Rondo in C Minor

Tamara Friedman Rondo in C Minor In the beginning they expected it every month. They made plans to convert the office—currenthome to theirsmaU library, college yearbooks, Miriam's family photo albums, and their white malte-poo,Ajax—into a nursery, which would ofcourse require a new carpet and they might as weU throw in a paint job whüe they were atit—paleyeUow, Miriam suggested, and Sue agreed. Theymade lists ofeverything theywould need-the standard line-up ofbabybooks along with some alternative selections, various diaper types and brands and the benefits and drawbacks of each, all the clothes, furniture , and linen needed to accomodate the arrival of a life. It could be said that they were optimistic except that they had bypassed any consideration that things might not go as smoothly, as expediently, as planned. Optimism was, in the beginning, irrelevant. And there reaUy was no cause, early on, for doubt: Sue was a healthy twenty-nine-year-old with the body of a nineteen-year-old, so her doctor told them, and there was no reason why something so natural, so often accidental or unwanted in het couples, should not happen quite easUy and without undue compUcations. There was nothing to it, in fact, aside from keeping track of ovulation and the actual monthly procedure, which involved a syringe, several pUlows on which to prop Sue's pelvis at a forty-five degree angle, and the slightly uncomfortable but not painful injection of the semen. Then they waited. Miriam turned the TV on to a program about wildlife or ecology or outer space. Months later she began reading poetry to Sue, first the romantics, then the moderns, then a chronological selection from an anthology ofwomen poets: Barrett Browning, Rossetti, Moore, Bishop, Sexton, Rich. She skipped Plath (too difficult) and Dickinson (too sparse), though she came across Plath's journal one Saturday in the pubUc library and checked it out, for there were several breathtaking entries. Sue lay on the pUlows, staring at the ceiling or at her lover's face, and imagined Plath's stars and the warm summer wind on her neck and thought that perhaps this was all coming together inside her. Six tries later she grew testy. "Read me the Bishop poems, the ones from BrazU. The fish houses, the moth one. No—Susan Griffin. You haven't read her yet. She's not in that book? I'd Uke to know whynot. Wordsworth, then. Oh, forgetit,just Frost, plain and simple." AfterMiriam finished one or twopoems the ordeal would begin again. Miriam told Sue to relax. She told her to pick the poems ahead of time 52 the minnesota review if it mattered that much to her so that she could just lie there and let things work. She told her it didn't really matter what she read, they just needed to pass the half hour pleasantly, Sue's pelvis on a slant. She told her one T. S. Eliot poem probably wouldn't damage the embryo . Except that there was no embryo. Then one day in July, after sixteen months of inseminating, Sue was late. She told Miriam while the two were getting ready for work. "But let's not get excited," she said, pattering around the bedroom like Ajax at the sight of his leash. "I could just be late." "I know, I know," Miriam said, and kissed her lightly on the lips. The next morning Sue's nipples burned in the shower. She didn't say anything to Miriam before leaving for the officebuthurried home from work that evening to pee over a slate. "Honey," Miriam said when she came home, standing just inside the screen door with a look of surprised dismay. Sue was crying quietly on the sofa, Ajax scrambling across her lap to lick her cheeks in alternation. "But that's good news, honey," Miriam said, when Sue told her the tests—three, over the course of the day—had turned the various yes colors. "Of course it is, "Sue murmured, staring at her folded arms, her empty lap, stUl in her blouse and skirt from work. Ajax had leapt off the sofa to greet Miriam, then...