Ever After

by William Wharton

  I’d been camping with other kids in high school. They all lived in big houses with maids, and roughing it was fun for them. But in Paris, we lived in a small apartment, only 300 square feet, all five of us, which was already halfway to camping. Then, when we went to the mill, we had no electricity and needed to haul water from the well; it was freezing cold at Christmas and there was no way to wash your hair. I don’t look forward to camping at all. But Bert’s so excited by the idea I agree to go.

  We drive all over Greece, camping in campgrounds, and it’s as bad as I expected. Then Bert sprouts the idea we must climb Mount Olympus.

  “Why do a crazy thing like that? It looks awfully high to me. We could get lost and never be found again.”

  “But, Kate, it’s the home of the gods. There are paths and trails all the way up. We could never be lost. If you get tired, I’ll carry you.”

  I give in. Bert’s always so easy to live with except when he has one of his fixations, these goofball notions. Then he’s like someone possessed.

  He carefully makes tight knapsacks for each of us, his about twice as big as mine. He checks my hiking boots and socks. I’d forgotten Bert’s a farm boy who knows how to handle himself in rough country. Maybe he wants me to go with him so he can show off.

  At first, it isn’t so bad, and we sing as we walk along. Then it starts getting steeper. I want to turn back. The top is still far off. Also it’s beginning to feel cold, in the middle of July!

  “Come on, Kate, we’re more than halfway. Think of it. We might meet some of the gods; it’s the chance of a lifetime.”

  “You go ahead, Bert. I’ll wait here.”

  “Give me your hand, Kate. I’ll pull with each step.”

  I give him my hand. We slug along for another half hour. Then I sit down on a rock. I look up to the top. We don’t seem to be any closer.

  “Honestly, Bert. I can’t make it. I’m not the athletic type. You go on and I’ll start back.”

  “Let’s just take a little rest, Hon. Then we’ll see. Look, the view from here is beautiful. It must be sensational on top.”

  I’m too tired to argue. I have a headache and I’m beginning to feel faint. What kind of guy am I living with?

  After another half hour, I have my breath back. I’m ready to start down. Bert stands up, windmills his arms around in big circles, helps me wrestle my pack up on my back again.

  “Kate, try 200 more steps. I know you can do it. If you come this close to the top of Mount Olympus and turn back, you’ll never forgive yourself.”

  So we start trudging on, Bert practically dragging me along behind him. I begin to understand the meaning of the word “enthusiasm,” one of Dad’s favorites. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard him say it meant “with the gods” in Ancient Greek or something. Bert’s definitely with the gods, or, at least, wants to be.

  I’d been counting, trying to give my mind something to do, and once we reach 200 I stop. If it weren’t so cold, I’d be sweating down into my boots. The top looks closer, but not close enough. Neither of us says anything. Bert drops his pack and helps me off with mine again. We sit on the rocky side of that damned hill. Even Bert is puffing.

  “Well, we’re getting close, Honey. I’ll bet not many women have made it this far. I’m proud of you.”

  He’s being so slick, which isn’t like him. Maybe living together is a big mistake. What other goofy ideas does he have? Mount Everest? I feel I might be getting hysterical.

  “OK, Bert. I’ll try to reach the top of this goddamned mountain but when we come down, we’re finished. I don’t want to live with a madman.”

  “Oh, come on, Kate. You don’t mean that. If you feel that way, let’s just turn on back right now. I didn’t realize. I’m sorry.”

  I look at him and stand. He pushes the pack up on my back and then pulls on his. He starts on his way down the hill. I turn and start up. I’m determined to shame him, make him realize what he’s been doing. I’m sure I’m going to die of exhaustion or a heart attack and it will be his fault. He hurries after me.

  “You OK, Kate? Come on, let’s go back. Your face is white.”

  I don’t answer. I keep my eyes down and take one step at a time. If this is the last thing we ever do together, at least I’m going to do it right. He trudges along behind me. I don’t even think to worry about Wills. I’m that mad. Bert tries to take the pack off my back but I shrug him off. He doesn’t say anything.

  I don’t know how I do it, but we reach the top. I check to be sure there’s no higher place, then plop down. I’m sure I’m going to faint, but I don’t. I look out. It is beautiful. Bert’s on his knees beside me, looking into my face.

  “Please don’t be this way, Kate. I just got so excited by the whole idea I didn’t think. Come on, give me another chance.”

  I stare at him. Then I see tears in his eyes. I’d never even thought Bert could cry. He knows. He knows how close he’s come to losing me. More than anything else, I know how much he really loves me, not just romance or sex but love with a capital L-O-V-E. I fall over into him.

  We sit on top of that cold, uncomfortable hill through most of the afternoon.

  “Kate, we’d better start back down before sundown. I’m not sure I can find our way back to the camp in the dark.”

  I stand up. I look at him.

  “Bert, I know you can.”

  He looks me in the eyes carefully, gives me a hug, and we begin walking.

  It’s hard to believe how easy it is going down. Although my legs are like rubber and my big toe feels as if it’s going to push its way right out the front of that heavy boot, we make it just as the sun sets. Bert has both packs. I know he’s incredibly excited about having made it all the way to the top but he doesn’t want to say anything until I do. And I’m just too tired.

  When we arrive at the tent, I flop on the sleeping-bag. I hurt all over. Bert piles our packs in the corner, then kneels at my feet and unlaces my boots. I’m too tired to stop him. He gets off my boots and socks, then begins massaging my feet. Having my feet massaged is one of the things I like most in this world. How did he know? Immediately my headache starts to fade. I begin to be proud we’ve actually made it. He covers my feet and crawls up to my head. He looks into my eyes.

  “Kate, you did it. You climbed to the top of Mount Olympus. That makes you a goddess. I always knew you were one, but this proves it.”

  He reaches into his pack and pulls out, of all things, a bottle of champagne, a warm bottle. He’s toted it all the way up that mountain and then back again.

  “I hoped we could drink this up there, but it wasn’t the right time. Will you drink some with me now, before it explodes?”

  I smile and reach up for him. He comes down on me and gives me one of his most loving and enfolding bear hugs. Up there on that hill was the closest I came to losing the best man in the world. We drink the warm champagne slowly. Bert undresses and undresses me. We climb into the sleeping-bag. We haven’t even finished the bottle when I fall asleep with my head on his shoulder. I imagine he finishes the bottle himself, but I don’t remember a thing.

  We stay at the camp another day while I recover from my stiffness and my poor feet heal enough so I can walk on them again. It’s warm now and I spread out in the sun. I have to admit I keep looking up at that mountain, not believing I’ve really done it. I can’t think of any one thing, except having Wills, that was so hard or so worth doing.

  A few days later, we go to a monastery, which for centuries allowed only men inside. We’re hauled up a cliff in a wicker basket. I’m scared to death. They house us in neat, clean, small rooms that used to be cells for the monks. We eat at a big long table with the monks and a few other tourists. The food is simple but good. There’s no electricity so we go to bed early. Bert starts making his moves. Then I remember.

  “Bert, I left my diaphragm down in the car, and it’s the wrong time.”

  He doesn’t stop but keeps fondling, stroking, nuzzling
me.

  “I’ll tell you, Honey, much as I love you, I’m not going down in that basket in the dark to get it.”

  I turn into him.

  “I’m not either.”

  We make love, simply, almost reverently, in a way somehow like the food and the whole place, simple and rewarding. Afterward, as I lie stretched out on my back, I look up at the ceiling and try to read what’s written out in gold and red in a ring around the wall. I can’t figure out much but there’s one word in that crazy complicated printing that looks to me like Dayiel.

  Three weeks after we’re back, I know I’m pregnant. I check with a kit and sure enough it’s so. This is the very last thing I want. I know abortion is out for me. It has nothing to do with religion or anything. I just don’t like the idea of anybody violating my body and then having nothing for it; it’s like a negative number somehow, something you can see, but less than zero: nothing. I tell Bert.

  It makes him crazy. He picks me up and swings me in the air. I think he’s going to drop me.

  “It was in that monastery, wasn’t it? Tell me.”

  “As far as I can figure, it wasn’t on Mount Olympus.”

  “I knew it. I could feel it. I felt a third person with us in the cell that night and the next morning. It was as if you had an angel on your shoulder or some kind of aura all around you. I just knew it.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t tell me. Now what do we do? I’ll never finish the two years’ teaching experience I need to get a job in an international school. I’m back where I started, depending on a man. Goddamn it, Bert, I worked so hard to free myself.”

  “Think about it, Kate. We’re going to have a baby, somebody new who’s the two of us put together. Doesn’t that make you excited? God, I’m almost dizzy thinking about it. Come on, let’s go down to the Rathaus and find out what we should do to get married. Imagine, I’m going to be a father and you’re going to be my wife.”

  “No, I’m not. I did that once. The only ones who profit from marriages are lawyers. Either you love me and will stick around to help or you won’t. Priests or mayors or Burgermeisters or anybody waving sticks over our heads or throwing smoke in our faces doesn’t change anything. I just hope if you want to split, you’ll be straight enough to help me until the baby’s in school and I can go back to work.”

  “Damn, Kate. You sound so cold-hearted. I really want to marry you. I want us to be Mr. and Mrs. Woodman. I’m so proud of you and I want everybody to know. Don’t you understand?”

  “That’s just male egotism talking. You have to remember: I’ve been through all this. I suffered from it. I’d like to think it would be different for us—I know I love you and am more than half-sure that you love me—but nothing lasts. Life is change and if you don’t like change you don’t like life. I like life.”

  But I can feel myself getting excited. I love children; that’s why I enjoy teaching kindergarten and first grade. I’m like Mom that way. I can feel myself melting. I swore I’d never be trapped like this again, but here it is. I smile and snuggle into Bert’s arms.

  “Bert, I’m glad you’re the father and feel the way you do. I’ve just had so many bad experiences with men. You’re the first man I’ve ever trusted. I’ll be happy to be the mother of our child. In fact, if it’s a girl I want to call her Dayiel.”

  Bert holds me close, but has already started sucking in his little beer-belly so it won’t push against me. We stand there in the hall, rocking back and forth, almost as if we’re dancing. Bert even starts to hum. He stops.

  “Did you say Dayiel? How do you spell it? Where did you find such a name?”

  I tell him about reading it on the ceiling where the baby was conceived. He laughs, rears back. There are tears in his eyes again.

  “What if it’s a boy?”

  When Wills comes home at the end of summer, I’m beginning to show a little bit and have tender nipples. We wait till after supper on the first night. I’ve made some chocolate milk and then bring out cookies, German Liebkuchen. These Wills really likes. We’re in the kitchen. Bert brings it up.

  “How’d you like a little brother or sister, Wilzer?”

  Wills looks at him carefully.

  “Where do you mean, here, or with Daddy and Sally in California?”

  That stops Bert. Neither of us had thought of that. It’s easy to forget how Wills lives in two different worlds with two different sets of people, and he’s just come from the other world.

  “I mean here with us, Wilzer, with your mom and me.”

  “But you aren’t my dad. He might get mad if Mom and you have a baby.”

  “They don’t live together any more, Wilzer. They’re divorced. I live with your mom now.”

  “But you aren’t married the way Dad and Sally are. How can you have a baby together?”

  “Well, we are married in a way. We consider ourselves married. That’s why I’m living here with you.”

  “Do I get to go to the wedding?”

  I lean forward and hold Wills tight to me. It’s the first time I realize how alone he must feel. It’s hard on kids when parents break up. They don’t show much at first but afterwards nothing surprises them any more.

  That night I call Mom and Dad in Paris. Mom’s even more excited than Bert. I can tell Dad is, too. They both have always loved children and, so far, Wills is their only grandchild. I have a hard time getting them off the phone; we don’t really have the money to afford long-distance calls to Paris.

  Bert is all over me while I’m pregnant, not only to make love, but also to put his face, his ear, even his nose against my stomach as it gets bigger. I feel movement early, just before the fourth month. When Bert feels it, he becomes excited, jumping up and down like one of those Indian dancers you see.

  “Bert, you’ll wake Frau Zeidelman. Stop acting like an idiot and come back here.”

  He lowers himself onto the bed and puts both his hands and his face against me.

  “There it is again. It’s live. It’s pushing right against me. Just feel that.”

  “I feel it, Bert. Now relax.”

  After that night, he climbs in bed with me every evening after I’ve read to Wills, and talks to the baby. He not only talks, he sings—crazy songs. I can’t imagine how he knows so many. And some have the dirtiest lyrics I’ve ever heard. He says he learned them as a kid in Oregon. He sings so I begin giggling and then the baby jumps around. It’s ridiculous, but I love it.

  Then Wills hears us, of course, and wants to join in. He’ll have his head on one side of my belly and Bert his head on the other. At first, Bert doesn’t sing his dirty songs but then I say it’s OK, and Wills laughs so hard he almost falls off the bed. They’re just the kind of songs little boys like most.

  Now Bert really starts putting pressure on us to get married.

  “Look, Kate. My folks come from a small town with only 600 people. They’re Catholic, although the only one who’s actually religious is my little sister. We don’t need to have a church wedding, but they’ll feel peculiar if we have our baby without any kind of wedding at all.”

  Finally I give in. It’s also my parents. They tell us we can have the wedding on the houseboat with a big dance afterward. My parents have a two-story houseboat they put together—a wooden boat on top, with a metal hull underneath. The downstairs is fifty feet long and is almost all one room. The boat looks like an ark and is perfect for parties. This could be our personal Halloween party, to chase away all the ghosts. This was before I knew there are no ghosts, not the way people think, anyway.

  So that’s what we do. Nobody in Bert’s family has ever been to Europe, but the whole passel of them say they’re coming. We decide, because we have a five-day holiday for All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day, to celebrate the marriage on November first. That day will also honor my Aunt Emmaline, Mom’s sister. It’s her birthday.

  I have two aunts, Aunt Emmaline, and Dad’s sister, Aunt Jean. They were girlfriends in high school. In fact the two o
f them brought Dad and Mom together when they were all teenagers. Aunt Jean married a PE teacher in a junior high school and has had five kids, all by Caesarean. Aunt Emmaline was an actress. She got married on her fortieth birthday. It was her first and only marriage. It lasted five years even though she was married to one of the nicest men I’ve ever met.

  I adored Aunt Emmaline when I was a little girl. She lived in gorgeous apartments and wore fancy clothes. She was always on TV in some series or another and was in several films. She was glamorous. She bleached her hair, which normally was sandy-colored like mine, so she looked like a real blonde, and wore heavy make-up. She had a great figure.

  Aunt Emmaline was the dream aunt for a teenage girl, a fairy godmother. She’d take me out to eat and buy me clothes. She was as different from my mother as anyone could be. Mom is the same size, but with dark hair and dark eyes. She doesn’t dye her hair. She has the same beautiful figure but you’d never know it from the way she dresses. Mom has always been quiet. In fact, I can’t remember Mom ever once raising her voice.

  But before Aunt Emmaline was fifty, she was a drunk. She’d call us on Christmas Eve almost every year and give what Dad called her “goodbye-goodbye” speech. Dad made it a rule that nobody was to answer the phone on Christmas Eve but him. We could always tell from his face who it was. He’d just listen and nod his head. Normally my dad isn’t a great listener. Then he’d say, “Is that all, Em?” He’d pause. “Well, I hope you have a happy life and Merry Christmas. Take care of yourself.” Then he’d hang up. It was always the same. We never knew what she was saying. When I finally asked, he told me she was threatening to kill herself because nobody loved her.

  My last dealings with Aunt Emmaline were sad ones.

  My younger sister, Camille, and I were living in California. I was in Venice, and Camille in Culver City. Mom’s mother, our grandmother, was living in Santa Monica. Emmaline was living in West Hollywood. Grandma was more than eighty at the time.

  Grandma called Camille and said she’d been trying to phone Emmaline for three days and nobody answered. She’d taken a cab over to her place but it was all locked up. She wondered what she should do. She was crying.