A Big Storm Knocked It Over
Page 18
Teddy was not romantic: He was direct. His hunger for Jane Louise was his testimony, his love letter, his poetry. In those moments she knew that for all his silence, he was hers.
Although she missed him, she admitted to herself that being pregnant and alone was very serene. In the mornings she lay in bed with her coffee and watched her unborn child cause her saucer to jiggle on her stomach.
She sighed and called up Edie. Teddy’s call had made her lonesome.
“Mr. or Miss Edith Steinhaus,” she began.
“Oh, shut up,” Edie said. “I hate my husband.”
“Trouble?” said Jane Louise.
“I love him, and he works hard,” Edie said. “But I’m telling you, his mama treated him like an African prince. Did I tell you about the test shoe?”
“You didn’t,” Jane Louise said. “Is it funny?”
“It’s tragic,” Edie said. “I found one of Mokie’s great big shoes in the bathroom, kicked behind the hamper. The other is missing, which is just as well because they’re the sneakers with the holes in them that he wore to paint your mother-in-law’s shed. Anyway, I put the sneaker on the top of the hamper, and it’s been there for six weeks!”
“Cute,” Jane Louise said. “Teddy’s very neat, but only with his stuff. I could leave my coat lying on the floor for a year, and he would never pick it up because it’s mine.”
“It’s because they don’t see it.”
“What is it about guys, anyway?” Jane Louise said. “Do you think they’ll clean up after the babies?”
“Until the babies are five,” Edie said. “Then we’ll have to clean up after both of them.”
“It’s too bad we can’t run away,” Jane Louise said. “This is our last chance.”
“It’s too cold,” Edie said. “I’m too tired.”
“I’m exhausted,” Jane Louise said. “Sometimes I feel as if I can barely crawl, and sometimes I feel I could leap over tall buildings with a single bound.”
“Me, too,” yawned Edie.
“Do you suppose our babies will grow up and hate us?”
“I don’t see why,” Edie said. “We’re so terribly nice. We’re so much nicer, more enlightened, and more self-examined than our mothers.”
“Our mothers,” Jane Louise said. “You know, the truth is, I never believe it when people tell me they liked their mothers. I always think to myself: You think you do. And now I’m going to be one myself, and I have no faith whatever that this unborn person will turn fifteen and not hate me.”
“Mokie says we can’t call a girl Ernestine,” Edie said. “After his great-grandfather. I myself love it.”
“Teddy says we can’t call a boy Felix, after no one,” Jane Louise said. “He says he’ll get beaten up in school.”
“We won’t send them to that kind of school,” Edie said. “We’ll send them to a school where the name Felix will be honored.”
“Edie,” Jane Louise said. “Does Mokie ever reassure you that everything will be okay?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Edie said. “He knows everything will not be okay. His way of being reassuring is that he doesn’t really care one way or another.”
Jane Louise sighed. She was so tired she felt she would not even be able to crawl underneath her sheets.
“I’m fading,” she said to Edie.
Edie said: “I hate to tell you, but I slept through most of this conversation, not that I don’t find you extremely fascinating.”
“See you in the future,” said Jane Louise.
“In the Fullness of Time,” said Edie, and they hung up.
CHAPTER 29
The baby, whoever it was in there, was now making itself known. In the bath Jane Louise saw what she thought were elbow-shaped bulges in her stomach. She felt her baby swimming and kicking and generally horsing around. It was the oddest and most bizarre sensation she had ever felt. Edie said she felt as if she were running the gymnasium of inner space. Her unborn liked to work out right before she went to sleep.
“Of course, I never sleep anymore,” she said to Jane Louise one Saturday afternoon over lunch.
“Apparently we’ll never sleep again,” Jane Louise said. “Unless we get one of those gizmos that sounds like your heart.”
“Her new toy arrived,” Edie said of Mrs. Teagarden. “The one that replicates the birth environment. She played it for me. It sounds like being at the beach.”
“I thought her child was about two,” Jane Louise said.
“She says she likes to remind this child, whatever its name is, of what it was like inside. She feels it’s an aid to bonding and that he or she will love her better for it. And also be so appreciative of the enormous birthday party they’re having for it. They had Mokie over there the other night. They’re searching for a theme, but they feel they haven’t come up with quite the right thing yet.”
“Oh, yeah? What did they reject?”
“Well, they thought birds might be a nice thing. They got a real Audubon for his or her room.”
“What a nice present for a two-year-old,” Jane Louise said. “I wish I were two.”
“Then they thought they might have live doves, but then they were afraid they would shit all over their priceless curtains.”
“To say nothing of the children,” Jane Louise said.
“They didn’t seem overly concerned about that,” Edie said. “It’s cheaper to clean a child than a curtain. They think they might buy a parrot because they live so long, he or she can have it all his life and take it to college, but then they thought parrots might bite small children, and they couldn’t get one of those falconer’s gloves in a small size and if the parrot wanted to sit on his arm, or her arm, it might hurt him or her with its claws.”
“This woman thinks of everything!” Jane Louise said. “I’m so impressed. Falconer’s gloves for children! Why don’t we manufacture some and make a million dollars?”
“Now they’re thinking trains,” Edie said.
“It’s hard to get one of those into your apartment,” Jane Louise said.
“They may buy one of those child-size ones and put it in the room, and he or she can ride on it.”
“Our children will be poor,” Jane Louise said.
“They will be rich in values,” Edie said.
“Oh, screw that!” Jane Louise said. “I want money.”
“We all want money,” Edie said. “One of these days Mokie is going to tell me how sick he is of catering and that he either wants to open a restaurant or go to divinity school, in which case we’ll be totally broke. Honest, Janey, I don’t think I can go on making five-tiered medieval cakes for these ghastly people.”
“One of these days I’m going to be out of a job,” Jane Louise said. “They’ll hire one powerhouse to do all the design and get rid of me, probably while I’m on maternity leave, or they’ll freelance everything out, and I’ll get a little job once in a while, and all those nice health benefits will vanish off the face of the earth, and Teddy’s company will be sold.”
“A pair of cheerful mothers-to-be,” Edie said. “Mokie seems pretty cheerful for the moment.”
“Teddy’s cooking something up,” Jane Louise said. “I can feel it. There’s a small company right outside of West Minton that’s only twenty-five minutes from Marshallsville. It’s all about alternative pesticides and household stuff. They’ve been nosing around him.”
“Does that mean you’d live there?” Edie asked.
“It’s something to think about.”
“All right, Janey,” Edie said. “Then we all have to think about it. We could open up a catering in Primrose Hill and do something nice for all those rich matrons and their prep-school daughters.”
“And I could do design for the local paper. Wouldn’t it be swell?”
“It would be something,” Edie said. “It’s unclear what.”
“Edie,” said Jane Louise. “Do you think we ever knew for one second what our lives would be like?”
“How lucky you are,” Jane Louise said. “I don’t think I ever knew, and now it’s worse—the whole world is going to change. I don’t know what’s what, and we don’t have any money.”
“Darling,” Edie said. “We have each other.”
“Yes, but when your parents do the right thing, you’ll inherit, and I won’t, because the only money my mother has is Charlie’s, and he has three children.”
“My parents are pretty young as parents go,” Edie said. “You know what top shape they’re in, what with skiing and sailing. And as for your mama, Charlie will predecease her, and you will inherit.”
“I guess I ought to shut up,” Jane Louise said. “This kind of agitation isn’t probably any good for the unborn.”
“It isn’t great for the born, either,” Edie said.
They were sitting in their favorite restaurant, a little Pakistani hole-in-the-wall with extremely fiery food. Both of them seemed to crave the hottest food they could find. The restaurant teemed with women in saris and babies in strollers. There were babies at almost every table being fed rice with a spoon, or being nursed while their mothers ate with their left hands, or they were half asleep in their buggies. There were a number of toddlers, whom Teddy referred to as “bipeds,” walking around, several of whom found Jane Louise and Edie, with their fair skin and huge stomachs, totally irresistible.
“These mothers are young enough to be our daughters,” Jane Louise said gloomily.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Edie said. “Pass me some of that hot pickle.”
“They’re in their twenties,” Jane Louise said. “Look at them.”
“I’m looking. Who cares?”
“I care,” Jane Louise said. “Poor Teddy. The guy married the president of the Withered Crone Society, who gets knocked up in her later years.”
“I don’t mean to be indelicate,” Edie said, “but as you know, you decided to get pregnant and probably did on the first try.”
“One shot to the moon,” Jane Louise said.
“Not withered-crone behavior. Janey, will you cheer up, or do you think this is hormonal? You’re a few weeks ahead of me. Is this what I have to look forward to?”
“Certainly not,” Jane Louise said. “You’re self-employed. Your company can’t be sold.”
“Yes, but,” Edie said. “At least your baby has dropped, and you can breathe. I still have the stuffed nose of pregnancy, and this kid is pressing against my diaphragm. It must be nice to breathe again.”
“Mine is sitting on my pelvic bone,” Jane Louise said. “I feel so weird. It’s like going into a dark wood. I’m scared.”
“It’s part of the process,” Edie said.
“I guess I’ll get over it,” Jane Louise said. “By summer we’ll be pushing these babies around in a conveyance.”
Two weeks later Miranda Elizabeth Parker was born, and three weeks after that, Aaron Talbot Frazier, nicknamed Tallie, appeared on the scene, to the intense relief and exaltation of their exhausted mothers.
PART IV
CHAPTER 30
Motherhood is a storm, a seizure: It is like weather. Nights of high wind followed by calm mornings of dense fog or brilliant sunshine that gives way to tropical rain, or blinding snow. Jane Louise and Edie found themselves swept away, cast ashore, washed overboard. It was hard to keep anything straight. The days seemed to congeal like rubber cement, although moments stood out in clearest, starkest brilliance. You might string these together on the charm bracelet of your memory if you could keep your eyes open long enough to remember anything. Jane Louise had found herself asleep standing at her kitchen counter, and Edie reported that she had passed out on a park bench.
It was perfectly clear to Jane Louise, as soon as she held her baby in her arms, that she was not going to hire a nanny and go to work full-time when Miranda was three months old. It seemed to her that once you got your hands on these babies, you could not tear yourself away from them. She knew that the best thing she would be able to muster was some part-time arrangement. This made her feel torn in half. On the one hand, she and Teddy needed the money, and Jane Louise did love to work. On the other hand, she was overcome and brought to her knees by what she felt for this tiny pink creature with her slaty, unfocused blue eyes. Perhaps it was raging hormones, but the depth of this love knocked Jane Louise out. She knew that she was not going anywhere for some time.
Naturally, as soon as Jane Louise felt she was up to being seen, Sven demanded an audience. He was preceded by Adele, who came bearing a little blanket knitted by her mother.
“Sven wants to see you,” Adele said. “He really wants to. He seemed so excited about the baby.”
“He wants to come and watch me nurse,” Jane Louise said. “I know him.”
“Well, of course,” Adele said. “But he really got sort of gooey.”
Jane Louise gazed at Adele, who was holding Miranda on her lap. Adele had dozens of nieces and nephews: She came from an enormous family with four brothers and three sisters. Therefore she was an old hand at babies. She did not come from the world of sex and romance but from the realms of family and stability. Her fiancé, Phil, was a perfectly nice person, yet it was not clear to Jane Louise whether he and Adele, who had been together since high school, slept together. It probably didn’t matter a single whit. Adele and Phil would get married at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. She would wear a real white bride’s dress. Their joint bank account would be appropriately safe. Her huge number of relatives would pour forth checks, small and medium-size, to get the young couple started. Passion did not really figure in all this, or if it did, it was of a lesser order compared to such things as family compatibility.
When Sven finally appeared, bringing a highly appropriate baby garment, Jane Louise ran this past him. Sven blinked his eyes, clearly wondering why anyone would have spent time considering Adele.
“Why would I ever think about her?” he asked.
“Because she is a fellow citizen and crawls around on the earth with the rest of us, Sven.”
“Not with me,” Sven said. “I don’t have much of a taste for my species. I don’t like the idea of crawling around on the earth with my fellow citizens. I can never keep her straight. She’s a girl, right? She’s getting married or something, right? She’s my secretary, right?”
Jane Louise knew that people who held no attraction for Sven barely existed for him. He had two strategies for people who did: He either conquered them, or he came very close up to them and read their minds. Jane Louise had been rather terrified of the appropriate baby garment and asked Sven if Edwina had picked it out.
“I know a thing or two about baby clothes,” Sven said. “Women don’t know everything. Now, when is this baby going to wake up so I can check her out?”
“What exactly were you going to check out, Sven?”
“Oh, this and that,” Sven said. “Number of fingers and toes, various configurations. Having a girl child is—” he broke off suddenly.
“Would you like to say what it is, Sven?”
“Not in front of you, Janey. You’re much too prim.”
Sven was wearing a pair of twill trousers and a blue-and-white-striped shirt. Jane Louise hardly knew what she was wearing: an old pair of jeans and a faded black T-shirt. Sven remarked that she appeared to have lost all her baby weight, and this was true. Both she and Edie had turned right back into beanpoles after a few weeks. Sven sat perched on the edge of his chair, his ear cocked for baby noises.
“So, Sven, why don’t you tell me anything about the office?” Jane Louise said. “Or do you think that now I’ve had a baby my brain has turned into rice pudding?”
“There’s nothing about the office,” Sven said. “It’s the same old same old. We’ll just have to wait, but for now everything seems dandy.”
Jane Louise looked glum. “When I come back will
my office be bricked up? Or do you suppose they’ll cut me during my maternity leave?”
“I thought you wanted to work part-time,” Sven said.
“I guess I’ve lost my nice, sunny office,” Jane Louise said.
“You’ll have to share it with Peggy Resnick,” Sven said. “It’s only fair. You’ll both be part-time. Besides, she doesn’t take up much room.”
Urgent baby squeals were suddenly heard. Sven’s face brightened.
“So there really is a baby,” he said. “Go fetch it.”
His voice took on an intimate, caressing tone. Outside the sky was gray, and sleet occasionally clattered against the window. Inside it was warm and steamy. When Jane Louise returned with Miranda in her arms, Sven was settled comfortably on the sofa, waiting. Miranda began to squirm and fidget, and Jane Louise slipped her under her shirt.
“Just shut up in advance, Sven,” Jane Louise said.
“I wasn’t intending to say a word,” Sven said. He sat comfortably in his chair and didn’t utter a word. Jane Louise found his silence far more alarming than any comment he might have made. She could not read the expression on his face.
After a while, when she could stand it no longer, she said: “Has Dita married her Frenchman yet?”
“Ah, the beautiful former Mrs. Samuelovich,” Sven said. “We are but flyspecks on her magnificent radar screen. Last heard she had finally divorced Nick, and it seems that she and her frog are one.”
Jane Louise studied him. For the merest instant she thought she saw a look of true pain cross his features, but it might simply have been a leg cramp.
“She left us both in the dust,” Jane Louise said. “She never even told me she was leaving.”
“It was amazing,” Sven said. “Little things always meant so little to her. I was sort of surprised when you two got friendly like that.”
“I loved her. I thought she loved me,” Jane Louise said. “Isn’t that weird?”
“It’s part of her charm,” Sven said. “We all think our little Dita loved us. We see her for an instant, and then she vanishes. Maybe you knew too much or were about to find out.”