No Kids
Paul and Miriam met the old-fashioned way. He was working in her father’s law firm. She didn’t work much. When the mood struck, she’d accept substitute teaching gigs at public schools on Chicago’s south side, then, rather than battle traffic on the long drive north to her posh little condo in the nice part of suburban Evanston, she’d instead retreat to her old room in her father’s big house in Hyde Park. The house was near the University of Chicago, where Paul attended law school and was editor of Law Review. There, in her old childhood room in her father’s big house, she’d bleed out poems about her experiences with the colorful and troubled children she inspired in their colorful and troubled schools.
She’d been her father’s date at his law firm’s annual summer gala at Lincoln Park Zoo. Her father had introduced her to Paul in the Children’s Zoo. Paul and a gaggle of other summer law interns were watching the children of the firm’s lawyers feed hay to a row of cows in a barn. The children screeched in terror when the cows’ big wet mouths tried to grab hay from their little hands. Miriam liked how Paul laughed at the children. He was the only intern who didn’t gush over the children, who didn’t crouch next to them to steady their trembling, hay-filled fists under the cows' mouths. She liked how he towered over the other law students and lawyers. S’e liked that his nose was large and lumpy and that his hands had strong knuckles and calluses. Despite his stylish short hair, khaki trousers, and pale blue polo shirt, he looked more like a boxer, or a truck driver, than he did a smart young law student.
She liked that.
They got married 12 months later, right after Paul graduated from law school. They had a lavish, old-fashioned June wedding. Miriam took his last name. She willingly let him be the breadwinner, though she continued to accept the occasional substitute teaching gig and compose the occasional poem.
Everything about their union was old-fashioned, except for one thing. By their tenth wedding anniversary, it was still just the two of them.
*
They celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary at the Signature Room. The restaurant is on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building on Chicago's North Michigan Avenue. Paul had proposed to Miriam at the very table where the two of them are now seated on a Sunday afternoon in June.
Paul is distracted. They'd had a little disagreement that morning. He'd wanted romance. She knew it was a dangerous time for romance. Rhythm was the only contraception she could tolerate. It was the only method for her that didn't trigger weight gain, cramps, or allergic reactions. She is very meticulous with her calendar and temperature charts. She knows when romance is safe, and when it's not.
Paul will be in New York tomorrow for some lawyerly business. He still seems a little down, Miriam thinks, and so she is glad when he excuses himself after their dessert to use the restroom. Miriam pulls out her cell phone, calls her father, and makes her special request. She wants the firm's limo to take Paul to the airport. She doesn't want to drive Paul. Driving to the airport is stressful even under friendly circumstances. Today driving will be particularly stressful because Paul is reviving the one issue they can't agree on. After 9/11, he’d backed off. He’d sighed but nodded when Miriam said it was too dangerous to bring a child into the world. But 9/11 had happened almost two years ago. The world hadn’t blown up.
Her father is happy to send the limo to wait for them in front of the John Hancock. He's refused her nothing since she hit him and bit him and cursed him and promised to hate him forever.
He's refused her nothing since she was 11 years old.
She's always been careful not to take advantage of that. She asks him only for what she truly wants or needs.
She is saying "goodbye Daddy love you" when a commotion occurs by the entrance.
She looks up. A family of eight fills the doorway to the restaurant. There are six children, from baby to school age. The oldest is maybe 12.
Dear God. She knows them, the mother and the father.
Miriam looks away, out the window, 95 floors over Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. Sailboats on Lake Michigan slice the horizon, their sails pregnant with wind.
As the family weaves its way inside the restaurant, one of the children, a chubby girl wearing unattractive glasses, trips and falls. She shrieks, then laughs as her mother pulls her up. Her noise punctures the soft melody rippling from the piano.
Ridiculous, Miriam thinks, to schlep kids to an expensive, upscale place like the Signature Room. Rude of the parents, she thinks to inflict their children's destructive mess and rowdiness on the other diners who've all managed to come child-free.
She's glad that she and Paul are just about ready to leave. She signals the waiter, asks for the check. She'll pay it, she decides, then wait for Paul in the sitting area near the restrooms
The family is following the maître d’. They approach Miriam's table. Miriam bows her head so that her long, straight hair obscures her profile.
The family is so noisy! Chattering, laughing, bumping, and then two quick sneezes explode from one of the girls. Miriam shudders.
A floppy straw hat hides the mother's face. The hat is lumpy with plastic flowers, and horrors, a cluster of plastic purple grapes. Clunky flat sandals and socks thicken her feet, and a yellow splotch stains the breast of her untucked white blouse.
Baby drool, Miriam suspects, or leaking breast milk. The mother is seriously fat, probably a size 12, maybe even a 14.
Miriam shivers. She's thinner now than she'd been on her wedding day. She's never been bigger than a size six. She's blessed with her mother's figure. In all the photos Miriam saved from the trash basket in her father's study, her mother is slim, posture-perfect, beautifully dressed.
The family settles themselves around the table next to Miriam's. The father is nearly bald, the curly black hair Miriam remembers is mostly gone, but his crooked nose is the same, tilted just to the side. A salt and pepper mustache and beard add weight to his long thin face. The skin under his eyes is pouched and delicately stained.
Miriam's heart squirms.
The father suddenly glances at Miriam. Recognition twists his eyes and mouth. He shoots his gaze down at the baby in his lap. Miriam feels a blush heat her face.
The waiter approaches the family, Miriam's waiter. A big smile dimples his cheeks. The dimples surprise Miriam. The waiter had not dimpled any smiles at her or Paul.
"So, who's the young man turning 10 today?" the waiter asks.
The children giggle. One of the boys, 10 apparently, blushes and raises his hand. He has his father's round brown eyes and sturdy dark eyebrows.
"My real birthday was two weeks ago," he says. His voice is soft and sandy, a bit like Miriam’s own voice, she thinks.
"Well, sir," the waiter says to the boy. "How do you like this special table we've saved just for you, right by the window, so you can see the boats on Lake Michigan? Maybe one of those yachts out there is yours, eh?"