Zoe
It had never occurred to me that trying to have a baby could be so difficult. Spence and I were surrounded by people who seemed to merely state their intention to start a family and—zap—they were expecting. Not me.
Six months almost to the day after our wedding Spence and I agreed that it was time. We had settled into the small one-bedroom walk-up above a bookstore in Madison, halfway between the Capitol and the campus. With Spence’s psych residency nearing completion, he’d been offered a faculty position at the medical college, a position that would allow him to focus on the research into postwar psychosis that he’d begun during his residency. I continued to work at Legal Aid. Money was tight, because we were determined not to accept any financial help from my parents. So we spent hours dreaming of the future we were building. Spence dreamed of one day establishing a center for counseling veterans and others who had suffered from the aftermath of war. For me the plan continued to be some nonspecific form of saving the world. But in those days the all-consuming dream we shared was having a family of our own. We wanted the whole Norman Rockwell scene—kids, a house of our own with a yard, close neighbors, and our parents and friends gathered around a huge old farm-style dining table with Spence ready to carve the turkey on Thanksgiving.
“How many?” Spence asked one night as we lay in the waterbed we’d thought was a good idea at the time we bought it. We’d celebrated that first half year of marriage with a candlelight dinner on the fire escape landing outside our bedroom window.
“A dozen?” I replied, smiling to myself in the dark as I felt him stiffen in protest next to me.
“Tell me you’re kidding,” he said.
“Well, how many, then?” I said, turning on my side and propping myself on one elbow to watch his expression in the street light finding its way through the blinds.
He waited for the rocking of the bed to calm. “How about two?” he said uncertainly.
“A boy for you and a girl for me like the song lyric?”
He smiled, obviously relieved that I had decided not to push the even dozen. “Or the other way round.” He reached up and cupped my face with his palm. “Are you sure?”
“About the number?” I shrugged. “Let’s try one and see how it goes.”
“About the timing,” he replied, and his tone told me we had switched gears. He was serious about this. It was no longer “someday”—it was “how about now?”
I kissed him. “Now is perfect,” I said.
And because the bliss of my life had apparently made me stupid, I assumed that “now” was a reasonable goal. After we made love that night, I lay awake listening as Spence’s breathing settled into the even rise and fall of his chest that told me he was sleeping soundly. I mentally toured the apartment and began rearranging things to accommodate a baby. I thought about my job and made a mental note to ask my boss about perhaps bringing the baby with me to the office sometimes or working from home part-time. I ran through what I assumed would become Spence’s schedule of lectures, labs, administrative duties and the constant pressure for him to publish journal articles and present at various medical meetings. And I assumed that if I wasn’t already pregnant, I would be shortly.
“What did the doctor say?” Spence asked a year and a half later after we had separately and together gone through just about every test available and experimented with every method currently in fashion for getting pregnant. I had taken my temperature eighty gazillion times a day. More than once Spence had rushed home from campus so we could mate at the optimum moment. I had begun to feel like some sort of rare zoo animal, and although he never said a word, Spence had to be feeling like a thoroughbred who’d been put out to stud.
“What does she always say?” I replied bitterly. “Give it time.”
I knew I wasn’t being fair. It wasn’t Spence’s fault. It was no one’s fault, everyone assured me. But I felt—What did I feel? Inadequate? A failure? Sad as I mourned the life I wanted so much? All of the above. What scared me the most was that the plans Spence and I had dreamed for the future had included not only children but grandchildren—generations of Wingfield-Andersens carrying forth a legacy of my fiery independence mixed with the reassuring calm that was Spence. It wasn’t fair. We would be such good parents. Our children would surely make the world a better place.
Spence patted my hand. “I’ve got an idea,” he said.
“What?” I snapped, irritated at anyone who had one more well-meaning suggestion for me. “It’s not my fault, you know,” I shouted, and burst into tears.
Spence held out his arms to me, but I couldn’t stand the expression I interpreted as pity and I pushed away from him. “And don’t suggest adoption. I want my own baby. If that’s not possible, then…” I faltered and looked around wildly. Then what?
Spence handed me my coat. “Come on,” he said, shrugging into his own jacket and grabbing the car keys. “Let’s go for a ride.”
Feeling guilty at striking out at him, yet not ready to apologize or back down, I jammed my arms into my coat and walked into the hallway. In silence I followed him down the dim stairway and out to the alley where we parked our car. In silence Spence opened the passenger door for me. In silence he got in and drove.
“Where are we going?” I asked finally. I had assumed that we were headed for a movie or perhaps a walk on the lake path on campus, followed by cups of hot tea enjoyed on the nearly deserted terrace outside the Union. All were therapies that had worked in the past. But by now I couldn’t be pacified.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he said. His voice was perfectly calm. He could be maddening that way. While I would stew for hours or even days if he snapped at me unfairly, he took it all in stride.
I folded my arms tightly across my chest and stared out the window at the gathering twilight. We hadn’t eaten. I’d come home upset and exhausted and then realized I had meant to do the grocery shopping after work. We were saving for so many things—the baby, a house, a future. We couldn’t afford to go out, but he deserved better than the can of tuna waiting at home.
“Just something quick,” I muttered. “Barney’s or fast food. Let’s don’t make a big deal.” Translation—let’s don’t make me feel even guiltier by spending more than we can afford on dinner just because you think it’s going to cheer me up.
“Who said anything about dinner?” he replied evenly as he turned onto a side street I’d never been on before. He followed its winding path and stopped the car under a gigantic elm tree. “Well,” he said as he pulled me closer and pointed out the window on his side. “What do you think?”
I followed his gaze. Across the street from us sat a house on a hill, every window lit and that warm golden glow spilling out onto a lawn sprinkled with mature trees dressed in all the golds and reds of their autumn splendor. In the center of the lawn was a For Sale by Owner sign.
I blinked and looked more closely at the neighborhood, considering the route we’d taken to get here. “It’s on the lake?”
“Yep.” Spence grinned. “Has a boathouse and everything.”
It worked. For the first time in weeks I was not constantly obsessing about getting pregnant. Before me was the kind of house—the kind of home—I’d always dreamed of. “But—”
“Want to see the inside?”
Before I could answer, Spence was out of the car. I opened the door. “We can’t just—”
“They’re sort of expecting us,” he said.
On the way up the cobblestone walkway to the front door, Spence said, “Remember Professor Kent?”
“Philosophy 101 and one of the prime backers of the antiwar effort,” I replied. “Of course I remember Professor Kent, Spence. In case you’ve forgotten, we attended his funeral last spring.”
“Right. Well, I ran into his son on campus today. The kids are here to try to sell the house. They all live out of town and Mrs. Kent is moving to California with one of the daughters and—”
The front door swung open and a man in his forties stepped forward to greet us. “Dan Kent,” he said, extending his hand to me. “Come in. Come in. I thought maybe you’d decided tonight wasn’t good.”
He took my coat and hung it in the hall closet, then stood aside while Spence hung his jacket, as well.
“It needs work—a lot of work.” Dan glanced around. “Funny how when you grow up in a place you forgive so much, but then when you try to sell it…”
I wanted to warn him to stop talking so much about the downside and focus on the good stuff—like the Arts-and-Craft-style moldings and doorways and windows I could see in the rooms leading off the hall. For that matter the stairway itself was an architectural treasure. On the landing—large enough to accommodate a small writing desk and mission-style rocker with a reading lamp—there was an incredible window seat beneath a span of three tall, thin leaded-glass windows.
“Make yourself at home,” Dan urged. “I’m just going to attend to a couple of calls and start a pot of coffee. You two take your time touring, okay? I’ll be back in the kitchen when you’re ready and we’ll talk.”
With Dan gone, I abandoned any attempt to remain cool and calm. I clutched Spence’s arm. “Oh, my stars, Spence, look at this place.” Before he could reply, I was already across the hall, examining the living room. “That fireplace,” I whispered excitedly.
“Definitely works,” Spence said as the logs snapped and popped. But I was already into the adjoining dining room, with its built-in china cabinet, scarred wood floors that could be sanded and refinished and more windows.
“Both rooms have a view of the lake,” I observed, my voice rising now as I hurried on to the pantry, with its glass-front floor-to-ceiling cabinets and enough counter space to hold a buffet for all our friends.
I could hear Dan on the phone, so I skipped the kitchen and retraced my steps through the living room and across the foyer to a long, narrow room that the professor had obviously used as his office and library. On one side were French doors that led to a screened porch large enough to hold a worn but magnificent wicker settee and two matching chairs. Images of lazy summer evenings sitting in a darkness lit only by fireflies skittered across my mind.
“Let’s check out the upstairs,” Spence said, grinning as I emerged from the porch, my mouth agape. He led the way.
I paused on the landing and ran my fingers over the chintz fabric of the window seat cushions, already imagining myself curled there on a rainy Sunday afternoon, working the Times crossword puzzle.
“There’s more,” Spence said from the top of the stairs. I hurried to see what marvels waited there.
The master bedroom and its adjoining old-fashioned bath were enormous. The Kents’ large four-poster bed fit easily, with plenty of room to spare. The bathroom was tiled in a sort of peach-and-green combination that would take some getting used to, but I barely noticed when I walked in and saw Spence sitting, knees to chin and fully clothed, in the old-fashioned claw-foot bathtub.
“And check this out,” he said, scrambling from the tub and leading the way across the hall. “One, two, three more bedrooms, plus another full bath,” he announced as he dashed from one doorway to the next. “And an attic—” he opened the last door and flicked on a switch “—with its own cedar-lined closet.”
“We don’t have enough furniture to fill half the rooms,” I protested, but I was laughing, and even the sight of the extra bedrooms did not ignite my sorrow at failing to become pregnant. This was like Christmas morning and Santa had dropped off an entire sleigh full of goodies.
“Wait,” Spence said mysteriously. “It gets better. But first let’s go hear the bad news.”
In the kitchen—sorely in need of updating, not to mention a really thorough cleaning—Dan laid out the downside. “Okay, start with a new roof and furnace. The windows are all wood, with separate storms and screens that have to be put up and taken down every season. Likewise the screened porch. The gardens are nonexistent. Once Dad got sick, Mom gave all her time to him and the outside pretty much went to pot.”
“The boathouse?” Spence asked.
Dan shrugged. “I walked down there earlier—the steps are rotting and that roof also has to be replaced.”
I glanced at Spence. This was my dream house—our dream house. If there was any way…
“Look,” Dan said, “there are four of us kids all with jobs and families of our own and all hundreds of miles away. After the funeral we each chose the furniture pieces and sentimental items—books and knickknacks and such—that we wanted. The plan is to try to sell the place ourselves this fall. If that doesn’t work, we put some money into fixing it up and list with a Realtor in the spring. Frankly, we’d rather get a deal done before the holidays and not have to fool with it for the next six months.”
I cradled the mug of coffee and blessed Dan for the cheese spread and crackers he’d set out, as well. “So, what you’re saying is—” The phone rang.
“What I’m saying is make us an offer—any reasonable offer,” Dan replied on his way to take the call in the professor’s study.
“What’s he asking?” I whispered.
Spence named a figure and my heart fell. “It’s fair, but we can’t afford that, Spence.”
“Actually, we can. I had Zach run some numbers earlier and—”
“But there’s the roof and the furnace and the painting and the lawn and…this…” I finished, weakly motioning to the kitchen.
“Do you like it?”
“I love it. You knew I’d fall in love with it. That’s why you brought me here, but—”
“Well, so do I. Let’s make a fresh start, Zoe. This is the home we’ve both dreamed of and it’s here for the taking. Let’s do it.”
“It would be fun,” I said, glancing around, ideas for paint colors and new kitchen curtains and how our things might fit spinning through my brain.
“Did I mention that the price includes the furniture that’s here?” Spence said casually as he got up and rinsed the empty coffee mugs in the sink.
“What? You’re kidding.”
He turned and he was grinning like a kid. “That’s what I meant upstairs when I told you it got better. Let’s do it, Zoe.”
And within the month we were the proud owners of a 1920s two-story house overlooking the lake, the campus, the Capitol building and, somewhere in there, our old apartment.
Spence
Over the next several months, the house claimed all our time and most of our money. Zoe’s parents gave us a sizable check for the replacement of the roof and furnace. “An early Christmas present,” Kay said when Zoe protested.
“Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries for the next decade,” I said when Zoe showed me the check.
“Are you okay with accepting it? I can give it back.”
“They’ll just find another way. I just wouldn’t want my folks to be upset that they can’t do as much.”
Zoe whirled, her eyes wide with genuine shock. “Are you nuts? Hal and your brothers have climbed all over the outside of this place patching and painting, replacing cracked windows and adding insulation so that our heating bills—even with the new furnace—don’t bankrupt us.”
“Yeah, but—”
“And Marie? Don’t get me started on what your mother has done for us. The new drapes for the library, the wall-papering she did in the bedrooms, the…”
I could see that this was a conversation likely to go on for some time, so I did what I always did in the face of Zoe’s one-sided debates. I surrendered. “Okay, you win,” I said with a grin.
“It’s not a matter of winning—this isn’t a contest,” she huffed, and went back to painting the woodwork on the sunporch. “We’re incredibly lucky to have your parents and mine in—” She stood and swayed slightly, then immediately sat on the edge of the wicker ottoman.
“Zoe?”
“Paint fumes,” she said with a smile that didn’t quite extend all the way to her eyes. She put down the brush and held her head.
“Enough,” I declared, relieving her of the paintbrush. “Go inside and lie down.” I gave her my support as I walked with her into the library and led her to the worn leather sofa. She didn’t protest and that worried me. “What can I get you?” I asked, covering her with the afghan Mom had made especially for this room.
“Maybe a little white soda,” she said, her eyes closed. “I’ll be fine.”
But she slept the rest of the afternoon, and when I gently shook her to see if she could eat a little chicken soup, she moaned and closed her eyes again. The idea of Zoe any less than hale and hearty was the scariest thing I’d ever considered. “I’m calling the doctor,” I muttered, more to myself than to Zoe.
“No. It’s a touch of the flu or else the paint fumes got to me. I’ll be fine. Just need some sleep.”
I pulled a chair close and read while she slept. Near eleven she woke and sat up. “I could use a little of that soup now,” she said. “And maybe a couple of saltines,” she added as I hurried to the kitchen to do her bidding.
It should have occurred to me that what we were seeing were the classic symptoms of pregnancy, but we had both begun to accept the idea that perhaps children—at least of our own making—were not in our future. So, as the evidence mounted, I found every possible cause other than pregnancy, because frankly, I didn’t want to get my hopes up.
The next day she was her old self—off to work for ten long hours, then home to make dinner and start in on the next project on her list. I had insisted that any more painting be put on hold until the weather permitted open doors and windows and proper ventilation. For once, Zoe hadn’t argued—which told me just how lousy she’d been feeling the night before.
But when it happened again two days later—same time, only no paint fumes—I refused to listen to her protests as I went to the phone and called Elizabeth Simmons—my colleague at the medical college and our neighbor two doors down.
“Liz, tell him he’s overreacting,” Zoe pleaded as Liz arrived ten minutes later and calmly performed her examination.
“Here’s what I’m going to tell both of you,” she said quietly as she put away her stethoscope. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure that you’re pregnant.”
“But…” Zoe started to protest.
“Probably a couple of months—that’s usually when morning sickness hits.”
“It’s nine o’clock at night,” Zoe pointed out.
Liz shrugged as she packed up her stethoscope. “Tomorrow I want you in the office first thing so we can run a proper test.” She stood up and grinned down at Zoe. “Congratulations.”
Speechless, I walked with her to the door. “You’re sure?”
“As sure as I can be under the circumstances,” she replied as I held her coat for her. Then something in my expression must have made her reconsider the flippancy of her tone. “Spence, I’m sure enough that I said it outright in there instead of waiting until tomorrow. I would never want to disappoint either of you after all you’ve been through wanting this news.”
“Thanks.” I opened the door for her. Then, overwhelmed with the realization that this was almost certainly for real, I hugged her. “Thanks,” I repeated joyfully.
“Oh, sure,” Zoe announced from the doorway to the library, “I’m barely pregnant and you’re already making moves on another woman.” Then she grinned and held out her arms to me.
I caught her and swung her round and round as we repeated the incredible and completely unexpected news. “We hadn’t even been trying,” she said at the same time that I shouted, “A baby—our baby.”
Somewhere in there Liz let herself out and gently closed the door.
After these initial bouts of morning-in-the-evening sickness, Zoe sailed through pregnancy as if she’d already done it a dozen times. And if brides are radiant, they are pale and bland compared with a woman anticipating her first child. Zoe had always been beautiful, but now there was a kind of ethereal luminosity that took my breath away.
“Spence?” Zoe whispered one night about six weeks before her due date. “It’s time.”
I had just gotten to bed after working most of the night completing a journal article on my theory on post-traumatic stress syndrome. I had fallen into bed and instantly into an exhausted slumber. “Just got here,” I mumbled, and pulled the pillow over my head.
“For the baby,” she said calmly.
Her words registered and I was immediately wide-awake, grabbing for my trousers and shoes without bothering with socks. Zoe sat across from me on the chair next to her dresser. She was dressed, her hands folded primly in her lap and the bag that Mom had helped her pack was at her feet.
“I have to call Elizabeth,” I said, stumbling about like a drunken sailor, grabbing for glasses, wallet, the sweatshirt I kept on the back of the closet door.
Zoe stood up and held out the car keys. “Calm down. I called Liz when the contractions started half an hour ago. They’re still at least fifteen minutes apart—in fact, this may be what they call false…”
Her voice trailed off and her face went white as she dropped the keys and grabbed her protruding belly. “Right,” I muttered as I picked up the keys and scooped Zoe into my arms. “Let’s go.”
“The bag,” she protested.
“I’ll come back for it after we see why this kid is in such a rush.” I carried her down the stairs and through the house to the garage, where I deposited her in the car and raced around to get in myself.
“The lights,” she said.
“Leave ’em,” I said, and then cursed as I flooded the engine.
“Tender ears,” she warned, pointing to her tummy. Then she gasped again. “We’d better hurry,” she admitted.
If sheer will can start a car, it worked that night. The VW Bug we’d bought when we got married finally caught and I roared out of the garage and down the winding street.
“You’re going to get a ticket,” Zoe observed, her voice sounding far away and weaker by the minute.
“Then the kid gets a police escort. Hang on,” I ordered, and floored it.
Liz was already at the hospital, gowned and ready for anything. I could see that she was worried and trying not to show it.
“It’s too soon,” I protested.
“We’ll see,” was her noncommittal response, and in that moment I vowed to reexamine my own script for reassuring family members, because I definitely was not reassured by Liz’s words or her expression.
“Spence?”
Zoe’s voice trembled.
“Right here, love.” I grasped her hand as the aides wheeled her along the corridors as if they were doing time trials for the Indy 500. “Everything’s going to be fine. Liz is right here.”
Zoe nodded and then smiled. “Your daughter’s in a hurry,” she said.
“Our son takes after his mother,” I replied as the double doors at the end of the hall opened with a pop, exposing an operating theater where nurses and others immediately went into action with no direction from Liz.
“You guys have done this before,” Zoe observed, her words already beginning to slur from the drugs they were pumping through the IV a nurse had inserted into her arm almost before the gurney came to a halt.
“Oh, honey, we’re the best,” the nurse assured her. “That’s why they pay us the really big bucks.” The orderlies transferring Zoe from the gurney to the table laughed.
Liz examined Zoe, consulted quietly with two other doctors, gave some orders to the staff and then turned to Zoe. “Your baby is coming. It’s early, but you’re both strong. The problem is the position, so we’re going to put you under and perform a cesarean. That—”
“No.” This was Zoe—a single word, strongly stated and undebatable.
“But, Zoe,” Liz began again, lifting her eyes to mine, pleading for help.
“Can you do it without doing the C-section?” I asked.
“Well, sure, but…”
Zoe gripped my hand so tight I thought at least two fingers would crack. “She’s waited a long time for this and it’s important to her. It’s her call,” I replied.
Zoe’s fingers relaxed, then tightened again as the next contraction hit. “Jeezle Pete,” she yelled, and then blew out her breath in the panting sounds she and I had learned in our prenatal training. “Check again,” she said to Liz when the contraction passed. “I’m pretty sure the kid just stuck the landing on a triple somersault.”
Liz did as Zoe asked, then looked at me and shook her head once.
I bent close to Zoe, turning my back on everyone else. “Zoe, you don’t have to do this. You’re not going to be any less a great mom just because you—”
She grabbed the front of my sweatshirt and pulled me closer. “Now, you listen to me, farm boy. Unless you want to trade places and lie here on this gurney with eighteen people checking out your privates, every few minutes followed by repeated karate kicks to your gut, you don’t get to decide what I can and cannot do, okay? As long as I’m not endangering our child—and I’m not, right?” She glanced up at Liz for confirmation.
Liz hesitated, then sighed and shook her head. “No, you’re just being stubborn and putting yourself through more than you need to.”
“But I can do this—we can do this, right?” she asked, gently running her hands over her extended belly.
“You can do it,” Liz agreed.
Zoe smiled and released me. “Then let’s have ourselves a baby.”
Camilla Louise Andersen—named for two of her great-grandmothers—entered the world some eighteen hours later. She weighed just over five pounds, had a full head of black hair, my eyes and her mother’s temperament, stating her needs from the start. But she was also a miracle—a tiny being who would settle into what Zoe called “coo” stage, sleeping or simply lying quietly and taking in the world around her.
“Hey, Cami,” Zoe said softly as she studied the miracle that was our firstborn. “Welcome to our world.”