Life Expectancy

it a place of honor on the living-room sofa.
        The head of the birthing bed had been elevated, so Lorrie was half sitting. She looked sweaty, sore, exhausted-and radiant.
        "Well, there you are," she said. "I thought maybe you went off to have dinner."
        Licking my lips, patting my belly, I said, "New York steak, baked potato, creamed corn, pepper slaw, and a slab of chocolate fudge gateau."
        "When you make chocolate fudge gateau," Mello Melodeon asked, "do you always have to use ground almonds, or can you substitute hazelnuts?"
        Lorrie said, "Good Lord, what does a girl have to do around here to be a star?"
        Just then she expelled the afterbirth. There's some spectacle involved in this final bit of business, but it's not the stuff of stardom.
        On my feet at her bedside, swaying, I gripped her hand, and she said,
        "You can lean on me, big guy," and I sincerely said, "Thanks."
        When the red-haired nurse brought the baby, it was washed and pink and swaddled in a soft white cloth. "Mr. Tock, say hello to your daughter."
        Lorrie held the precious bundle, while I stood paralyzed and speechless. For nine months, I had known where this was leading, but it nevertheless seemed impossible.
        We had chosen the name Andy if it was a boy, Anne if it was a girl.
        Anne had fine golden hair. Her nose was perfect. Her eyes, too, and her chin, and her tiny little hands, all perfect.
        I thought of Nedra Lamm in the freezer, Punchinello in prison, Konrad Beezo out there somewhere in the winter night, and I wondered how I dared to bring a vulnerable child into a world as dark as ours, and getting darker year by year.
        On days when the universe seems cruel or at least indifferent, my dad has a saying that he relies on to cheer him up. I have heard it a thousand times: Where there's cake, there's hope. And there's always cake.
        In spite of Konrad Beezo and all my concerns, "my eyes filled with tears of joy, and I said, "Welcome to the world, Annie Tock."
        As you might remember, Annie came to us on Monday night, January 12, 1998, exactly seven days before the second of the five terrible dates foreseen by Grandpa Josef.
        The following week was the longest week of my life. Waiting for the other big clown shoe to drop.
        The storm passed. The sky became that hard pale blue familiar to those who live at high altitudes, such a clean and steely and sharp shade of blue that you felt you could reach up and cut your hand on it.
        With Beezo loose and the fateful day ahead of us, our house on Hawksbill Road seemed dangerously isolated. We stayed in town with my folks.
        Naturally, our worst fear was that Annie, with whom we had been so recently blessed, would be taken from us-one way or another.
        We were prepared to die rather than let that happen.
        Because Huey Foster knew all about my grandfather's predictions and their unsettling accuracy, the Snow Village Police assigned an officer to my parents' house around the clock, beginning Wednesday morning, when I brought Lorrie and Annie home. Indeed, we were driven from the hospital in a squad car.
        Each officer came for an eight-hour shift. He patrolled the house every hour, checking door and window locks, studying the neighboring residences and the street.
        Dad went to work, but I took time off and stayed home. Of course when the tension made me crazy, I baked.
        Each of the cops chose the kitchen table as his post, and by Thursday all of them agreed that they had never eaten so well in their lives.
        In times of loss and trouble of all kinds, neighbors usually express their concern and solidarity by bringing food. In our case, the neighbors were too intimidated to offer the usual casseroles and homebaked pies.
        Instead, they brought DVDs. I don't know whether independently each of them arrived at the conclusion that in this media-drenched era, DVDs were an acceptable substitute for consoling gifts of food, or if they had a community meeting to debate the issue. By Friday our home-entertainment needs for the next two years were covered.
        Grandma Rowena snatched up all the Schwarzenegger movies and watched them on the TV in her bedroom, with the door closed.
        We put the rest of the DVDs in a box in the corner of the living room and forgot about them for the duration.
        Mom