Love/Imperfect

How the Coe Boys Got Their Names

How the Coe Boys Got Their Names for Annette All that miserable August, she cursed Dr. Banfield, Del, love, her own plumbing, the U.S. Army, the United Nations, and Korea, both North and South. It was bad enough, in what everybody said was the sultriest summer since 1928, that she was into the eighth month of her first pregnancy. But then, six weeks before her due date, Dr. Banfield recommended a lying-in. “With this kind of thing, Dora, we don’t want to take any chances,” he said while she was still up in the stirrups. “Besides, just think: what woman in your condition wouldn’t want to spend a whole month in bed?” A fat lot he knew about it! she thought. Flat on her back and covered with sweat, feeling like an overstuffed roaster in a slow oven. She really shouldn’t complain, and, if Del were around, she probably wouldn’t. If he were working down at his daddy’s realty office, she could look forward to his being home at lunchtime and every night at five. And, 56 · christopher t. leland too, she could count on his keeping his mother, his sisters, his father, the whole brood of her family, and the Millikins from next door at bay. But there in her third month, he had been called up and was now about as far away from Rhymers Creek as it was possible to be. “Hell of a time for a war,” he had grumbled the night they saw him off. Dora was trying to be brave there at the station, but, to her, the very word Korea sounded like it had four letters instead of five, even though Del assured her everything would be all right. They walked slowly to the end of the platform, where he pulled her close, his hand wandering down to rest on her belly. “Honey,” he whispered, “there is one thing I want you to do.” “Oh, Del. Anything, anything.” “When this boy comes along . . .” He raised his hand to still her. He was convinced it was a boy. “When this boy comes along, no matter what my momma says, don’t you dare name him after me.” She was a little startled at his vehemence. “But, honey . . .” “No buts,” he said. “I always thought Delmer was the stupidest name I ever heard—and by all the fights I had about it, I wasn’t the only one—and I’ll be damned if my boy’s going to have to go through what I did over some dumb name.” “Well, okay, Del.” She leaned tight against him. “Oh, Del, maybe it’ll be a girl.” He kissed her. “It’s a boy, Dora. I just know it.” Shiny as a basted hen on the bed, she’d sometimes marvel that she’d had no notion how difficult a charge her husband had laid upon her. It had really not been clear till after the lying-in began, when Momma Coe dropped by, resplendent as usual in an organdy dress, apparently unaffected by the humidity. White gloves, Dora noted with a mix of wonder and nausea: she was actually wearing white gloves! how the coe boys got their names · 57 “Honey, I’ve been meaning to get by these last two days and just haven’t had a minute. How are you feeling?” Momma Coe prattled on about the heat, about a fashion show she’d helped organize for the Hillside Orphanage and one she was planning for the Red Cross, about Poppa Coe’s latest siege with gallbladder. “. . . you know, we haven’t had a letter from Del in what, two weeks now? Even if he is in Seoul, I just worry and worry. I know you do too, honey.” She sighed. “It just seems so sad he won’t be around when his own Little Delmer arrives.” For Dora, “Little Delmer” hovered in the air like a challenge, and she felt a sudden, swift kick inside her, as if her unborn boy was demanding she pick up the gauntlet and sally forth as champion of the infinite not-Delmers of the world. She reached for the magazine on the floor, the new Saturday Evening Post, as it turned out, and began to fan herself clumsily, staring off at a point just beyond Momma Coe’s head. “Well, Momma Coe...