Full of Life

by John Fante

  Thus it was that I caught her again. That afternoon I quit work at two, drove to within a block of my house, and parked around the corner. I walked the rest of the way. From that distance I surprised her. She was on her knees beside the pile of stones, her two small hands gripping a short-handled sledge. She was pounding a piece of flagstone, breaking it into smaller segments for the fireplace. With a shout I rushed toward her. She dropped the sledge, suppressed a cry, and ran into the house. I jumped the fence and went right after her. She was not in the living room. Papa was at the fireplace, a trowel in his hand.

  “Where’s my wife?”

  He shrugged innocently.

  I climbed the stairs. She had locked herself in the bathroom. I could hear the hiss of water in the shower. I went into her bedroom. Everything was in readiness for the most important event of her life. A week ago she had packed a grip for her stay in the hospital.

  It lay open on the stand, and I looked through it. Combs, a brush, a hand mirror. A clock. Bedroom slippers. A box of stationery. A fountain pen. Gowns. A dressing robe. A manicure set. Cologne. A few handkerchiefs, a few pins. The many small things in a woman’s life. Piled in the corner were the gifts she had received at a baby shower: toys, bottles, blankets, baby clothes, a little silver dish, a tiny fork and spoon. Off her bedroom was the glassed-in porch she planned for a nursery. Here was the crib, a chiffonier, a bassinet, a rocking horse, a doll. Pink was the motif, pink for girls, pink curtains, pink ribbons.

  So let it be a girl. But boy or girl, give it a chance, let it live! It was time for a showdown. The bathroom door opened and she came into the room. She looked at me without surprise. The shower had washed the make-up from her face, her lips were a faded red, and her wet hair hung like a rag mop.

  “Well?” she said.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Really?”

  She began to brush her hair.

  “I want you to stop fooling around. No more lifting. No more breaking stones.”

  “Is that all?”

  I wanted to shake her.

  “I’ve come to a decision. Stop it, or I leave this house.”

  She smiled and tossed her wet hair.

  “You can leave any time.”

  “Is that your decision?”

  “Yes, darling.”

  Grimly I walked out. The choice was hers. She alone had made it. But I didn’t leave. You can’t leave them when they are in that condition. It requires great tact. Nor should you make rash statements. It requires great forbearance, but you can’t leave.

  SEVEN

  RETRIBUTION was inevitable. Two nights later she paid for her folly. It was ten minutes after midnight when she entered my room. One glance at the chalky face, the wide eyes, and I knew her time was at hand. Dr. Stanley had predicted first labor around the 25th. This was the 12th. But Dr. Stanley had not anticipated a siege of mixing mortar and crushing stones.

  Leaning in the doorway, one hand on the bump, the other against her forehead, she said, “I think the baby’s coming.”

  I jumped out of bed. She gritted her teeth as cramps seized her and she studied her wrist watch, breathing hard.

  “Nine minutes. They’re getting worse.”

  I led her to the bed. There was sweat at her temples and she trembled. Her hand in mine was hot, wet and shaking. Together we stared at the wrist watch. Ten minutes later she had another seizure. It lasted thirty seconds. She took it with gritted teeth, clenched fists. I remembered warnings from the books.

  “How about the bag of waters?”

  “Call Dr. Stanley. Get me to the hospital.”

  I ran downstairs and telephoned the doctor. A nurse answered. She would deliver my message; the doctor would call back. Upstairs Joyce lay stretched full length on the bed. I called Papa.

  “The baby’s coming.”

  He wakened instantly.

  “Where?” He sat up. “The baby?” He was out of bed. “How?”

  He staggered out of the darkness in his long underwear. Joyce moaned. Papa pulled on his overalls. I went back to the bedroom. Joyce lay with eyes closed.

  “How about the bag of waters?”

  “Give me a cigarette.”

  Buckling his overall straps, Papa entered. In a glance he appraised the situation.

  “You. Go downstairs and boil some water.”

  “What for?”

  “Do what I tell you.”

  I couldn’t move. All my life in such situations I knew they boiled water. What did they do with it?

  “We’ve got to get her to the hospital.”

  “God damn it, boil some water.”

  He got me by the nape of the neck and shoved me through the door. All the way downstairs I knew it was madness. The hospital was only ten minutes away. I filled the teakettle with water, put it over the gas flame and hurried upstairs. Papa sat on the bed beside Joyce, holding her hand.

  “Did you call Dr. Stanley?”

  “His nurse is getting him.”

  “Call Father Gondalfo. I want to be baptized.”

  “Hot water,” Papa said.

  The phone rang. I rushed downstairs. It was the voice of Dr. Stanley.

  “The baby’s coming, Doc.”

  “It seems a bit early. Is she in labor?”

  “She’s in agony.”

  “Are the pains regular? Did she time them?”

  “Every ten minutes. She’s in agony.”

  “You’d better bring her down.”

  “Okay, Doc.”

  I went upstairs.

  “Get ready, honey. We’re going to the hospital.”

  “Hot water,” Papa yelled.

  “Call Father Gondalfo,” Joyce moaned. “I want to be baptized.”

  The kettle downstairs began to whistle, then shriek as the water came to a boil. I called Father Gondalfo. He promised to be at the hospital in fifteen minutes. I grabbed the kettle of hot water and carried it upstairs. Joyce was in her room, seated on the bed, a fur coat around her, bedroom slippers on her feet. Papa tore the kettle out of my hands.

  “Get the car. Bring it around front.”

  He rushed the kettle into the bathroom. I followed him. I wanted to see this.

  “Get going,” he said. “The car.”

  I just stood there. I didn’t want him using any of his Abruzzian techniques on Joyce. He took a bottle of brandy from the medicine cabinet and poured a big slug of it into a water tumbler. Then he added hot water and held the mixture up to the light.

  “What’re you up to?”

  “What do you suppose?”

  He put away the drink in one breathless gulp. It burned all the way down.

  “Ha-a-a!” he said. “Now I feel better. Get going, you.”

  I rushed downstairs, backed the car out of the garage, and drove it around front. They were waiting for me at the curb. The three of us sat up front. Papa put his arm around Joyce’s shoulder. She was not in pain.

  All the way to the hospital there were no seizures. None of this felt like impending fatherhood, and I had the murky feeling that the whole thing was a false alarm. It felt like hysteria rather than fatherhood; it seemed shapeless, smoky, like an unexplained explosion. I went along with it because I couldn’t be sure. There was caution in Joyce’s face now; there was restraint and worry. Papa had an unlit cigar in his mouth.

  “Everything’s gonna be fine,” he said.

  The statement had no texture, no honesty. The nearer the hospital, the greater our unspoken certainty that the whole thing was badly miscalculated.

  Then I said it. I had to say it: “Maybe it really isn’t your time yet, darling.”

  It brought a howl of dismay from Joyce.

  “Oh, please!” she cried. “Don’t even think it! I’ll die if you do.”

  With his left hand Papa reached over and yanked my hair.

  “Leave her alone, you damn fool.”

  “It’s just a thought I had.”

  “Then cut it out.
After all you done!”

  “Me? I didn’t do anything.”

  At first I didn’t realize his meaning. I looked at him, his eyes sharp and popping with anger. It was a chute into his mind. Then I knew. He was still thinking of the time I sold his concrete mixer to buy a bicycle. It had happened nearly twenty years ago, but there it was, the old bitterness, flaring up at this odd time.

  “Please, Papa. Not that again.”

  The cigar trembled with his chin. The old bitterness had rendered him speechless.

  Joyce began to sob.

  “I’m so miserable.”

  His arm tightened around her shoulder.

  “After the baby, you come and live with Mama and me,” he soothed. “Get away from this fellow. He brings nothing but trouble. I shoulda sent him to reform school.”

  I clung tightly to the wheel and kept still. We entered the circular driveway before the main gate of the hospital. On the front steps loomed the big figure of Father Gondalfo. He opened the door as I stopped the car.

  “Oh, Father!” Joyce sobbed.

  Papa got out. The two men helped Joyce step down. Her eyes were wet from crying. The priest laid his large hands on her shoulders and comforted her.

  She wept softly. Now Papa and Father Gondalfo began an exchange of crackling Italian. They waved their arms, shook their heads, frowned, grunted, sneered, smiled, groaned, rolled their eyes, grimaced, swayed, pointed at me, and finally lapsed into brooding silence, looking at one another in unhappy bewilderment. Then the giant priest poked his head inside the car door and looked at me, his dark eyes eating me up.

  “You, there. Park the car.”

  Why not? At a time like this, it was a father’s solemn duty to park his car. I drove across the street to the vast hospital parking area. When I walked back to the hospital entrance, they were gone. I entered the reception room. They had taken the elevator and were already somewhere upstairs. I asked the nurse at the desk where they had gone. She wouldn’t tell me. I had to sign some papers before she would talk about it. Then she told me to see the nurse on the twelfth floor.

  It was bad up there too. I couldn’t learn anything. Papa and Father Gondalfo were out of sight. The chief nurse informed me that Joyce was being examined by Dr. Stanley. She was a short, thick-chested woman with a red face and rippling muscles in her arms. She was too busy to talk to me. Her desk was covered with papers and ledgers.

  “What room is she in?” I asked.

  “You can’t see her anyway.”

  “But I’m her husband.”

  “I thought the old man was her husband.”

  “He’s my mother’s husband. He’s my father.”

  She returned to her papers. Other nurses came and went. I stood there, trying to keep out of the way. The phone kept ringing. An interne informed the chief nurse that 1231 wanted orange juice. She sneered and said, “No orange juice.” Above her, on the opposite wall, was an electric box with a glass face. A number kept appearing and disappearing in the glass. Number 1214, a red number. It came and went with frantic urgency. Nobody paid any attention to it, neither nurses nor internes.

  “Is my wife in 1214?”

  ‘No.”

  I nodded at the glass.

  “Somebody in 1214 wants something.”

  “Young man, please go to 1245 and sit down.”

  I went everywhere, looking for 1245. I walked up one hall and down another. I couldn’t find it. The room numbers would be in sequence, and then there would be a series of unnumbered doors. I tried a door without a number and a woman sat up in bed and said, “Get out of here.” I finally found my way back to the chief nurse.

  “I can’t seem to find 1245.”

  She was convinced of my vast stupidity, for 1245 was right there, next to her desk. She didn’t even speak to me, she only looked at the door and let her eyes roll back to me. I thanked her, but there was no hiding her low opinion of me.

  Papa and Father Gondalfo sat in 1245. They froze as I entered. Papa turned his back on me. Father Gondalfo waited for me to sit down in one of the leather chairs.

  “A man and his wife have many problems,” he began. “Sometimes they seem too much to bear. They lose their tempers. It’s only human to lose your temper.”

  “Where is she?” I interrupted. “What did they do with her?”

  “Now he wants to know,” Papa sneered. “After all he’s done.”

  Father Gondalfo raised his hand for peace. Papa ignored it.

  “I seen this kid chase her upstairs. She had to lock herself in the water closet. That’s when it happened, running up the stairs.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” the priest said. “Let’s wait until we hear what the doctor has to say.”

  “I hope nothing’s wrong with my grandson,” Papa said. “I’ll kill him if anything happened.”

  I was sick of him.

  “Oh, shut up, Papa.”

  He stared beseechingly at the priest. At last he was vindicated. At last I had demonstrated my worthlessness. His overalls and broken-down shoes didn’t help matters either.

  Then Joyce entered with Dr. Stanley. She was calm, chastened, and seemed more pregnant than ever.

  “Wrap her up and take her home,” the doctor smiled.

  “Everything all right?” Papa asked.

  “Fine, fine. Come back in a week or so.”

  “I’m so ashamed,” Joyce said.

  “It happens all the time. Forget it.”

  “No action from the bag of waters,” I said. ‘That was the tip-off.”

  “You and your bag of waters,” Joyce said.

  She was changed, chastened. It was mostly embarrassment. She wanted to be out of there. The doctor followed us as we trooped to the elevators. She hugged the fur around her, hiding her face. There was very little to say. We were leaving the place without a baby, empty-handed. The big priest towered over us. In complete silence we waited for the elevator. Papa looked like a tramp. I got behind a post, out of sight of the cynical nurses. I shared Joyce’s embarrassment. We seemed forever to be coming and going from this hospital. We were always harassing this doctor. We had probably got him out of a sound sleep. He had not delivered a baby. Now we were going home. The procedure seemed endless, stretching into eternity. Next week we would do it all over again.

  The elevator arrived and we stepped in: a pregnant woman, her husband, her father-in-law, and her spiritual adviser. With the old man who operated the elevator there were five of us. It was a massive elevator, it was like a ballroom. Thirty people could easily have ridden in it without crowding. But standing there, saying good-by once more to the smiling doctor, there was scarcely room to breathe. The mound under the fur coat seemed to fill the whole elevator. Crammed together, crushed in a thick human mass, we descended in grim silence. Only when we got to the main floor did a sense of freedom return.

  Then Joyce said, “I forgot my grip.”

  They all looked at me.

  Why not? Who else?

  I took the elevator back to the twelfth floor. The grip was beside the chief nurse’s desk. I picked it up.

  “Just a minute.”

  “It’s my wife’s. She’s not staying. She forgot it.”

  “What’s your name?”

  I told her.

  “That’s the old man’s name.”

  “He’s my father.”

  “You’re the husband?”

  “Right.”

  Silence.

  “May I take the grip?”

  “It’s yours, isn’t it?”

  I rode down to the main floor. They were waiting for me on the steps outside.

  “Get the car,” Papa said.

  I got the car. Papa and Joyce settled in the front seat. Father Gondalfo had come in the parish car. We thanked him for his trouble.

  “It’s God’s will,” he said to Joyce. “And it’s for the best. Now you’ll have time to complete your instructions.”

  We said good-by. He walke
d toward the parking lot, the gravel snarling under his feet. I drove away. Joyce sat quietly, full of sadness and new wisdom. I leaned over and kissed her.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Very tired. And very foolish.”

  A big sigh came from Papa.

  “It takes a long time to make a son.”

  EIGHT

  PEACE IN my house, quiet, a time of great calm. She became another woman again. She was out of the fable now, out of the novels, a tale of motherhood, a woman in waiting. No more breaking of stones or mixing mortar. I never saw her so beautiful. She walked on quiet feet, a different perfume trailing after her. Every morning she went to early Mass. Every afternoon she visited the parish house for instructions. Father Gondalfo was rushing it a little, but it was at her insistence. In the evenings I walked with her to the church. She said the rosary, made the stations of the cross, or simply sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap.

  It was a strange time for me. I sat beside her, not able to pray, to articulate a feeling for Christ. But it all came back to me, the memory of the old days when I was a boy and this cool and melancholy place meant so much. From the beginning she had assumed I would return with her. It had seemed the right thing to do. Somehow I would capture the old feeling, the reaching out with the fingers of my soul and grasping the rich fine joy of belief. Somehow I had felt it was always there, that I had but to move toward it with only a murmur of desire and it would cloak me in the vast comfort of God’s womb. There was the scent of incense, the creaking of pews, the play of sunlight through stained-glass windows, the cool touch of holy water, the laughter of little candles, the stupendous reaching back into antiquity, the baffling realization that countless millions before me had been here and gone, that other billions would come and go through a million tomorrows. These were my thoughts as I sat beside my wife. These and the gradual realization that I had been wrong, that it was not easy to come back to your church, that the Church changeless was always there, but that I had changed. The drift of years had covered me like a mountain of sand. It was not easy to emerge. It was not easy to call out with a small voice and feel that I was being heard. I sat beside her, and I knew it would be very hard. Nay, I knew it would be almost impossible.