Great With Child

by Sonia Taitz

  Arlie remained silent.

  “You know what I think?” said Abigail. “I think you and Tim should go on an actual date or something. You might find you have a lot in common. Do you want me to mention it to him?”

  Finally, Arlie spoke. She wiped her hands on her apron and said, “What does that mean, ‘date’? We go out to a movie, we eat popcorn or something like that?”

  Abigail sensed a passion rising in Arlie, something like anger, but not exactly that. A grievance. A misunderstanding that needed to be cleared up.

  “You’d have fun.”

  “Oh, fun, is that it for me?”

  “It could be that. Or it could be more.”

  Then Arlie said, “You may not believe it, Ms. Thomas, but it is more than that already.”

  “You mean—”

  “We are already very well acquainted with one another.”

  “Well acquainted?” Abigail repeated, feeling foolish. Arlie seemed the expert again, as she had with Chloe. “You don’t mean?”

  “What?”

  “Like, physical relations acquainted?”

  “Yes, very good physical communications. But more than that. Some honest conversations. And some mutual respect, beginning to be there as well. You know?”

  Abigail was surprised to feel a little hurt. Arlie had gone to places with Tim, it appeared, that she had not known were there. And without either of them telling her about any of it.

  “Don’t feel green and jealous, because you don’t love the man and you never did,” said Arlie kindly. “He’s not so real to you, you know?”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “He kinda interests me, Abigail. Can I call you that, since we are talking so privately this girly-girly way?”

  Abigail nodded. “Of course you can call me that.”

  “Tim is also interested. He is beginning to let himself know who Arlie is. I know him, too. I understand what makes him weak and what makes him strong.”

  “I didn’t even know he had those options,” said Abigail. Had she missed some wonderful opportunity?

  “Tim needs your approval. He is too much in awe of certain women, maybe all of us. He needs our strength, not to fear us or be jealous of us. I think you were like a goddess for him, big belly with a child, which men can’t do. . . .”

  “Me?”

  “They’re all looking for that big, big woman, you know? The mother, the caregiver. Whoever gave them that tiny bit of love, so long ago. They shrink up without it. But the need makes them angry, and they fight back against it with all their man pride. They pretend to look down on us, to have that snobby sneer, you know. I fight this every day. If I let him get away with putting me below and him above—”

  “He has contempt for you? How dare he—”

  “Not really me, Abigail, but you know, for the, the soft one, the servant. The one he needs so much. You know, the mother that takes care of all of it.”

  “You’re not a—a servant!” said Abigail, feeling embarrassed. No one ever called their help “servants” or “maids” anymore. “And of course mothers are not servants, either! They’re the furthest things from—”

  Abigail stopped herself. And what if they were? What shame was there in service for others? It was good work, tending to the young and the old, nursing the sick and dying. Pushing the elderly in their wheelchairs and the young ones in their strollers, wiping the chins. So many women doing it, for so many years, and for so little obvious reward. She remembered her good sister Annie, and her own faithful mother. She wondered if she herself had ever been that kindhearted. Only for moments, so far, she thought with some shame. But it was a good shame, because she felt herself growing from it.

  “We’re the bottom of the heap,” said Arlie. “A great place to be. They think they stand so tall? They stand tall because of us. If we move, they fall all the way down. Should we feel insulted that they don’t admit it?”

  “No, and it’s not our flaw if they’re too proud.”

  “So let them learn at their own slow pace, eh?”

  “If they ever do,” said Abigail, pensively. “And even if they don’t, it’s true, and the truth is all that should really matter.”

  “Anyway,” continued Arlie, “things are going to change for me now. I’m thinking to go into computers. Maybe in a year, don’t worry,” she hastened to add, seeing Abigail’s face cloud over. “I won’t suddenly disappear. And then you will call the agency again. They’ll find you someone just as good as me. Better maybe. Older, like a real mother type for you. You need that, too, right?”

  “I think I could go for a caring husband, actually.”

  “All right, so then call that man who was looking for you like crazy lately anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tim never told you about his call. But I heard him talk to someone, and he admitted that he gave him the runaround. Not because he wants you for himself. Right now, for the time, he wants me. But the one who has been calling here—Richard—he might be waiting for you, you know, even though Tim does think he’s a married man.”

  “What would Tim know about it?”

  “Not one thing.”

  “But on the other hand, sadly, Richard is married, Arlie.”

  “You saw the wife with your own eyes?”

  “No, but I heard him on the phone, talking to his wife about the kids.”

  “So you ask him and he admit it?”

  “Well—it seemed pretty obvious. But no, I didn’t cross-examine him or anything.”

  “Well, I say he has no wife of his own, and no kids, except for Chloe, of course.”

  “How do you know that?” Abigail’s heart billowed for a second.

  “That is my educated hunch. And anyway, ‘innocent until guilty,’ right? Isn’t that what you smart lawyers always say, eh?”

  “Right, that’s the law,” said Abigail, distracted. “Or, you know, maybe it was just an ex-wife or something. People can stay in a close, cooperative parenthood, even after divorce, right?” It killed her not to know.

  “Stop studying it in your mind. Call up and hear him. Listen to his proofs. A man with a rotten heart doesn’t call, call, call like that. It was more than once, I seem to remember. Maybe two times, he try, and Tim was no help to him. Maybe this man even worried about the baby, you know? Maybe he want to help you out.”

  “He doesn’t even know about the baby,” Abigail protested, though she knew how absurd this objection was. He ought to know, and she ought to tell him, come what may. No more hoarding facts from those who were entitled to possess them.

  “You’re holding this child in your hands and you don’t say nothing to him about her? It isn’t right for you, or Richard. How long can you go on like that?”

  “It’s OK,” she said, no longer certain that it was.

  “No, it’s not! You’re keeping the truth boxed up,” said Arlie. “You’re like Chloe with gas trapped up in her guts. Get it straight and let it go free. Come on out with it.”

  “Tell Richard everything?”

  “All the pressure will be gone. And he will tell you all about himself as well. So do that right away.”

  Abigail could see why Arlie had been so good for her and her daughter. She could see what Tim could see in her, and how much she might be teaching him.

  35

  Richard had been regularly visiting his sisterin-law, Lauren, at the Willows, the mental-wellness facility at which she was convalescing from what used to be called a “nervous breakdown.” This was a vast, luxurious retreat for the anxious and depressed who could no longer function optimally outside, and for those whose moods had led to addiction to alcohol or other substances.

  Richard was surprised to learn that Lauren had fit into most of those categories. She had been incapacitated by anxiety and depression, periodically self-medicating with alcohol, and also given to taking tranquilizers on a regular basis. Her husband’s heart attack had sent her careening down to full addi
ction and collapse.

  How well people hid their essential selves, Richard thought, and how often the truth (as in pregnancy, or breakdown) had a way of finding its way to the light. Lauren, much like his own older brother, had once seemed to him impervious. It was a shock to see her crumble, even temporarily. Still, Richard had been happy to take care of her three children. It had given him real joy to be helpful to her and to Allen, and to get to know his nephews and niece.

  Lauren Trubridge was beautiful and elegant—almost six feet tall, and blessed with a mane of gleaming auburn hair that she wore in a sporty ponytail or elegant chignon. Her hazel green eyes now belied the sportiness and elegance. They were fathoms deep with sadness, noticed Richard, annoyed at himself for not detecting even a hint of this mood in Lauren before her bout with debilitating clinical malaise. Could he have done something to prevent it? And couldn’t the chronically overworked, self-driving Allen have seen this coming?

  Still, there were moments when Lauren’s spirits lifted, and she seemed almost ready to meet the world again. On this day, her hair was down and freshly washed. Richard sat with her in the greenery-filled solarium, where palm fronds waved and the scent of lilies filled the air. It was a bit depressing in this facility, which Richard thought counterproductive (not to mention its name, the Willows, with its suggestion of weeping). How could anyone get better in a place where all were so urgently struggling, as though willfully going through emotional boot camp? That very effort was the opposite of relaxing, but simple stress (and marital loneliness) seemed at the core of Lauren’s sorrow.

  The solarium’s brightness made him want to shut his eyes, and its cloying floral scent made him think of the funeral of his parents—both killed in a boating accident when Richard and his brother were scarcely out of their twenties. Perhaps that was why Allen drove himself so—busy hours and enormous bushels of dollars might provide some sense of safety, insulate him from the inevitable barbs of life. But this insulation hadn’t protected his broken core; he’d nonetheless been struck from within.

  Something in the sadness of the sunlit room and its forced, false spirit of spring made Richard himself suddenly burst into tears. These were hard tears, accompanied by shaking shoulders and a convulsing chest. These were sobs. Richard was crying not only for his lost parents, about whom he rarely thought, but about his own fragility, and his brother’s, and his sister-in-law’s. So tiny a margin separated people from the edges of disaster.

  “Oh, my goodness,” said Lauren, with a trace of a smile. Yes, her expression seemed to say. Life can be sad. Take a minute, why don’t you, and cry about it. It will do you good, and I will be there.

  And suddenly, Lauren began talking openly, telling Richard how she’d so often wanted to cry when at PTA meetings led by belligerent, autocratic hausfraus, or when she’d see one of her children hurt by another’s cruelty. About the many times she’d suppressed tears, and how many more times she had spilled them, when first one child, and then another, and another, had spoken its first word, and then spoken back, or taken its first step, and then stepped away. More than anything else in the world, she told Richard, parenting children called upon indescribable reserves of courage, shown on the field, on the spot—or sometimes not until much later. But knowing these feelings helped. And crying helped.

  Lauren poured her soul out. She spoke about how often she’d cried at her many mistakes, her tendency to scream too much at the children when they wrote on the walls or yelled, clamoring for attention, during their father’s weekend naps. Her tendency to buckle under pressure, to let them quit lessons they didn’t like. Her tendency to pity her children, and herself as their shield, for the harshness of the world they all had to confront. A world in which they would be forced to prevail.

  All this talking—and he’d listened. But when she stopped, Lauren looked shocked to see Richard weep again.

  “I’ve never said this much about myself,” she offered. “But to see you, Richard, strong, logical, legal-eagle Richard, crying!”

  Richard didn’t answer, but Lauren gave him a moment. That was the mother in her, he saw.

  Then he sniffed, cleared his throat, and said, “Wow. I really didn’t know I was going to do that.”

  “What is it, Richard? What’s happened? Is everything all right?”

  “It’s this woman,” he said, shuddering with some purging finality, reaching into his pocket for a tissue. He wiped his nose and continued.

  “I seem to be falling deeply in love with a woman who won’t give me the time of day. And I just don’t know why.”

  Lauren sighed with relief.

  “You don’t know why she won’t give you the time of day, or you don’t know why you love her?”

  “Oh, I know why I love her, Lauren. She’s magical and good. I just can’t figure out why she’s been consistently avoiding me.”

  “She might have met someone else, Richard. Have you considered that possibility?”

  “Yes, I know, of course, but I think it’s more to do with me, somehow. She seemed a little curt or angry the last time we were—together. As though she were annoyed, or hurt, by something I’d done. And for the life of me, I can’t imagine what. And I feel if I could just find out—”

  “She’d forgive and forget?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive or forget! I meant to say I’d know how to strategize. What to say, what on earth to apologize for.”

  Lauren played with a lock of her coppery hair.

  “There’s no need to shout,” she said, but she was smiling again.

  “I actually admire you, Richard. It’s nice to see a virile and competent man lose his boundaries a little. Or a lot. If only Allen had let go once in a while, fallen all over the place, cried and shouted. Maybe then his poor heart would not have had to explode,” said Lauren, now with a trace of anger. “If only he’d been sensitive, like you.”

  “I’m not usually like this,” Richard said, slightly abashed.

  “Oh, but you are. The way you speak. The work you do. The fact that you’d take our kids in as if they were your own. And especially Martin, and all his demands and his needs. I can’t imagine Allen doing any of that.”

  “Well, he’ll have to think about making some changes,” said Richard. “The kids need him back. And more than anything, Lauren, they need you.”

  36

  Abigail now found herself trying to reach Richard Trubridge, as Arlie had advised, if only to tell him about the baby he’d sired. But when she called the number she’d tracked down online there was no answer. No machine, nothing.

  Of course, there was another way to reach him. Rona DeWitt Miller had told Abigail about sighting Richard in her park on the East River. She’d seen him several times, and each time with the same kid. Rona had told her, frankly, that he seemed devoted to this little boy.

  “How old is he?” Abigail had asked.

  “About three, I’d say. And a handful.”

  “Really, a handful?”

  “A nightmare. Really spoiled, screams a lot, calls his dad by his first name.”

  Rona had had to concede, though, that Richard did seem to be acting pretty nice to his little boy. And he came there every day, without fail. The kid was challenging, but no matter what, Richard never yelled at him. Sometimes, she told Abigail, Richard knelt in front of the boy, holding him by the shoulders, looking into his eyes, until they both were in agreement. Nodding together.

  “Well, maybe he is a good father,” she had admitted. “That’s possible, even if he is a philanderer and a crook lawyer. I mean, people have different sides to them—most have something they’re gaga about. And men do cherish their heirs.”

  Rona’s talk of Richard’s tenderness brought back bittersweet memories of how tender he’d been with her. Coupled with the fact that he’d called her home (along with Arlie’s hunch), it was all too much for Abigail to resist. Determined to head straight to the East River playground where Richard would be found, she dialed Rona’
s number and began talking immediately.

  “Take me to him, Rona; I can’t stand it anymore.”

  “All right,” said her friend, “I can see you’ve got it bad. I used to have it bad for my husband, but then it passed, thank goodness. It was like the influenza. Actually, sometimes I miss it, being lovesick. This is Abigail, right?”

  “Of course it is! Who else says ‘take me to him, I’m lovesick’?”

  “You actually said, ‘I can’t stand it anymore.”

  “Same difference. What’s that obnoxious sound I hear in the background?”

  “Processor. I was just making some more mashed yams for Dylan,” said Rona. “You want to help me? I’ve got to get organic, my cooking teacher says. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

  “What is the point?” said Abigail distractedly, trying to keep up her end of the conversation.

  Rona turned off the processor. “OK. I’ll shop for the organic and then we’ll do the park thing. I’ll meet you at East End and Eighty-Fourth, OK? Then if it goes like a disaster for you, we’ll spend the afternoon baking. Sound good?”

  “Maybe he’s not married, Rona. Maybe this whole time, there was only me.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Who says he’s not married?” said Rona.

  “My babysitter, OK? I mean, she can’t be sure, of course. But she thinks he’s a nice guy, and so there must be some explanation besides that he’s the son of Satan. She’s really cool. You met her briefly when you came over. Arlie, remember?”

  “I didn’t pay attention, sorry. I was focused on your dot boards.”

  “I happen to trust her judgment.”

  “Whose—your sitter’s?”

  “Yes. Arlie Rajani. She’s the one who made those boards you seemed to appreciate,” said Abigail loyally. “And she’s been really astute about Tim, too.”

  “In what sense, ‘astute’?”