Free Dance Real Slow by Michael Grant Jaffe Page B

department presented him with a plaque and gold watch at half court afterwards. Bruce Cutler, the school’s sports information director, had a message on his answering machine saying that my wife’s contractions had begun at 7:50 p.m., twenty minutes after tip-off. I received the news at 10:20 and left on a flight soon after, drinking watery Scotch from plastic cups the entire way. By the time I got to the hospital, in Ann Arbor, it was over. Kate was asleep.
    She had been tucked in tightly, so only the peaks of her shoulders rose above the line of the blanket. Her round face smooth and bright, the silent mask of a worker. Freshly washed hair, light as split oak, spilled over the pillow, breaking slightly, delicately, as it dumped down on the mattress. I took her hand and liftedit to my chest and then my mouth, rubbing her fingers between my lips. I told her I was sorry I had not been there and that I loved her very much.
    When I first saw Calvin, he was blotchy and red and I asked the duty nurse if he was okay, if he was supposed to be that way. She assured me he was fine, just fine, and I could hold him in the morning if I liked.
    The hospital cafeteria was closed, so I sat in the doctors’ lounge drinking vending-machine coffee. Kate’s parents had not yet been notified. Her friend Denise left it to me. Denise had driven Kate to the hospital, had called Bruce Cutler’s machine, had stayed with Kate until just before I arrived. Kate’s parents could wait a few more hours, I remember thinking, and then I went back to her room. I climbed into bed beside her, squeezing close, my arms drawn across her chest like they are now against Calvin. The bed was short and narrow and sometime in the early morning I rolled off, cracking my face against the floor. My chin was sliced open, leaving a crescent-shaped flap dangling underneath my jawline. I stood in the bathroom blotting at it with clumps of Kleenex, toilet paper, and then a wet towel. There was blood sprayed over the front of my shirt, speckled and black. Shuffling, I made my way into the hall with a soppy towel clinging like a giant, distorted goatee.
    Kate sat in a wheelchair holding my hand while they sewed eight stitches into my chin. She laughed a little and then told me about the delivery, about how easy things had gone. Then the two of us went to see Calvin. I cradled him carefully against my sternum while Kate ran her fingers along his mushy arm, and watched me.I still had blood dried to my body and cheeks and a clean white bandage, thick with gauze, stuck to my chin.
    Twenty-six months later, in our bedroom, I stood watching Kate. She was folding her clothes and stacking them into neat piles on the end of the bed.
    â€œI was too young when we got married, Gordon,” she said. “I still am too young.”
    We were married during the spring of Kate’s senior year at Michigan, my second year of law school. She had wanted to be married—or to have a wedding, anyway. An event: white and pink and hers alone. And then she wanted a family. But she could close off her emotions with a simple, easy twist, like a faucet. Now it was time to get on with her future—the part that mattered. Calvin and I were baggage she could no longer tote. From us, she had graduated.
    She told me she wanted to travel, to see more of the country, of other countries, that her father had offered to finance the trip. She was tired of Ann Arbor, of the people and of the town. She needed to be alone, away for a while, and then maybe things would change. In fact, she said she truly hoped they would change. Last, she volunteered to take Calvin, as someone might volunteer to take a pet, but she was not sure how much time she could spend with him. She believed he would be fine staying with her parents in Dallas. Thank you, I said, calmly, reasonably. He would remain with me.
    That Sunday she left, driving the convertible BMW her father had given her after she