Stepping Page 11

  Finally I said, “Come on, girls, it’s cold; let’s get in our pajamas and get in bed. We won’t sleep, we’ll wait for your father, but at least we’ll get warmed up.”

  Dutifully, zombie china dolls, they obeyed. I put on my nightgown, too, a nice unsexy flannel one I had brought just for that evening with them. Then I finished the last of my drink and crawled right into the middle of the double bed with the girls. I sat up and leaned against the headboard of the bed and pulled each girl up against me. Caroline of course pulled away a bit, put her head on a pillow and wrapped her arms around it. But she let the bottom half of her body lie touching mine. Cathy cuddled up against me, lay half on my lap. For a few minutes it was horribly awkward and our breathing sounded ridiculously loud. Then, I have no idea why, I began to sing. I had sung in church choirs and choral groups when I was younger and my voice was still a nice steady alto. I started singing an old lullabye: “ ‘Skitters are a-hummin’ on the honeysuckle vine, sleep, Kentucky babe …’ ” It had a soothing, Southern, comforting slow lilt to it in a deep, dark minor key. My mother had often sung it to me as she rocked me on her lap; perhaps that was why it came to me so easily then, when I was holding two children against me. The music seemed fitting, neither happy nor sad. I sang it three or four times. When I stopped singing, the room seemed stark and empty. So I sang some more. First hymns, all the hymns I could remember, even Christmas songs—the quiet, holy ones. I sang my serious sorority songs. Serious folk songs. “ ‘Lord, it’s one, Lord, it’s two, Lord, it’s three, Lord, it’s four, Lord, it’s five hundred miles to my home …’ ”

  Of course, in my own way, I was praying.

  Cathy cried quietly, head buried in my lap, soaking my flannel nightgown. Caroline lay stone-still, chilled, dry-eyed, staring.

  I sang till my voice was hoarse. At least the time passed. At least we were warmed, there under the covers together.

  Charlie arrived at nine, two hours after we had checked in at the motel. He said that Adelaide was all right, would be all right. They had pumped her stomach, and she had thrown up the pills, and at eight she had awakened and was resting normally. He had talked to her. He had told her that he would take care of the girls until Monday. He told her he would pay for a plane ticket and arrange for Adelaide’s mother to fly up from Kansas to live with her for a while. He told her he would pay for some psychological counseling for a few months. He told her that everything would be fine.

  We ordered up some more drinks and dinners from room service, and this time the girls, reassured by Charlie’s presence and Adelaide’s recovery, ate. They discussed Adelaide and the sleeping pills: apparently she had cheerfully helped the girls pack their bags, had brushed their hair and put them in pretty dresses, then told them to watch television, while she went upstairs to rest awhile. The girls had looked in her room only once, and then Adelaide had been sound asleep on her bed and they hadn’t wanted to bother her. They thought it couldn’t have been more than half an hour between the time she had gone upstairs and the time Charlie arrived; they had gone to her room during the TV commercial.

  “We didn’t know she had taken sleeping pills, Daddy,” Caroline had pleaded. “Not till you came and we ran up to tell her and she wouldn’t wake up and we saw the bottles on the floor—”

  “It’s all right,” Charlie said. “You couldn’t have known. And let me tell you what your mommy said, girls, at the hospital. She smiled at me and said, ‘Charlie, that was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Tell Caroline and Cathy that I’m sorry if I scared them. Tell them I’ll never, ever, do it again.’ ”

  After a while the girls got into bed. They didn’t sleep, they probably couldn’t, with all the phone calls Charlie made. He called Adelaide’s mother and told her about the pills, and listened to her scream and cry and rave—Mrs. Fowler was her daughter’s mother—and managed to calm her down. He suggested that she come live with Adelaide and the girls for a few months; Mrs. Fowler was a widow, and lived alone. Then he called the airlines and made reservations, and called Mrs. Fowler back and told her when her flight was, on the coming Monday, and that she would have a prepaid ticket waiting for her at the ticket counter. He told her yes, he would also pay for her fare home whenever she decided to leave. He had her talk to Caroline and Cathy for a few minutes. Then he called the airlines and changed our reservations home to Monday instead of Sunday. He called Anthony Leyden in Kansas City to tell him about the emergency. Anthony said he would cover for Charlie’s classes on Monday, and would also see to it that my profs and students knew I was absent because of an emergency. Then Charlie called the Ascrofts, who had been close friends of Charlie-and-Adelaide when they were still Charlie-and-Adelaide and living in Amherst. The Ascrofts still lived in Amherst, and it was George Ascroft who had found Adelaide her job at the university and who was partly responsible for Adelaide’s moving back to Massachusetts. After Charlie had divorced Adelaide, George and Susan Ascroft had written Charlie to tell him that they thought he was a cad and a creep and a villain, that they thought he was doing a nauseatingly, viciously monstrously evil and unkind thing by leaving his wife and daughters, and that they would no longer be his friend or have any contact with him. But when Charlie called that night, they agreed to meet him for a drink to discuss Adelaide and her problems and what they could all do to help.

  Then Charlie called the hospital to check on Adelaide. She was sleeping peacefully, in good condition.

  Finally there was no one left to call. The girls fell asleep, and Charlie and I sat up drinking slowly and talking guiltily in the darkened hotel room.

  “I don’t love her, I don’t know her, I scarcely remember her,” Charlie said. “I feel as though I were doing all this for a stranger. But I have to help her; she needs help.”

  “Yes,” I said. I knew he was right; he had to help her. Even I would help her, indirectly, however I could, by being good to her daughters. But I hated her. She had made the canyon come back between Charlie and me. She had made all of us, Charlie, me, her daughters, her friends, feel guilty, somehow vaguely, terribly guilty. It was her weakness, but we had to suffer for it. It did not seem fair. But of course I pitied her, too. I pitied her deeply. And I learned from her. Never in my life, I decided, would I let myself become so dependent, so vulnerable. I would become financially and emotionally independent, I resolved, so that if Charlie and I separated I would be able to laugh, to dance, to fly, rather than to mourn or collapse. I lay awake deep in the night on my side of that vast lonely canyon, while Charlie lay sleeping and tossing and moaning on his side. I lay awake deep into the night, and stared at the dark wall of the motel room, while Adelaide slept peacefully, in good condition in her lonely hospital bed.

  The next day was again centered around Adelaide. My life with Charlie was completely dismissed for a while. I hung around and waited when necessary, or took care of the girls, or played chauffeur. In the morning Charlie took the girls to the hospital to see Adelaide. I waited in the motel room, thinking of the four of them, blue-eyed blonds in assorted sizes, together, gently talking. I took the girls to lunch and shopping for clothes while Charlie talked to two different clinical psychologists about Adelaide. Then I sat alone in the motel room again while Charlie and his daughters visited the Ascrofts. The Ascrofts had children Caroline’s and Cathy’s ages, so the girls were invited to play while Charlie discussed Adelaide with George and Susan. I was not invited. Charlie thought the Ascrofts might be offended if I came along. I sat for four hours pretending to read a book, wondering if my life would ever be simple again. At six I ordered a scotch and water for myself and at seven I ordered another one, and when Charlie and Caroline and Cathy arrived at seven-thirty, I was a little bit drunk. Not happy-drunk. Tired-drunk. Charlie said the three of them had eaten at the Ascrofts’ and now wanted to go to a new Walt Disney movie. I was too drunk and hungry and tired and melancholy to want to go, but I knew it was Adelaide’s crisis, not mine, and I didn’t want to act like a spoiled c
hild who had lost the limelight. So I went. I ate two bags of popcorn and pretended to laugh.

  Sunday it was more or less the same: in the morning Charlie and his daughters went to see Adelaide. In the afternoon the three of them went to visit the Ascrofts, who had invited another couple who had once been friends of Charlie-and-Adelaide. I went to a matinee, some foreign film with subtitles I didn’t try to understand. Sunday night the four of us had a big dinner together at the Wiggins Inn. It was an expensive dinner, and I didn’t enjoy it; the food was good, but my spirits were low. I felt the canyon between Charlie and me widening, deepening, hourly. I was tired of being silent and subservient, tired of not being touched or talked to. I wanted to fling my wineglass dramatically across the room, to yell, “I’m strangling in this stupid soap opera you’ve got going! I want out! I want to start my own life!” But all I did was to accidentally knock over my water glass, causing all four of us embarrassment.

  Monday morning Charlie and I drove Caroline and Cathy to school. Again Cathy cried when Charlie said goodbye. Caroline ran off into the safety of the school without speaking. Charlie and I rode in silence to the airport in Hartford. He had to meet Adelaide’s mother, Mrs. Fowler, at the airport and drive her back to Hadley. Then he and Mrs. Fowler brought Adelaide home from the hospital. I waited—again, I waited, long, blank drizzling hours—while Charlie drove back to Bradley Field so that the two of us could catch our six-o’clock flight back to Kansas City. I didn’t want to meet Mrs. Fowler, and Lord knows she wouldn’t have been pleased to meet me. But I would have sold my soul to be able to watch Charlie as he got Adelaide from the hospital. Was he tender with her, I wondered, solicitous? Loving? Did she fall against him and cry? When he entered that lovely red brick colonial with her, did he want to shut the door behind him and stay?

  It was at the Hartford airport, waiting through that long March day, watching people kiss and hug and reunite, that I thought it. I thought that the only way I would ever have Charlie completely to myself would be for Caroline and Cathy to die. Then the ties would be cut. If Adelaide died, we would have to raise Cathy and Caroline ourselves, and I would never be free. But if the girls died, there would be no more reason for Adelaide to see or talk to Charlie ever again. He would be all mine. Of course I knew I wouldn’t kill the girls myself, and at that moment I didn’t actively wish them, those two small girls, dead, but still, still, thoughts of plane crashes flickered about my mind like a fire playing, and I thought how clean a plane crash would be, how certain, and how final. I would not have willed it to happen, but if it had happened, I am not sure I would have minded. How confused, how jealous, I was.

  Somewhere above Illinois, on our United flight to Kansas City, Charlie, who to that moment had been silent, suddenly rose and went back to the rest room. He was gone a long time. When he returned, he was ashen and shaky. It was obvious he had been sick. When he sat down again, he leaned back and closed his eyes. And reached out to take my hand. And held it tight. The canyon between us closed instantly, with a magnificent jarring crash, like two continents joining after an ice age.

  “Zelda,” he said, “I’m so sorry. It was hell for me; it must have been just as awful for you.”

  The sympathetic words made tears spring to my eyes. “Charlie,” I said, “tell me truthfully. Do you want to go back with her? That would solve everyone’s problems.”

  A real smile broke out across Charlie’s face. He shook his head. “Oh, Zelda, my love,” he said, as if that were the answer. Then, “No, heavens, no. I’d like to have my girls with me, but I don’t want to go back with Adelaide. I don’t know why I ever married her in the first place. And now she just bores me. Annoys me. I don’t even feel sorry for her after this weekend, and that’s the truth. I feel irritated. It’s as though she feels the only way she can be important anymore is by being weak and pitiful. And her sad little trick will cost me plenty financially, the phone calls, the fare for her mother, the damned psychologist. I hope to hell he helps her. She’s got to get straightened out. What kind of model is she for the girls? It’s crazy. If I had been run over by a truck, she would have carried on bravely and started a new life. But since I chose to leave her, she can only fall apart. God, what a mess. It makes me sick. She makes me sick.”

  Well, hooray for that, I thought.

  We talked some more about Adelaide and the girls. Charlie thought that if Adelaide did anything else so dramatically unpleasant he would get a court order to take custody of the girls. But he thought that with the help of the Ascrofts and Adelaide’s mother things would improve. Adelaide had been living in Hadley for over a year now, and the Ascrofts had said that she had been still feeling so shy and bitter toward men in general and toward women because they married men that she hadn’t made friends or even dated. She had insisted on the Ascroft family spending Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Easter Sunday, the Fourth of July, and so on and so on, with her. She had fixed marvelous meals. It was as if those holidays with their ritual food had provided the only sense of stability and community that she had. The Ascrofts had felt guilty, Charlie said, because for the past few months they had been trying to pull away from Adelaide. She had spent too many Saturdays and Sundays at their house, had invited them too often to hers; they had lost a feeling of family and had wanted more privacy. And Adelaide had become redundant, boring; too quick to find fault with men; bitter, so acidly bitter that they had turned away from her to keep from being singed. Now they realized that she needed help, really needed help, and they were going to do all they could. Mrs. Fowler was going to do all she could. The psychologist was going to do all he could, one hour a week for eighteen weeks. Charlie had signed an agreement to pay for that many sessions. Surely Adelaide would perk up, especially since she cared for her daughters so much.

  I was nearly sick myself when I heard how much Charlie would have to pay the psychologist. It meant that our lives—Charlie’s and mine—would be dreadfully austere for the next four months.

  “You don’t have to pay for her treatment,” I said, and I worked hard to put the question pleasantly and reasonably instead of in one big wail. “Why are you doing it?”

  “For the girls,” Charlie said. “They are girls. And they love their mother and need her there, healthy and stable, to give them love and a good model of a woman. It wouldn’t help if I dragged them away from her. They need their mother first. The only way I can help Caroline and Cathy is to help Adelaide. To try to give her back to them since I’ve taken myself away.”

  “I see now,” I said, and I did. I admired Charlie for it. I thought he was a good man. I knew I was not a good woman; a selfish beast within kept screaming, Get Adelaide out of my life! I can’t take this anymore!

  It was wonderful when the plane trip ended. Once we set foot in Kansas City, our territory, I felt myself expand. For four months we would be poor, but we would be alone, Charlie and I, and he would teach and write and I would teach and study and we would have books and each other and still a few trips to the farm. We would be in our own world again, and I knew I would survive the phone calls about Adelaide and her health. When I saw my beautiful city again, and our small lovely house, and my books and papers, and the bed I shared with Charlie, I knew I could survive anything if I could just have those.

  * * *

  Today was a lovely, bright, sunny fall day here in Helsinki. An unusual day. For the past two weeks we have had rain, gloom, heavy gray skies, and then, oddly enough, clear starlit nights. I usually stand on our tiny balcony after Adam and Lucy are asleep and look out at the cold clear sky and hiss, “For crying out loud, why can’t you get it right! Be clear in the day and cloudy at night!” Actually, I think the Finns may prefer the gray sky; it goes better with their color scheme. Things—coats, dresses, boots, scarves, bags—are of an excellent quality here, but drab. The Finns wear black, gray, dark brown, dark blue. I feel like a freak as I hurry along to the grocery store in my pale blue ski parka with its red embroidery and white furry trimm
ed hood.

  What is it about Finland that makes the Finns so dreadfully dull? The polite word is shy, but it’s something more. It seems a philosophical choice. Three families we’ve been with now, and all the adults have been pleasant and interesting, but all the children seem neurotically reserved. They cry if Adam or Lucy accidentally touches his or her knee as we ride, four abreast, stuffed in the back of a Volvo. They stand almost motionless next to the security of their mother for two hours at a time while my children, tired of trying to get a response, play with the Finnish child’s toys. Perhaps Finnish children are so shy because Finns don’t like children. Finns like things nice and quiet and clean and tidy, and God knows children are anything but that. Also, children, young babies, indicate that people have been engaging in sexual acts. People have been making love. People have been screwing … fucking. I think screwing is still frowned upon here in this Lutheran society. Oh ye sinners. Heavy, heavy. The other night at a party, where only adults were gathered, Charlie asked, “Where is the red-light district in Helsinki? Is it worth seeing?” And all of the people in the room, six other intelligent, sophisticated, grown-up Finns, stopped talking and stared at Charlie with a mixture of embarrassed amusement and serious, reproving shock.

  “Well, the one in Amsterdam was so gay,” I offered, trying to appeal to their sense of sophistication, wanting somehow to bail Charlie out. And they did stop staring at Charlie, but only to look with bland silent disapproval at me. “The red-light district in Amsterdam is even on the tourist guide maps,” I continued, smiling. There was no response; no one said, “Ah yes, I’ve been there, too.” I felt compelled to make it clear that Charlie and I were not crazy American sex fiends. I had a bright idea; I would mention Charlie’s daughters, who were young and innocent. Then they would understand how unlewd Charlie’s question had been. I wanted the staring Finns to know that we—Charlie and I—all Americans—were good people. “I took Charlie’s daughters to the Amsterdam red-light district one afternoon. It was a Sunday, and Charlie had left for a conference in Barcelona, and his daughters were living with us that semester, and I said to them, ‘Where would you like to go? What would you like to see in Amsterdam?’ And they said the red-light district. They had read about it in the tour guides. I was worried about taking them there because Caroline was seventeen and Cathy was fourteen, and Charlie was gone, and I didn’t know if he would approve, and their mother might have thought I was damaging their innocent minds. So I tried to get out of it. I said, ‘If you cook the dinner and do all the dishes tonight, I’ll take you there.’ You see, they hated cooking and doing dishes so much I thought they’d never agree. Well, they did. And we had great hamburgers and they cleaned the kitchen and I took them to the red-light district. It was a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon. We walked up and down and around the streets, looking in the windows. I must say that the people on the streets stared at us, too; I was seven months pregnant with Adam then, and I am short and dark, while Caroline and Cathy are tall and blond. People always stared at us in Amsterdam. Well, it was fun—there were the Algerian sailors, swarthy little men in dark peacoats with the collars turned up, darting into the ladies’ doors, and the ladies would pull down their heavy shades: occupied for a few minutes. But there were shops selling baby clothes and pastries or fruit and pleasant residences mixed in with the prostitutes’ apartments, and all sorts of people passed us on the streets, old gentlemen with dogs, mommies and children. It was really quite pleasant, even gay.”