Raymond Carver’s Eraserhead

by J. Thomas Murphy

My buddy Norm and his wife had been trying to get pregnant for a little while. Trouble was, they weren’t having any luck. Norm’s wife’s name was Norma, if you can believe it. Norm and Norma. Norm told me about his troubles one night after we had been drinking.

“It’s not her,” he told me, “it’s my sperm. They’re all... weird.”

“Weird how?”

“They don’t have any tails, or maybe it’s heads. I forget.”

“You should get a sperm donor,” I said.

“A sperm donor?”

“Sure, you pick someone out that you both like and they give you their sperm. Good sperm, you know.”

He seemed pretty astonished by this. “You mean I should let someone else sleep with my wife?”

“Nothing like that,” I said. “They just put it in a little cup and give it to the doctor and then they have this device–”

“Never mind,” he said.

“Alright,” I said. Norm could be pretty sensitive about these kinds of things so I let it go.

One night a couple of weeks later he called and asked me out for a drink. He was already there by the time I got to the bar. I sat down across from him but he didn’t seem to see me.

“Hi Norm,” I said.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, before I could order.

“Ok,” I said.

“Norma and I talked about it, and we want you to be our sperm donor.”

It wasn’t the weirdest thing I’d ever had proposed to me.

“Except we don’t want to do any of that stuff with the cups and the tubes,” he said, “we want to do it natural.”

That part I couldn’t believe. “You want me to sleep with your wife, Norm?”

“Not like that. Not exactly. Something just doesn’t sit right with us about doing it with all those bits and bobs. Pieces, you know? Anyway, we didn’t see any reason to get a stranger involved in all of this.”

I told Norm that I’d have to think about it. I got up and went home. Didn’t even get a chance to have that drink. A couple of days later I called him up and told him I’d do it, but only as a friend. There was nothing wrong with Norma. She was a pretty woman, all right. It’s just that I have a pretty hard and fast rule about sleeping with my friends’ wives. A buddy of mine had gotten into some bad trouble about that.

So, the next week Norm and Norma and I went out to dinner. I wasn’t seeing anyone at that time so I went by myself. I wore a good shirt and everything. Even so, it was a pretty tense evening. They sat across from me smiling blankly while I ate my steak. I tried to have a conversation with Norm but he just spoke in monosyllables: yes or no, stuff like that. Norma was a little better, she talked about herself and then told me about something Norm had been telling her the other day, but Norm wasn’t in a mood to join in.

After dinner, I took Norma to my car. Norm stood across the parking lot watching us go. He didn’t say anything. Right before she got into my car, Norma turned around and waved at him.

We drove back to my place. I was going to clean up but then I thought better of it. I didn’t want it to seem too eager. I could tell Norm wasn’t too keen on the idea, even though it was his to begin with. He was the kind of man who gave himself bad choices and bad choices. I didn’t need to give him another reason to feel down about it. And anyway, I didn’t want Norma to think that I’d always held a torch for her or anything. Which I didn’t. But all the same, there was lots of stuff lying around that I didn’t want her to see: beer cans, takeout containers, a couple fashion magazines. She looked around and said, “Well isn’t this something?”

She followed me to the bedroom and pulled her dress off up over her head. She wasn’t wearing any panties. We went at it a couple times and when we were done she pulled her legs up to her chest and held them with her arms. I lay there a little out of breath, a little hazy. It had been a little while since I had been with a woman. It felt good, to be honest.

Then she got up and went to the bathroom. I slept through the night. In the morning, she took a cab home. I stood at my window and looked down at the street. Before she got into her cab she looked up at me and waved. I waved back.

The thing about getting pregnant is that it doesn’t happen all at once. Most times you can’t even get pregnant on the first try. Norma and I had a couple more of these sessions. At first, we went out to dinner together and invited Norm because it only seemed right. You can’t sleep with a man’s wife and not buy him dinner first. Maybe it was for my conscience, too. But Norm wasn’t any good company those nights. He’d sit there and squirm, not looking at anything in particular, coughing into his napkin. Eventually we decided to meet at my apartment. I’d order takeout and she’d get some wine. I’d play some music and before we knew it we were in bed. We’d do it three or four times, just to be sure.

After about a month Norma called me up and said, “Well that’s about it.”

“Congratulations,” I said. I meant it.

I didn’t know about the birth until well after the fact. Norma and I hadn’t spoken for a couple weeks, but I figured that was to be expected. She got pretty swollen up at the end, like a caricature of a pregnant woman from some old magazine. I remember one night sitting in a Chinese buffet, a drumstick halfway between the plate and my mouth, when I thought, It must be the baby.  I hadn’t even realized I had been feeling bad in the first place, but the thought that the baby had come made me feel pretty good after that.

Norm called me one night after. He sounded pretty down. The baby had been sick for a little while. Norma had been crying for a long time but she’d stopped now. The doctors and the nurses had said there was nothing else they could do, so Norm and Norma and the baby had been sent home. They’d just been sitting around all day looking at it. Norm wanted me to come and see it.

I went over there the next day with flowers and a card. I didn’t know what else to do. Norm was waiting in the doorway. Norma was watching television. She didn’t look too good either. I gave her the flowers and the card and she nodded. Norm took me into the bedroom where the baby was. All of the lights were off. I could see the shape of it in the crib. I leaned over and looked down at my child. In the dark, it looked all right: head and arms and a little body. But then Norm flicked the lights on and I saw that it wasn’t all right. There was something very wrong with it. Its arms and legs were too short. It didn’t look like they had joints or anything. It had two big eyes, much too big for its age, and a tiny mouth that puckered and cooed at me. I stood there staring down on it.

Norma came in behind us and said, “They say it happens like that sometimes. The first one is really small and scrawny, then the rest come out all right.”

Norm didn’t say anything, just looked at the floor. I guessed they’d had this conversation already. Norm invited me to stay for a late dinner. We ate in silence, pausing now and again when we thought we heard the baby stirring. Norm finished and put his napkin on the table. Norma laid her hand on his arm and nodded.

“Norma and I have a favor to ask,” he said.

I thought they were going to ask me to take that baby. I really did. I started to think about all the excuses I could make. I thought maybe I could run. After all, I hadn’t signed any papers. Then again, we hadn’t ever signed any papers. I was just about stuck. Instead Norm said, “We’d like to try again.”

“Again?”

“As in you and Norma.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve got a little while to think it over,” he said. “Once she’s done healing up you two can give it another try, if you’re interested.”

Before I left I stood in the doorway of the baby’s room and listened to it breathe. It was my kid, after all, but in that moment, I didn’t consider what was wrong with it was anything to do with me. I thought that what Norma said was right, about first ones coming out a little funny. After the first one I figured things would even out. 

So, after she was better, Norma started coming around again, leaving Norm to take care of the baby while we fooled around. It wasn’t the same at first. We were both a little more careful, as though any unnecessary roughness would bring about another sad conclusion. But after the first time, things settled back into their usual rhythm.

That next one came about three months premature. I visited Norma in the hospital. Norm stayed home with their other child. The baby was inside an incubator, all kinds of needles and things sticking into it. I can’t hardly describe what it looked like. It was like something out of a science fiction magazine. Most of it was normal: two eyes, two ears, one set of genitals. But I couldn’t tell how many arms and legs it had, they kept flailing around every time I tried to get a count. Eventually I gave up and went with the nurse to sign some papers.

Norm wanted us to try again as soon as possible. He wanted another crack at it. Norma didn’t care, said she always wanted a big family. She let me take a couple pictures of all of them together. I printed the pictures out and they hung them in the living room. Norm took a couple with him to work. Norma gave me a couple to put up at home. After a week I stuck them in a drawer. I only took them out when Norma came over, put them on a bookshelf behind the sofa so I wouldn’t have to look at them.

Norm seemed happy. After that second one the past seemed to recede, disappear. He could look me in the eyes again. More importantly he could look those kids in their faces, dandle them in his lap, call them baby names. Some nights I’d come over and they’d be dreaming up futures: this one in the trades, that one a scientist, maybe they’d get lucky and have some kind of computer genius on their hands and, all retire out in Northern California. Norma wanted to keep going. Even after the third one she wanted another. The same thing happened. Too many eyes, not enough eyes. Strange mouths. We kept going. It kept happening. Invertebrate, gelatinous, some with skin, some covered with something else. They all came out a little strange. Each time her pregnancies got shorter and shorter until it got to be she was pushing them out every month. There were so many kids in their house they had to hire a nanny to help out. Norm’s insurance was pretty good so it didn’t cost them much. I tried to chip in a little but Norm wouldn’t hear of it. I’d already done my part for him as far as he was concerned.

When we got to twelve I was ready to tell Norma I had to stop, that it was too much. I figured she’d be upset, but I wasn’t going to let that sway me. Well, let Norm say something I thought. I had a whole speech planned about my rights, how they’d taken this too far. I never got to say it, but it made me feel good to think it all up, see myself as the victim. I was still practicing my speech in my head when the nurses brought the baby in.

That one was all wormy. It was just a mouth gaping at the open air. I put them both in my car and we drove home. Norma didn’t speak. She rode in the back with the baby, staring out at the road. I wanted to leave it alone, whatever it was that was wrong with me. I wanted to drive them home and lay that kid down next to all of the others like there was nothing wrong and go to my apartment and get good and stinking drunk. Instead I turned the radio down and looked at Norma in the rearview mirror.

“Listen, Norma,” I said.

“You wanna stop.”

I stared at her.

“I could see you working yourself up back at the hospital.”

“Twelve just seems … like maybe there should be fewer.”

She was quiet again for a little while, then said, “I used to wake up and go into the world and all around me would be all these people, but they were all strangers to me. And the whole world was like that, and the whole world would go on being like that. And I just thought…if the world had to be full up of all of these people, why couldn’t they be my people?”

We sat in silence, listening to the car as it rolled over the road.

She looked back at me in the rearview. “Does that sound like an explanation or an excuse?”

Norm was waiting for us. He came out the house and took Norma and the kid and invited me in, but I told him I had somewhere to be. Back at my apartment, I turned the television on. I took two American Lite Beers from the fridge and sat on the couch. I tried not to think about the kids, but I did. What else was I supposed to do? 

I was drowsing between my first and second beer when my phone woke me up. I pressed the receiver to my ear, heard Norma’s voice on the other end.

“You sound like you were asleep. Did I wake you?”

“No, I should be getting up anyway,” I said but I didn’t. I just lay there.

“Rest,” she said. “I can call you another time.”

“I was thinking about those kids.”

“Thinking is good.”

Something came over me, crushed me. I wanted to weep.

“You want to come over? Norm could pick you up.”

“No, it’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“All right well I’ll let you go then, you can get some rest.”

“Wait -- Norma?”

“Hm?”

“I was thinking, you know, we never gave them names.”

I could hear one of the kids start to cry. 

“Come around sometime. The kids miss you.”

After she hung up, I lay there for a while, trying to think about what I wanted to do. I was split between getting drunk and going out for Chinese when I fell asleep again. In my dream it was dark, but the kids were all lit up, every single one of them. They all lay there, looking at me. I could feel their eyes, even the ones that didn’t have eyes. Without turning on the light I went down the rows, looking at each one of them until I got to the end. The newest one was there, still awake, I think. Under the coverlet it writhed. I put my hand on it and that settled it down a little. Out of nowhere I remembered a song my mother used to sing to me when I was young. A few bars tripped out and then a few more. The kid picked it up, right away. We got to the end of the song and started up again, together in tune.

All of a sudden I heard this music, really beautiful music. The feeling was so strange, so unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I woke out the dream so slowly and gently that by the time I realized it was over, it was already too late.

***

J. Thomas Murphy is a writer from Boston. He tried living somewhere else, he promises. His work has previously appeared in Sundog Lit, Heavy Feather Review, Ligeia Magazine, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.