Open by Lisa Moore Page A

swivelled in his chair to face me. He pressed his hands down the length of his thighs. I had wanted a second child more than anything in the world and Lyle hadn’t. I had wanted one with all my might. Alex was eleven.
    Go to it, he had said. While I was in the bathroom reading the instructions I could hear him typing.
    We had been vacationing in France. I was in the shower and I’d felt a sharp pinch and knew. It was like anything else without rhythm or beat. No way to be sure of it; I was sure. Myforehead tingled, I broke a light sweat. All the objects in the world brightened in a single synchronic pulse. If Lyle wanted to leave, he could leave. If there was a fight, I would hardly be able to pay attention. Nobody feels conception taking place; I felt it.
    The wheels on Lyle’s office chair squeaked over my head. The test sat on the windowsill. The bathroom linoleum was cold underfoot and there was a flattened squiggle of blue toothpaste in the sink with some of Alex’s hair stuck in it, wavering under a thread of water from the leaking tap. On the floor above, Lyle was rolling toward the bookshelf. Dragging himself with the heels of his shoes. Then he kicked himself back to the computer and began typing again. Our luggage was still in the living room, though we’d been back a week. I wanted it put away. Beside the pregnancy test, an enamel soap dish, a brilliant white bar of soap smeared with two bleating red petals from the geranium. The faded pink cross on the plastic wand turned redder.
    I called up the stairs, It’s positive.
    Lyle rings the doorbell and we wait. Prissy Ivany swings the door wide open and grins at us. She’s wearing a long, clingy black dress with a greenish sheen and her hair is big and orange.
    Your hair is beautiful, Prissy, I say. Charles Ivany comes up behind his wife.
    She once hid some forks in there, Charles says.
    That’s true, says Prissy, a whole place setting.
    Where’s Alex, asks Charles.
    A sleepover, I say.
    Charles is smoking with an emerald cigarette holder and he’s wearing a tuxedo jacket with satin lapels and a red bow tie. He has a miniature set of antlers on his bald head.
    So glad you could make it, he says. Let me take your coats.
    Let’s get that baby settled away, says Prissy. Charles claps his hands once.
    What will you have to drink? I’ve got a very good sherry.
    I’ll try the sherry, Lyle says. He’s beaming happiness.
    Good man, says Charles.
    Prissy brings me to a bedroom upstairs and helps me with the folding playpen. She switches on a baby monitor and holds it to her ear. Then she gives it a shake.
    Guess that thing works, she says. When we come back downstairs Charles is telling a story about Thomas Aquinas.
    Just stopped writing. Charles pauses to grin at everyone.
    He’d had a vision. Everything he’d written before was straw. Charles throws back his head and laughs.
    Can you imagine,
straw
, it was all straw.
    Blue diodes are the next thing, Joanne Barker announces. That’s all you’ll hear from now on, blue diodes.
    What about pocket calculators, Lyle says, didn’t some calculator guy get the Nobel?
    Don’t start with me, says Joanne. She raises her chin at Lyle, saucy and flirting.
    I want to do what Diane McCarthy always does, says Prissy. Each man moves two chairs down before dessert. Men, desert your wives.
    Listen, says Lyle. Everyone hushes at once. Pete has started to cry.
    I walk out to the car, Pete in one arm, the folded playpen banging against my shin. I throw it into the trunk, strap Pete into the car seat. There’s a J. J. Cale tape in the stereo and it bursts honeyed and sweltering into the frosty air.
Magnolia, you sweet thing, you’re driving me mad
. Fat snowflakes drift onto the windshield. The steering wheel is too cold to hold. Somewhere in the world there are magnolias. There are men who love women, a particular woman, to the point of devotion. In that part of the world babies sleep under filmy mosquito nets while their