Lily traveled out into the terrain of chain stores and neon lights and housing developments, the riot of clashing, gaudy colors and garish cartoon shapes, clown faces, broken signs, boarded-up windows and empty lots that lined the highway, and felt as though her spirit had been dampened, put to sleep, awfully, and that the only thing that cut through any of it was the idea of this child she was carrying, though she was also aware of the inevitable fate that awaited the child, too. The whole matter between the child’s birth and his or her eventual end seemed cheapened, tarnished by the vulgarity of the buildings, the hideous look of late-twentieth-century America, and even, finally, the shape of the hills themselves in the distance, the yellowed grass showing through bare trees. When she was in this mood, it all looked like the sick scenery of the world, with its catastrophes, holocausts, and assassinations. Tyler’s dark mind-set was having an effect on her that she deplored, and she couldn’t find a way out of it—certainly not with Sheri or Millicent or Nick, or her own family, or, really, with anyone who knew what they had all so recently been through.
5
TONIGHT, Tyler would be late, and she thought of calling Sheri, but then decided against it. She had periodically wondered if her connection to Sheri and Millicent and Nick were not slowly moving toward atrophy. And then Sheri and Millicent would surprise her by showing up in an afternoon, or calling her to ask if she would come to dinner. When she thought about it, she realized that she herself seldom if ever called them. She looked out the window again, and tried to think of something else. She sat at her table with all the notes and her writing, and attempted to work. But she felt headachy, and she couldn’t concentrate.
Finally, she got her coat on and waddled out to the car. There was an intermittent, warm southerly breeze, tree branches clicking and agitating in the sudden little eddies of wind. The clicking sounded like someone tapping out a code. The grass had gone brown, and looked like straw in places, and the wet patches were black as pitch. Except for a lowering escarpment of charcoal-colored clouds to the west, broken in places, but solid-looking where they were darkest, the sky was blue. Perhaps there would be another storm. She wedged in behind the wheel of the car and started it, and drove through the disheartening muddle of chain stores and gas stations, toward the Galatierre house. By the time she saw the twotiered porch, she was fairly well discouraged. The big house felt like sanctuary, and perhaps it had been a bad idea after all to move into the little place out by Yellow Leaf Creek.
Rosa answered the door, wearing an apron and holding a wooden mixing spoon. “Oh,” she said. “Hi.” She stepped back, holding the door, and spoke to the room. “Look who’s here.”
Millicent and Sheri were in the living room, sitting on opposite ends of the sofa. They were drinking wine, and the television was on. There was Nelson Mandela, leading a large crowd through the streets of Pretoria. Millicent had muted the sound. “Have you eaten?” she said.
“No.”
“Rosa’s leaving us,” said Sheri. “This is a farewell dinner. Impromptu. Rosa just told us. I tried to call you but you must’ve been on the way here.”
Millicent stood and offered to take Lily’s coat.
Sheri poured more wine for herself and drank half the glass down, then lay her head back on the cushions of the sofa, holding the wine upright on her abdomen. “You look so beautiful pregnant,” she said.
“I don’t feel beautiful.” Lily sat in the wing chair across from her. She saw Millicent waver slightly as she came back from the hallway, and realized that both women were already on their way to being drunk. She wished she hadn’t come. Millicent arranged herself on the sofa and picked up her glass of wine. “Rosa will bring you whatever you want to drink. Rosa’s insisting on serving this farewell dinner. Her last gesture, as she calls it, in this house.”
“We’re having chicken. I don’t know what kind. Not cordon bleu. Of that we’re what you might call fairly certain.”
They both drank, not looking at each other, or at Lily. Rosa was moving around in the kitchen. The quiet was oppressive.
Lily looked at the room. Millicent had taken down more of the pictures on the walls, and all of the big game trophies. There were bare places where these things had been, and darker shapes where the paint hadn’t been faded by sunlight from the windows.
“The boys’re working late again,” Sheri said.
“Poor Nick,” said Millicent, almost to herself.
For what felt like a long while, no one said anything. Rosa came in from the kitchen and handed Lily a glass of milk. “If you don’t want it, leave it,” she said. “It’s supposed to be good for you.”
“Where are you going?” Lily asked her.
“Back in the kitchen.”
“No, I mean—”
“Oh.” Rosa laughed. “School. I’m leaving to go to school.”
“I thought you were in school.”
“This is more school. And they’re giving me money. And it’s in California. Bakersfield.”
“You’ll be close to your father.”
“You remembered that.”
“Yes,” Lily said. “Of course I did.”
“Dinner will be ready in about ten minutes,” said Rosa, speaking generally, to the room.
When the other two said nothing, she shrugged and returned to the kitchen.
On the television now, a woman in a bright red dress was standing in front of a green map of the lower South, pointing out weather patterns, cold air dipping down from the north again.
“Shit,” Sheri said abruptly.
“What is it?” Lily asked. “I shouldn’t have come.”
“No,” Millicent said impatiently. “It isn’t you. I know you’re pregnant, dear, but try not to assume everything is about you all the time.”
Lily felt wounded by this, and almost got up to leave.
Sheri said, “Mother, here, has just been trying to talk me into getting pregnant, for Nick. She thinks my getting pregnant will bring him back from the edge of the abyss. And make me happy, too. And I’ve just been telling Mother that I think it would be nice if we let a couple of days go by without Roger Gault being over. In the middle of this, Rosa tells us she’s quitting and that this is her last night. It’s been a really pleasant evening so far. You can’t imagine how happy we are to see you. At least I am, anyway.”
Rosa stood in the entrance of the room. “If he’s coming, he better get here soon.”
Millicent said, “We get the message, Rosa, thank you.”
There was another silence. It went on, and neither Millicent nor Sheri seemed to feel the awkwardness of it. Indeed, they were behaving as if each of them was alone.
Lily stood. “I’m tired. I think I’ll go home and go to bed.”
Millicent didn’t look up. “Don’t let Sheri chase you away, dear. We are glad to see you.”
“I do believe I said as much,” Sheri put in. Then she looked over at Lily. “Don’t let Millicent drive you away, honey.”
Millicent poured more of the wine, the last of the bottle, and then set it down with a loud thump. The scene was becoming pathological. Any moment one of them would begin to scream.
The doorbell rang into this silence with the shocking suddenness of a bolt of lightning. Sheri actually cried out. Millicent stood and moved unsteadily toward the door, but Rosa had come out of the kitchen and opened it, and ushered in Roger Gault. He bowed to Rosa, who took his jacket, and then he took Millicent by the hands and bowed again. He looked faintly absurd, Lily thought, and couldn’t decide why. He wore corduroy slacks, a white flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows; a pair of brown Docksiders shoes. Perhaps it was that he was so consciously attired in the clothes that the college boys were wearing now. He was someone trying to appear younger than he was. He came into the room and gently shook Lily’s hand (she had a momentary sense that he might bend to kiss it, and was relieved when he did not), and kissed Sheri on the forehead. Sheri had sat forward, and now she got up
and went toward the kitchen.
“Need some more wine,” she said.
“We’re getting a little tipsy,” Millicent said to her. “Aren’t we?”
“I believe that is one word for it,” said Sheri.
Millicent sat next to Roger on the sofa. “Sometimes,” she said, “my daughter makes me ill.”
Lily sat back down in the chair, her hands folded tightly on her lap. She wanted to leave, but felt how awkward that would be, and so she waited, while Sheri came faltering into the room with another bottle of red wine. She poured herself a glass, then handed the bottle to her mother. “Pinot noir is the drink of the evening,” she said to Roger. “Unless you’re pregnant, which of course I ain’t, and it looks like I might stay that way. And it looks like poor Lily here will stay pregnant the rest of her life.”
“Feels like it,” Lily said, because they were all looking at her, and she couldn’t stand up to leave.
“To Lily,” Sheri said, and swallowed most of what she had poured.
Millicent asked Roger what he wanted to drink, and in the instant that it took him to decide, Lily felt everything go running out of her, a prodigious rushing of fluid pouring down, soaking her dress, and the chair she was sitting in. It was as if an overwhelming need to urinate had come over her in the instant that the ability to control the muscles of her body lapsed. She went weak, and was momentarily dizzy. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, God.”
Millicent had stood, looking at the floor around the chair. She attempted to set the glass of wine down and knocked it over, and that was pouring, too. On the floor around Lily’s chair was a widening pool of water, streaked with blood. Lily stood, holding on to the arms of the chair, and Sheri said, “Oh, honey, your water’s broken.”
For a few shaking moments everything dissolved in confusion. Lily simply stood there while it poured out of her. She felt no cramp or contraction; yet everything was changing inside, and she could feel that. Rosa had come out of the kitchen, spoon in hand, and then had gone back. Sheri was putting Lily’s coat over her shoulders and talking at her, as was Roger Gault. Millicent spoke to all of them, telling them to calm down. “Someone—Sheri—go call Tyler and Nick.”
But Sheri was still holding on to Lily, holding her up now, as Lily began to sink down, the light going away for an instant and then coming back. “I’m all right,” Lily said. “I’m fine.”
They all moved toward the door, and Rosa was there, opening it. “I called Tyler. They’ll be on the way to the hospital.”
Outside, in the cold, Lily felt the chill of being wet on her hips and legs, and Sheri pulled the coat tight around her, evidently feeling her shivering. “I’ve got you, honey,” Sheri said. “Don’t be scared.”
They got into Millicent’s station wagon, Lily in front.
“I’m making a mess of the car,” Lily said.
“Don’t worry about the damn car.”
A fine rain was falling, a thin, misty cold, and there were low, heavy clouds visible in the light from the open door. The clouds were trailing down almost to the ground in the field opposite the house. For some reason Lily thought of ghosts. The car doors were closing. She didn’t even know who else was in the car with her. She saw that Millicent was driving. She put her head back on the seat and closed her eyes, and the first hard contraction hit her. It came in a fierce wave, a band of searing pain across her lower abdomen. She tried to speak, to bring any sound out of her throat. This was the beginning of it all, she knew, this thing that she had so often put off thinking about, this thing itself, a baby coming, something she had no power to revoke. She had fallen into the habit of thinking beyond this transaction with the world, to the time when it would be past, when the baby would be there and the anguish of its coming would be already lived through. The realization of this truth about it filled her with terror exactly as it caused her soul to exult; she felt the excitement in the middle of the fear like the kernel of something inside a larger whole. Then she herself was the husk, containing something phenomenal and terrifying.
She was being pulled along, and the contraction hauled her out of herself, out of any thought at all but the tightness of her abdomen, the breath-stopping pain. She tried to remember what she had read of the breathing exercises, but nothing would come to her in any sequence she could recognize. In her mind, she saw the men at the construction site: the tractors, the ragged ground where they had been tearing at the earth; she would be torn that way. And now a series of images presented themselves to her mind: she saw the hills as they had looked from the window of the train south; she saw Buddy Galatierre holding his glass up in the pool, in shade and sun; she saw the ripped soft white belly of the deer.
Millicent was steering the car, both hands tight on the wheel. “Hurry,” Lily said, or thought she said. Her mind closed on an image of something flickering in the distance, a flame. She opened her eyes and looked into the vanishing perspective of the road ahead and saw the flame. She closed her eyes and still saw it. The contraction had eased, and she could breathe again.
“Hold on, sweetie,” Millicent said.
“Did anybody call the doctor?” Sheri asked.
“I did.” Rosa’s voice.
Lily turned in the seat and saw that Rosa and Sheri and Roger Gault were in the back. They were all looking at her with amazement and fright.
The hospital was in a row of white buildings a few blocks south of the football stadium. Millicent pulled into the emergency entrance and stopped. The others were out of the car quickly. Roger ran in. Millicent opened Lily’s door, and reached in to help her bring her legs around, taking her by the knees. Again, Lily felt everything become vague, as if she were falling out of light toward some vast darkness. And then two men in white stood nearby with a wheelchair, and they came to take hold of her. As she moved toward the chair, another contraction came, hard and insistent. She said, “Oh, something’s wrong.”
“We’ve got you,” one of the men said.
She saw that he had a space between his teeth and that he was blond. His glasses showed her the lights of the entrance, and shapes moving in those lights. None of it quite registered as experience. It was all dream and flow, half sleep and wide awake at the same time. The other man held her by her elbow and guided her to the chair, and now a nurse had come out of the double doors, just as the contraction eased off. Lily had the unreasonable sense that this nurse’s appearance had brought about the release from pain, and she looked upon the other woman—a heavy, dark, round-featured woman with bulging eyes and fat cheeks—with a form of abject love, like the love of a pet for the person who feeds it. She strove to keep her eyes on the nurse, who had walked around the chair and was pushing her toward the doorway, where the two young men had moved to stand. She had lost sight of Millicent and Sheri and the others. The corridor of the emergency room was too bright; she saw pictures of fields and hills on the walls, and she saw a room where people sat reading magazines and watching television. One person had a cast on his leg, a man who looked to be a hundred years old. The nurse kept pushing her along in the chair, through a set of double doors and on, past wide wooden doors and people in white uniforms walking the other way. And here was Sheri, walking beside her. “Mother’s giving them the pertinent information,” she said. “How do you feel?”
Lily made a face, but couldn’t speak. She thought another contraction was coming, but then it eased off, and she held tight to the arms of the chair. Before her, another set of double doors opened, leading to an area of what looked like office doors, in a lobby, with a lighted station under a low roof. Another nurse came out from behind the counter there and said, “Hello,” walking before them around the station to another corridor, another set of double doors. Lily had the sensation of being spirited away, in a maze of rooms and hallways, and she worried about Tyler: how would Tyler find her?
There was no pain now, but only the discomfort of the wetness where she was sitting. She tried to shift her weight, and then remembered the baby
. She said, “The baby’s coming.” No one answered her.
The new corridor contained three open rooms, the second of which she was wheeled into. She saw a bed, a sink, a strange gray apparatus. Sheri spoke to the nurse, and then looked at Lily and smiled. She was still in the doorway, had stepped aside to let the nurse leave.
“Feel okay?” she said.
Lily nodded, holding on to the arms of the wheelchair. A nurse came in and laid a gown on the bed, then handed her a bag in which to put her clothes. “Put the gown on,” she said. Sheri helped her out of her clothes and into the gown, and then into the bed. She propped her with pillows, and raised the bed up a little, so that Lily could lie almost sitting up. Next to the bed was an array of equipment, a television monitor in the middle of all of it. The nurse came back. Everything seemed to be speeding now, a blur, and there were the several smells—perfume and soap and garlic and tobacco; starch and toothpaste, mint and sweat. She did not, for the moment, know where her own body left off and all of these sensations began—how much of it was imagined, and how much of it was real. The nurse, a frizzy-haired girlish young woman with square-framed glasses, told her to slow her breathing. “You don’t want to hyperventilate, sweetie.”
Lily tried to slow down. She had lost sight of Sheri. There were two nurses, now, and one of them was taking her blood pressure. The other said, “This will stick just a little.” Lily hardly felt it. A pinch. She looked at her own hand, the back of which the nurse was taping. There was an IV attached, and she followed with her eyes the winding path of the tube up into the bottle above her. The first nurse had lifted her gown and was holding a stethoscope to her stomach. The stethoscope was cold. Lily watched it all, and was in a zone somewhere far away, waiting for the next wave of pain. But nothing happened. The nurses put small sensors on her abdomen, and she could look at the monitor and see her own, and the baby’s, heartbeat. The machine made a small rhythmical beeping sound.
From somewhere she heard the snap of something, a rubbery squeal, and she thought of the soles of their shoes. The frizzy-haired nurse reached in and examined her, and abruptly there was a new level to the pain. There seemed something quite aggressive and unfriendly about it. Lily released a small cry, and held her breath.
Hello to the Cannibals Page 45
