by Belva Plain
“Not do a thing? You call four babies not doing anything?”
“I don’t mean it the way it sounds. Of course, they’re wonderful. The boys are darling. They’re into everything, especially Tommy. You know how two-year-olds are. And the babies are getting so pretty, they already have Donal’s dark wavy hair …”
“What do you mean, then, if you don’t mean it the way it sounds?”
Meg sat down. She couldn’t have described the weakness that went through her sometimes. It was a kind of draining, a kind of—could the word dread describe it? And she sighed, as though there were something inside that could not be contained.
“I don’t know. I know I wouldn’t want to go into business and leave them all day. Anyway, I’m not like you, I couldn’t run a business. Not,” she apologized, fearing to have said something hurtful, “that it isn’t all right for you. You only have one child.” She paused. There was something she wanted to know and, timidly, she ventured it. “Was it that you couldn’t have any more, Leah? Do you mind my asking?”
“I don’t mind, and the answer is I don’t want any more.”
As simply as that a woman could say: I don’t want any more. Meg had to pursue it. “You never thought it wrong not to want to?”
“Well, it’s my body and my life, isn’t it?” Leah sat down and stared at Meg. Two vertical frown lines appeared at the root of her nose. “So that’s your problem, is it? Do you want to tell me about it?”
The subject was too intimate. It was between husband and wife alone. The moment you let a third person into the circle of that intimacy, you destroyed the perfection of the marriage. Her marriage to Donal had been flawless; their love had defied everyone, hadn’t it? No stranger must ever be permitted to pry into that perfect circle.
“There’s not much to tell. Forget what I’ve said. It’s childish of me to complain when I have so much. I guess I’m just tired. People say foolish things when they’re tired.”
“It seems pretty clear that what’s tiring you is the thought of being pregnant again.” Leah’s frank gaze was kindly.
Meg didn’t answer.
“Well, isn’t it? Raise your head. Do raise your head and look at me.”
Thus focused, Meg whispered, “I guess so.”
“Then why do it?”
“Donal wants to.” There, now she had said it. Her first disloyalty.
“Oh, the devil with what Donal wants! He doesn’t have to walk around with a big belly for nine months!”
Meg started up. “Leah … people will hear us.”
Leah shoved the door shut with her foot. “There isn’t a customer in the place, the girls are all in the workrooms, and besides your voice is so low that my ears have to strain to hear you. Listen, do you mean to tell me he won’t use anything?”
Heat prickled up Meg’s back. “Oh, no! He wouldn’t dream of it!”
“Why? I could understand if it were a question of religion. But he never goes to church, does he?”
“No.” Meg’s voice was almost a whisper.
“So what’s this all about?”
Again she had to sigh. “There are just certain things he clings to. Habit, I suppose. Customs.”
“Customs! Habit!”
“Some conviction, too, probably. Birth control is something he won’t even talk about, except to say that his grandmother had nine.”
“Lord! He doesn’t expect you to have nine, does he?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I could have. I’m very fertile.” And in a small, bleak voice, she repeated. “I suppose I could have.”
“What you need is a diaphragm,” Leah said.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t even know where to go for one.”
“Meg, you’re a babe in the woods. Listen, there’s an awfully nice obstetrician who comes in here now and then with his wife. As a matter of fact, he’s the man who took care of Marian that time. I’ll give you his address or, if you’d like, I’ll make an appointment for you, all in absolute confidence, nothing to fear.”
But fear was running up and down Meg’s body. “What if he were to find it at home in a drawer?”
“You mean to say he goes through all your things?”
“No, but it could happen.”
“You’re making difficulties. You can do it.”
“I don’t dare. Honestly, Leah, I don’t dare.”
“What’s the matter? Are you afraid of him?”
She knew what Leah was thinking, that she was a fool and a weakling. But you had to be born like Leah to act like Leah. One was made in a way that determined what one was capable of doing.
There was a silence. And Leah said, “Go get the shoes. You might try Altman’s.” She kissed Meg’s cheek. “You’ll work things out. Eventually you will.”
Meg rode down Fifth Avenue with Leah’s glossy boxes on the backseat beside her. In front, the chauffeur’s head and shoulders loomed out of the falling dusk and the falling sleet that had followed the rain. The thought of the velvet shoes depressed her. Which were the others that Leah had recommended? Bronze kid. She had no interest in them.
“Roy,” she said, “never mind Altman’s. We’ll go home instead.”
She laid her head back on the seat before remembering that the man could see her through the rearview mirror. She sat upright again; it was undignified for the madam to loll. Shades of Emily, she thought, with faintly bitter humor. She didn’t miss Emily.…
Sometimes she missed Alfie, though. Often she did. Right now she did. “Come on, kid, buck up,” he’d say if he were there, and the funny thing was, she probably would “buck up.” He could laugh about almost anything, her father could. She wished he would visit more often; he had never said so, but she knew he preferred to have her do the visiting. He still didn’t feel comfortable in Donal’s house, that was why, although he was surely impressed by it and liked to tell people about it, and about the Isotta-Fraschini.
The car arrived at the ferry slip and jolted on board. The engines started up and the boat, lurching over a swell, began to move across the Hudson.
“You can get out and stretch, Roy, if you want,” Meg said. “I don’t mind.”
“Too cold, ma’am, thank you.” He turned around to her. “In a couple of years they’ll have finished the tunnel under the river. Beats me how they’ll be able to keep the water out of the tunnel. A wonder, ain’t it?”
“It surely is. A wonder.”
In a couple of years, how many children will I have?
Sleet glittered in the long paths of light that poured out of the downstairs windows. On the second floor a bedroom window was bright; Donal was home early. The children heard the front door open and came running. Whenever Donal came in, they expected a present, while from their mother they expected only a hug, wide-armed enough to hold them both.
“What have you been doing?” Meg asked when she had released her boys, although she knew the answer. The sweet smell of fresh bread had seeped into the hall. They had been “helping” in the kitchen.
“We made bread,” Tim said. “And cupcakes. I made the icing. I let Tom lick it.”
The boys had glossy white skin. Their eyelids and delicate nostrils were almost transparent. They were both quick, agile as monkeys, and yet their knees were always bruised. In one second, the very second in which you looked away, they could disappear; you had to search for them then, calling frantically through the house until you found them in the cellar or the garage or in a neighbor’s yard far down the street. They were alert and tough and purposeful. Like their father.
“I licked it,” Tom repeated. He repeated everything after his brother.
The boys followed Meg into the kitchen. How cozy it was! There was a tureen of pea soup on the table, which was set for the children’s supper. Kitty, the nursemaid, was slicing bread. The cook and she must have been talking the afternoon away; there were signs of mirth around their eyes. The sight of these two sturdy, friendly working women was som
ehow heartening to Meg.
She asked about the twins. “Sleeping,” Kitty said. “Good as angels.”
“I wish we didn’t have to go out tonight,” Meg said, observing the good, thick soup. It was a night to be indoors, the cook agreed.
In the nursery, a night-light threw a milky arc up from the baseboard, barely bright enough for her to see the babies, each in her pink point d’esprit crib. She bent over through the semidark. Lucy’s mouth was slightly open, the lower lip still wet with milk. Meg was the only one, except for Kitty, who knew that the two girls were not exactly alike. For a few moments, she listened to their soft breathing, and then went to the bedroom, where Donal lay on the sofa, reading the paper.
He had had his shower. His hair was wet, with comb ridges stiff between the thick waves. Under the red silk dressing gown, he was naked.
“You went shopping, I see. You didn’t get very much,” he said, counting Leah’s boxes.
“Wait till you see the bill. You won’t say that’s not very much.”
“I’ve never complained. Not that her prices aren’t sky-high.” He laughed. “More power to her, though. She gets away with it.”
Meg took off her coat, hung it in the closet and searched for this evening’s clothes. Behind her, over the rattle of hangers, she heard him.
“I never can figure out why a wife of Ben’s has to work. He certainly makes enough … the fees I pay him … she ought to be home having children. Only one kid! And that one not even his.”
She pulled her dress over her head. Her voice came out muffled.
“Oh, I’m tired! I hate shopping. Do we really have to go out tonight? All the way back to the city?”
“All you have to do is move from the seat in the car to a seat at a table. What’s so hard about that?”
“These charity dinners. We go to so many of them.”
Donal enjoyed them. He could sit patiently through all the boring speeches in anticipation of the moment when his name, included in a list of distinguished long-time benefactors, would be called out and he would rise to acknowledge with a slight bow, a self-deprecating smile, the recognition of his gift. Naturally, he knew that he was only tolerated there because of his gift. He laughed about that.
“Wear your diamond earrings,” he said now. “The drops, not the studs.”
“They’re much too formal. People are never that dressy at this dinner.”
“I know, but I don’t care. That prissy snob Marian will be there and I want her to see the earrings.”
Surprised at such childishness, which was not at all like him, Meg came to the defense of Marian, not so much for the sake of Marian—who really was, to tell the truth, more than a little “prissy”—as for the sake of Paul.
“She’s not really a snob. She’s just quiet and unhappy.”
“What’s she got to be unhappy about? She lives on the fat of the land.”
“That’s not all there is.”
“No? Try living on the lean and you’ll find out.”
Meg was silent. Peeling her stockings off, she examined the small cluster of thin, blue-red veins on the side of one knee. The twins had done that.
“On the other hand,” Donal said, “it may be pretty tough having to live with Paul.”
“With Paul? Why, any woman would give her eyeteeth for him!”
“You think so? I had a run-in with him this morning. Oh, he’s quite the gentleman, all right, but no more than I am. I know how to play that game too. I play all the games. He hates my guts and, I don’t mind telling you, I hate his.”
Meg was aghast. “You had a fight with Paul?”
“Well, we didn’t come to fisticuffs, but I had a proposition, a perfectly decent proposition that anybody’d jump at, an acquisition—it’s too complicated to explain—exchanging stocks in one company for another. Leah’s kid would have made a bundle, and he turned it down.” Donal stood up and leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece. “Pure and holy! Wouldn’t touch it because it’s weaponry, might be used in another war, he says. Bah! Never mind, I’ll get there without him. Donal Powers will get along without Paul Werner. Pure and holy. Who does he think he is?”
“I don’t think he thinks he’s anybody.”
“That shows what you know. The man’s loaded with conceit.”
“Never!” Meg said hotly. “I’ve known Paul all my life. You’ll go far to see anyone as—as respected, as—”
“You’re taking his side? I’m your husband! Remember?”
“I’m not taking sides. I only said that he’s respected.”
“And I’m not?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You meant it. You think I don’t know what passes through your mind? I read you like a book, Meg. All right, I sell liquor! Booze! I sell to the highest in the land. Your mother’s stuffy D.A.R. ladies—”
“Leave my mother out, please.” There was anger in her, not because of her mother or even because of Paul. She was just—angry.
Donal chuckled. “I’m laughing. Those proper biddies, with their bootlegger! Wouldn’t invite me to dinner in their homes—not that I want to go, Lord, no—but I’ve seen them tipple at the clubs, the proper biddies.”
“I don’t see anything so funny,” Meg said stiffly.
He stopped laughing, tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, examining her. “The trouble with you is you have no sense of humor.”
“I won’t deny that. It’s a lack. They left it out when they made me. But the trouble with you is—” And she regarded him; still he stood, resting an elbow on the mantel, so nonchalant, so sure of himself. He must have dealt with Paul and been infuriated because for once it hadn’t worked. “The trouble with you is, you always have to have your own way. Everything your way.”
Donal blinked and opened his eyes wide in a show of amazement. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing. My way? Name one thing you’ve ever wanted that you didn’t get! A house? You pick it. A week in Bermuda? We go. Anything you want and you know it.”
“It’s what I don’t want,” she said, very low. “But I get it anyway.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Yes, ‘oh.’ You know what I mean. I’ve told you often enough.”
“Birth control again. We’re back to that.”
She lifted her chin. “Yes. Birth control.”
“And I’ve told you often enough, no.” He took a step toward her. “I told you when I married you that I wanted a large family. You can’t say you weren’t told.”
“How large is large? We have four children and I adore them, but they’re enough. How many do you want anyway?”
“As many as come.”
She sneered. “As many as the Lord sends?”
“If you want to put it that way.”
“You don’t believe that, Donal. You’re not a believer.”
“Different people have different beliefs. Principles. And one of mine is, no birth control. Except rhythm.”
“You don’t even adhere to that. You take me whenever you want me.”
“Yes, and you love it, too.”
“Do you want me to go on having children until I drop?”
“You won’t drop. You’re healthy as a horse.” He took her by the shoulders. His palms, clasping the rounded flesh, were hot.
“Didn’t they wear this kind of chemise at the Folies-Bergère, except that theirs were black? Black lace, weren’t they?” and as she refused to answer, “weren’t they?”
“I don’t remember. Leave me alone.”
“Yes, you do. You remember everything. When we went back to the hotel, in our room, when we—”
Her voice shook, quavering. “Leave me alone.”
Backed up, pressed against the footboard of the bed, she was losing her balance. With one hand she braced herself, while the other, made into a fist, struck Donal’s chest.
“Strong. Strong. Go on, fight me. I love it when you fight me.”
She was on the edge of tears. “Dona
l, no, I’m angry. Can’t you see how angry I am?”
He slid the frail silk straps down over her arms; the soft loose garment dropped to the floor. Tipping her lightly off balance, he pushed her down on the bed, onto the quilt that lay folded at its foot. He was laughing, chuckling into her shoulder.
“Come on now, Meg, you’re not angry. You can’t ever stay angry at me.”
She struggled. “I can, I can.”
He was still laughing. “But I know what to do. I always know, don’t I?”
The struggle was silly. It was like trying to push aside a rock.
“Please, please not now.”
“Yes, now.” The laughter ceased. “Why, most certainly now. Little Meg, that’s it. Yes, little Meg.”
“You loved it …” she heard him whisper, felt the slither of the quilt when he laid it over her and tucked it gently on her feet. “Take a nap. There’s time. I’m going in to the boys.”
Her mind was wide awake. Again, he had proved how he could do what he wanted with her. Dammit! he could. And she frowned with effort, trying to trace back to the start, on the very first day at Leah’s house.… They had all been fussing over Dan, where he sat in the big wing chair, and she had been standing aside in the curve of the piano, and Donal had gone straight over to her. I didn’t get your name, he’d said. That’s a beautiful color for a cold day. You look like a Christmas rose. She’d been so ignorant then, a Victorian holdover. Too ignorant to know what it was that she wanted of him. But he had known.
He knew everything about her. Perhaps it was supposed to be like that. The man led and the woman, secure in his care, followed. When you looked around at the world, it seemed to be the way things were.
Five years, she thought, and was back in her room at college, dreaming out of the window, seeing beyond the colors of the campus, sky, trees, or umbrellas glistening in the rain, into a future that was in some ways what it had turned out to be, and in some ways inevitably not. So how could one foresee?
