A Big Storm Knocked It Over

by Laurie Colwin

  “I didn’t know anything,” Jane Louise said. “Although she certainly had Grand Canyon–size emotions.”

  “She doesn’t like those to be seen,” Sven said. “She’ll be so much happier living in the French language. Did you know that stutterers don’t stutter in newly acquired languages? Not until they become fluent. Are you finished with that baby? I’d like her for a moment, if you don’t mind.”

  Sven, without another word, took Miranda from Jane Louise’s arms and set her on his shoulder.

  “You’d better take this cloth,” Jane Louise said. “She enjoys puking on quality shirts.”

  Sven took the cloth and rested Miranda’s little head on it. It was hard to imagine what he was thinking. The room seemed suddenly very hot to Jane Louise.

  Gently he stroked Miranda’s back. “I haven’t burped a baby in years,” he said.

  “I didn’t peg you for a burping sort of guy,” Jane Louise said.

  “Isn’t is strange, little Janey, that we all start out this way?” Sven said. “And look where we end up. Even Mrs. Samuelovich was a sweet little baby when she was a baby. This little baby’s destiny will unfold right in front of us.”

  This thought brought stinging tears to Jane Louise’s eyes. She gave Sven a steely look.

  “Perhaps I ought to hire you as her nurse,” Jane Louise said. “You seem very interested, and you’re not bad at burping.”

  “I am the father of many,” Sven said smugly.

  “Several of whom you see once a year,” Jane Louise said.

  “I see motherhood has not made you any less good natured,” Sven said. “Although you certainly are besotted. You might look at me for a minute.”

  “I am good natured,” Jane Louise said. “I have one of the pleasantest little dispositions you’ll ever find on an anxious person. I just like to see things as they are.”

  “And what is it you see?”

  “Listen, Sven. You’ll never be a mother. You guys can cut loose any time you want. You don’t have to spend your days worrying about whether or not you’re a good father. You have to worry about paying their school bills. You don’t have to provide them with an appropriate home, a well-run household, decent cheer, religious upbringing, enjoyable holidays. The burden of their psychological development is not on your shoulder, so don’t get smug with me.”

  “My, my,” Sven said. “Touchy.”

  “Having a baby does that to you,” Jane Louise said.

  That afternoon the babies were napping in Miranda’s crib, an accomplishment their mothers felt was a kind of miracle. It was the first time they had managed to get both asleep at the same time. They sat on Jane Louise’s couch, on opposite ends, drinking decaffeinated coffee. Edie yawned.

  “I’d love a cup of real coffee,” she said. “But why should I feed him caffeine? He never sleeps as it is.”

  “He sleeps a little,” Jane Louise said.

  “I ought to hate you,” Edie said. “Because Miranda sleeps through the night.”

  “Yes, darling,” said Jane Louise, “if you consider eleven o’clock at night till four in the morning sleeping through the night. Oh, sleep! Don’t you remember how wonderful it used to feel?”

  “No,” said Edie. “I’m too tired.”

  “Someday,” Jane Louise said, “they’ll be fifteen years old. Just think of it.”

  “You think of it,” Edie said. “We’ll be up all night wondering where they are. Then they’ll be sixteen, and we’ll lie in bed all night wondering if they cracked up the car. Then they’ll be twenty, and we’ll lie in bed terrified that they’re taking drugs.”

  “Well, most of the people we knew did, and look at them now,” said Jane Louise. “Didn’t you tell me that Mrs. Teagarden wanted to give an old-fashioned hash party?”

  “You look at them,” Edie said glumly. “Oh, Christ. I’ll never have a decent night’s sleep for the rest of my life.”

  “Oh, well,” Jane Louise said. “Anyone can sleep.”

  “Perhaps we’re so old that our cells are way past the regeneration point, so maybe it doesn’t matter if we never sleep again, since we probably don’t have any cells left to repair.”

  “Hey,” said Jane Louise, “why don’t we just pass out quietly on the sofa while our little babies sleep?”

  “Because they’ll only wake up,” Edie said. “Besides, I’m too tired.”

  “Sven was here today,” Jane Louise said.

  “Oh, yeah?” Edie said. “I bet he got an eyeful.”

  “Miranda and I were extremely discreet,” Jane Louise said. “He just sat here very quietly for a long time. It sort of freaked me out.”

  “He just sat around and didn’t speak?”

  “I tell you, Edie. That guy scares me. He just sat here staring. He made me feel as if we had just gotten out of bed.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Parker. You’ve left something out. I don’t quite catch.”

  “Unspeakable intimacy,” Jane Louise said. “You know, I’ve known him a long time. He told Adele that when women have babies they cross over some sacred line and change. And I felt he was sitting around observing me to see what I was like now.”

  Edie yawned. “I’m sure when he says change he’s referring to our internal organs,” she said.

  “Maybe he does,” Jane Louise said. “Maybe we’ve changed forever.”

  “There’s no maybe,” Edie said. “We have.”

  CHAPTER 31

  The spring unfolded in a blur. Jane Louise woke up one morning to realize that the leaves had budded out on the trees. Miranda was now a baby, pink, round, and smiling. She began to coo and drool, a sign of eventual teething and talking.

  A baby who talked! A baby with teeth! In the park Jane Louise saw mothers with toddlers. Next to her neat baby, they looked unformed and sloppy wearing an array of green, turquoise, scarlet, and dark yellow baby garments with T-shirts of purple, lime green, and hot pink. Now that Miranda could hold her head up, Jane Louise carried her around in a side pack.

  Her darling baby wore a bright orange shirt and a pair of purple overalls with yellow stripes. Jane Louise wore green sandals, yellow shirt, and an azure-colored skirt. She had tied her lank hair back with azure ribbon. Miranda’s hair stood straight up on her head.

  She and Edie made quite a sight as they ambled around town, their napping babes in tow, looking for a place to sit and have coffee.

  “Her first word will be cappuccino,” Jane Louise said. “I’m too old for this. Other moms seem to be able to go for hours without constant infusions of caffeine.”

  “They have those pump devices,” Edie said. “Hidden in their expensive handbags. It pours caffeine into their systems intravenously.”

  “Guess what?” Jane Louise said. “I finally got the Hugh Oswald-Murphy book finished, and he wants to take me for lunch this week.”

  “Shall I baby-sit?” Edie said.

  “No,” said Jane Louise. “He claims he has dozens of children. Miranda is very well behaved. I’m taking her with me.”

  Once a week Jane Louise went to her office, which she now shared with the impressively neat Peggy Resnick, who became extremely uneasy at the sight of Jane Louise and her baby. Peggy had taken a fairly commodious workspace and sat at it as if she were a tiny mouse. Her memos were handwritten in tiny, precise, crabbed script. Her own daughter was in college.

  “They’re so much nicer when they can talk,” Peggy said.

  “I think they’re kind of nice now,” Jane Louise said.

  “You’ll see,” Peggy said. “You’ll see.”

  On the day of her lunch with Hugh Oswald-Murphy, she put on a skimpy gray dress and a red jacket and decked Miranda out in fuchsia and olive. She found Hugh in her office, sweating slightly and wearing a rattled expression. “Two for lunch,” he shouted into the telephone.

  “And one baby,” Jane Louise said.

  “And one baby,” Hugh said into the receiver. Jane Louise could hear squawking on the other end o
f the line.

  Hugh turned to Jane Louise. “This woman wants to know will the baby cry.”

  “Tell her we’ll stuff a sock down its throat,” said Jane Louise.

  “The mother says the baby will be muzzled,” Hugh said. “No, madame, I assure you that was said in jest. This baby is extremely well behaved.”

  “It’s a mute,” Jane Louise said.

  “It’s a mute,” Hugh said. “I do hope you don’t have a no-baby policy, since we intend to spend an enormous amount of money.”

  He turned to Jane Louise. “She says dogs are allowed in handbags, but she’s checking about babies.”

  “Tell her I’ll put the baby in my handbag.”

  “Yes, yes,” Hugh said into the phone. “Very good. Excellent. Thanks awfully.” He turned to Jane Louise. “She says they don’t really want babies, but it’s okay.”

  “I hate other people,” said Jane Louise.

  Miranda sat on Jane Louise’s lap during lunch, drooling happily and playing with the silverware. Hugh Oswald-Murphy ate in huge gusts, after which he stopped abruptly. Jane Louise, who was more along the lines of a delicate eater, watched him with interest. When he stopped, he fixed Miranda with an intent look and wagged his huge eyebrows at her. Since this made her giggle, he did it fairly often. Then he described Eskimo food.

  “Now,” he said. “Giviak. In bird season you spread nets and catch hundreds of birds, and what you don’t eat on the spot you ‘stuff with berries, and then you cram them into a seal bladder with lots of seal blubber, and then you bury it in your cache and let it mellow for a number of months.”

  Jane Louise looked at him with a kind of naked horror.

  “What about the feathers?” she said.

  “You eat them, too. It’s rather delicious, my dear girl. Like artichokes. Explorers must not be ethnocentric.”

  “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

  “Your baby,” Hugh said. “Your baby is very intelligent. She is also beautifully formed. Her fingers are quite long. She will be very tall. Is her father also tall?”

  “Her father is a little taller than I am,” Jane Louise said. “He has a beautiful disposition.”

  “Hmmm,” Hugh Oswald-Murphy said. “Really, an excellent baby. I do love them—so small, so sweetly smelling, so fresh.”

  He went on at great length in this way. Jane Louise was reminded of his descriptions of musk-oxen, which she had found somewhat over the top. She felt a pleasant, dreamy warmth and realized that it was the result of hearing her baby praised. She put her lips to her baby’s head and sniffed her warm, fragrant baby smell and rubbed her cheek against her small, hot, velvety head.

  “The Eskimos are marvelous with children,” Hugh was saying. “They are about the nicest babies in the world. Some nurse till they are four and will nurse from other mothers.”

  “Gee,” Jane Louise said. She felt as if she were underwater. The things men said to one! Especially one who had only recently had a baby. You would have thought they would talk about money, the future, the appropriate type of schooling, and so forth, but instead they seemed to like to talk about such things as nursing and burping.

  As they ate, a thin woman who seemed to be the maître d’ buzzed by them. She had a heavy French accent, short hair, and the aspect of a whippet. The sight of Miranda seemed to make her nervous. Her eyes darted around the room and then back to the baby, as if the baby were some strange and awful thing that ought to have been concealed.

  “Everything is all right, yes?” she asked.

  “Everything is splendid!” boomed Hugh. “Such a nice place to bring a baby.”

  “Zis is your baby, yes?”

  “This is my baby, no. The baby belongs to this enchanting young woman. But I would be proud if this were my baby. This baby is beautiful, intelligent, and beautifully behaved, don’t you think?”

  The woman’s cheeks flushed, and she turned away in what seemed to be a combination of embarrassment and dread.

  “Don’t you think it’s weird how much people hate babies?” Jane Louise said.

  “This is not a baby-friendly culture,” Hugh said. “But don’t you remember before you entered your breeding years what a nuisance they were? Coming into restaurants and shrieking? Having one sitting behind you at the cinema yakking or yelling?”

  “I don’t think of myself as someone in my breeding years,” Jane Louise said.

  Hugh looked affrighted. “If you are breeding, my dear girl, then you are in your breeding years. How is the father taking this?”

  “In a state of awe,” Jane Louise said.

  “Very appropriate,” Hugh said. “Now, my oldest child is so old that when he was born, they didn’t let fathers into the delivery room. It makes a big difference, to my mind. My youngest has just started school—a heroic little tyke. Very strong. And once a year I go up to Greenland to see my Eskimo son.”

  “And the others?” asked Jane Louise. “Aren’t there dozens of others?”

  “Five. Three in England and two in Argentina.”

  “How transcontinental,” said Jane Louise.

  “Quite,” Hugh said. “Oh, look. Here comes that awful woman again.”

  “Everything is all right?” she asked.

  “Madame,” Hugh said. “Everything is perfectly lovely with us, but you seem troubled. Would you like to share your distress with us?”

  “Zis baby when it cry.”

  “This baby has barely cooed,” Hugh said. His voice was loud and cheerful. “This baby is a model baby. I personally feel, my dear woman, that this preoccupation of yours has to do with some deep, inner, psychic thing or other. Is there something you might like to reveal to us so we can understand this better?”

  “We do not ‘ave baby in this restaurant,” the woman said.

  “You do now,” Jane Louise said. “And we made this reservation on the late side so that the place wouldn’t be crowded. Now it’s almost empty. Have you had complaints?”

  “Pas exactement,” the woman whispered, and fled.

  “A highly evolved urban type. Responsive only to things. No connection to the natural world. A person of the future,” Hugh said. “Ah, for the Arctic wastes, those huge white spaces among which men are men and women are women.”

  “Aren’t they men and women even near a fire hydrant, Hugh?”

  “You know what I mean,” Hugh said. “Anyone who has a baby understands elemental life.”

  He stared at Miranda, who had been given a tiny taste of Hugh’s vanilla ice cream and had managed to get it all over her face.

  “Yes,” said Jane Louise. “Elemental life. It’s highly elemental.”

  CHAPTER 32

  The world had shrunk to the size of a pea, made up of such tiny things: the smell of a baby’s feet, the fuzziness of its hard, hot little head, the amazing variety of expressions on its little face, the beguiling sounds it made. How it looked asleep in its crib, the intensity of its focus when it held something up in its hands to check it out, the way it wriggled with joy. These things were primal, vital, intoxicating. Here was a reality without peer through which Jane Louise felt she trudged, half beside herself with joy, half dead with exhaustion.

  This life opened before her as if it had been a door, and when Jane Louise stepped through this door, it led into a secret room stuffed with a collection of strange objects, all of which produced odd, intense, and unexpected feelings.

  These days Jane Louise read the morning paper after dinner and found herself half asleep on the couch. One night she found Teddy passed out at the other end. Their long legs were intertwined. He sat up with a start.

  “Is it morning?” asked Jane Louise.

  “It’s nine-thirty,” Teddy said.

  “Hey,” Jane Louise said. “Let’s go dancing.” She took off her socks and noticed that one was striped and one was polka-dotted. Had she worn two different socks all day? Of course, the only people she had seen all day were Miranda, who was too young to care, and E
die, who was too tired to notice.

  Jane Louise’s bony shoulders now ached constantly from hunching over a baby stroller or bending over to put a baby into a crib. There had been a time when she had gone bopping around town with only her money in her back pocket. Now she was a pack animal, battened down with diapers, blankets, changes of baby clothes, and bottles of water.

  There were nights when she would happily have collapsed in a heap with her clothes on, but she was far too orderly to do that. Instead she laid her clothes on a chair, threw on her nightgown, and flung herself into bed.

  Teddy said: “Mokie and I thought we would take the kids off your hands for a few hours on Saturday and give you and Edie a break.”

  Jane Louise had not been looking forward to having this conversation.

  She instantly said: “But the weekends are our only time to be together.”

  Teddy said, “You say that every weekend, Janey. I have to prize my own child away from you. I can’t even take her to the park without you having an anxiety attack.”

  “For God’s sake, she’s still nursing,” Jane Louise said.

  “Yes,” said Teddy. “And she’s also eating baby food. She can come out for an hour or two with her old man. I can’t stand having this push-me-pull-you every time I want a little time alone with my own child. She is not exclusively yours. Besides, you need a break. You’re wiped.”

  There was nothing Jane Louise could say. She had never had a baby-sitter, except at night after Miranda was already asleep. She did not have some nice woman to take Miranda to the park in the morning so she could get some work done: She got her work done while Miranda napped. She was so bound to her baby that she felt lost without her. What would she do with herself? She imagined Miranda out with Teddy and herself pacing around in the apartment like a caged cat, wondering where they were, what they were doing, picturing danger at every corner. She saw herself alone with the laundry folded, the dinner organized, waiting and waiting for them to come home, thinking that she would never see them again. She did not know how she could stand it. She began to cry.

  Teddy propped himself on his elbow and regarded her. She hoped he would take her into his arms, but he didn’t. He said: “Don’t think I don’t know how you feel. I do, but you have to know how I feel. You don’t have exclusive rights. I’m her father. Do you think I would let anything bad happen to her? I arranged this all around you. You’ll have Edie to calm you down, and I’ll have Mokie to protect me from Tong warriors with guns, if they happen to come to the park. You really have to do this, Janey.”