Stepping

by Nancy Thayer

  Charlie was busy all the time with his teaching or book writing, and I valiantly and dutifully kept to my reading list, preparing for my PhD work, keeping notes, reading relevant criticism. But I couldn’t read or study all the time, and Alice lived within walking distance of the house we were renting, and I wanted to take advantage of the few months I would have to live near her. So I visited her almost daily. Her home seemed like a storybook to me. All those children, each one so beautiful, and all their animals, dogs, cats, birds, turtles, gerbils, even a snake, and all the children’s friends, and the babysitters who came sometimes just to chat—all that life was wonderful. Alice and her husband had a great huge Victorian house that twisted and rambled and had window seats and doors in the paneling of the front stairs and alcoves and lots of big wide halls. Everything was covered with hockey sticks or ballet slippers or sweaters and mittens or dog leashes or ice skates or dolls, except for the living room, which was majestically reserved for adults. Every evening from four till five-thirty Alice had a sitter come play with all six children in their big bright messy basement rec room while she and her husband read the paper and drank martinis and talked in the beautiful neat living room. Charlie and I often joined them and sometimes stayed for dinner, which was held in the big oak-paneled dining room with all the family. It seemed to me that Alice looked like a queen as she sat at the head of the huge oak table smiling down at her children. The four oldest children, who were twelve, eleven, nine and seven, had to help set the table and clear off. The two youngest ones had to sit up straight and eat as politely as they could or they were banished to a lonely meal in the kitchen. We never stayed after dinner; then Alice turned from queen into general and directed the table clearing, dish doing, floor sweeping, homework preparing, baths, storytime, and bed. She did it all so beautifully and elegantly that it never occurred to me to think that it could be hard work.

  Alice was beautiful, her house was beautiful, and her children especially were beautiful. The oldest boy played the guitar and sang; the oldest girl was doing very well in ballet; the second son took piano and played as well as an adult and intended to go to conservatory; the second daughter could draw and paint. The two youngest children were simply very clever and very cute.

  The youngest child, a girl named Vanessa, but called Nessie, was my favorite. She liked me because I always brought treats. She was just three, with great blue eyes and curly black hair. She wore her older sibling’s cast-off clothes and looked like a charming Raggedy Ann doll. One stormy winter day I sat snuggled in a window seat off the kitchen, reading Nessie a story. She was curled up against me with her old soft blanket clutched in her hand; she was almost falling asleep. The doorbell rang and Alice went to answer it, and brought back into the kitchen a young woman who had just moved into a house across the street. Alice had asked her over for tea.

  “This is a friend of mine, Zelda Campbell,” Alice said, introducing us, “and that is Nessie.”

  “She’s beautiful,” the new neighbor said, looking at me, talking to me. “And she looks just like you.”

  “Why, she does, doesn’t she!” Alice laughed. “Zelda, she could be yours. You’ve got the same curly black hair! But actually,” she said, turning to the new woman, “Nessie’s mine. My youngest.”

  The women laughed, and we went on talking and Nessie fell asleep. Alice came over and lifted Nessie out of my arms to take her up to nap in her bed. I wanted to cry out at the loss of the sweet warm weight of the little girl who looked like me. I thought: someone thinks I could have a child. I could have a child. I could have a little girl of my own. I want a little girl of my own! I was so agitated and excited and upset that I could scarcely keep my wits about me the rest of the afternoon. When I returned to our rented house, it seemed empty and lonely and dull.

  The rest of the semester seemed like a war to me, and I was both sides and the battleground. I didn’t tell Charlie about my feelings, I told no one. I was ashamed of wanting to have a child. It seemed an enormous weakness on my part, as if I were admitting that I wasn’t enough for myself. I thought that every other woman in the world simply got pregnant by accident, that I was the only woman in the world wrestling with such a choice. I thought I was losing my mind, that my wanting to have a child was the same as admitting to be a failure as a professional person. I began to hate myself for wanting to have a child.

  Christmas was the hardest time. We were invited to spend Christmas Eve with Alice and her family. The great Victorian house had been built for Christmastime, and the six children had decorated it in every corner. The Christmas tree was at least eleven feet high and almost hidden behind the sparkling lights and handmade decorations. We all sat around eating pastries and cookies and drinking laced eggnog, and the older children played Christmas carols on the guitar or piano, and then they all sang carols together in front of the fire—for Christmas Eve they were allowed in the living room. They opened the presents Charlie and I had given them, and said thank you, then were bustled off to bed.

  “They’ll be up at six to see what Santa brought,” Alice grinned.

  Charlie helped Alice’s husband put a little bicycle together while Alice and I kept watch to be sure no children were sneaking back downstairs.

  That night Charlie and I walked home in the snow, and I began to cry, and couldn’t stop, and couldn’t tell him why.

  I felt as sad and relieved to leave Michigan at the end of the semester as a weight watcher leaving a pastry shop. Each day I was there I felt tempted toward something that I thought was intrinsically wrong and bad for me. I was glad to start my PhD work back in Kansas City, and I was grateful that it was difficult and time-consuming. I told myself that I was going to be an interesting career woman, not a boring mother. I was afraid of becoming like Adelaide: dependent on children, feeling significant to the world because of them, void and helpless when they were gone. I did not want to be that way. I told myself repeatedly that I was crazy to think of it—of having a child of my own. But sometimes on spring evenings as I worked late in the library digging up my little clusters of obscure and useless facts, I wondered what I was doing with all that dusty dead stuff when what I wanted was life.

  It all got even more confusing that summer, the fourth summer the girls came. Caroline was thirteen, and had braces, and Cathy was ten, and gawky and trying to act like her older sister, who had wondrously become a teenager. Both girls were interested in horror movies and clothes and rock music and competitive sports, and I was glad to drop my studies for a while in order to take them to horror movies and shopping and swimming and riding. Charlie was finishing up his book; that summer the girls spent more time with me than with him. The girls seemed to relax with me that summer, and we began to enjoy each other.

  We began to share jokes.

  CAROLINE: Do you know why the Dairy Queen got pregnant?

  ZELDA: No. Why?

  CAROLINE: Because the Burger King couldn’t handle his Whopper.

  ZELDA: Caroline! You’re only thirteen!

  Mad hysterical fits of laughter.

  We began to share likes and dislikes.

  CATHY: Which movie did you like best?

  ZELDA: The Claw of the Cat.

  CATHY: Me, too. It was scariest of all. I loved the part where they found the hand.

  And we began to share memories. That was very nice, sharing memories.

  CAROLINE: Is Liza getting old?

  ZELDA: No, not really, she’s only ten.

  CAROLINE: Well, she seems old. It seems like I’ve been riding her forever. It’s just like sitting on a big ol’ comfortable grandmother’s lap. I can really trust her. And I can remember that first summer, how scared I was of her, how afraid I was to ride.

  ZELDA: Yes, I always felt bad about making you ride, because I knew you were afraid. But I wanted you to learn. I knew you’d like it when you had learned.

  CAROLINE: Yeah, it was funny. I hated you when you made me get on the horse, but once I was up there I was g
lad you had made me. Sometimes I liked you for it while I hated you for it, you know?

  ZELDA: Yeah, I know.

  And we began to share hopes for the future.

  CATHY: Zelda, we all aren’t driving back to Maine this summer again, are we?

  ZELDA: No, darn it, we’re not. I wish we could, but Charlie’s got to teach this summer, and he’s got to get that damned book finished.

  CATHY: Well, maybe we can go next summer. I’d love to go to the beach again. And we could all go eat at that neat lobster place!

  It had happened. By the fourth summer I had been accepted, or assimilated, or something. I was part of their lives. We could share things. We could talk.

  They were turning from children into pretty girls. They were clever and bright and imaginative. Caroline showed me how to do simple macramé. Cathy, who was good at sports, began to beat me at swimming races. They were beginning to add things to my life. And when they left at the end of that fourth summer, I missed them. I missed them very much. They had told me about their friends, their projects, their fears, their desires. I found myself wanting to know how it all worked out: did Caroline get the good grade-seven teacher or the bad one? Was Cathy invited to rich Jennifer’s birthday party? Suddenly the world was filled with things I wanted to share with the girls—movies, music, clothes, puzzles, jokes, games. I thought of them every day after they left. I remembered what rich pleasure it had been that summer, giving them things, how it had been as if I were giving myself presents because I enjoyed their pleasure so much. More and more my PhD studies and professors seemed dry and dull and insignificant. I had to force myself to leave the summer, to enter the fall.

  Charlie, on the other hand, was plunging deeper and deeper into his work. He had finished all his little projects, and the book he had co-authored with the other historian was now at the publishers’. Charlie was starting another book—his book—which he had been collecting information and notes on for years. Everything other than The Book became a distraction for him. He taught and attended committees dutifully, then rushed back to his study at home. We had books and note cards all over the house, we read constantly, and spent less and less time at the farm, or eating out, or seeing friends. We worked. Charlie was past happiness; he was absorbed in his work. But I was lonely, and grew lonelier every day. I missed teaching very much. I often walked slowly by the classrooms, listening to other instructors explain metaphor or syllogisms, and I yearned to be there, in a classroom full of scratching, yawning, gum-chewing, note-taking kids. Instead I had the library, with its silent heavy books, or my house, decorated with piles of white note cards.

  Adelaide had called several times that summer, but not so frantically, and once Charlie agreed to pay the bill for both Caroline’s and Cathy’s orthodontic work she stopped calling him completely. For once a fall passed without letters from her threatening to go to court. The girls had said very little about her that fourth summer, just that Adelaide was taking a vacation in Maine with a woman friend, and that she was taking a few craft classes, and that she wasn’t dating at all. The girls were very happy that she wasn’t dating. The three of them had moved into a small colonial house, and little by little were making it their home, and that made them all very happy, planning curtains and carpets and wallpaper and mirrors and such.

  The first week in September that the girls were gone, I wrote them a letter. I almost couldn’t help myself; I missed them. Still, I didn’t say that; I didn’t want anyone to get sad or mad. Two weeks later I was shocked to find a letter for me from Caroline. It was a long, newsy, silly, sweet letter; Caroline was warmer in correspondence than in person. I noticed that Adelaide had put the return address on and I smiled: so Adelaide had accepted me, too. To “Mrs. Zelda Campbell,” from “Mrs. Adelaide Campbell.” How funny. After that I wrote Caroline and Cathy about once a week, sending clippings from cartoons, jokes, and sometimes a tiny present, a dollar, or a little ring. I looked forward to Caroline’s letters. She was a sensitive girl, I thought, always asking questions of herself or of me.

  Whenever I listen to music, I’m happy. It’s like being in a hot bathtub after a rainy day, I feel so warm and content. I love the Beatles, and I think I would die for them. I would give up all my possessions just to talk to John Lennon for one hour. Why do I feel this way? I think sometimes I love the Beatles more than I love Cathy or Mother or anybody. Isn’t that strange? And I’m supposed to love God, but I think church is so boring. I feel closer to God listening to the Beatles than in church. I wonder why this is. Do you know? It’s really embarrassing in a way, how warm and happy the Beatles make me feel. I think I must feel like adults do when they’re drinking wine.

  I always answered Caroline as well as I could, and I sent Cathy little letters each time I wrote Caroline. I didn’t want to seem to like Caroline more, even though secretly of course I did. I kept reminding myself that Cathy was younger and not interested in writing letters yet, that she was a different person.

  The fall semester passed slowly. The spring semester came. Nothing changed. The year clicked over; it was 1969. I wrote letters to Charlie’s girls and waited for their letters, and wrote Alice and waited for her letters, and read books and wrote papers and waited for my professors’ remarks. Charlie buried himself in his study, and when he came out it was to ask me to read and criticize the latest chapter of his book. The few friends I made at the university were graduate students, too, fighting the same battles I was fighting: when we talked, we talked about literature. My world seemed made of words. Printed words. All life seemed like chapters from books, overheard conversation seemed like dialogue. I couldn’t look at a person without finding his twin in some literary work; I couldn’t look at the countryside without trying to find the perfect words to describe it. When I slept at night I dreamed of my papers, of footnotes, bibliographies, indented quotes, words in rows. Sentences rearranged themselves in my head. I cooked absentmindedly, reading a book with one hand while stirring with the other, and it didn’t matter, for we ate absentmindedly, uninterested in our food. Our Christmas vacation was spent on the farm, and our one escape from words was to ride the horses. But as soon as we entered the house, we saw the books and papers we had brought down with us, and we made a big fire and weak drinks and settled down to work again.

  I was doing well. I was getting the best grades, the best remarks from my professors. I was doing what I had dreamed of doing all my life, and I was doing it well, and I was miserable beyond the reach of all those words at my command. A year had passed since I had seen Alice and her children, yet I thought of them every day. Alice and I wrote to each other often, and occasionally she included in her letters photos or a splashy bright painting made by one of her children for me. I would tape it to a mirror or the refrigerator door, and it would bring back to me vividly the laughter, the noise, the caressing and cuddling, the sheer good busyness of life which was a part of Alice’s world and not a part of mine. I began to apply images of barrenness and sterility to myself. I would read Eliot’s words, “ridiculous the waste sad time,” and think of myself as a pale sad half-moon, curving emptily around nothing, drained instead of filled. When I saw pregnant women on the street I stared with envy and amazement: how could they have done it? Did they choose it? How did it feel to be so full, to carry another life? I would look away, ashamed. When I saw little babies in their mothers’ baskets at the grocery store I would stare, dumbfounded at the size, wondering how it would feel to hold something so very small in my arms. When I visited Linda and saw little Dina, who walked and talked now, and cooed and babbled when she saw me, who was all soft pink flesh and immediacy, I felt nearly sick with longing. Sometimes, when I was very sad or tired, I would let myself indulge in the ultimate forbidden delight: I would imagine a child, a real child of mine and Charlie’s, a child who would cuddle against me, a child who would hold my hand.

  I did not understand what was going on. Had instinctual desire to reproduce suddenly risen within me like a
yeast bread? If so, how base, how animalistic. I had to fight it off. I told myself that my feelings were temporary. I told myself that I would absolutely not give in to them. I took my birth control pill with fanatical regularity. I told no one, not even Charlie, of my feelings. I knew that what I wanted was ridiculous, unnecessary, senseless; I could not think of one good logical reason for having a child. Yet I wanted one with all my heart, every day.

  I had my pride and the Pill as weapons against myself; I decided they weren’t enough. I got a cat. A beautiful Siamese chocolate point. I named him Jami, after a Persian poet, and Charlie enjoyed Jami, too. He was an intelligent and a playful animal, and he entertained us and gave us a break from our work, and gave me something to love and to buy little treats for. I bought him a basket and wove blue ribbons in and around the wicker and tied a blue bow on top; he soon tore the bow to shreds. He slept on my lap when I read, he greeted me at the door when I came home. He rubbed against my ankles or arms when I cried, and when I looked into his face I only cried the more because he was a sweet cuddly creature but an animal, with whiskers and crossed eyes.

  Finally the spring semester ended and the summer began. I was amazed at the joy I felt when the semester ended and at the relief I felt when I said, “No, I won’t be taking courses this summer. Charlie’s girls are coming again for two months. I’ve got to play stepmother. Charlie’s almost through with The Book—he’s got to work on it this summer.”

  I spent hours planning special events for the summer, hours looking at children’s clothes which I eventually didn’t buy, not knowing Caroline’s and Cathy’s sizes after a year’s growth, hours looking at card games and toys. The night before Charlie’s daughters arrived it finally hit me: boom. I was putting a huge stuffed teddy bear on each bed, a surprise for the girls. How happy they would be, I thought, when they saw the bright cuddly bears. I grinned in anticipation. I looked at the big stuffed bears. And knew—boom—what I was doing. I was acting as if Charlie’s daughters were mine. I was making myself happy through them.