Chin Up, Honey

Emma gazed at the list. “Well, we can easily keep it to just family. That isn’t so many…and I think Johnny will want his family there.”

The idea of having the wedding far away from home about made her sick. But then she reminded herself to be glad that Johnny had not run off and eloped, as he had often said he would do.

She looked up and saw John Cole, a Coke in hand, leaning against the kitchen counter, gazing at the floor.

He was here—home—she thought, running her eyes from his head to his boots.

His eyes met her own. She felt a little silly, getting caught looking at him, but she couldn’t just look away now that he had seen her.

He said, “You know, I just keep thinkin’ about how small he was when he was born and yet he had those really big feet.”

“Oh, my gosh…” She remembered, too, and smiled. “…They didn’t fit any of the booties that came in the newborn sets.”

John Cole gave a small grin, then tipped up his Coke and drank deeply.

Emma looked back at the list of names in front of her. She could not believe that John Cole remembered any of that, much less spoke of it. Tears welled in her eyes. And for some odd reason she was afraid for him to see.

“I guess I’m goin’ on to bed,” he said.

“Good night.” She saw him pause uncertainly. “I’ll come later,” she said. “I’m sleepin’ in the guest room. I…thought it might be best.”

There, it was said. She checked his face for his reaction. There was nothing.

He nodded and said, “Good night.”

Her chest felt crushed. But then, “John Cole?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for comin’ home.”

“He’s my son, too, Emma.”

His words struck hard. She opened her mouth to reply, to say that she well knew that. But he was already out of the room, and for some reason, she couldn’t figure out exactly what to say to stop him.

Lying against the pillows in the darkened guest room, Emma gazed out into the hallway and saw the dim silvery light shining from the television down in the master bedroom. She could faintly hear voices. It was funny how so small a light and soft a sound could go such a distance in a silent and dark house.

She fluffed her pillows, lay back again and breathed deeply. Over the past few days, she had often felt that she just could not get enough air. She felt that way now, tried inhaling deeply again, then repositioned the pillows and herself. Accepting that she was as comfortable as she was going to get, she lay staring up at the ceiling and recalled the conversation in the kitchen.

It was rare for John Cole to reveal any deep emotional thoughts as he had in speaking about Johnny as a baby. Sometimes she didn’t think John Cole even had any deep emotional thoughts, nothing beyond a fondness for television, car racing, making money and Coca-Cola.

He’s my son, too. As if she did not know that, as if to say that she tended to act like Johnny was all hers.

She supposed she did, a little. After all, she had so desperately wanted a child.

And John Cole had done his very best to give her one, too.

4

1968—1971

It’s a Boy!

After two years of marriage, they decided to have a baby.

Actually, Emma decided. John Cole did not seem to care one way or the other, although he did get a little anxious to accomplish having any children they wanted while he was in the Navy so they could let Uncle Sam pay the medical expenses.

So Emma went off the birth-control pills, which so many women of her generation had believed to be the way of life, totally disregarding the popular margarine commercial of the time: It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.

Things did not quite go as planned.

When she did not get pregnant that very first month, she was quite surprised. A few more months, and she still did not get pregnant. It seemed like more women than she had ever seen were pregnant all around her, but she was not.

She began to read books about getting pregnant, started to take her temperature and try various sexual positions conducive to conception. Once, she threw her back out and therefore missed two perfectly ripe chances to conceive.

Finally, after a year, she sought medical help. Time was wasting, and she needed to take advantage of what the Navy medical services could do for her, free of charge. After checking her over, putting her through all manner of tests and having her try a number of the things she had already tried, to no avail, the doctor said that John Cole needed to be examined.

John Cole, who rarely said no straight out, looked at her like he would rather eat live frogs.

Emma was ready for her persuasion, which was that she didn’t think an examination or any test was too much to ask. After all, she got a Pap smear every year. That wasn’t any fun. And she herself was willing to go to great lengths to cure their childless state, so she expected John Cole to do his part.

This reasoning, along with Emma crying a lot about wanting a baby, compelled John Cole along.

The day of John Cole’s appointment, Emma waited outside the clinic in the car with all the windows down. It was summer at the naval station in Florida and hot as blue blazes. After a little while, John Cole came out, but he didn’t get in the car. He stood by her open window and told her that he had to undergo a sperm-count test. He looked disgusted and as if he might refuse to do the test, or as if he might ask Emma to go in with him to help. She hoped he didn’t do either and just sat there, not saying anything.

Finally, he went back inside for what seemed a long time, while she waited, sweating in the car and feeling guilty about making him do something he didn’t want to do. She promised herself to make it up to him, and that night and in the following weeks, she cooked his favorite foods, waited on him hand and foot, even left the air conditioner on high all night and never complained.

The test results arrived. John Cole’s count of live and volatile sperm was in the extremely low category. It said right on the results that his ability to impregnate her was in the bottom percentile.

It was hard news. John Cole got more quiet than usual, and Emma went in search of finding out what could help a man’s sperm count. She ran up a bill of twenty-five dollars just on long-distance phone calls to her mother, who excelled in research and who could also ask the other women in the family. She scoured the library and read long into the night, then started feeding John Cole protein drinks, vitamins E and C, and putting wheat germ in every recipe that she cooked—hamburgers, meat loaves, oatmeal, even salads.

When it came to chocolate cake, John Cole balked. “Good God, Emma. You’re gonna wheat me to death.”

She begged him to go without underwear, so that his little sperm wouldn’t be overheated and would be able to swim correctly. She followed her ovulation carefully and figured out how to prop her legs up on the headboard for ten minutes after sex, although John Cole really got afraid she might have a stroke from such antics. His fear over this, coupled with Emma’s demands on him, caused him to lose a lot of sleep and risk getting into great trouble during the day at his duty post, because he tended to nod off if he sat anywhere too long.

A little over three years later, after she had finally given up trying and reluctantly decided to seek an education for some sort of career, she turned up pregnant. By then, John Cole was out of the Navy and they had returned to his hometown in Eastern Oklahoma, where he worked at the Berry Hardware Store and Emma spent her days keeping their tiny apartment over the elder Berrys’ garage spotless and making cute crafts. John Cole had set his sights on buying one of the big fancy vans so popular at the time. He had to change that idea and accept a baby instead, along with paying a lot of the medical bills out of his own pocket, as their medical insurance was poor.

The evening Emma went into labor, John Cole had fallen asleep in front of the television. She had been engrossed in reading a magazine article about tie-dyeing when she began to feel odd. Her back hurt, and she thought she felt contractions. She checked the instructions from the doctor and wondered if she was truly in labor.

She woke John Cole and told him what was happening, then asked, “What do you think?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he replied to her question, gazing helplessly at her. He lay back again in the recliner and dozed off, until fifteen minutes later, when Emma shook him again and said that she was fairly certain she needed to get to the hospital—and quick.

Going into something of a panic, John Cole called his parents, who came running over from their house. They all got into Papa and Mother Berrys’ big Plymouth and headed through pouring rain to the hospital. Every couple of minutes throughout the drive John Cole would ask her, “Are you all right?”

How did one answer, when one’s body was seized with a wave of constricting pain at about the same time as the question was asked?

Just before they got there, Emma began to feel that she was about to deliver. She hiked up her dress and began to remove her panties.