Morning.
They caught the six-thirty ferry. Today Sara would have lab tests done at the hospital. Tomorrow she would have surgery.
They had told Steve’s boss and their friends, the people in their group, that they were going to Boston for the rehearsal dinner and wedding of a friend of Sara’s, a business colleague. Sara still was not on intimate terms with the women on Nantucket, so she knew no questions would be asked.
Now that they were actually on the way, Sara was relaxed. She had indulged herself one last time in maudlin self-dramatization; she had written Steve a long mushy good-bye letter and included it with a will (leaving Steve everything); both were in an envelope, lying on her side of the dresser where Steve could easily find it if he were to come home alone.
It was a pleasure to drive up over Cape Cod Canal and then along Route 3 to Boston. Already they could see the beginning of fall in the flame-tipped trees that bordered the road. The dunes and short, scrubby trees that fought to grow on Nantucket and the Cape soon gave way to thick bushy evergreens and majestic maples, which in turn gave way to the splendid rampant Boston skyline.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital was really a city all its own. The entrance to the day surgery unit was much like an airport terminal on a busy day; there was the same information desk with the same beleaguered woman answering the questions of lost souls; the same gift shop selling the same overpriced stuffed animals and anonymous kitsch; the same kind of crowd milling and surging through the echoing foyer, as if from one continent to another.
It took almost an hour for Sara and Steve to deal with the first step: sitting in a cramped cubicle, they told a harassed secretary every sequence of numbers that had or ever would have any relevance to their lives. Birth dates. Social Security. Address. Phone. Health insurance policy number. Then they were sent off to give the hospital a check for fifteen hundred dollars, the deductible amount of Sara’s health insurance.
They found the day surgery admissions room in the basement of the building. Here they were very organized. They presented Sara with a blue plastic card with her name and hospital account number stamped into it, a white file card telling her that her surgery would take place at eleven-thirty the next day and that she should be at the hospital no later than nine-thirty or she would be considered late and the surgery would be canceled, and several Xeroxed papers entitled “Pre-Operative Instructions for Day Surgery Unit,” “Pre-Op Instructions for Diagnostic Laparoscopy,” and “Pre-Op Instructions, D&C.”
Sara and Steve sat in the crowded waiting room, waiting for the anesthetist to call her name. Steve looked at old magazines; Sara read the information she had been given. It all seemed very simple and straightforward, nothing to be alarmed about. And, she reasoned, if there were so many of these operations that material was Xeroxed to be distributed, they must be very common operations. Everything would be fine.
Finally her name was called, and she was sent down the hall to a small office where an anesthetist took her “anesthesia history” and explained how the anesthesia would be administered. The anesthetist was a surprisingly beautiful young woman, even in her green scrubs with her hair stuck under what looked like a shower cap. She radiated health, and she had the longest, reddest fingernails Sara had ever seen.
“Do you have any questions?” she asked Sara.
To Sara’s slight surprise (but then all this seemed unreal, and she felt so unaccountable, for on entering the hospital she had let go of certain inhibitions), Sara heard herself say, “Yes, I do have a question. How did you get your nails so long? They’re beautiful.”
The anesthetist laughed. “Oh, they’re fake,” she said. “I had terrible nails, really, so I wear these. My eyelashes are fake, too.”
Surely, Sara thought as she walked back down the hall, surely something as dreadful as death couldn’t exist side by side with that gorgeous woman with fake fingernails. She was extraordinarily cheered.
The lab tests were conducted in the Admitting Test Center. Sara gave them urine, asked Steve to hold her hand while the nurse took blood from her arm (it didn’t hurt! She thanked the nurse, who looked amused by her gratitude), and had an electrocardiogram. When she lay down on the table for the EKG, her shirt and bra undone, exposing her bare breasts, she felt vulnerable for a moment, alarmed.
“Will this hurt?” she asked, looking at the funny little suction cups attached to myriad wires that the nurse was placing in semicircles around her breasts.
“Honey,” the nurse said with what Sara recognized as a Jamaican lilt, “when I get through doing this to you, you going to ask me to do it to you again.”
And it didn’t hurt. It was over in a flash. The lab work was over—they were free to go.
The rest of the day flew by; they went to some bookstores in Cambridge, and to dinner at Pistachio’s and a silly movie, then to the hotel to bed. Sara thought at first that she wouldn’t be able to enjoy making love, that she would be too overwhelmed with emotion, thinking, “This might be the last time I’ll ever make love. Tomorrow I might die.” But all such thoughts vanished when she crawled into the hotel bed with Steve. It was fun to be in a strange bed with him, between crisp white sheets instead of their colored ones, fun to feel a little illicit; here they were just the two of them, together in an alien world. They made love for such a long time that Sara fell into a contented and exhausted sleep immediately afterward.
She awoke at six o’clock and couldn’t get back to sleep. Two months ago she had had her thirty-fifth birthday. She felt so old, and so young. She slipped from the bed and into the bathroom to take a very long, very hot shower. She looked down at her naked body, which she had so often been so critical of. But it was a perfectly fine body, really, all of a piece, soft to the touch, but firm beneath. What would she look like after the surgery? Would Steve be grossed out by her scarred body? Really, she thought, they were living in a society that was too rational, too scientific. It would be better for everyone if some magic and ritual were included, too; if, for example, Steve also had to go through some procedure involving anesthesia and loss of consciousness and control and necessitating the slight scarring of his body. Then they would be more of a couple, then he would understand her better because he would have been through similar experiences, then they would not be forced further apart by their differences. She was certain that she had read of such mirror behavior in primitive societies. She wished something like that could be done here and now, for more than anything else she was aware of the fact that when it came right down to it, she was going through it all alone.
She could not have anything to eat or drink. Not even a sip of water. She brushed her teeth carefully, using little water, spitting it all out, not swallowing a drop. She dressed—and undressed; for the nurses had warned her to take off her engagement and wedding rings. When her hands were bare, she felt sad; she had never taken her rings off before and it seemed wrong to do so, a violation.
She could not wear any makeup; another hospital rule. She peered in the mirror at her pale morning face, the eyes slightly puffy (they had had a lot of wine last night), the eyebrows too fine and light without penciling; they seemed to blend into her skin, her six tiny pastel freckles jumping out across the bridge of her nose without powder to obscure them. She looked young and fragile: too young to die.
After she opened the door from the bathroom, fully dressed, ready to go to the hospital, the day blossomed before her with the startling rapidity of time-lapse photography. Steve dressed quickly, they drove to the hospital, they were in the waiting room. When her name was called, Sara was led to a woman’s dressing room where she took off her clothes and put on a blue-and-white-striped gown with a blue-and-white-striped robe and squishy blue plastic foam slippers. She tied the robe tightly, thinking Steve might admire her slender waist, but when he saw her he said, “Seersucker, huh. Pretty classy hospital.”
They sat together inside the day surgery unit, waiting for Sara’s name to be called again. Nurses and doctors hurried past. Two healthy young men joked with each other from adjoining hospital beds. A pitiful-looking young woman pushing her IV pole with one hand and with a nurse on her other side holding her arm crept past them into the restroom. A man in a wheelchair, wearing a hat to obscure the fact that he had lost most of his hair, sat next to them, begging his wife to take him home, he did not want to face the treatment today. The day deepened around them.
At last a nurse came to get Sara. In front of the room full of people, Steve pulled Sara to him in a long embrace. “I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you, Steve,” Sara replied.
The nurse led Sara to a barred hospital bed in the large open room and helped her climb in.
A tall young man approached, introducing himself as her anesthesiologist. Sara listened as he told her what they were going to do, nodding, not understanding a word. I have already given up control, she was thinking. I would not any more jump from this bed and run away than stand up and curse in church. Even here, where I’m afraid I’ll die, I’m polite and bound by etiquette. I could leave now if I wanted to; I’m not hampered. But I won’t. I’ll sit and smile at this guy, who, if he makes a mistake, could kill me or maim me, and I won’t say any of the things I had planned to say, like “Don’t goof,” or even “Please be careful.” I don’t care that he’s good-looking and might be judging me, I don’t care if he sees my breasts or thinks my stomach’s flabby. The world operates by a completely different set of rules here and I instinctively know them. I have already given up control.
Dr. Crochett appeared then, smiling, chatting, joking. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ve already done two of these this morning, I’ve had plenty of practice.”
Sara was glad to see him, someone she knew, yet at the same time she felt estranged from him; he was part of them. She looked away while he put an IV in the vein of her left hand, surprised at how little it hurt, surprised to see the nurse still with her, on the other side of the bed.
Then she was being wheeled down the hallway and through a swinging door. She saw a sign, pointing in another direction, that said DELIVERY ROOM.
“I’d rather be going there,” she said.
“That’s next time,” Dr. Crochett told her.
She was helped from the rolling bed to the stationary table in the operating room. She felt drowsy, warm, and relaxed. Someone placed a mask over her mouth and nose; she was alert enough to mind.
“I don’t like this mask,” Sara said.
“You’ll be asleep in a few seconds,” the nurse said.
“I don’t like losing control,” Sara said, for she could feel it going, or, rather, feel herself going.
“Try counting backward from one hundred,” the anesthetist said.
“I really don’t like this mask,” Sara said, and then, with complete awareness, but with no feeling of alarm, she felt herself go under.
“Hi,” someone said. Sara opened her eyes and saw that she was in the recovery room, blankets over her and a blurry nurse standing near her.
“Hi,” the nurse said again.
I’m alive, Sara thought. I’m alive and I thought I’d jump for joy when I woke up, but I’m too drugged out. She raised the blankets and lifted her gown and peered down at herself. There was an enormous Band-Aid just under her belly button and another one just above her pubic hair. It’s the same day; they didn’t do a laparotomy, she thought, and drifted off.
“Hi,” Dr. Crochett said from the foot of the bed, “You’re just fine. A little endometriosis that I could take care of without a laparotomy, and we did a tubal lavage and you’re all opened up. I did a D&C, too, so you’re all squeaky clean. You’re in great shape and ready to go.”
“You didn’t do the laparotomy?” Sara asked.
“Didn’t need to. You do not have severe endometriosis,” Dr. Crochett said. “I’ll tell you more later. You won’t remember anything I tell you now.”
“Oh,” Sara said. She watched the doctor rise into the air at her feet and slowly float along the ceiling away from her. It was amazing that he could do that, but she was too tired to watch.
A while later the nurse returned. “Want to get up?”
“No,” Sara said. “Never.” Vaguely, in the Sahara Desert of her mind, she remembered her sister’s advice: the sooner you get up and walk around, move around, the sooner the effect of the drug dissipates.
But her sister hadn’t told her that she would feel like this: overwhelmingly sick to her stomach. Her vision was murky with nausea. If she moved her head, bruise-colored waves splatted at her eyes. So how was she to move her body?
But the nurse was pulling back the covers and assisting her from the bed. Sara’s robotlike body plopped down one leg, then the other, and the three of them, nurse, Sara, and the tall stainless steel IV pole, clunked along the floor away from the bed.
They had not really operated on Sara. They had really just beaten her up. They must have straightened up the bed so that she was strapped in a standing position, and then taken turns beating her over and over again just under her rib cage. She was so sore there she could scarcely breathe.
“My abdomen hurts,” Sara said.
“That’s right,” the nurse said. “That’s the carbon dioxide. They used it to blow up your abdomen so they wouldn’t hit the bowel. It’ll only last for a day or two.”
“If it lasts for a day or two, I won’t last for a day or two,” Sara said.
The nurse giggled. “You’re doing just fine,” she assured Sara.
Together they shuffled and clunked their way across the recovery room, covering entire inches in hours. Sara’s head was thick, her abdomen and shoulders ached, and the nausea retreated slightly only to return in ever more violent waves.
“Why don’t you just go in here and see what you can do?” the nurse suggested, guiding Sara into the same bathroom she had earlier in the day seen another woman enter. Vaguely she wondered if she looked as pathetic as that woman had.
Sara sank down on the toilet and looked at the pad she had automatically pulled down. It was soaked with blood. But she couldn’t feel herself bleeding. She couldn’t feel anything but nausea and the intense pressure from the gas on her rib cage. Through the vast wasteland of her mind came the knowledge that she was urinating.
When she had finished, she stood up shakily and washed her hands, careful not to get the IV tube on her left hand wet, then leaned on the sink, looking deep into the mirror to find her reflection. Yes, there she was. Alive, in a way. It was interesting that her face could look this way; at once pitiful and bland, like a piece of paper someone had stepped on. Slowly she opened the bathroom door and wobbled back into the recovery room.
“Did you urinate?” the nurse asked.
“Yes,” Sara replied.
“You won’t be needing this, then,” the nurse said. And she took away the IV and pole.
Sara felt bereft without the pole. It had given her something to hold on to. Now she slumped forward, in slow motion, knowing that sooner or later she would just sag right down to the floor.
“I wish you could make me feel better,” Sara said confidingly. “I feel like shit.”
“Just sit down here awhile,” the nurse said. “You’ll be better soon. “Why don’t I bring you some crackers and a 7UP.”
The nurse brought a little packet of saltine crackers and a cup of 7UP.
“Would you like me to get your husband for you?” she asked.
“I really don’t think so,” Sara replied. Surely the nausea would pass in a while. She had with great effort managed to find the clock on the wall. She had even managed to decipher the time. It was three-fifteen. She was sure she would be better soon.
“Why don’t I give you a shot of Compazine to help your stomach?” the nurse said.
“Whatever,” Sara said. She was aware of the shot being administered in the way one is aware of a mosquito biting in a dream.
At four the nurse brought Steve in to her.
“She’s doing just fine!” the nurse said cheerfully.
Sara looked up at Steve. She had not realized he was so tall. She had to crane her neck backward to look up at his face, which wavered before her thirty or forty feet in the air.
“Hi,” she said and leaned forward and vomited on his shoes.
This left her shaking with weakness, but amazingly clear-headed. She was aware suddenly of the nurses scurrying around, of people giving Steve paper towels, of Steve sitting down in the chair next to her to wipe off his shoes.
“I’m glad you wore your wing tips instead of your sneakers,” Sara managed to say. “It would have soaked into your sneakers.”
“Do you feel better?” the nurse asked.
“A little,” Sara said to the nurse. To Steve she said, “I didn’t do that on purpose, you know.”
“I know,” Steve said. He put his hand on her shoulder. Someone should tell him that his hand weighs as much as a car, Sara thought. “How are you?”
“Better,” Sara said. “Alive at least.”
“I love you,” Steve said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I love you, too,” Sara told him.
By four-thirty she was ready to leave. Steve drove her back to the hotel and Sara shuffled through the lobby and into the elevator. Steve opened the door, helped her take off her clothes and get into her nightgown, helped her get into bed. Her shoulders and abdomen were still pressured by the carbon dioxide, which in certain positions even made her wince. She arranged herself on several pillows, and lay there, fading into and out of the evening. She was aware from time to time that Steve had left the room, had returned with a paper bag from Brigham’s. She was aware that he was watching TV, eating, calling his parents, talking to her.
At last Steve turned off the television and the lights, undressed and crawled into bed with her. Vaguely Sara recalled the time she had called Dr. Crochett in a panic to ask how long they would have to wait after her operation before making love. “About two weeks if you have a laparotomy,” Dr. Crochett had said. “And if you just have the laparoscopy, the same night if you feel like it.”
“Yeah, right,” Sara said to Dr. Crochett.
“Did you say something?” Steve asked.
“Good night,” Sara mumbled.
“Good night, Sara,” Steve said.
He leaned over to kiss her. His movements made the bed rock like a ship in a stormy sea. The slight touch of his lips set off waves of rolling thunder in her head and stomach. Finally he lay down and was quiet. He slept. Sara stayed in the position she had spent the evening in, propped against pillows—if she lay down the gas surged up into her shoulders and burned to get out. She was aware that she was listing sideways and that if she continued to fall she would have to make the monumental effort of righting herself or enduring pain. Her mind was stumblingly tackling this problem when she really fell, into the blessed black bliss of sleep.
Morning.
Glorious, ecstatic, celestial morning.
Sara woke up sane and whole and hungry. Ravenous. It had been thirty-six hours since she had eaten (the crackers and 7UP didn’t count, and anyway she had lost them on Steve’s shoes).
Steve came out of the bathroom, trailing smells of soap and shaving cream. He was wearing slacks but no shoes or shirt, and when she saw his bare chest, all hairy and muscular, she felt the most delicious surge of lust pass through her.
“Oh, God!” she cried. “I’m back to normal!”
Well, almost. In the bathroom she found that she was still bleeding slightly. She peeled back one of the bandages that covered her incision—which was torture, the hospital clearly had used Elmer’s Glue to stick the bandages to her—and saw nothing very remarkable, only a messy wine-colored slit with plastic threads sticking out. Not very attractive, but on the other hand, nothing to get pitiful about. How pretty she looked, how young and fresh and healthy and whole.
And how beautiful this hotel room was with its geometric 1950s faded green-and-blue curtains and bedspreads, its chipped veneer bureaus and chairs. Oh, how wonderful the morning was with its heavy gray clouds scudding across the sky—life was grand! She was alive and well and not nauseated, and never again in her life would she complain about anything!
They dressed and went out for breakfast at a fancy hotel restaurant. Sara had scrambled eggs and sausages and country-fried potatoes and English muffins with piles of strawberry jam and butter and a tall glass of grapefruit juice. But first she had coffee, hot rich, dark coffee, thick with cream and sugar; it melted in her mouth like chocolate and expanded through her body like LSD. She didn’t think she had ever been happier in her life.
Back home, the next day she awoke feeling truly normal—happy but not manic—and tired. She decided to spend the day in bed. She began reading a novel she had bought for just this day, and was delighted to see rain streaking down her bedroom windows, as if the weather were giving her approval to be lazy.
In the middle of the afternoon, the doorbell rang and she opened it to a florist delivering a magnificent arrangement of flowers that Fanny had sent. She put them on her bedside table where she could look at them, and then turned back to her novel. But now she could not concentrate. The flowers made her think of Fanny … something special about Fanny … she rose from bed and shuffled to the living room to get her Xeroxed copy of the manuscript of Jenny’s Book. Back in bed, she leafed through the book, then stopped to read, carefully, the final two pages in Fanny’s novel.
Some of us are meant to fight with fate. Not that it’s ever a fair fight, not that we can ever win completely, but the occasional triumphs we wrest away are so glowing, like golden trophies, like prizes we have never dreamed of, that finally, bad taken with the good, it is worth the effort.
And sometimes it is the fight itself that matters: the daily battle that makes our senses blaze.
The trick is to find the fight that belongs to you. In Kansas I knew even as a child I could never defeat the elements—that wind, killing frost, blistering heat, hateful air. The people who stayed to battle there I honor in my heart: they are mythic to me, humans who pit themselves against nature over and over again. They win simply because they stay to fight, their victories and defeats are often the same, their nobility becomes etched in the lines of their faces.
My battle was of a different sort. It is not over, nor will it be, until the day I die. I battle against elements almost as deadly as the Kansas weather—against dullness, stupidity, insensitivity—against nonsense. I would so much like for life to be comprised of something other than nonsense, and for people to be handsomer, more articulate, and kinder than they are. Also, of course, I would like them to admire me, I would always like that. Growing old, as I am, I am also growing, in my own way, more vain, and more demanding—imperious and difficult I have often been called.
But I have learned some things and in my wisdom feel superior enough to attempt to pass them on. As I grow closer to death, which if nothing else is the absence of the life I know, I have discovered the meaning of life. It resides in the books I love and the animals that surround me; in present friends and in memories of lovers and enemies, too; in silk, champagne, an applewood fire, and Mozart. It resides in what I can wrest from each day that I live.
It’s here.
It’s here.
“Well, Fanny,” Sara said aloud. She put the manuscript down on the bed beside her and spoke aloud to herself, to the air, the flowers, to Fanny’s spirit. “Good for you! You did it. You fought with fate and won, and this book is your victory. And you know, it looks as if I’m meant to fight with fate, too. I’m trying! I did have the operation, you know! I was terrified of it, but I did it, I did try to take control. But it’s different for me. I’ve found the fight that belongs to me, but for me it’s not the fight that matters—I want to win! I want the prize! I want a baby. And there’s only so much I can do!”
Sara ran her hands over the manuscript. White paper, black print. It had taken Fanny a lifetime to accomplish this. Fanny’s fight with fate was all about creating, and so was Sara’s, but in a different way. She had helped Fanny bring her book to the light of day, but it would take a different source of help for Sara and Steve to have a child. It would take that spark, that flash, that gift from nowhere seen, and Sara could have operations and use charts and pray, but still her fate relied on more than determination and persistence; it relied on something beyond her control.
Still. Still, as Fanny said, the meaning of life was not about having babies, but in the present, in wresting what she could from each day she lived.
That night when Steve came home, he brought pizza, and chocolate chip cookies for dessert, and later they made love, gentle, careful, easy love. In the dark deep night Steve lay against her, Sara held him, he was inside her, she enclosed him, they were two halves of a whole, blended and blurred and complete. And Sara thought: It’s here. It’s here.
Dr. Crochett had told Sara that many women got pregnant the first cycle after a laparoscopy, so when Sara’s period started at the end of September she was nearly wild with surprise and grief. But when she called his office, he calmed her, “No, no,” he said, “this doesn’t count, next month is the important cycle, not this month.” She hung up the phone, feeling foolish and weak with relief. She should have known; and after all, it would have been expecting a miracle for her to get pregnant right after the operation, because she had bled for almost a week. And she had taken strong antibiotics for two weeks in order to forestall any infection from the operation—that wouldn’t have been good for a developing embryo. So it was all right that she wasn’t pregnant. Logically it was all right.
She went to Boston to have the stitches removed. Dr. Crochett pronounced her in great shape. “Go home and get pregnant!” he said.
“Should I use the ovulation-indicator tests?” she asked him.
“No,” he said, “don’t bother with all that, don’t even think about it. It will only get you nervous. Just have a great time with your husband. Make love a lot.”
It was the beginning of October. The days glowed. Sara took on as much editing as she could, needing to keep occupied and needing to replenish the money they had spent on the operation.
She spoke with Fanny on the phone several times a week—Fanny had received the galleys of her book for proofreading, and she was getting nervous about its publication. The book was due out in January; the earliest reviews would appear in December.
Caroline and Clark Kendall closed up their ’Sconset house and went back to Florida. Sara felt enormously (and guiltily) relieved to see them go.
The island emptied of tourists. Shops and stores and sidewalks were no longer crowded. Steve had stopped working for Mack and, with two men working for him, had gone into business for himself. He was up and out early and home late and dirty and tired. But he was happy, and Sara was happy for him. And happy for herself.
They made love a lot that month. And it really was love. Sara stopped using the thermometer and didn’t try to make love when she wasn’t in the mood—but she was gratefully aware of the fact that they made love every night during the week she was to ovulate. After they made love, without even mentioning it, she slipped a pillow under her hips, remembering how Morris Newhouse had held her bottom in the air to help the semen enter her uterus.
The last two weeks of October were golden. Sara biked every afternoon, luxuriating in the sun on her face; in the evenings she and Steve sat by the fire reading or talking. She started to needlepoint another pillow. She felt radiantly happy, in an almost sinfully contented domesticity.
Why was it that the group always got together on exactly the day that signs of her period began?
“I can’t believe I’m so significant or wicked that the universe is conspiring against me this way!” Sara said aloud to the mirror as she got ready for the evening out. She was tense today, tense and worried, and she talked aloud to herself, chiding herself, cajoling herself, trying to control herself: if she didn’t think her period was going to start, it wouldn’t start. But there was no doubt that her stomach was bloated and swollen, her breasts were stinging, her spirits had plunged. And this afternoon, when she got out of the shower, she had been horrified to see a splot of blood on her ankle. At first she thought she had cut her leg somehow, then realized what it was, where it had fallen from.
“No,” she said. “No. No.”
She had sunk down onto the floor, knocked out with dismay. Tomorrow was the twenty-ninth day. It looked as if she was going to start her period again. It looked as if she, unlike other women, was not going to be pregnant the first cycle after her laparoscopy. She sat on the bathroom floor, stunned, stupid, unable to think of a reason for getting up.
Finally she put her hand to her crotch, then pulled her fingers away and looked. No blood. No sign of blood. Perhaps—perhaps anything. Oh, fuck, Sara thought, perhaps anything at all. Ellie had said that quite often women still bled a little when they were pregnant, and that sometimes women even thought they had had their period when they were pregnant. She did not have to give up all hopes because of that spot of blood.
This thought gave her the courage to go on as normal. She took her time in front of the mirror, putting on her makeup carefully, trying on various clothes. She wanted to get just the right look. Tonight there was a party at the Danforths’ to celebrate Wade Danforth’s birthday, which was today, and Sheldon Jones’s birthday, which was tomorrow. It was a potluck dinner, everyone was bringing something, and there would be champagne, and since the Danforths had a big house, there would be dancing. A real party. Sara felt that she had often dressed inappropriately for the group’s get-togethers. She often wore a silk dress, which was what she would have worn in Boston, only to find that all the other women had worn jeans or slacks. Tonight she put on a huge loose almost-ankle-length cotton sweaterdress she had ordered from Bloomingdale’s. It was bright red and had big shoulder pads and a boatneck with a plunging V in the back. It was a great-looking dress, sloppy yet elegant, unstudied-looking. She put on a pair of long dangling gold-and-red earrings and lots of makeup.
“There,” she said to her reflection in the mirror, “your body might be hopeless, but it still looks good.”
Steve whistled when he saw Sara. And he paid her his ultimate compliment, using the word she allowed herself to interpret in many ways, as “gorgeous” or “beautiful” or “sexy.” He said, “Hey, you look really nice.”
Sara smiled and kissed him, secretly wondering if he would ever in his life tell her she looked anything but nice.
Steve looked nice, too, after he had showered and put on chinos and a button-down shirt and a sweater. The heavy physical work he did kept him in great condition; his stomach was flat, his arms and legs were shapely with muscles. Sara loved the contrast of his civilized clothes on his prize-animal body. And he was so pleasant to be with these days, fun, relaxed, optimistic, and easygoing. She was more in love with her husband now, she knew, than she had been when they were married.
Wade Danforth had brought out all his old 1960s records and before long Wade and Annie were laughing and doing the old hand-jive to Bo Diddley. Sara took off her shoes and danced barefoot. She was glad to see that all the other women had worn dresses or sweaters and skirts. All except The Virgin, who was wearing her usual tight jeans and tighter sweater. The outfit looked strange on her now that she was four months pregnant and her tummy swelled outward just enough to make her look pudgy. Mary sat in the corner most of the evening, talking to friends, shaking her head when asked to dance. Sara noticed that Bill Bennett was paying no attention to his wife; but actually he seemed to be in one of his black moods, avoiding everyone and everything except the kitchen counter where the booze was. Now and then Sara thought about talking to him—after all, she was an editor and he was a writer—but he had never approached her on the subject. No, she wouldn’t approach him; he was too scary, his dark moods emanating from him like a fog. She forgot about him and enjoyed herself, dancing with Steve and the other men, laughing and joking with the women, dancing again with Steve, drinking the champagne that had been brought for the birthdays.
She had enjoyed herself so much—and had had so much to drink—that when she went to the bathroom and saw that her pants were stained with a heavy flow of blood she felt only impatient, unreal. This hadn’t really happened, her period hadn’t really started, she didn’t even believe it. She was at a party, everyone was happy, she was having fun. She wouldn’t believe it, she wouldn’t let it be. She left the bathroom without taking any precautions against getting blood on her clothing.
Coming down the hall from the bathroom, she was given a tunnel view of Mary Bennett, who was still seated in her corner of the living room, snuggled against the sofa.
Steve was sitting on the arm of the sofa, looking down at Mary. As Sara watched, Mary took Steve’s hand and put it on her rounded stomach. She said something to him. Steve said something to her and smiled. With her hand, Mary moved Steve’s hand upward so that while the greater part of it touched her stomach, part of his hand touched her large swollen breast.
Immediately Steve took his hand away.
Mary smiled at Steve, and Sara, still in the hallway, could see the challenge in the smile. She was surprised that the sexual message Mary was transmitting hadn’t made the entire group turn and stare at her in amazement.
Steve rose from the sofa and walked away.
Mary turned her head and saw Sara coming toward her. Mary’s eyes narrowed like a cat’s or a vampire’s and she did not smile and she did not look away. She is a witch, Sara thought. She is a witch and she is cursing me. It seemed centuries before she arrived at the end of the hallway and entered the crowded living room.
Everyone was laughing, dancing, talking, but the magic had gone out of the party for Sara and it was with effort that she played her part. She danced until the stickiness between her legs made her realize she would embarrass herself if she didn’t do something. She made her way back to Annie Danforth’s bathroom. Locking the door behind her, she opened the big cupboard in the wall, looking for Tampax or a maxi-pad. She found both, and also found, with a frisson of delight, a First Response kit, a kit used to tell exactly when ovulation will occur.
So perhaps she wasn’t alone. Perhaps Annie Danforth was having trouble getting pregnant, too. Annie was in her early thirties and had no children. She would have to have Annie to lunch; they could drink wine, get confidential. What a relief it would be to know one other woman who was having the same problem! A wave of real relief swept through Sara, counteracting the despair that was rising in her body like a well of tears. Someone else was having a problem. She was not unique, abnormal—she was not so terribly cursed or flawed.
Sara put Annie’s things back in the cupboard. She washed her hands, combed her hair, refreshed her lipstick, stared at herself in the mirror. Did the pain show in her eyes?
When she came back into the living room, she found the party mellowing. Only Jamie and Sheldon were dancing. Everyone else was sitting now, sprawled on the floor or on the sofa and chairs, smoking cigarettes or pot, finishing beer or glasses of champagne. Everyone was there except Steve.
Sara went into the kitchen. No one was there. Even Bill Bennett had disappeared from his guard over the booze.
She went back into the living room, sank down next to Annie, and waited until she had finished talking with Carole to ask, “Where’s Steve?”
Annie yawned. “I was supposed to tell you,” she said. “He took Mary home.” Seeing the look of surprise on Sara’s face, she went on, “Where have you been? We’ve had quite a little drama in the past few minutes. Mary wanted to go home, I think, anyway she went into the kitchen and was talking to Bill, and the next thing we knew Bill was cursing and shouting and we all thought he was going to hit her or something. What an asshole he is. Anyway, he stomped out of here so fast he forgot his jacket. And then Mary asked Steve if he would drive her home; we saw Bill drive off in their car. Steve said he’d be right back.”
“Oh,” Sara said, feeling her voice come small and weak from her throat. “I was in the bathroom. I guess, with the music I didn’t hear—”
Carole leaned forward. “I just hope Bill’s not waiting at home when Mary gets there. He can be such a mean drunk.”
“No, it’s early yet, he probably went off to a bar,” Annie said. “At least I think that’s his pattern. I don’t think Mary’s afraid of him. I don’t think he’s violent or anything. He just says such awful stuff. Poor Mary.”
Carole looked at her watch. “You might think it’s early, but I don’t,” she said. “We should go home, too.”
Sara looked at her watch. It was just after midnight. She had been in the bathroom for perhaps ten minutes, she thought—the Bennetts didn’t live very far from here, no more than a five-minute drive. Steve should be back any minute.
Annie had risen to see Carole and Pete to the door. Other couples were getting ready to leave now. Women gathered casserole dishes and salad bowls. Sara watched from the sofa as the group clustered in the doorway and, couple by couple, disappeared into the night.
She was left alone with Annie and Wade. She did not need to look at her watch to know that Steve should be back by now.
“God, I’m beat, I’m going to turn in,” Wade said, stretching.
“Go ahead,” Annie said. “I’m just going to clean up a bit.”
“Let me help,” Sara offered, glad for a chance to do something that would make the time pass, so that she wouldn’t be sitting there awkwardly, abandoned. As she carried overflowing ashtrays and empty beer bottles into the kitchen, she thought about asking Annie about the ovulation test but decided against it; it was too late, they were too tired, Steve would surely be back any moment and their conversation would be interrupted. But what was Steve doing? Why wasn’t he back? Damn, why wasn’t he back?
A half hour passed intolerably slowly. The two women cleaned the living room, dining room, and kitchen, chatting all the while, dissembling. Just when Sara thought she could stand it no longer, that she would turn to Annie and let tears streak down her face while she bawled out her worst fears, there was a sound at the door and Steve came in.
“Hi,” he said. “Where’d everybody go?”
“The clock struck twelve,” Annie said, grinning. “They all turned into pumpkins.”
“What took you so long?” Sara asked, keeping her voice casual. She wanted to scream the words at him.
“Well, I had to take the babysitter home,” Steve said, “and then I stayed a few minutes to talk to Mary. Poor kid. Bill has such a temper.”
“I know,” Annie said. “Even when he’s not in a bad mood he’s scary. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him be really pleasant.”
“I guess he thinks that artists are exempt from ordinary rules,” Steve said.
“Was he home? Is Mary going to be okay?” Annie asked.
“No, he wasn’t home, and Mary said he probably wouldn’t wander in until early in the morning. He’s got drinking buddies he hangs out with. She’s fine. She’s not afraid of him, she just gets tired of him sometimes.”
On the way home in the car, Sara waited for Steve to say something else, to give her a fuller explanation. Surely he owed her that. He knew how she felt about Mary. And he had been gone a long time. But he said nothing. He drove in silence, occupied with his thoughts, and his silence was like fuel to the flame of anger that burned in Sara’s stomach and finally blazed up when they entered the house.
“Did you kiss her?” Sara asked, her voice accusing and grim.
“What?” Steve said, looking surprised.
“Oh, come off it,” Sara said. “You heard me.” Cramps spread in waves across her body and down her thighs. She could feel the heavy blood pushing its swollen way through her. Just so was her anger mushrooming its way upward from her body, expanding into a black cloud of wrath she could no longer contain.
“No, I didn’t kiss her. Jesus, Sara,” Steve said. He walked away from her, up the stairs to their bedroom.
Sara followed, feeling her body shaking with rage. “Well, did you hold her? Comfort her? Did you ‘comfort’ poor Mary?” Her voice was twisted with sarcasm.
Steve sat on the foot of the bed to take off his shoes. “No, I didn’t comfort her,” he said, his voice even and martyred. “I did talk to her. I mostly listened to her. She’s unhappy.”
“And she thinks you can make her happy. Right? Right?” Sara stood in the doorway, glaring at her husband. One part of her mind lifted up and away from her body, and, hovering somewhere in the north corner of their bedroom ceiling, stared down at Sara in amazement. Where did this harpy come from? What did she think she was doing?
“Sara, I’m tired. I wish you would just drop it,” Steve said.
“You go off and leave the party, leave me alone at the party, with all your friends knowing you’ve gone off with your old lover, you go off alone with her for over half an hour, and you want me to just act like nothing happened?” Sara said. Suddenly her anger became all confused with fear and she began to cry.
“Oh, Sara.” Steve sighed. “I hate all this so much, don’t you know it? I hate it when you’re jealous. Why can’t you trust me? Why can’t you believe me? I love you. I don’t love anyone else. I don’t love Mary. I just feel incredibly sorry for her. But I wouldn’t do anything with her. It’s just stupid of you to be jealous this way.”
Sara crossed the room and sat on the bed, as far away from Steve as she could get and still manage to find purchase. She huddled up against the headboard. “I can’t help being jealous,” she said. “When I see the way she looks at you. I saw her with you tonight. The way she took your hand and put it on her stomach. The way you smiled at her. The way she smiled at you.” She looked up at Steve, who sat at the end of the bed, his elbows on his knees, his head lowered into his hands. She waited, but he said nothing. His silence goaded her on. “Did you feel the baby move?” Sara asked accusingly. “Did you like touching her? Did you wish she were your wife and that were your baby?”
Steve didn’t answer. He only sat, head obscured in his hands.
Sara stared, tears streaking down her face. Then, startling herself, she grabbed a book from the bedside table and threw it across the room. It thudded against the wall and fell to the floor. “Goddamn it!” she screamed. “If you’re going to go off alone with your old lover, the least you can do is talk to me. If you want me, that is! If you don’t, then at least have the decency to tell me. Or I swear I’ll leave. I’ll pack my bags and leave and you’ll never see me again. That’s what you would like, isn’t it? Then you could be rid of me, and you could marry Mary and have babies with her. She could give you all the children you need.”
“Shut up, Sara,” Steve said. “Please just shut up.”
Sara was so astonished that she did go quiet. Steve had never said anything like that before. She rose, went into the bathroom and changed her pad, which was soaked with blood, rinsed her face with cold water, trying to regain some kind of control, then calmly went back into the bedroom. She took her suitcase from the closet and opened it on the bed. She would leave him. It was all over. She couldn’t believe it was happening.
“Sara,” Steve said. “Look. There’s something you should know. Christ, Sara, would you stop packing and sit down and listen to me?”
Sara looked at Steve. His face was strangely contorted. She didn’t think she had ever seen him look quite so sickened. She sat down on the bed, looking at Steve, not touching him.
“When Mary and I were going together,” Steve began, then stopped. When he spoke again, his voice took on the cramped tone of a man holding back tears. “When Mary and I were going together,” he said again, slowly, “she knew I didn’t want to marry her. I had told her, often, that I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment with her. I was always honest about that. You have to believe me. I never led her on. I told her I didn’t love her anymore. But we kept on—going together—now and then, out of, oh, habit or convenience, I don’t know. Anyway, I got her pregnant.”
Sara’s heart was scalded with pain. The fire of all her anger turned back on her now and she burned at the stake of this new knowledge.
“It was an accident,” Steve was saying. “On my part, at least. I mean, I thought she was using birth control. We had talked about it, and she didn’t like me to use condoms; she said she would be responsible for it, she said she was on the pill. Then one day she came to me and said that she was pregnant, that she had done it on purpose, that she had been off the pill for months and hadn’t told me, that she wanted to get pregnant, she knew she was trapping me, but she wanted to marry me, she loved me enough for both of us, it would work out.”
Grief, misery, anguish, jealousy burned through Sara, blistering and scorching her heart.
“I told her I wouldn’t marry her.” Steve was silent awhile then. “I told her I absolutely wouldn’t marry her. I told her I didn’t love her, that we didn’t have that much in common, that I never wanted to touch her again now that she had tricked me—I said some pretty awful things to her that night. I called her a conniving stupid bitch, I called her … awful things. I told her I wouldn’t marry her. That I didn’t want to see her again. I told her the only thing I would do for her was to pay for an abortion.” Again, the silence. Then, his voice lowered, Steve went on. “She went to Boston and had the abortion. I gave her the money for it. And I never spent any time with her alone after that—and then I met you. So you see, Sara, if I had wanted children so damned badly, I could have had them. But I wouldn’t marry a woman just for children. I didn’t marry you for children. I married you because I love you, because I want to spend my life with you, however it works out. I can’t believe you could doubt that for a second. It makes me feel sick at my stomach when you say the things you say.”
“Oh, Steve,” Sara said, and moved across the bed, kneeling behind him. She wrapped her arms around him, leaned against his back and nuzzled her forehead against the back of his head. “Oh, Steve, forgive me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m so jealous. I didn’t know. I didn’t suspect. And I’m so nutty with not getting pregnant, it’s turning me into a crazy woman. Steve, I’m starting my period again. And I feel like such a failure.”
To her wonder, she felt Steve’s shoulder shaking. “I sometimes think,” Steve said, and she realized that he was crying, “I sometimes think it’s my fault, Sara. Oh, shit. I didn’t want to have a child aborted. I felt like a monster. A murderer. But I couldn’t marry Mary, it would have been hell for us both, it just wouldn’t have worked. I didn’t love her. But I didn’t mean to get her pregnant, and I’ve always felt guilty that I was the cause of an abortion. And I sometimes think … that this is my punishment. That we can’t have a baby, that I can’t have a baby with the woman I love, because fate, or something, God, whatever, is punishing me for causing an abortion.”
Sara could feel Steve’s body shaking and tensing as he fought for control. She kept her arms wrapped around him. When she could find the power to speak, she said softly, “Oh, Steve, it doesn’t work that way. It really doesn’t. You’re not being punished. It’s not your fault. It’s not really my fault, either, it’s not anybody’s fault, it just is. Oh, Steve, I love you. Don’t cry, oh, darling, don’t be sad. You didn’t do the wrong thing. You did the right thing. Steve, I’m so glad you told me all this, I know it was hard for you, but it will help me, don’t you see how much it will really help me? I won’t be jealous again like I was, I promise you that. It’s made things clearer for me, it was all blurry and suspicious, you and Mary, but now I can understand. Oh, Steve,” she said.
After a while Steve pulled away and went into the bathroom. Sara caught a glimpse of his face, which was red and blotched with emotion and embarrassment. She turned off the lights and took off her clothes. When he came back, she reached for him as he got into bed and put her arms around him like a mother around a child. It seemed to Sara that she had never loved him so much and so completely.
At the same time, an evil demon of self-pity inside her taunted in a whining nasty tone: So you see? He can make babies. He has proof. You are the one who can’t make babies. You are the one who is failing. Now you know beyond a shadow of a doubt.