Free In the Middle of All This by Fred G. Leebron

rested there.
    Now he crushed out the almost-whole cigarette and looked at himself in the bar back. Past midnight and he was alone. Past midnight, and upstairs she slept. In London another day had gone by, there was another day to get through. He couldn’t imagine what it was like.
    You keep trying, is what you do. You listen to the numbers when they’re good, and ignore them when they’re bad. You do flushes and decide that the pieces and chunks and stones in the toilet bowl afterward are the it of it coming out. You let the shamans and healers take you wherever and however you can. You lie to yourself. You tell yourself the truth. You touch his hand whenever you can, you follow the crease of his collar to the soft belly of his throat, you crumple his earlobes between your fingertips whenever he comes in late from a course or a meditation and you tell him how glad you are that he is growing in all this. You get up every morning and go after it. You try not to call everybody all the time. You stay within yourself. You get out of yourself as much as possible. You deny the self. You are all self. You swim in a flood of meditation, constructive reading, and organic vegetables. When he’s left you for another night of Epiphany or yoga and you can hide it from yourself, you sneak a bite of chocolate, a slice of steak, a dab of pâté, a sip of wine, hours of television. On the Internet you surf the humor sites and send a selection every Monday to the e-mail list of your mother, brother, sister, cousins, old colleagues, friends. You crawl into bed every night and hunt for pockets of energy that you forgot to burn. You lay awake long after he has fallen asleep. You use the toilet six or seven times. You wonder what God will look like. You listen, breath held, for the phone to ring and then you will answer it and the voice on the line will say whatever you most need it to say. There’s been a mistake, and you don’t have what they told you you have. Or, You’re going to be a mother. Or, I love you, we love you, everyone loves you. Or, You can rest now. Go ahead now, rest. And then you will. Although for a few minutes after the phone still hasn’t rung, your heart will beat too rapidly, and sweat will trace its way along the lifelines of your palms and in the creases under your knees. And then you will. You will rest. It won’t be a rest like the rest you used to have, if you can remember what that felt like. It will be a rest from which you will wake unrested and hoping to discover that it’s all been a dream, just a mistake, just a nightmare. The dream is the tremor of the it in you, and the sleep around the dream is as shallow as the bed you are in, and you wake—what?—almost disappointed to find that you are still alive and that you haven’t arrived at some new, daring, dazzling, endless world.
    Later still, he found himself swaying in the kitchen, feeling for the phone, opening the refrigerator and dialing in its light. Her voice. How are you’s. Questions about the kids, how she missed them and loved hearing stories about them and would he please please please send some pictures or a video. Stuff they always said.
    â€œI want you to know we’re thinking about having a baby for you,” he heard himself say. He’d had more than he could count and he looked at his near-empty glass, puzzled by what he’d just offered.
    â€œYou’ve got to be kidding,” Elizabeth said incredulously.
    â€œIsn’t it—” He gulped the rest of the drink. He’d forgotten he’d switched to vodka. Not much resistance there. Maybe if he’d chosen scotch he could have shut himself up. “—What you want.” He fucking wished he could put the phone down and yet he noticed how exhilarated he was beginning to feel.
    â€œWhat?” she said. “What?” She lowered her voice.
    â€œA baby,” he said, his voice brimming and