A Big Storm Knocked It Over

by Laurie Colwin

  Jane Louise wandered aimlessly through the aisles of the market. She passed the couple who sold clocks and china from the thirties, and the woman from Belize who came up twice a year for a month and sold piano shawls and white nightgowns. She wandered past the upscale dealers who kept their stock under glass and sold fancy silver, Sèvres, and little bronzes.

  At the top of the center aisle was a clutch of tables on which a young dealer named Albert threw the contents of his house sales: large piles of household linens smelling of naphtha; dishes, glasses, and plates; a rack of fur coats; piles of books. Jane Louise ambled by. There, on the corner table, were the immaculate contents of some person’s library: the works of Sigmund Freud, the Grove’s Dictionary of Music, the poetry of Heinrich Heine, the plays of Bertolt Brecht, The Story of Opera. Jane Louise opened a copy of The Life of Schiller. On the flyleaf was a bookplate, a line cut showing Cupid resting under a laurel tree eating a cluster of grapes and reading a book. It said: EX LIBRIS DR. FRANCES ROSENWASSER.

  Instantly Jane Louise felt she knew exactly who this person was: a psychoanalyst who fled Vienna or Frankfurt in the late thirties, when you could not take your money but could take your things. The set of Rosenthal china on the next table was doubtless hers, as well as the napkins and damask cloths. Jane Louise picked up a copy of The Hebrew Melodies in English und auf Deutsch. On the table among the china she found a set of napkins, heavily embroidered with poppies and wheat, and a tea cloth to go with them. She found a little green vase in the shape of a monkey and bought it for Teddy. The whole lot cost eight dollars. Then she walked slowly home.

  She felt awful. Was it the weather, or was she pregnant? She clutched her purchases to her and imagined Dr. Frances Rosen-wasser’s apartment—a long dark hallway, a window ledge full of snake plants, a dining room with limp chiffon curtains and etchings framed in gilt. People got born, grew up, acquired things, and then, in a flash, it was all over: sold in a heap, dispersed, given away. Why did Dr. Frances Rosenwasser’s children, if she had children, or her friends, not want her Grove’s Dictionary of Music? Why had someone not claimed those beautifully embroidered napkins?

  She walked home slowly, immersed in these melancholy thoughts. If Teddy was awake, she would not tell him how queasy she felt. Suppose she merely had the flu? Jane Louise’s impulse not to disappoint Teddy was ferocious. She owed him this, she felt; life owed him this. The glitches in hers had been cosmetic: moving around, never having enough money, feeling like a perpetual outsider. But the fracture in Teddy’s life was deep as a fault. She wanted life to prove to him that things could be made whole.

  He was up, showered, his hair wet and slicked down, wearing a pair of blue jeans and an old T-shirt. He looked about sixteen years old, reading the paper at the table.

  She put her package down. Teddy offered his forehead for a wifely kiss.

  “I feel rotten,” Jane Louise said.

  “How rotten?” said Teddy.

  “I don’t know. Queasy.”

  Teddy looked over the top of his paper. He peered at her inquiringly.

  “It’s probably flu,” said Jane Louise. “It’s going around the office.”

  “Maybe you’re pregnant,” Teddy said. “Is that going around the office?”

  “It sort of went around the office six years ago. Erna had Winnie, Sven had Piers, and Gwen, who used to be Erna’s secretary, had twins.”

  “Maybe it’s a slow-acting pregnancy virus,” Teddy said.

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Jane Louise said. “I don’t want to be disappointed.”

  “I’ll put you to bed,” Teddy said. “Would you like some tea?”

  Instead Jane Louise crawled into his arms. She made a clumsy fit, all legs and elbows. She did not want to say, “I want this to be a baby! I want to be some child’s mother. It’s taken me over! I want it! I want it!”

  She said nothing.

  Teddy said, “If it’s a baby, we’ll have a baby. If it’s not, you’ll have the flu, and we’ll have the baby later.”

  “And will it be all right?” asked Jane Louise. “I mean, do you think anything will be all right?”

  “I do,” Teddy said. “I really do.”

  CHAPTER 16

  It was the first of June. The office was suddenly quiet. No one could stand to stay in at lunchtime except on rainy days, when people ordered piles of sandwiches from the local delicatessen and made gallons of coffee in the coffee maker near the ladies’ room. Otherwise the noon hour was calm as a nursery at nap time.

  Jane Louise sat at her drawing board with a calendar in front of her, idly doodling. She had just come back from the gynecologist, whom she now had to call her obstetrician since she had just learned that she was going to have a baby. She had conveyed this news by telephone to Teddy, who had said, “Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh!” a number of times and then had hung up in order to call his mother. Eleanor was stoical by nature, but she was longing for a grandchild, since Teddy was her only shot at having one.

  The idea that there was to be a baby was about as remote as Saturn. Jane Louise was entirely unchanged. She was as skinny as ever. In fact, she was rather skinnier since she was definitely off food. She did not look five minutes pregnant, although she was actually six weeks gone. Her doctor had shown her a photo of what looked like a translucent little salamander. This was what had taken up residence inside her. She had heard herself giggle—she who was not prone to giggle—but the whole thing was so outlandish and odd.

  She and Teddy had decided to tell a few close friends and then keep the news to themselves. Soon they would go on vacation. By the end of the summer she would be showing, and that was time enough. Furthermore, in the first three months anything could happen, although Jane Louise did not want to think about that. A wave of the most intense, almost furious protectiveness had come over her. Her hands balled into fists. This little creature was her creature. She was the container for some future citizen. This seemed to her the most serious thing in the world. Strangely, when she had looked around her on the bus back to the office, it was teeming with large pregnant women, and no one seemed to give it a second thought. Even at the doctor’s, women who looked about to deliver sat waiting for their appointments, reading Business Week or using their briefcases as desks.

  Jane Louise closed her door and dialed Edie.

  “Guess what?” she said.

  “Okay!” said Edie. “I’ll have to get right on this. I mean, if we want to go comparison shopping for layettes and stuff. Mokie’s out looking over a client’s apartment. I’ll jump on him when he comes home. Though I have to say, I’ve been feeling sort of awful myself. So maybe it won’t be necessary.”

  “It’s very serious,” Jane Louise said.

  “Oh,” Edie said. “Did I get it wrong, and you’re sick and not pregnant?”

  “No, you got it right. It just feels so . . . serious. I mean, this is about future people, whose early history is in our hands. I mean, characters to mold and personalities to form.”

  “God, it makes a person talk funny,” Edie said.

  “Well, for Chrissake,” Jane Louise said. “It is serious.”

  “I know it’s serious, but aren’t you glad?”

  “Oh, I’m so incredibly glad,” said Jane Louise, her voice quavering. “I’ll call you later,” and she splashed tears all over the receiver.

  This tiny thing, this spark of life, was going to change everything. Jane Louise contemplated the five million things she would soon have to think about: maternity leave, baby clothes, choosing a pediatrician, appropriate gear for carrying a baby around or putting it in a car, baby backpacks, proper baby toys, schools, to say nothing of labor and delivery.

  Being pregnant and not telling anyone was like a state of suspended animation. In the ladies’ room, where Jane Louise went to wash any tear streaks off her face, she realized she was wearing a strange grin—a sort of involuntary smile.

  The person to avoid, she knew, was Sven. He would
be able to intuit her state. There was no doubt, Jane Louise was not immune to his fearsome charm. He seemed to be only about sex. You did not think of Sven in connection with nice meals, or having children (despite his four), or walks in the park. You only imagined him in the act of, and there was no doubt that he would be very good at it since it was all he ever thought about, except running the art department, which was, in his opinion, much less complicated.

  Sven made a person think of sheets and sweat, of hotel rooms and assignations, of deep kissing on empty side streets, and things like that. Was that because of Sven? Or because of her?

  A person who was pregnant ought not to have impure thoughts about other people. Why couldn’t a person seal her life up, as a book is packed in shrink wrapping? Safe, immune, immured, like Erna Hendershott and her fortresslike marriage, her fortified castle of children, her homemade pasta and needlework. Her bake sales for the children’s schools, her dinner parties, her security and safety against things that didn’t fit. You wouldn’t catch her thinking about Sven in connection with rumpled sheets, at least not whilst in the elevated condition of pregnancy.

  Meanwhile there was business to do. The enormous Arctic manuscript by Hugh Oswald-Murphy had been pulled back yet again by Erna, who claimed that the author was recasting it and that all work on it must stop.

  “Who is this guy, anyway?” Jane Louise complained to Sven when he promptly appeared in her office. She felt she must only talk business.

  “Erna thinks he’s a genius,” Sven said. “Did you read it?”

  “I thought it was kind of soppy,” Jane Louise said. “He uses the word vast a lot.”

  “I guess it’s kind of vast up there,” Sven said. “Now listen, here’s another of Erna’s geniuses. Martin Barlow.”

  Jane Louise groaned. “Carole Santangelo literally threw that manuscript at Erna the day she quit.”

  “Carole had many other reasons to throw things at Erna,” Sven said. “Now, Janey, you’re our good girl. Take this home tonight and get on it. He’s coming in next week.”

  “May I ask when he delivered this thing?” Jane Louise looked at this manuscript, which was large and untidy.

  “It isn’t when he delivered,” Sven said. “It’s when Erna scheduled it. She wants to crash it for the fall.”

  “Why?”

  “Here’s why,” Sven said. “The first deal Hamish had lined up to sell us fell through. There’s Germans or Swiss wandering around upstairs. No sane person would authorize the kind of money Erna’s planning to pump into this book. She claims she wants it out for the Christmas season, but really she wants it out before we get sold.”

  “What’s it got?”

  “His wife did the woodcuts, let’s put it that way,” Sven sniffed. “It’s not so bad. It’s just huge.”

  “The Literature of Nature,” Jane Louise read. “The Magnificent Language of Outdoors. What a lousy subtitle. It sounds like one of those ever-popular anthologies to me.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Sven, no longer very interested. “The author needs restraining. He refuses to cut a line of it unless someone shows him that the design won’t be affected.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Jane Louise. “I’m supposed to be the mouthpiece for Erna’s cuts, right?”

  “Beautifully put,” Sven said. “See you around. If you baby-sit him nice, I’ll take you out to lunch after. You’ll need a drink, doubtless, unless by that time you’ll be worrying about fetal alcohol syndrome. Any news on that score?”

  “Sven, don’t you ever give up?” Jane Louise asked.

  “It’s just that I can’t wait,” he said. “You can’t know how I look forward to it. You, pregnant. There’s something about pregnancy in a tall, skinny girl that has a kind of magic to it.”

  “When I get there, I’ll let you feel for me for a dollar and a half,” Jane Louise said. “Please go away.”

  Sven looked at her musingly. “Cheap at twice the price,” he said.

  On her way home from work it occurred to Jane Louise that she might bring home some flowers for Teddy. He had called a number of times during the day, which was most unlike him. He told her how happy his mother was and how delighted Peter and Beth Peering were, and how Birdie hoped that she could sit for the baby when it came.

  “Did you tell your father?” Jane Louise said.

  “I’ll write him,” Teddy said, and shut up like a clam. His dread of his father, his stepmother Martine, and his three half-sisters was considerable. He felt they breathed a different-colored air and lived in a familiar yet entirely alien atmosphere. The fact that he was connected to these three big, silly blond girls, by blood, amazed and alarmed him. They had nothing in common whatsoever. His half-sisters were shoppers and consumers, devotees of beauty parlors and nail salons. They read fake historical novels whose heroes were named Brad and whose heroines were called Topaz.

  Even grown up, they still adored stuffed animals. They were strongly and tightly bound to one another, and they found Teddy useless and superfluous. As for Jane Louise, she barely registered as female for them. She was too thin, too plain, too uninterested in jewelry, and her clothes were too odd. And she worked for a publisher and didn’t show any interest in children.

  In the old days, under the old order, a wife might feel it her job to bring a family together, but in the face of modern exigencies this was impossible. How could you get Teddy’s parents ever to be in the same room harmoniously?

  Surely in the face of all this uncertainty in the world, there might be a way to celebrate the news of an impending birth. Did the couple go out for dinner? Did the wife make dinner? Did she rush home and set the table with the good silver and the wedding china? Of course, Teddy and Jane Louise did not have wedding china. They had the large number of ironstone plates Jane Louise had collected, and they had half a set of Eleanor’s mother’s silver, filled in with things Jane Louise had picked up here and there. For their wedding they had gotten odd things like art pottery and a tea set in the shape of oranges and lemons. Teddy’s half-sisters could be seen at the wedding thinking, Weird friends, weird presents, and they’re weird, too.

  Jane Louise stopped to buy flowers, then bought a large bunch of grapes and a pomegranate. Seeds seemed appropriate. If you hadn’t any rituals, you might as well roll your own, Jane Louise thought.

  Would roast chicken be a nice dinner to celebrate a baby? And a bottle of champagne, although She supposed she shouldn’t drink any. Perhaps a nice bottle of nonalcoholic champagne, if such a thing existed. Green beans, rice, and something from the bakery. As she gazed into the bakery window, she saw Teddy at the counter waiting for a package. He had a bunch of flowers under his arm.

  Suddenly Jane Louise felt washed over with shyness. Her own husband. Their own baby. Now what was she supposed to say, or do, or be? She was standing at the bakery door when Teddy came out.

  “Hi, Dad,” said Jane Louise.

  “I just got us a little chocolate cake,” Teddy said meekly. “To celebrate.”

  “Isn’t that funny,” Jane Louise said. “I got a chicken.”

  They stared at each other almost uneasily.

  “Maybe I ought to carry you home,” Teddy said, “in your fragile condition.”

  “Maybe we both ought to start working out in a gym and build up our stamina,” Jane Louise said. “What else did your mother say?”

  “You know her,” Teddy said. They walked down the street in the early evening light.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice,” said Jane Louise, “if we could just be ecstatic about this without having to think about all this other stuff?”

  “Like what?” Teddy said.

  “Well, like your father, and my sister. She got there first, kid-wise. I’m telling you, in some way she’ll hate me for this. And then there’s my mother and her countless notions. I don’t know. I guess it makes me sad that I have to tell her husband rather than my father.”

  “It’ll all be fine,” Teddy said. “Who cares, anyway? You
are happy, aren’t you?”

  “I worry about being an unfit mother,” Jane Louise said. “I worry that something will happen and I’ll lose the baby.” She was very near tears.

  Teddy grabbed her by the shoulders. He looked at her fiercely. He never, ever, made public displays of anything. He looked her in the eyes.

  “Nothing is going to happen to this baby. You’re a very healthy person. Dr. Pivnik told you that, didn’t you say? We’re going to have this baby, and you will be a wonderful mother, and I will be a wonderful father.”

  Jane Louise looked into his hazel eyes. Teddy’s features were round and mild. To see him in a passionate state disarmed Jane Louise completely.

  “Did you marry me just so I could be the vehicle for your baby?”

  Instead of getting angry, Teddy enfolded her. He said, “I married you so I could sleep with you all the time. Now you’re knocked, and I feel like a million bucks. I’d like to call everyone I know.”

  Jane Louise walked along next to him in silence.

  “You should have married some nice girl in her twenties so you can have dozens of babies,” Jane Louise said. “Instead of the president of the Withered Crone Society.”

  “Shut up, Jane Louise,” Teddy said. “I’m the depressive in this family, not you. So, march nicely, and let’s have a little fun.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Martin Barlow’s colossal anthology was divided by landscape categories: fen, heath, moor, meadow, field, bog, swamp, dale, and so forth. Since the integrity of the book was of great importance to him, he would not give an inch.

  “Do we need all these pages on marl?” Jane Louise asked. She felt sweaty even though it was cool. There were strange twinges and flutters in her lower region—signs of the presence of her little tadpole. At the moment she did not much care how many pages the pink-cheeked and sweet-looking Martin Barlow had on the subject of marl.

  “Do you know how little has been written about marl?” Martin said. “It took me months to track it. Listen, I’ll combine it with moraine, but that’s as far as I’ll go. There isn’t very much on either of them.”