CHAPTER TEN

Barb

I never liked my name. I should’ve changed it when I was sixteen.

Barb. Barb Frost. Barbara Marie Johnson Frost. The most boring, unremarkable, midwestern name on every level. Oh, Frost was a fine last name, especially given that John was somehow related to Robert Frost. I’d been so excited by that when we first met. How thrilling, being related to the great poet! To have that gentle, insightful, famous blood running through your veins! Gosh!

“Well, I don’t know about that,” John had said, and maybe I should’ve taken more notice, because it was true. Turned out, there was nothing poetic about him.

At our wedding, his mother told me no one was quite sure how Robert Frost was connected to them . . . It was more of a rumor than anything that could be fact-checked at the time. Not that it mattered, but it seemed like John had been keeping that from me. Maybe related to Robert Frost is different from being related to Robert Frost. As for the name John, well, it was the most common name in the English-speaking world, wasn’t it? At least no one called him Jack. Jack Frost. Jeez Louise, that would’ve been horrible.

When I finally had a baby, I gave her the most poetic name in the world. Juliet Elizabeth Frost. A beautiful name for a beautiful girl. I only wanted one baby, I’d already decided; I had three sisters and three brothers, and it wasn’t the way they show it in books. I remember reading Cheaper by the Dozen and feeling so cheated. We Johnson kids were no happy gang of seven romping and singing and helping each other, heck no. My oldest brother, fifteen years my senior, barely knew I was alive, and Elaine, older by sixteen months, picked on me endlessly. I was the fifth child, lost in the middle blur. My father never got my name right on the first try, and my mother was exhausted and exasperated all the time. I shared a room with my sisters, and all our clothes were hand-me-downs from our wealthier cousins, first to Nancy, then Elaine, then to me, then to Tina, who at least had the honor of being the baby of the family.

Seven children in nineteen years. Russell, Nancy, Henry, Elaine, me, Arthur and Tina. We weren’t poor, but we weren’t comfortable, either. We didn’t go hungry, but that was because we had a small farm, and Dad could always slaughter a pig. No vacations except for one time when we piled into the gigantic station wagon and drove for ten hours to an aunt’s rented house on a lake, where there was one bathroom for thirteen people. We kids slept on the floors of various rooms and porches, trying to make friends with cousins we had never met. The mosquitoes were relentless, and the lake water was murky and brown. Tina was still wetting the bed at night, which became my responsibility somehow. Every other summer was unbroken, just a stream of long days and hard work, endless laundry and cooking, loading hay, feeding the pigs, weeding our vast garden, crushing grubs between our fingers with no relief from the prairie sun. I hated it.

I was a not-bad student, not that anyone noticed. Solid Bs, the occasional A. I blamed my name. Barbara Marie Johnson. She doesn’t sound much like a valedictorian, does she? Not someone who’d get a scholarship to St. Olaf or Columbia. My oldest brother went into the Army; Nancy went to secretarial school; Henry became a mechanic; Elaine got pregnant and married the summer after she graduated.

All I wanted was to get away. I took a few courses and became a legal secretary, then I applied for jobs up and down the East Coast. No way was I going to stay in Minnesota, no sir. When I got a job offer in Providence, Rhode Island, I took it sight unseen. I had just turned eighteen, since I’d skipped fourth grade, much to Elaine’s annoyance. Without much fanfare, I moved to Rhode Island, so small and charming and eclectic compared to Minnesota!

I loved Providence. It was busy and cultured, with the colleges and the restaurants and such. I told people my name was Barb, which sounded a little more energetic than Barbara. Barbie was out. I couldn’t go by my initials—B. M. or B. J. (A girlfriend told me what BJ stood for, and gosh, I was shocked.) Bobbi was too popular at the time. I tried BeBe, but it didn’t take. Barb was the best I could do.

The law firm that had hired me was large and paid well. I shared a cute apartment with two other girls, and buckled down at being a grown-up, learning to drink a gin and tonic (my family was dry in every sense), painting old furniture I got at garage sales. I learned to accessorize and shop at thrift stores for good-quality clothes and tried to look professional and a little sassy at work. Sometimes people teased me about my accent, which I didn’t even know I had, and I tried to tone it down.

I worked hard at my job, one of dozens of legal secretaries at the firm. I needed to stand out, so I was first in the department every day, last to leave. I learned my boss’s preferences and rhythms, handing him the paper and a coffee just the way he liked it (“You don’t have to do that, Barb!” he’d say every day, pleased that I did). In addition to making sure my work was absolutely immaculate, I put his wedding anniversary and kids’ birthdays on my calendar to remind him. I offered to order flowers for his wife or call restaurants for reservations. I was friendly and respectful and didn’t miss a day.

It worked. He recommended that I get promoted to paralegal, because this was back in the day when you didn’t need to have a degree for that. You just had to be sharp. And I was.

Soon it felt natural, being perky and cheerful and making the most out of my ordinary looks with makeup and flattering hairstyles. Elaine was “the pretty one” in our family, Tina “the feisty one,” Nancy “the smart one.” I didn’t have a title—once, my father called me “the angry one,” and I burst into tears, scaring him. I’m not sure I ever forgave him for that. It should’ve been “the hardworking one.”

I had to work just as hard socially. I didn’t come from a close-knit, adoring family like Becky, one of my roommates. I wasn’t beautiful, like Christine, one of the other secretaries, who made men fall silent and forget what they were saying. I was just Barb Johnson, cheerful, hardworking, helpful. So when it came to parties or dating, I studied the other girls and learned how to flirt, talk, walk with my hips swaying just enough. I was making the best of what I had. That was something I had learned from my parents.

I met John at a company cocktail party. I worked in Real Estate; he worked in Family (one of the lower-earning divisions). But he was nice-looking and had a gentle voice, and he seemed to like me quite a bit, laughing at my jokes, smiling as I spoke. We dated for six months before he proposed, saying he loved me. I loved him, too. I thought I did, anyway. He was a perfectly nice young man with good prospects. I liked kissing him. I liked his hands on me, but I kept things chaste, because who marries the cow if you get the milk for free, even if this was the wild seventies?

That makes me sound cold, doesn’t it? Well, you have to know, there was no romance in my upbringing. My parents married each other because they were both immigrants, both Norwegian, both Lutheran, and my father had land.

John would be a good husband. There was nothing to dislike, no skeletons, no weird fetishes or unkindness. We wanted the same things—stability, family, comfort.

When my parents finally agreed to come to Rhode Island to meet him and his parents, my father opened by saying a big wedding wasn’t in the budget and there was nothing wrong with city hall. John’s parents exchanged a glance. His mother said, “Oh, please, let us throw the kids a wedding. John’s our only child, and we love Barb like a daughter already!”

I felt so pathetically grateful. My own parents didn’t care, but Eleanor Frost did. Our wedding was small but tasteful—forty guests, a fancy lunch at the Hotel Adelade. I invited my siblings, but none of them came. Tina was in a snit because I didn’t want her to be a bridesmaid, Nancy was pregnant and the rest of them didn’t have the money or time or interest to come, frankly. Nancy sent a card and a casserole dish, which, given that she already had four kids, was truly thoughtful.

I stayed at the law firm, relishing both my job and our domesticity. John and I weren’t setting the world on fire, but I read a few books about making a happy marriage, and we were happy, back then. We bought a real cute house on a lovely street in Cranston. On Friday nights, we had cocktails and a nice dinner, just us two, sometimes going out, sometimes me making a fuss and trying something from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, because the books said to make an effort and show your appreciation. On Saturday nights, we went out with friends—bowling or the movies, Mexican food. We had sex on Tuesdays and Fridays, and sometimes on Sunday mornings, too.

I loved being married. The rhythm of it, the safety. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I’d snuggle against John’s back, so grateful to belong.

I loved being a wife. Loved doing little things to make him feel special—cranberry orange muffins on the weekends, or a note tucked into his briefcase.

Maybe more than him, I loved us. The unity of us. He’d roll his eyes in sympathy when I endured my mother’s phone call each month, knowing that she peppered me with a litany of complaints and dissatisfactions. When he called his mother (every other day), I’d run my hand through his hair or give him a kiss on the cheek, glad he was a good son, a good man, then take the phone and update Eleanor on the girlier things in our life—how I’d planted tulips, could I have her recipe for those delicious potatoes with the rosemary and such.

When I was twenty-three, I decided it was time for a baby. Keep in mind I was a midwesterner, and twenty-three in Minnesota was a full-on grown-up, and we’d already been married for more than two years. John agreed. He’d be a wonderful dad, so solid and reliable, so unwavering, especially if our baby was a boy.

As I said, I only wanted one child. Growing up in a sloppy litter of children, I never wanted my child to feel unloved or pushed aside. Though John said he’d been a bit lonely without siblings, he’d also felt completely loved by both parents. He had no idea how lucky he was in that respect.

So it was settled. We had enough in the bank, we had this marriage thing down, and it was time. I repainted the empty bedroom pale yellow and started shopping at antiques stores on the weekends, buying a nice old mantel clock and some porcelain Winnie-the-Pooh figurines that would look so sweet on a bookcase. Threw myself into baking, dreamily imagined my little one running in from the school bus to eat a chocolate chip cookie warm from the oven, chattering about his or her day.

I got pregnant right away. Oh, gosh, we were so happy. We wanted to wait to tell folks, just in case something went wrong, but we celebrated, just the two of us. I think that’s when I loved John the most, and he loved me the most, too. He worshipped my body, in awe, even if I wasn’t showing. My tender breasts, the veins that were suddenly so visible through my pale skin. He’d bring me an Awful Awful from Newport Creamery—a milkshake that got its name from being awful big, awful good.

A miscarriage never crossed my mind, not until I felt the warm rush of blood, and helpless terror flooded through me.

By the time we got to the hospital, it was over. Ten weeks. Not uncommon, especially with first pregnancies. Nature’s way of sensing a problem with the fetus.

I’d never thought of it as a fetus. That had been our baby. Our son. Though the doctor didn’t say, I knew it was a boy.

I was so glad we hadn’t told anyone, because I felt an awful sense of shame. I couldn’t put it into words. On the one hand, I believed the doctor when he said it wasn’t my fault. On the other, I hated my stupid, stupid body. My mother had seven children! My sister Nancy was on her sixth! Elaine had three!

John was kind. And sad. But you know, it felt like it was my fault, no matter what anyone said. I missed that baby. Gosh, I missed him.

All I wanted was to get pregnant again, and fast. As soon as I recovered, we started trying again. Figured since I got pregnant right away the first time, it’d be no problem the second.

We were wrong.

The weeks turned into months. That was fine, I told myself. I loved John, loved working as a paralegal, loved keeping our house perfectly tidy and appealing. If I lay awake in bed at night, tears slipping into my hair, well, of course I was taking it hard. Now that I’d had a taste of that kind of love, I needed another baby to heal my heart. I wanted to be a mother so much, I ached with it.

The second year I didn’t get pregnant, we saw a doctor. Nothing was wrong with either of us, and I was still young. “You’re not infertile,” the doctor said, “because you did get pregnant. Keep trying.” I cried in the parking lot, and John tried to console me.

I found myself growing brittle. It was harder to keep smiling, to stay perky. My mind drifted at work, and I made mistakes, too busy wondering if this month would be when nature deigned to let me have—and keep—what everyone else seemed to get so easily. John was sympathetic enough, but it was hard to put into words just how empty I felt. Like all the work and time I’d put into getting to this point in life meant nothing, not without a baby. What good was I if I couldn’t be a mother? Oh, I knew it was harder for some women, of course I did. But when Tina called with the news that she was having twins, I hung up, then called back later, saying a storm had knocked out our phone lines.

Babies were everywhere but in my womb.

I went on Clomid, but had to go off it because of the blinding headaches it caused. “There’s nothing medically wrong with either of you,” the doctor said, and I quit his practice and found someone else.

The second year of trying turned into a third year.

It wasn’t fair. Going out with other couples was harder now; once we’d all been in the same boat; now Ellen was having her second and was tired, and the Parsons couldn’t get a babysitter, and Abby and Paul had exciting news, and I didn’t want to see them anymore. Friday night dinners, which had been such fun and felt so grown-up, were now morose. Why us? When would it happen? What if something was really wrong? Should we be trying to adopt now? Could we afford a trip to Korea? Colombia? Russia? We were on three agencies’ lists, and not once did we make it to the interview stage.

Then John’s grandfather died, and much to his surprise, John inherited the old man’s home in Stoningham, Connecticut. When we pulled up to the house, I sat there, stunned silent. Grandpa Theo had been living with his sister in Maine for years and years. I’d never even been to Stoningham. Didn’t know this house existed.

It was absolutely beautiful. A Greek Revival that needed some work, but was elegant and large and so . . . so classy. As I wandered through, taking in the huge windows, the columns, the pilasters, friezes and cornices and other words whose meaning I didn’t even know, I fell in love. A front hall with a curving, graceful staircase. Fireplaces. A front parlor, a study, a family room, a dining room, a sunny if dated kitchen. Five bedrooms upstairs. Five!

A far cry from our run-down farmhouse in Nowhere, Minnesota. Our house in Cranston was cute but humble, not a place where we could have more than two couples over because the rooms were so small. But this house . . . this was heaven! The town, the house, the small enclosed yard, the nearby library, the smell of salt in the air, the cheerfully painted businesses on Water Street . . . honest to Pete, I was in heaven.

Stoningham was what a person thought of when they heard the word Connecticut—a little village of Colonials and Victorians, old cemeteries, posh boutiques, several restaurants, the historical society, the garden society, Long Island Sound sparkling, dotted with the white sails of boats.

Suddenly, marriage seemed wonderful again, new lifeblood injected into our lives. We needed this, John and I. The change. The freshness. We moved, John commuting half an hour or so to Providence. I decided to quit my job and devote myself to the house, which hadn’t been lived in for nearly a decade. This was where I was meant to be. This would be where my child would be born. We would belong here in a way I’d never belonged anywhere. I’d been the girl who lived on that cow farm outside of town, one of the many Johnson kids. I’d been Barb from Minnesota in Providence, and since I worked the whole time we lived in Cranston, we still hadn’t met some of our neighbors.

But in Stoningham, I could be someone. I wanted to be someone here, to fit into Stoningham’s effortless grace, to be known by name, to have our house on the tour of homes at Christmas, to be recognized by the society ladies, because this was a town that had society ladies. Being a Frost was suddenly relevant; while we may or may not have been related to the poet, the name Frost was carved in granite on three war memorials here—Silas, Obadiah and Nathaniel.

I wasn’t a paralegal anymore; I was the wife of an attorney. He’d gone to Boston College and Northeastern, and suddenly, that mattered more. He had a pedigree (maybe), and I would reflect that in everything I did, starting with our home. And once that was done, maybe God would grace me with a pregnancy, because this was where my child should be raised.

I threw myself into the town and was received graciously. Welcomed, even. I met Caro from around the corner. She was married, had one infant son and was desperate for an adult to talk to. I joined the Friends of the Library and asked for advice about the restoration of our columns from the head of the historical society, who was pleased that I took the house’s history so seriously. John bought a little sailboat and we joined the yacht club.

I still didn’t get pregnant, though. Years passed. Years of trying, that one brief pregnancy. Four different ob-gyns. No diagnosis.

It was devastating. Everywhere I went, I felt judged. I wasn’t childless by choice. I was broken somehow. Everywhere I looked, there were pregnant women, children, babies. In the summertime, when the population doubled, there were so many beautiful children everywhere that I would cry. “Don’t worry, honey,” John said one night. “It’ll happen, and if it doesn’t, well, we’re happy just the way we are.”

I wanted to punch him. Hard. I was not happy, not on the inside! Couldn’t he see that? I almost hated him, living the same life as always, staid and unruffled, driving back and forth to Providence, reasonably successful but ever complacent. How dare he be happy when I wanted to drop to my knees and sob?

When a woman can’t get pregnant, the world judges her. The husband, gosh, he’s just a great guy, releasing millions of sperm for his wife’s selfish, snobby egg to reject. He’s so patient, so understanding, so good-natured, so supportive (of her problem). That John, I imagined people thinking. He sure is a saint.

I was barren. That hateful word. I wanted to be lush, fertile, inviting, warm, nurturing . . . and instead, my uterus was an empty white room with sharp angles and immaculate floors.

One of my former coworkers was Japanese, and she told me once that women who couldn’t have children were called stone women. I felt like stone, all right. I went through the motions, sex becoming only about procreation. I snapped at John. My smile felt hard as I volunteered on committees and worked in the garden. When Genevieve London, the most influential and beloved of all Stoningham’s residents, told me I’d done a “truly stellar” job on the fund-raiser for a new wing in the library, I almost broke down. I don’t care about that! I imagined sobbing on her shoulder. I just want to be a mother.

I spoke with adoption agencies, longing for the Victorian days when you could just go to an orphanage and pick out a child. “This one’s adorable! We’ll take her!”

Caro was the only one I told. She’d just had her second boy, and I’d gone over with a hot dish. She let me hold him, and I must’ve looked sad, because she said, “Are you okay, honey?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “It’s just . . . we’ve been having some trouble on the baby front.” A few tears dropped onto her son’s tiny, perfect head. “He’s awfully precious, Caro.”

She got me a tissue and gave me a hug. “If you ever want to talk about it, or borrow the boys, I’m here.” And she let me hold that baby a long, long time.

And then, finally, when John had stopped asking if I was late, when I was speaking to adoption agencies in nine states and three countries, it happened. John and I had gone through the motions the night before, and when I woke up in the morning, I knew. I just knew.

Those first three months, I was so careful, holding myself together with all I had. I told God I was grateful and waited, waited for every day to pass, to bring me closer to my child. When I went to the doctor at fifteen weeks and she pronounced everything normal and healthy, I burst into tears. Only when I started to show did I confirm that yes, I was pregnant.

That beautiful, rich, sacred word. Pregnant. I called my family, and they answered in typical Minnesotan fashion. “Oh, that’s nice, Barbara. Didja hear Tina’s pregnant again, too?” I hadn’t shared my difficulties with them, but their nonchalance infuriated me.

Caro was wonderful. She threw her arms around me and cried with happiness. Took me shopping for maternity clothes and understood that I was too superstitious to want a baby shower.

What a completely terrifying time those nine months were! “Enjoy,” people would say, and I’d look at them like they were crazy. Enjoy? When I could hold my baby, I would enjoy. For now, I was wrapped in fear, walking a razor’s edge, taking such good care of myself and yet held hostage every minute.

John figured we were “out of the woods” once I hit the fourth month, unaware that I prayed ferociously and almost constantly, begging and bribing and cajoling and threatening God to give me a healthy child, to spare me another miscarriage. I would be the best mother. I would love my baby so much. I already did. I would make God so proud of me. Please. Please. Please. With every roll and push of the baby, I was struck by wonder . . . and fear. Oh, I loved this baby so much. So much.

When I went into labor, I was the most ready person in the world. None of this “please, it hurts too much, I can’t do it,” not for me. Gosh no. And it didn’t hurt—well, of course it did, but not nearly as much as they tell you it will.

I was ready, and my baby was ready, too—two hours after John and I got to the hospital, she was here.

A daughter. Oh, the joy that filled my heart when they told me! I’m sure I would’ve felt the same way if it had been a boy, but upon hearing, “It’s a girl, Mrs. Frost!” my heart overflowed with gratitude and joy and sheer, utter bliss.

Juliet Elizabeth Frost. My precious, wonderful miracle. I knew, in that moment, I would never love anyone as much.

Not even my second daughter. I’m not proud of it, but there it is just the same.