Not Sweater Weather
Eve Marx
Word Count 765
The summer of 1987 was among the hottest on record. The New York Times reported that from Ponca City, OK to Paducah, KY, eighty people died during the many weeks of 100-degree temperatures. My partner and I were living in a condo in West Haven, CT, a location we stumbled on accidentally and knew little about. Although our condo was set directly on Long Island Sound, the high temperatures were oppressive and relentless. Our condo was a mere two blocks from the beach, but it lacked air conditioning or even cross ventilation. The Sound itself was no relief as that summer it was so polluted with toxins and debris from medical waste that governmental authorities deemed entering it unsafe. I was heavily pregnant that summer with our firstborn and completely miserable and isolated.
We were living in West Haven in part because we were escaping our sordid situation, which in a nutshell was that I wasn't married to the baby's dad. He was, in fact, still married to his first wife, F., and awaiting the paperwork that would finalize their divorce decree through the storefront legal firm Jacoby and Meyers. Nobody was happy about how this situation had unfolded, least of all my partner's parents, divorced themselves, whose enthusiasm for their first grandchild was significantly dampened knowing it was to be born out of wedlock.
The heatwave got me up and out of the two-bedroom condo early, as I had to walk my elderly dogs before the sidewalks heated up. I felt nothing but pity for them as they panted their way slowly around the corner past the Dunkin' Donuts and a small shopping plaza with a Baskin-Robbins, where I was not above ordering an icy milkshake for my breakfast. All the dogs really wanted to do was get their business over so they could return to the condo and collapse in front of a box fan. I was retaining water, and my ankles were swollen to three times their normal size, and I was reduced to wearing one of two loose, billowy maternity dresses I'd found at TJ Maxx and a maternity bathing suit, used, gifted by a formerly pregnant friend. I wore these garments exclusively for approximately six weeks because they were the only clothes that fit.
There was no rain that summer or even the break of a cloudy day. After walking the dogs, I'd head to the beach with a book, a sand chair, and a pair of sunglasses. I'd place the low-slung chair close to the water's edge, hoping to catch any breeze. I would occasionally dip my feet into the water just to cool them, always on the lookout for the random used syringe.
My due date was early September, but the baby was so big that it appeared I was about to pop at any moment. One day, a woman I didn't know approached me on the beach and told me to go home. "You shouldn't be here!" she said. I told her I was just trying to stay cool, but she wasn't having it and scowled angrily. Defeated, I went back to the condo and sat myself in a chair directly in front of a fan, soaking my swollen ankles and feet in a bowl of ice water.
The baby's father became obsessed that the child be born during the Harmonic Convergence, the world's first synchronized global peace meditation celebrating a special alignment of the solar planets, set to happen Aug. 16-17. He made me walk the beach one beastly hot evening for hours in an attempt to induce labor without result. A few nights later, to beat the heat, we went to an air-conditioned movie theater, where we watched "No Way Out" starring Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, and an actress nobody remembers now named Sean Young. During the film, the baby kicked violently inside of me, which I took to be a sign. The next day, my partner received a letter in the mail informing him that his divorce was final, and that afternoon my water broke. A little before noon the next day, our son was born by emergency C-section at Yale New Haven Hospital two full weeks ahead of schedule. I stayed in the hospital with him for five days, which at the time was the custom. On the day of our release, the heatwave broke, and when we returned to the condo, it was a balmy and humidity-free 68 degrees. Over the next few days, the temps continued to drop, and all the beautiful summer-weight newborn clothing I'd collected was rendered useless because it was already sweater weather.
Eve is a national journalist and book author. Her most recent novel, "How's Your Day Going So Far?" was released in 2026. She is also the author of What’s Your Sexual IQ?, The Goddess Orgasm, 101 Things You Didn’t Know About Sex and other titles bearing some relation to her stint editing Penthouse Forum. Her is also a writer of police reports and the author of Call The Police: Flash Fiction Based on Real Police Reports can be found at eve.marx.Substack.com. She lives near Portland, Oregon with her husband, a jazz saxophonist.
