Birth Control

Eugenio Volpe

Your days soar like a swarm of arrows and then you come home to find your wife crying in the bathtub. It is late morning on a sunny Monday in early May. The curtains are drawn. Candles are lit. The toilet lid is down with her iPod on top of it. She’s listening to The Cowboy Junkies.
…..“Is everything okay? Why are you home from work?”
…..“I want kids,” she says tearfully.
…..“Since when?” I respond.
…..“Since I just found out that Erik and Sheila are having a baby. We’ll be the only couple without one.”
…..“What if all of our friends jumped off the Zakim?”
…..“Birds of a feather,” she says.
…..“What happened to your values and ideals? Feminism. Overpopulation. Free time to yourself. What happened to those things?”
…..“I want someone to love me forever and ever.”
…..“I loved you yesterday and I love you today. Isn’t that enough?”
…..“Not anymore.”
…..We’re both thirty-six. Our friends all have kids. We’ve been together longer than any of them, seventeen years to be exact. Even my latently gay friend Erik has found a woman to marry and now impregnate. It’s a total sham, but Erik can pull it off. He’s got strong Irish genes, fearless and stubborn, which incidentally makes him a terrific liar. I’m of Italian ancestry. My emotions are an open book.
…..“Why don’t you want a baby?” she asks.
…..“It’s your brother and father,” I say, kneeling down next to the tub. “I’ve come to dislike them very much.”
…..“I don’t like them much either, but what does that have to do with us having a baby?”
…..“Have you ever seen your brother throw a baseball? It’s terribly sad. He throws worse than a girl. He doesn’t have an athletic bone in his body. In addition to being uncoordinated, his lips are too thin. He looks like an albino Kermit the Frog. He also has Kermit’s drab personality. At least your father has those upswings when bouncing off the rock bottom of his bipolar disorder. At least your father has enough testosterone to grow a beard and conceal his thin lips. Otherwise, he’s a physical and psychological train wreck too. Never mind his high cholesterol and blood pressure.”
…..She takes a deep breath and sinks to the bottom of the tub. I count to thirty-six before pulling her up. She exhales and slaps me across the face. It doesn’t hurt.
…..“I love you, but I don’t think I could love a son who took after your brother or father.”
…..“I’m not interested in building the master race. I just want a baby.”
…..I watch her cry for five minutes and wonder what the hell is wrong with me. I can’t think of anything. Maybe I’m honest to a fault. I don’t excel at algebra. I don’t have the perfect nose. My wife pulls the drain and stands up. She has epic breasts. Her mother and sister have them too.
…..“I just thought of something. What if we have a daughter? There’s no way she’ll take after any of the men in your family. Girls usually look like their fathers.”
…..“I take after my mother.”
…..“Perfect! She’ll either look like you or she’ll look like me. I could live with either outcome.”
…..“Boy or girl. It’s a 50-50 chance. Luck has never been on your side.”
…..“I’ve never been unlucky.”
…..“What about the novel? You had a publisher. They wanted the last few chapters. Bob died and you never finished.”
…..“He was my best friend. I lost my will to write. That’s got nothing to do with being lucky. It’s called having a heart.”
…..“Winners make their own luck. A man with stronger dopamine levels might have persevered and finished his novel.”
…..“Winners are born not made,” I reply. “I’ll rise again.”
…..“No, losers are born. Winners never quit. Let’s talk about your family. Your father might be strong and handsome, but he’s an underachiever. Instead of being a bricklayer like his father, he settled for being a laborer.”
…..“The men in my family might not be financially successful, but we’re physical specimens. More importantly, we’re happy and well-adjusted.”
…..“He also served two years in jail for manslaughter.”
…..“That was during Vietnam. He was in the Navy. There was a barroom brawl. My father only hit him once. The poor guy had a rickety brain stem. Talk about luck.”
…..I follow her into the bedroom. She steps into a pair of panties. She could model pantyhose with calves like hers. She has a nicer body than any of the women in my family.
…..“Let’s talk about the women in your family,” she says while reaching behind her back to clasp her bra.
…..“Uh-oh.”
…..“They’re prone to smoking, artificial tanning, wearing too much makeup, excessive body waxing, and patriarchal oppression.”
…..“I see your point. Where does this leave us?”
…..She sits on the edge of the bed and says, “I don’t want to hate my daughter.”
…..It’s my turn to cry. I sit on the bed next to her and weep into my highly developed pectorals. She tries putting an arm around me, but my shoulders are too broad. Her fingertips just make it to the backside of my opposite armpit. She cries a little too and then we start kissing, which eventually leads to love making. It’s emotionally intense with a smattering of dirty, our best performance in recent memory. She packs my bags while I take a candlelit shower. I croon “Sweet Jane” while my wife blow dries her hair in the bedroom. After I’m toweled off and dressed, she helps carry my bags to the car. I roll the window down for a farewell kiss.
…..“Come back in a week and we’ll talk,” she says.
…..“Genghis Kahn once said that conquering the world on horseback is easy; it’s dismounting and governing that’s hard.”
…..“Was he talking about slaying men or raping women?”
…..“Both, I think.”
…..I speed through Harvard Square on my way out of Cambridge. I swerve at students who disobey pedestrian lights. I rev past the heels of lollygagging crosswalkers. I play chicken with cyclists peddling against the flow of traffic. I live to scare the Jesus out of these so-called geniuses. I do it every morning on my way to the gym. I do it again in the evenings on my way to the Extension School where I teach courses in world history. It’s a harmless way of conquering the brick Utopia that is Harvard Square. If any man should own the place it’s me. I have a brick soul and a PhD. The tweed blazers and Rasta beanies are not responsible for the Square’s liberal ambiance. It’s the bricks. I honor them by terrorizing the Square with a high speed showing of working class humor.
…..I drive to my cousin’s house in Revere. She lives around the corner from our old neighborhood. We grew up across the street from each other. Our mothers are sisters. I’m two years her elder. We’re very close although I don’t think too highly of her. She smokes and has a tattoo of Italy on the small of her back. Her husband has shit for brains. He voted for George Bush twice. She waits on him hand and foot. It kills me in a small way. We played house and kissed a lot as kids. Once, I was pretend coming home from work. I leaned in for my afternoon kiss and my pretend wife dug her hand down the front of my pants. She didn’t actually touch anything, but came close enough. I was eleven. Aside from a hello peck on the corner of the mouth, we haven’t kissed since. I often visit the memory with regret. She’s the only woman who I’ve seriously considered impregnating. Spare me the Deliverance jokes. Charles Darwin, the granddaddy of evolution, married his cousin Emma. They had ten children, none of whom played banjo.
…..Sofia is always home. She has three sons. Unfortunately, they all look like their father. Five to nine years old and they’re already exhibiting signs of his male pattern baldness above the temples. He’s one of those Neanderthal–looking Italians. His ancestors probably dragged their knuckles all the way down the peninsula from Germany. Sofia is too good for him. Her features are soft and honorable like my own. Of course, you’d have to scrub the makeup off her face to see it.
…..Sofia and the boys greet me at the door with enthusiastic hugs. The boys call me Uncle Ercule. I toss them around the living room for ten minutes, bouncing them off the couch and flipping them onto the carpet. They then take turns punching me in the stomach as hard as they can. I’m good with kids, boys especially. Sofia orders us to stop when her youngest almost hits his head on the corner of the coffee table. She’s a good mother. I help the boys put all the blankets and couch cushions back in place. Sofia runs a tight ship. The décor is tacky but she keeps things tidy and clean. The women in my family are dead serious about homemaking. My wife hires a cleaning service to vacuum and mop the floors of our small, two-bedroom bungalow.
…..Sofia and I go into the kitchen and have coffee. She lights up a cigarette. She smokes Merits, the same brand endorsed by our mothers.
…..“So what’s going on? Is everything okay?”
…..“Meg and I are taking a break for a week. We had kind of a fight.”
…..“Why?”
…..“She wants a baby.”
…..“And?”
…..“I don’t want one. Not with her anyway. Don’t get me wrong. I want to spend the rest of my life with her, but I’m not sure I want to mix my DNA with hers. You’ve met her brother and father. They can’t even throw a baseball. Does that sound superficial?”
…..“Incredibly, but fuck it, we’re Italian. We’re better than everybody else.”
…..“Yeah, fuck it, but then what should I do?”
…..“You can’t leave Meg. You two are perfect for each other. It’s a shame because you’d both make incredible parents. You’d definitely have beautiful daughters. She’s so smart and attractive.”
…..“She says the same thing about you.”
…..“You’re so bad at lying.”
…..“I know. It’s not in my genes. It’s in Meg’s genes to be holier than thou.”
…..“It’s alright. I like her. She’s kind of right. The men are definitely better than the women in our family.”
…..“Her biggest complaint about the women in our family is that you’re prone to patriarchal oppression.”
…..“I don’t even know what that means.”
…..“It means that the women in our family make their own luck.”
…..“I can live with that.”
…..She reaches across the table and strokes my hair with a lit cigarette between her fingers. Her wedding ring snags my head like a random thought.
…..“I’ll say one thing. It’d be a real shame if you didn’t pass this hair along to somebody. It’s like a crown. I was hoping one of my boys might inherit it. Nonno and Zio had it too. Maybe you should spend the week knocking up every Italian girl in East Boston.”
…..“One arrow can be easily broken but many arrows are indestructible.”
…..“Who said that?”
…..“Genghis Kahn.”
…..“Is that the guy you were writing a book about?”
…..“Yes, but then Bob died.”
…..“I still can’t believe he’s gone. It was such a freak thing. Bob never had good luck.”
…..“Genghis Kahn made his own luck. He’s responsible for eight percent of the population in Central Asia.”
…..“So when he said that thing about arrows, he wasn’t just talking about arrows?”
…..“Sperm,” I say.
…..Sofia laughs and then stands from the table to fetch more coffee. Her bum is small but not exactly firm. Her black tracksuit pants aren’t doing it any justice. The women in my family are petite but not toned. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if my daughter inherited the physique. There are worse ones out there (the pear-bottom in particular). I could see to it that my daughter participated in sports. I wouldn’t allow junk food or soda in the house. Sofia’s cupboards are full of sweets. Her middle child, my namesake, walks in and asks for some Double Stuff Oreos. Our mothers never fed us that crap, but what do I know about raising kids these days? Sofia reminds him that he just ate lunch. He whines a little and Sofia tells him to get the hell out of the kitchen. He stomps away and she lights up another cigarette.
…..“You used to yell at your dolls like that. You must have been practicing all those years.”
…..“It’s the only thing I’m good at,” she says. “Remember playing house?”
…..“No, I don’t remember playing house.”
…..Sofia grins. I am feeling very comfortable so I stand up to leave. She gives me a goodbye peck on the corner of the mouth. My nephews line up at the door for a parting punch to my gut.
…..I drive around Boston stopping in front of hotels and parking garages that my father had a hand in building. Churches and condominiums. The Bayside Expo Center and Symphony Hall. My father’s mortar holds much of the city together. He might have done better for himself. He might have laid the actual bricks, but who am I? I have barely held myself together.
…..I park at a friend’s lot in the North End and head over to Long Wharf. At the end of the wharf, there’s a 9000lb granite block with my father’s middle finger under it. Aside from me and my sister, it’s his finest work. It’s the little brother I never had. I sometimes sit on it and wrestle with myself. I’ve been doing it more often since Bob died. He was the older brother I never had. My grandfather got him into the bricklayer’s union. Two years ago, he was working on some new complex in the South End. He took a wrong step and fell thirty stories. Nobody saw him fall. Everybody heard him land.
…..The wharf is bustling with friends I’ll never have, women I’ll never impregnate. I wouldn’t want any of them. They can’t walk in a straight line. They walk to the left instead of the right. They stop short when looking down at a map or cell phone. I plow through them with my broad shoulders. I step on their heels. I breathe down their necks. Doing so makes me feel like a better man. I am a better man. So why don’t I want to reproduce? The overall character of the country would improve if I stimulated the population by eight percent, but then my eight percent would have to find another eight percent worth knocking up. Eventually, my wavy haired, broad shouldered descendants would have to settle for lesser specimens, unless of course they all began breeding with their second and third cousins.
…..A group of Germans stop short and turn around for a picture of the Custom House Tower. I have neither the time nor space to sidestep them so I bury my shoulder into the closest man. He stumbles backward and drops his camera. I say nothing. I do not look back. I smile at their guttural outcries. Let them do something about it. I’m in the mood for historic changes.
…..I sit on my father’s granite block and wonder why the hell I think so highly of myself. There’s a slight breeze coming off the harbor. I catch a whiff of Sofia. I sniff the sleeve of my blazer. The cotton smells of cigarette smoke. There’s also a strand of long black hair clinging to my shoulder. It’s hers. I imagine lifting the 9,000lb granite block and placing it next to the fossilized imprint of my father’s middle finger. It would be a task fit for my name, a name I have yet to live up to.
…..When the block closed on my father’s finger like a four ton granite book, the foreman immediately signaled for the crane operator to hoist it back up. My father told him not to bother. What use was his middle finger? He was done telling the world to fuck itself. He’d served two years in prison for manslaughter. Upon release, he returned to his old stomping ground and raised holy hell for two years. He beat up a few cops. He hospitalized an alleged mobster. Then he met my mother. She was cute like Annette Funicello and prone to patriarchal oppression. He got off his warring high horse and governed, first me, and then my sister.
…..While sitting on my father’s stone wondering if any of it relates to my childless marriage, I notice the Germans making a march towards me. Their leader is waving his broken camera as he nears. This could make a great story. I am bigger than them, but they are numerous. It’s my fight to lose. I pluck Sofia’s hair from my shoulder and put it in my pocket for safekeeping.
…..I scream like a Mongol and make a run at them. They’re too good for violence. They turn and flee, dispersing in all directions. I chase after their lanky leader. He runs like a flightless bird. He keeps looking over his shoulder at me. The man is scared to death. Seeing this, I realize that I am not going to hurt him. I only want to chase him for a few blocks, but he is gangly and less athletic than even my brother-in-law. The closer I get, the less he looks ahead.
…..A man’s supposed to know that you don’t look over your shoulder while running. It slows you down. You run into things. The German trips over the granite curbing and tumbles off the wharf. I see him fall. I hear his splash. I am eternally thankful that he hasn’t impaled himself or smashed his head and with that I keep running. Someone yells for me to stop, but I don’t. I’ve got too much momentum in my legs. I cross Atlantic Ave and sprint the entire length of State Street, stories and stories of granite, not to mention sandstone and brick. Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me. I stop in front of the Ames Building to catch my breath. Stories and stories of arches. I look all the way up and keep my gaze there. I have mattered to myself for too long. The sirens crescendo. I will never go back, until death do us part…
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