14
1886
Maud staggered down a long hall, flanked by doors on each side. She flung each one open with a bang, but each revealed only an empty room. Far off in the distance, a baby was crying, as faint as the chirping of a tiny bird. The hallway telescoped out in front of her.
Frank! Maud cried out, but his name, instead of coming out fully formed, wafted out of her mouth like a puffy cloud. Frank!! The words seemed to float above her, a line of vaporous puffs. Suddenly, she was seized by fear. She couldn’t move; she was paralyzed. She twisted and turned, but she was caught up in something. It wrapped around her torso like a vise, so tight, so tight, that she shrieked out in pain.
“There, there, dear Maud.” Maud opened her eyes and saw Julia leaning over her, wiping her forehead with a cool cloth.
“You’ve had quite a fever,” Julia said. “I think it’s coming down now.”
Maud closed her eyes, but again she saw the long hallway, the empty rooms. She opened her eyes, and this time, she saw not just her sister’s face but Frank’s, peering at her with concern.
“Maud,” Frank said, in the gentlest voice. “Have you come back to us?”
“But where have I been?” Maud said. Why was she here, in this upstairs bedroom? She was…
Maud’s hands flew to her belly, but she drew them away quickly—her stomach was hot and painful.
She closed her eyes again and willed herself to concentrate, but her head was so thick and fuzzy, she couldn’t think straight. Bits and pieces came back to her. She remembered her pains coming in waves; she was standing by the window, looking at the garden.
Frank’s face was so close she could reach out and touch it, but her arm was too heavy to lift. She could see tears blackening his long lashes.
“Don’t leave us again, my dearest. I can’t lose you.”
Through the fog in her mind, through the confusion of the image of the long corridor, she remembered. She remembered that she had given birth. She could remember the lusty cry and the ruddy body slick with the white grease of birth.
Where is the baby?
Julia’s face hovered above her.
“Maud, Maudie dear? Don’t try to talk, just rest…”
Where is the baby?
Now a man with whiskers stood over her. She recognized Dr. Winchell. He murmured, “You need to rest.” She felt the sharp stick of a hypodermic, and then everything receded.
MAUD AWOKE TO A bright sun shining in the window. She blinked her eyes and tried to roll to her side, but she felt a sharp pain in her belly and then a gentle hand on her arm.
“Maud? Are you awake? How are you feeling?”
Frank had placed a hand on her forehead.
“You feel cooler.”
“Frank.” Maud was trying to speak clearly, but her breath came out in a whisper.
“What is it, dear?”
“The baby? Where is the baby?”
“Oh, Maudie dear, don’t trouble yourself about the baby. He’s beautiful, and I’m taking good care of him. You just take care of yourself.”
“The baby—is okay?” Maud tried to smile, but she felt herself slipping away again.
MATILDA APPLIED A CAMPHOR plaster to Maud’s tender, swollen midsection. Maud’s teeth were chattering, and she shook so violently that the bedstead shuddered against the wall.
“I’ve brewed you some willow-bark tea to bring your fever down.” Matilda lifted Maud’s head and spooned the tea into her daughter’s mouth.
Maud heard babies crying. The sound seemed to echo and multiply. How many babies? Why were they crying? Was one of the wails coming from her own child?
Mother disappeared and Julia arrived. Julia left and the doctor came in. The doctor left and Frank came to rest by her side. And still, the babies cried.
At one point, Frank said, “I’d like to bring Bunting to see you. Just for a moment. It would cheer him up.”
At the mention of her son’s name, she felt her face grow wet with tears, even though she didn’t know she was crying.
Bunting stood in the doorway, one foot crossed over the other, dressed in his nightshirt, his golden hair tousled. He looked like an angel. Maud tried to sit up, only to collapse with a sharp stitch in her side.
“Hello there, darling,” she whispered, but her voice was so soft he couldn’t hear. She reached down inside herself, pulling up all her strength. “Come in, sweet Bunting, don’t be afraid. It’s just your mama.” She tried to smile.
The boy darted back down the hallway. Frank disappeared after him.
Maud closed her eyes. She floated on a dark wave of pain.
Sometimes when she opened her eyes, she could see the tree outside her window. Bare of leaves, it looked like a giant hand reaching up to a white sky. Maud saw black crows perching on the branches, and she counted them, rhyming in her head: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy…But then they disappeared, and she wondered if they had ever been there at all.
JULIA KISSED HER CHEEK, smoothed her brow, and told her that she was leaving, going back to Dakota.
“No, you can’t go!” Maud tried to sit up, but she couldn’t. In the next moment, Julia was gone.
Songbirds sang outside the window, and the tree was suddenly green, dusted with tiny buds. The sky was bright blue, and scattered across the blue, white fluffy clouds floated like balls of cotton.
“It is a testament to your youth and fortitude, and to your family’s devoted care, that you are still alive,” Dr. Winchell said. “I’ve seen few women recover from such a severe puerperal sepsis. But make no mistake, you are not yet fully recovered. The slightest strain or draft of cold can still kill you.”
Maud was only now beginning to understand what had happened to her. On the third day after childbirth, she had developed the dreaded fever. That she was still alive was nothing short of a miracle. But she could not see for what purpose she had been spared. Five times a day, her nurse placed a folded length of cotton between her legs, and each time, the pad was soaked with the devil’s brew—green and yellow, foul-odored. Her cheeks were sunken and gray, her hip bones stuck out, her arms were useless twigs, and below her umbilicus, where she had once been strong, her belly remained swollen and sore to the touch. Nevertheless, Maud had begun to refuse the morphine injections, determined to uncloud her mind.
She could see what had happened from the faces of them all—from her frightened little Bunting, who hovered at the sickroom door but refused to come in, from the weary faces of her caretakers, from the softly repeated rosary of the Irish nurse, from the grave way the doctor addressed her—and she understood that she was no longer Maud. She had become that most dreaded household figure: the female invalid.
“We’ve done everything we can do for you here,” the doctor said. “The only hope is to put you in a sanitarium.”
Maud lay in the bed, almost too tired to speak. Perhaps Frank expected her to protest, but…but instead, she felt nothing, except for a dark, gray, blank relief that she would no longer be a burden.
DR. VANDER WENK’S SANITARIUM was clean, bright, and quiet. Maud was relieved that her family was spared the sight of the hideous tube that stuck into her belly, draining foul-smelling pus, the same pus that still dripped from between her legs. But here, there was nothing for her to do—no words to say, no loved ones to worry about, no children to cry, no weary face of her husband, no kindness and pity of her mother, no dutiful face of the private nurse.
When, at last, the tube came out and the wound slowly healed over, leaving nothing but a shiny pink divot, Maud spent her days sitting in a rocking chair near the big windows, sun streaming onto her face. The staff brought her nourishing broth and then fresh food. At first, she was allowed to walk down the halls, and then a nurse wheeled her out into the gardens. She sat in the dappling sunshine pining for home—for Frank and Bunting, and the baby, Robert, whom they were calling Robin. How she missed them! But she was determined to set aside her impatience and focus on regaining her strength. When at last she was able to circle the garden once on her own two feet, she was ready to go home.
The first time Frank carried her new baby to her and placed him in her arms, Maud looked down at him in confusion. This pink, healthy, strapping six-month-old was completely unfamiliar to her, and as soon as she held him, he set to fussing. Maud looked up at Frank, tears filling her eyes. Frank, for his part, handled the infant expertly, jiggling him on a hip to send him to sleep, pulling silly faces to make him laugh. Maud scarcely recognized the child. She could hardly believe that he was her own—he had never suckled. Never fallen asleep in her arms. He might as well have been a beautiful changeling dropped off on her doorstep.
And Bunting! When had he gotten so tall and full of words? When Maud reached out her arms to her beloved firstborn, he was too shy to run to her. He hung back, peering between his father’s long legs. Her heart cracked. Her eldest son had become a stranger.
IT TOOK MAUD MORE than a year to fully recover, but finally she was able to care for the household and the boys again, and she started to feel like herself. The memory of the first day home, when the boys had seemed like strangers, had long since faded, and they no longer remembered that she had ever been absent. But one thing between herself and Frank had permanently changed. Each night Maud lay alone, curled up on the far side of the mattress when Frank crawled into bed. She wanted more than anything to roll toward him, to bury her face in his chest and allow him to wrap her in his embrace, but her doctor had given her firm instructions: she must not conceive another child. The sponge in the lacquer box was not enough protection. Another parturition would put her life in immediate peril.
Frank had agreed to the restriction. He treated her with the utmost kindness and concern, but Maud no longer felt like herself. She was a dainty piece of china, a teapot with a mended spout. She had no doubt of his love for her, but she longed constantly for his embrace, and treated him coldly for fear that she would have a moment of weakness.
One night, Frank rolled toward her in the dark and placed his chin on her shoulder. She could feel the scratch of his moustache through her gown.
“Maudie, darling?”
“Yes, dear?”
“I feel like I’m suffocating here in New York. So much competition. So many people fighting for the same dime. It sounds like out in Dakota, a man can really be somebody. What if we head out there? Take our chances? Try to make our fortune?”
Maud felt a slight stirring somewhere deep inside her, like the wings of a baby bird cupped in her hands.
“I know you miss Julia and T.C.,” Frank continued. “Tell me, darling, what do you think?”
Maud could have ticked off a million reasons why it was a bad idea, such an uncertain venture, with the children so young. But they had left the theater company to keep Maud well, and look what had happened: she had gotten sick. Safety, certainty—whose choices in life gave them that kind of guarantee?
“Well, all right then,” Frank said, mistaking her silence for unwillingness.
Maud lay her head against his chest and felt his heart thumping in her ear—Frank, so good, so kind, so generous, so bighearted. He had been such a hollow man of late. Maud was stronger now. Why shouldn’t they adventure once again?