Private Life

by Jane Smiley

  Andrew said, “What is his condition?”

  “Jaundice. Icterus.”

  Now, she thought, Andrew was going to ask Dr. Bernstein to tell him everything that anyone had ever said about jaundice or icterus, but he didn’t. The both of them simply looked at her, and she offered Alexander the breast.

  He seemed indifferent, or more than indifferent—he turned his face away, as if trying to avoid it. It had been hours since the middle-of-the-night feeding, but he wasn’t hungry, or, she should say, wasn’t anything. But she touched herself to his lip, and all of a sudden he commenced sucking. As he went on, he sucked harder, as if sucking itself, the milk itself, reminded him of something good. He nursed for some ten minutes. Mrs. Wareham and Naoko left the doorway, and Dr. Bernstein looked on with evident satisfaction. When they were finished, he took Alexander away from her again, laid him on the bed again, unwrapped him. Alexander kicked his legs a few times and waved one of his arms. This was a good sign. She imagined herself fortifying her son, building him up like a little tower. She had never done much of anything, but, she felt, this she could do. Dr. Bernstein said, “That seems to have had an effect. Sometimes this resolves on its own. Depends on the child. I’m hopeful.”

  MARGARET settled in on Ohio Street and made herself stop thinking of the future. Andrew brought her a couple of books and more clothes and some knitting she had been doing for Alexander, but even after she was feeling well enough to get out of bed (some three days, a very short time, according to Mrs. Wareham, who told her she hadn’t gotten out of bed after a childbirth in less than two weeks), the knitting looked to her like an abandoned artifact of a lost civilization. She had been knitting Alexander a little coat of red wool. Because of the color, she found she could not touch it. All day, whenever Mrs. Wareham was not in the room pressing sustenance upon her, she was staring at Alexander.

  Yes, he was a strange boy, that much was evident. Not so bullish as the other boys she had known. He did not remind her of anyone, but he was no less interesting for that. Or, perhaps, he reminded her of her, of the strange lack she had of what her mother had always called, in admiration of her brothers, and also of Beatrice, “the life force.” Of course, there was a lot to be said for the life force. People with plenty of the life force found the world falling away around them. They didn’t feel the cold or the heat. They didn’t hear what others said about them. If you were at the knitting circle, and you were talking about Mrs. Tillotson, for example, only to go quiet just before she entered the room, the woman would not even sense the enthusiasm with which all of her flaws had just been canvassed. She had so much life force that she never doubted her own welcome, and, indeed, whatever the women had been saying among themselves, when Mrs. Tillotson entered the room they smiled in spite of themselves to see her—her energetic walk, her healthy toss of the head, her pink dress with its green ruching, her lace parasol, her knitting that was always carelessly done. If you had the life force, your surroundings more or less escaped your notice, because you were too busy noticing yourself—your own ebbs and flows were strong the way a well-bred horse was strong, and if you didn’t pay attention to them, they could throw you, the way such a horse could do.

  But if, like Alexander, you didn’t feel that, if the life force was nothing at all forceful, more a hope than an assertion, then the world was the vivid thing, the fascinating and compelling thing. A quiet room like her room at Mrs. Wareham’s grew interesting, just in the way the sunlight shifted over the course of a day, or in the way the fogdamp seemed to enter invisibly through the very walls. If you didn’t have much life force, then the mere weight of a blanket could tell on you, now just right, now too heavy, now too light. If you didn’t have much life force, then sometimes the face of your mother looked one way, and sometimes it looked another way. Even though Alexander was far too young to see her, she sensed that her proximity sometimes troubled him, sometimes comforted him. When she sensed that it troubled him, she didn’t stop holding him, though; rather, she shifted her thoughts consciously away from him and onto something else, but something not disturbing, something simple, like the rose-of-Sharon tree in her mother’s yard. Mrs. Wareham had told her to pray, and this was what she did—she thought of flowers and leaves. As she did this, she imagined herself suspended, near Alexander but not uncomfortably close. She thought he might like that better.

  And they nursed. She loved to nurse him. Every swallow bolstered him, carried him toward more life force—not so much of it that they might forget what they had learned here, but enough so he could survive.

  That Andrew came into the room less and less was fine with her—she thought it was better, in fact. Andrew had more of the life force than Mrs. Tillotson or Beatrice or anyone else she had ever met. It was located in his curiosity. In most circles, curiosity was seen as polite, the opposite of talking only about oneself all the time, but curiosity flowed out of Andrew in a torrent, bowling over everything before it. He would ask a question, then another question, and the person of whom he was asking the question would answer, and then answer again. But Andrew’s curiosity was beyond answers, and soon enough, he would be contradicting the person’s answers and suggesting new ways of looking at the matter, possibly instituting some sort of investigation that would finally uncover the real truth. You had to admire how the life force operated in this way, and people did admire Andrew: Why was he stuck on the island, with such a tiny telescope? How could the island contain him (meaning his life force)? But his life force might be a danger to Alexander. If Alexander was lying in his cradle, Andrew would lean over and stare down at him with such intensity that she imagined suffocation. As a result, if she heard Andrew enter the house (he always came at odd times), she would hurry to pick Alexander up and hold him to her, half turned away from Andrew, using her shoulder for a shield.

  And she knew that Andrew was disappointed in Alexander. Something in her resented this. All the time she worried about the baby, every time she lifted his little limp hands and felt his fingers droop over hers, each time she surveyed his flaccid chest and caught her breath, her next thought, or the thought after that, was “How dare …?” How dare Andrew be disappointed? Who did he think he was? It was a strange feeling, like being suspended in midair, to know that Alexander’s condition was disappointing and yet to hate Andrew’s disappointment. She started thinking of Andrew in a whole new way, and sometimes when she was awake at night, if the night was clear, she would look at the moon in the window and feel relieved that the moon was distant enough from Andrew so as not to be affected or impinged upon by his life force, or his disappointment. The moon, at least, was safe.

  But then she thought, doubting all her other thoughts, What if the life force is more like a contagion than a flood? What if Alexander needed measured doses of a healthy life force rather than protection from it? It was a difficult question, and involved two ways of thinking about the world, and life and death, that were more different than she could manage at that time, in that place, looking into his little face, looking at his little body, something so small that enclosed so profound a mystery. And, then, she appreciated the life force. Mrs. Wareham or Naoko or one of the children would come in, and they would seem so self-starting as to be miraculous. No effort at all was required with Naoko, who was quick and efficient. She opened the door and was across the room in a second, presenting Margaret with the sandwich or the cup of tea that she needed, laying a napkin across her lap, smiling in a kindly fashion, pouring out the tea, asking her how she was feeling, looking affectionately at the baby. Since she was small, she was less imposing than Mrs. Wareham, and so Margaret could appreciate her and yet never had to wonder how she was or if she would live or die. She embodied the life force at its best. Margaret encouraged Naoko to pick Alexander up and hold him. The girl’s life force, she thought, could surround and warm him. Then, one day, Naoko said, “My mother would like to visit you and the baby.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yes. My moth
er is a midwife. She has birthed many babies.”

  Margaret stared at Naoko. She didn’t know how to say no, so she nodded. Mrs. Kimura came the next morning. Mrs. Kimura was small, like Naoko, but smooth rather than quick. Naoko brought her to the door when Margaret was just finishing her breakfast, and Mrs. Kimura bowed slightly and smiled. She was wearing a simple blue coat and gray gloves, which she took off and gave to Naoko. Then she came over to Margaret and shook her hand with a smile. She said something in Japanese, and Naoko said, “My mother apologizes for her poor English, and asks that I translate for her.”

  Margaret nodded.

  Naoko said, “My mother asks if she may pick up the baby.”

  “Yes,” said Margaret.

  Mrs. Kimura went to the cradle and lifted Alexander out of it, then rested him in the crook of her left arm in a practiced manner. She held her arm rather high, and stared for a long time into his face. Her own face was neither somber nor happy, merely unreadable, and after a while Margaret despaired of learning anything from it. She stared out the window at the green wall of the house next door. After a while, Naoko said goodbye, and the two paused for a moment and then left. Margaret had nothing to say to them. Naoko did not seem to think this was rude of her, but continued to attend to Margaret’s and Alexander’s needs with quiet grace.

  As for Alexander, sometimes his eyes were open, wide open and staring. Sometimes his body was stiff. Dr. Bernstein checked on him twice a day, not saying much, only asking if he was still nursing. More or less, he was still nursing.

  On the morning of the eighteenth day, she unwrapped him and saw that his belly was hugely distended. She saw, moreover, that it had been hugely distended, but that she hadn’t recognized it as hugely distended—she had only recognized it as Alexander. Alarm and guilt surged in her, burning upward from her feet, enveloping her head, her brain, her mind in a fever of knowledge. Her first thought was not to call Dr. Bernstein at all, but to hide this development from him and, for some reason, call Mrs. Kimura. Even as she thought this, Alexander started to make a noise, high-pitched and distressed, and to arch his back. It seemed to her that he was crying for help, so she picked him up and went to the door of the room and opened it. Naoko was in the hallway. She looked at her, and without Margaret’s saying a thing, the girl ran out the front door. Margaret closed her door and carried Alexander over to the bed. She sat down and readied herself to nurse, but in that short moment, the moment between her sitting down and her putting him to the breast, he lost even that ability—Margaret felt it. It was a feeling of something dissolving. She looked at his face. She saw that he had but one thing left, which was that he could look back at her. She stroked the top of his head, moving the thin hairs this way and that, feeling the smoothness of his golden skin. She held him closer, as gently as she could. And then, in the way that you can feel with your baby but not see or sense with anyone else larger or more distantly related, she felt the life force go out of him entirely.

  1909

  PART THREE

  1911

  THE LEARS MOVED AWAY—off to Hawaii and then Anchorage (“A sad day for me,” wrote Mrs. Lear, “but have you ever tasted moose? It is actually quite good salted and dried”). The big house was taken by an older couple, Captain Pritchard and Mrs. Pritchard, no children. Mrs. Pritchard was seventeen years older than Margaret, but she seemed to think they were two of a kind. Though she was an agreeable, mild person, she was afflicted with headaches and almost never emerged from her vast domicile. Margaret had her confidantes now, and everyone on the island was friendly, but she knew she had become the strange sort of lady that she remembered noticing as a child, the sort of lady who was always neat and kind, whose house was quiet because there were no children, who hosted the knitting circle and kept small treats around in case some child might be in need of a licorice whip or a shortbread cookie.

  Then, in the summer of 1911, she got a letter from Dora, who was living in Europe. Dora’s departure from St. Louis had been scandalous, but not unwelcome. Elizabeth had written Margaret, “Robert’s mother has thrown up her hands and washed her hands at least ten thousand times, but it has had no effect at all. Now she says, ‘We shall have to BUY someone for her on the black market!’” Dora wrote:

  Darling,

  I was sitting at a table at the restaurant at the new Goring Hotel with Ezra Pound, who is from Idaho, can you imagine, and in walks Hearst, my BOSS, I knew him instantly, and he sits down at the next table, and when he takes off his top hat, he puts it down on the floor beside Ezra. Without saying a word, or even pausing in his ingestion of his sausage and mashed potatoes, Ezra picks up his foot and puts it inside the hat. Hearst jumps up and says, “Young man! You have your shoe in my hat!” and Ezra says, “Old man! You have put your hat in my way!” And while they are glaring at each other, I say, “Mr. Hearst, Miss Dora Bell, Cosmopolitan. May I introduce you to Mr. Pound, Ezra Pound?” At which point, Ezra finished his sausages and exclaimed, “Pound the bell! Pound pound pound, / As Ronald her steed did tattoo the pavement / Hatching a flock of doors, a / barbed surreal randy will.” He tossed this off in a resonant voice that caught the attention of all the people, who then clapped, though I doubt that they understood all of the puns he was making on our names. Then Ezra handed Mr. Hearst his top hat, and got up and walked out. Mr. Hearst invited me to his table, and he asked what sort of poetry that was, so I told him about Ezra and his friends. I can’t say that he was impressed, except that he said that he had been to Idaho—“Full of jokers and freaks, Miss Bell.” The result of all of this was that I have taken a position at the San Francisco Examiner, and I am to come and live there.

  In Europe, Dora specialized in a certain type of article, in which she happened to find herself somewhere—walking down the road between Florence and Siena, or exploring the Fortress of Diocletian at Split. She would fall into conversations with people she met, and report them, as if word for word. Though she got interviews with important politicians from time to time, mostly her subjects were not important at all. They simply showed her how to gut a tuna or to make a pudding out of sheep stomachs or to hide in some rocks and keep the baby quiet while a bear ambled past. Were the articles reports or stories? Did Dora listen, or did she make it all up? Margaret didn’t actually care. When Lavinia sent her a sheaf of articles that Beatrice had culled from the magazine, she read them avidly and felt as though she now knew the Adriatic perfectly. Andrew was more skeptical, but he read every article from beginning to end. He declared that he was glad Dora was coming, a breath of fresh hot Missouri air in the California damp.

  Dora arrived in Vallejo in the first-class car of the Overland Limited, stayed at the best hotel in town. She was tiny still, but slender now rather than square. She wore a medium-blue tiered coat over a lighter-blue skirt, and her shoes were very neat, also in blue. After tea, they went for a stroll. She walked and talked quite confidently, discoursing on this and that as they tramped down the street. She scanned faces and façades and perspectives, taking everything in. Every so often, she would reach into her bag and take out a small notebook and a pen, saying only, “One little moment, darling,” and then write something down. When Margaret asked her what she was writing, she said, “Goodness, I don’t know. I never look into my notebook. But the habit of writing it down keeps it in my mind. My mind is such a dustbin. Don’t you remember that in St. Louis you could hardly raise your eyes from your shoes without offending someone? Darling, don’t you enjoy California? Do you ever get tired of it? I have never seen such a variety of humanity all in one place.” Her deep, satisfied breath was practically a snort.

  A week or so later, Dora asked her about Alexander. No, really, she drew Margaret out in a practiced way. Margaret rarely if ever spoke about Alexander—every lady in her knitting group had a tale to tell, if not of her own misfortune, then of a sister’s or a cousin’s. After describing what happened as best she could, Margaret said, “Dr. Bernstein told us about women whose children suffe
red from an icterus like Alexander’s, and then produced one child after another, each one sicker than the last, though how a child could be sicker than Alexander, I don’t like to think. I took that to heart. Whatever the condition is, it doesn’t seem to be relieved by the passage of time or anything a doctor can do.” She put her finger to her lips, as if keeping a secret, and then took it away, and said, “I hated Andrew for months afterward.”

  Dora nodded.

  “I hated him for being disappointed in Alexander. Even though Alexander was dying from the first moment he was born. I realize now that I was beside myself, of course.”

  Dora took her hand. Margaret sighed, and then tried to be scientific. “Andrew insisted that we test our blood, and our blood types are compatible. It’s a mystery.” She went on. “I did describe Alexander’s symptoms in a letter to my mother.” She sipped her tea, then said, “Of course, my mother was sympathetic, but Ben’s and Lawrence’s deaths were so much worse. And my father’s, of course.” Margaret didn’t say that she supposed she had been cowardly not to keep at it, as Lavinia and every woman she knew had done. She had let the scientific speculations of Dr. Bernstein and Andrew make up her mind for her. The painful part was not so much the death of Alexander as it was that if she let herself dwell on thoughts of Alexander, then they would be followed inescapably by thoughts of her hand in Lawrence’s, or her father bending down to say something to her. She turned these things over in her mind, and perhaps if Lavinia had lived down the street it would have come up one day when she found her mother in a meditative mood, and they would have talked it out. She never had the courage to write about it in a letter, though.

  Then she said, as brightly as she could, “I thought of adopting. There was a boy I heard of, two years old, whose mother, father, and older brother died right in town. The boy survived all alone for three days. It was in the paper. I even went to the orphanage to look at him. Relatives in Texas took him in. But Andrew was interested in his own offspring, not someone else’s. And he has gotten quite carried away with his book about the moon. No time for much else, really.”