Breastfeeding in summer sundresses and tank tops afforded us easy access but was sticky and warm, even more difficult during a heat wave and overstimulating as Frank gnawed on my nipples, sending little painful injections into the surface of my hot skin. We sweated together, sweet and sour, salty and sapped. Although I could have fallen asleep in the rocking chair, I knew if I could transfer Franco’s body into his lower bunk, I’d finally be able to confirm or refute my latest worry.
I’d been taking my birth control pill haphazardly. Before I’d birthed children, the pill had little negative effect on me, aside from its obvious purpose of preventing conception, but since Irie was born, every prescription made me feel queasy. The synthetic hormones, as opposed to the natural ones, deadened my libido and my sense of self; I’d feel depressed and numb. I experimented with new pill-popping patterns, hoping to avoid nausea—at bedtime, in the morning, with lunch—but now I wasn’t menstruating either. I wish I’d tracked how many pregnancy tests I bought between the first time Ryan and I had sex and now, at which point I was buying First Response mega boxes, just to keep the sticks on hand, like Band-Aids or tampons. My body was in a constant state of hormonal adjustment with the nonstop breastfeeding and postpartum recoveries. Although on one hand, my textbook cycles never betrayed me, on the other hand, I was continually permutating. I’d ultimately give up birth control altogether and resort to the rhythm method, natural family planning that seemed to work.
When the fireworks began, I could feel them detonating inside my rib cage. As I carried Francis to his cool sheets, he threw his arms over his head, sleeping, as babies do, to air out the soft pleats of their armpits. Our house rumbled. I imagined we were inside a nuclear fallout shelter. Half the population of Oshkosh, right outside our windows, sacrificed their lives for some short-lived but radiant pleasure.
I’d peed on so many tests, I never bothered anymore to read the directions. The urine spread through the little window quickly as if somebody had pulled the shade. Any sighted person in the world can decode two pink lines. They crawl slyly into view with perfect lineographic certainty like two styluses across an Etch A Sketch.
I was pregnant.
Worry was not the honest word, except that I was worried about Ryan’s reaction. I’d knowingly been imagining another baby—a fifth load of laundry, a fifth twang of laughter. Our lovemaking was no accident either. It still felt purposeful and creative as opposed to recreational. And hadn’t I been harboring baby clothes since that fight over Goodwill donations in the basement, claiming ridiculously we’d save some special baby clothes for Fern’s baby dolls or our future grandchildren? Sure, he’d convinced me of his position at Koreana, and sure, I’d concurred, but no number of “Your Honors” prevented me from changing my mind.
As the last pyrotechnics rocked our house, rendering us deaf and numb, a titanium salute that resounded till morning, I stood alone in the bathroom, holding a proclamation: we were going to be parents again. I was afraid Ryan would feel betrayed, and I was already dreading the first twenty weeks—sickness and exhaustion. During every previous first trimester, I’d fallen asleep against my will by dinnertime, leaving Ryan to cook, clean, and bathe the children alone. But I also realized that taking birth control pills was just a ruse, all along. I’d opened my mouth and swallowed inconsistently, and in my heart, those little tablets were just placebos.
A cavalcade of people trudged by our house, children balancing on the short retention wall holding our garden in place, and at long last, the front door yawned. Ryan carried Fern up to bed. We marveled how children could fall asleep at concerts and basketball games and fireworks displays. Irie and Leo were itchy and hot. They footslogged upstairs without being asked twice. They closed their eyes; lights out.
“I need a quick shower,” Ryan said. He was filmy with bug spray and sweat. I waited for him at the foot of our bed, knowing he’d cranked the water cold. After his shower, he walked into our bedroom, already sweating again, wrapped at his waist in a towel. Droplets of water clung to his skin like transparent little scuttle bugs.
“So, I have to tell you something,” I said.
“Don’t tell me you’re pregnant.” Maybe he was waiting for a fifth baby too, the inevitability of my need and desire like a footnote in his vehement case against it.
“Yes, I think so.”
He unknotted his towel and stood there naked. Then he grabbed the towel by the corners and tightened it, as if he were going to whip or snap the bath sheet, aimed at me, but he didn’t do that either. He dropped the towel and began to laugh. He walked toward the door and closed it, so that he could laugh harder.
“We’re fucked,” he said. He perched, though with gravitas, on the edge of our bed, bare-bottomed and thick around his waist, clutching his thick, wet hair in white-knuckled fists. The dusty ceiling fan whipped in variables over his head, Ryan’s laughter rising and catching in the old brown propellers. “Oh, honey,” he chuckled. “We’re totally fucked.”
The very next day, we were scheduled for the rare luxury of dropping the kids at my dad and Nancy’s house. We were headed to Summerfest to see the Avett Brothers in concert. I imagined the worst, Ryan haranguing or scolding me in the comical but overbearing way he castigated our children, pulling his Ryan-isms from a deep, dark bag of tricks. “I’ll give you something to smirk about,” he’d admonish, if Leo or Fern covered their lips, smug beneath their little five-fingered fig leaves. “You’ll be sorry,” he’d say, or “If you don’t watch it, I’ll spank you so hard it’ll send you into next week.”
