Lost in the Reflecting Pool

by Diane Pomerantz

  It would have been nice to have a glass of wine, but I restrained myself, and Charles and I toasted with our glasses of ice water. The food was fabulous. We shared eggplant rollatini and baked clams and then had the house special pork chops with sweet and hot vinegar peppers. I was in heaven . . . and then, without warning, a sharp, cramping pain hit me. I got up quickly.

  “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.” I made it to the restroom. There wasn’t much blood, but the crimson stains on my underwear had begun, along with the end of my fantasy.

  When I opened the restroom door, Charles was standing there. “Are you okay?”

  I shrugged.

  He put his arm around my shoulder and said, “I guess maybe we overdid it today.” The muscle in his cheek twitched.

  We paid the bill, took the flowers, and returned to my parents’ house.

  In the darkness of the car, I told him, “I’m spotting. It’s not a lot, but this is how it starts.”

  Chapter Nine

  CRIMSON-RED BLOOD. IT CONTINUED. NOT CLUMPS OR clots—just enough to be a bold reminder that the threads of life were ever so delicate, and that there are never guarantees. By twelve weeks, two of the fetuses had vanished. The two survivors were reported to be doing well, but by week fourteen, there was only one.

  No matter how prepared I thought I was, it always felt like death.

  “You’re fine,” Dr. Clare assured me, then looked reassuringly at Charles, a stiffening in her gaze. Turning her gaze back to me, she went on, “But you will likely have bleeding throughout the pregnancy from the placentas. You don’t have to go crazy every time you see blood. Your body is just sloughing off what isn’t reabsorbed.”

  I laughed as I said, “Dr. Clare, you know I will go crazy and I will need to come in every time.”

  “I know you will, and it’s okay; you can come in, and we’ll do an ultrasound, and I’ll tell you the same thing.”

  During that meeting with Dr. Clare, I could sense a palpable tension between her and Charles, over who would be in charge of my pregnancy and the decisions that would be made about it. It was just something that I could feel as a presence in the room whenever Charles came with me to an appointment. He would become the reserved observer, judging the action with a critical and subtle, or perhaps not-so-subtle, eye.

  Charles was always intense about what he felt or wanted. If something wasn’t that important to me, I usually gave in. It didn’t seem worth a battle. It had always been that way. But during this pregnancy, something changed. Not only was Charles involved and invested, but I sometimes felt as if he wanted to take over my body, to consume me. Armor—I needed armor to define and protect myself. Whenever a decision needed to be made, I felt my body tense. I found myself having to stop and deliberately think, Is this what I want? My immediate response was that I would have to hold my ground. The ideas Charles had were often ideas I did ultimately agree with, like working with a birth doula. I’m not sure why I resisted this when Charles originally suggested it, other than needing to assert myself, to maintain my own boundaries.

  In fact, nothing became a matter of contention between us, but there was an increasing feeling that I needed to hold on to myself, hold on to who I was as a person, separate from Charles.

  I continued to work part-time through my pregnancy, and I did panic whenever the crimson color appeared on my underwear. Physically, though, I was fine. I was due in mid-August.

  Springtime does not last long in Baltimore. That was the case in 1991. The cold days of winter passed, and the heat and humidity of summer descended upon us almost immediately. It was early July. It had been close to one hundred degrees for a week. I put some things in a bag, and Elli and I drove over to the community pool. Elli, a real water baby, was splashing in the shallow end of the pool, wearing her water wings, as I stood near her.

  “It looks like you’re going to deliver within the next twenty-four hours,” a tall, dark-haired woman standing nearby casually commented.

  “I wish, but I have most of the summer to go.”

  “I don’t think so.” She smiled warmly.

  “Well, all I know is that I’m uncomfortable.”

  We introduced ourselves, and she continued, “I guarantee you won’t make it to August. I think it’s going to happen within the next twenty-four hours.”

  She certainly sounded sure of herself, so much so that I thought, Maybe she knows something I don’t know. So many little things made me realize how important my connection with other women was. It was that bonding around maternity that made her comments feel as if I was about to approach another rite of passage.

  Standing in the cool water, chatting with this stranger, made the blistering heat of that July day more bearable. Elli and I stayed at the pool for hours and headed home in the late afternoon. Cuddling on the couch after dinner, her head on my stomach, I read her one of her favorite stories, The Foundling Fox.

  “Mommy, I can feel the baby.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Mommy, did you know that when I was in Joni’s tummy I kicked and kicked so hard because I couldn’t wait to get out and be with you and Daddy?”

  “Really? That is so funny, because when you were in Joni’s tummy, Daddy and I were so excited, we were having a hard time waiting patiently for you to get here, too. When you finally arrived, it was the most exciting day of our lives.”

  Elli’s blond curls were spread across my stomach as she peered up at me through her long, long lashes and smiled. “I love you, Mommy.”

  “I love you, too, Elli.”

  IT was midnight. Elli and Charles were both asleep, and I did what had become a nightly ritual. After having a large glass of milk, I let the water run in the tub. I lit a candle and turned off the light in our tiny bathroom. With the sounds of classical Japanese koto music surrounding me, I dropped my robe and let myself sink into the warmth. I closed my eyes.

  About two hours later, I finally crawled into bed and settled in against Charles’s side. His soft, regular breathing lulled me into sleep.

  Then I was on a beach, gazing at the clouds.

  Suddenly, a wave crashed over me and my reverie was broken. The sheets were soaking wet. I was disoriented, and then I realized what had happened.

  “Charles!” I shook him. “My water broke!”

  “Are you sure you didn’t pee?” he asked groggily, turning over on his side.

  “Charles, my water broke! I have to call Dr. Clare.”

  “Okay. I’m up. Calm down, though. She’ll probably tell you to go back to sleep.”

  “I don’t think so. When your water breaks, I think you have to go to the hospital.”

  Dr. Clare did tell me that we needed to go to the hospital. I called my friend Shelly, and I called my parents. Shelly lived nearby and had agreed that if I went into labor during the night, she would come over and stay with Elli until she awoke and then take her back to her house. My parents would then come from New York, pick Elli up, and bring her home.

  We arrived at the hospital at five thirty in the morning. My labor was long and became loud. By the time I asked for something for the pain, I was told it was too late.

  “I don’t want to do this. Forget it. I just want to go home,” I screamed.

  “It’s too late now,” Dr. Clare said; then she told me to push.

  Samuel Ian was born at seven o’clock in the evening on July 17, 1991. He was six and a half weeks early. He had no fat on him, but he looked exactly like Charles.

  Still on the delivery table, I have a vague memory of Dr. Clare saying something about an episiotomy, and then of her looking at Charles and adding “This time, we do it my way.”

  Labor was hard, but the high I felt after Sam was born was unbelievable. My body was without form, ethereal; I was clear-headed, full of energy and joy, and so in love with my beautiful baby boy.

  Because Sam came early, he had to spend some time in the NICU. We stayed with him for a number of hours, and then, around midnight, Cha
rles left and I went back to my room. I called Allyson, and I called Gail. My parents brought Elli to the hospital later in the day to meet her brother. I felt complete with my husband, my children, and my parents all there. The night before I was discharged with Sam, Charles and I had the hospital’s new-parent champagne dinner as our son slept in his bassinet beside us.

  “To everything wonderful that lies ahead,” Charles toasted.

  “L’chaim. To life.” I touched his glass with mine.

  “To love,” he added.

  AFTER that, life was loud. Our two-bedroom cottage was crowded. Elli enjoyed being a big sister to her little brother for the first several weeks. Then she decided she’d had enough.

  “When can we send him back, Mommy, and get a sister instead?” she asked over breakfast one morning. “He cries too much. Can I watch The Little Mermaid?”

  “Sure, let’s put it on, and it’ll get easier, sweetie,” I told her, thinking, It had better get easier. The first week, Sam slept most of the time and I got into the rhythm of nursing and all seemed well, but then he started screaming whenever he wasn’t nursing. He had gas and diarrhea and projectile-vomiting. Whereas with Elli I had felt like the perfect mother, now I felt totally incompetent. At night, I would nurse Sam and then Charles would hold him on his stomach, gently stroking Sam’s back, and I would drift off for a short while, until the screaming started and Sam needed to nurse again—the only thing that would really soothe him.

  The pediatrician said it was just colic. This was more than colic. It took three months to discover that Sam had a milk-protein allergy and that the most minuscule amount of whey in my diet would set off a horrible allergic reaction in him. Once that was discovered, life did get better—in some ways.

  Living in a tiny house with two small children was tight. We needed more room. Charles was not pleased that I couldn’t easily increase the number of hours I worked. My parents came often and helped a lot. Charles appreciated that. Charles’s parents visited, too, but he was adamant that he did not want to leave Elli and Sam with them. “My mother is too dense and flighty. I don’t trust her with our children.”

  I felt sad about that. Marcy wasn’t a bad person, but, over the years, Charles’s disdain for her had colored my perceptions of her. And then there was the evening when we left Elli with his parents for just a couple of hours while they were visiting.

  Elli was about eighteen months old and liked to have her bath before bed. I told Marcy, “I wrote out the instructions for how to turn on the hot water in the tub. It’s an old house, and the plumbing is kind of quirky, so you have to turn on the cold water first and then slowly turn on the hot water. You have to test it, because it can suddenly shoot out scalding water. I never put Elli in the tub until the water is already in and the right temperature, because she could get burned.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’ve given plenty of baths before.”

  “I know you know how to give a baby a bath, but this plumbing is old and unpredictable, so we really are careful with it. Just make sure you follow these directions, and there won’t be a problem.”

  Needless to say, when we returned home, Elli was still up cuddled on the sofa, thumb in her mouth, holding her blankie and cuddling Ak, her favorite stuffed dog. She was no longer crying, but a big patch of bright red covered her leg and thigh—she had gotten scalded in the tub.

  “I had no idea that the water would become so hot all of a sudden.” Marcy was truly oblivious. Albert rolled his eyes at her and silently walked into the kitchen.

  The burn was not that serious, but . . .

  “This is what I mean,” Charles uttered through gritted teeth later when we were alone in our bedroom. “She doesn’t pay attention to anything. Never again!” And that was the first and last time Marcy and Albert were left alone with the children.

  It would be quite a while before I allowed myself to see Charles’s criticalness and need for control. His need to treat me with denigration and contempt increased once we had children. However subtle they might have been, he always delivered his blows with the deft strokes of a surgeon’s scalpel. Once Charles was no longer the sole centrifugal force from which I moved outward, once I was a mother, I could no longer be good, because for Charles, “mother” equaled “bad.”

  “I can’t be around her for more than an hour, and then I get a headache; I feel sick,” he told anyone and everyone about Marcy. He saw her as weak and pathetic, vulnerable. These were things I saw and ignored from the very beginning, but there was a turning point when it got worse. There was a point when I became Marcy.

  Chapter Ten

  RELATIONSHIPS EVOLVE; THEY HAVE A LIFE CYCLE. SOMEtimes they grow and mature. Sometimes they have an early death. Charles’s and my days of belly laughs and flowers became only occasional punctuation marks in the litany of our lives.

  My parents had been married for fifty years. At first, Charles and I thought of making a party for them, as his parents had made for themselves. We decided, though, that my parents would appreciate something other than a party, so we decided on giving them a trip.

  We walked into a Park Slope restaurant to meet them for dinner one night with Elli, who was a head-turner, even at four. The blue trim on her white dress, and her white straw hat with a blue ribbon, perfectly matched the color of her eyes. Charles carried Sammy, then six months old, to the table, where my parents were already seated. They were a handsome couple. My mother, at seventy-two, still had dark hair and was a stylish and beautiful woman who looked much younger than her age. My father, although a bit heavier than in his youth, still had the broad smile and quiet openness that drew others to him, no matter what their age.

  Two dozen yellow roses were in the center of the table. Back then, Charles still never forgot the flowers. The waiter poured Dom Pérignon. Charles made the toast.

  “To Marty and Rita, Mom and Dad, Grandma and Poppy, we love you today, tomorrow, and for eternity.”

  “I’ll give the presents. Then you guess why you got them, okay?” Elli’s words spilled out like Cheerios from the box that I had placed in front of Sammy. I put three small boxes and an envelope in front of Elli, each wrapped in glossy white paper and topped with colorful, curled ribbon. Elli pushed the first small, square box in front of my mother. “You open this one, Grandma, but it’s for you, too, Poppy.”

  “You guys are too much. This is so exciting.” The sound of my mother’s giggles mixed with the crunching sound of the wrapping paper as she took the small, finely crafted, miniature ceramic Cotswold cottage from the box.

  “This one is from Sammy. Right, bro?” Elli reached over and made a raspberry sound in her brother’s face, and they both started laughing. “You open this one, Poppy.” He pulled a small metal 747 jetliner from the box he had carefully unwrapped.

  “Wow, guy, you already know about planes. We’re going to have so much fun together when you get bigger.” Sammy continued to giggle.

  The next box held an old map. CITY OF MANCHESTER, 1920

  was printed across the top.

  “That’s the year I was born, and that’s where I was born.” As my mother began to speak, that dry, hacking cough interrupted her words.

  “Where are the Halls, Grandma? I’ll get you one.” Elli was waiting for permission to look in Grandma’s purse for the cough drops. Charles and I exchanged glances as the coughing stopped, and Elli asked if they could guess the meaning behind the presents.

  “Okay, I guess we’ll have to give you the final gift.” With great fanfare, Elli pushed the white envelope toward my mother. “You open this, Grandma.”

  They looked with astonishment at the three-week travel itinerary to England that fell from the envelope, along with photos of the cottage in the Cotswold’s and of the hotels we had booked for them in London and in Manchester, the city where my mother was born and had not been back to in over fifty years.

  Will Charles and I be together for fifty years? Why would I wonder that? I thought, as I looked
at the blond curls surrounding my four-year-old’s cherubic face and the dark curls atop her baby brother’s head.

  As was often the case, out of nowhere, Charles began to talk to my parents about moving to Maryland.

  “The next time we visit after this wonderful trip, I promise we’ll look around at places,” my mom said, deftly steering the conversation in another direction. I knew that my mother did not want to leave New York.

  As this subject began to come up more and more frequently, I wondered, Does Charles want them to move to be more available for child-care? I knew he wanted me to be working more, even though my part-time practice was bringing in decent money. He was terribly upset about the new houses that were infringing upon our isolated paradise, and when Charles became anxious, his obsessing about money, or at least about my spending, became worse.

  We really did need more space, and we thought about moving, but Charles wanted to add on to our small cottage, rather than relocate. We worked with an architect, but since Charles was also an architect, the modest addition that we had planned began to grow in scope. Charles designed a huge and separate suite as an enticement for my parents to come and live with us. The design was fabulous; it was hard for me not to be drawn in by both his enthusiasm and his talent. One night we stood under a cloak of black sky, in our own cocoon of silence, as Charles measured the distance from our position in the field to the point where he wanted to place the circular window. There was something magical about that moment: the two of us, ensconced in the blackness of night, covered by a canopy of twinkling lights, the air a soft kiss of paradise.

  Shortly after my parents returned from their trip, my mother began to complain of being tired. Her cough, which had by then persisted for several years, worsened. It was even hard for her oncologist to ignore. He had minimized and scoffed at our concern previously, seemingly because he was so pleased with himself for having saved her from breast cancer twenty years earlier.