Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

in St. Johnsbury, or to some third friend’s home in Hardwick or Greensboro or Craftsbury. One September and October, it seemed, he was driving us somewhere every single day, and then working at the dining-room table in our home all night to try and keep up with the work he was missing nine to five at his office: There had been a notable baby boom in the county that fall, roughly nine months after the coldest, harshest winter in years, and my mother was busy.
    And although my father was unfailingly patient with me, and always at least feigned contentment at the prospect of another Saturday afternoon or Wednesday evening with only an eight- or a nine-year-old child for company, I know the demands of my mother’s calling strained their marriage. When they fought, and I remember them fighting most when I was in elementary school and at that age when I was at once young enough to need virtually constant supervision by someone and old enough to understand on some level the dynamics of what was occurring, their arguments would filter up through the registers in the ceilings of the rooms on the first floor of our house.
    “She needs a mother, dammit!” my father would snap, or “You’re never here for her!” or “I can’t do this alone!” Against all experience, he continued to believe he could use me as a trump card to convince my mother to stay home. It never worked, which usually compelled him to change his tactics from guilt to threats:
    “I didn’t marry you to live in this house all alone!”
    “A marriage demands two people’s attention, Sibyl.”
    “I
will
have a wife in this world, Sibyl. That’s a fact.”
    At the beginning of these fights, my mother always sounded more perplexed and hurt than angry, but underneath that initial sadness in her tone was a stubbornness as unyielding as Vermontgranite. She could no sooner stop delivering babies than people could stop having them.
    But I also believe that my father deserves high marks for simply enduring all that he did: The husbands of most midwives don’t put up with their spouses’ hours for long, especially once they are fathers themselves, and most of my mother’s midwife friends had been divorced at least once.
    Usually my parents’ arguments ended in silence, often because my father was incredulous:
    “Wait a minute. Didn’t the baby arrive at six in the evening?” I might hear my father asking.
    “Yup. Julia. Such a pretty girl.”
    “It’s past nine o’clock! What the hell have you been doing for the last three hours?”
    “Folding baby clothes. You know I love folding baby clothes.”
    “You were folding baby clothes for three hours? I suppose the parents own a store that sells baby clothes?”
    “Oh, for God’s sake, Rand. You know I didn’t stay there just to fold baby clothes. I wanted to make sure everyone was okay. It
is
their first child, you know.”
    “So how long did you spend—”
    “Thirty minutes, Rand. I probably spent thirty minutes actually folding Onesies and Julia’s tiny little turtlenecks.”
    “But you did hang around for three hours—”
    “Yes, I did. I made sure Julia was nursing, and Julia’s mom was up and around. I made sure the family had plenty of food in the refrigerator, and the neighbors were planning to bring by casseroles for the next few days.”
    “And you made sure the baby’s clothes were folded.”
    “You bet,” my mother might say, and I could see in my mind my father shaking his head in quiet astonishment. A moment later I would hear him leave the kitchen, where they might have been bickering, and go upstairs alone to their bedroom. Sometimes, later,I’d hear them make love as they made up: To this day, I remember the noise their bed made as among the most reassuring sounds I’ve ever heard.
    Unfortunately, there were also those fights that would escalate and become ugly, sometimes because my father had been drinking. He might have been drunk when my mother returned, and she might