Family Album (38 page)

“You're happy, aren't you, Li?” It was important to her to know that. He meant so much to her. And she was fond of John, she always had been, but she was more so now, after his helping to find Anne.

“Yes, I am, Mom.” He had grown up beautifully, even if he wasn't what she and Ward had expected him to be. Maybe that didn't really matter after all. She asked herself a lot of questions about that at times, but it was still impossible to discuss it with Ward.

“I'm glad. Now what about Anne? Will she give the baby up?” The doctor had a couple who were definitely interested. She was thirty-six and he was forty-two, and they were both sterile, and the agencies said they were too old to adopt. She was Jewish and he was Catholic, and with all of that there was absolutely no hope, except this way. They didn't even mind the risk of the baby's possible defects from drugs. They were desperate and insisted they would love him or her anyway. And in September, Faye insisted that Anne at least meet them, to give them a chance. They were very nervous and very sweet, and they almost begged the child to give her baby to them. They promised her that she could come to visit him sometimes, although the doctor and their attorney discouraged that. It had led to some terrible incidents once or twice, and a kidnapping once, after the papers had been signed. It was better to make a clean break, they said, but they would have agreed to anything. The woman had shining black hair, and beautiful brown eyes, a good figure, a bright mind. She was an attorney, originally from New York, and her husband was an ophthalmologist with features similar to Anne's. The baby could even have looked like them, if it looked like Anne at all, and not the rest of the commune, Faye thought to herself. They were lovely people and Anne felt sorry for them.

“How come they can't have kids?” Anne asked as they drove away and her mother took her back to Lionel's.

“I didn't ask. I just know they can't.” Faye was praying she would be reasonable. She wanted Ward to talk to her too, but he was away. He had begged Faye to come with him, he thought they needed a “honeymoon” as he put it, now that they were back together again. And she had been touched, but she just didn't feel comfortable leaving Anne until after the baby was born. If something had happened to her, if she delivered early, which the doctor said teenagers sometimes did … and he had warned her that girls in their teens had the hardest time, even harder than women her age, and she was surprised. She was forty-six years old now, and babies were the farthest thing from her mind. But she was frightened that Anne would have a hard time, and she refused to go away with Ward. They had some time between films, but she was trying to spend as much time as she could with Anne. And instead, Ward went to Europe with Greg. Faye thought it would do them both good to get away.

Anne hadn't agreed to anything by the time the baby was due. She was so enormous she looked as though she was having twins, and Lionel felt desperately sorry for her. She seemed to be having pains all the time, and he suspected that she was scared. He didn't blame her at all, he would have been terrified. And he just hoped he was home from school when the baby started to come. If not, John had promised to take a cab home from work and get her to the hospital. It was a lot easier to reach him than Lionel. She had had some crazy idea about having it at home, like they did at the commune, but they had squashed that, and Faye had made them swear that they would call her right away. Lionel had promised, but Anne had begged him not to.

“She'll steal my baby, Li.” The big blue eyes pleaded with him and his heart went out to her. She was frightened all the time now, of everything.

“She won't do anything of the sort. She just wants to be there with you. And no one is going to steal the baby. You have to make up your own mind.” But he was still trying to influence her. He thought his mother was right. At fourteen and a half, she didn't need the burden of a child. She was still a baby herself. And he was even more sure of it the night she began to have labor pains. She panicked and locked herself in her room, sobbing hysterically, and he and John had alternately threatened to break down the door. Eventually, while he talked cajolingly to her, John went out on the roof, slipped in through the window, and unlocked the door, and let her brother in. She was sobbing hysterically on the bed, convulsed with pain, and there was water all over the floor. Her water had broken an hour before, and the pains had grown severe. But she threw her arms around Lionel's neck and sobbed, clutching him with each pain.

“Oh Li, I'm so scared … I'm so scared …” No one had told her it would hurt this much. On the way to the hospital in the cab, she moaned and dug her nails into his hand, and refused to go away with the nurse. She hung on to him and begged him to stay with her, but when the doctor came, he told her to be a good girl, and two nurses wheeled her away as she screamed.

Lionel was visibly shaken and John was pale as they spoke to the quiet older man. “Can't you give her a sedative?”

“I'm afraid not. It may slow her labor down. She's young, she'll forget it all afterwards.” That seemed difficult to believe and he smiled sympathetically at them. “It's hard on girls her age, they're not really prepared to go through childbirth, physically or mentally. But we'll get her through and shell be just fine.” Lionel wasn't as sure. He could still hear her screaming from down the hall, and he wondered if he should be with her. “Have you called your mother yet?” Li shook his head nervously. It was eleven o'clock at night, and he wasn't sure if they'd be asleep. But he knew she'd be furious if they didn't call, so he dialed his old home number with trembling hands. Ward answered and Lionel spoke at once.

“I'm at the hospital with Anne.”

Ward didn't waste time handing the phone to Faye. For once, he spoke to Lionel himself. “We'll be right there.” And he was as good as his word. In ten minutes, they were at UCLA Medical Center, looking slightly rumpled, but wide awake. And the doctor made an exception, and let Faye stay with Anne, at least as long as she was in the labor room. None of them were prepared for how long it would take. Even the doctor didn't know, although he was usually good at predicting that, but again with teenagers, nothing was sure, she could race through it suddenly or it could take three days. She was dilating well, but she would stop at each stage for long hours, begging for release, for drugs, for anything, clutching at her mother's hand, trying to sit up to leave and then collapsing with the pain, clawing at the walls, and begging the nurses to let her go. It was the worst thing Faye had ever seen, and she had never felt so helpless in her life. There was nothing she could do to help the child, and she only left her once to go outside and say something to Ward. She wanted him to call the attorney first thing the next morning, in case Anne agreed to give the baby up after it was born. They would have her sign the papers immediately. They had to review them again in six months, to make them permanent, but by then the baby would be gone, and hopefully she'd have started a normal life again. Ward agreed to call him the next morning, and she suggested he go home. It could take hours, and the three men agreed. Ward dropped Lionel and John off, without saying much to them, and the two boys went upstairs. They were surprised to realize that it was already 4
A.M.
and Lionel never got to sleep that night. He crept stealthily out of bed, and called the hospital several times, but there was no news of Anne. She was still in the labor room, and the baby had not been born. And she was still there the following afternoon when John came home from work, and found Lionel still sitting by the phone. It was six o'clock and he was amazed.

“My God, hasn't she had the baby yet?” He couldn't imagine it taking so long. She had gone into labor around eight o'clock the night before, and had already been in terrible pain when they got her to the hospital. “Is she all right?”

Lionel looked pale. He had called the hospital what seemed like a thousand times, had even gone there for a few hours, but his mother didn't even want to come out to talk to him. She didn't want to leave Anne. He noticed a couple waiting nervously in the waiting room with the Thayers' lawyer, and he correctly guessed who they were. They were even more anxious for the baby to come than the Thayers were. And the doctor was guessing only a few more hours now. They had seen the head all afternoon, and she was ready to push, but it was going to be a while. And if there was no progress by eight or nine o'clock that night, he was going to do a Caesarean.

“Thank God,” John said, and both of them found they couldn't eat. They were too worried about her. At seven, Lionel called a cab. He was going back to the hospital.

“I want to be there.”

John nodded. “I'll come too.” They had spent five months looking for her, another five living with her now. John felt as though she were his little sister too, and the house didn't seem the same without her clothes and her books and her records spread around. He had threatened to put her on restriction once, if she didn't pick up her clothes, and she had laughed and teased him and said she'd tell the whole neighborhood he was queer. And he was desperately sorry for her now. It sounded like a grisly ordeal and when he saw Faye Thayer's face shortly after nine o'clock, he could only begin to imagine what the child was going through.

“They just can't get it out,” Faye reported to Ward, who was back at the hospital too. “And he doesn't want to do a Caesarean on a child her age, unless he absolutely has to.” But what she was going through was worse than anything Faye had ever seen. She was shrieking and begging, half delirious with the pain. There was absolutely nothing they could do for her, and the nightmare went on for another two hours, while Anne begged them to kill her … the baby … anything … and then finally, the little head emerged, and as the rest of him came, slowly, tearing his mother wickedly and causing her as much grief as possible right till the end, they all understood why it had been such agony for Anne. The child was huge, just over ten pounds, and Faye couldn't think of worse punishment for her narrow frame. It was as though each man who had entered her had contributed to this child, and he had emerged full grown, a composite of all of them. Faye stood watching him, with tears in her eyes, tears for the pain he had caused Anne, and for the life which would never touch theirs again.

Hours before, Anne had agreed to give him up. She would have agreed to anything then. And the doctor slipped a gas mask on her face now. She never saw the child, never knew how big he was, never felt them sewing her up, and Faye silently left the delivery room, feeling sorry for her own child, for the pain she had borne, for the experience she would probably never forget, the child she would never know, unlike her own, who had caused her joy and pain over the years, but none of whom she regretted having. And now her first grandchild was to be given away, and she would never see him again. He was put in a polyethylene basket and rolled away to the nursery, to be cleaned up, and given to someone else.

Half an hour later, as she and Ward left the hospital, she saw the woman with the dark hair holding him, with tears streaming down her face and a look of love in her eyes. They had waited fourteen years for him, and they accepted him as he was, not knowing who his father was, or what damage the drugs had done. They accepted him with unconditional love, and Faye held tightly to Ward's hand as they left, and took a deep gulp of the night air. The doctor had said that Anne would sleep for several hours. She would be heavily sedated now, thank God, and that night, as she lay in her bed, Faye cried in Ward's arms.

“It was so horrible … she screamed so terribly …” She sobbed uncontrollably now. It had been almost unbearable watching her, but it was all over now. For all of them. Except the couple with Anne's child. For them it had just begun.

CHAPTER 25

They kept Anne in the hospital for a week, in an attempt to let the wounds heal, both physically and mentally. The doctor told Faye that they would heal with time. They kept her on Valium, and Demerol for the pain. She had been torn badly by the baby's head because he was so large. But more than that, they all recognized that she would have emotional scars from this. A psychiatrist came to talk to her every day, but she would say nothing at all to him, she just lay in bed and stared at the ceiling or the wall, and every day after an hour he went away. She said nothing to Faye, or Ward, or the twins, or even Lionel when he and John came, carefully, at a different time from Faye and Ward. Lionel brought her an enormous stuffed bear, and he hoped it
didn't
remind her of the lost child. The baby had left the hospital three days after it was born. His parents took him away in an elaborate blue and white outfit by Dior, and two blankets his new grandmother had made. They had sent an enormous arrangement of flowers to Anne, but she had them given to someone else. She wanted no reminder of them. She hated herself for what she had done, but in those first few hours after she awoke, she felt so terrible that she never wanted to see him again. It was only now that he was gone that she wished she could have seen his face, just once … so she would remember him … her eyes filled with tears at the thought. Everyone said she had done the right thing, but she hated them all, and herself most of all, and she told Lionel that now, as John fought back tears. If it had been his sister, he would have died for her, and he tried to cheer Anne up now. Even if the jokes were in bad taste, they were heartfelt. He felt terrible for her.

“We could always redo your room in black. I have some great black corduroy at the shop … we could drape black tulle over the windows, a few little black spiders here and there.” He squinted artistically, and for the first time in a week she laughed. But when it came time to go home, it was Ward and Faye who came for her. They had talked to Lionel earlier that day, or at least Faye had, and explained that they were taking Anne home now. He and John were free to rent her room to a friend, or do whatever they liked with it. The purpose had been served, and now Anne had to come home to resume her life with them.