“She sprang it on me,” said Guido.
“But you want a baby,” said Vincent brightly. “And now you’re going to have one. Why don’t you just sit back and enjoy it?”
“It’s not the baby,” said Guido. “It’s the idea of it. It’s that Holly harbored this desire and didn’t bother to tell me. We were supposed to talk about it together.”
“How disgusting,” said Misty. “Now it’s my turn. You expect Holly to behave as you would behave. She doesn’t and she never will. Did you ever for a second stop to think that maybe Holly already knew you wanted a baby and didn’t want to have endless discussions about it? Maybe she wasn’t up for one of those mechanical modern conversations about sperm. Maybe it was an accident and she thinks it’s a happy accident. I can see your point and you’re entitled to it. But you have to see Holly’s and Holly is not you. Besides, Holly answers everything you think about the world and loves you too. You win both ways. You can brood with nothing very serious to brood about. You can think the universe is dark and full of awful surprises and you can be right and wrong at the same time. Holly is the perfect wife for you. If you were married to someone just like you, the two of you would sit around and discuss every tiny event in your past, present, and future and you’d never have any fun.”
“If Holly is so perfect,” said Guido, “why do I feel so awful?”
“Because what you wanted to happen happened, but not in the way you wanted it to,” said Misty. “You didn’t orchestrate it. In short, you are a spoiled brat.”
“That isn’t nice,” said Vincent.
“It isn’t,” said Guido. “But it’s true. Let’s have something to drink.”
They retired to the living room. Vincent brought out brandy and glasses. The three of them sat together on the couch, drinking. By the second round, they all felt rather mellow.
“Misty is allowed to say anything she wants,” said Guido. “She’s family.”
“We are all family,” said Vincent, for whom brandy and sentiment went hand in hand.
“I feel much better,” said Guido, stretching his legs. “This is adult friendship.”
“This is brandy,” said Misty.
“What a materialist you are,” said Guido. “I’m in the company of my family and I’m feeling much happier than I have in weeks.”
“It won’t last,” said Misty.
“What does it matter?” said Vincent. “We’re all together. We’re family and we’re friends. I think that’s the best thing in the world, and Guido does too.”
“You boys,” said Misty.
Holly came back in a little less than three weeks. Guido came home one evening to find her in the kitchen making dinner. She looked in radiant health.
“I thought I was supposed to come and pick you up,” said Guido.
“I wanted to slip back unobtrusively,” said Holly. She gave him a serene kiss and went on with dinner as if she had never left. She advised Guido that the meal was to be his favorite and that he must leave the kitchen at once.
“I’m not used to talking,” she said. “I have to get used to it gradually.”
Holly had left the place immaculate and Guido had kept it that way. There was almost no sign at all that she was back. Her clothes had all been folded or hung up and put away. But when Holly wasn’t around, all the life went out of the place and Guido felt that he was living in the midst of a dead landscape. When Holly was gone, Guido kept all the lights on and still everything looked dim. With Holly back, the one night-table lamp made the room look soft and warm.
At dinner Guido felt he was eating real food for the first time since she had left. Meals in restaurants, at other people’s houses, or things he put together for himself did not taste real to Guido. Holly was a very pure cook, and nothing else tasted quite right to Guido.
Over coffee, Holly spoke about her experience with tranquillity.
“I haven’t had a cup of coffee in three weeks,” she said. “I completely forgot what a stimulant it is. And silence—it’s amazing what not talking does. You keep silence at meals but someone reads to you. You don’t talk during the day except for a little while in the afternoon. I heard a few spiritual lectures. But the amazing thing is the atmosphere. You just soak it in and realize how even if you’re not a tense person as a rule, living in society makes you tense. I’m beginning to think that space absorbs silence or noise. For example, I got on an empty train to come home and it sat in the station for about fifteen minutes. There was no noise at all except the usual birds and dogs, but it didn’t feel quiet. Whereas in the monastery, even when it’s full of people it’s completely hushed. I can’t tell you how soothing it is. It made me wonder how to put more silence into normal life.”
At this Guido’s fork clattered loudly to his plate. The last three weeks had taken their toll. He was jumpy, nervous, and about to come down with a cold. His bones felt hot and his flesh felt cold. Blankets did not help. He did not want to put more silence into normal life. He did not want Holly to go off to a life of silence and leave him all alone. A little more quietude might kill him, he felt.
That night, he fell into a feverish sleep. He dreamed that Holly had gone away. This woke him up. He sat up in bed shivering. In the darkness he could see the ghostly shapes of the furniture. The bedroom looked like a seascape. He sank back into the pillows and drifted off. This time he dreamed that Holly had decided never to come back. He tossed unhappily until he felt her leg next to his. This made him feel better. He fell asleep and dreamed that Holly had entered a convent and that he would never see her again. The sense of loss and hopelessness in his dream was so acute it woke him up. He felt for Holly’s leg, but Holly was not in bed.
She was sitting in a chair reading in the little pool of light cast by her reading lamp. Guido was half awake, still in the grip of his terrible dream. Holly looked very far off in the distance, canceled out by light. He tried to focus, but he could not.
It was four o’clock in the morning. He felt very feverish and spoke without meaning to.
“Holly,” he said. “Please come back.”
The light was flicked off. He heard her put the book back on her night table. Then her cool hand was on his forehead.
“Poor darling,” she said. “You have a fever.”
“Please come back,” said Guido.
“I am back,” said Holly.
“Just come back,” said Guido. “Come back and don’t leave me.”
“I am back, darling,” she said. “I haven’t left. I’m right here. Now go to sleep.”
PART THREE
CHAPTER 9
Holly had a cousin called Gem—Gem Jaspar. Gem was five years younger and Holly had never paid much attention to her. When Holly was in college, Gem was still playing field hockey and was thus fixed in Holly’s mind as a girl wearing a school uniform.
Gem lived publicly in the world. When fashion magazines did spreads about the proper clothes to wear while sailing, Gem’s photo was sure to turn up. When lavish parties were reported by the newspapers, Gem’s name was always mentioned. In Holly’s meticulous address book, Gem took up a page and a half. Holly hated crossing out addresses since it ruined the precision of her script and Gem’s peripatetic life had caused her much small anguish on this account. Holly believed that people ought to settle and she wrote everyone down in ink. Gem had finally been demoted to pencil.
Gem was one of those tall, crisp athletic girls who look slightly cross-eyed from a distance but not up close. She had been sent to school in France and had made a pass at going to college but had only floated through the many institutions of higher learning to which she had been sent. Somewhere along the line she had been married to a man named Clifford van Allen. They had been married in Switzerland and had set about traveling. Clifford raced horses and cars. These were his only interests. Somewhere along the line he and Gem had gotten divorced and Gem had set about on a course of self-improvement. She went to fashion school, took classes in architectu
ral drawing, and put in four months at interpreters school finding out if her French was good enough for simultaneous translation at the United Nations. It was not. These occupations took up the spring and fall. Otherwise, Gem summered and wintered. She sailed in the summer and skied in the winter, mostly abroad.
When Gem came to visit, her muddy riding boots stood outside the door of wherever she stayed and in fine weather her jodhpurs were hung over the railings. Gem traveled heavy. She carried boots, an iron bootjack, and frequently brought along her saddle, as well as a collapsible stainless-steel saddle rack. There was no occasion for which Gem did not have proper clothing and equipment. Life made certain demands on Gem: she needed space for her downhill skis as well as her cross-country skis, for her ski boots and skates, for her hiking boots, rock-climbing gear, sailing shoes, and hunting tack.
Holly and Guido had not seen her since their marriage, but her whereabouts had been documented by a series of postcards and scribbled messages that bore a resemblance to letters but were more like outpourings. Holly did not know why she was the recipient of Gem’s innermost thoughts. She marked it down to the fact that she was Gem’s only female cousin. Guido marked it down to the fact that Gem probably had no one else to send these messages to.
One evening Guido came home and tripped over a pair of riding boots. In the living room, he found Gem drinking a cup of tea and staring into the handmade crib that contained the six-month-old Juliana Sturgis Morris.
These days when Guido put his key into the lock, he knew what to expect: the scene he had hoped to witness—his beautiful wife and baby communing on the sofa. Having a baby made life more sure.
Besides, Holly’s pregnancy had changed things. If she behaved mysteriously, there was a reason for it. If she burst into tears or stopped speaking, there was a cause. The baby, in fact, drew them together. Guido had assumed that Holly would hate being pregnant, but she did not. When she felt the baby kick, she called Guido to her side so he could feel it too. If Guido had ever wanted her to talk, she fulfilled his wildest dreams. She felt she was in the midst of a miraculous process that she described in minute detail. She talked about the mystery of life. She lectured Guido on dietary purity and would not allow him to smoke his cigars in the same room with her.
“You can’t smoke in Juliana’s presence until she is three,” said Holly after the delivery.
For the first few days of Juliana’s life, Guido was reluctant to go to work. He hung around the hospital with his nose pressed against the glass window of the nursery, staring at his daughter. The rest of the time he spent in Holly’s room holding her hand, watching her sleep, or reading out loud to her from one of the pile of books on infancy she kept on her hospital night table.
One afternoon, she burst into tears. “I’m terrified to take her home,” said Holly. “I’ll make awful mistakes. She’ll get sick. She’ll turn into a resentful teenager. Then she’ll run away to a potato farm commune in the Southwest and it will all be my fault.”
At this point, it was decided that a baby nurse was a very high priority. The next morning, Guido was confronted by a tall, middle-aged woman with short gray hair. She was sitting next to Holly’s bed conversing earnestly. Her name was Ruth Binnenstock and she was an infant psychologist as well as a pediatric nurse.
“But babies just eat and sleep. Aren’t they too young to have a psychology?” said Guido.
“I must explain,” said Ruth Binnenstock. “I deal with sick babies, odd babies, hyperkinetic babies, babies who are about to undergo surgery. Since my own children are teenagers, I rent myself out once a year to spend some time with a normal baby. If I don’t do that, I feel I lose the touch. Now, let’s see yours.”
Juliana was brought forth from the nursery wearing for the occasion a smock with tulips painted on it. Ruth Binnenstock held her up. Juliana looked at her with a clear, level gaze and then stuck out her tongue. Ruth Binnenstock stuck her tongue out at Juliana. Juliana squeezed her eyes closed and then began to coo. Ruth Binnenstock cooed back. Juliana smiled.
“It says in one of those books that when they smile in infancy it’s only gas,” said Guido.
“What idiocy,” said Ruth Binnenstock. “People don’t have the proper respect for babies. Babies are geniuses. They know everything. They want to know everything. This one is just perfect. Let me tell you something. Science doesn’t know beans about babies.”
Holly had indeed produced a stylish baby. This child had been delivered by Caesarean section and when put on display had been the most beautiful baby in the nursery.
Vincent and Misty had gone to view it. Babies were all “it” to Misty until they wore clothes that more clearly identified them. She was not much of a fan of babies although she understood that when one of them happened to be yours, you found their little wrinkles and red faces perfectly enthralling. She and Vincent had stood at the big glass window on the maternity floor and surveyed a number of wrinkled babies.
“See that one?” said a man next to Vincent. He pointed to an enormous infant who was not only red, but also black and blue.
“That’s mine,” said the man. “Will you look at that brute? High forceps. Makes ’em look like they just went fifteen rounds.”
One of these babies was not red and did not howl but lay in its crib looking intelligently around it with a sweet smile on its little face. This baby had a mop of curly black hair and looked exactly like a sugar baby.
“That’s the one,” said Misty.
“How can you tell?” said Vincent.
“The others are wrinkled,” said Misty. “Holly’s is pressed. Besides, you can always tell a Caesarean because they don’t get all mangled up in the birth canal. Holly told me on the phone this morning that she had wanted natural childbirth but she was glad it was Caesarean because there’s no birth trauma and the baby’s introduction to life is more serene.”
Finally, it was time to bring Juliana home. The crib had been delivered by the cabinetmaker in Maine. The back bedroom had been turned into a pale peach nursery. In the name of serenity, all grandparents had been temporarily banned, but they had sent their blessings in the form of mobiles to hang over the crib, night-lights, a metal cat under a glass bell that glowed in the dark, and a small Degas drawing.
Guido was sent reluctantly to work while Holly stayed at home to be schooled in the arts of mothering by Ruth Binnenstock.
“I am a failure,” said Holly one afternoon. She and Ruth were drinking tea while Juliana took a nap. “I thought when you had a baby, you knew what to do.”
“Nonsense,” said Ruth Binnenstock. “Maternal wisdom is delivered with the passing of years, not with the baby. I say, simply follow your impulses. Try to think of what you would like if you were a baby. And never forget that you were one. Now, why did you decide to go on a retreat?”
“I wanted to be quiet. I wanted to be somewhere plain and simple with a lot of women around and I couldn’t figure out where in the world I would find any kind of silence like that except at a monastery.”
“Exactly my point,” said Ruth Binnenstock. “You followed your impulses and they were right. If there were more retreats and more expectant mothers who went on them, I could work up quite an elegant study. I think you’ll do just fine. Your impulse led you to Margot Justis-Vorander. I like to see a mother reading Prenatal Serenity. A fine book. A fine woman. I studied with her. Very brilliant and very humane. What this all boils down to is: when it comes to babies, never be afraid to make a fool of yourself. Mr. Morris will have no trouble on that score. I have never seen such a doting father—and I’ve seen enough fathers to last me several lifetimes. Coo when she coos. Qawl when she crawls. That’s all a parent needs to know. They’re only like this for a little while. Your worries will come much later on. But for now, take advantage. Get down on the floor and play with her. You happen to be very lucky. Juliana is a wonderful, kind baby. I’ve had babies puke and kick and spit out of pure spite. They have characters even at this age. This one
I want to stay in touch with. Once a year I will expect a dinner invitation. Besides, this baby is going to get the world’s best food. I see you have been practicing making zwieback. I took a piece for breakfast this morning. Quite delicious.”
When Juliana was put on a blanket on the floor to wriggle her arms and legs, Ruth Binnenstock wriggled along with her. When she cooed, Ruth cooed too. When Juliana sang, Ruth sang along. The sound of Juliana singing drove Guido into a frenzy of love. She sang in a high, piping voice that Ruth Binnenstock could almost imitate.
After a month and a half, Ruth Binnenstock decided that Holly and Guido knew all they needed to know and she began to pack.
“You can’t leave,” said Holly. “I’m too terrified.”
“Nonsense,” said Ruth. “If you get scared, just call me. But believe me, this baby of yours is a dream. She’s perfectly fine. If there’s any problem, it’ll be yours, not hers.”
Juliana didn’t seem to mind when Ruth left, but Guido and Holly were crushed.
“It isn’t that Ruth understands babies,” said Holly. “She is babies.”
“Alone at last,” said Guido. “Don’t look so stricken. Where’s my kid?”
“She was taking a nap, but I think I just heard her.”
“I’ll go get her,” said Guido.
“Be careful,” said Holly.
“Get a grip on yourself, woman,” said Guido. “Ruth said not to worry. Ruth says to coo when she coos, so I’ll bring her in here and we’ll coo together.”
Juliana slept in a football jersey given to her by Vincent and Misty, which made her look almost unbearably adorable.
“Look at this beauty,” said Guido. He held Juliana in his arms. He was terrified. “Now what do I do?”
“You put her on the couch next to me,” said Holly, “and then you sit down next to her. Then we coo and appreciate her.”
Holly and Guido were in great awe of their offspring. One or the other of them was constantly hanging over her crib, staring at her.
Happy All the Time Page 17
