tightly.

  “You mustn’t ever talk like that,” she said quietly.

  It was early evening. Up the block, the theatre marquee was flickering on into gaudy colors. In the street, boys were playing ball. Cars kept driving through center field and rolling over home plate.

  “Honey,” she asked, “can’t we afford just one new living room chair? Just one?”

  I exhaled a long loud breath.

  “You know what we have in the bank as well as I do,” I said. “We have to save something. We do want a baby some day don’t we?”

  “O-oh,” she said, her voice rising in annoyance. “Why doesn’t that fool lab pay you a decent salary?”

  I took a deep breath and pulled my arms back. She turned quickly and pressed against me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Davie, I’m sorry.”

  She kissed my cheek and we embraced.

  “Money, money, money,” she said. “Why is it so important? Why does it always spoil everything?”

  “I don’t know baby,” I said. “I just don’t know.”

  That was when I saw Ted’s car turn into the block.

  “Here comes our fair-haired scientist,” I said.

  “Where does he get off with a car like that?” she said.

  Ted and I had both majored in the Biological Unit at Fort College. That was as far as the resemblance went. I was an assistant in a small medical lab in the city’s downtown section. Ted had a high-paying position doing research in genetics at the DeMorgan Institute of Medical Research.

  When he got out of the car, Pat turned to me.

  “I look all right?” she asked.

  “If you looked any better,” I said, “I’d be afraid to let him in.”

  “Huh,” she said and started away. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back.

  “Cut it out,” she laughed. “I have to put lipstick on, not take it off.”

  “No,” I said, kissing her neck. “No, I want you to look like the well-kissed wife when guests come calling.”

  We wrestled until the doorbell rang. Then she kissed me once and pulled away.

  “You old rake,” she said, going into the bedroom.

  “That’s me,” I admitted.

  I opened the door. Ted was a little taller than me. He had a young searching look, a head of blond hair cut to a springy fuzz and the build of a football star.

  “Hello, Dave,” he said, shaking my hand with his powerful grip.

  “Enter,” I said.

  He came in and I waved him to a chair.

  “Where’s Patricia?” he asked.

  “She’ll be out in a second. What tears you away from the test tubes? Tired of bachelor meals?”

  He shook his head with a smile.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll tell you as soon as Patricia is here.”

  “All right.”

  I was making him a drink when Pat came in, her silky brunette hair combed and lips freshly painted with her delicate tint of lipstick.

  “Don’t get up Ted,” she said. “What brings you here? Tired of bachelor meals?”

  I grinned as I handed Ted his drink.

  “You see what an original family we are,” I said. He smiled thinly.

  “I say something?” Pat said. “Make me one, Davie.”

  “Right away. That bachelor meals gag. I just pulled it before you came in.”

  “Well,” she said. “That’s what you get for making me take that fool course in Basic Telepathy at Fort.”

  “I knew you’d live to regret it. Here.” I handed her the drink.

  “Thank you.”

  I sat down in my chair and Pat rested on the arm.

  “What’s the deal, Ted?” I asked. I turned to Pat. “Our boy has something cooking,” I told her.

  “Oh?” she said. “What is it, Ted?”

  “Well, uh,” he said a little awkwardly, “I hope I put this just right. It’s a little . . . uh . . .”

  “Indecent?” I said.

  His lips twitched into a nervous smile.

  “Not at all,” he said affirmatively, “not at all. It’s just that . . . well, let me put it this way. How would you like to make five thousand dollars?”

  “You put it the right way,” I said.

  “Five thousand?” Pat said incredulously. “Dollars?”

  Ted laughed self-consciously.

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “Without murder?” she said.

  “No, no,” he said, perfectly serious in a second. “Strictly honest. I’m just a . . . well, you know. A little embarrassed to . . .”

  He cleared his throat suddenly and sat up straight in the chair.

  “We believe,” he said, as though commencing a formal lecture, “that we’ve succeeded in isolating the male gamete from the female.”

  “What!” I cried.

  That was something we used to muse about at college, make vague conjectures over; strictly the stuff of dreams. I had always considered it beyond the practical means of science.

  “My God,” I said, stunned by it. “They’ve done it? That’s incredible.”

  I leaned forward.

  “How, Ted? How?”

  “Well,” he said, slowly and carefully, “it’s really too complicated a procedure to explain. And, well, to be frank, I don’t understand the whole thing myself. It’s mainly due to a, uh, a centrifugal gimmick we worked out. But there are other factors; a complex mass of them.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said. “I’ll just bet there are. My God would I . . .”

  “Will you please let me in on this?” Pat said. “And kindly tell me where the five thousand dollars comes in.”

  “Baby,” I said excitedly, “don’t you see? If what Ted says is actually so, there’ll be no more guesswork about sex in babies. If a couple wants a boy, they can have one. If they want a girl, they can have a girl.”

  “No kidding?” she said. “That’s wonderful!”

  “Well,” Ted broke in hurriedly, “we . . . we aren’t positive of course. We haven’t tested it with human procreation. Naturally we can’t be sure until we do. And . . .”

  “You want us?” Pat asked. “Is that it?”

  Ted hesitated a moment, then nodded slowly and uncertainly.

  “Well,” he said, “we, uh, we’ve been trying to locate a couple. We thought of advertising. Then . . . I mentioned you two. Well, uh . . .”

  He shifted in the chair and ran a hand over his short-cropped hair.

  “Since there’s no danger involved to the best of my knowledge, why, uh, I thought it would give you a chance to, well, to have that baby you’ve spoken about so often and . . . well, make some money too, and . . .”

  He grimaced.

  “Look,” he said, “I didn’t mean to put it that way. It’s just that . . .”

  “Calm do
wn Ted,” Pat said. “You’re not insulting us.”

  She turned and looked at me. I could see the excitement pouring over the edges. It was a rich uncle dying, a windfall, manna from heaven. I’m sure she didn’t realize for a second how it would be to conceive her first child under such conditions.

  I made Ted tell us more. Most of it Pat didn’t understand. She fidgeted at my side and tried to be patient. But she couldn’t hold her exuberance in. I knew she had already made up her mind.

  When Ted had gone, she made me sit down again. She plopped on my lap and clasped her hands behind my neck, smiling happily.

  “Oh, Davie,” she said with a shiver of delight.

  I smiled and kissed her flushed cheek.

  “We’ll do it, won’t we?” she said. “Won’t we, Davie?”

  “Now listen to me, baby,” I said.

  I told her what it would be like; what she would have to go through; artificial insemination, months of being little better than a guinea pig, perhaps terrible shock to her mind and body.

  It didn’t impress her.

  “Oh, but I can stand it,” she kept insisting. “I can stand it once Davie. Just think of all we can do with five thousand dollars. And we’d be having our baby too. And not only that, we can even decide on whether it’ll be a boy or a girl!”

  In the end I convinced myself that the advantages far outweighed the loss of romance. As always, practicality made the big difference. We could pay our bills, refurnish the apartment, buy clothes, do any number of needed things. Moreover Ted had told us that the Institute would provide all necessary services up to and including the delivery period.

  We sat in the living room that night without turning on the lights, her curled up into a warm bundle on my lap. We talked in happy whispers, while outside the flicker of the theatre marquee sprayed the building walls with blinking colors.

  It was dark. She held on to me, her warm breath caressing my cheek.

  “Davie,” she murmured, “let’s decide whether we should have a boy or a girl.”

  Then she suddenly hugged me and squealed in childlike abandon. “Isn’t it wonderful,” she said, “to decide for ourselves? Isn’t it exciting?”

  It seemed exciting.

  Conception by remote control. Love from a test tube. When I think back on it I wonder how we could have allowed anything so passionless and ugly to enter our marriage.

  I didn’t have her in my arms. I wasn’t caressing her or kissing her and, with my love, softening the bluntness into beauty. I was separated, sitting in a white-walled reception room, smoking nervously. And somewhere, far apart, my wife was conceiving our first child.

  When she came out, she was pale, uneasy. Ted was at her side. I stood up and went to her.

  She pressed her cheek against mine and I felt her fingers dig into my arm. She whispered:

  “It was a little mathematical for a way to have a baby.”

  I tried to speak but I didn’t know what to say. A dozen different endearments sprang into mind and jumbled together. I felt cold and strangely perturbed. I kissed her damp forehead and hugged her.

  “Well, the worst is over,” Ted said, with blatant cheerfulness. “Now you can pick up your check at the cashier’s window.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Fine.”

  But I didn’t feel fine as we pushed through the swinging doors into the deathly quiet hall and started for the elevators. It all seemed fantastic and unreal.

  Then I was holding the check in my hand and Pat was smiling at me like a frightened little girl. And the whole thing poured over me like lead and hardened into a brain-crushing shell.

  It almost made my flesh crawl to fully realize that deep in my wife’s body, cells were joining, mixing, forming the first amorphous pattern of our coming child. I almost felt outraged, betrayed, the butt of an unfaithful act.

  Yet far worse than my own feeling I could sense the terror that gripped Pat. She was really so young, so unprepared. Normal conception would, in itself, have been enough of a shock for her. But this . . .

  I wanted to have her alone, to hold her and soothe her and make up for the cruel way she’d had to receive her baby.

  Down in the street I hailed a cab. After I gave the driver our address I put my arm around her. She fell against me, the breath catching in her throat. I felt her shudder and warm tears ran down my shirt front.

  “Oh, Davie, Davie,” she sobbed.

  “Baby, don’t,” I begged.

  She raised her face quickly and our mouths clung together in a desperate kiss. Then she rubbed her cheek over mine.

  “Just this once,” she murmured in a thin high-strung voice, “never again. I don’t want to have any more babies that way. I want you there when it happens.”

  We held on to each other without a word.

  After a while she calmed down. She sat up a little and took a compact out of her coat pocket; peered at her reflection quizzically.

  “I’m going to be a mother,” she said as if she couldn’t believe it, “a mother.”

  She snapped the compact shut and looked straight ahead with eyes that glistened. I pulled her back. She pushed against me and slid her shaking hands under my jacket.

  “Think of all we can do with that money,” she said hastily. “It’s all right just this once. It’s not so bad now.It’s . . .”

  She shivered and pressed her face against my shoulder.

  “It was so awful.” I heard her muffled shaky voice.

  I stroked her hair gently.

  “Don’t think about it baby,” I said. “We’ll both try to forget it.”

  “Yes,” she said. “We’ll think about new furniture and clothes and . . .

  “Davie,” she said.

  “What is it, baby?”

  She hesitated, fingering the lapel of my jacket with one hand. I heard her throat contracting.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  After a moment she said:

  “Do you think we chose right?”

  “We . . . decided on a boy didn’t we?” I said.

  “Yes, but . . . oh, I’m just silly,” she said, throwing off the mood. “It’s better to know right away. Now we don’t have to worry about it all the time. Will it be a boy? Will it be a girl? We know.”

  The forced look of pleasure faded from her face. She willed it back. “Remember,” she went on quickly as if afraid to let herself think, “remember how we used to laugh at my sister when they were having their babies? When they kept wondering whether they’d have a boy or a girl? Remember that?”

  “I remember,” I said.

  She sighed. I don’t think she meant to speak out loud. It seemed more a thought. She whispered:

  “They had sort of fun though.”

  It was about a week later.

  I woke up around four in the morning and saw that Pat wasn’t lying beside me. I got up slowly and went in the living room. She was standing by the window looking up at the dimming circle of the moon.

  “Oh,” she said, with a start. “You frightened me.”

  “What’s the matter,” I asked. “Can’t you sleep?”

  She took hold of my hand and squeezed it.

  “It’s nothing; I’m all right.”

  “Come on. Tell me,” I said, blinking my eyes to stay awake.

  I sat down on my chair and pulled her down on my lap. She rested her head on my shoulder.

  “Now,” I said.

  “I was thinking about little Igor,” she said.

  I chuckled sleepily.

  “That’s a fine name,” I said. “Well, what about little Igor?”

  She rubbed her hand over my chest.

  “I was thinking we lost something.”

  “Lost? What?”

  “Oh,” she said, “There’s something about . . . about not knowing that’s nice.”

  That woke me up a little. It was true. Uncertainty can be beautiful. It can be exciting. We had lost that.

 
; “Are you sorry already?” I asked.

  She lifted her head and kissed my cheek.

  “No, no, darling,” she said softly, “I’m not sorry. We always wanted a boy. I’d be silly to complain now just because there’s no chance of me having a girl.”

  But there was something wistful in her voice as though she half hoped she might have a girl.

  “I just hope they don’t tell us more,” she said.

  “About what, baby?” I said, closing my eyes.

  “I mean, I hope they don’t tell us any more about Igor. I don’t want to know. I think it would be awful to know.”

  I tightened my arms around her and rested my head against hers.

  “Don’t worry baby,” I said yawning. “All we know is that it’ll be a boy. There’s still plenty of mystery left.”

  She sighed and tugged me.

  “Sure there is,” she said. “Plenty of it.”

  Then she got up and tugged me to my feet.

  “Come on, sleepyhead,” she whispered.

  It was after a month that Ted came.

  It was colder and he had a briefcase with him. Otherwise, it seemed as though his last visit were being repeated. I made him a drink. Pat came out of the bedroom, hair combed, lips repainted. She sat on the arm of my chair.

  “Hello Ted,” she said.

  “Hello,” he said. “I . . . I see you’ve redone the apartment.”

  “Do you like it?” she said. “Little Igor paid for it.”

  “Who? Oh, are you going to name . . .”

  “How do you like that?” Pat went on. “Most parents have to wait for twenty years before their kids start to pay off. Ours isn’t even born yet and already he’s redecorated the apartment.”

  Her lips were pressed together into a tight humorless smile. I squeezed her arm as Ted glanced at me, lost for something appropriate to say.

  “I was only kidding,” Pat said.

  “Oh,” said Ted. “I . . . I . . .”

  “What’s the briefcase for?” she asked.

  Ted cleared his throat as he unzipped the top jerkily.

  “Well,” he said, “I think I have something here you’ll find . . . well, interesting.”

  While he was bent over the case I turned Pat toward me and looked into her eyes. Her face was a mask of calm. She smiled at me quickly and, bending over suddenly, she kissed me on the cheek. Her fingers tightened on my shoulder.