by Sue Miller
Meri picked up her glass with her free hand and drank. The ice cubes made a light noise as she set it down.
“How are you doing with your charge?” Delia gestured at the baby.
“Oh,” Meri said. “All right, I suppose. He's still up two or three times a night, so I feel as if I more or less stagger through the days.”
“But your husband is a help, is he not?”
“Oh, Nathan's been wonderful. He does the shopping and the dinner. He even sort of cleans.” She made a face. “But that's mostly because he can't stand the way things look if he doesn't.”
“Well, this too shall pass.”
“Actually, that part of it probably won't. I've always been a slob. It's just that in the olden days, I had only myself to care for.”
“Well, yes, I know how that is.” She shifted in her chair. “One more or less loves one's own messes.”
Meri looked up and smiled in what looked like surprise. “We do, don't we?” She nodded, and then turned to the window. She frowned, looking at something, and then she turned quickly back to Delia. “My God, Delia, what happened to your car?”
“Oh.” Delia felt a pulse of shame, of embarrassment for herself. “I had an accident.”
“Well, yes,” Meri said. “But what happened?”
“It was my fault,” Delia said. “I was lost in a dream and I ran a red light. The other car plowed right into me.”
“God. How terrifying.”
“Yes, it was. It was a very strange experience. Have you ever had that, been hit out of the blue? I mean, without anticipating it, or seeing it coming?”
“No.” Meri shook her head, and her limp hair swayed.
“This was quite . . . bizarre.” Delia shivered, recalling it. “It was as though the world had suddenly blown up. I couldn't imagine for about three seconds, probably, what had happened. Three long seconds. This horrible loud noise, and the car flying through the air, sideways—I simply didn't know anything for a moment. I barely knew who I was.”
“But you weren't hurt.”
“No, and neither was the poor woman who hit me. The car, on the other hand . . .” She raised her eyebrows.
“But you can drive it.” Her face made it a question.
“Oh yes, I have been. I'll have to get it fixed at some point. But first I have to get the insurance man to come and look it over. I just”—her hand waved—“I haven't got around to it yet.”
“It'll take a little while, I would think. Fixing it.” Meri was looking out the window again.
In profile, Delia thought, she looked very young. The fatigue just vanished. “Yes, I'll have to time for it when I won't need it for at least a few days.”
“Well, you can always borrow ours for errands and the like.”
“Thank you, dear. That's kind of you, but I don't want to impose.”
“It wouldn't be, imposing.”
“So you say. But I'll manage. I thank you, but I'll manage. I feel I've imposed on you enough, asking you to take on this sitting for Tom.”
“No, Delia. No.” She said this firmly, looking right at Delia. “No, I looked forward to this all day. To be in someone else's house—a place where there are no . . . chores left undone. No messes that are my responsibility.” She smiled. “Messes. Yes indeed. Do you know, I dropped a bottle of olive oil on the floor in the pantry this morning, and I still haven't wiped it all up? There are footprints all over the first floor now. It looks like . . . a ghost has been walking around.” She smiled sadly. “That ghost would be me.”
Delia didn't know quite what to say. She was aware of feeling that Meri was asking something of her, and she was aware of her own resistance to that.
Meri was swaying her body slightly back and forth, patting the baby's back. “No, I loved sitting here in the quiet,” she said.
Delia was relieved that the subject seemed to have changed, that they'd moved on.
“And the driver does everything anyway, just as you said he would. He gets him into his room, gets his shoes off. He's very kind. I can hear him talking to Tom.”
“He does seem lovely, doesn't he?”
“Well, maybe not exactly lovely.” Meri made a face.
“Oh, I know, I know,” Delia said. “He does have that wretched pompadour. A man with a pompadour is a man who thinks too much about himself.”
Meri smiled at her and moved to get more comfortable in her chair.
“Well, I'm glad then,” Delia said. “I'm glad if being here is actually a momentary haven.” She looked at her own hands on the table, the ridges of greenish veins running across them. “I remember when the children were small, I used to love taking them to the doctor's office because there were toys and other children and they'd play, and I'd be able to sit there utterly idle for five or ten or even fifteen minutes. No chores to be done. Sometimes I'd actually have time to read some ridiculous article in a magazine, Ladies’ Home Journal or something like that, and I'd think, ‘Why, this is utter bliss.’ ”
Meri was looking intensely at Delia. “But you loved your children.”
“Well, of course I loved them. I mean, there were moments with each of them when I didn't. Moments, you know.” And Delia was suddenly remembering them, those moments. Remembering how it had felt, the rage at something your child was doing or saying in public—doing or saying with what must be a kind of instinctive canniness regarding the upper hand he held, an inborn sense of how deeply embarrassing his behavior would be to you. The shrieks at the checkout line in the grocery store over the candy and gum they perversely stacked by the cash registers. The wails, the collapse on the ground when she would announce it was time to leave the park. She remembered turning to one or another of her children when she had them alone finally, in the car or at home, turning to them and paying them back with her own real anger, her rage.
She said, “But everyone has those moments.” She waved her hand. “You have to forgive yourself for those moments. You need to, or you can't go on. Forgiveness is essential. Forgiveness of yourself, first. Then it's easier to forgive others.”
Meri's mouth made an odd shape. “Neither is a great gift of mine, I'm afraid.”
“I find as I get older that they are, of mine. Interesting, isn't it?” And Delia felt it suddenly as a point of pride, an accomplishment. She felt, she realized, that having Tom here now was connected to her having forgiven him all those years ago. Having let go of so much. It was like a reward for that, for that generosity. She smiled. “Maybe I am trying for sainthood, as my daughter suggested.”
“Did she?”
“She did, but she was mad at me at the moment. It wasn't meant kindly.”
The baby made a little noise and Meri began again to sway her upper body from side to side. She said, “I think I remember Tom describing her as formidable, didn't he?”
“When was this?” Delia asked. She was surprised by this, by Meri's calling up of Tom, whole. How would she know?
“When we came over just before last Christmas. When he was visiting. When your son came.”
“Oh, yes!” Delia said. She'd forgotten that Meri had met Tom then. Now she thought back to that evening. She remembered it clearly. Most of all, Tom's presence then. His elegant presence—she could recall even the color of the shirt he was wearing, a pale gray. She remembered too the night before, which was the last time they'd made love before the stroke. “That seems another universe, doesn't it? It was another universe.” They sat for a moment. “Well, formidable Nancy is,” she said.
Meri sighed. “It's so hard to imagine, having grown children who actually have characteristics. Who are people, people you've helped to make.” She shook her head. “Part of what's difficult for me now is that I can't really believe anything I do with Asa has anything to do with him as a person. I mean, I feel I'm just doing chores when I care for him.”
“You are a very conscientious mother, dear,” Delia said.
“Well, of course I'm conscientious. He's my job. I alw
ays do a good job.” Her eyes seemed to be glittering. She looked down at the table.
Delia waited.
After a few seconds Meri said, “It's just that I feel so . . . well, brain-dead, I suppose. So much that I'm just this, animal. This . . . body.” She gestured down her side with her free hand.
She started to speak, and stopped. Then she said, “Did you feel that? when your children were babies?”
“Of course. It's one of those times, isn't it? when you're reminded of your animal nature—labor, and then the kind of fog you live in for a while after the baby comes—one of those times when you're so aware that you live in your body. We get to forget it most of the time. But we are our bodies after all. We may feel full of lofty concerns most of the time, but it all comes down to that in the end. We live in our bodies, and we get reminded of that from time to time.”
“God, don't tell me there are times when I'm going to feel this way again. I don't want to know it.”
“Ah, but there are, of course,” Delia answered. “In old age, for example, when the body begins to go wrong, to fail in any of a variety of interesting and depressing ways.” She snorted lightly. “You wake up every morning, I assure you, very much in your body. Very aware of it. And in illness, with something like what's happened to Tom. It forces you to understand how provisional it all is—the body's working correctly.”
Meri's lips tightened. Her head moved, bowed almost, in what seemed a kind of apology, or concession. Okay.
“Yours, now,” Delia said. “The feeling you have of . . . bodiliness, of being overwhelmed by it—yours is actually the kindest version of that, I would think.” She smiled. “Because it's just that your body is working so hard. But it's working well—it is working correctly—and that's something to be grateful for.” She was aware that part of what she was telling Meri was that she shouldn't complain, that she should be braver than she was; and she was aware that she felt some unkindness toward the younger woman as she did this. But she couldn't help it. Life was hard, hard for everyone. One never stopped having to work at it. Meri was of an age when she ought to know that.
Meri looked as though she was beginning to say something, but then there was a noise, a cry from Tom in the dining room. “Dheee!” Delia.
Delia smiled at Meri. “Ah, my baby,” she said. She stood up.
Meri stood up too, more slowly, adjusting the baby on her shoulder. Delia walked with her to the living room, where Meri carefully lowered Asa into his bassinet, trying not to wake him. They stood together over the basket and watched him as he unfurled himself spasmodically. His eyes opened, he seemed to gasp, as though surprised by what he saw. Then they closed again, he curled slightly to his left, and his little fist rose to his mouth.
Meri sighed in relief. She picked the basket up by its handles, and Delia followed her down the hallway to the front door.
“Well, thanks for the tea, Delia.” There was a pregnant pause, as though she wasn't sure what to say next. “And for the company.”
“Oh, please, not at all.” Even though she felt an itchy impatience, Delia was trying to keep her voice gracious and unrushed. “And thank you, again, for staying with Tom,” she said.
She waited, smiling, until Meri had stepped outside, had moved away on the front porch. She waved then, and shut the door.
She turned back down the hall, feeling an almost giddy sense of release, of escape. Eagerly, quickly, she crossed to the dining room door.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Meri, July 7, 1994
ON THURSDAY, Meri's fourth time at Delia's house, she was once more sitting in the living room while Tom napped. This time too she'd barely spoken to him. The driver, Len, had helped him up the steps as he always did, had walked him in, waited for him outside the lavatory, and then taken him in to lie down on his bed in the dining room.
Len liked Meri. He often stopped for a few minutes to chat with her. He liked Tom too. Today after he'd shut the dining room door, he'd come and stood leaning against the frame of the living room doorway in his black suit to talk about him. “He's a good guy,” he said. “A good guy. Sharp. It's a shame.” He shook his head. “If that a happeneda me . . .” His lips pressed tight together to end his sentence, leaving Meri to fill in the blank for herself. I'd be sad? I'd kill myself?
He pushed away from the frame and tapped it with his palm. “See ya Tuesday, right?”
“Right,” Meri said, and mirrored his pointing index finger.
“Hah!” he said.
After Len left, she simply sat for a while in the pretty living room—prettiest at this time of day, she thought—looking down from time to time at Asa when he made the startled noises and movements that punctuated his sleeping life. She was thinking about nothing. Well, lots of things, actually—images: Nathan, getting out of bed this morning, his body gleaming white in the bright sunlight. Delia's face when she was talking to her the other day, suddenly so seemingly cold. The almost-empty refrigerator. What she needed to buy. But nothing like a thought.
She sighed. The New York Times was lying in front of her on Delia's coffee table. She leaned forward and started to read. She went through the beginnings of a couple of articles on the front page. She'd just gotten engrossed in one about the national health plan, about whether abortion services would be included in it, when she heard the door to the dining room open. She looked up. Tom Naughton was starting across the hall toward her, using his metal cane, swinging his leg with each step.
She stood and began to move to him, to help, but he held up a hand. “Hokay.” Okay. It's okay.
She sat back down then and waited, trying not to watch his hitching progress. As he came into the room, he stopped at the bassinet, looking down. “Ace,” he said softly, smiling a little, gesturing at the sleeping baby.
Meri was pleased to have him remember Asa's name, to have him speak it. Delia had told her that he'd been charmed by the baby, that the night the two of them had babysat, he'd held him for a while. It argued for Tom, in her mind.
He moved to the sofa opposite her. He stood above it for a moment, and then more or less collapsed into it, a noise like a groan emerging from him.
Meri felt awkward, suddenly, in his presence. He was supposed to sleep when she was here. But perhaps this was a good sign, a sign of recovery—that he was less exhausted by his rehabilitation sessions than he'd been earlier.
Still, was she in charge of him now? Was she supposed to figure out what he wanted, or needed? “Would you like something to eat?” she asked. “Or drink?”
He shook his head.
They sat for a minute more. “I was reading,” Meri said. “The Times.” She gestured at the paper lying on the table in front of her. She kept her voice low. “There's an interesting article on the Clintons’ health plan. On abortion and the Clintons’ health plan. Would you like me to read it to you?”
“Yeh,” he said, with a pronunciation that sounded only mildly interested. And then he nodded and said it again, more clearly, more decidedly. “Yhes.”
Meri picked up the paper, rattled it flat, and started to read aloud. When she had to search through to a back page for the continuation, he waited patiently. She could tell he was listening—every time she looked up at him, he was frowning in concentration.
She came to the end of the article and there was another long silence.
Asa smacked his lips, nursing in his sleep.
She said, “There's a piece here on Breyer too. On the Supreme Court hearings. Shall I read that one?”
“Mmmm,” he said, nodding. She flipped back to the first page and started again.
This time, partway through the article, Asa stirred and shook himself—she could see him in her peripheral vision. He began to whimper.
On schedule: it was about the time he'd been nursing for the last few days. She tried to ignore him. She read on. But when she folded the paper back to the end of the story, the noise seemed to wake him fully. He started to move his arms and legs, an
d then to squawk.
“Oh, excuse me, I'm so sorry,” she said to Tom. She set the paper down, and bent to pick up the baby. She lifted him to her shoulder. She patted him gently for a few minutes, but his noises only became more frantic. And then he was really crying, fighting with her, pushing his body against her to get to her breast.
“Hong,” Tom said.
“You're hungry?!” Meri asked, jiggling Asa harder. What next?
He shook his head. “Ace, hong.”
“Oh, yes. Yes,” she said, and smiled helplessly. “I'm afraid he is.”
“Feeuhmm.”
“Feed him?”
He nodded. “Feeuhmm. Sokay.”
“You don't mind?” she said, realizing, even as she spoke the words, that she did mind. She did, of course she did, or she would have done it on her own, fed Asa without being given permission. She hadn't fed him in front of a stranger since the time the old woman in the lunch place had turned from her in revulsion. She'd even tried to avoid nursing him in front of Nathan, though that wasn't always possible.
He shook his head.
What she wanted was for him to go away, go back into his room—but she didn't feel she could say this to him. It would be too rude. It would be unkind. She lowered Asa and rested him along her arm. As he stopped crying and began his noisy snuffling toward her, she lifted her T-shirt on that side.
But she did it awkwardly because she was trying not to expose her breast to Tom, and Asa was left rooting and snuffling at the fabric of her shirt. By the time she tilted her body back to pull him away from her and put her hand under her breast to lift the nipple to him, milk was spurting out. It landed all over Asa's face. His body started, and he swung his head quickly back and forth in recoil. He made a funny spitting noise with his mouth and tongue, a kind of infant Bronx cheer. And when he came forward again, she saw that there was milk on the lids of his eyes and in his ears.
As Asa attached himself, she heard Tom make a noise and looked over at him. He was laughing, his head thrown back. She remembered that laugh from the evening at Delia's house at Christmas, his light hoarse laugh and the way he gave himself over to it. It had made her smile then, and she smiled now too.
