by Jeanne Ray
“Well, one, probably. The greatest chance is for one. At least one.”
“But you could have six?” I sat down on the arm of the sofa.
Nora smiled hugely, a smile so sweet and vacant, a smile so utterly unlike any expression I had ever seen on her face before, that I wondered if they had attached one of the fertilized eggs to her brain. “No one actually has six, except that woman who’s always on the cover of Good Housekeeping.”
“I think she had seven,” I said.
“Eight,” Sarah said. “She had eight.”
Nora laughed. “Well, we don’t need to worry about that. All I want is one nice, healthy baby. That’s what I’m going to concentrate on now.”
I wanted to tell her that concentration had nothing to do with it, but there was no sense in getting into that.
Alex walked in from the kitchen eating a yogurt out of its little cup. He was wearing the same goofy smile that Nora had, the smile of someone who had hit the jackpot.
“I didn’t know you were here!” I said, getting up to kiss him on the cheek. “Congratulations!”
“If you had known I was coming, you would have stocked in some real food.” He scraped his spoon around the bottom of the cup.
“I’m the one who’s supposed to be hungry,” Nora said, sounding very much like the sunny heroine of a romantic comedy.
Alex was startled. “Are you hungry? There’s really nothing in there but yogurt, but I can go out and get you something.”
Nora reached up and squeezed his wrist. “Sweetheart, I’m kidding.” She looked up at me, her eyes bright as new pennies. “Is he going to be the cutest father?”
“The cutest,” I said. There was no other possible answer to such a question.
“Can we tell Romeo?”
“You could tell him, but he wouldn’t hear you. The doctor gave him a shot. He’s completely out of it.”
“What are you going to tell Romeo?” Big Tony walked in with Sandy. He thought we were talking about his father’s back because, of course, until a few minutes ago that was the big news of the day. His face was still sick with worry.
“We’re going to have a baby!”
Big Tony and Sandy just stood very close together, looking puzzled. They reached down and locked their pinkie fingers. “But you don’t want a baby,” Sandy said finally.
“I do!” Nora said.
“But you hate babies. When I was pregnant—”
Nora cut her off. “That was a long time ago.”
“It wasn’t such a long time—Sarah, you have got to turn that movie off!”
I have to say, I had risen above Wonka for a moment. I didn’t even hear him.
Sarah looked up at her mother from the safe custody of her aunt’s arm. “We can’t turn it off, now that she’s going to have a baby. This means it’s working.”
“It doesn’t mean that the movie is working. It means that nature is working, or it means science is working. Besides, no one can watch television for their entire pregnancy.” Sandy glanced around for the clicker, but Sarah deftly slipped it under her thigh, so Sandy walked over and turned the television off. We were all startled by the sudden silence of the room.
Sarah took in a deep breath to begin her Wonka-deprived caterwauling, but Sandy turned on her quickly. “Don’t start. Not now. We’re going to have one adult moment in this family without singing chocolate bars.”
“They don’t sing,” Sarah said, implying that her mother had lost her mind.
Sandy opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. She stood there for a minute, guppylike, opening and closing and coming to nothing. Sarah was so struck by the sight that she forgot to cry, and instead Sandy burst into tears.
“I’m sorry,” Sandy said. “It’s just such good news. It caught me off guard. I shouldn’t be so emotional. I’m really happy—” She turned and walked out of the room and went upstairs.
Alex clapped Big Tony on the shoulder. “We’ve been crying all day. That’s what babies do to people, I guess.”
“I guess,” Tony said weakly.
I slipped off the couch and followed Sandy up to her room, the room that had been hers when she was a baby and a little girl and a teenager and a single mother coming home and a married woman. I remembered putting together the crib with Mort, then taking it apart to bring in a toddler bed; then there were two twin beds so her friends could sleep over. She got the double bed after her divorce. I thought that I hadn’t gotten very far away from where I started out, but Sandy hadn’t even moved across the hall. I tapped on her door, then let myself in. Sandy never could hear anything when she was crying.
I sat down beside her on the bed and stroked her marvelous confusion of hair. “What is it?”
“Nora hates babies.”
“I know. I guess her biological clock just caught up with her.”
Sandy rolled over on her back and wiped her pillowcase across her eyes. “She always made me feel so bad about myself. She had this big career and all this money, and I was home with my kids. She acted like I was such a failure.”
“Nora never thought you were a failure,” I said. I had to say it, but I didn’t know that for sure. It seemed perfectly possible.
“Now she gets to have a baby. Even Dad and Lila get to have a baby. Sometimes I feel like everybody gets a baby except me.”
“Well, you’ve had two babies.”
Sandy covered her eyes with her hands and started crying in earnest. I had to wait awhile before she could even breathe clearly. “I want another one!”
“You want to have another baby?” Was that possible? Her children could pour their own breakfast cereal and take their own baths. They knew how to program the VCR. Who would want to go backward from that?
“I want to have a baby with Tony. But we can’t. There isn’t any money, and he’s back in school, but Nora can just snap her fingers and get to have anything she wants.”
I lay down next to Sandy and let her cry in my arms. I didn’t know what to say to her: that two children were plenty, and you didn’t need to have a baby with someone to really love him, and that Nora had tried really hard to get pregnant. But sometimes a mother is just a box of Kleenex, silent and comforting, a willing place for a girl to pour out her sorrows.
Chapter Five
AFTER KNOWING EACH OTHER IN A LIMITED AND inaccurate context for most of our lives, Romeo and I started dating three years ago. Dating is a very thin word. It calls up images of malt shops and hand holding, which gives some indication of the last time I dated. These days Romeo was my business partner, my dear friend, my paramour. He was not, however, my husband or the man I lived with.
This had something to do with the fact that his ninety-three-year-old mother, his son Alan, Alan’s wife Theresa, their three children, and their children’s dog, Junior, were living with him, just as my daughter Sandy, Romeo’s son Big Tony, and Sandy’s two children, and their cat, Oompah-Loompah, lived with me. At one point we had actually discussed the possibility of moving all the children into Romeo’s house and Romeo and I living together in my house. It wouldn’t make anything more expensive, but logistically it wouldn’t work in terms of everyone having bedrooms.
For awhile we managed to keep a tiny studio apartment so we’d have someplace where we could go and be alone, but times were tight, and after a year of struggling to keep two flower shops open and employ all our children, we had to give it up.
We didn’t do sleepovers. I suppose we could have; these were modern times; but we both felt too weird about it with all the kids in the house. Children have a tendency to throw up in the middle of the night. They have bad dreams. And when they stumbled out of bed at 3:00 A.M., nauseated or frightened or both, they didn’t differentiate between Mama’s door and Grandma’s door, they just came in.
So even though Romeo and I lived completely intertwined lives and spent our days together at work and caught the blessed and rare moment alone to make love, we virtually never went
to sleep together in the same bed unless we managed a rare, tiny weekend vacation up in Maine.
Now here I was, exhausted from what had been by any standard a day of enormous importance, standing at the foot of my own bed.
And Romeo, the man I longed to go to bed with, was as comatose as Juliet in her tomb.
Sarah and Little Tony had gone to sleep with no questions about where I was planning to sleep or when Romeo was going home. They seemed to understand that he was sick and staying over, and no one so much as batted an eyelash. I was clearly not creating a situation that would keep them tied up in therapy through their middle years.
I sat down on the edge of the bed. Romeo was unmovable on the side I thought of as my side, the side that had been Mort’s side back in the days Mort slept in this bed. I unlaced my sneakers and pushed them off, but kept the rest of my clothes on. I had learned that lesson, at least. I slipped beneath the covers fully dressed and carefully, carefully, so as not to create the slightest bit of bounce, leaned over and kissed my true love’s cheek.
“Good night, Romeo,” I whispered. There was not a flicker of response, and for a minute I placed my hand on the side of his neck to make sure that everything was still okay.
That night, I dreamed I was hugely pregnant. I was beside myself with worry, and I paced the floor wearing a green dress that looked like a pup tent. “Romeo, what have we done?” I said. “We’re too old for this. We’ll be eighty when the baby goes to college.”
But Romeo didn’t seem to be concerned. “Everything will be wonderful,” he said, his hands on my belly.
“But we can’t!” I wailed. “It isn’t right. Who’ll take care of the baby if we die?”
“We have big families. There’s plenty of love to go around. There will be plenty for our baby.”
And the very next minute, since this is the way things go in dreams, the baby was in my arms, all wrapped up tight in a white blanket. It was a little boy, my first son, and I felt that rush of happiness I had felt only twice before in my life, the perfect moment of complete possibility and goodness. There was never such a beautiful baby as this child, this bundle of light. I cried over his fine black hair and fat cheeks. “Romeo, look. Look at our son!”
Romeo took the baby high over his head and shook him gently, and the baby laughed and laughed. “And you thought it was too late!”
I held on to his arm, nearly drowning in all the love I felt for these two. I am Charlie Bucket. I found the golden ticket.
When I woke up it was the middle of the night, and I was holding on to Romeo’s arm, my whole body pressed in tight to his.
“What is it?” he said sleepily.
“I woke you up. I’m sorry.” I touched his forehead. “Are you okay?”
“My back hurts,” he said. “And I have twenty-four cotton balls in my mouth.”
I sat up and turned on the light beside the bed. He looked impossibly tired for someone who had been sleeping so hard. “I’ll get you some water and a pain pill. Tony went out and had your prescriptions filled.”
“He’s a good boy.” Romeo’s voice sounded like it was being excavated one word at a time from the darkest recesses of his chest.
I moved carefully away from him and got the pill and the cup, but when I came back he only looked at me. “I don’t know about this,” he said. He drew in his elbows and tried to push up, then he made a sound that was something like, “Ike!” and put his arms down again. His head had not left the pillow a quarter inch.
“It’s okay,” I said, realizing that there were some advantages to having young children in your house. I went very quietly down to the kitchen and brought up the box of bendy-necked straws that Sarah demanded when drinking chocolate milk. I also picked up a long narrow vase just in case a trip to the bathroom could not be arranged.
“You’re a very thoughtful person,” Romeo said.
I held down the straw. “I’m a mother. It comes with the territory.”
“I’m not going to be awake much longer,” he said, when I slipped into bed. “Is there anything going on that I should know about?”
“I feel pretty awful about your back,” I said.
“Don’t.”
“Oh, and the big news is that Nora’s pregnant and thrilled, and Sandy is devastated because she and Tony want to have a baby, and they can’t afford one.”
Romeo gave a small smile. “Then I’m happy for Nora and sorry for Sandy.” He looked like he might have said more on the subject but it took too much energy, and he was on his way back to sleep.
I leaned over and put my head on the corner of his pillow. It was so wonderful and strange to have Romeo in my bed, and everything in me wanted to wrap myself around him. “Romeo?”
“Hm?”
“Do you ever wish we’d had a baby together?”
“We had plenty of babies.”
“But do you think it would have been nice? Not that it could have happened; it’s too late.”
“No,” he said.
In my dream you were so happy, I wanted to say to him, you were crazy about our baby. But all I said was, “Oh.”
“Having babies was a lot of work,” he said drowsily. “I like it better this way.” He yawned. “If I had known how nice life could be without babies, I would have told Camille we weren’t having any.”
I closed my eyes and watched Romeo toss our baby up in the air again, but this time the wind caught the baby, and he blew straight up into the night and disappeared into the stars. My fat baby flew away from me, and, much to my surprise, I was still perfectly happy. I allowed myself the pleasure of putting one hand lightly over Romeo’s wrist and together we fell back to sleep.
It was just barely light when the phone started ringing. Romeo opened one eye, then closed it. I started to reach over him to get the phone, but then I thought better of it. I got out of bed and walked around.
“Julie?” a man’s voice whispered.
“Yes?”
“It’s Alan. Tony told me that Dad hurt his back again.”
“Oh, Alan, I’m sorry. I should have called you. Things were a little hectic around here last night.”
But the truth was more complicated. I didn’t feel comfortable calling Romeo’s sons. I never had quite gotten over how much they had hated me at first. Even though they were perfectly nice to me now, Big Tony and Plummy, Romeo’s daughter, were the only two I felt completely at ease with.
“No, no, that’s not a problem. It’s just that Grandma’s been waiting up all night, and she’s pretty confused. Theresa can’t get her calmed down. I told her that Dad was staying with a friend, but she didn’t believe me.”
“Who’s on the phone?” I heard the old woman bark out in the background.
This was perhaps the single most compelling reason why Romeo and I didn’t live together: his rotten mother. Though his sons had come to peace with me, his mother still believed I would best be dispatched with a silver bullet through my heart. Candidly, I figured she was bound to die pretty soon and that I might as well sit tight and wait her out. But at ninety-three she seemed suspiciously healthy; only her mind had gone. It seemed to me she was mostly living in the 1950s, at the very height of her family hating my family. I figured her plan was to outlive me so as to deny me any chance of greater happiness. I both admired Romeo for honoring his pledge to take care of the old bat and cursed him for not putting her in a home. Not that we could have afforded a home. Alan’s wife Theresa, a sainted, silent Italian girl, stayed home and took care of the senior Mrs. Cacciamani, her own three children, and Junior, the dog.
“Your dad’s pretty doped up,” I told Alan, “but let me see if I can wake him.”
There was a ruckus on the other end of the line. “Is that Romeo you’re talking to? Give me the phone!”
“Grandma, it isn’t Dad. Let go of the cord.”
I waited for Alan to say no, don’t wake Dad up, but instead he said, “Yeah, I think that would be best.”
I gave R
omeo a gentle tap right in the middle of his chest. It wasn’t even six o’clock in the morning. “Hey, Romeo, hey, wake up.”
He opened his eyes enough to squint at me. “Is something wrong?” he said. I could tell the cotton balls were back.
“Here, take a sip of water and talk to Alan on the phone. Your mother is worried about you.” I would not have said this so nicely were it not for the fact I knew Alan could hear everything. I held down the bendy-neck straw, and Romeo took a long drink. Then I held the phone next to his ear.
“Alan?” He stopped and cleared his throat, struggling to make his voice sound more awake. “No, I’m fine, my back is fine. Just a little catch. I’ll be completely fine. Put Mom on the phone, I’ll talk to her.” Romeo waited, looked up at me, mouthed the words “good morning.” “Mom? Yeah, it’s me…. No, I’m great, I just stayed over with a friend…. I went to Mass, I did. I saw Father Al yesterday.”
As I listened to Romeo lie, some deeply insane part of me wanted to say, why won’t you tell your demented ninety-three-year-old mother that you’re with me? How will she ever learn to accept me if you pretend like we’re not together? Mentally, I gave myself a good slap and got over it.
“…No, I won’t miss work. I didn’t stay up too late. How are you feeling this morning?…Well, I’m sorry I kept you up. Mom, I’ve got to get going now…. That’s right, I have to go to work…. I love you, too. Don’t be too hard on Theresa. Do what she tells you to do. Let me talk to Alan again.”
When Alan got back on the phone, Romeo told him to call if there were any problems at work.
“And what?” I said when I hung up for him. “You’ll come right over?”
“I might be helpful over the phone,” he said.
“That’s true, but you can’t pick the phone up.”
“I can pick you up, and you can pick the phone up.”
“You do realize your back is broken, don’t you? This isn’t a catch.”
