The Merbaby

The other day, Andrew wondered aloud if our having a merbaby was punishment from God for premarital sex. “We had a child out of wedlock, Kat,” he philosophized. “It would explain a lot.”
I wasn’t offended so much by his declaring our progeny a “punishment” as I was by his impromptu piety: I’m fairly sure Andrew thinks Deuteronomy is a surgical procedure. I asked him how’s the weather up on that horse; there was a tiny mermaid squalling for a feeding in the next room: it was not the time for argument, anagogical or otherwise. I tossed Daddy a bottle of warmed-over fish feed to three parts formula. “Your turn, preacher man. I’m due for a nap.”
Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on him: after all, I have my theories, too, quietly formed as I lie in bed at night, or take lone walks during sunset, or squeegee the sides of baby’s tank. Why did we, two humans, produce a merbaby? I’ve thought back to the aquatically hosted sexual encounters Andrew and I have had: aside from the requisite swimming pools and hot tubs, there was that once in the ocean at Cabo, and that time in Lake Tahoe when we got caught by the Sea-Dooers. An explanation shows itself in neither instance. Had I consumed too much tuna in my lifetime, unwittingly coated my innards with caviar? I won’t think it’s God, or karma or aliens or the ghost of Hans Christian Anderson. I leave conspiracy and suspicion to Andrew, who wouldn’t know empiricism if it hit him the head and then proved the fact. Our mermaid is a living, oxygen-converting baby, not a fairy tale; I will act as such.
***
The thing that bothers Andrew most is the fact that our mermaid is a boy. “He’s going to develop a complex,” he wailed one night as we lay in bed; he had been upset since that afternoon, when a little girl he passed in the grocery store waved a glitter-finned Barbie at him from the throne of her mother’s shopping cart. I stroked his hair and told him to go to sleep, that no such thing would happen. He would have none of it; he buried his face in my clavicle and continued in a skeleton-muffled voice: “Imagine having to spend your life as a boy being constantly referred to as a ‘maid.’ Do you have any idea what that will do to his psyche? No one thinks of mermen- no, it’s all girls and princess stuff. Long hair and seashell bras.” The next morning, I found him a grim-faced soldier in the kitchen, wielding his coffee mug; he was resolved. “Mark my words: no son of mine is going to get treated like some pussy siren. I’ll be damned!” He has since sent out several long letters demanding the portrayal of masculine mer-role models on pain of a class action suit; the people at Disney have yet to respond.
***
The first couple nights the baby was home, we stood on the other side of the closed nursery door, worrying about having done something wrong in preparing our child for sleep. Was the room warm enough? Was the water cool enough? The ceremony of agony was on its third nightly installment: I studied Andrew’s face in the dark-light glow of the hallway, watched his brow laced tight with concern, his bottom lip being wrung relentlessly by his teeth. He always chews his lip when he’s assessing a situation. I reached up and softly stilled his mouth’s savage work with my fingertips. “You’re going to make it bleed, baby.”
His whispered close in my ear: “What if we didn’t use enough moss?”
“We can go in and check.”
“We promised each other we wouldn’t be nervous.”
I searched out his hand and found it, blind, the way I knew I could. “Just this once. We’ll go in just this once.”
The quiet of the nursery seemed to be inhabited by only the glow of the plastic nightlight on the wall, a cartoonish lion with the dumbstruck face of a jungle cat too featherheaded to ever attack. The lion’s single black line smile watched Andrew and I advance on the bed like two Indians creeping through the grass toward Jamestown. There was, in fact, more life in the room: it was small and quiet and escaped all but the most careful detection, packed away in the high-barred crib under a mobile that featured the rest of the dopey safari cast. We peered into the crib; Andrew’s lip let out an audible sigh as it was freed from torture; I sagged into his freshly laundered Fruit of the Loom chest. The baby was asleep like a little mer-angel in the tank in the crib. We had made a slope of smooth pond rock within the four glass walls that dipped under a half foot of clean water. His tiny tail lazed happily under its blanket of wet, and his perfect pink body, encased in white cotton tee, was stretched out on the dry incline, cradled in downy thick peat.
“Look how fast that little chest moves in and out,” Andrew murmured.
“Look how fast the little gills open and close.”
He kissed my forehead. “Let’s go to bed, Momma.”
***
In the shock of first seeing the tail, everyone in the delivery room forwent the ceremony of naming the baby; a secretary called from the hospital a week later and asked what she should fill the blank line on the birth certificate with. I told her I’d call back: like all new parents, wrapped in the chrysalis of a three person world, Andrew and I had merely been referring to “the baby.” Visiting new grandparents had been no help, either, in that they simply lavished the object of adoration with the entire dictionary of pet-nicknames. But the phone call brought the outside world in: now was the time for action. I sat Andrew down at the dining room table and declared open season on names. All the ones we had teased back and forth through the pregnancy seemed wrong now- too leggy, somehow. “How about Wade?” Andrew smirked, earning himself a punch in the chest. We made a list; we went to baby name websites on the internet; combed the family trees, cracked open favorite books with favorite characters. Three hours later, the only spoils was a notebook page full of crossed-out entries. Andrew had had his way with half a bottle of wine and was dozing on the couch with an anonymous, purring baby wrapped in a soaking wet towel on his chest. The phone rang; it was the hospital again, the night shift secretary now.




“We have an incomplete birth certificate here,” she tsked at me through the line.
“I know,” I answered, switching the phone to my other hand with a wince: my knuckles were tender from their earlier collision with Andrew’s kryptonite sternum.
“Baby’s first name?” she prompted.
“Wade.”
***

The dusky blue of Wade’s newborn eyes are now tinged with the shrapnel of green he will wear in them as an adult; they are a perfect match with his tail, which extends itself in its silkiness week by week. Andrew has picked up extra shifts at work: we’re saving for a salt water pool. Evenings now, we sit in the bathroom, cuddled together contented on the floor mat, watching the baby learn to use his fins. He did his first cross-tub lap the other day; Andrew unwisely, endearingly, dipped into the swimming pool fund and bought a video camera- he’ll be ready for lap number two. He doesn’t talk about providence or clandestine government toxic waste dumping; I’ve left the encyclopedias to the spiders as real estate. We talk instead about the next few years, about when we’ll finally pick up and move to a seaside home; how I’ll be able to take sunset walks on the beach; how Andrew will get his diving certification.
After bathing is bedtime. Andrew and I stand, two soundless trees grown from the nursery’s carpeted floor, and watch Wade sleep at night the same way we brush our teeth: one more thing you always do before bed. We don’t care if it means we’re nervous; we’d rather be nervous than not do it. Watching him sleep is one of those things you wouldn’t miss out on, no matter what the cost, no matter how routine it becomes: I guess having a new baby is a phenomenon you never quite get used to.