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Policy , on which she had an upcoming exam. “For God’s sake,” she said. “Haven’t these people heard of Pampers?”
    3) Set up the crib before the infant arrives and train your pet to stay away from it. Otherwise, the cat may want to sleep with your child .
    In a tiny room just off the kitchen I cleared a space next to the washer and dryer, built the crib, hung pink curtains, and taped up several pages torn from a Dumbo coloring book I’d found at the store. I sat in a corner of the room gripping a water pistol, a finely detailed German Luger, and squirted Meckie whenever she came near the crib. She glared at me, hatefully. “Screw you both,” I said to my wife and my cat on particularly bad days. Susan wasn’t talking much. Okra stems lay in the shoebox at her feet. I called my mother for advice. “Be patient with her, Josh. Her body’s going through changes.”
    â€œYou’re telling me. She’s as big as the World Trade Center.”
    â€œWhat are you feeding her?”
    I glanced at the box. “Size nines,” I said.
    ______
    â€œWhat will our baby look like?” Susie asked me one night. “I mean, genetically speaking, what are the possibilities?”
    â€œIt’s hard to predict,” I said. I pictured various members of our families. “She could be big as a battleship or small as a bath toy.”
    Susie wasn’t pleased. She was so large by now she couldn’t haul herself out of a chair without my help.
    One evening after dinner she wanted to take my picture. “With your shirt off,” she demanded, posing me by a window.
    â€œWhy?” I asked.
    â€œWhen our daughter’s old enough to appreciate men, I want her to see how young and sexy her father was.”
    â€œSomehow you just made me feel old.”
    She popped a flashcube onto the camera. “Flex your muscles, Josh. A little Schwarzenegger action.”
    â€œOur kid’s going to think her parents were pornographers,” I said. I was depressed. That morning I’d resigned my post at the high school, effective at the end of the summer. Bio-Systems Research, Inc. of Toledo, Ohio, a small outfit on a farm road south of Lake Erie, had hired me to write grant proposals at three times the salary I was making as a teacher. Instantly I’d become a better potential father in Susie’s eyes, a more upstanding citizen, but my schedule looked daunting to me and I wouldn’t earn a vacation for another two years.
    â€œGlad to have you on our team,” Wayne Miller, my new boss, had told me at lunch. “We’ve been trying to bag federal dollars for months. We’re going to need you ‘round the clock here at first.”
    I was going to miss chasing cats. With my long hours I feared I’d miss seeing Jessie grow up.
    Susie circled me with the camera, standing on tiptoe or crouching (sort of), as though she couldn’t see me.
    â€œJosh?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œSmile.”
    ______
    In Buenos Aires, shortly after the military coup in March ’76, I saw a gorgeous gray Angora with only three legs, limping from car to car. Under the tense scrutiny of several heavily armed young soldiers, I coaxed the cat out of a jeep and took it to a vet. It was one of the happiest moments of my life.
    In the days before Jessie was born I’d lie in bed with Susan, rubbing baby oil on her belly, trying to calm her fears about the world. “Our little girl’ll be so helpless …,” she’d say. I practiced my lullabies on her, from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats:
    The Rum Tum Tugger is artful and knowing.
The Rum Tum Tugger doesn’t care for a cuddle;
But he’ll leap on your lap in the middle of your sewing,
For there’s nothing he enjoys like a horrible muddle.
    ______
    The night Susan gave birth I decided I couldn’t be a father after all. I’d driven her (fumbling with the gear