Muffled sounds—now familiar—emanate from the adjacent apartment. Rocky is at that age—late twos, early threes—when, like a pint-sized King Lear, he rages and bellows over nothing, which, you could note, puts him on a par with Bunny, except you can assume Rocky will outgrow it. When it first started, his mothers apologized for the disturbance, which was thoughtful of them but unnecessary. “It doesn’t bother us at all,” Albie had said, which wasn’t consistently true. The sounds of the kid going ballistic did, on occasion, set Bunny’s teeth on edge, but she never would’ve complained because Rachel and Kelly never complained about her cigarette smoke, as opposed to the crank who lives one floor below who slid notes under the door: I can smell your smoke!!! It’s disgusting!!! If it doesn’t stop, I am going to report you!!!, which prompted Bunny to slide a note under his door: To whom are you going to report me? The American Cancer Society? The Health Police? Your mother???? Preferring, in the end, to rise above the squabble, Bunny bought one of those expensive air purifiers to absorb the smell of cigarette smoke. He no longer slides notes under the door, although he scowls whenever he sees her. When you consider all the litigious crackpots out there, or even worse, such as the neighbor who wants to be your best friend, Bunny and Albie lucked out with the lesbians next door. Any disruption resulting from their kid throwing a tantrum is piffle.
When Bunny first learned that Rachel and Kelly were pregnant, Albie wanted to know, “Which one?”
Bunny shrugged. “I didn’t ask.” When her sister Nicole had announced that she and the Wiccan princess were pregnant, Bunny did ask, “You? Or the Princess?” and Nicole repeated, “We’re having a baby.”
“You might not know this,” Bunny said, “but only one of you is going to grow fat and lactate.”
“Do you have to ruin everything?” Nicole asked.
And you wonder why no one likes you.
Rachel, it turned out, was the pregnant one. On a stultifying July afternoon, she and Bunny met up at the mail bank in the lobby. As if over a matter of a mere few days, Rachel’s stomach went from relatively flat to freakishly huge, like one of those monster squashes, and Bunny couldn’t help but stare. Rachel placed the palm of her hand on her belly, and said, “He’s kicking. Do you want to feel?”
“What?” Bunny asked.
“Do you want to feel him kick?”
The pause that followed was suffocating, as inescapable as a stench in the air, until Bunny managed to scramble together an excuse; something about bacteria, the kitchen counter and a sponge. “My hands.” She held them up as if they were evidence.
One night, a year or so after Rocky was born, Albie, home from work, burst into the kitchen where Bunny was slicing tomatoes for a salad, and he said, “You’re not going to believe this. Rocky is walking. He’s in the hall with Kelly. Walking!”
“Yeah? So?” Bunny did not look up from the task at hand. “They do that. They learn to walk.”
“But don’t you think it’s exciting?”
“I’d be excited if he were flying. But walking? No.”
“Do you have to be that way about everything?”
“Yes,” Bunny said. “I do have to be that way,” and Albie asked, “Did the paper come?”
The delivery of the daily Times was, as of the last few weeks, erratic; it often came late and sometimes not at all.
“No. I’ll call tomorrow.” Bunny had been promising to call tomorrow for a few weeks already. “But the New York Review came. It’s on the coffee table.”
Bunny dumped the sliced tomatoes from the cutting board into the salad bowl where they landed on top of the packaged, pre-washed mixed baby lettuces. She shook the bottle of salad dressing—Newman’s Own—but paused before pouring it. Bunny was never unaware of her own limitations.
Soon after Albie and Bunny were married, her mother asked, “Should I be looking forward to a grandchild?”
Second on the list of things Bunny feared having was a baby. Third on the list was facial hair. Whatever was first, she never mentioned it.
Bunny shook her head. “Albie has no sperm. None,” she said and, as was Bunny’s intent, that was the end of that conversation.
Except it’s a conversation that never really ends because everyone wants children. A woman who doesn’t want children? Something must be very wrong with her.
In the apartment above, one flight up, lives a family with two children. Twins, a boy and a girl. When they moved in, Bunny claimed to smell sulfur coming through the air ducts in the bathroom. She swore to Albie that those children had cloven hooves like pickled pig’s feet instead of feet with toes. You might then imagine Bunny’s displeasure at finding herself in the laundry room with them and their mother who acted as if their opening and slamming shut the dryer door, as if determined to snap it from its hinges, were the same sort of wholesome activity as drawing stick figures on paper.
“It’s even better than I imagined it,” she said to Bunny who, although she did not look up from sorting her laundry, did ask, “What’s better?”
As if it were objectively obvious, the mother said, “Having children. Don’t wait too long,” she advised. While she was recounting her Herculean efforts with in vitro fertilization, Bunny cut her off. “I don’t want children,” Bunny said.
“You say that now, but just you wait until you have your own.”
“I don’t want children,” Bunny repeated, but some people can’t let go.
“You’ll change your mind,” their mother said, “and you’ll see. It’ll be the best thing you ever did.”
“Let me ask you something,” Bunny fished around in her bag for her cigarettes. “If I said I didn’t want a dog, would you urge me to get one nonetheless?” To which the mother of those two little shits said, “You can’t smoke in here.”
It has, as of late, crossed Albie’s mind that perhaps he should be the one apologizing to Rachel and Kelly for Bunny’s tantrums.
Rocky kicks at, or throws something at the shared wall. The sound is soft, but clear and it reverberates. “My little echo,” Bunny says.
Is it safe to laugh or not? Albie waits for a clue.