Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [4]
“I always go to fairs, any fair in town,” the doctor said. “School fairs, church fairs, Italian fairs, Ukrainian … I like the food. I also like the rides; I like to watch the people who run them. What would it be like, working for such an outfit? I used to take my daughters, but they’re too old now, they say. ‘How can that be?’ I ask them. ‘I’m not too old; how come you are?’ My youngest is barely ten. How can she be too old?”
“The baby’s here,” Emily said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The baby. I feel it.”
The doctor looked in the mirror again. His eyes were more aged than the rest of him—a mournful brown, bloodshot and pouched, the skin beneath them the tarnished color of a bruise inside a banana. He opened his mouth, or appeared to. At any rate, his beard lengthened. Then it shortened again.
“Stop the car,” Leon said.
“Well … ah, yes, maybe so,” the doctor said.
He parked beside a hydrant, in front of a tiny pizza parlor called Maria’s Home-Style. Leon was chafing Emily’s wrists. The doctor climbed out, scratching the curls beneath his ski cap and looking puzzled. “Excuse me,” he said to Leon. Leon got out of the car. The doctor leaned in and asked, “You say you feel it?”
“I feel the head.”
“Of course this is all a mistake,” the doctor told Leon. “You know how long it takes the average primipara to deliver? Between ten and twelve hours. Oh, at least. And with a great deal more carrying on, believe me. There’s not a chance in this world that baby could be here yet.”
But as he spoke, he was sliding Emily into a horizontal position on the seat, methodically folding back her damp skirt in a series of tidy pleats. He said, “What in the name of—?” It appeared that her T-shirt was some sort of leotard; it had a crotch. He grimaced and ripped the center seam. Then he said, “She’s right.”
“Well, do something,” Leon said. “What are you going to do?”
“Go buy some newspapers,” the doctor told him. “Anything will be fine—News American, Sun … but fresh ones, you understand? Don’t just accept what someone hands you in a diner, saying he’s finished reading it …”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I don’t have change,” Leon said.
The doctor started rummaging through his pockets. He pulled out his mangled pack of Camels, two lint-covered jellybeans, and a cylinder of Rolaids. “Emily,” he said, “would you happen to have change for a dollar?”
Emily said something that sounded like yes, and turned her head from side to side. “Try her purse,” the doctor said. They felt along the floor, among the gym clothes and soda straws. Leon brought up the purse by its strap. He plowed through it till he found a billfold and then he raced off down the street, muttering, “Newspapers. Newspapers.” It was a cheerful, jumbled street with littered sidewalks and a row of tiny shops—eating places, dry cleaners, florists. In front of one of the cafés were various newspapers in locked, windowed boxes.
The doctor stepped on his cigarette and ground it into the pavement. Then he took off his suit jacket. He rolled up his sleeves and tucked his shirt more firmly into his trousers. He bent inside the car and laid a palm on Emily’s abdomen. “Breathe high in your chest,” he told her. He gazed dreamily past her, humming under his breath, watching the trucks and buses rumble by through the opposite window. The cold air caused the dark hairs to bristle on his forearms.
A woman in high heels clopped down the sidewalk; she never even noticed what was going on. Then two teenaged girls approached, sharing fudge from a white paper sack. Their footsteps slowed, and the doctor heard and turned around. “You two!” he said. “Go call an ambulance. Tell them we’ve got a delivery on our hands.”
They stared at him. Identical cubes of fudge were poised halfway to their mouths. “Well?” he said. “Go on.”
When they had rushed into Maria’s Home-Style, the doctor turned back to Emily. “How