One more, for the road.
Technically, three more. Her three final chances for the only thing she had ever made so bold as to request from the universe. But then Loretta, who had been present at every one of those thirteen embryonic failures, and who, moreover, had seen some of the most powerful citizens of the metropolis wail and weep （sometimes in happiness, sometimes in grief）， lowered her magic wand over Johanna’s belly and the cacophony of life came thundering through. And not a single thump either, or even a duet, but a crashing, howling trio. Johanna Oppenheimer was, literally, teeming with life.
“Well now,” said Loretta, whose Cavan accent had never shifted, despite forty years in New York. She was grinning at the screen. “You folks, everything you’ve been through. I said a rosary for the Oppenheimers, I don’t mind telling you. I don’t do that for everyone!”
She heard someone say, “Oh wow,” and thought of Andy Warhol, because only a week earlier they’d watched some television program about the artist. He’d stood over a gaggle of assistants as they silk-screened Uncle Sam onto canvas, and said the same thing: Oh wow, oh wow. Now, when she turned her head to look at Salo he himself looked silk-screened, and in a shade of green she had never seen before. Or perhaps it was making him actually, physically ill, the news that he was now—and could never for the rest of his life escape being—somebody’s father. A whole bunch of somebodies, in fact.
Chapter Four
Triptych
In which Johanna Oppenheimer gestates and Salo Oppenheimer goes further afield
Our mother spent the second half of the pregnancy in bed, allowed up only for careful, increasingly uncomfortable trips to the bathroom and the occasional appointment with the high-risk obstetrician. Hers was an old-fashioned confinement, beginning with heartburn, nausea, and gas, and only getting worse as those babies commenced to mess with her internal organs and the inertia commenced to mess with her head. Downstairs, contractors finished up the house’s “gourmet kitchen” and went clomping up to the fourth floor, where they got started on the nurseries: the two boys in the larger front room （with its stunning view of the harbor, a compensation for having to share）， the girl in the back, overlooking Montague Terrace. At six months some offset between elation at her long-desired state and profound discomfort tipped, and she began to find that she did not wake in the mornings to contemplate the pure delight of a new day. She did not wake at all, having failed to sleep during the night, as twelve limbs tangled for position inside her and somebody’s head pounded her bladder without remorse, and fear—deep fear—coursed through her exhausted body.
The goal was to get to eight months, but eight months undulated before her like a hula dancer in a desert mirage—so far, so unreachably far. Seven and a half months felt just as impossible. Seven months was a daydream, like someday, somehow, loping toward the ribbon at the New York Marathon. She couldn’t lie on her left side, where one of the boys sojourned head down, or on her right for fear the girl might be crushed under her brothers. She wasn’t allowed to stand except when walking, carefully, to the bathroom. That left sitting up in bed or lying flat on her back, two positions she alternated throughout the day and night.
Our aunt Debbie came once a week or so after work, and our grandmother on Saturdays. One of Johanna’s Skidmore friends was a nanny in Park Slope for a couple of novelists; she visited a few times, telling stories about her employers’ pretensions, and their dinner parties with other novelists （and their pretensions）， but hanging out with an immobile and hugely pregnant woman wasn’t a scintillating activity for a nanny’s single day off, so Johanna wasn’t surprised when those visits petered out. Mainly it was just our mother and Gloria de Angelis, the housekeeper she and our father had hired when the high-risk obstetrician told her to hit the mattress, and the dog, Jürgen （who, being low to the ground, did not enjoy the house’s many stairs and preferred to stay on the parlor floor, barking at perceived intruders outside on the Esplanade）， and of course Salo, who faithfully came home early and brought dinner upstairs on a tray for both of them: broiled chicken, ravioli, gazpacho, all prepared by Gloria. For nearly four months she stayed where she was, trapped and supine except for those terrifying walks to the bathroom and extremely careful visits to the doctor. Upstairs the workmen clomped and clattered as they readied the two nurseries. She wanted so badly to see the rooms, the curtains and paint color she’d chosen from her bed, the rugs and rocking chairs, the three black-and-white mobiles, which Aunt Debbie insisted had contributed to the genius of her sons, our cousins. But it wasn’t worth the risk of climbing the stairs. And the three of them came closer every deeply uncomfortable day.