The Chaperone

  Afterward, reaching across the bed to hold her hand, he would ask if she was all right, as if he had damaged her somehow, which she didn’t understand, because she was his wife. And she had told him, even before they were married, how much she wanted a child, how she didn’t want to wait, how much it would mean to her to know someone, even a little baby, who shared her blood. And she wasn’t hurt. In fact, even when he was holding her hand and what she needed from him for a child was already released inside her, even then, she wanted to crawl across the bed and move her hand against his side and press her face into the warm skin of his chest.

  But that might be strange, or too forward.

  “Cora? Darling? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she would say, squeezing his hand, because she couldn’t say more than that.

  Having the twins nearly killed her. She wasn’t due for another three weeks when she woke with what felt like a pickax in her belly, her mouth and throat so parched that at first, she couldn’t cry out. When she finally did, the pickax moved, slicing into her on each side, but Alan appeared in the doorway of her room, still wearing his pajamas, his mouth going slack at the sight of her.

  Later, he told her she was so pale, even her lips drained of color, that it was like she was already a corpse, but writhing in agony on the bed.

  They were lucky to have a phone. Most people still didn’t, and it saved time, which the doctor said later had been crucial—she could have bled to death. As soon as Alan made the call, he returned to her with water and a wet cloth that she grabbed from him and bit down on. Her vision began to blur and darken, but she could hear him crying, begging her not to go. That scared her. He kissed her forehead, the morning stubble of his chin rough against her cheek, and whispered that he was so sorry. He kept saying how sorry he was. She was irritated, even as the pickax burrowed in. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d only been a husband. It wasn’t his fault that something in her body was going horribly wrong. It was her own defective machinery, likely bad since her own birth. Regular childbirth was Eve’s curse, a bearable pain for all women, but this, hers, was something else.

  When the doctor arrived, he asked Cora if her own mother had suffered from toxemia. Or a sister? Or an aunt, perhaps? Had any of them had any trouble with childbirth at all? Any blood clots?

  She gripped Alan’s hand, dug her nails into his skin.

  “She doesn’t know,” he told the doctor. And then more firmly: “Don’t agitate her with these questions.”

  She would never understand how she survived it, bearing down while she could barely breathe, the doctor and nurse urging her on, even when she told them about the pickax, even as she was shrieking and begging them to stop the pain. It was the placenta, the doctor told her. It was tearing off too early, and they had to get the baby out. He couldn’t use chloroform. He would need her help to push and save the baby, and to save herself as well.

  Alan was banished from the room. She didn’t know he’d gone, or how long he was away. He told Cora later that he heard Howard’s first hearty cry from the parlor, and that he’d been on his knees, his forehead pressed against the sofa’s armrest. Cora heard Howard’s first cry, too, though she never heard Earle’s—by the time he was delivered, she was losing blood, fading in and out. Even when she could hear, she couldn’t move, or feel, her arms or her legs. But she no longer felt the pickax, either, and she was peaceful, ready to sleep, even with her unquenched thirst, even having just heard the first cry of her child. She was that tired, and that afraid of the pickax’s return. “We’re losing her,” the doctor said, quietly, but she heard it, and still all she wanted was to rest, to stop having to fight, to just go with what nature intended and lay her head down on the grain. But hands pressed against her, shook her awake. “Don’t breathe in the poison,” Mother Kaufmann said. “Cora? Love? You can’t see it or smell it, but it’ll kill you.” They were both with her, their hands on her, shaking her awake though she couldn’t see them, even as they pushed and pulled her to the silo’s ladder. “Go on,” Mr. Kaufmann said, with a not-so-gentle shove. “Go on, now.” She couldn’t turn around. She had to keep looking up at the silo’s blue-sky opening, grasping for it, but she could hear them both behind her, urging her to keep climbing through the thickness on the slippery rungs, to go on and let herself be the happy woman and the very good mother they’d always known she would be.

  They already had an older Swedish woman coming in on washday, but after the twins were born, Alan asked Helgi to come in every day to do the housework and the cooking, too. So Cora spent the first months of her sons’ lives recovering in bed as the doctor suggested, a bassinet on each side, both within easy reach for breastfeeding. Despite Cora’s lingering weakness, Alan’s mother had insisted that a wet nurse was out of the question, as most wet nurses were unmarried mothers and immigrants, she said, and there was no telling what unseen weaknesses or vices babies ingested along with the milk. When the senior Mrs. Carlisle said things like this, Cora didn’t know if she had simply forgotten about Cora’s own murky background. Her mother-in-law was always kind, and she never brought up the fact that Cora could easily be illegitimate herself. But Cora knew she knew.

  So even before she was strong enough to go down the stairs by herself, Cora worked to prove herself not just adequate, but excellent at nursing her ravenous boys, who both seemed a little angry for being expelled too early from the womb, and so thin and desperate for nourishment. She sang “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” to them, marveling at Howard’s fair hair and strong grip, and how Earle, with his serious eyes, already looked so much like Alan. Twins. The surprise of it made her laugh, albeit with exhaustion. Alan’s family had no history of twins. Perhaps her side did.

  Alan handled the shopping. Almost every day, on his way home from work, he went to the grocery and the bakery and vegetable stands and purchased what Helgi needed to cook whatever Cora was craving. He regularly brought home calf’s liver, which the doctor had suggested to restore her blood and iron, though Cora did not crave this at all. He brought her novels and constructed a little bookstand so she could read while she nursed. The phonograph was moved upstairs by her bed, and Alan purchased records he thought she and the babies might like to hear. He would bring up her dinner and sit with her at the table in the corner of her room, holding both of the boys so she could eat. Fatherhood agreed with him. He seemed so happy, beaming down at their little faces, or, if one or both started to cry, walking them around the room and assuring them, in his low, patient voice, that they would be fine, that their mother had been through a lot, and they should give her some time to rest.

  Once she was able to get up and down the stairs without feeling light-headed, she and Alan started eating in the dining room again, leaving the twins upstairs asleep, the heavy door to her room pulled shut for just that half hour, so, Alan said, she wouldn’t hear if one of them woke and started to cry. Cora appreciated that he insisted they spend this uninterrupted time together, and that he always worked to amuse her with stories of warring secretaries and belligerent judges. But it was an effort to keep up her end of the conversation—her days consisted of repeated, short cycles of sleeping, eating, nursing, and changing diapers, and there was no way to get too many anecdotes or charming observations out of that. She could ask him about things she’d read in the paper—had he heard about the fire at the ice plant? Did he really think it would cost twenty-five thousand dollars to build a new one? Had he heard Henry Ford had invented an automobile that could go over ninety miles an hour? She would plan these topics in advance, not wanting to appear such a dullard, but then, when Alan actually tried to discuss them with her, her tired mind would lose focus. Even with the door upstairs shut she might hear one or both of the boys crying, and the front of her dress would be wet with milk and she wouldn’t hear Alan at all.

  She felt sorry for him. Before the end of her pregnancy, they’d gone out to parties and dances together. Now she felt like a walking
eyesore, her body still too swollen to squeeze into a corset, her breasts too large with milk. And really, she didn’t want to be away from the twins for long. But having people over for dinner also seemed too challenging—and embarrassing, as she was still an exhausted and potentially leaky vessel. She was only comfortable with visits from Alan’s family, for whom it seemed she could do no wrong.

  Alan said it was ridiculous of her to apologize, that she didn’t have anything to be sorry for. Of course she needed time to recover.

  “You almost died,” he reminded her, taking a bite of a pancake coated with sugar, a favorite dessert of Helgi. “And I’m hardly dissatisfied. We’ve been married a year, and we have two healthy sons. You’ve been a devoted mother to them.” He smiled across the table. “I have no complaints whatsoever.”

  She cut into her pancake and glanced up at him. He was still dressed for court, still wearing his coat, even, though he’d removed his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. The skin beneath was a faint shadow in the glow of the table’s candles. Her gaze moved to his hands.

  “Thank you,” she said. “But I want you to know…” She swallowed and looked down at her plate. “I want you to know that I look forward to my full recovery, when I can be a wife to you again as well.”

  There. She had said it, as plainly as she could. She didn’t know what else to do. He hadn’t been in her bed since she told him she was pregnant. She’d assumed that this was a common practice, and that having relations when she was pregnant would harm the child in some way, and that her doctor was too embarrassed to tell her. And Alan, so considerate, might still think her too tired or fragile for relations. But now, looking at him in the candlelight, even with Helgi still cleaning up in the kitchen, she wanted to go to him and sit in his lap and put her arms around his broad shoulders, and press her nose against his Adam’s apple, breathing in the peppermint and the scent of warm skin underneath. She didn’t want him to be considerate forever.

  She heard him set down his spoon. When she looked up, his smile was gone. He turned toward her, his knee grazing hers under the table.

  “Cora,” he said, reaching over the table’s corner to take her hand. “I’m afraid I have to tell you something.”

  She held her breath, waiting. His hand was warm against hers.

  “We can’t have any more children. Or we shouldn’t. I didn’t want to tell you while you were still weak, but the doctor was clear.” He stared at her. “What happened with the twins’ birth could likely happen again, and he can’t guarantee you would be as fortunate.”

  She looked into the candle’s flame. He wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t already suspected. But she’d put the thought out of her mind—she’d long dreamed of a big family with Alan, finally, to make up for the years of being alone. She’d wanted to be one of those women with a house full of children who would know only love and togetherness, all of them calling her Mother and wanting for nothing. She’d wanted this so badly that it had felt like a need, a mission. But now, hearing the hard facts, her fear trumped all that. Alan was right. She loved the twins more than these imagined children. She wouldn’t risk leaving them motherless. And really, it was more than that. She remembered with clarity the feeling of life truly pulling away from her. She didn’t want to die, or ever feel that pickax again. She wanted to live a long life and be in this world with her beautiful husband and her baby boys and her pretty house with the turret and the afternoon sunlight slanting across the wooden floors. Even for herself, even without the twins, she didn’t want to bleed to death. She was grateful Alan hadn’t left the choice up to her, or implied they might try for another child anyway. Because she wanted to live even more than she wanted more children, but saying that aloud would sound unwomanly, and cowardly, and selfish.

  She leaned down to kiss Alan’s hand. “You don’t mind?” she asked, looking up.

  He smoothed back her hair and shook his head. “I couldn’t bear it if something went wrong,” he said. “We need you to live.”

  He never came to her bed again. He kissed her cheek, and kissed her hand, and sometimes moved his hand over her hair, but even when the twins were sleeping through the night in their own room at the end of the hall, and even when she could fit in her corset again, and wear pretty dresses and dance with him at parties, he stayed in his own room at night. She understood he was being chivalrous, protecting her from his desire.

  But she also wondered, from time to time, if so much chivalry was necessary. Surely not all relations led to babies. Many women she knew had ten or more children, but some had only three or four, and it was hard to believe that all of the married women who weren’t having babies each year lay alone in bed every night as she did. And what about bad women? They certainly couldn’t risk a baby every time they had relations. There must be some trick, something other women knew and she didn’t. Would it be safe if they just didn’t complete the act? If they stopped before he spilled out? That would certainly be better than nothing. But who could she ask? Not the doctor. Not Viola or Harriet. Either one would likely be offended, or horrified, and think her some sort of bad woman. She could say she was just asking for Alan’s sake, for the sake of a happy marriage, but she might just embarrass herself.

  She wondered if he went to bad women. If he did, then he was right to stay out of her room. There had been a notice in the paper that had bluntly warned men not to visit bad women unless they wanted to bring syphilis and all sorts of other diseases home to their wives and likely make them infertile. Cora knew a nice woman who had been married five years, with no children at all, and Viola Hammond said she was sterile because her husband had visited a bad woman and brought home a disease. It happened all the time, Viola said, and then she’d looked at Cora so steadily that Cora wondered if she was implying that Alan was similarly responsible for the twins’ difficult birth, which for all she knew, he could have been. Would the doctor have told her? She didn’t know. There was so much she didn’t know, and no way to find any of it out.

  But she couldn’t come out and accuse him. Not on such shaky ground. And not when he was so good to her and the boys. Once Howard and Earle were toddling around, Alan would get down on the floor to play with them, even after a long day at work, letting them climb up on his back and crawl underneath him, laughing and blowing raspberries into their bellies until they were laughing, too. And he often surprised Cora with a present—a new hat from the Innes store, or something nice for the house. If she would remind him that it wasn’t her birthday or Christmas, he would tell her he was aware of that, but that he was also aware of what a wonderful wife and mother she was, and that it wasn’t his fault that she had the kind of head that looked good in any hat.

  When the twins were four, Cora thought it would be fun to take them to Wonderland, which was just over the Douglas Avenue Bridge, a trolley park with a carousel, a roller rink, and even a roller coaster called The Great Thriller. Out of her own excitement, she made the mistake of telling the boys her plan in advance, and she was so pleased with their thrilled response that she promised to take them the very next Saturday if the weather was good. Alan had been working long hours, but he said he was curious about Wonderland himself, and he thought he could manage to free himself for a Saturday. Harriet and her new husband, Milt, said they wanted to come along as well, as they would soon be moving to Lawrence, and they knew how much they would miss their little nephews, not to mention Cora and Alan, once they were three hours away.

  But when Saturday came, a cloudless morning suggesting a beautiful day, Alan said he didn’t feel well. It was just a headache, he said, tightening the belt of his robe. And maybe something with his stomach. He didn’t need a doctor, just some rest at home. They should go on without him.

  “You’re sure?” Cora asked, reaching up to press her hand against his forehead. They were in his room with the green velvet curtains, the same fabric covering the bed. Five years they had been married, and she’d hardly been in this room. She
’d never so much as sat on the bed. “We could just go another day.”

  He took her hand from his forehead and kissed it. Even now, she found him so arresting to look at. He’d grown a mustache like Teddy Roosevelt’s, and she was surprised at how much she liked it on him.

  “I’d hate to disappoint the boys,” he said. “It’s all they’ve been thinking about. Really. I just need some rest. I’ll be fine.”

  Before they left the house, her own head started to ache a bit. She tried to ignore it, because the boys were already sad that their father wasn’t coming and she was determined to make the best of things. But by the time they met up with Harriet and Milt on the trolley, the ache was making her snappish with the boys, too sensitive to their collective volume. She realized she was shivering a little, too, though the sun was shining and everyone else said the breeze felt good. If Alan hadn’t fallen ill that morning, she might have kept pushing herself, but since her symptoms trailed his by just a few hours, it seemed likely that she really was getting sick. And though she’d been looking forward to seeing the boys have fun, a day at the amusement park with two excited children hardly seemed what she needed now.