ready by the birth of their daughter he
had been rendered useless. More than
that, he had felt he wasn’t wanted there,
clumsy and helpless among the cabal
of women with their special knowledge:
his wife, the midwife, the midwife-in-
training, and the nurse. It was only with
their first child that he had been needed
by Nadine, as a bulwark between her
and the pain.
The woman now began to shout and
writhe. He reached for her hand, the
tan fingers decorated with silver rings,
and she crushed his like a vise. What
was her name? Her name? She didn’t
seem to hear the question until she did.
Nava.
She had started to sweat, little beads
gathering at her temples. Up close, her
face was softer, less decided. Cohen
searched his mind for the thing to do.
What if the baby came now? The baby
was coming now, wasn’t he?
She tugged at her sweatpants. Cohen
grabbed them from the ankles and
stripped them off. Some intelligence
not his own moved in him, and he rolled
them up and placed them under Nava’s
lower back. She bent her legs, her thighs
heavy from the long months of carry-
ing. There was no time to think. Push!
he urged her. She was grunting with
pain. That’s it, now again, he said. I want
you to push with everything you have.
The head, matted with black hair, ap-
peared. Cohen slipped his fingers in and
felt the heat of the infant’s slick face.
A boy, he told her. I think it’s going
to be a boy. She screamed in pain, a wild
and ardent scream that tore through
him like something he had not felt for
a long time.
Oh, God, Cohen prayed. Let it be a
boy. Let me be right, for once, about
everything.
Later, as he stood in the doorway of the
hospital room where Nava sat looking
upon the child like a Renaissance Ma-
donna, newly gifted with light and per-
spective, Cohen was confused for the
father. The nurse offered him congrat-
ulations and paperwork. Oh, Cohen
said, sober at last. Not mine. Though
as soon as the words came out he felt
them to be not wholly true. For in that
moment he felt that something of the
child belonged to him, too, that the
child had arrived bearing a message for
him, a restoration. In his mind’s eye, he
saw himself uncurling the tiny, mottled
fist to reveal an ancient code written on
the palm. He rubbed his eyes. Perhaps
he was not yet entirely sober after all.
Or the capacity for visions still lingered;
that happened sometimes, too.
The nurse, Russian, shot him a dirty
look, the look of a woman tired of men.
Tired of all the men in the birthing rooms
trying to slip the noose of paternity—
were there so many? Cohen wished to
explain that he wasn’t one. Or that he
had at least managed to internalize his
rage against responsibility, rather than
enact it on his children. He had the urge
to take out his phone and show her pho-
tographs of them, grown now, the young-
est soon to leave for Oberlin. Instead,
he just pointed at the darkened screen.
Her phone shattered, he explained. The
father had not yet been called. Soon he
would arrive, Cohen thought, stumbling
and sweaty, lugging the bag that had
stood by the door for weeks, packed with
things needed for a labor that had al-
ready passed, things rendered useless by
the infant’s sudden arrival. All that had
been needed was what Cohen had: his
wits, his voice, his hands.
But the father was not called. The fa-
ther, as it happened, was out of the pic-
ture, the baby the result of a brief affair
with a man not interested in fatherhood.
The man Cohen had taken for her part-
ner was only her best friend and room-
mate, and he was working in Jerusalem
and couldn’t come. Cohen’s spirits bright-
ened at this turn of events. There was
room for him here, more than he hadexpected. Soon Nava’s mother arrived in
a turban and flowing skirts, hectic and
disorganized, on the phone with her rabbi,
from whom she wanted a blessing. She
placed her hand on the baby’s head while
the rabbi, or maybe merely a guru, came
through on speakerphone. She tied a red
string around the baby’s tiny wrist, mut-
tering spells. Nava arched an eyebrow,
and in that arch and the set of her jaw
Cohen saw the ancient line of daugh-
ters dedicated to being nothing like the
mothers their own mothers had been.
The baby was weighed and measured,
capped and wiped down. He experi-
enced his first defecation and screamed.
So much screaming at the start of life!
A way to vocalize the power of life mov-
ing through us, taking us up in its great,
rushing volume! Such were Cohen’s
thoughts when the nurse returned and,
holding the shrieking infant like a foot-
ball, swaddled him tightly then stuck
him to the breast to suck. But he wouldn’t
take, and so she grabbed the huge, en-
gorged nipple and plugged his mouth.
At last he accepted this first of many
compromises and settled down, purr-
ing and gurgling at his mother’s breast.
The nurse murmured encouragingly,
and Nava, wild-haired, flushed with her
own success, lifted her eyes to meet Co-
hen’s, to meet his wonder with her own;
in her eyes, Cohen felt himself, for a
moment, magnificently reflected.
Presently the nurse turned to look at
him, too. Her lips produced a scolding
sound. What? Cohen shrugged. But,
when she narrowed her eyes at him, he
understood that he was being sum-
moned. She wants a Coke, the nurse“Remember—never shake on it until they show you the treat.”