She interrupted him. “Larry, I have some news. I’m pregnant.”
“You’re what?”
He jumped up. His fork clattered on the plate. His chair overturned and clattered.
“You’re sure? When did you find out? Why didn’t you tell me right away?” He raced around the table to hug and kiss her, cheeks, lips, neck, and hands, in a frenzy of excitement.
“You sure? When did you find out?” he repeated.
“Today. I saw the doctor and came right home,” she lied, and lied again. “I made a special dinner to celebrate.”
“Oh, my lord!” he cried. “I’ve just won the ten-million-dollar lottery. I’ve been elected president. I’m on a rocket trip to Mars. When is it going to be?”
“April.”
“My lord!” he repeated. “And we weren’t even trying! I’ve had the flu one week off and one week on practically all the darn winter, and you’ve been working hard, not feeling tiptop—it goes to show you, doesn’t it? But you’re feeling all right? Everything’s fine?”
“Everything’s fine.” She smiled. Was it not a miracle that she was able to? Some good fairy must be propping her up.
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right? You’re so quiet.”
“I guess I’m just stunned,” she answered, still smiling.
Larry glanced at his watch. “Hey, I’ve got to call Dad and Norma.”
“Let your father enjoy his evening in peace. You can tell him at work tomorrow.”
“You think it’ll disturb his peace to hear that he’s going to be a grandfather for the first time? He’ll burst his buttons, he’ll be so proud!” Larry moved to the telephone and stopped. “But what am I thinking of? You should have the first turn. Call your folks. Then I’ll go.”
“Thanks, but I’ll call my mother tomorrow when everyone’s left for work and we can have a long talk. We do it a lot anyway, as you can see from the telephone bills.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure. You make your calls while I clean up.”
“No, no. You did all the cooking and I’ll do the cleaning up. You just sit down and rest.”
There was no use arguing with him, because she would not win. Obviously, he was going to treat her like an invalid or a princess for the rest of her term. So without further speech, she would simply do what she wanted, and what she wanted now was not to overhear his telephone call. Alone in the kitchen, she closed the door.
A few minutes later he opened it and called in. “My father was stunned. I could tell because he barely said a word.”
“He didn’t say anything?”
“Oh, surprise and congratulations, of course. You know how he is. He never says very much, but I could tell he was happy. Really, really happy. And Norma was thrilled. She’s so different. Now let me scrub that roasting pan. It takes elbow grease. You can put the dishes in the dishwasher if you insist on doing something.”
“Larry, you’re being quite silly. Very dear, but silly. I’m not sick, and I’m not a queen.”
“You’re my queen. And in there,” he said, patting her stomach, “is the heir to the kingdom.”
Ah, Larry, poor Larry! She wanted to weep for him, and could not.
“I get a kick out of seeing you so happy about the news,” Lester said, as he came back for the second time into the room where Norma was working on the next edition of her Latin reader. “I never saw you rejoice over anything the way you’re doing now.”
He was also, Norma saw, somewhat puzzled. His expression seemed to be asking in a nice way what all the fuss was about. Most people who wanted children did, after all, have them without much trouble. So it really wasn’t such a remarkable happening, was it?
No, it wasn’t. But in her particular circumstances, which she would have liked to describe to him and never would, this was an exquisite relief. A baby anticipated with such joy as Larry was so clearly feeling is the best possible evidence that the couple is a solid unit. So she reasoned.
“I can’t wait to see Larry’s face,” she said. “He’s been wanting this for so long. Not that he ever said so directly, but I could tell from hints and by the way he behaved with little children.”
The cloud that had been hovering above her since that memorable afternoon in the school’s theater building was now dispelled for good. True, through a combination of her own reasoning powers and Lester’s excellent advice about the tricks one’s eyes can play, the cloud had faded to a shred. Yet, she had to admit that at rare moments when the wind shifted, it had reappeared in a clear sky and lurked there, a small, dark menace on the horizon.
All that remained to trouble her now was a quiver of shame as she recalled her own suspicions, so nasty, dirty, and obscene. Well, at least nobody else knew about them, and now she simply would toss them into a refuse heap where they belonged.
Outside on Lane Avenue trucks ground by. Heat smelling of gasoline poured through the open window. Completely dressed, without desire or energy of any kind, Amanda and L.B. lay on the dusty couch. For many minutes past they had not spoken.
After a while L.B. asked, or said, for it was impossible to tell whether he was making a statement or asking a question, “So he is happy.”
“Very.”
“Yes, he’s been going around the office these last few days talking about it. I go to the other office. I stay away as much as I can. I can’t look at him.”
“You can’t? What about me? I have to do a lot more than look, you know.”
“I do know. Does he never question your dates? You said you so rarely—”
“No, never. Why would he not trust me? Anyway, it’s the woman who keeps count of herself.”
She gazed about the room, the safe haven for which the world outside and time itself, every hour apart from here, had existed only as a framework. All golden it had been, beautiful and beloved as a summer afternoon in the country. Would it, could it ever be restored?
This guilt that she bore around her neck, this albatross, was hooked and fastened so tightly that it would never be removed. It was going to be with her for the next seven months, and after that, for the rest of her life. In one way she wished the seven months would pass quickly, while in another, she wanted them not to come to an end. The physical presence of a child—of this child, poor innocent being—was going to be a daily, an hourly reminder that it had arrived unwanted by its mother.
How was she to love it, or even look at it, without feeling that way? How was she to care for it without ever letting it sense that there was something unnatural in its mother’s way of caring? For no matter how intense the effort she might make, surely she would never be like other mothers, who hug and kiss and laugh and who have earnest discussions about which parent’s mouth and eyes the baby has inherited.
Yesterday there had come a fancy card, signed by all her family at home including Lorena’s vagabond, now-and-then husband, congratulating them on the news. Last week her mother, over the telephone, had half sadly and half humorously remarked on the difference between her two sons-in-law: The one kept producing babies without wanting them, and the other, wanting them, had taken years to get one.
After hanging up, Amanda had sat down and given way to more miserable reflections about families and complications. L.B. would naturally be given a name such as “Grandpa,” “Grand-daddy,” or “Gramp.” How would they two, sitting in the same room, even be able to look at each other?
“Are you going to keep your job, or what?” he asked now.
“I’m going to work right up till the end, and as soon as I can, start again after it’s over. I’d go crazy otherwise. As it is,” she said bitterly, “I may go crazy anyway.”
He pressed her hand. “You won’t. You’re too strong.” And then, as if in pain, he cried out, “I’m so sorry. You can’t know how sorry I am. What have I done to you?”
“Given me the best years of my life, L.B.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean this business.”
&
nbsp; “How can this be your fault? Darling, there’s never a one-hundred-percent guarantee.”
“The last thing I’d ever do is cause you any pain. Or cause Larry any, either.”
In two years they had used his name no more than a dozen times. Always they had circled about to avoid it, finding another way to say whatever had to be said.
In myriad small ways, everything had changed and would continue to do so. The contacts that they two had avoided had already begun: Nothing would do, Norma had insisted, but that L.B. take his two offspring and their respective spouses to a gala dinner in celebration of the new event. Once there they had not dared to meet each other’s eyes. Amanda had spent the time talking earnestly to Lester, and L.B. had managed to concentrate on Norma. After the child arrived, there would be more of these forced meetings; was Larry’s father not to play his expected loving part in the life of the child?
And this room, this safe haven, what of it? Were they to play their parts at a two-year-old’s birthday party on Tuesday and then meet here on Wednesday?
As if there were someone who might overhear, L.B. whispered. “I see your tears. Listen, it’s all too sudden and too soon for any clear thinking. We simply have to remember what we’ve been saying all along, that no one will be hurt, and we will manage.”
“Hold me. Comfort me,” she whispered back.
“Always. I’ll always comfort you. I love you so, Amanda.”
In spite of the heat and in spite of the noise from the street, she closed her eyes, wanting and needing to float away in a familiar peace. Quietly, they lay, with their hands clasped.
Quite suddenly then, a terrible foreboding disturbed Amanda’s peace: You are going to be punished … But because she loved him, she did not tell him.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A manda watched snowflakes drift past the hospital window. It was the beginning of spring, and the belated snow was a strange way to welcome Stevie Balsan into the world. It seemed as if even before this morning, when for the first time a doctor had addressed her cheerily as “Mother,” she had been living in a sort of waking dream.
Pretty soon her mother would come on one of her cheerful visits. You would think she’d be blasé about grandbabies by now, having had so many of them. But no, she declared, each one is different from the rest, born of different parents, in differing circumstances.
Differing circumstances.
Now there would be an excuse not to pay the visit to Mississippi that Dad had been asking for—with a new job and a raise he had been able to straighten out the house a bit. But even so, they would not expect people to travel with a new baby.
Her hand went to her stomach, as if the hand were trying to test whether it was really flat again. It was, or nearly so. The former occupant of the space was in the nursery down the hall, calmly asleep. She had awakened early with a start and plunged at once into a frightening conflict of emotions, chief of which was a frank dread when she realized that they would shortly be bringing him to her.
What kind of a monster was she? She had no feeling for the child! What did that mean? Everything was remote; the snow, the voices in the corridor, the white bed, and the baby—her baby—wrapped in a blue blanket. Stevie. The name was Larry’s choice. Wasn’t there some funny expression: Even Steven? Her head was behaving strangely.
“Let me feel,” he had said one evening a few months ago. It was he who had first observed what is called “life,” the child’s first thrusting of little arms and legs within the mother. Yes, it was the miracle that everyone said it was. Yet to Amanda it was something else, too: fear. What kind of a monster was she?
She thought now of all those weeks during which Larry had been kindness itself and full of cheer. “Most women feel sick in the morning at the beginning. It must be miserable, but at least you know it’s part of the game.”
He was a mine of information, some of it accurate, and much of it not. Most women did not go through as many months of nausea as she had endured. But then most women did not have a body as heavy with fear as was hers.
“I’ve heard that something sweet, some jam on toast before you get out of bed, will help.”
That piece of advice at least did help. And so early every morning for many, many mornings, she had lain flat until Larry should appear with the plate of toast and jam. It would have been so much easier if he had been mean to her.
The most unexpected people, especially as the winter progressed, had shown their friendly interest in this birth. It had been astonishing and unsettling to see so much of it. A neighbor had knitted a carriage cover. People gave advice about buying the right high chair and crib, or going to the right pediatrician. Cecile, who had received enough gifts for three pairs of twins, had already parted with luxuries: a satin quilt, a CD player for the nursery, and a silver mug. Norma had bought a collection of books, children’s classics, to be read to him, and a size-two snowsuit on which his name was being embroidered. With affectionate laughter, she had reported that “Dad is giving money, a big, fat check, too. He said he had no idea what to buy for babies, and I believe him.”
Oh, he knew very well what to buy for anybody on any occasion, only not for this particular baby, born as it was, born like every human being, helpless and without fault! What were they to tell him? The question was absurd because the answer was plain: nothing. As long as you or he may live, he must know nothing.
To look at his little face, which had not the slightest imperfection, was like looking at a wound. One is filled with pity over a wound, while at the same time one is filled with horror that any human being could have inflicted it upon another. And one looks away.
Once she had told L.B. that she wished they could confess to someone, and he had understood. He always did understand.
When now the telephone rang beside the bed, she felt it was he. It had been ringing all morning, but she had not yet heard from him.
“Are you alone?” he asked cautiously.
With equal caution, she replied, “Yes, I can talk. How are you?”
“I’ve been somewhat better since I got the news that you’re all right. Before that I was an interested spectator who didn’t dare show too much interest. Was it awful, darling?”
“Not bad at all. Nothing unusual, they tell me.”
“Nothing unusual,” L.B. said bitterly.
There was a silence, as if the telephone had gone dead. Then she said, “I can’t bear to look at him.”
“I don’t want to do it, either.”
“But you’ll have to.”
“I know that, too.”
“I’m not thinking about us. I’m thinking about him. What kind of a life will he have?”
“A very good one. The best life, at least, that the best of care can give him. The rest only depends on luck, doesn’t it? Isn’t that true of all of us?”
This resolute optimism was meant to help her, she knew, and so she replied in kind. “I’ll think of that next time they bring him to me.”
“Think, too, that I am with you. I am with you all the time, every day, all day.”
“I already do that.”
All she could see from where she sat in the bed was the blank sky and the unseasonable snow. A sudden loneliness overcame her in spite of her resolve, so that she could not help but cry it out. “The loneliness is the hardest thing. It has been so long for us, L.B.”
“You’ll be all right. You’re very strong, Amanda. I’m a fairly good judge of people, and I know that you can weather anything. Let’s just take one day at a time. Today you’re going to have visitors, Norma told me. She’s coming, and Cecile will come, too, since she works right downstairs at the hospital. So put on your best smile for them.”
“Why do they have to come? For goodness’ sake, I’m going home tomorrow. I don’t want them. I’m not in the mood.”
“Darling, it’s not hard to understand why, but you have to be in the mood, don’t you? From now on, both of us will always have to be.”
> He was right. It was already noon, and rousing all her energy, she got up, washed, put on a pink robe, and forced herself to walk around the room. At the window she stood to watch the snow. In a book L.B. had given her, there was a poem with lovely words about “silent snow, secret snow”; she tried to remember the rest of it, but was not able to, nor to remember the name of the poet. Her mind was not functioning clearly. And yet, she could precisely recall the book’s green jacket and the long-stemmed rose that lay on the table beside it. He had lain on the couch watching her open the book. Always her memories returned to him. And she stood there resting her arms on the high sill while the snow fell past. She was still standing there when the bright sounds of joyous greetings came from the doorway. Cecile and Norma had arrived together.
“We met by accident in the elevator. Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“No, I should be on my feet.”
“Your husband,” Norma said, “is the limit. He came to our door practically at the crack of dawn with a turkey sandwich for your lunch. He made it himself the way you like it, with whole wheat bread. I was to take it to you today because you will have been up half the night, and you’ll be hungry before he gets here later.”
“He was up half the night here himself,” Amanda said.
“He looked it, all worn out. The funny thing is, you did all the work and you don’t look it, does she, Cele?”
“She looks beautiful, the way she always does. We cheated on you. We stopped first at the nursery to get a peek before seeing you. He’s adorable.”
Put on your best smile, L.B. said.
Amanda smiled. “Oh, they all look alike, round and red like apples.”
“No, if you saw as many as I do,” Cecile objected, “you’d know that’s not true. This baby has a beautiful head, and his nose isn’t pug, it’s—don’t laugh—it’s going to be aristocratic.”
Norma did laugh. “Aristocratic! That’s a good one. But you’re right. You really can see that it’s chiseled, like his grandfather’s. Oh, won’t Dad be pleased to hear that!”