Stepping Page 21

  For example, in three more days Stephen is supposed to arrive here in Helsinki. BEA 270, November 29, 11:30. That is one piece of the puzzle. Incredibly, unbelievably, Charlie is leaving tomorrow to lecture for five days in Sweden. Is that another piece of the puzzle? Has fate arranged for my husband to be gone so that I can easily be with my lover? (Is Stephen my lover if we haven’t actually made love yet? I’m not sure of the details. Perhaps he is my lover simply because he loves me, but then I’m not sure he really loves me, either. What shall I call him then?) Since fate has arranged for Charlie to be gone, does it mean that it is right for me to be with Stephen? Am I supposed to choose Stephen? What am I supposed to do? Do I want Stephen? What do I want?

  I want to teach. I want to teach, I have always wanted to teach, and I’m trying my best now to find a job. I have written the colleges within driving distance of our New Hampshire farm, but mail, even air mail, from Finland to the States, can take a long time, can often be irregular, and I have not as yet received any reply. It occurs to me that I could try to make a deal with Stephen: Give me a job, and I’ll sleep with you. But no, no, I could not live with that; that is one thing I know I will not do.

  It must mean something, though, that I can’t think of Stephen apart from his position as holder of jobs that I crave. How funny it is that now when I have a handsome man who wants to be my lover coming to see me I don’t think about sex or love. How funny it is that now when all my friends are writing me letters about their new lovers and new love affairs, or their husbands’ lovers and love affairs, that while they dream of rendezvous with passionate men I dream only of a nice clean office with my own desk and a great big classroom full of eighteen-year-old kids who don’t know how to use the subjunctive. Am I crazy? What do I want? How do I decide whether or not to sleep with Stephen?

  Let me think now, let me turn the puzzle pieces in my hands and think. It is after midnight now, and Charlie and the children are asleep, and I have gotten out of bed because no matter how I closed my eyes, no matter how many times I reminded myself that I will be exhausted and bitchy tomorrow, I still could not get sleep to come to me. I’ve come into this little kitchen and shut the door so that my noises won’t disturb anyone else. It is strange how the kitchen which seems so dark and dull in the day suddenly seems bright and somehow mysteriously gay at night. It is because it is snowing outside now, and the streetlights look like golden globes, and out on the highways the cars pass with bright lights under the bright highway lamps. I’ve fixed myself a scotch and water, a strong one, to make me sleep, and I’m sitting at the good old rocky kitchen table, drinking and looking out the window at the snow and the street and the apartments full of sleeping people. No one is walking outside. It is very quiet. Surely now in all this silence I will be able to think and to come to an intelligent, sensible decision.

  Should I meet Stephen? Should I make love with him? I promised him I would. And he is handsome and sexually exciting; I would probably enjoy making love with him. Should I tell him I’ll marry him? Ouch—why does that thought hurt so much? Marriage. It’s the thought of marriage, for heaven’s sake.

  Marriage. I am already married to Charlie, I am already involved in a marriage. We’ve been collaborating in this marriage for thirteen years. And what does it mean? When I first met Charlie, and in those first early years, I desired him, I lusted after him, more than I ever have for anything else in this world. Thirteen years of having him has calmed me down considerably. Yet I have never desired Stephen, or anyone, as I once desired Charlie. Sex. Sex was not all of it, and isn’t now. I did not desire only to screw Charlie, I wanted something more, and I must say I feel I’ve gotten it. On that score I am satisfied. I am satisfied with my marriage.

  So then why am I even considering sleeping with Stephen? Or, for heaven’s sake, marrying him? Those first insane sharp sexy moments, that first surge of desire, those first kisses, are awfully sweet, it is true. And after thirteen years of following Charlie around, it’s fantastic to have someone following me. But I’m not sure I want to go any further. I really don’t think I want anything more. It’s as if Charlie and I have built a bridge together, a great strong stony bridge that arches and supports us both over the eerie chasm of death and loneliness and meaninglessness. It is something real and good and special, that great bridge. It supports Adam and Lucy, too, it is a place where they can stand safely until they can build their own lives. I don’t want to break off my part of that bridge, or pull it down with me in one resounding crash, simply to grasp a butterfly.

  Butterflies, bridges, what am I talking about? There are bread crumbs under this kitchen table, and the scotch has hit me in the head. No, I can’t put a decision together like a puzzle. At least not tonight. But deep down inside I feel things moving together. I suppose I will have to surprise myself once again.

  * * *

  On February 5, 1973, there was a blizzard in New Hampshire. It was frightening how the wind howled and blew at the walls and windows of our house, frightening to see the snow pile up in barriers across the road, frightening to hear great tree limbs crack and break and fall. Charlie was in bed, asleep, but at midnight I was downstairs in the kitchen, looking out the windows and crying. I hadn’t slept well for oh, how many nights, so many nights, each night waking up to pee and then being unable to go back to sleep because of the discomfort of my body and the discomfort of my thoughts. I was irrational, and as I stood in the dark kitchen, my bare feet cold and my robe too small to wrap around my great belly, I cried and whispered to the howling wind. I wanted to make a deal. I wanted to make a deal with someone, with something, and the howling wind seemed to represent whatever it was that was in charge of my life. It had come over me that in having a baby, in giving a new person life, I was stealing years of life from my husband. He was now forty-five, and suddenly forty-five seemed very old to me. I felt horrified at my audacity in becoming pregnant. Who did I think I was? What in the world did I think I was doing? It was Charlie I loved, it was Charlie I wanted to give my love to, all my love. By bringing a new person into our lives I was taking love and care and concern away from Charlie. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. I leaned against the window, the cold panes sending chills through me, and I whispered out at the storm. “Let this baby miscarry, let this baby die, and let the years of its life be added on to Charlie’s life. Let Charlie live forever and forever, or at least as long as I do. Give Charlie the life, the years, and if it means depriving our child of life and years, so be it.”

  How insane that night was. I knew with my intelligence that it wasn’t possible to trade one life for another, one set of years for another. But I wasn’t being intelligent that night. I suddenly realized that having a baby would sever me from Charlie; we would no longer be the complete and satisfied couple that we were. I didn’t stop to remember that I had not been a thoroughly satisfied half of that pair. I only sensed a great vast change ahead of me, and I was afraid of that change.

  I couldn’t sleep. I wandered through our large old colonial house, gazing out windows into the snowy night, running my hands over the familiar furniture. I drifted into the pantry and without turning on the light got down a bottle of Advocaat; I had become enamored of this Dutch liquor in Holland, where they told me it was a good drink for pregnant women because it contained eggs. All the bottles and glasses in the pantry glinted silvery in the light from the window. I drank some of the thick yellow liquor and felt better, and poured myself another glass and wandered back into the living room. I was so restless I knew I couldn’t go back to bed; that would only make me toss and turn and wake Charlie up. I sank down on the big white sofa in the living room and pulled an afghan down over me and cuddled up under it. For a while I was happy: warm and lonely and somehow self-sufficient in that big, dark, quiet room. The furniture seemed somehow benign and understanding. I had always wondered about the furniture at night, if it didn’t move around a bit; it seemed strange that it sat where it was, day after day, night after
night, without moving, when I felt it had a life of its own. The furniture as I watched did not move. Yet it radiated a friendliness that comforted me. I drank some more Advocaat; I slept for a while.

  When I woke up, it was still night, and I felt cozy and rather gay and all my fear was gone. The wind had stopped howling, and the sudden silence of the night was hauntingly prophetic. I thought of Charlie upstairs above me, sleeping, and I smiled to myself, thinking how ridiculous I had been earlier. Charlie would live forever with or without my love, I knew: he was strong and forceful and good, a great bear of a man, full of life. I had been foolish to worry. I couldn’t imagine what had come over me. I snuggled back down under the afghan and closed my eyes.

  My stomach hardened. It was as if it had become an enormous fist clenching, squeezing out coils of pain. I waited until it had softened, then turned over the other way and tried to go back to sleep. It hardened again.

  “Oh, stop it,” I said aloud, and rubbed my tummy. Several times during the past few days and nights it had hardened on me like this, though not quite so dramatically.

  And not quite so often, for there it was again. It was amazing: down there were my bare feet and legs and up here were my arms and shoulders and neck and head, and there in the middle, detached from the familiar comfortable normal part of me was this vast round territory that had suddenly made up its own rules and started its own revolution. My stomach clenched like a giant fist, and the coils of pain squeezed out like a hot red acid, encircling me.

  “Not now,” I said, “not yet. I’m not ready. I’m not in the mood. I haven’t slept for ages. Let me take a nap first.”

  My stomach clenched, and I heard myself cry out, a tiny involuntary moan. I sat up and looked around. It was still night, still dark out. Charlie was still upstairs, asleep. I was all alone, and it seemed a very strange time for my stomach to start this strange little act. It clenched again, hard, so hard that I thought, Well, good grief, do you suppose this is really it? I’d better not get the sofa wet.

  I pulled myself up into a standing position, and after a few seconds’ deliberation I wandered into the downstairs bathroom. When I pulled down my pants I saw they were covered with blood. In spite of everything, it was still a shock to know that my body, which of course I considered a part of me, was doing this, this bright indiscreet bleeding, without my knowledge or awareness. That blood, which could have been a stranger’s, so independently had it flowed, seemed full of existential significances. I would have stared at it forever, entranced in metaphysical wanderings, but my stomach clenched again, hard. I looked at my stomach. I could see the clenching, the tightening, as if both sides were trying to draw in to touch each other. I looked down again at the blood on my pants, and then at my huge hard belly, and then up at my startled face in the bathroom mirror. My hair was standing up all over in wild black curls. The center focused; it was all real. I grinned at myself in the mirror. I felt absolutely gay.

  “Well, good for you, stomach!” I said at last, and patted myself. “What a good little stomach you are!” I shuffled out of the bathroom and back into the kitchen, wondering what I should do first. I felt giddy, I felt immeasurably pleased with myself. “Guess what, table,” I said to the kitchen table, “I think it’s starting. My stomach’s as hard as you are.” I leaned on the table with both hands and panted as my stomach hardened again. Should I wake Charlie yet? I thought. Should I call the doctor? No, it would be a shame to wake her up. Should I bring my bag downstairs? Perhaps I should have another drink. Perhaps champagne. That would make the waiting easier. What a party I’d have drinking champagne and waiting for the contractions to become serious ones. I went back into the pantry and began to scrounge around in the wine rack, looking for champagne. I found a bottle, and shuffled to the refrigerator, and put it in to cool, and held on to the refrigerator door and panted. Everyone had assured me I would have hours and hours of this simple cadenced pain. I was supposed to go to the hospital when the contractions were regular and four minutes apart. I decided just for the fun of it not to wait for the champagne, to time the contractions right then. I turned on the kitchen light, sank down into a captain’s chair, and let my legs slide out in front of me. I watched the thin red second hand go around the face of our big yellow clock.

  The contractions were two minutes apart. I sat there for fifteen minutes until I could trust myself to believe it.

  “Well,” I said to my stomach, “aren’t you clever. You just get right down to business, don’t you.” My stomach hardened in reply.

  I was terribly pleased with myself and appreciated the delights of temporary schizophrenia. The baby hovered somewhere in the distance like a thought or the refrain of a song, but my stomach had suddenly become a real individual, a charming, entertaining, quite willful friend, and I found myself trailing along behind it like a child after an older, braver, slightly frightening playmate, one who was leading me to places I couldn’t imagine.

  I shuffled up the stairs, stopping now and then to bend and relax and pant when the contractions came, and then went on into my bedroom. I was amused at how soundly Charlie slept, so oblivious to all that was going on. I dressed myself in my favorite maternity clothes and cleverly put my pierced earrings in in the dark, then sat down on the bed next to Charlie and watched him sleep for a while. He seemed so sweet and innocent, so good and dear. I felt in contrast very capable, large, and important. Finally I woke him up.

  “Charlie,” I said, “wake up. It’s happening.”

  Charlie opened his eyes and stared at me for a while, surfacing from his deep sleep. “What’s happening?”

  “The baby.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Feel.”

  With his hand on my stomach the clenching did not feel quite so bad. I wondered if perhaps I had made a mistake. Perhaps it was only a false alarm.

  “Two minutes apart,” I said.

  “Let’s go to the hospital,” Charlie said.

  While Charlie dressed I made the bed, then sat on it and felt my stomach and panted. I wanted to call friends to tell them it was starting, but I realized that I was supposed to wait until it was all over to call. Still, I was terribly excited and happy, as if I were about to go to a marvelous party.

  Charlie helped me down the stairs, then went out to start the Jeep and warm it. He put my small overnight bag full of nursing bras and nightgowns in the Jeep, then came for me. As I went out the door of my house I felt buoyant, as if I were stepping off the stoop into gravity-free air. I wondered who would be in my arms when I entered the house again.

  I chatted gaily to Charlie all the way to the hospital. I felt I had never been quite so witty and enjoyable a conversationalist. Charlie had to concentrate on steering the Jeep over the snowpacked roads, and we slid once or twice on ice, but it all seemed distant and easy to me, although an occasional bump made me gasp. Everything seemed out of my hands now. I felt that if Charlie had settled back in his seat the car would have gently moved itself along the snowy roads. It was beautiful out. Everything was white and soft and full of depth.

  At the hospital I couldn’t help smiling at everyone. So this is what the janitor who mops the floor here every night looks like, I thought. How nice it must be to work in such a place of drama, and so this will be my nurse. The labor room they put me in had a window, and I could see the sky lightening and the windows of a white clapboard church begin to glow. I liked it when the nurse slipped a crisp white institutional frock over me; it was as if someone were taking care of me, someone were dressing me, like a mother.

  I climbed up on a high white bed and the nurses covered me with a soft beige blanket, and Charlie came in and held my hand. He looked out of place in his green sweater and old gray corduroy slacks while the rest of us were all in white.

  “Charlie,” I said, “you promised you’d come into the delivery room with me. You promised.”

  “I will,” he said. “I will. I’ll get the hospital garb on when the time comes
. But you’ve still got a long way to go.”

  “How do you know?” I asked. I knew that Charlie had not been with Adelaide when Caroline and Cathy were born.

  “The nurses told me,” Charlie said. “They said that if you’re still smiling and joking around, you’ve got a long way to go.”

  Hah, I thought to myself, will they have a surprise coming! I’m going to smile and joke through it all. Why not? It’s easy. To Charlie, I said, “Do I need some more lipstick?”

  Charlie said, “Oh, Zelda, I love you.”

  And of course the nurses were right. After a while I stopped smiling and joking and concentrated on breathing correctly and not screaming. After a while the nurses didn’t seem so cute or sweet and Charlie seemed absolutely irritating. It occurred to me in a rush that I was going to have to surrender myself to something out of my control. It was as if my greedy hardening stomach was trying to pull myself—the “I” of my self—out of my head, to pull it down to the center of my body, and when I finally realized that this was what was necessary I let go. And things began to move much more rapidly. I let go of myself, of my “I,” the I who was Zelda, who was thirty years old and had curly black hair and a ready smile, who knew about T. S. Eliot, who loved to ride horses through the woods. I let go. And my I, my self, seemed to suddenly sink and surge downward into the center of my being. I lost myself, I surrendered myself to the passionate lustful pain. Charlie held my hand and rubbed my back, but I was not with Charlie. And I was not with the baby. I was with, blended with, something else, some greedy, fierce, ripping power. Suddenly the clenched fist socked me in the small of my back, and my back arched, and I cried out in a way that I never would have let myself cry before. They took me to the delivery room.