The Original 1982 by Lori Carson Page B

these people.
    Thank God Alan is with me. When we’re shown a video of a birth, he covers his eyes with his hands. I do, too, but peek through my fingers. I know somehow you’ve got to come out, but I can’t believe this is the way it still happens. You’d think with all the advances in technology and science, they’d have come up with something less barbaric by now.
    Nicole talks about preparing for the hospital, what to pack in our bags, and when to know it’s time. She describes the pain management options and has us practice breathing. I fear I’m too distracted to remember half of what she says; I’m going to miss something important. But a woman who is having her second baby says no matter what you learn beforehand, once the baby starts coming, you don’t remember a thing anyway.
    â€œThat’s why we have our wonderful husbands with us today,” Nicole says.
    I look at Alan and he smiles at me like a goofball. People in the class assume he’s my husband. Someone calls us a cute couple. He reaches out to pat me on the head, and I smack his hand away. I don’t know why I don’t love him like that. He’s the best friend I have and I count on him for so much.
    The light is long and yellow as we walk back to my place. It’s a late November afternoon. Alan wants to stop for ice cream cones, so we do. We get brown bonnets. The chocolate shell cracks and falls apart faster than I can keep up. Soon I’ve got ice cream running down my arm.
    At the apartment, I take my guitar out of Alan’s hands. “I’ve got a new one,” I tell him, holding the guitar awkwardly. My belly prevents my cradling it normally. The song is called “Still True.”
    Baby, all I’ve ever looked for is a safe place,
    All I’ve ever longed for is your warm embrace,
    All I’ve ever wanted is you.
    Take a good look and you’ll know
    It’s still true
    â€œDamn. That’s a nice one.” The cats are at Alan’s feet. He reaches up from scratching their heads to take the guitar from my hands.
    â€œYou could play it this way.” He starts to strum it.
    â€œOh, I love that.” I sing the melody over the song’s new feel. It’s got that eighth note in the bass thing now, like a lot of songs in the years after “Every Breath You Take.” We play it a few times through.
    â€œI definitely hear cello on it,” I say.
    This is before we knew Marianne Mercurio, the cellist who one day plays on “Still True” and many of my other songs. In the original 1982, I go to CBGB’s to see Shelly Lee Rowan play and Marianne is with her. She’s sitting on the right side of the stage, cello between her legs, wearing a black leather cap. Her long straight hair swings back and forth with every frenetic push and pull of her bow. I think she’s the coolest girl I’ve ever seen. Years later, when we’re making the first record, my producer tracks her down. This is back in the day of big-budget records, before the majors ran out of money.
    Marianne becomes the third member of our band.
    â€œYeah, cello would be extremely cool,” Alan says now.

Twenty-three
    M y parents come into town and take me to lunch at the coffee shop on Broadway. They love diners and coffee shops because there’s a lot to choose from and the food is predictable and inexpensive. BLTs and spinach pie, meatloaf sandwiches, and tuna melts.
    As a young family, we sometimes attempted to go to other restaurants. My father would tell us that we shouldn’t drink the water or eat the bread before he’d looked at the menu, because if the prices were too high, we were going to leave. It had actually happened more than once, and we’d walked out, trailing behind him feeling mildly humiliated. When my sister got to be a teenager, she got him back by always ordering a lobster or a sirloin steak.
    My father reads his menu now and