CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
It was a scorcher, as they say in Wisconsin, in the back half of July, right when you would expect one. It was a Saturday, and the clock had just struck twelve. The temperature was already at eighty-one degrees, and the morning passed without a breeze of any kind. The temperature would surely go up a few more degrees in the next couple of hours.
George and Connie were on the flagstone patio in the backyard, relaxing in the heat under the cool shade of a couple of big elm trees. They looked out on a lush backyard that was defined by rock walls on the sides and a white picket fence on the back lot line, which separated them from another house tucked under the shade of more giant elm trees. Peggy and Steve were playing at the neighbor’s house a block away on Lake Drive. In this heat, they were either in the swimming pool or carousing on the beach and splashing around in Lake Michigan’s chilly waters. Lucky them!
George was working on his umpteenth Camel cigarette and his second cold beer, a long neck bottle of Schlitz, “the beer that made Milwaukee famous.” He had worked up a shirt-soaking sweat from a full morning of planting and replanting in the flower beds that ran the length of the rock walls, mostly Fiddlehead ferns he had collected from the woodsy property around his summer home on Big Cedar Lake the weekend before.
Connie had an iced tea in front of her, but she wasn’t drinking it. She didn’t even feel like sipping it. She didn’t feel like conversation or much of anything for that matter. She sighed, but not the sigh of contentment; it was closer to a sigh of discomfort, and George picked up on it.
“You okay, honey?” he inquired.
“Yeah, just feeling… I don’t know, a little queasy maybe,” she responded in slow motion, unable to shuck off the oppressive heat.
“Maybe the heat’s getting to you,” George offered. “Try drinking your iced tea. You might feel better—it’s hot. When it’s this hot, the body needs lots of fluids.” He scanned the yard and liked what he saw. Many of the flowers were in full bloom. The tiger lilies were blooming by the dozens in the beds in the corners at the far end of the backyard. He had transported them from the house on Cedar Lake two months ago. He was happy to see that they were doing well. They were nice reminders of how much he loved that lake. His thoughts wandered in the stillness of the day, and within moments, he was at the lake with his memories.
The lake house had been built thirty-five years ago by his father, on the east side of a pristine lake about forty miles northwest of Milwaukee. That was Big Cedar Lake, which overshadowed the one next to it, Little Cedar Lake. It was a humble lake home—more cottage than house—consistent with other dwellings on the shoreline, with its best feature being a very large screened porch, which is where life in the cottage happened most. The property was adjacent to a working farm, which guaranteed the cottage dwellers fresh eggs every morning, in this sacred place of solitude on the shoreline of a tree-lined lake with water clarity that was so good you could easily see the bottom at twenty-five feet.
The fishing was easy and the sailing could be vigorous, although the lake wasn’t really very big, despite the name. The Cedar Lake Yacht Club was directly across the lake, about a half mile to the other side. Dock-sitting was pleasant, and it was easy to sit for hours and watch the lightning class sailboats sail in and out of the Yacht Club, like bees at a hive, and zig-zag around the lake. Sightings of ski boats trailing water skiers were climbing with the passage of summers. Their buzz, like summer’s cicadas, was intrusive. Between weekly thunder-storms, the gentle lapping of water on the rocks that trimmed the fern-crested shoreline was particularly pleasant and had lulled more people into a nap on the dock chairs than anyone could count.
George happily recalled the annual summer parties at the lake house, where each year his father, Oscar Dunker, and his father’s band, Dunker’s Band, would set up on the front lawn for a day of music with John Phillip Sousa and countless other American favorites. The band of forty men would arrange themselves in concentric semi-circles, and Oscar would conduct, his baton in constant motion, standing tall while dressed in his white waistcoat with a design on it of a black staff of notes. He always wore a silk top hat, and everyone thought that was a grand touch.
At these events, boats lined the shoreline and cars filled the fields, emptied from discharging the hundreds of people who attended. This was big entertainment for a country lake house in rural Wisconsin and something that was always remembered by those who attended, whether they had been there thirty times or only once. Since George couldn’t recall ever having missed that special annual event, for him, that would be forty-one times. What a great day for kids. “Yeah,” he thought to himself, “Cedar Lake was a great place for kids.”
With a break in his thoughts, George stared blankly for a minute at the peonies he had just planted, surprised that their blooms were already so full. He had put them in the ground in the spring when the house was still under construction and wasn’t sure they’d even bloom this summer. They looked terrific. He liked peonies a lot; they reminded him of his youth. His mom had had a long garden of them on the west side of their house—pink and white ones. She loved them too and always marveled over the size of their magnificent blossoms, blossoms so big that the stems often fell over with their weight. His were white; he didn’t think he could do pink.
Connie thought about the heat for a minute and about how she felt and took her time responding to George’s suggestion to drink her iced tea.
“I’m not really thirsty,” she finally concluded, “… just a little queasy. I felt a little like this yesterday… and it wasn’t nearly this hot then.”
George laughed.
Connie asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” he chuckled, to himself and then sat up straight, “… Jesus Almighty!” he cried out.
“Jesus Almighty what, George?”
He turned to look at her and waited till she looked at him before saying, “Maybe you’re pregnant!”
“No,” she said without hesitation. “You know that’s not possible. I told you I couldn’t get pregnant because of the accident.” She always referred to that traumatic experience as “the accident.”
George didn’t let up. “Maybe you’ve got morning sickness.”
“But it’s not the morning.”
“Morning has nothing to do with it. Women can have morning sickness any time of the day, not just the morning.”
“Really?” she asked. “That’s true?”
“Yes, you bet that’s true,” he paused. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the heat, or maybe not,” he added, relaxing back into his chair before adding, “You know doctors can be wrong.”
“Since when, DOCTOR George Dunker, has that ever been the case?”
“Well, I’m not one of them, of course,” he responded with a smile, “but, hey, doctors can be wrong, like I said.”
Connie said nothing and just sat there in silence, looking out over the yard. “Good God,” Connie thought to herself, “Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m pregnant.” That possibility had never occurred to her because it seemed to be an impossibility for her because of what the doctors had told her after she’d come out of the coma. It was something she had never thought about because it made her too sad to think that she couldn’t have a baby. “Maybe it was morning sickness,” she pondered.
“George,” Connie exclaimed, “maybe I am pregnant!” She felt her heart leap with joy over the possibility, a joy that came out of nowhere, a joy she thought could never be hers. What she’d thought was impossible just became a possibility. But then doubt quickly moved in. She was amazed at how high her hopes had suddenly soared and then realized she had overreacted to what was possibly not at all the case. She realized, too, that she had just set herself up for one big whopping disappointment. Maybe it was the heat. And for a brief moment, she prayed it was the heat that was making her feel queasy. She could deal with that explanation. She wasn’t sure she could deal with all of the emotions that would co
me with a pregnancy after accepting that it would never happen to her.
George interrupted her thoughts. “Come down to St. Joe’s Monday morning, meet me, and we’ll find out together.”
“Yeah,” she said, “let’s do that.” Connie stood up. “I’m going in the house to lie down for a while. Maybe I’ll feel better a little later.” She left her glass of iced tea on the table and went into the house, not having the energy or inclination to carry the glass in with her.
George didn’t move except for reaching for his beer and taking another sip. The possibility of having another child hit him too. And he loved it. Right away, he loved the idea and hoped, indeed, that Connie was pregnant, although there was room for doubt of course. After all, he had just tossed the possibility into the ring as a lark of wishful thinking, no more than that. He knew that Connie had been told by doctors that having a baby was not at all likely and possibly even dangerous, but danger was a thought he dismissed. “How could that be?” he asked and made a mental note to talk to an OB about that.
He thought it through: “If she is pregnant, well, that’s really something! I hope it’s a boy. I’d like another boy.” Then he said aloud to himself, “Yeah, I hope it’s a boy” and made another mental note not to express a preference to Connie… that is, if she is pregnant. “Wow!” he said to himself, with a big sigh of contentment, “life is full of surprises.” And then he went back to staring at the huge, white peony blossoms and losing himself in his childhood memories.
Two days later at St. Joe’s hospital, Connie learned that she was indeed pregnant. George had been right. They guessed that conception had occurred five weeks ago, which placed the couple at The Grand Hotel for their honeymoon. At St. Joe’s, they met with Dr. Servis to discuss concerns that Connie’s accident might create complications. Records were reviewed, and Dr. Servis did what he could in examining Connie and exploring the possible ramifications that a pregnancy presented to her health.
The fact was that Connie was pregnant, and there was no choice other than to have the baby. And if it meant a risk to Connie’s health, well, it was understood as a risk, but the birth would happen—that was what everyone expected. The unavoidable course of action made George a little nervous; he certainly didn’t want to lose Connie. Connie reassured him over and over that having the baby was the right thing to do. She wanted a baby more than anything else and brushed aside any concerns that it was risky. Dr. Servis didn’t see any obvious red flags, and so they would move forward and hope for the best.
The months passed and, with them, the seasons passed too. Life was good, and George and Connie were happy and so were the two kids. The due date was only three weeks away, and the excitement that had been building slowly over the previous eight months was now increasing exponentially. Would it be a boy or a girl? No one knew nor could know; there was just no way of telling. And, of course, would mom make it through the delivery all right? That was George and Connie’s biggest concern, although no one was talking about that.
Of course they discussed names. George and Connie decided to name the baby John if it was a boy, after Connie’s father, John Ortlieb, and Virginia, if it was a girl, after Connie’s sister. If it was a girl, they would call her Ginny, for short.
We know from George’s earlier soliloquy that he was privately hoping for a boy. It’s funny how that works because Connie was privately hoping for a girl. Neither knew what the other was hoping for, and neither thought it a good idea to reveal their preference, so they concurrently said to each other that it didn’t matter: each simply wanted a healthy baby delivered into the world, along with a mom that made it through the birth with no complications.
Couples actually function that way quite a bit through a first pregnancy—neither expresses a preference, and both operate with a desire for harmony and in avoidance of unnecessary conflict. Couples operate this way quite possibly through every pregnancy, and possibly, the same strategy applies to a lot of controversial issues that come up between two people in the course of a relationship, thus enabling them to move forward in life. In this way, I guess you can see the sensibility in all of this and, when the outcome is determined, simply say it was a matter of two hearts beating as one. It happens all the time.
∞
A Love Story with a Little Heartbreak Page 45
