A Delayed Arrival

“Still no baby yet, huh?”This time it was my friend Allison.I was now past due. As if we weren’t anxious enough, every ring of the phone seemed to bring forth another person asking this same question.“Nope,” I said. “But it’s getting pretty crowded in there.” Sooner or later, this belly would no longer be big enough for the both of us. I was hoping for sooner. If another week passed with no baby, the doctor was planning to induce – or, as Andy liked to call it, evict.I told Allison all this, and she told me she knew three babies who came on their own the day before their scheduled inductions. “It’s like they know or something,” she said, in a way I knew was meant to be reassuring.Then she asked: “Are you dilated at all yet?” There is a difference between discussing the countdown to baby with people who have had babies and people who haven’t, and the divide is highlighted by this question. The uninitiated neither know nor care to discuss the state of my cervix. When I told her I was not, she said, “Well, it doesn’t really mean anything anyway.” This was the thing everyone – doctors, midwives, Citybaby message boarders – always said, which left me with one resounding question: If it doesn’t matter how much you’ve dilated, why does everyone keep checking?I didn’t bother asking Allison this question; instead, I asked how she was doing. She said she was fine, and that she’d just come from paying my nemesis Courtney and her new baby a visit. “Have you been over to see them yet?”The simple answer was “no.” The real answer was, “Of course not, she’s my nemesis. Plus, I still haven’t gotten over the fact that she stole my girl name, even if she technically didn’t know it was my girl name.” But to Allison, I said, “I didn’t know she was up for visitors yet,” which was also true, and vaguely diplomatic.“Well, little Annie’s really sweet,” Allison said, as I cringed yet again at the thought of Courtney’s baby being an Annie. “You should go see them now, while you still have the chance.”“You’re right,” I said. “I should.” But, since not having a chance to visit before the baby arrived was my escape hatch excuse to avoid going at all, I was actually thinking, “Oh, no, I shouldn’t.”After a little more chitchat, I bade Allison goodbye; she wished me good luck and hoped the next time we spoke was postbirth. Then I hung up the phone, repositioned myself on the couch and reopened my copy of the New Yorker, resuming what had now become my near full-time activity, waiting to go into labor.A half hour later, I had made my way through roughly two paragraphs. Waiting for labor signs was clearly too distracting. At first, I made to turn on the television, but then, noticing the clock, I thought better of it. I did have one other job besides waiting for labor: moving the car for alternate side street cleaning. And this time – just after 3 p.m. – was potentially a good one for parking, late enough that people would be leaving spots, but early enough to avoid the home from work crowd.As I made my way down the brownstone steps, the usual crowd of 70-something men assembled in front of Vinnie’s, the pizza parlor across the street, called out to me. “Still no baby, huh?” one said, and I shook my head. “You let us know if you need any help,” said another, to which I replied, “I sure will. Thank you!”Once on the street, I waddled my way to the car, which was parked around the corner, employing my usual strategy: a preliminary eyeballing of the block for open spaces. To the untrained eye, there might have appeared to be a few spots available on the optimal side of the block, but I knew they were blocked by a driveway, a fire hydrant, or weren’t far enough from the bus stop mirages.I was now faced with the quintessential must-move-the-car today dilemma: Do I wait for a space to open up or get in the car now and try to find a spot, and thereby risk losing the one I was vacating?As I weighed the pros and cons, a familiar voice rang out behind me. “Eve!” It was my friend Matthew, husband of my nemesis Courtney and new father.“Matthew!” I said, turning to give him a hug, genuinely happy to see him.“Still no baby, huh?” he said, gesturing toward my enormous middle. I shook my head and asked if he’d taken the day off. “Yup,” he said, explaining his work had been pretty flexible. I asked how new fatherhood was treating him, and he said, “It’s been amazing.” He started to give me the details – how cute Annie was, how she made little noises and balled her fists and smelled like fresh-baked bagels – then stopped and said, “Why don’t you come over and see for yourself?”“I’d love to,” I said, realizing that as much as I dreaded hanging out with Courtney, it would be fun to see Matthew as a dad. “I’ll give you a call when Andy gets home and we’ll figure out a time.”“You could come on over now,” he said. “I was just on my way back,” he said, raising his arm to show a grocery bag. “Unless, of course, you’re busy …”“Well,” I began, raising the keys in my hand and looking car-ward. But, realizing “I have to move my car” was a pretty lame excuse not to see his baby, I told Matthew, “I guess I could drop by for a little bit. But it’s not an imposition on Courtney, is it?”“Of course not,” he said. “I’m sure she’d love to see you.”The Brooklyn Chronicles, a work of fiction, appears each Friday. Previous installments are available at www.nysun.com/archive_chronicles.php. The author can be reached at kschwartz@nysun.com.

A Delayed Arrival

A Delayed Arrival

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