While Drowning in the Desert Read Online Free PDF Page B

breakfast?”
    “I don’t know,” I moaned. “Bacon and eggs.”
    “Eggs?!” he snapped. “What, are you trying to kill me?”
    I hadn’t been, but the concept didn’t entirely lack appeal at the moment.
    But assuming it was a rhetorical question, I didn’t answer.
    “And bacon?” he asked indignantly.
    “What’s wrong with bacon?”
    Apparently giving up on talking directly to me Nate mumbled to no one in particular, “He wants to feed bacon and eggs to an old Jew with a heart condition.”
    “I didn’t know you had a heart condition,” I said.
    “I’m eighty-six years old,” Nate answered. “That is a heart condition.”
    “Look, you can have gefilte fish and matzo balls for breakfast. I don’t care.”
    “What about the chocolate cake?”
    “For breakfast?”
    “Now.”
    I knew that. I was just giving him back a little, you know.
    “I have an idea,” I said.
    “Excuse me, but I’m skeptical.”
    “Why don’t we go back to the Mirage and order the chocolate cake from room service?”
    “What are you, crazy?” he asked. “Room-service prices?”
    I didn’t care. I had the company’s gold card. With an American Express Gold Card in Vegas you could get a whole cake and someone to jump out of it if you wanted.
    Anyway, that’s what we did. (No, not the jumping-out part, just the cake part.) I could tell he was wearing out, so he didn’t give me too much of a fight. And on a Sunday night it was no problem extending his room. So Nate sat in his underwear eating his cake and watching old movies on TV while I called Karen.
    “Hi,” I said. “What are you doing?”
    “Knitting.”
    “The only thing I’ve ever seen you knit is your brow,” I said.
    Which was not overly bright on my part, but I was starting to get annoyed with the baby thing.
    “You can be such a jerk,” she said.
    “I know.”
    “Don’t think admitting it is going to get you off the hook,” she said. “And I’ve been thinking.”
    Maybe, I hoped, she’d been thinking that getting pregnant right away was a tad premature and that we should wait until we’ve been married two or ten years. And that she was knitting me a sweater or a scarf or something.
    “What have you been thinking?” I asked as gently as I could. You know, to let her ease into backing down.
    “I’ve been thinking,” she said, “that you’re not okay with parenthood because you never knew your own father and your mother was a heroin-addicted prostitute who didn’t nurture you and that you haven’t really dealt with your suppressed rage sufficiently to surrender your own childhood and adopt adult responsibilities.”
    Oh.
    “So you want me to come in every Tuesday, Doctor?” I asked.
    “See, there’s that hostility.”
    “Christ, I don’t know why I’d be hostile!” I yelled.
    “I think it’s healthy that you’re working out your anger,” she said casually.
    “I am not working out my goddamned anger!!!” I screeched.
    “You don’t have to get mad,” she said.
    And hung up.
    Without taking his eyes off the television Nate said, “I went to a child psychiatrist once.”
    “Kid didn’t do me any good at all,” we said at the same time.
    Nate looked at me with renewed respect.
    Okay, not exactly respect. Call it affection.
    All right, he looked at me with a near absence of total contempt, let’s put it that way.
    Nate looked at me with a renewed near absence of total contempt.
    Then he fell asleep.
    I took the plate and fork off his lap, lay his head back on his pillow and covered him with a sheet and blanket. Then I set the alarm and climbed into the other twin bed.
    Nurturing, I thought. Suppressed rage. Surrender my childhood, accept adult responsibilities.
    We hadn’t even had the kid yet and already I felt exhausted.
    I told myself to forget about it and just go to sleep. Sleep would be good. Sleep would be great. All I had to do was lie there and not worry about suppressing or surrendering or accepting