He wanted to take them both, Rose and Natalie, to live with him up north. And the baby. The stonework was finished and he’d frame up the house by spring; there’d be plenty of room. “I see,” said Rose, “a harem.”
He hustled her up the stairs. The little room under the eaves held a wicker armchair stacked with towels and a narrow bedstead where Natalie lay waiting, the covers pulled back in welcome, her breasts loose inside the open neck of her nightgown and her hair tumbling free. Guy shut the door behind them. The air smelled of freshly bathed skin, Natalie’s, and of sweat, Guy’s, an odor that tugged familiarly, nauseatingly at Rose.
She’d thought she could reach out and draw him back to her, had she? Too much had happened. Things beyond her imagination had happened. The music that had been a constant inside her since the news of the grant, the surging and trilling, went silent.
“No, of course not a harem,” Guy was saying. He’d never meant to touch Natalie. That was wrong. But she needed holding. Anyone could see she needed to be held. Rose should be the one to hold her. They’d all be together and things would straighten out.
“Ah,” said Rose. “I’m the chaperon.”
“What?” gasped Natalie. “What are you saying? She’s not a part of it.”
“Oh, I’m not—no fear.” Rose’s throat tightened and her stomach heaved.
“Rose, I’m sorry,” Guy said, and murmured to Natalie to lie down.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” said Natalie.
“You need your sleep. We can figure this out later.” He put a tentative hand on her head. “We’ll go now. You sleep.”
“Never tell me what to do,” declared Natalie.
She swung herself up out of bed and into the wicker armchair, dis-placing the stack of towels, which cascaded to the floor. She arched and gasped. Guy reached a hand behind her and began rubbing circles on the small of her back. It seemed to Rose a practiced gesture.
How exactly had they managed to get this going right under her nose? They’d gone for a walk once or twice to build up Natalie’s strength, Guy had said. Strength, was it? But hadn’t he slept with Rose in the barn every night he’d stayed over? And Rose was never away from the farm, except the previous two nights. She’d slept one night at Alan’s and then the previous night she’d spent with Ursula at Emma’s. That was when.
Natalie caught Guy’s free hand and held it. “It’s not wrong—what we are to each other. Don’t we have a right to be happy?” She stared up at Rose. “Don’t I?”
Guy stood caught in the headlights. Well, Rose would not spare him. Had he actually, the past two nights, crawled in with Natalie across the hall from Lila? Natalie would not have consented to sleep in the barn, so he must have. The disgrace of it, the creepiness—the pair of them trooping down in the morning, shamefaced or defiant in front of Lila and the rest.
“I see,” said Rose. “I get it, Guy.” She waited till his eyes met hers. “Natalie’s almost me—right? You can pretend it’s your baby.”
“I’m not you,” said Natalie.
“You shut up,” said Rose, quaking with rage, her self-possession deserting her as Guy massaged and massaged her sister’s back.
Natalie was undaunted. “You did have his baby, but you killed it.”
Guy shot a hand up to Rose in appeal.
“What else did you tell her?” asked Rose. “What I’m like in bed? The sounds I make?”
“What do you care?” Natalie broke in. “You barely pay attention to him. You hardly know he’s alive.”
Then Rose was on her, roaring. The heel of her hand struck Natalie’s chin and knocked her jaw upward, crashing her teeth together. Rose clamped down on her sister’s shoulders, but Guy stepped between them, freeing Natalie, and put a hand over Rose’s mouth and held her back as she roared, wordless, into Natalie’s face, roared out all her freezing nights in the barn and all her lonely girlhood, the butt of Natalie’s jokes, that outrage not dead and buried, but mounting up in a long, unbroken blast. How could someone as sloppy, as trivial as Natalie get her hands on Guy? How could Guy allow it? Roaring at him now, roaring out their lost days and nights, their chance meeting, their wondrous hours—her Guy, her bear in the oats wrested from her, her hope and pleasure swallowed up in the bloated figure of Natalie.
Rose ripped Guy’s hand away from her mouth and quieted her voice. “Okay,” she said. “We’re not waking Emma, but you’re not staying, either. You’ll have to go. Both of you.”
“Right now?” said Guy, ready to obey her.
Natalie drew a sharp breath. There came a whooshing and her night-gown was drenched, thigh to foot. She stood. “Oh, god,” she said and rushed out.
Guy let Rose loose. She swiped at her hands and arms, ridding herself of his touch. A puddle ran from the wicker chair to the floor. Rose bent and stacked up the towels and took one to wipe up the wet. She wouldn’t look at him.
Emma called from the bottom of the stairs, “Hello, up there. Every-thing all right?”
Natalie opened the bathroom door. “Active bladder,” she called.
“Ah, yes,” Emma said and padded off to her bedroom at the back of the house.
Natalie reappeared and lowered herself, groaning, toward the bed, and Rose and Guy cracked heads, bending to try to help her down.
“Leave me alone, both of you,” she said. “I’ve got to change my nightgown.”
As if she had anything to hide, Rose thought. But they went.
“Rose,”Guy said, behind her on the stair. “I’ve only held her and kissed her a little. It’s never gone beyond kissing.”
She laughed mildly. She’d seen Natalie waiting to take him into her bed. He had crossed over a very wide river and sunk the boat on the other side.
“First thing tomorrow, you go,” she told him and quickened her step through the dark, and then he wasn’t behind her any more.
Emma, in plaid flannel pajamas, stood brewing tea in the kitchen.
“The noise woke you up. I’m sorry,” Rose muttered.
Emma handed her a cup of tea. “My hearing’s not the greatest any more. No, you didn’t wake me. I was on a prowl and saw the light upstairs.” But even halfway deaf, Emma could not have failed to hear Rose roaring that way. She still felt the vibration in her chest. Her teacup shook in her hand.
Emma reached and put a finger on her wrist. “What is it?”
Rose flinched. Again, she saw herself step into Natalie’s room, Guy ahead of her, Natalie’s face showing fierce exultation till she saw Rose. Again, she heard the placid little voice: You barely pay attention to him. You hardly know he’s alive. There was truth to that. She’d neglected Guy, pushing him away when it suited her, leaving him to tag along till she was ready for him again.
“You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of,” said Emma. “You didn’t get her into this. That young man of hers—he’s the one responsible. He’s here tonight; all well and good. But has he put a ring on her finger? Has he put a roof over her head? Does he have any plan at all?”
Rose barked out a laugh. Apparently, it had not occurred to Emma that Guy might be—might have been—Rose’s boyfriend.
Guy and Natalie. It even made some sort of sense. Maybe they belonged together. Preoccupied as Rose had been with her troubles at the farm, with her grant and its promise of a new start in the world, she had failed to follow where love was going. Love was, as always, on the move, pushing things out of its path, strengthening or breaking things. The strength Guy had built up in Natalie, or Natalie in Guy—it hardly mattered who started it—the building into a we had cast Rose out, a lonely I, and just when she’d started to desire again. What her grant could do for her seemed nothing, seemed ashes, compared to what love could do, not to strengthen, but to disgrace her. She was going to have to live this down. She could start by telling Emma. She made herself meet Emma’s eyes.
“Well,” Emma was saying. “You’re just the sister.”
Right. This might not be about her at all, but the story of Guy and Natalie. And Rose was “just the sister,” the one who’d unwittingly brought them together.
“It’s easy to get wrapped up in other people,” said Emma, “to lose sleep they ought to be losing.” She frowned. “Have I said too much?”
“No, Emma, you’re dead on. I’ll let them lose the sleep.” Rose pulled herself to her feet. She’d explain it all to Emma another day. She glanced through the doorway toward the darkened staircase. “Do you have a dog?”
Emma shook her head. Rose shrugged—she’d thought she heard a panting sound somewhere in the house just then.
She went back to her bed and dumped herself down. Let them lose the sleep. She forced her eyes closed and saw Guy standing at Natalie’s bed. His clothes dropped away and his cock sprang upright. She told her-self to quit—not to do this to herself. He’d said there had only been holding and kissing. But, really, why should they stop there? Nothing was stopping them. Certainly not Rose, not the sister who’d brought them together. Natalie on the bed would be harder, but Rose could do it—spread her sister’s legs apart beneath her huge belly or hump Natalie up on all fours so he could enter from behind.
Natalie cried out. An actual cry, distant in the house. And then another—an alert, gasping cry. Rose and Emma converged on the stairs.
On the bed stripped of all but a bottom sheet and towels underneath her and a belt looped either side of the footboard, leather belts of Guy’s, homemade stirrups, Natalie lay, pressing out her feet, her arms stretched overhead, her hands clamped to the bars of the headboard.
“I’ll call the ambulance,” said Emma.
“No,” gasped Natalie. “Not the hospital. Not lights and steel tables and strangers.”
“You can’t do it this way. It’s too risky.”
“Guy, don’t let her,” panted Natalie.
Emma turned to him. He stared, unseeing. Natalie drew a breath and brayed.
“Call the ambulance, for Chrissake,” said Rose.
Emma dropped to her knees and tugged the towel smooth under Natalie, and reached for the stack of towels on the floor—Emma’s towels. “You had this all planned, I see.”
“I’m sorry,” said Rose. “I didn’t know.”
“Well,” said Emma, “why should we argue? I, myself, came into the world this way, right in this house, as a matter of fact, possibly in this room. We’ll need a sheet of plastic to protect the mattress and boiled water, lots of it. And basins. Have you sterilized the towels?” she asked Natalie, who sat up, shaking her head and shivering.
“Lean back,” said Emma. “No rush. How long have you been in labor?”
“Since supper.”
“And your waters broke—”
“An hour ago.” Now Rose understood the source of the flood that had drenched Natalie’s nightgown and puddled the chair. Natalie regarded her. Between them was the unspoken accusation: Rose had shouted at Natalie, had struck her while she was in labor.
Rose returned the stony look. She had not known Natalie was in labor; Natalie hadn’t seen fit to tell her. Emma sent Rose to the kitchen to fill and heat the teapot, the double boiler, and the soup kettle and to turn on the oven for sterilizing towels. Rose turned from Natalie. She’d be the sister; she’d heat water and carry basins. But she hated Natalie all the same.
In the hour it took to boil water and cool it and fill pitchers and gallon jars and set them in a row outside the birthing room, Rose turned herself into a bystander, coming and going, passing Guy on the stairs. He reached to touch her shoulder once and she quickly moved out from under his hand.
Natalie lay on sheets and towels over crackling plastic. Emma unfastened and cast aside the leather belts from the footboard.
“A trip to the olden days,” she said, and beckoned to Rose to make a sling with her, the two of them kneeling either side of the headboard. Natalie was told to sit forward, and Rose and Emma joined arms, hand to elbow, and braced her from behind and then she lay back and Emma and Rose extended, each of them, an elbow around front, over which Natalie was to hook her knees. And when she had each knee in place and, between her legs, gripped their free hands, the human sling went taut, and Natalie was entirely contained in their arms and, at the same time, able to open her thighs. Her nightgown was bunched to her waist. Her under-pants were soaking.
“You can take those off,” said Emma and released Rose and set a lamp low at the foot of the bed for later, when it would be needed. She switched the lamp off. It might be a while yet, she told them. Natalie should rest and Rose might read a book, and Guy—well, Guy would do whatever he pleased.
Emma installed herself with a book in a narrow rocker outside the open door, where she read and hummed. Obediently, Rose went down-stairs to the bookshelf and found a Western with a sunset on the cover and settled herself back upstairs in the dampness of the wicker chair. She read and reread page one, in which a cowboy put a halter on a horse. Emma noticed she was not turning pages and suggested she go down-stairs to nap. Rose gave a fake yawn and stretched but settled back to her page one, seeing not a cowboy, but Doris Atkinson the previous autumn, that terrible afternoon when she had observed Doris enduring Frances and Harold in the same room. She felt a sudden affinity for the pale, shattered woman. But here, in the room under the eaves, the room with the strange odors, something was about to transpire and Rose found herself interested. Something, someone was coming.
Natalie slept and then she was astir. She tried to get up. She lay back down.
“Are you hot?” Emma asked. “Shall we take this off?” She gave the nightgown a tug.
Natalie cast a wild look in Guy’s direction.
“Oh, I wouldn’t spare his feelings,” said Emma.
They lifted off the nightgown and Natalie leaned back, her breasts and nipples bloated above the mound of her belly and her vulva, enormous, exposed between her open knees.
Emma cast an eye on Guy, and, obediently, he looked.
“You’re okay. You’re good,” he told Natalie, his voice unsteady.
Was he turned on by the sight, Rose wondered? Did this fulfill his notion of womanhood? She felt a prickling of remorse. No matter what Natalie had done, she was in childbirth now. This was, undeniably, womanhood, a grand, momentous thing.
Natalie smiled wanly up at him. “We could name him Guy, Junior.”
“Oh?” he croaked. He leaned back and his shadow seemed to fall over backwards.
She yelped and bore down.
“I’m not sure you should be pushing yet,” said Emma.
Natalie lifted her chin sharply toward the spot between her legs. They saw a slight bulge.
Emma and Rose knelt and made their sling, and Natalie gripped and the bulge vanished.
“Not so hard yet,” said Emma. “Try to hold back.”
Natalie was thirsty. Emma went to crack ice. The grandeur of birth, was it? The roiling mass of legs and belly seemed to yield up nothing but chaos and stink.
Natalie again lay against Rose and Emma, her hair matted, her skin very pale. A freckle by her ear seemed as dark as ink. She tensed and Emma and Rose tensed with her, cradling her. And they stood and stretched and then she tensed again and then again so soon after the previous time that they had to stay kneeling in place.
The clock read 3:30. The bulge between Natalie’s legs was enlarging by degrees.
“His head,” said Natalie.
Between her legs, between the lips, a dark something showed, partly hairy, partly smooth, perhaps a head. A little dent and a slit in it—per-haps a wrinkled eye.
“Push now,” said Emma, and swung Natalie’s knee to Guy and moved to crouch between Natalie’s legs, reaching in with her hands. “And now.” Natalie bellowed.
“God,” said Guy.
The head came and then the shoulders and the rest, sluicing fishlike into Emma’s hands, and she scooped it up and laid it on Natalie’s heaving chest. A baby. A baby who breathed in a tiny heaving counterpoint.
“It’s a girl,” said Guy.
“Very good,” said Emma, laughing.
“Oh,” said Natalie and closed her eyes.
With sterilized sewing scissors, Emma cut and tied the cord.
“Now, hold her,” she urged Natalie, who, her eyes still closed, allowed Emma to move her arm to curl limply around the baby. “What are you going to call her?”
“She’s a girl, so I don’t know,” said Natalie remotely.
Rose sneaked a hand up and grasped the baby’s foot. Satiny, sticky little foot. Natalie’s arm loosened around the baby and her hand wandered down to the pulsing cord.
“Yes,” said Emma. “Take your daughter, Guy. We’ve got to push that placenta out.”
Guy sat gingerly and held out his hands, eager, uncertain. “She isn’t mine,” he admitted.
“Yes, we all feel that at first,” said Emma and no one enlightened her.
Natalie swayed to her feet and squatted and the placenta spilled out, purple and white, ridged and ruffled and slick with blood. They couldn’t help staring, all but Emma, who was gathering towels and pouring water.
Rose filled a basin and took the baby from Guy, who didn’t protest, and went to the wicker chair, where she sat with her knees together, nestling the baby between her thighs and, no one stopping her, bathed the little thing and, with a clean washcloth and pins, fashioned a diaper.
Swaddled in a towel, the tiny girl frowned and twisted her mouth. A cheek caved in and then rounded out again.
The silence inside Rose had broken out in chanting, a many-voiced tumult. She closed her fingers around the tiny hand. Who are you? This was Natalie’s—Natalie’s baby, she told herself sternly, but it seemed irrelevant.
“What’s your name?” she whispered. Beyond her in the room, Emma helped Natalie into a fresh nightgown and Guy gathered up the soiled bedding.
“What’s your name?” Rose said aloud. “She’s going to tell me,” she informed them.
“Really?” said Natalie dully and lay down again.
Rose knew it was not her right to do this, but no one seemed to be stopping her. In her lap, the tiny, wobbly being opened one dazzling eye and then the other and looked at her.
A name floated up.
“Marguerite,” breathed Rose. “Marguerite MacGregor,” she said aloud.
“After who?” said Natalie.
“After no one but herself.”
Guy stopped. Emma cast a startled glance at Rose and the baby.
“All right,” said Natalie. “We’ll call her Marguerite.”