"How's My Little Man?" Short Story in Jane

WHO’S MY LITTLE MAN?
(Appeared in Jane, November 2003

I told Donna not to take the Clomid, but did she listen to me? No. So now her stomach sticks out like the prow of the QE2 because she’s about to have two very large twins, which is creepy enough, but she just called me with some prime family news which was far worse. It was information so thrillingly disturbing that my dialing finger was twitching as she was talking because I wanted to phone my other sister so badly.
"Evidently," she says, "there is a third baby." Evidently is one of our favorite family words because it adds the appropriate frisson of drama to the most mundane subject. ("Evidently," my mother will observe darkly, "they’re building a new wing onto the King James Nursing Home.")
"Well, he’s not really fully developed," Donna said, sniffling. "In the ultrasound he just looks sort of scrawny." She heaved a shaky sigh. "The doctors aren’t sure if his brain is developing properly or not. They say they will only know after he’s born." Jesus.
I cleared my throat. "Well, can you lose him and keep the others?"
"Absolutely not," she said, crying in earnest now. "I’m due in two months. And his head looks like it’s a normal size, so maybe his brain will be okay. It’s really his body that looks a little…it’s hard to describe."
‘ Hard to describe?’ I decided not to push. Plus, I had to get to Rose before Donna did. "Listen," I said, "I guarantee that you’ll have three happy, healthy babies." Who will wear you down to a nub, I added in my head. "So keep me posted, okay? Don’t cry." I hung up and speed dialed Rose: "Donna-is-having-a third-half-baby.”
"What?" Her other line beeped.
"He’s underdeveloped or something.”
"Christ," Rose said. Then she had to take Donna’s call.

Donna was the first of the siblings to have kids, so we monitored her every move. We’re the type of family who will brag that we are so lovingly in each other’s business, but this curdles swiftly into treacherous gossip. Say one of us brings home a new boyfriend who has a few beers before dinner. This tiny thread of transgression can be woven into a cloak of shame as he becomes Roger, Who Drank to Excess.
Two months later I get the call from Donna’s husband Dan (the one who has a Money Problem.)
"It’s time," Dan panted.
Off we went to the hospital, the best in south Jersey. Poor Donna was in labor for 30 hours, finally squeezing out three boys – well, two and a half, because the third was a bit shrunken. When we burst into Donna’s room, she was triumphantly cradling two of the triplets. That was all she could hold, trust me, because these babies were huge and rubbery-looking. They emitted dolphin-like shrieks. A nurse held the third, who was silent.
Everyone crowded Donna but I went right to the nurse and peered in the blanket. Hmm. He was tiny, and unlike his red-faced brothers, he had a greyish tone. His eyes looked flat, somehow. "Is he okay?" I asked the nurse, whose nametag said ‘Goldean.” I tried to stretch my lips into a smile.
"Oh, sure," she said. "He’s a little undersized, but he should grow in no time." I peered at his fingers. They were nearly translucent, pulsating softly like a sea anemone.
She handed him over. He was as light as a cereal box. I impulsively sniffed the top of his head. It didn’t have that sweetly pure baby aroma. What was that odor? I took another deep sniff. He smelled like industrial carpeting. I gingerly moved the blanket so I could see his body. He looked like a cave fish, sort of curled around, with a bony ribcage. He was utterly bloodless. Then I noticed that he was staring at me with those flat eyes. It wasn’t the dim stare of a newborn. I am telling you that he saw me. He lifted his hand and undulated his fingers. I felt a little faint.
Donna and Dan named the babies Richard, Nicholas, and Archibald, despite objections from me and Rose. Donna will just never learn. She insisted that people will not abbreviate Richard to Dick or Rick or Rich.
So now, as we predicted, she has three kids named Ricky, Nicky, and because Archibald had yet to develop, we privately called him Sicky. It sounds like a cruel nickname, but Sicky quickly grew to be my favorite. Ricky and Nicky seemed to double in weight by the day and were soon walking on their sturdy legs. There was something wrong with Sicky’s slightly curved legs, and Donna was forever bringing him in to the doctor for a barrage of tests, but she didn’t seem too worried.
Besides, Ricky and Nicky absorbed every nanosecond of Donna’s time. She liked to dress them in matching overalls and backwards baseball caps, for reasons I cannot fathom. Off they’d go like two stumpy penguins, clomping in wobbly unison across Donna’s mauve wall-to-wall. They never stopped eating, crying, and hollering. They pooped continuously, like earthworms. Their nursing alone almost killed my sister. They inevitably wanted to eat, or I guess it would be drink, at the same time. Afterwards Sicky got a crack, but he didn’t seem that interested anyway.
In no time Donna’s boobs looked like two tube socks filled with sand, but she had a permanent, dreamy smile. My folks’ house in south Jersey used to be our gathering spot, but because it was such a process to strap the squirming, chubby Ricky and Nicky into their x-large car seats, we soon held all gatherings at Donna and Dan’s in central Jersey. It was easier for Rose, who lived in Hoboken, and for me, the only one to live in New York City, where I proofread copy for a heart medicine company, don’t even ask.
Every birthday celebration became a trial when Ricky and Nicky started to talk. You couldn’t get through a full sentence without Ricky tugging at Donna’s skirt. "Muh-meee," he would whine, "I want duce."
"Okay, honey," she would say brightly, and the world had to stop as Ricky gulped down cup after cup of juice, sitting fatly on Donna’s knee. "Moh duce!" he would yell after each refill. Donna, radiant in her lilac new-mom sundress, just thought that was the cutest thing ever. Then, as we tried to resume our conversation, Nicky would spot the juice and would clump over, screeching in alarm. The first word that they ever learned was Moh. Moh duce, moh coo-kie, moh milk.
Sicky, meanwhile, lay in one of Nicky’s discarded carriers, a grey presence. Occasionally he would cry, but it was always silently. Tears would slip out of his eyes, and his small mouth would purse. Donna dressed him ridiculously in Ricky and Nicky’s oversized castoffs.
Once, at Donna and Dan’s annual Fourth of July picnic, I decided I would lavish attention on poor Sicky. After Rose and I pulled in the driveway , laden with the usual foil-topped flotilla of fiber-free beige food that families like to eat at gatherings (potato salad, garlic bread) I did the hug-and-kiss thing and made straight for Sicky. Did I detect his matte eyes lighting up?
I held him all during dinner. He sat there, pleasantly enough, staring straight ahead as he usually did. Emboldened, I asked to feed him. At that point, he liked plain yogurt and that was about it. He couldn’t stand anything sweet, unlike Ricky and Nicky, who loved their goddamn graham cah-kas.
That night, as I returned home to my West Village apartment, I found to my astonishment that I missed Sicky’s ghostly presence. Usually after a family hootenanny, I savored the silence of my one bedroom, one bath. Now the apartment seemed a little empty, even with two geriatric cats. Fortunately, a few days later, Donna called.
"You can say no, but I’m desperate.” I heard Ricky and Nicky’s screeching in the background. "The twins are sick. They won’t eat." Now, that was alarming. "Can you take Archie for the weekend?"
To her obvious surprise, I agreed. The next morning, Donna and Dan deposited Sicky in my apartment. He stared straight ahead. "Hi," I ventured. "I’m glad you’re here." It sounded absurdly formal, yet apropos. To me, Sicky had a dignity about him. I propped him in his holder in a corner of the room — not too near the sun. I fed him some farina, which he barely ate, and changed his toddler diapers. At first, his thin, papery skin gave me the creeps, but soon I grew to like it. He was exotic, like some rare hairless Chihuahua. With Sicky a wispy yet companionable presence, we happily watched television, listened to the radio, or we read quietly.
Donna called Sunday night. My heart contracted. "You’re going to kill me, but I was wondering if you’d take Archie for a few more days," she said. Joy of joys!
It was really the ideal relationship: I stayed at home most of the time anyway, scanning heart medicine ads. Sicky seemed glad to get a little peace. I usually had most everything delivered, so I never needed a babysitter. Unless I moved him, he stayed in the same position all day, staring straight ahead in his carrier.
After I had kept him a week, I was readying his farina one morning when he opened up his mouth to eat. I almost fainted. He had gone from a few tiny, pointed teeth to a full set in a few days. They weren’t the usual toddler teeth –these were cylindral, and flat, like something a brontosaurus would have for grinding plant matter. I took it to mean that he was thriving under my tender care. “Who’s my little man?” I cooed.
His behavior began to change in other ways. One day, after I ran down to the corner for some coffee, I bounded into the room and saw that Sicky had somehow escaped from his carrier. Frantically, I searched the room. A cursory look in the cat bed. There was Sicky, curled in with the cats, sleeping soundly, his hairless back rising and falling with the cats.’
"Donna," I begged on the phone, "please let me keep him a little while longer." She feigned disappointment, but agreed.
Oftentimes it wasn’t easy. Sicky was a fussy eater. I prepared all manner of savory dishes, but he would just stare blankly, mouth shut. After a few days of sampling, I discovered Sicky would only eat seven or eight things, kind of like a macrobiotic diet. Garlic pickles, soy milk thinned with water, horseradish, dry fettucine, bok choy and sour cream were his favorites. He also liked to gnaw on cardboard like a gerbil. Sicky was happiest (at least, I assume so, he never smiled) when I got a package in the mail and he could lounge in the cat bed, chewing methodically on a box. His teeth made a rasping noise, which soothed me. He never swallowed, and eventually his soggy scraps formed a little nest, which the cats seemed to enjoy.
He was soon able to sit up, although his legs, with their too-shiny skin and narrow, pointed feet, seemed useless. He would watch me as I scanned ad copy for heart-attack drugs and played trivia games on my computer. One morning I was stumped by Who Said That? and called my father. "Hey, Dad," I said absently. "Who said ‘power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely?’"
"Lord Acton," said a toneless voice from the cat bed. I froze. "Dad? I’ll call you back." I hung up and slowly turned around, frightened for the first time.
"Archibald? You can talk?" My lips went numb. "How did you…"
His lips pursed and twitched. He had to work up to an answer. He gasped a little, then took a deep breath. "National Public Radio," he burst out, in a voice which sounded like an automated answering-machine message. Every morning we listened to the radio. I guess he was taking notes.
I tried to coax more words out of him, but he stared at a point beyond my shoulder. The next day he summoned some energy after I spoon-fed him a big bowl of sour cream. "I do not mind if you call me Sicky," he said haltingly.
Each day, usually after breakfast, he would gather his strength and utter something, and then, exhausted, nap. Painstakingly, I learned about him through his oddly formal English. No I cannot feel my legs. Please to lower the television audio during the commercials. I do not like Nicky. The oddest revealation was that he liked slapstick comedies, so I would pack him in my Snugli and we would go to the movies. His eyesight was poor, but he would listen, and I could feel him – not laughing, exactly, more like coughing –against my chest.
With Sicky, I felt a contentment which had eluded me for most of my adult life. The only time it wavered was when Rose dropped by the apartment one Saturday. "Hey," she said, giving me a kiss at the door. Then she wrinkled her nose. "What’s that smell? It’s like drain cleaner."
"Aren’t you going to say hello?" I said, jerking my head towards Sicky.
"Hi, Archie," she said warily. Then she made her usual inspection: fridge, medicine cabinet, closet. Rose is always in motion. Our whole family is. We’re like a pack of lemurs: twitchy and clannish, leaping frantically out of our den, chattering shrilly at intruders.
I followed her into my bedroom as she inspected my closet. She whirled around to face me. "Listen to me carefully," she said levelly. She pointed to the living room. "That? Is not right. I know you don’t want me to involve Mom."
"Oh, ho," I said. "Rolling out the heavy artillery, are we?" But I did not want her telling our mother, who would notify someone. The woman loves to notify people, especially now that she’s retired.
"Donna tells me he eats horseradish," she said. I kept it to myself that he actually had enjoyed some horseradish on his second birthday.
Rose noticed my pinched expression and softened. "Honey," she said gently. "I know you’re lonely, and you don’t have the support network that –"
I cut her off. "I’m not lonely, actually. And we will talk about it. Soon. Now let’s go back in the living room before it gets more awkward."
She stayed for twenty minutes, clutching the arm of the couch the whole time. Finally she left, probably taking the stairs two at a time so she could get near a phone to call Donna.
After Rose’s visit, it seemed to me that Sicky was more listless than usual. He sometimes slept all day in the cat bed. I am fine, he said once, but I didn’t believe him. Then one day I came home from some errands and found he wasn’t in his carrier.
I searched the apartment, finally finding him on the floor of my bedroom. His skin was a slate color. "Sicky?" I quavered. I bent down and checked to see if he was breathing. He wasn’t. There was a faint smell of camphor coming from his mouth. I realized with a nauseating jolt that he had gone on some binge and eaten all of the moth balls in my closet.
The funeral was two days later. Of course Ricky and Nicky weren’t able to sit through the service. "Muh-mee," Ricky whined loudly as the minister gave a eulogy, "I need to make water."
"Just keep dressing them in matching suits, Donna," I told her before the ceremony. "Send them straight to the pyschiatrist’s couch."
For the next couple of weeks, I wore the same outfit for days at a time. I sobbed as I packed away all of Sicky’s things. Weeks slipped into months.
I decided to get pregnant. I never thought I was the maternal type, but Archibald changed my mind. My folks naturally would have preferred if I was in a relationship, but they were willing to take what they could get. I was artificially inseminated through a clinic.
While I was pregnant, I was absolutely coursing with joy. I gave birth nine months after the day of conception, and sailed through labor in under five hours. Who knew giving birth was so wonderfully easy? Little Oswald is my happiness, my dearest treasure. Although I’ve begun to thin out his milk a bit with some water, because he’s looking a little too robust for my taste.

Comments

[Jennifer Carmean]

I loved the story of Sicky. I was captivated by this story.

You have a very unique way of writing. You are a very gifted individual.

How old is your little Oswald?

[long hair]

I love the way you write..so deep , so profound, not an ounce of boredom, keep up the good work

[Jesse]

Ok, I know I'm 2 years late....
but I read this story when it was in Jane and I loved it. Heartbreakingly morbid, I think that's how I described it to my husband.
In fact, it inspired me to return to short story writing, for which I thank you.
So I was telling a friend about it today and decided to try to find the story, and I'm glad I did :)