Ann pictures herself doing the same thing. She will find a kind, good man someday. He will be nothing like Rupert. She will never tell him about Rupert, although he will know that she can only care for him deeply—never precisely love him. They will not talk a great deal: he will tell her how things went at work; she’ll ask him what he’d like for supper. They’ll have several children.
Here’s what all of this builds to, in her mind, as she lies in the tub—the water lukewarm by now and the bubbles gone, the Kahlua glass empty, Dolly and Porter singing “Just Someone I Used to Know.” Ann will be in the supermarket, standing at the checkout with her husband. She will have a baby on her hip and another child about Trina’s age beside her, and she will be pregnant, although her face will be very thin. She hears a voice behind her, asking, “Do you have Birds Eye Tender Tiny Peas?” Rupert used to eat them for breakfast. Their eyes meet; he studies the baby’s face, and he does that trick where he makes his ears wiggle, for her older child. Neither of them says anything. Ann’s husband pushes their cart out to the car and she looks over her shoulder one last time. He’s standing in the magnetic door holding his single box of peas with the saddest look on his face. They never see each other again.
Carla has taken the top three drawers for her shirts and jeans, just like at home. The bottom drawer’s for Greg. He puts his box of painting clothes in the wooden camp locker Dan and Sally use for a coffee table. His paints, for now, sit in boxes by the door. Tomorrow he’ll set up a studio in the little room overlooking the falls that Dan and Sally use for guests.
Carla is putting the last of her cast-iron pots in a Hoosier cabinet Sally refinished. It has a built-in flour sifter; you open a little door at the bottom and crank out the flour. Carla thinks she will learn how to bake bread this summer. Maybe English muffins. There’s a recipe in one of her Julia Child books.
For dinner they had smoked salmon and cream cheese omelets and wine that Greg chilled in the icy water at the falls. The stove is from the thirties—pale-green enamel, on legs, with a warming oven. The refrigerator has not been plugged in yet, and they’ll have to prime the pump (Dan has left instructions) before they have water. There’s also a wood stove and a pile of dried ash, split, outside the door. Greg doesn’t have the hang of the stove yet. His fire went out. But it’s not a cold night. Carla’s just as glad that they will have to lie very close under the covers tonight.
On the walls of their sleeping loft is a series of photographs Sally must have taken. At first Carla thought they must be pictures of hills, one behind the other, with long shadows falling in the foreground and some kind of fuzzy boulder in the distance. Then she realizes Sally must have taken these pictures while she and Dan were making love. Knees, one elbow, part of a breast, and Dan’s testicles hovering overhead like a bomber.
Greg stands at the window watching the falls. There is an almost full moon. “I’ve got to learn how to fly cast,” he says. “We can have trout for breakfast.”
Carla finishes the last sip of her wine and leans against the sink, watching him. That almost flat ass, his pants hanging loose at the hips. The piece of hair that always stands up on the top of his head. (When they go out to a good restaurant he uses a dab of Vitalis. She used to make fun of him for that.) He looks so hopeful, excited. How she feels about him, sometimes, is almost maternal. She never thought she would ever want more for another person than for herself. “This is going to be great,” he says.
Ronnie Spaulding is pleased. He bowled 144 tonight: three strikes and two spares. His date—Wanda something—threw mostly gutter balls. A couple so bad he thought they might end up in the next lane. She’s not very coordinated: takes three steps, winds up like a pitcher, and then when she gets to the line she just stands there. Stops. Bends over (what a big ass) and lets it go more like she’s launching a baby duck in a pond.
No point spending another dollar on a second string. “Want to get some pizza?” he asks her. Of course she will.
Wanda’s just as glad to leave the bowling alley. She feels very self-conscious when she gets up to bowl. She knows she looks worst from the back. Wanda is actually a pretty good bowler, but she feels so uncomfortable that she can’t concentrate. Just as she is about to let go of the ball, her brain flashes something like a picture of her rear end or the little roll of flesh that she can feel hanging over the top of her jeans. This makes her stop. Then all she wants is to get it over with so she can go sit down again, with her sweater across her lap. There are so many skinny girls here tonight. She’s going to start on a diet very soon.
He asks her if she’d like to go for pizza. She says sure.
Chapter 3
JILL CANNOT IMAGINE WHAT to do. She bends over to get a shirt to cover her top. The Erik Estrada shirt has been buried in the pile of maternity things. She rummages in the pile, can’t find it. She can feel her nipples getting hard, sticking out. She must just cover herself up.
The shirt she pulls over her head turns out to be the one that says “Baby.” She’s still wearing the pillow stuck in the maternity pants. Mark is the first one to speak. His voice is flat; he sounds dead.
“Congratulations,” he says.
Wanda and Ronnie are sitting in the corner booth at Rocky’s. He has got them a large double cheese pizza and two Cokes. “New Kid in Town” is playing on the jukebox.
“ ‘It’s those restless hearts that never mend,’ ” Ronnie sings along with the Eagles. He takes a bite of pizza. I’ll just have one piece, Wanda thinks.
“ ‘Johnny come lately, new kid in town,’ ” Ronnie sings.
“Are you in a league?” Wanda asks.
“Second in the division,” he says.
Jill and Virgil pass by the door. She stands outside. He comes in for a pack of cigarettes. Wanda waves to Jill, who does not notice.
“Friend of yours?” Ronnie asks. “Cute.”
They watch Virgil leave, Jill follow him to the car.
“Cops better not be around tonight,” says Ronnie. Virgil is driving very fast.
Wanda reaches for another slice of pizza. Ronnie looks at the piece of cheese sticking to her chin. “You done?” he says.
He parks outside the mill. He can see this spot out the window when he works the second shift. It’s his private thing, looking out the window while he’s working, remembering the night before. He unzips his fly.
This is her first time since Melissa was born. The doctor said she could do it in six weeks, but no one asked before. She figures it will be safe.
She is thinking about her stomach. There’s a dark black line from her navel to her pubic hair. The thing that’s worse is the stretch marks. It’s hard for her to believe now, when she takes out her bikini from last summer, that she ever fit into that thing. Now it’s like she’s carrying a wrinkled old parachute around her middle. Her skin is all covered with wavy lines with white spaces in between. Her belly, which was so hard when she was pregnant—like a rock—feels like one of those crocheted pillows of Mrs. Ramsay’s that has lost half its stuffing. Her breasts are not so big as they were when her milk came in—before the pills the doctor gave her made them dry up—but they have stretch marks too, and her nipples have turned brown. She never used to wear a bra. Now, when Ronnie unhooks her, tugs the straps off (he is not gentle like Sam Pierce), her breasts drop heavily.
He is not interested in her breasts, does not kiss her. He sticks his penis in her right away and rams it in very deep. She remembers the feeling, as Melissa’s head shot out, before they had time to cut her. She thought she could hear her skin rip. Her throat was too dry to scream.
She’s dry now and it hurts. He is pounding her, back and forth. She can picture her skin—red and sore—being rubbed raw. She has not looked at herself yet, since Melissa was born, but in her mind she sees her baby daughter’s pink, hairless genitals—surprisingly large, in proportion to the rest of her, and a tiny dot of bright red blood on the tip of that little piece of skin whose name she has forgotten. Me
lissa had a drop of blood on her like that, in fact, the day after she was born. Wanda got very scared when she saw it and rushed into the hall, dripping blood herself, to find a doctor. “She’s having a little menstrual period,” the nurse said. “Sometimes mother’s hormones affect baby that way.”
Ronnie groans, flinches, goes limp. He lies there for a minute, his breathing slowly coming back to normal. Then he rolls away from her, zips up his pants.
“You want me to drop you at the baby-sitter’s?”
Carla takes her diaphragm out of her makeup case, squeezes out a little Koromex. She is careful not to get any on her hands because there is no water to wash it off.
She pulls off her shirt, her underpants. Naked, she climbs the ladder to the sleeping loft. Pulls back the goose-down quilt, thinking: Tonight I will take the left-hand side of the bed.
Greg is curled up, hugging the pillow. He’s asleep.
It’s a little past eight-thirty in the morning and Wayne is sitting in the sunroom on the fifth floor of the Good Samaritan Hospital, looking out the window. Actually, he is always on the fifth floor—has been for five and a half years—except when they have a field trip. Even then he is seldom allowed to go out, because forensic patients require one-to-one supervision and there are not often enough orderlies for that.
The TV set is on. It’s always on, even when there’s just a test pattern. The volume is turned up very loud, so that Jane Pauley, who’s interviewing a collector of antique dolls—a great hedge against inflation—seems to be yelling. She is not really yelling, but a number of people on the fifth floor are. Not the forensic patients so much—they are the most normal-acting ones. But across the hall, in the Manchester unit. There is a man who has been hitting his head against the door since Tuesday. There’s a kid who appears to have dropped too much acid, and now all he does is yell that Mick Jagger is trying to kill Karen Ann Quinlan. They are going to bomb the Bedford Groves Roller Rink on Memorial Day. His mother puts saltpeter in the food here. That’s why Bo Derek stopped visiting him.
So far today, Wayne has done sixty push-ups, taken a shower, shampooed his hair, shaved. (All this he must do under supervision. There are no doors in the bathroom—a person can’t even take a shit in private here. And of course they have to watch him with the razor in case he might want to murder someone or commit suicide.) He has asked Charles, the only orderly he will talk to, for one of his cigarettes. Only one, because this pack has to last until Sunday. He had to ask Charles to light the cigarette for him, naturally. No telling when he might try to set Mrs. Partlow’s girdle on fire.
Then he got his breakfast tray. Forensics do not go to the dining hall. Breakfast today was fried eggs and hash browns. He does not eat that junk. He is watching his cholesterol. Most people here let their bodies get wrecked. Even the young ones are soft. But Wayne, though he will be thirty-eight this June, is hard as a football player.
Today’s schedule is posted on the bulletin board outside the orderlies’ station. Ten o’clock: shop. Not too much you can build without a hammer and saw. Eleven-thirty: current events. There will be a quiz on the days of the week. About half the class will flunk.
Lunch at noon. Fridays they have fish sticks and cole slaw. One o’clock: visiting hours. No one will come to see Wayne, of course. Still, he likes to change his shirt, slick his hair back with a little water, take the Union-Leader out into the sunroom. He will hold the paper open in front of his face but he will not read anything except the cars for sale. He has spotted some great deals. And he likes listening to the visitors.
Artie LeFleur, for example, who is in here for shooting his wife in the leg. She did not report his doing this for three days and by that time her leg was infected. Now she comes to visit him with their two kids, Norman and Marcelle. She has an artificial leg, which Artie refers to as her prosthetic device. One time he sneaked her into the shower stall while Wayne stood guard and Norman and Marcelle played pick-up sticks with Mrs. Partlow. Artie was too nervous to do anything, but his wife showed him her stump, which he hadn’t seen before. You meet some weird people here.
Wayne picks up a magazine. Woman’s Day, September 1976. Tips from the World’s Most Expensive Beauty Spa. Why I Chose Sterilization. Help! My Hair Just Won’t Hold a Set. Five Fantastic Meat Loaves. Are We Trying to Solve Too Many Problems with Sex?
Not likely.
He gets up, thinks he will take a stroll down the hall. They still haven’t taken down the cardboard rabbits and chicks and the banner that says Happy Easter. Probably won’t until the Memorial Day decorations go up. Mrs. Partlow’s drawing of Snoopy, with the words “Five Steps to Mental Health” coming out of his mouth, has been there since 1978.
“Keep a disciplined schedule.”
“Do not dwell on the past.”
“Be outgoing. Make new friends.” (Artie LeFleur)
“Avoid idleness. Keep busy.”
“Think positive.”
Back to the sunroom. He picks up the New Hampshire Times. Wayne does not have much use for the articles, which are mostly about very homey, backwoodsy things like maple sugaring and how to make your own horseshoes, which all the young kids are into who move here from places like New York. He would just like to check out the cars in the classifieds.
Nothing very good. He skims the page for something else that might be interesting. He has never noticed the personals column before.
Some make no sense.
“TO THE DANVILLE CAL. MONKEY BREEDERS. I’ve gone bananas over your gift. My new little pal and I are real swingers. Love, Jim.”
“WOOD BUTCHER: TWO years have gone by in a minute. I’ve got love enough for hours. Augusta.”
“CONCORD AREA WOMEN looking for two articulate, radicalized women to vent anger with us. Call Claudia.”
“ANDROGYNOUS MAN, age 27, in open marriage, would like to meet female counterpart to share quality relationship. Interests include vegetarian dining, Judy Collins, solar energy, nonsmoking, intimacy, travel.”
“FARMER. Shy, nice looking. Would like to meet serious woman into organic gardening and holistic medicine.”
These men are a bunch of losers. Wayne feels he has much more to offer. He imagines what he would write, “INSATIABLE LOVER in search of same, THEY CALL ME CRAZY. Give me a call, SINGLE MAN. Not into travel.”
Seriously. What does he have to lose? “Hey, Charles,” he says. “Can I have an envelope and a stamp?”
Ann wakes up feeling better than usual. She will have just half a grapefruit for breakfast this morning and she will not turn on the Phil Donahue show. She is going to be busy today.
Things to do. Buy shoes for jogging. Vacuum house. Buy seeds and fertilizer, rosebushes, clematis vine. Fabric for curtains. Do one hour of exercise. Get newspaper, start looking for job.
Ann washes her hair. It is really getting long. After she moved out of Rupert’s house—during one of those days when she was driving around looking at real estate and sleeping in motels—she took her nail clippers and really hacked herself up. She looked like the lead singer in a punk band. It was so terrible she had to do something, and there was nothing left to cut, so she bought some Nice’n Easy and dyed it red. After she’d been out in the sun for a few months it turned orange.
But now her hair touches her shoulders, and it’s brown again. She blows it dry, turning under the ends, so it looks very fluffy. She puts on a little blusher and some eyeliner. “I am not going to throw up today,” she says.
Today that man is coming to Rototill the vegetable garden. Reg. She will ask him to make some flower beds too. Maybe he can do something about the leak under the kitchen sink.
She has seen him in his yard, sawing up wood, and she remembers seeing a deer in his yard last fall. He was skinning it. She had to turn away. From the clothes she has seen hanging on their line—T-shirts with pictures of celebrities printed on the front—there must be a teen-aged daughter too. Sometimes she sees the wife bringing in the wash. She is a thin woman who we
ars curlers a lot. One time when Ann was walking past, the woman called out to her that she was the local Avon representative and would Ann be interested in any of their products. Ann said she guessed not. The woman said, “Just thought I’d ask,” as if this was what she’d expected.
Ann doesn’t know anybody in this town. The checkout girl at the Grand Union, of course. “You sure must like honey yogurt,” she said a while back, when Ann came in for the second time during a really bad day of eating. After that she was careful to buy her yogurt at different places.
She wishes she had a friend here. Sometimes she stops in at Sal’s for a doughnut and coffee. She does not really like coffee but she likes listening to the conversations of the people at Sal’s, especially the high school kids. Ann has been out of high school only four years, but she can’t remember what it was like being carefree and so unscarred. Her one big worry was getting into a good college. Her friends from those days will be graduating in a month or so. She hears from a few of them sometimes, but not much. Rupert never liked it when they called, and the one time when her friend Patsy came to visit was a disaster. Patsy brought a Talking Heads album and played it over and over, very loud. She was eating macrobiotic, trying to decide if it would be compromising her beliefs to take money from her parents for a trip to Japan that summer to study ceramics. The three of them went out to dinner together that night and Ann wore an outfit she had not worn since she moved in with Rupert—a green velvet jumpsuit with flat, Mary Jane-style Capezios. Rupert said, “You’re trying to make me look like a dirty old man,” and made a point of talking about how he was losing the hearing in one ear. Patsy did not visit them again.
Baby Love Page 5
