Full Circle (2 page)

“Oh, God, Andy … I can't … how will I live without you … ?” He felt as though he had a hole in his guts the size of a fist when he looked into her eyes and saw what he had done to her. But he had no choice … no choice … he was a man … he had to fight … his country was at war … and the worst of it was that when he didn't feel sick over what he'd done to her, he felt a strange, unfamiliar thrill of excitement about going to war, as though this was an opportunity he might never have again, something he had to do almost like a mystic rite, in order to become a man. And he felt guilty about that too. And by late Saturday night, it had gotten to him too. He was so torn between Jean's clinging little hands and what he knew he had to do that he wished it was already over with and he was on the train, heading west, but he would be soon enough. He had to report to Grand Central Station at five A.M. And when he finally got up in the tiny bedroom to get dressed, he turned and looked at her, she was quieter now, her tears were spent, her eyes swollen and red, but she looked a little bit more resigned than she had before. For Jean, in some terrible, desperate, frightening way, it was like losing her sister, or her parents, again. Andy was all she had left. And she would rather have died herself than lose him. And suddenly he was leaving her too.

“You'll be all right, won't you, babe?” He sat on the edge of the bed, looking at her, desperate for some reassurance from her now, and she smiled sadly and reached a hand out for his.

“I'll have to be, I guess, won't I?” And then she smiled again, almost mysteriously. “You know what I wish?” They both knew that, that he weren't going to war. She read his thoughts, and kissed his fingertips. “Aside from that … I hope you got me pregnant this week.…”In the emotions of the past few days, they had thrown caution to the winds. He had been aware of it, but there had been so much else going on. He had just hoped that it wasn't her dangerous time. But he wondered now, as he looked at her. They had been so careful about that for the past year, they had agreed from the first that they didn't want babies for a while, at least not for the first few years until they both got better jobs, or maybe Andy went back to college for another two years. They were in no hurry, they were both young, but now … in the past week, their whole life had turned upside down.

“I kind of wondered what was happening this week.… Do you think you could have … ?” He looked worried. That hadn't been what he wanted at all. He didn't want her to be pregnant alone, with him God knows where, at war.

She shrugged. “I might.…” And then she smiled again and sat up. “I'll let you know.”

“Great. That's all we need.” He looked suddenly upset, and then glanced nervously at the bedside clock. It was ten after four. He had to go.

“Maybe it is.” And then suddenly, as though she had to tell him before he left, “I meant what I said just now, Andy. I'd like that a lot.”

“Now?” He looked shocked and she nodded her head, her voice a whisper in the tiny room.

“Yes.”

T
he elevated train roared past the windows of Jean Roberts' apartment, providing the only breeze she had felt in days as she sat motionless in front of the open windows. It felt as though the entire building had turned into an inferno, as the blazing August heat rose off the sidewalks, and seemed to bake right into the walls of the brownstone building. And sometimes at night, she had to leave her bed, and sit on the stoop, just to get some air as the train hurtled by. Or she would sit in her bathroom, wrapped in a wet sheet. There seemed to be no way to cool down, and the baby made it worse. She felt as though her whole body were about to explode, and the hotter it got, the more the baby would kick her, as if it knew, as if it were stifling too. Jean smiled to herself at the thought. She could hardly wait to see the baby now … there were only four weeks left … four weeks until she held their baby … she hoped that it would look just like Andy. He was in the Pacific now, doing just what he had wanted to do, “fighting the Japs,” as he said in his letters, although somehow the words always pained her. One of the girls in the law firm she had worked in was Japanese and she had been so nice to Jean when she found out she was pregnant. She even covered for her when Jean was almost too sick to move in the beginning. She would drag herself in to work, and stare into her typewriter, praying that she wouldn't throw up before she reached the bathroom. They had kept her for six months, which was decent of them, it was longer than most firms would have kept her, she knew, but they felt it was the patriotic thing to do, because of Andy, as she told him in one of her letters. She wrote to him almost every day, although she rarely heard from him more than once a month. Most of the time, he was too tired to write, and the letters took forever to reach her. It was a long way from selling Buicks in New York, as he said in one letter, making her laugh about the bad food, and his buddies. Somehow he always seemed to make her laugh with his letters. He made everything sound better than it was, and she was never as frightened after she heard from him. She had been terrified at first, particularly when she felt so ill. She had gone through agonies of conflict after she first found out she was pregnant. It had seemed like such a good idea at first, during those last few days before he left, but when she found out, she had panicked. It meant she had to give up her job, she'd be alone, and how would she support herself, and the baby? She had been desperately afraid of his reaction too, only when he finally wrote to her, he sounded so thrilled that it all seemed fine to her again, and by then, she was almost five months pregnant, and she wasn't as nervous.

And in the last few months she'd had plenty of time to turn their bedroom into a nursery for the baby. She had sewn everything herself in white eyelet with yellow ribbons, sewing and knitting, and making little hats and booties and sweaters. She had even painted pretty little murals on the baby's walls and clouds on the ceiling, although one of her neighbors had given her hell when he found out that she was doing the painting herself and standing on the ladder. But she had nothing else to do now that she wasn't working. She had saved every penny she could, and she wouldn't even go to a movie now, for fear of eating into those savings, and she was receiving part of Andy's paycheck from the army. She was going to need everything she had for the baby, and she was going to stay home for the first few months if she could, and after that she'd have to find a sitter and go back to work. She was hoping that elderly Mrs. Weissman on the fourth floor would baby-sit for her. She was a warm, grandmotherly woman who had lived in the building for years, and had been excited to hear about Jean's baby. She checked on her every day, and sometimes she would even come down late at night, unable to sleep herself in the heat, and tap on Jean's door, if she saw a light beneath it.

But tonight, Jean didn't turn on the lights. She just sat in the dark, feeling breathless and stifled in the killing heat, listening to train after train come by until they stopped and then started again just before the dawn. Jean even watched the sun come up. She wondered if she would ever be able to breathe normally again, or lie down without feeling as though she were being smothered. There were days when it was really very trying and the heat and the train didn't help. It was almost eight o'clock in the morning when she heard the knock on her door, and assumed it was Mrs. Weissman. She put her pink bathrobe on, and with a tired sigh padded toward the front door in bare feet. Thank God she only had four weeks to go. She was beginning to think she couldn't take it for much longer.

“Hi.…” She pulled the door open with a tired smile, expecting to see her friend, and blushed to find herself looking into the face of a stranger, a stranger in a brown uniform with a cap and mustard colored braid, holding a yellow envelope toward her. She looked at him, uncomprehending, not wanting to understand because she knew only too well what that meant, and the man seemed to be leering at her. It was as though his face was distorted as she reeled from the shock and the heat, clutching the envelope and tearing it open without saying a word to him. And it was there, just as she had feared, and she looked at the messenger of death again, focusing on the words on his uniform as her mouth formed a scream, and she sank to his feet in a quiet heap on the floor, as he gaped at her in silent horror, and then suddenly called out for help. He was sixteen years old and he had never been that close to a pregnant woman before. Two doors opened across the hall, and a moment later, there was the sound of running feet on the stairs above, and Mrs. Weissman was putting damp cloths on Jean's head, as the boy backed slowly away and then hurried down the stairs. All he wanted to do was get out of the stifling little building. Jean was moaning by then, and Mrs. Weissman and two other ladies were leading her to the couch where she slept now. It was the same couch where the baby had been conceived, where she had lain and made love with Andy … Andy … Andy.… “We regret to inform you … your husband died in the service of his country … killed in action at Guadalcanal … in action … in action…” her head was reeling and she couldn't see the faces.

“Jean … ? Jean.…” They kept calling her name, and there was something cold on her face, as they looked at her and at each other. Helen Weissman had read the telegram, and had quickly shown it to the others. “Jean.…” She came around slowly, barely able to breathe, and they helped her to sit and forced her to drink a little water. She looked blankly at Mrs. Weiss-man, and then suddenly she remembered, and the sobs strangled her more than the heat, and she couldn't catch her breath anymore, all she could do was cry and cling to the old woman who held her … he was dead … just like the others … like Mommy and Daddy and Ruthie … gone … he was gone … she would never see him again … she whimpered almost like a small child, feeling a weight in her heart that she had never felt before, even for the others. “It's all right, dear, it's all right.…” But they all knew that it wasn't, and never would be again, not for poor Andy.

The others went back to their apartments a little while later, but Helen Weissman stayed. She didn't like the glazed look in the girl's eyes, the way she sat and stared and then suddenly began to sob, or the terrible endless crying she heard that night when she finally left Jean for a little while, and then returned to open the unlocked door and check on her again as she had all day. She had even called Jean's doctor before he left his office, and he had told Mrs. Weissman to tell Jean how sorry he was to hear the news, and warned her that Jean could go into labor from the shock, which was exactly what she was afraid of, and it was exactly what she suspected when she saw Jean press her fists into her back several times later that evening, and walk restlessly around the tiny apartment, as though it had grown too small for her in the past few hours. Her entire world had shattered around her, and there was nowhere left to go. There wasn't even a body to send home … just the memory of a tall, handsome blond boy … and the baby in her belly.

“Are you all right?” Helen Weissman's accent made Jean smile. She had been in the country for forty years, but she still spoke with a heavy German accent. She was a wise, warm woman, and she was fond of Jean. She had lost her own husband thirty years before, and she had never remarried. She had three children in New York, who visited her from time to time, mostly to drop their respective children off so she could baby-sit, and a son who had a good job in Chicago. “You have pains?” Her eyes searched Jean's, and Jean started to shake her head. Her whole body ached after the day of crying, and yet inside she felt numb. She didn't know what she felt, just achy and hot and restless. She arched her back as though to stretch it.

“I'm all right. Why don't you get some sleep, Mrs. Weissman?” Her voice was hoarse after the long day of crying. She glanced at the kitchen clock and registered the fact that it had been fifteen hours since she had gotten the telegram telling her about Andy … fifteen hours, it felt like fifteen years … a thousand years … she walked around the room again as Helen Weissman watched her.

“You want to go for a walk outside?” The train whizzed past nearby and Jean shook her head. It was too hot to go for a walk, even at eleven o'clock at night. And suddenly Jean was even hotter than she'd been all day.

“I think I'll have something cold to drink.” She fixed herself a glass of the lemonade she kept in a pitcher in the icebox, and it tasted good going down, but it came back up almost as quickly. She rushed to the bathroom, where she threw up and retched repeatedly, and then emerged wanly a little while later.

“You should lie down.” Meekly, she agreed. She was more uncomfortable when she did. It was easier to sit up than lie down, so she tried the comfortable old green chair again, but after a few minutes she found that she couldn't do that either. She had gnawing pains in her lower back and an unsettled feeling in her stomach, and Helen Weissman left her alone again at midnight, but only after insisting that Jean come and get her during the night if she had a problem. But Jean was sure she wouldn't have to. She turned off the lights, and sat alone in the silent apartment, thinking of her husband … Andy … of the big green eyes and straight blond hair … track star … football hero … her first and only love … the boy she had fallen head over heels in love with the first time she saw him, and as she thought of him, she felt a shaft of pain slice through her from her belly to her back, and then again, and again, and yet again, so that she couldn't catch her breath at all now. She stood up unsteadily, nausea overwhelming her, but determined to get to the bathroom, where she clung miserably to the toilet for almost an hour, the pains pounding her body, the retching tearing at her soul, until weakly at last, barely conscious, she began calling for Andy. It was there that Helen Weissman found her at one thirty in the morning. She had decided to check on her once more before going to bed. It was too hot for anyone to sleep that night, so she was awake unusually late. And she thanked God that she was, when she found her. She went back to her own apartment just long enough to call Jean's doctor and the police, who promised to send an ambulance at once. She climbed into a cotton housedress, grabbed her purse, kept the same sandals on her feet, and hurried back to Jean, to drape a bathrobe around her shoulders, and ten minutes later, they heard the sirens. Helen did, but Jean seemed to hear nothing at all as she retched and cried, and Helen Weissman tried to soothe her. She was writhing with pain and calling Andy's name by the time they reached New York Hospital, and the baby didn't take long to come after that. The nurses whisked Jean away on a gurney, and they didn't have time to give her anything at all, before the wiry five-pound four-ounce little girl emerged with jet black hair, and tightly clenched fists, wailing loudly. Helen Weiss-man saw them both barely an hour later. Jean mercifully drugged at last, the baby dozing comfortably.