UN: blaaarg
LN: McGuire
DH (37): Timothy (Phone Co, Wavy Red/Brown Hair & Blue Eyes)
DW (22): Melissa (Artist, Curly Dark Brown & Brown Eyes, Biracial)
DSD (13): Frances Angela "Nancy"
DS (nb): Heinrich Dean Keating
Tim was a very quiet person, and around him Melissa felt free to be quiet and exist. They were comfortable in each others surroundings and could sit silently with each other and have an experience as emotionally enriching as in-depth conversations were for other couples. Communicating silently meant that both of them were more attentive to small changes in equilibrium. In the days after Melissa found out she was pregnant, the equilibrium quietly shifted. She began to take long walks in the afternoons when she usually worked. She frowned more. She began to look through things that she was looking at. Her conversation became distracted. Tim, in his respectful, silent way, didn't ask about it for over a week.
She didn't know why she wasn't telling him. She knew he could see the changes. It would come out sooner or later, and they would deal with it together. But it still seemed like something private, just for a few days. One morning she stared out the window with her hand absently on her stomach. Tim stood in the doorway for a few seconds. She looked at him. "Melissa," he said.
She looked at him. They both knew.
"You're pregnant."
Melissa looked back out the window.
Tim came and sat with her and they both looked out the window. After a few minutes he stood up. "I've got to go to work," he said.
"Bye."
"Bye."
What were they going to do? Melissa was reluctant to hint at marriage, and Tim did his part not to say anything about it. They stayed roughly on opposite sides of this issue; Melissa had always quietly wanted children and marriage, and Tim was finished with both institutions. But here was Melissa pregnant. Nancy had reacted with wide eyes and the question: "So are you gonna get married?"
"Maybe," said Melissa. The question was in the air.
Tim waited before answering, "How do you feel about engagement? Like, a semi-permanent engagement?"
Melissa's sister Jessica was excited and glad; her brother disapproved; her parents were genial. All of them liked Tim except Vincent, who didn't see that he was a good compassionate accepting soul and only that he had a crappy job. Tim's parents quietly accepted the idea that he would be having a child with this young mixed-race artist, somewhat more reluctantly than they had accepted the idea of Nancy fourteen years ago.
So Melissa was pregnant. She became tired; she swam through her days; her art grew vivid, abstract, brilliant; then the baby was here, dark hair and light blue eyes, and Nancy named him Heinrich. "Why Heinrich?" Tim asked. Nancy shrugged. "It's cool, don't you think?"
Melissa did not separate her art from her child. He sent her soul spinning in artistic directions she had never anticipated. All of his movements and actions had a profound effect on her. He cried for two weeks and she stared at him. She and Tim grew accustomed to the noise, regarding it as something maybe from the center of the earth, some expression of eternal human and nonhuman injustice. Melissa's friends were in and out of the house with books and blankets. Heinrich opened his eyes and grasped things. Nancy was entranced by him and cooed and counted his toes. They called him Heinrich in full all the time. Melissa's friends put on a show of her art. Vivid, rich, new, it began to sell. Melissa didn't notice. She continued to produce, as if she were an apple tree which continued to grow apples. Tim was fascinated and humbled by the entire process. He got home from work and stared at the child, who stared back at him and made nonsensical noises and grabbed his finger when he placed it close enough. The baby communicated nothing, no tarnished words, no fear of death, only closeness and newness, in a simple and nonperverted language.
This message was edited 6/25/2009, 8:51 AM