Babylon and Other Stories by Alix Ohlin Read Free Book Online Page B

Tanizaki's stick still beating inside his ears. His mother would be sitting on the couch, looking out the window at the park, there and notthere at the same time. He thought the baby in her stomach was dragging her down; it was round like a bowling ball and maybe that heavy.
    Rachel had decisions to make, had to figure out what to do— about her job, the rent, the future. The words
what to do
ran together in her mind until they lost meaning and became a chant instead,
whattodowhattodowhattodo.
At times she felt like she was drowning in air—too thick, it bore down until she couldn't move or breathe. The baby was due in two months. This much she knew: she was going to name the baby Jennifer, she was going to put little barrettes in her hair, she could practically feel the silky skin of the baby's cheek against hers. One day a fifty-dollar bill came in the mail, in an envelope with no return address. She was waiting to find the strength inside her, waiting for it and building it up. In the meantime she rested, and Kevin played piano in his room.
    It was summer and Kevin did not have school. He stayed in his room playing the piano. The apartment was hot and dense. He played “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Rachel was lying down in the bedroom. Then the doorbell rang, and he answered it. It was his father. Kevin looked at him. Rachel had said that Brian was away on a trip, but he hadn't believed her. Maybe it was true.
    “Hey, buddy,” Brian said, “how's it going?”
    “Okay.”
    “Just okay? Not good, not great?”
    “Good.”
    “Good,” Brian said, holding out a plastic bag. “Here, I brought you something.”
    Kevin took it and looked inside. It was a toy truck.
    “Can I come in?”
    Kevin stepped aside, and Brian walked in. Rachel was standing in the living room, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Each time she went to sleep she seemed to fall deeper and deeper, and it took her forever to wake up. Even the sight of her husband couldn't shake her into action; she stood there blinking.
    “Hey,” Brian said. “I came to see how you guys are doing.”
    Rachel rubbed her stomach. “It's a girl,” she said. “Jennifer.”
    When Kevin closed the door, the sound of it made Brian turn around. He smiled at Kevin. Rachel and Brian sat on the couch, and he did all the talking. It was like he'd been storing up words all the time he'd been away, and when he got home and opened his mouth they tumbled out on top of one another, falling and falling. But the things he was talking about had nothing to do with his trip—baseball scores, stories about his job, jokes he'd heard. Kevin sat down next to him, on the other side of Rachel, and put his hand next to Brian's knee. He could feel the weight of his father's leg on the couch. A while later Rachel went into the kitchen to make dinner and Brian stood there in the doorway, still talking. After dinner, Kevin went to his room and could hear his parents' voices rumbling in a steady rhythm through the walls. With a book and the paper piano on his lap, he turned this rhythm into a song, making it the bass clef to a melody he made up as he went, a tap-tap beat up and down and around the scale.
    In the middle of the night he thought he heard a scream and jumped up out of bed. Standing outside their door, listening, he heard his mother sob. Was it the baby? So heavy that it dropped out of her, ripping her open? “Mom?” he said.
    “Go to sleep, Kev,” Brian said. “Everything's fine.”
    Kevin looked at the closed door. “Mom?” he said.
    Finally she called, “It's okay.”
    He was still standing there, and Brian said, “Did you hear her, bud? Go back to bed.”
    In the morning, they were still asleep when he left for his piano lesson. He drank a glass of juice and ate some toast and walked around the park, green and weedy now. He rang the doorbell at Mrs. Tanizaki's.
    “Come in, Kevin,” she said. “Today I've got a surprise for you.”
    He followed her into the house. Lawrence