Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Hamish
Snow in Boston is like looking through a kaleidoscope. Cozy movie snowfall one minute, horizontal assault the next.
And speaking of assaults, our living room looks like a baby store exploded.
Boxes, packing paper, plastic, the new crib still in its box, and in the corner, a plush animal so huge, it should be paying rent. I think it's a giraffe. Or a cow. Maybe a horse born with forceps?
Amy stands in the doorway, arms crossed, wearing my team hoodie and burgundy leggings, eyeing the chaos and the Godzilla-sized animal like she wishes it would animate and eat me.
"I'm going to Mike's Pastry," she announces. "I need cannoli and ten minutes where nothing in the room is trying to choke, stab, smother, or emotionally manipulate me."
"I ken ye dinna mean me, and I dinna think the crib is emotionally manipulative," I say. "The giraffe/cow demon, aye, but—"
She points at the crib box: "When I come back in one hour, this will be assembled."
Then the baby wrap on the couch: "You will figure out how to wear that."
Then the giant giraffe/cow demon thing: "And that abomination will at least be turned around to face the wall. I swear its eyes follow me."
I straighten up. I can't magically fix my knee or guarantee a contract, but I can assemble furniture and tame beasts.
"Aye, pet. Consider it done. I'm verra good at managing equipment."
"Hamish." She is squinting at me. "When we moved in together, you thought my salad spinner was a helmet."
"In ma defense, it fits ma head."
She kisses me, warm and quick.
"One hour. Or I'm returning everything. Including you."
"Stay warm! It's balty out there."
The door shuts. Snow whips past the window.
Right. Me versus the baby gear.
I start with the wrap because it looks simple, but that proves to be deceptive.
Big piece of gray jersey fabric with instructions that might as well be a kink manual for folks who like being tied up.
In desperation, I pull up a few videos. The people in them do mystical origami with the fabric and end up with a baby tucked securely under their chins, like it's nothing.
If they can do it, I certainly can. It's just fabric after all.
"Now you can breastfeed!" says a woman wearing so much gauzy mauve clothing, she looks like a walking maypole. She pulls her tit out and stuffs it in the wee bairn's face. I hear gulping, look down at my chest, and frown.
"Mebbe that's the problem. I've no tit. That's why I canna make this work."
My knee starts to ache from standing, weight uneven. I want this sorted before Amy comes back so I can show her I've got this. That I'm more than just good intentions and jokes and stuffed animals taller than a basketball hoop.
"A different video," I mutter. "One wi' a man." I scroll through YouTube until I find one with a still of a bearded dad wearing a red T-shirt, a backwards baseball cap, and a baby. It's captioned "Duct Tape Works But You Like Your Chest Hair." I click.
"Welcome to the Dadding 101 Channel, with me, your host, Ari Dadoofsky."
Dear Lord, tell me that's a stage name.
"I'm here with Peanut and before we get started, clickeroo on the old subscribe button. Bam bam bam. Dadoofsky needs sweet ad revenue to buy his brewski so he can make it through the dayski as a stay-at-home dad!"
I close the video. New strategy.
I find the AI app on my phone, smugly waiting to tell me whatever I want to know. Amy used it for ancestral Canadian citizenship research; it can handle one babywrap.
"How do I put on a baby wrap?" I ask it.
It spits out a long series of paragraphs about how to avoid a baby trap.
"Nae," I tell it, as if I can learn anything new about that - I'm an expert at keeping women from doing that. "How do I put on a baby wrap, no' a baby trap!"
Now it talks about baby horses.
"Ye got horses from that? What a load of pish!"
Now it starts telling me about fishermen off the coast of Cape Cod.
"I willna throw ma new phone at the wall," I tell myself, though I'm right tempted. The AI keeps getting my instructions wrong. So much for state-of-the-art tech.
And then I realize why.
My accent.
These software developers couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were on the sole. I look at the screen. It says:
Your request for information on "I will now throw my knee fan at the whale" leads to...
"OCH!" My blood pressure spikes.
I relax the muscles in the back of my throat and press my tongue flat in my mouth. Not too hard, just in the shape of American laziness.
"How do I put on a baby wrap?" I ask in my best American accent. The words taste like I'm drinking a Miller Lite pissbucket, but it gives me exactly what I need, a set of clear instructions. I activate voice mode and listen.
"Stand in front of a mirror. Find the center of the wrap, place it across your torso, cross the ends behind your back..."
Limping into the bathroom, I prop the phone on the sink, unfold the wrap, and face the mirror.
"Center on torso," I mutter, smoothing fabric across my chest. "Cross in the back..."
I twist, the knee brace pulls, and the wrap slips. Now I've got one tail under my armpit and the other somehow behind my neck.
"Make an X on your chest," the instructions say.
I try again—cross, pull, tuck—but something goes wrong in step four. The fabric cinches under my shoulder blade and jerks my arm in. Now I'm halfway into a straitjacket, knee bent, weight off, balance gone.
I shift to fix it and my heel nudges the base of the toilet. The seat is up, which means I was the last one to use it and therefore, what happens next is entirely my fault.
Dammit.
I twist and sit down hard, in fucking cold toilet water.
"JESUS—"
I grab for the counter with my free hand so I don't go fully in, but I am now wedged in the open toilet, fully clothed, half-mummified in gray jersey. My knee screams.
If my da could see me now, he'd laugh until he pissed himself, then wander away calling for one of my brothers to take blackmail video.
The phone, still on the sink, pings.
It's Mum: Have you and Amy picked a date for the proper reception yet? Your da keeps telling folk "soon."
Another ping almost on top of it. Mum again: We need to book the hall. Scotland makes the most sense and that way, our priest can hear your confession. You broke the poor man years ago, why do it to anyone else?
Like they have some kind of mind meld, Marie starts texting me, too: I'm thinking late summer?? We should start planning! I have IDEAS.
I close my eyes. My balls are completely soaked, cold little boaby buoys.
The reception. The imaginary reception we keep not having, but lives in our mothers' minds like a fantasy football league with floral arrangements.
Mum pings: Hamish? Why are you ignoring me? I know your schedule. You're home. It's not like you're working.
My hands are wet from toilet water. My ass is freezing. I can't reach my back to untangle the wrap and my knee's at a horrible angle. I need both hands free but right now, I've got one clutching slippery porcelain and the other trying not to cross-contaminate my phone.
"Voice to text," I mutter. "We're at that point."
I tap the microphone and speak slowly.
"Mum, we're no' having a reception. We talked about it. Amy will be very pregnant by then. We are done with wedding stuff."
The text appears: Mum we are now having an infection we talked about it Amy will be very pregnant by then we are done with wedding stuff
Then I stare in frustration as the text goes through to her.
"Noooooo!" I tell the phone, too late. I try again.
"Not having a reception, Mum. Not. Reception. No party. That's final."
The app dutifully produces: Not having a c section mum. Not resurrection. No party with anal.
I let out a sound that might be a laugh or a sob.
Another ping.
A C section?? What infection? Why did no one tell me? What hospital? Is Amy all right??
Another bubble: And who do you think you're talking to? Anal? You need confession worse than I thought.
"I am literally stuck in a toilet," I tell the phone. "This is no' the time."
"The time is now seven forty-two p.m.," it intones.
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!"
"The birth of Jesus occurred in what scholars and religious leaders—"
I click out of the app.
I try to use my free hand to unwind the wrap from around my waist. Bad move. The fabric tightens and my brace jams against the base of the toilet. I slip, catch myself with my wet hand, and my phone wobbles on the edge of the sink.
"No, no, no—" I grab for it.
The phone bounces once on the edge of the sink, makes a little ping of pure betrayal, and drops.
Straight.
Into.
The toilet.
The splash is generous.
"AW, FOR FUCK'S SAKE," I roar, lunging up with impotent futility on pure instinct, which makes my knee howl.
I fish the phone out, slam it on the bath mat, and hit buttons with shaking fingers until it turns off. There's cannoli coming for me from Mike's while I sit here in a toilet, my mother thinks my wife is in surgery and infected, and my phone smells like shame.
Then the front door opens.
"I came right home. Cannoli!" she calls, then her voice changes. "The crib! The box isn't even—where are you?"
"Still figuring out the baby wrap," I call out.
"Well, let me see! Come out here. Show off your ooey-gooey sexy daddy side."
One testicle crawls up my groin a bit more than the other, as if hiding in embarrassment. I understand completely. If I could burrow up my inguinal canal right now, I would do it, too.
"Hamish?"
"Aye."
"Where are you?"
My lower back hurts, I likely bruised a rib, my crotch is marinating in toilet water, and my beautiful pregnant wife is waiting for me in the other room with a bag of Italian pastries.
"HAMISH? Are you okay? Did something happen?"
"Ye could say that," I mutter.
She appears in the bathroom doorway. Stops. Looks down.