One afternoon in July, Lily received a call from her father, whom she had only seen a handful of times since her wedding.
“You’d better come over here and get your mother, before I call the cops.”
“What’s going on, Dad?”
“She can tell you all about it when you get here.”
Lily found her mother planted in the driveway at Chestnut Crest, arms folded across her chest. Ricci stood in the living room window, and her father stood guard at the back door.
“Mom,” said Lily, getting out of the car. “What’s going on?”
“Ricci and I have an appointment for counseling, and your father won’t let him come out. Your father is telling me I have to leave; he says I’m trespassing.”
“How can he say you’re trespassing?” Lily asked. “Your divorce isn’t final yet. It’s your house, too.”
“Not technically,” said her mother. She used her hand to push back the auburn curls now streaked with gray that were plastered to her face by sweat. “When we bought this place, you kids were all small. Ricci was still in diapers - I didn’t have anyone to watch you, so I wasn’t able to accompany your father to the bank to sign the deed and the mortgage paperwork. As far as the law is concerned, this isn’t my house; I was only a guest here. Now I am a trespasser.”
Two police cruisers pulled into the driveway.
“Dad - you called the cops? Seriously?” Lily turned to her mother. “Mom, please, just get in your car and leave. We’ll sort this out later.”
“I will not,” her mother replied. “The way New York State treats women in these cases is criminal, and if they want me out of here, they will have to arrest me and take me to jail.”
Lily gently rubbed her belly. Even though it would be at least another two months before she would start to show, she wanted to let her baby know that she would do her best to protect it from this family into which it would soon be born, a family that had become capable of such hostility.
“Dad - please... don’t do this,” Lily choked on the plea.
“I’m not doing anything,” said Lily’s father, crushing his cigarette out on the asphalt. “I’ve got the law on my side. Talk to your mother if you want to put a stop to this.”
Lily’s head swooned in the July heat, and she made her way to a chaise under the apple tree, as her parents continued their stand-off. She watched, helpless, as the fuzzy scene played out. She blinked, hoping to gain focus, as if she might make sense out of it and thereby concoct a solution. Her mother, her father, and the two policemen argued in the driveway. Her father shouted, but Lily couldn’t hear what he said, couldn’t make out the words; all she heard was the grind of hate. Her mother shoved him with both hands, causing him to lose his footing. Lily wanted to scream as the taller policeman put her mother in handcuffs, but she couldn’t find her breath. Sweat poured down her face, and she gripped the arm rests of the chaise to keep from falling out of it. The policeman used his hand to keep Lily’s mother’s head from banging on the door frame as he guided her into the back seat of the squad car, just as they did with apprehended criminals on TV.
Everyone seemed to forget that Lily was even there, a horrified, helpless spectator. She closed her eyes and cried as the squad car pulled out of the driveway and drove down the street. She hoped that unborn babies had no memories and vowed to herself that once she had the strength to get up and leave she would never again visit her father at Chestnut Crest, both as a show of solidarity for her mother and in general protest of people fucking each other over in the name of the law.
The next morning, Lily awoke to cramps that twisted and gnawed at her insides. She groaned and rolled onto her back and when she did, she felt a gush of warm fluid trickle from between her legs. She bolted up in bed.
“Oh, no!” she cried. “No, no, no, no, no!”
“What’s wrong?” said Joe groggily. “What the fuck is going on?”
Lily ran into the bathroom, as the blood ran down her leg. She sat on the toilet just in time to catch a clot of blood as it slipped from her body and hit the water with a small splash.
“No!” she cried. “Joe! Call the doctor - something is wrong! Something’s wrong with the baby!”
Lily cleaned herself, slipped a sanitary napkin into her underpants and then sat on the lid of the toilet seat.
“Yes, doc,” said Joe. “She’s right here.” Joe handed Lily the phone.
“Hello? Dr. O’Connell?” Lily paused. “Yes, eight weeks, that’s right... Uh-huh... yes... just now, about five minutes ago... Yes, I’m having cramps.”
Lily plucked two tissues from the dispenser on the back of the toilet and covered her face with them as she rocked and tried to cry as quietly as she could. Joe stood dumbfounded in the doorway.
“But isn’t there something else I can do?” Lily looked up at Joe and shook her head from side to side. “OK, OK, then I’ll see you first thing Monday. Thank you, Doctor.”
Lily handed the phone back to Joe.
“What did he say? What’s going on?”
“He said that ‘the pregnancy is likely terminating.’”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I’m having a miscarriage, Joe.” Lily burst into tears.
“Let’s get to you to the hospital then,” said Joe. “I’ll go get your slippers, you stay right there.”
“Joe -” said Lily. “No. There’s no need to go to the hospital. There’s nothing they can do for me there.”
“Then what do you need? Did he call in a prescription or something?”
“All I can do is rest and wait,” said Lily. “He wants me to come in on Monday to get checked, but he said it sounds like the pregnancy is failing.”
“Failing?”
“Yes,” said Lily. “He said it’s really common in the first trimester, and that I shouldn’t be too worried about it, that it’s not like a baby yet or anything.”
“He said that?!” Joe screamed. “I’m calling him back right now, what an asshole!”
“Please, Joe,” said Lily. “Just help me get back to bed.”
Lily stayed in bed all that weekend and then on Monday Joe drove her to the doctor where her blood test and an internal examination confirmed that Lily was no longer pregnant.
“This should progress like an ordinary period,” said Dr. O’Connell. He placed his hand on Lily’s shoulders.
“What caused this?” Joe asked. “What did she do?”
“Mr. Diotallevi, your wife didn’t do anything to bring this about. Believe me - I’ve seen women throw themselves down the stairs in an attempt to provoke a miscarriage - without success.” He turned to Lily. “Honestly, if you hadn’t had a test done so soon, you wouldn’t even have known you were pregnant. Next time, maybe wait until you’ve missed two periods before confirming.”
It was better to not know what you were missing, even in this.
As they drove home from the doctor’s office, Lily lowered the visor to keep the sun from stinging her eyes, which were already raw from sorrow.
“I blame your parents,” Joe blurted. “No matter what that doctor said, I know it wasn’t good that you were over there watching your mother get arrested, watching them fight like that. I don’t care what the doctor said. I don’t want you to go over there anymore, you hear me?”
“Whatever,” said Lily. Whatever would get Joe to stop talking and let her grieve in peace. All she wanted to do was cry - for the son she wouldn’t give him; for the baby she couldn’t hold; for the anger she never unleashed upon her mother-in-law for tainting this experience for her; for the frustration of poverty that was making its mark on her marriage; for Joe’s splintered loyalties and his ambivalence to her sexual needs; and for her mother in jail and her father’s prison of rage. Every sadness for which she’d ever denied tears came looking for its due, and Lily just wanted to oblige.
Two months had passed since the miscarriage, but Lily still didn’t feel normal. Her enthusiasm for keeping house
had dwindled and she resented that her life seemed rife with responsibilities: balance the checkbook, go to work, clean the house, do the shopping. Joe was working in the evenings now and Lily sought pleasure in eating in front of the TV and was already starting to notice that her jeans were getting snug. Joe still approached her for sex almost every day, but Lily cared mostly about getting it over with now; it was just one more in a long list of chores.
She had forgotten that Iris and Gregorio had arrived the night before, and was at first surprised when Iris called to arrange a visit.
“I’m not really feeling myself yet,” Lily told Iris over the phone. “I haven’t been going out much.”
“Of course, we were thinking of driving over to your place,” said Iris. “Gregorio knows what an ordeal this can be for a woman.”
“Sure - that’d be great, Iris - I can’t wait to see you.” She hoped she sounded sincere. Lily looked around the apartment, noticing what a mess it was; she had barely touched it since before rushing off to that awful scene between her parents. Her apartment looked much as her life felt these days. Confused. Sad. Neglected. The last thing she felt like doing was cleaning. She forced herself to retrieve the trash can from under the kitchen sink and then went from room to room, sweeping food wrappers, junk mail, the contents of overflowing ashtrays and used paper towels into it. She shoved the can back under the sink and dragged herself around the place a second time, collecting a stack of dirty dishes, which she dropped into the sink. She quickly spritzed the kitchen and bathroom faucets with Windex, wiped them down with a paper towel, and then sprayed a blast of air freshener into the middle of the living room. The buzzer rang before she had a chance to look at her hair or makeup.
“Lily! Lily of the Valley!” Iris shrieked when Lily opened the door.
“Iris!” Lily gave her sister an embrace, hoping she wouldn’t notice that she hadn’t showered. “C’mon in!” Lily stepped aside and held the door open, making way for Gregorio.
“Ciao, Bella!” chimed Gregorio, placing a kiss first on Lily’s right cheek and then her left. Lily usually loved the scent of Gregorio’s pipe tobacco, which reminded her of the incense they burned in Church at Easter, but she noticed that it was laced with the scent of Estee Lauder Youth Dew - the inevitable result of staying at Auntie Rosa’s house - the way the cloud of dust followed Pig Pen around in the Charlie Brown cartoons.
“Bella della Mamma!” shouted Auntie Rosa, toddling into the apartment behind Gregorio.
“Oh! Hi, Auntie Rosa,” said Lily. “I didn’t know you were coming.” Lily had seen very little of Auntie Rosa and Uncle Alfred since the wedding. They were on different sides of the Capotosti family conflict, so they couldn’t talk about current events without butting heads and arousing tempers, and there wasn’t much else to talk about. Iris was a popular topic of conversation, but whenever Auntie Rosa talked about Iris, she lamented about how much she missed her, and how sad it was that God wasn’t producing a baby - especially for someone so loving and sweet as Iris. Auntie Rosa was also happy to reminisce about days gone by, but her constant interjection of “You know, Lily - I loved you both the same,” was just proof that she didn’t, and that she knew everyone was aware of it. It would have been easier if she’d just admitted it.
“After all,” said Auntie Rosa, “I certainly want to see you - I haven’t seen you since the wedding, and then of course your mother wouldn’t allow me to do much.”
Lily took their coats and laid them on her bed. When she returned to the living room, she found Auntie Rosa sitting in the rocking chair that Joe had bought her for her birthday, in anticipation of the new baby. She wanted to ask Auntie Rosa to get up. “That chair’s not for you,” she wanted to say.
“How do you feel, Lily?” Iris was perched on the edge of the couch, clutching a red leather bag in her folded hands. Her long, slender, manicured fingers sparkled with gold and diamonds. She wore a knee-length blue linen dress, cinched at the waist with a red belt, and red ballerina shoes. Her long neck was adorned with a double strand of pearls, and matching earrings peeked out from behind her perfectly coiffed hair.
“I’m pretty good,” said Lily, smoothing out her hair and straightening her sweatshirt. “Tired. I must look a mess.”
Although she hadn’t planned to, she recounted recent events, pausing to gain her composure as she told them of the miscarriage, the agonizing weekend spent wondering whether she was still carrying a baby or not, the cold, factual visit to the doctor.
Auntie Rosa just shook her head, and clicked her tongue, the way she used to during the evening news.
“Your doctor is right, Lily,” said Gregorio. “At such an early stage of pregnancy, there is little more than a cluster of cells that simply fail to thrive and so purge themselves.” He took a toke on his pipe. “It certainly was a life, but could hardly be called a baby, even though it may have been so in your imagination. And this, of course, is where your grief and suffering is coming from. Do remember, Lily, that God knows what is best for us in these situations. If your feelings of despair don’t subside in a reasonable amount of time, you may want to consider asking your G-Y-N about a pharmacological solution for depression.”
Cluster of cells. Not a baby. Imagination? Didn’t he get it at all?
Lily felt her eyes welling with tears. Iris blinked and a single droplet escaped from her right eye. At least now, Lily and Iris had one thing in common.
5. Iris
“Hop right up there, Signora. This won’t take long at all.”
Iris placed a bare foot on the steel step-stool and pivoted around to rest her buttocks on the paper sheet. She was uncomfortable in her nudity, shivering with chill and agitation. A hospital gown might have helped, but by now she knew such amenities were not always provided by the public health care system, even if you were the wife of Dottor Gregorio Leale. Perched on the edge of the examining table, legs dangling, she wished she had the nerve to grab her clothes and run away.
“You just lie back now, and put your legs through there,” the doctor or intern or technician said. He wore no name tag, but his white coat identified him as a man of authority; his baldness and bifocals vouched for experience.
The only thing to do was comply, and get this whole thing over with as soon as possible. She scooted back and lowered herself to a supine position, spread her thighs, and rested her legs in the stirrups, wincing as the cold steel made contact with the backs of her knees. She hated exposing herself in this way, although she knew the professionals in the gynecology ward must be forced to look at all kinds of disgusting sights every day. Not wanting to make their jobs any more unpleasant, she had given herself a pedicure and waxed her legs the day before. She would be mortified if word got around that Dottor Leale’s wife were a slovenly American with hairy legs and overgrown toenails, in addition to being unable to bear him a child.
Isterosalpingografia. It had taken her some effort to remember, let alone pronounce, the term. Hysterosalpingogram wasn’t much easier. With a wave of the hand and a puff of the pipe, Gregorio had dismissed her concerns about undergoing the exam, telling her not to worry, the name was more intimidating than the procedure. The doctor or intern or technician said exactly the same thing as he inserted the speculum, his perfunctory warning that the instrument might feel cold reaching her ears seconds after the impact reached her vagina, but that part she was already used to. In fact, though she always felt embarrassed, she had grown accustomed to the discomfort caused by all the probing and poking to which she had been submitted over the past several months; it was the psychological strain that was harder to deal with each time.
Women all over the world got pregnant, even when they were trying not to. It didn’t matter whether you were rich or poor, smart or stupid, loved or neglected, having babies was the most natural process in God’s creation. Maybe He had decided that someone had to pay for the fact that her mother had brought more than her share of babies into the world. She had not expected this, nor
obviously had Gregorio. She recalled his first letters, how he had told her that she would make a wonderful mother, even before he had asked her to marry him. Now, as a woman and wife, she was turning out to be a total failure. To make matters worse, none of the specialists Gregorio consulted seemed able to diagnose the problem or prescribe a cure. They all reiterated that she was young and healthy and must learn to be patient, but they weren’t the ones who had to listen to Gregorio’s sermons each time he found a fresh box of Tampax in the bathroom cabinet. Month after month of temperature tracking, needle pricking, and pill popping had only produced one result: the transformation of marital relations into a job on a time clock. Sex had become the means to an end, and that end was the wail of a newborn, not the moan of a woman reaching orgasm. As her desire dwindled, taking down with it her self-esteem, and vice versa, Gregorio remained a stalwart inseminator, pouring his inexhaustible supply of semen into her at regular intervals, reminding her that she must rest, rest, rest, and stop running, sunning, drinking, thinking.
For a while, the days immediately following the ovulation-copulation frenzy had been Iris’s favorite time of the month. Her pharmaceutically stimulated ovaries had hatched all the eggs they could, and Gregorio’s sperm had been unleashed in staggering numbers. She forced herself to follow her husband’s advice, staying in bed a bit longer, taking leisurely walks instead of jogging, reading in the shade instead of going to the beach, focusing on dreaming and hoping and praying instead of worrying. She had even gotten into the habit of going to morning Mass at the little church in town, and lighting a candle to the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. By the fourth week of her cycle, anxiety always got the better of her, as she obsessively monitored her temperature, the tenderness in her breasts, and any other signs that this might be her lucky month. She had bought a do-it-yourself pregnancy test, and hid it in her underwear drawer. She had already read the instructions, and would perform the test as soon as she was a day late. She planned to prepare a special dinner for Gregorio, and present him with the positive test strip, just as he had surprised her with his semen analysis on their wedding anniversary.
[Iris and Lily 01.0 - 03.0] The Complete Series Page 67
