Stepping

by Nancy Thayer

  We sat in the front parlor by a nice crackly fire that I had made, and looked at the sparkling lights of the Christmas tree, and Charlie and I drank scotch and the girls drank eggnog with rum, and they opened their presents, and looked at each one with an infinitely bored expression, and said, “Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Zelda. And thanks again for the car.” And that was it. Merry Christmas, everyone.

  Things did not improve when Adam cooed out on awakening from his nap. I knew they certainly would not cry out, “Ooh, isn’t he sweet!” when they saw him, although he was sweet; most eleven-month-old babies are. But I was not prepared for the brief stony glares he received when I brought him down.

  “This is Adam,” I said, not too brightly, not too gaily, as if I were bringing in the family dog or cat.

  “Hi,” Cathy said, not quite looking at him, not quite smiling.

  “He’s cute,” Caroline said flatly, and that was that. They didn’t try to talk to him or hold him, they didn’t ask questions about him.

  We sat in the parlor for a while, one big happy family. Adam played on the floor with the torn wrapping paper and bows. The girls desultorily thumbed through their new books. The house smelled of evergreens, and a big stew simmering in wine, and applewood in the fire. Adam giggled and blithered with glee as he shredded the wrapping paper. Caroline and Cathy had not, as usual, brought anyone presents, and they would not respond to questions except in monosyllables, and I thought my heart would break. How could they have turned this way, so suddenly, so completely? Only a year ago we had been happy together, friends in Amsterdam. I was miserable. And I was piqued. But Charlie was their father, and he sat through it all as if pleasantly content, and I thought that if he wasn’t going to say anything I should hold my peace, too.

  Finally I served dinner, and after dinner the girls glued themselves to the television set while Charlie and I did the dishes and Adam chewed on Arrowroot cookies and played in his playpen in the kitchen. “Hi, pie,” I said to him now and then, or “How’s it going, love?” But I didn’t say as much to him as I usually did; each word sounded too loud, too nauseatingly sweet, because Caroline and Cathy could hear.

  The next day Charlie took them for a long walk around the farm, to show them how he had fixed up and cleaned up the horse barn, to show them the trees he had planted, and the berry bushes, and the spot—now laden with snow—where we planted our garden in summer. I asked each girl if she’d like to go riding with me on good ol’ Liza and Gabe, but they both said shortly, no. So I served them a warm lunch, and then they got into their new red Beetle and drove unsmilingly away.

  “Teenagers go through stages like that,” Charlie said to me as we watched them drive away. “I’m sure they act like that with their mother. They’re trying to break off, to find their own lifestyle, to establish their own independence, and they have to cut all ties. They’re in that stage of life where they hate all people over thirty, all people who might have any claim on their lives. It’s too bad, I know. It’s an ugly stage. I hate it. I’d like to give them hell about it; I find them thoroughly unpleasant. I’m really pissed at the way they acted about the car. But they don’t need criticism from me right now. It wouldn’t help. In addition to their regular problems they’ve got you and Adam to contend with. But don’t take it personally. Talk to anyone who’s a parent of a teenager; they’ll tell you. It’s a rotten stage. All anyone can do is just sit back and try to keep loving them in spite of it all. They’ll come out of it, you’ll see. I’m not worried about it. I’m just glad for once in my life that I don’t have to live with them.”

  We went through the spring and summer without seeing the girls or hearing from them, although Charlie drove down twice to take them out to dinner and returned to say that they were still pretty much, pretty bitchily the same. In a fit of hopefulness I sent Caroline a box of homemade cookies, but received no reply. Caroline and Cathy came up again for a day during their 1974 Christmas vacation, but again it was as unpleasant and uncomfortable as the one before. It didn’t help much that I was almost four months pregnant with my new child and beginning to show it, or that Adam was now almost two and walking and talking and trying to make contact with the girls. “Who you?” he would say, or, “See my train?” or, “You have a pretty on your neck.” They replied to him as shortly as possible. For a while, when they were first there, he simply stood next to them, trying to figure out what kind of strange people these were who didn’t smile or try to cuddle him. After a while he got bored with them and wandered away. It was not a successful visit, and I felt myself churning inside with longing to scream things at both sour-faced girls. But Charlie kept still, and so did I.

  Then it was June, and my second baby was on her way.

  The baby was due the first week in June. Charlie was due at a weeklong conference the second week in June. The house was basically in good shape, but I wasn’t eager to be alone out in the country with an energetic two-year-old and a new baby and a sore bum. And the grass needed mowing and the garden needed weeding and new seeds needed planting. The baby chicks Charlie had been incubating were due to hatch. Mrs. Justin, our favorite babysitter, had her own farm and family to run. Because we were on a farm, we were a good twenty-minute drive from our university friends, and the best of those friends were out of town on summer vacation. I would be isolated on the farm for seven days with Adam and a new baby. I needed help. It seemed logical that Caroline and Cathy help, especially since we would pay them. Charlie told them he would pay them each two hundred dollars for the one week’s work. At first I thought he was giving them far too much, but then I decided that it would be worth it if only they would smile.

  It had been almost six months since we had seen the girls. I thought of the past, all the years I had known them and loved them. It was true that they needed money; perhaps, I thought, they also needed to be included in Charlie’s new family group, to feel that they were wanted and could be helpful. Perhaps it would make them feel happier and more comfortable with us if they realized they could give as well as receive. After all, I told myself, they were Caroline and Cathy, girls I had known and laughed with for years. And they were seventeen and twenty now, big girls; surely they were maturing. I told Charlie to go ahead and see if he could arrange the setup with the girls.

  They said on the phone, in their new monotones, okay, fine, they would do it. And they arrived on June seventh, my due date, the day we had asked them to come. But they arrived with the same ungiving expressions that they had come with for two years. They didn’t speak easily, they looked surly, they averted their eyes. I smiled, Charlie smiled, we both smiled till our jaws hurt; still they froze away from us. And froze away from Adam. They did not touch him, or speak to him, or look at him. What has happened? I longed to ask. Why are you both acting this way? Do you suddenly hate us all? What can we do to change things? But their faces invited no such intimate questions.

  When my labor pains started that night, waking me from my sleep, I panicked. I said No, new baby, not yet. I’m not ready for you yet. I’ve got to figure a way out of this. I can’t leave Adam here alone with these two ice maidens. Perhaps I was behaving irrationally; of course the girls wouldn’t kill Adam. But I so wanted the new baby’s birth to be a time of love and joy for everyone, including Adam. I didn’t want him to remember it as a time of loneliness and strangeness and fear. Perhaps I was being irrational, fearing to leave him with the girls. But then Charlie was being too rational, I thought, and I had to counteract that. Not everything could be measured in money and logic, not at times like these.

  It was almost five-thirty by the time Mrs. Justin came and we gave her her instructions. Caroline and Cathy were still asleep in the pullout bed in the front parlor. Adam was still asleep upstairs. My contractions were coming fast and hard. We got into the car. Charlie drove as fast as he dared.

  “Have you tried to talk to them about it?” I asked Charlie between pants. “Have you tried to tell them how we feel?”

  �
�I spoke to them a bit yesterday,” Charlie said. “They said they feel funny here. They feel left out. We have our own little family and they aren’t a part of it. They said they don’t want to be a part of it, either. They just want to stay away from us. I guess they feel I’ve betrayed them and you have sort of tempted me into the betrayal. They don’t like to talk about it much. They won’t talk to me much, won’t open up. When I told them how we still loved them and cared for them, how we miss them and miss their company and friendship, they didn’t respond. Finally both girls said that they thought if we hadn’t had Adam we could have afforded to send them to better colleges, to private instead of state schools. Cathy said it didn’t seem fair that I could go out and get myself some new children when she couldn’t go out and get herself a nice new father.”

  “Oh, Charlie,” I moaned.

  “Well,” Charlie said, “I have my hopes for this week. Maybe over a long period of time they’ll relax, feel at home, talk with you. They’re going through a tough time all around, you know. They told me that about a year ago Adelaide was offered a new job at the university. Quite a jump up from her former position. She is now executive secretary to the vice president of the university. It’s a demanding job; it pays well, and it’s prestigious, and apparently she loves it. It’s really a classy job, and a powerful one. She’s gotten into it completely. She works full-time and overtime, and often has dinner with the trustees or visiting biggies. I guess it’s rather become her whole life. She was glad it came along just as the girls were getting ready to leave the nest, but I guess the girls weren’t ready for it. On the one hand they’ve got their mother, who is too tired to cook dinner or to make homemade anything, and who is too busy and too involved with her new work to be really there for them, and on the other hand they’ve got us with our boring farm and new babies. They’re feeling isolated and unprotected and estranged and bitter.”

  “But how great for Adelaide!” I cried out, louder than I meant to because of my contractions. “Did you talk to her when you picked the girls up yesterday? Did you see her?”

  “Yes,” Charlie said, “and she looked better than I’ve ever seen her in her life. She’s kept her hair blond and she’s very slim and was wearing a simple tailored shirt and slacks instead of that frilly crap she used to wear. She is happy; that radiates from her all over. She is really happy. She looks elegant and totally complete. We didn’t talk to each other very long, but it was quite pleasant. She had a classy leather briefcase under her arm. She looked great.”

  “God, I’m so glad!” I screeched. “Oh, Charlie, can you drive any faster? I think I’ve got to push.”

  “Puff and blow, for God’s sake,” Charlie said. “Don’t push, Jesus Christ!” He pressed down hard on the accelerator.

  I was afraid I would have the baby in the car. I was afraid Adam would cry when he woke up and found us gone. I was afraid the girls would be mean to him. I was afraid that in Charlie’s eyes I was suddenly not as attractive as Adelaide was, slim and elegant and sporting a leather briefcase. I was afraid that I would never be slim and elegant and sporting my own leather briefcase. And it is true that one’s psychological state has a lot to do with one’s physical state. Somewhere underneath it all I rationally knew what was going on, but I was so afraid of everything that each contraction seemed like a hard grip of fear. By the time we got to the hospital I was sobbing and shaking and out of control. We had of course forgotten to call the doctor to tell him we were on the way. I collapsed into a wheelchair and we went up to the maternity ward, where I was somehow shoved or thrown onto a table and hurried into the delivery room. By then I was pushing: I had to push. And I was screaming because of the pain, because I was so out of control, because my whole life was out of control. Never had anything hurt so much. The table was not ready. I grasped Charlie with my left hand and a nurse with my right hand, and another nurse ran around all flustered down where my legs were, trying to do something with white towels, and I yelled, “Please help me! Please give me something for the pain!” And in a lovely sliding whoosh my daughter was born.

  I had two cozy, aching, leaking, loving days in the hospital with Lucy before I went home. I let myself forget Adam, little chubby Adam, for those two days because Charlie was still there and I knew that Charlie would take care of him. I gave myself over to the adoration and contemplation of my new child, to the enjoyment of my pains and wounds, to the routine care of others, to soggy, milky, bloody, hot and moist bliss. But the third day of Lucy’s life I went home. The nurses and my physician warned me against it, but I didn’t listen to them. I didn’t care. I would not leave my son alone with my stepdaughters.

  Charlie came to pick me up, and Adam was in the car. His hair was curly from the humidity of the New Hampshire day and his cheeks were flushed. I put the baby in a baby carrier in the backseat and rode in the front seat next to Charlie, hugging Adam and stroking his perfect tanned sturdy legs and burying my nose in his hair.

  “How are Cathy and Caroline?” I asked him.

  “Who?”

  “Cathy and Caroline—”

  “Oh, those ladies that are living at our house? They’re okay.” And that was all he said. At least, I thought, at least he doesn’t seem afraid of them.

  Charlie got us all settled at home. Cathy and Caroline were out weeding the garden, and when we drove in they turned to look at us, but did not leave their work to come up to see me and my new child. Charlie carried Lucy in and settled her in her bed. He brought me my overnight bag and unpacked it for me. He fixed me a Bloody Mary; he fixed himself and Adam and me lunch.

  He said, “I’m sorry I have to go. A man my age has no business having babies. I’d like to stay home and simply hold Lucy and stare at her. She is so beautiful. But the conference is important.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “I’ve talked with the girls. I told them to be nice to you and to Adam. I told them they are to do all dishes and housework while I’m gone. They’ve been working out in the garden pretty well. I think it will all be just fine. I really do think it will be better than leaving you here with some strange expensive public health nurse.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “I’ve got to go. I’ll take Adam outside and have the girls watch him while you nurse Lucy and take your nap. Don’t worry. I promise it will all be okay.”

  Charlie left me then, leading Adam out the door, holding his dimpled hand. I shuffled up the stairs into my bedroom and tried to put on some lipstick, tried to brush my hair. I didn’t want to look too boringly dowdy. I changed out of my maternity clothes into a soft blue nightgown that I had bought when Adam was born; it buttoned down the front so that I could open it easily for nursing. I shuffled down the hall to the bathroom and took care of some physical needs, and by the time I was able to shuffle back, Lucy was wailing her new baby wail. I changed her and nursed her and talked to her a bit, and soon she fell back asleep. It was a warm June day and the windows were open, and insects buzzed against the screen and there was no breeze. I lay back on my bed, listening hard for sounds of Adam, and before I knew it I was asleep.

  When I awoke it was because Lucy was crying again. The light in my bedroom had changed and deepened. With horror I looked at my watch; it was almost six-thirty. I had slept for five straight hours, I had left my little boy alone in the world for five straight hours. Frantically I grabbed up Lucy and changed her, then held her to me and shuffled out of my room and down the stairs. “There, there,” I murmured, “there, there, you’ll get your dinner in a minute. Let’s just find Adam first.”

  The door into the kitchen was shut. I opened it to see Catherine and Caroline sitting at the dinner table, eating the casserole I had made and frozen earlier that month. The television was on and they were entranced by it.

  “Hello,” I said. “Where’s Adam?”

  “In there,” Cathy said, and jerked her head sideways.

  Adam was lying in the playpen, sucking his thumb and rolling rhy
thmically from side to side. When he saw me he stood up and burst into tears.

  “MOMMY!” he wailed.

  Neither girl looked at him or at me; they continued to steadily watch the television. I put Lucy on the rug on the floor and went over to lift Adam out of the playpen. It hurt to lift him; he was so much heavier than Lucy, and I had to bend down into an awkward position to reach him. I felt things inside me pull. But he wrapped himself around me and buried his head in my neck and cried, so I could not put him down.

  “Did you feed him?” I asked the girls.

  They pointed to a plate full of food. “He didn’t want it,” they said. “He said he didn’t like it.”

  “Oh, well, did you give him anything else?”

  “No. He didn’t say he wanted anything else. We just thought he wasn’t hungry.”

  Lucy, who had apparently been shocked into silence for a few moments, now began to wail again, wildly now. It had been over five hours since she had been fed. Adam continued to clutch me and sob. Both girls continued to watch television.

  “Look, sweet pie,” I said to Adam, “Mommy will put you in your high chair, and I’ll sit right next to you and feed you your dinner, and you can watch baby Lucy drink her dinner just like you did when you were a baby.”

  “Out of your breasts?” Adam asked.