John Michael and Charlie Rose

         It's late and I'm watching an old movie on cable. Something in black and white, with Bogie and Bacall and a lot of shadows and cigarette smoke. Bacall is telling Bogie to put his lips together and blow when the phone rings.
         I answer, my eyes still on the movie.
         "What are you doing?" she asks.
         "Just watching an old movie. To Have and Have Not."
         "Oh."
         "What's up?" I say.
         She is silent for a moment. "I'm late," she says at last.
         I try to ignore the tightening across my chest. "You're always late," I say. "It's part of your charm."
         "By late, I mean late."
         The ceiling fan stirs the air. I fumble for the remote and mute the television.
         "Okay," I say, sounding calmer than I feel.
         "So what are you thinking?" she asks.
         "Nothing in particular," I say. This is pretty much the truth. Her news is too big, too full of the dual possibilities of something and nothing, and my mind is still playing catch-up.
         She is surprised. "Nothing?" she asks.
         "Give me a minute," I say, and across the line I hear a quiet laugh that is somewhere between amused and terrified.
         "So what do you want to do if I am?" she says.
         "I guess that would be up to you," I say slowly. Neither of us will mention the word.
         "But what do you want?"
         I am silent for a time. "I think I would want to keep the baby," I say at last.
         "Me too."
         "Good."
         "Would you marry me? If?"
         "Of course."
         "Are you ready for that? I mean--"
         "We're twenty-one, sweetie. We're old enough to know what we're doing."
         "I'm getting a test tomorrow."
         "You want me to come over after work?"
         "Yes."
         We exchange I-love-you's and say goodbye. I try to go back to the movie, but suddenly I don't give a damn whether Bogie manages to smuggle the dissidents or get the girl.
         I go to bed and stare at the ceiling.
         We had talked marriage before, of course. And children too, in a hypothetical, wouldn't-it-be-nice kind of way. We'd even come up with names: John Michael for a boy, Charlotte Rose for a girl.
         I hope she isn't. I pray she isn't, I mean, God, I'm twenty-one, twenty-goddamn-one, three years out of high school, still watch cartoons when the spirit takes me, and please don't let it be the real deal because I'm not ready.
         I tell myself that for hours, and between bouts of terror, I try to reassure myself that even if she is, it will be all right. After all, I'm twenty-one, she's twenty-one, we're adults, we can handle it, I know people who had children at eighteen and still came out okay.
         And under both of these, another. I see two children, a boy and a girl, and in the dark and creeping non-time of a sleepless night I watch them grow up, grow strong, first steps and first kisses, and I wonder what it would be like to see it all for real, to help a young human being learn what being human is all about. And I try to block these thoughts out, try to tell myself I'm not ready, sure, I'll be able to handle it, but I sure as hell shouldn't hope for it. My God, I don't even like kids, and these aren't even real kids--they're smoke, they're phantoms, they're the faded shreds of a dream upon waking.
         But they're my smoke, my phantoms. They are John Michael and Charlie Rose, my children that may be, and as I stare into the blackness above me and count the minutes until dawn, I play at least four games of catch with each of them.
         After a thousand years, morning comes.
         I stumble through work in a daze, unable to keep my mind on the job for more than a few minutes at a time. The day lasts at least an eon. At six o'clock, I race to my car and drive to her apartment, cursing every red light on the way.
         We go to the store and buy the tests together--two of them, in case one is defective. We go back to her apartment, and I stand outside and smoke two cigarettes while she prepares dinner.
         "You know you're going to have to quit if these things are positive," she says as I come in.
         "Then I'd better stock up while I can," I say, and she laughs.
         We eat dinner slowly, making pleasant conversation which so strenuously avoids the subject of children that it seems as though we are two strangers talking, sticking to the weather and baseball to avoid offending each other.
         After dinner, we clear away the dishes and she goes to the bathroom to take the tests. They take a few minutes to register, so she comes out and we sit on the couch and continue our pleasant, impersonal chat.
         Finally, she looks at her watch and says, "That should be long enough."
         She goes into the bathroom. Galaxies form, planets cool, fish crawl onto the land with newly-developed legs and start evolving. Empires rise and flourish for a thousand years, then crumble during a thousand more.
         She comes out after maybe a minute, and she is smiling.
         "I'm not," she says.
         "You're sure?"
         "Both tests were negative." I can hear the relief in her voice, and for just a moment I hate her for it, and I can feel the relief loosening the muscles in my chest, and I hate myself, too. Because smothering my relief is a sudden, overwhelming sadness, a sense that I have reached out for something greater than me, greater than her, greater than anything I have ever encountered, and closed my hand on only smoke. And she doesn't understand that.
         "Are you all right?" she asks.
         "Yeah. Yeah, just relieved," I say.
         "Me too. We weren't ready."
         "No."
         "You want to watch some TV? Play a game?"
         I can't be here right now. "No," I say. "I've got to get up early tomorrow."
         "You want to stay here?"
         "I'd better not; all my stuff's at home."
         We embrace and exchange I-love-you's and I drive home, knowing all the way that I am not being fair to her, that she is right, that we are not ready. And wishing all the way that she had come out of that bathroom after that eternal minute and said, "I am."
         I do not know it yet, but this is the beginning of a split between us, a fissure that will widen over the next few months until it becomes a great gulf of separation, until we are strangers to each other.
         But now all of that lies ahead, in the unthought-of future. Now I drive home thinking of the possible future that I might have grasped, the future that will never be. Now I drive home and mourn my two children, John Michael and Charlie Rose. I mourn my two children who never were, my phantoms, my smoke, my dreams.
         And as the days slip by, I mourn them less, come to see them for the smoke they are, come to think of them as just part of that crazy, scary twenty-four hours I had with my ex-girlfriend. And as the days become months and the months become years, I stop thinking of them altogether.
         But sometimes--just sometimes--I will walk down the street or enter a restaurant or go to a friend's house and see a child who may vaguely resemble me, and I will remember my children, my phantoms, and I will shake my head and laugh at myself and wonder how it was possible to love children who never existed in the first place.
         But still...
         John Michael and Charlie Rose, had they ever existed, would be four years old now. And when I am reminded of that crazy, scary twenty-four hours I had half a decade ago, I can't help but wonder...
         Would they have had my eyes?