MARGY WORKED OUT her budget. Delivery and anesthetic—she’d have to have one, she was not brave enough—hospitalization—that came to seventy-two dollars. Cab each way, two dollars. She’d have to tip the day and night nurse a dollar each. Seventy-four. Make it seventy-five. She’d like to have a dollar extra in case she wanted to send out for a newspaper or something. Yes, seventy-five dollars would do it. It seemed very expensive to Margy.
Two weeks before the baby was due she had a conference with Frankie on finances. “We need seventy-five dollars,” she said. “At the least, seventy-four. I’ve saved and I’ve saved but I only have fifty-six dollars.”
“You said you’d manage,” said Frankie.
“I meant it. And I tried. I saved your two-dollar raise. I tried to economize. But somehow the food bills got higher. I seem to be so hungry all the time.”
“Well, don’t worry, Margy. It’s too bad that you have to go through the pain and trouble of childbirth and worry on the side about paying for it.”
“Oh, the worry’s good. It takes my mind off my own scaredness at least.”
“Well, it’ll work out all right. I’ll cut out smoking altogether.”
“Oh, no, Frankie! Your one comfort; your only extravagance. Besides, you don’t smoke much.”
“I’ll lay off for two weeks then—the two weeks you’re in the hospital. It won’t be hard. Every time I feel like a cigarette, I’ll think of you in the hospital. Doing without a smoke won’t seem like anything at all, considering.”
“We’ll save two weeks on the gas, electric and ice bills while I’m in the hospital,” she suggested hopefully.
“And food,” added Frankie. “I’ll stay at my mother’s house and eat breakfast and supper there. That will save a lot.”
He didn’t feel too happy about the idea of eating at his mother’s house. If he ate too eagerly of anything she’d say: “That’s right, Frankie. Eat more! You don’t get good cooking like this in your house.”
“We ought to take out hospital insurance,” he said. “I’ve been reading the ads. ‘You never know when illness will strike,’” he quoted somberly.
“No, Frankie.” She was firm about it. “I’ve never been sick, neither have you. We can’t afford to pay out premiums year after year on such a gamble. We have life insurance. That’s enough.”
“But you never can tell,” he persisted. “Like they say, illness strikes suddenly.”
“People like us can’t afford to be sick. We’ve got to keep well. If we lose our health . . .” she knocked on wood, he followed suit, “we’re sunk.”
“Everything’s all right now, maybe. But what about when we get old?” he asked, feeling the full weight of his twenty-two years.
“It will be forever before we get old. And by that time we’ll be on Easy Street. We’ll have our own home, you’ll have your own business and our children will be all through college.”
“Children?” he groaned. “Gee, Margy, we can’t have any more. Honest! A guy’s got children, he gives hostages to fortune. I read that somewhere when I was in high school.”
“What do you mean—hostages?”
“I mean when you have children you’re in hock for the rest of your life.”
“But if you bring up one you might as well bring up two or three; two close together and when they’re ten and twelve, one more. So that when the two oldest leave home, there’s still a child left in the house.”
“No, Margy. One’s enough. And I’ll see to it personally,” he said evenly, “that there’ll be no more.”
“But what good is a normal woman without children?” she cried out. “I’ve got to have children, Frankie.”
“Why? Why? Give me one good reason why.” He thought of his mother’s reason. “Aside from the fact that you want to tie me down.”
Then she said something she hadn’t known was in her mind. “We’ve got to have children because you and I have nothing between us.”
There was a sudden intense quiet like the throbbing stillness after the cutting off of a high note in music that has been held too long. Her hand went to her mouth as if she would put back the words. She fought frantically for something else to say—something that would nullify her words to him. But she couldn’t think of any magic phrases. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, she whispered to an invisible Confessor. She wanted to kneel before Frankie and ask him to forgive her for hurting him so. She moved forward in her chair but just then the baby stirred within her and she had a foolish notion that the baby would be harmed somehow if she knelt to ask forgiveness of its father.
His eyes were drawn to the little sudden movement under her taut skirt as the child within her stirred. And he winced with pity. She’s the one who’ll have all the pain and risk, he thought. Why does she fight so for it, he wondered, as if it were some great privilege? He got his hat and coat out of the closet. He spoke to her quietly.
“So you finally said it, Margy.”
Familiar from childhood with the dread ritual of quarreling, she made no answer, knowing that like steps, one angry word made a path for another angry word to follow. He put his hat on carefully; he buttoned his coat slowly.
“Where are you going?” she asked as she had heard her mother ask her father many a night.
“Out,” he said.
And his inflection was the same as her father’s.
OF COURSE THEY made up later that night. He explained his attitude quietly and logically and he begged her to understand. She assured him she did. And she really did understand. Unfortunately, understanding doesn’t always connote sanction, conversion or forgiveness. She had an idea that whoever wrote something about to understand all is to forgive all, just didn’t know what he was talking about. She apologized tearfully for what she had said. She assured him that they had everything in the world between them.
They made up and were close for an hour. But there was a tear in the fabric of their marriage and in spite of meticulous mending with words of forgiveness and understanding, there was a ridge that showed where the rent had been made.
IT TURNED OUT, however, that their hurting quarrel had been for nothing. Frankie was never called upon to assume the responsibilities of parenthood.
The baby, a girl after all, was born dead.