Cocktails, Caviar and Diapers

by Duke, Renee

  “The drearies? You didn’t tell me about them. Maybe that’s what’s happening to me. We’ll go to the American Commissary together, it’s miles away in Montparnasse. Oh, Lord, I hear the baby. I’ll call you later!”

  Whew! The blind leading the blind. Neither one of us knows much.

  And Paris... Angelica lived here when she was seven. She ran all the way to Portugal using ditches by the side of the road, to escape the German bombers.

  It’s nice to have a friend I can really talk to ... the children here already? No nap.

  “Go play in the dining room, dears, until Rosie can give you tea. I feel like resting a bit more.” What darlings. Eric still hasn’t realized that no one speaks Spanish here. It’s hard to change languages at three. Four children under the age of five! I feel like a brood mare. Each one of them so different, so interesting. I love babies. Fortunately my figure has come back. Evans doesn’t like me fat.

  A scream!

  What happened! Quick, it’s one of the children in the dining room. My God, who is screaming? The maid, the nurse and all the children!

  Eric has cut off his hand in the window.

  I just see screams.

  “Rosie, get out of here, take the children and the maid! Stop that screaming, get them out of here. Go downstairs and try and get a doctor.”

  No phone, dear God, what do I do? Where do I go? I can’t even speak French!

  Ah, part of his hand is still attached at the wrist. What do I do with these fountains of blood? It won’t stop.

  Blood all over me. Let’s see, I’ll tear a strip from my bathrobe and use a pencil. Make a tourniquet on his upper arm.

  Hush, darling. Lord, he’s turning yellow. Must be shock. Get the maid to bring me another bathrobe while I hold him. Lucky it’s short.

  The building concierge. What is she doing here? Get a blanket for Eric.

  “Rosie. The doctor?”

  “Madame, they are all at the hospitals in the morning. There is a hospital down the street. She says you can walk there. The taxis are on strike. One must walk.”

  Lord, Eric is so yellow and cold. I have fifteen minutes for the tourniquet. I can’t wait. The servants are in a state of collapse. Then there’s me, a week out of delivering a baby. They’ll just have to stitch me up if there’s any damage. If the Russian women can deliver their babies in the fields and get up and walk afterwards, I can too.

  “Rosie, you must stay with the children. Get milk for the baby and a bottle and feed him regular milk if I’m not back to give him the breast. Clean up and make it quiet for the boys. Keep the new maid busy. Do you have any money?”

  “Non, Madame.”

  “Neither do I. Well, Eric will die if I don’t get his wrist stitched up. I’m going. They will have to help me.”

  Tremble, tremble. I must do this. Wrap him up. Carry him down the stairs. Down the street in my bathrobe in full daylight. How many people are following me? All the windows are opening. I must do this, not fall.

  The street, now the next street. Why didn’t I get to know the neighborhood better when I moved here? So busy feeling sorry for myself. God, I won’t feel sorry for myself again, I promise.

  Hey, God, give me the strength to help Eric. Eric must live.

  Speak to them at the entrance to the hospital. What a little place! No, I can’t wait to make out the papers. Shake my head, speak the little I know. No, no. Doctor. No, not an intern. Doctor.

  The doctor speaks a bit of English. I can hardly speak it. I’m so cold. Blood down my bathrobe.

  Eric is opening his eyes. Take off the tourniquet, yes. He must be stitched up. You cannot?

  “Why can’t you stitch him up? His hand is hanging on by one thread! You must.”

  “I cannot do the job inside the hand, the nerves, the artery. You must have a surgeon. The best intern in Paris is at the children’s hospital in Montparnasse.”

  “Intern? No, I want the best surgeon. I want to go to the American Hospital.”

  “There is no surgeon there who can do what this man Bellefeuille can do. In France, an intern is very high. You must go to him. The child has very little time before his artery begins to shrink up into his arm. He will be crippled.”

  Quick again, pick up Eric. He is so pale. Needs a transfusion I’m sure. I have no money but I will get to this hospital.

  A taxi right outside the door. What was this Rosie said about a strike? I cannot pay, sign language. He understands! Take my name and address, my husband will pay you. He cries. The taxi man has tears in his eyes.

  The boy is so small. He looks big to me because he has two younger brothers. He really is small. In my hand I look at his hand, lightly lying on a piece of wood, taped loosely with gauze. I can remember the nerves like thin spaghetti, the artery large and full of blood. His tiny wrist. Like a baby’s.

  He is only three. I forgot. If I could only stop trembling, I could warm him better. We both still have blood all over us.

  Arriving, the hospital is so huge and grey, so old. How long has this place been here? How wonderful everyone is to me. People know what it is like to be afraid for a child, even when they don’t know what you are saying. Thank you, he has my address. How good the taxi driver is to do this for nothing.

  Now to get past all these forms. Bellefeuille. Doctor Bellefeuille. Take the child to him. I will do the forms. I can see that I’m not doing the usual. The long, high corridors and great dirty walls stretch in every direction. Feels like the Middle Ages here.

  They can help him, I know they can. I feel it.

  How dreadful, they have a stretcher for Eric. He looks lost on it. So small. He can’t talk French. He doesn’t know where they are taking him or why.

  “Darling, they must sew up your wrist. Don’t cry.”

  My God, why can’t I go with him? He cannot speak French. He is alone. Oh, he cries, “Mummy, Mummy” and it echoes in the halls. I feel frantic as I see him go away. Let me go to him! No, I must fill in the forms. I don’t know what they say! I only read the French classics. I can’t speak it and I can’t read forms but I can recite “Le Cid.”

  I’m getting hysterical.

  Social worker. They must have someone here who speaks a bit of English. They do. Thank heaven. This is terrible. My mind feels clear as a bell and not a bit of information in it.

  “Yes, my husband was born in Cleveland, Ohio.”

  How is Eric? What are they doing to him?

  “Can I see him? I was born in New York, yes, my mother, she is American too.”

  Finally they seem satisfied, they can call Evans at work for the rest.

  “Please, I feel very faint. I had a baby last week.” My breasts are beginning to hurt. I’ll just have to stand it. Rosie must have fed the baby by now.

  “I’ll wait here until I find out what you are doing with him.” The wooden bench is slippery and hard like the wooden bench in Grand Central Station. I will sit here and think as little as possible.

  “He is being operated on now? He is already under ether? He is going to be all right?” They are not sure but I know. He will be all right. He will be able to use his hand. He is fine now. I know they can do it.

  Where is the telephone? The glass booth in the corridor? Evans must know. He’ll be frantic. He can come and get me, I’m at the end of my strength. Someone else can take over now. I can get back to the baby.

  “Evans, Eric cut his hand on the window. He cut it off at the wrist. We are here at the hospital. They are operating now, they can do it. Please come and get me and talk to them. You can do it better than I. Yes, Montparnasse. Yes, that one. I’ll be waiting for you. It will be so good to see you.”

  As I hang up, I feel my knees giving way. Why faint now? I’ve managed so far. I’ll manage some more.

  Finally the days and days of waiting are over. Eric can come home. I don’t know how I have managed to keep calm in the middle of such confusion. We’ve all taken turns going to see him but how much has he been bruis
ed by lying there, day after day, with no one to understand him?

  The hospital let us come and see him more than once a day because he only speaks Spanish and English. What do you do when you are only three and your hand is tied to the side of the bed, immobile? He can only make slight movements of the body. A little motorcycle that Rosie brought can be moved over his knees, like a racing motorcycle over mountains. The sheets become a world, the bars of the crib its boundaries.

  How will this keep him from reaching out? Which will be more important for him, a brave mind or a healed nerve? I wish I knew more about the effect of the mind on the body. I have dim recollections of psychology lectures in college, Pavlovian dogs and bells. There was a pamphlet by a genius in 1948, some truth about the spirit being stronger than the mind and body. It had better be stronger.

  I don’t think I can help him much, with a baby being nursed, the other boys running and jumping around me, a batch of idiot maids and Evans in dark despair. Will his spirit come out stronger?

  ***

  The only woman I know that has a spirit that has made it over the dreadful things that have happened to her mind and body is my great aunt, Hélène, a relic of old fashioned courage. Perhaps she can help us both.

  “Evans, let’s go see Aunt Hélène. She seems like a bastion of strength to me.”

  “How can she help, Andrée? You will have to work on Eric’s nerve therapy with him every day. That’s all. When I think of my son, unable to throw a football, a left arm that will be useless, a dangling and dead hand. His life is ruined.”

  “Evans, dear, he will be alright, I know it. My father and his friends are concentrating on his being well now.”

  “That is ridiculous. A bunch of old men thinking positive thoughts three thousand miles away will do no good. However, Aunt Hélène is a wonderful old woman and can tell me more about Paris. Maybe she can help you find a new apartment and a decent nurse.”

  “To tell you the truth, I get awfully sick of these nurses. We’ve already been through two. I need someone who’ll do the dirty work. I don’t need a lady to sit on her ass at the park and play with the boys, while I clean up at home.”

  “It’s your attitude that scares them away. You must let them have total authority over the children. Of course they won’t obey her, when they know they can run to you.”

  “I don’t see how an uneducated, overbearing woman, who is too lazy to do anything but sit on park benches with another’s children has any right to tell me what to do with my children. I’m afraid the children’s brains will stultify, they’ll get the degenerate values of people who can only be servants. I want them to see things, notice that the world is exciting and dangerous and they can live in it safely because they wish to.”

  “You have clap-trap notions, Andrée.”

  “Come off it, Evans. You believe in the aristocracy of the mind, don’t you? Why go to college? Why read books? Why try and be the best if you want to be part of the great grey masses.”

  “You’re a snob. My mother warned me that your family was wrong for me to marry into. What’s wrong with the masses?”

  “Not a thing, if you have a servant mentality. I’ve read of enough great men and women that have come up from the bottom to run the world, in some way or other, to know they didn’t want to be the masses. Who are the masses anyway? Just people, some brave, some weak. Everyone starts out equal, rich or poor. They make their life. I don’t see why you think that people are not responsible for everything they do?”

  “What about a lousy environment?”

  “They’re just that much greater if they can rise above it. I believe in people.”

  “You have Mary Poppins ideas, brought up rich. You haven’t the faintest idea of what you are talking about. Bravery comes because you’ve never failed.”

  “No, it’s courage. It’s failing and struggling and coming out stronger on the other side. Courage is living and growing in the spirit. It doesn’t require money, it requires guts.”

  “The hell with it. I’ll call Aunt Hélène.”

  “Thanks. Let’s go get Eric now.” I hate to watch over Eric, day and night. Such attention to the body is wrong. He will be well.

  ***

  Eric is making full use of his position. He seems to be playing on his smallness and frailty, with his arm tied close to his body. What a summer! Yesterday at the Bastille Day parade, the policeman carried him gently to the front of the watchers. He reviewed the troops holding on to his big brother’s hand. Then I had to race him back to the hospital to check his cast, his arm has shrunk and I was afraid there wasn’t enough support.

  The X–ray says his nerves have knit together. Now I can begin his hand exercises. The nurse says there is very little hope for him to be able to move his hand again but I don’t believe her. I won’t have a child who can lean on his crippled body to get his way.

  Today, we’re going to have lunch with Aunt Hélène at her apartment. At last I can fall back into the world of Proust and Colette.

  “Evans, let’s get her some roses.”

  “What’s the point, she can’t see them.”

  “She can smell them and touch them. The maid will see them. She hates chocolates and she has everything money can buy.”

  “There’s a shop here on the corner.”

  “What are all the women doing, standing on the street corners? This is a good section of town.”

  “That is a direct result of that idiot woman[14] closing all the whore houses. They have no place to go, so they solicit men along the street. Very unsanitary. That’s no way to control disease.”

  “True, that’s short sighted. Ah, here’s the courtyard of Hélène’s building. What a high iron fence!”

  “Comes the revolution, it won’t help.”

  “Oh, please. Shut up.”

  Old fashioned Paris apartment, painted cream, cream brocade on the furniture and cream curtains drawn against the light she can’t see anyway. Soft beige glow, neither like under water or of the air. Madeline, the maid, greets us in whispers, calm and elegant, devoted to her old lady. The old ways of an old household, each knowing its place and insisting on mine.

  The cook and the chauffeur appear at the door of the kitchen. I know he has been peacefully gossiping in the huge old kitchen, drinking wine at the cutting table underneath the row of pots and pans. I am politely greeted as a member of the family and I shed my American joviality.

  “Bonjour Madame.” They talk in chorus.

  “Bonjour Madame, Bonjour Monsieur.” The litany of politeness.

  I am asked, implicitly, to ignore that the chauffeur drinks too much, the cook had a vile temper and throws the pots at anyone who enters her domain when she’s working, that Madeline’s lover is taking her for all she’s worth. They know that they will all be well taken care of at Aunt Hélène’s death. They will have a little apartment and respectability. Here is a feudal society in miniature.

  “Aunt Hélène!”

  I bend to kiss her soft and wrinkled cheek. Her hand clasps the head of her cane and she lifts her eyes, although she can’t see me. Evans murmurs a few words with grace and charm as I look around the room, feeling large and bumptious.

  “Let us go into lunch. I don’t want to keep the cook waiting. She has such a temper.” A small tyranny.

  We follow slowly next to her into the glass-doored dining room. She has a steel pin through her hip ever since she broke it in an old lady’s fall. She looks elegant in simple clothes. Her navy blue Shetland sweater is open over a delicate white silk blouse, her skirt is blue and white tweed, her shoes sensible and expensive. Her short snow–white hair frames a face that has become extraordinary. The nose, an arched beak, would be too large for her face without the imperious carriage of the head. The heavy–lidded Spanish eyes are blind but intuitive. Anyone else would say that she has buck teeth and a small chin but I never notice it. The expression of the mouth is sweet. The whole effect is of dignity.

  “Te
ll me more about Eric, he is my favorite, you know.” We flutter near her, waiting to be seated. The dining room shines with silver and crystal reflecting in the noon sun. The glass doors and small paned windows shine too, reminding me of the accident.

  “The surgeon is marvelous. He made his reputation on the operation. Apparently it was from Russian research.” How lucky we were.

  “Russian? Something they have truly discovered? Unbelievable. Go on, Madeline, you may serve dinner.”

  I continue. “He didn’t have time to sew all the nerves together, as Eric is so tiny. As it was, he was under ether for five hours, the very limit. Can you imagine the delicacy of the work? He wrapped the central nerve in nerve tissue and hoped it would regenerate. It did, like a lizard’s tail. There has just been another operation of the same type in America, on a boy who had his arm torn off by a train. Ours was the first. Of course, they are still dubious about him using the arm.”