LITMIR.BIZ

       NICK

      BEFORE

      Clara stands before the kitchen sink in a striped crewneck T-shirt that surges at the center. Our baby. The shirt has a stretchy look to it, like spandex, so that it lies smoothly over the bump. From the back, you wouldn’t know she was pregnant. Her dark denim jeans hug tightly to her curves, that stretchy elastic panel that holds our baby in place hidden beneath the extended length of the T-shirt. But from the side is a different story. From Clara’s side, where I stand watching, completely hypnotized as she scrubs a Brillo pad along the surface of a frying pan, wiping away bits of cooked-on egg, her midsection swells to an unreasonable expanse, bumping into the sink. Red Tabasco sauce trails along the banded stripes of the T-shirt, over the hump that is always in the way.

      Soon her maternity shirts will no longer fit.

      We’ve begun to guess that she’s got a linebacker tucked away inside her womb, a pro boxer, a budding defenseman for the Blackhawks hockey team. Something along those lines.

      Clara sets down the Brillo pad and rubs at the small of her back, arching from the weight of our baby. Then she picks up the pad and gets back to work on the frying pan. A haze of hot air rises from the waterspout and into the air, making Clara sweat. These days, she is always hot. Her legs and feet swell like a middle-aged woman fighting the ugly effects of gravity, ripe with edema, so that she can no longer stuff her feet into her shoes. Along the armpits of the striped T-shirt, the blue begins to yellow with sweat.

      But still, I stare. My Clara is exquisite.

      “Jackson,” I say as I force my eyes away from my wife and gather the breakfast dishes from the table: Maisie’s unfinished cereal bowl, my clean plate. I dump the crumbs into the trash can and load the dishwasher with the bowl and plate, a spoon.

      “Too trendy,” Clara replies, eyes never swaying from the frying pan or the hot water that falls into the stainless-steel sink from a faucet I’ve recently replaced. Our home, a turn-of-the-century Craftsman, is incessantly a work in progress. Clara wanted a newer home; I wanted one with character, personality. A soul. I won, though oftentimes—my evenings and weekends consumed with fixing things—I wish I hadn’t. “He’ll forever be one of three Jacksons everywhere he goes,” she says, and I relent to this, knowing it’s true.

      I try again. “Brian,” I say this time, knowing I haven’t met a Brian in recent years who was younger than twenty-five. My Brian will be the only Brian who’s still a kid, while the rest are thirtysomething, balding businessmen.

      She shakes her head. “Too conventional,” she says. “Might as well call him William or Richard or Charles.”

      “What’s wrong with Charles?” I ask, and peeking at me with her grassy green eyes, Clara smiles. Charles is my middle name, given to me by my father, also a Charles. But for Clara this won’t do.

      “Too conventional,” she says again, shaking her head so that ribbons of hair sway on the surface of the striped shirt, all the way down her back.

      “How about Birch?” Clara suggests, and I laugh out loud, knowing this is the root of dispute: names like Birch. Or Finbar. Or Sadler, names she proposed yesterday and the day before.

      “Hell, no,” I say, going to her and embracing her from behind, setting my chin upon her spindly shoulder, wrapping my hands around her bulging midriff. “My son will not be a Birch,” I assert as through the T-shirt the baby kicks at me: an in utero high five. He agrees. “You’ll thank me later,” I say, knowing how sixth-grade boys have a predisposition for picking on boys named Birch and Finbar and Sadler.

      “Rafferty?” she asks, and again I groan, my fingertips finding their way down to the small of Clara’s back, where they press on those aching joints and nerves. Sciatica, her obstetrician told her, describing the softened ligaments that were causing pain, the shift in her center of gravity, the added weight. There was no doubt that Baby Brian was going to be a big boy, much bigger than Maisie—clocking in at seven pounds, eight ounces—had been.

      Clara soughs at the pressure of my touch. It feels good, and yet it doesn’t all at the same time. “Isn’t that some kind of ribbon?” I ask, pressing gently on her back, seeing Clara’s meticulously wrapped holiday gifts all trimmed with red and green rafferty.

      “That’s raffia,” she says, and I laugh into her ear.

      “Need I say more?” I ask. “Raffia, Rafferty. What’s the difference?”

      “There’s a difference,” she tells me knowingly, shooing away my hands from her back. She’s had enough of my massage, for now, but she’ll be back for more tonight, after Maisie is tucked in bed and Clara spreads drowsily across our mattress and begs for me to rub, directing my fingertips to the spots it most hurts. Lower, she’ll say, and To the left, sighing when together we’ve found the spot where little Rafferty’s head has lodged itself into her pelvis. She can no longer lie on her back, though the only thing in the world she wants to do is lie on her back. But the OB said no, that it isn’t good for the baby. Now we sleep with a body pillow pressed between us, one that takes up more space than me, and I know it’s only a matter of time before I find myself sleeping on the floor. Maisie has been wandering in, too, of late, concerned about her mother’s swelling belly, knowing that soon she’ll have to share her home, her toys, her parents,

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