Gould (13 page)

Passions of Anna
, I think; one of the more intense Bergmans around at the time     how's she doing?” and she said “Anna?” and he said “You know, or maybe you've lost contact,” and she said “She's fine, married, to an extremely nice fellow, living in Worcester, Mass., but she gets in every now and then. They have a house, with a patio with a tree growing right through it, and are trying to have a child  .   .  wait a second, I shouldn't be telling you this; I probably shouldn't even be talking to you,” and he said “Why?” and she said “You're saying you don't know?” and he said “Some incident she might have told you?” and she said “What else, that isn't enough?” and he said “You realize—I'm sure she does—I was mostly kidding at the time. It only went on for less than a day—overnight, granted, perhaps making it seem worse in the retelling of it than it was, and right after sunrise I was out and never saw her again,” and she said “She didn't think it funny. She called it horrible and that she feared for her life during part of it and for more than a week after she was still fearful you'd come back and that she thought of calling the police,” and a man and woman in front of her turned around and looked at them and then quickly turned forward again, and he said lower “And I told her ‘Go on, call them.' I mean, admittedly I was upset if not in a certain way out of control for a while, but never so out of it where I was going to flip over the edge, because of what I didn't want to lose—
you know
. But I knew she wouldn't call them because she knew I knew  .   .  I mean I knew she knew she had nothing on me. It was a spat, a very troubling argument, a major point I was trying to make about what there was at stake, and I was serious about the objective of it—what I wanted but not what I'd do to get it—because she did tell you the reason I acted up like that, right?” and she said “Yes, naturally, would I be sitting here nodding all this time if she hadn't?” and he said “Well, I wanted it so badly, so of course I wouldn't have hurt her for anything; to do that would be to hurt what I wanted more than anything in the world then, and I kept telling her that and she knew it. She also had to know that in telling you different she was only trying to turn it into a larger event in her life than it was. Or maybe, in addition to everything else she was also distraught she was going to have it  .     an operation,” and motioned with his head to the couple in front of her, “so that did it, or could have, for what woman, even if having the, you know, was the last thing she wanted at the time—a baby—wouldn't also have tremendous regrets over the—” and slit his finger through the air, “am I right?” and she pointed to where he'd slit and said “That finger across; I didn't get it,” and he said “The end, the procedure, the termination,” and she said “Ah, I see. But no matter what, you'd never convince Maria you weren't serious then in your threats. But that was between you two and is long in the past and I'm sorry I brought it up in the short time we have to talk—my stop's coming soon,” and he said “Oh, too bad. So how have things been with you?” and she said “Fine, fine, but you know what life's like: the good often looks better than it is and the bad often looks worse, but on the whole everything evens out and is nice. Married too    .  happy; a good unharried life, exactly the way I like it. We've decided not to have children—made that decision; people always ask so I'm telling you this right out. It's simply not anything we want,” and he said “How would you know so long beforehand?” and she said “We wouldn't be good parents; we're both too involved in what we do and see this as a lifetime practice, and we thought this individually long before we met. But don't start on me too,” and he said “Sure, I wasn't saying, and I'm glad everything seems to be going so well for you. What kind of work you do?” and she said “Same as then, computers, which I like, my husband too     and you, how are you getting along?” and he said “Work, health, spirits, all fine, and I've been seeing a woman the last year and a half and we'll probably get married end of the year or early next—we don't foresee anything that'll stop us—and right after that have children     I've got to before people think I'm their grandpa,” and she said “Why worry about that?” and he said “I really don't. And, well you wouldn't know but I don't live here, I live in Baltimore and only come up weekends to see her, till she eventually moves down with me,” and she said “So she's still working here; that makes sense,” and pushed the stop tape and he said “Yours, huh?—I forgot where you lived, or you probably moved. Anyway, if you see Maria—I hope she won't mind this—but please give her my regards and congratulations on her marriage and, between you and me, I hope she has a child if she wants one that much,” and she said “They both do but they've taken all the tests and it seems each of them has something wrong for it, so it doesn't look good,” and he said “I hope the a.b. had nothing—” and she said “No, that's been ruled out, it must be something since then, though I did say it was both of them,” and she got off and when he got to his woman friend's apartment he told her about whom he met on the bus and where he knew her from and for the first time about how he tried to force Maria to have the baby.

The last was when his wife was still walking with a cane, or a cane mostly but often with a walker and sometimes she needed a wheelchair to get around. They had two children and nearly three years after the second was born—that was the spacing they used between the first two and she became pregnant in a week—he said “What would you say to our trying to start having a third and what I promise will be our last child?” and she said she knows how much he wants another one—that he always wanted three—but she doesn't see how she could have one in her condition, which he knows that unless the present drug works or some other new drug suddenly turns up, is only going to get worse. “I could get pregnant—I don't believe that's stopped in me; having my periods regularly certainly hasn't. And if I was very careful—staying in bed through a lot of the pregnancy and taking extra good care of myself—not falling, staying off stairs—I could probably deliver it without a hitch. But what would I do with the child once it was born? I'd nurse it, if the doctors said I could after all the toxic medicines I've taken, but after that     though they'd take me off those medicines if I became pregnant. Would probably have taken me off them months before we started to try to have the baby, to avoid complications in the pregnancy, and because of that, who knows?—my condition could deteriorate even faster than it's been doing. But after that it'd be too difficult taking care of the baby the way I'd want to and you already have your hands full with the girls and your job and the house,” and he said “I wouldn't mind doing more. I'd love to—really, my kids are everything to me. You're everything too and I'd devote all my free time to the three of them and you. I'd make more free time for myself to do it—I know how to: just cut out just about everything else but them and you, which wouldn't be a big loss, though also making sure the toilets and kitchen floor and such are cleaned every so often. And I bet getting pregnant and then lactating, or they go together—I forget, what do you do, start with the milk at conception or three or so months into the pregnancy or even just when you give birth or right after? But the doctors have said that could happen with your illness, that pregnancy often arrests and even corrects some of it, and we've seen what being pregnant does to women already healthy—you with Fanny and even a little bit with Josephine,” and she said “I don't remember that,” and he said “It's true, take my word, it made you healthier and more energetic and I swear, even more erotic, and everyone kept saying you looked much better, more beautiful and so on,” and she said “The better-looks part happens with most pregnant women, maybe to compensate for the swollen body but which I'm sure comes from the glow of knowing you're carrying and has little to do with physical health other than you're supposed to be less disposed to colds,” and he said “The point is that it'd work and you'd be healthier and I'd see to it that it did,” and she said “It also wouldn't be fair to the girls. I'm barely half a mother to them now and with an infant around I'd be a quarter of a half the first year or longer,” and he said “So? Say a year, say two, but they can make that sacrifice also to have another sister or a brother,” and she said “You forget that to most children an infant sibling is an intruder, the worst sort of nuisance-scourge—stealing your parents and making you double up in your room with your sister or even worse in your sister's room because for a while this ugly stinky baby's got to have her own space and all the other folks mewling and drooling over it,” and he said “Not our kids; they'd love it, I know them, and they'd be helpful, learning how to change the diapers and burp it and so on—you'll see,” and she said “Besides, much as I'd love to give you another child, two's more than enough for us at our age and perhaps the planet's and when you consider college and who knows what else for them—shoes, piano lessons, a word processor each—” and he said “Nah, never them with computers,” and she said “Hey, turn around and face the future—anyway, practically all we can afford.” Some days when they wanted to make love she said “I'll put my diaphragm in,” and a couple of times he said something like “If you think you're so close to having your period where you're not even sure you need protection, don't bother: you're usually more precautionary than you have to be,” and once when he walked into their bathroom and found her drying herself after a shower he said “So, what do you say? No diaphragm or anything—just stand where you're standing and grab the grab bars and I'll come into you from behind. I'm that ready to go and the kids will be home soon with their school bus tooting so we have to do it fast,” and she said “I still have it in from last night. You really want to get me pregnant, but I've told you: I can't chance it; an abortion could cripple me faster than the normal speed of the disease.” About a year later putting in the diaphragm became so difficult for her that she instructed him how to do it and then she'd check to see if it was in right. “You don't trust me, eh?” he said once and she said “Matter of fact, I don't. Not only because you haven't had years of practice at it and that you admit to being clumsy with your hands, but when we start doing this you're always too much in a hurry and you want another child so much that you might leave it somewhat askew so a little of you leaks in.” Sometimes he couldn't get the diaphragm in right no matter how many times he tried and he'd pull his hand away and she'd say “You got it?” and he'd say “It feels okay,” and she'd feel it and say it wasn't and that he should just give up and get inside her and then finish his sex on her stomach or someplace, “but please pull out in plenty of time and keep your cock away from my cunt when you come,” and he said “Ah, now that's a familiar line from my youth or sometime after, or maybe I only heard it once when I probably rejected using a scumbag, as we called it then, and the only other way was on the girl's stomach or where she'd jerk me off till I did it in the air,” and she said “With my hands stiff and uncoordinated the way they are I doubt I could even do that to you now,” and he said “I wouldn't choose it over the stomach anyhow, but then, you know, when I could do it two to three times a night, who cared if I wasted one?” One night he didn't pull out in plenty of time but let a little of it dribble inside her—he could control it like that—and after when he thought enough had dribbled in for her to conceive but not so much where she'd feel or later notice the semen, he pulled out and made all the noises of orgasm on top of her, though he didn't feel anything when he came, and she got pregnant, he was sure she did by the swell of her belly a month or so later, so it was because of that one time when he dribbled or maybe some other time around then when he'd unintentionally inserted the diaphragm in wrong and when she checked it had felt all right to her, though with her hands shaking and there being less and less feeling in them, did she even know for sure what she felt with them anymore? But the belly. One night, about a month after he'd dribbled into her—on that particular night a month ago he'd wanted to get her pregnant; other times when they made love the thought didn't occur to him or if it did it was that he didn't want her getting pregnant because of the harm she said it could do her or because what the medicine she was taking would do to the fetus and once they found out then what they'd have to do to the fetus or that they already had two kids, more than enough, and if they had another even nine months from now he'd be close to his mid-fifties when it was born and when it was ten he'd be in his mid-sixties and when it was thirty and getting married, let's say, or having its first child he'd be an old man, possibly doddering or senile and very sick  .  but he lost it. Go back. Her belly. He was watching her, she was undressing, he liked to watch her undress, especially when she had her back to him—well, he liked to watch her stepping out of or kicking off her underpants from the front too, or trying to kick them off, getting them caught on her toes and then having to sit down to take them off—but best when she had her back to him, sitting on the bed or standing up, but was a little turned so when she took off her shirt or unhooked her bra and pulled it from around her arms a little of her breast showed.

Anyway, it was about a month after he dribbled into her, and while she was undressing he noticed her belly—she was standing sideways—had a quarter-moon-like swelling to it like the first two times she was pregnant a month or so. She showed early, though she always denied she did, and with one of their kids—Josephine—he said “But look at your belly, it's a bit bigger and has that particular pregnant swell, I should begin calling it if it turns out I'm right again, like the last time with Fanny and when I pointed it out then you said, though we'd been trying to conceive and probably did the first time we tried, ‘It's not that, it must be something else. Maybe I need to lose a few pounds or, God help us'—I remember that expression especially, for any use of the word God like that is unusual for you—‘it's just gas. If it is,' you said, ‘we'll find out soon enough,' and then you laughed, hand over your mouth, that kind of laugh, something you also rarely do, since you didn't mean it as a joke. You meant  .   .” But off the point again. This night when she was undressing and he was watching, preparing to make love to her—that's what was on his mind and he thought hers too by the way she smiled at him but not saying anything when she was unbuttoning her shirt and saw him watching and also the slow way she was undressing and because she knew he usually got aroused when he watched her undress unless they'd made love in the last few hours—he saw a little swelling  .     but he said that. Recognized it from the previous two times, but that too. But didn't mention it, feeling that if she was pregnant and didn't know  .     but he's gone over that too: later she found out the better, etcetera. Also, the longer she was pregnant maybe more attached she'd get to the baby, so less chance she'd want to abort. And this was one of those times he thought she'd stay the same or get healthier rather than sicker and where the medicines she was taking wouldn't affect the baby much and that if they had to abort because of what they later found out in the various tests she'd take, then at least they'd tried to have another baby, though he didn't know why he constantly switched his opinion on all this: maybe because he had no basis for either, where one way of thinking about it was as good as the other, meaning the chance of something good or bad happening to her or the baby was about as good as nothing happening. A few nights later she said her period's late this month, probably due to the new drug she's taking and he said “But you started it a couple of months ago,” and she said “It's possible it's only now beginning to have an effect on my period as it's already had on other things: hair falling out, little more tiredness during the day, discoloring of my stools, the occasional feeling I need to vomit,” and he let it go at that. Her stomach did seem a little rounder than it had a few nights before but he was probably only imagining it. He still hoped she was pregnant but now kind of doubted she was and that it was the new medicine changing things for her as she said. Several mornings later she pointed to her stomach when she was getting up and he was doing exercises in their room and said “I'm not getting fat, so don't worry, as I know how anxious you can get about that. Fat women—oh my dear; even unpleasantly plump ones—quite the turnoff, right? While I'd think that in some ways, all that meat, more to put your arms around and maybe another layer to get into and so much juicier to the squeeze, might turn a fellow on. But it's the constipation now, which I was also told to expect from this new drug,” and he said “Have you started your period?” and then thought Damn, shouldn't have mentioned it, for all the obvious reasons, but she said “No, though I thought I felt it coming on two days ago. It's maybe a day or two away, but not even spots yet. Look, when you're at the drugstore next time or Giant—their generic brand is as good, I hear     in fact, soon as you can, if you don't mind, could you buy me something to relieve it?” and she said it came in a tall container and gave the name. “But generic or otherwise, the powder with no sugar in it,” and he asked how to spell psyllium and when she spelled it he said “I better get this one on a piece of paper.” He looked at her exposed belly whenever he could the next week and felt it when they were making love or lying in the dark and going to sleep and it seemed to be getting a little larger and harder, and because the Tampax box wasn't opened on the floor by the toilet bowl and she wasn't spreading a towel under her when they made love it meant she hadn't started her period. “I bet she knows,” he thought, “and maybe even wants the baby but hasn't decided on that yet, so is holding off telling me.” Then she was going to the doctor's to learn how to catheterize herself, something she had to begin doing to empty her bladder a couple of times a day to prevent the accidents she's been having. He drove her there, went downstairs for coffee and a sandwich after he left her in the examining room, and when he came back she was sitting in the waiting room. “Something terrible's happened,” and he said “What, the catheterizing?” and she said “We didn't even get to finish it, so I'll have to come back for that another day. But the nurse teaching me was poking and sticking this self-catheter tube there when suddenly blood came—” and he said “Blood, Jesus, you're all right now though, aren't you? I mean, what do we have to do, the hospital?” and she said “No, we can go home, I'm fine, it's over. I thought it was my period starting, which I was thankful for, of course, and went to the bathroom—” and he said “It was a kid—you lost a baby,” and she said “I'm sure that was it. A very tiny fetus, infinitely tiny, almost nothing, a nothing blob, it was so tiny  .   I never had anything come out of me like that where I saw it  .   but how'd you know?” and he said “What about the bleeding? How bad was it? You call the nurse?” and she said “It went on a little while, but they helped me, even gave me a new pair of underpants—paper, but it feels funny, I don't like it, I want to get home and into a real pair—and a bag for the old ones,” and she held it up, “.     but how'd you know it was that? It could have been anything,” and he said “I just assumed by your expression when I came in; so worried, pained, almost afraid to tell me—that more than anything gave it away. Not ‘afraid' so much, but you know. But you sure that was it, what came out?” and she said “I didn't know it right at the time. I was so dumb. I'd had an abortion before—long ago, but the third or fourth month, and I was put out, so I never saw it and never wanted to. Here I thought it was a little menstrual blood at first. But also, because of the stomach cramps and my constipation, it was me all filled up with gas and crap and maybe the crap was finally coming out of me down there, but of course I wasn't thinking. All this before I looked, because I heard it plopping into the water, so for sure thought it was crap,” and he said “That stupid fucking nurse. So what did she do, poke you up your hole without looking or even the wrong hole intentionally because she wanted you to lose the baby?” and she said “Of course not. She didn't know; I didn't; nobody did. She was putting it in the right place, showing me; maybe she wasn't the greatest expert at it, because it hurt when she did it, but in the urethra, when the blood came,” and he said “And she didn't see what hole it was coming out of?” and she said “It was just a trickle, and it was all so fast her getting me into the bathroom that she didn't have time to look,” and he said “It was a goddamn botched-up job, a stupid screwup     which nurse was it? Did you tell the doctor? Did you even see him after?” and she said “Shh, please, and it wasn't her fault. And the doctor saw me and said, from everything I told him, that it must have been a very early fetus and there was no major hemorrhaging and everything came out and I was in no danger. It was just that this thing, this fetus, didn't have it in it to live—that's my opinion; the doctor couldn't say for sure what made it abort—” and he said “He doesn't want to take responsibility     the insurance and so on,” and she said “That's not it. But he agreed it could have been related to my illness and the way I am, so weak at times, and all the drugs I've been taking, and that he never specifically warned me with this new one because I'd told him I had no intention of getting pregnant again and that if I had changed my mind about it he knew I would have informed him,” and he said “Warned you about what?” and she said “You're really upset about this,” and he said “I am, what do you think; look what they did to you. But warned you about what?” and she said “Of getting—what I said; that women shouldn't be     that it shouldn't, this new drug, be taken by women contemplating getting pregnant or by men with my disease who are married to women who are planning to get pregnant, though the drug company has no extensive studies on that yet, the drug's so new; but in the little data they do have, there wasn't a single miscarry. They were just being extra careful by making that warning,” and he said “Extra careful? If they were extra careful, or the doctor and nurse were—” and she said “He did the right thing based on the information about the drug and what I'd told him. But that—all those things working against me—coupled with the fact that the fetus wasn't healthy itself, which can happen in women much younger than I and stronger and in perfect shape and not taking any drugs or anything—” and he said “What did it look like?” and she said “Can't we continue this in the car, or even later? I've had it with it for now,” and he said “Just, while you can still remember it, tell me what it looked like, please,” and she said “I told you: nothing; a glob, dark, red, bloody. I flushed it down fast, almost before I knew what I was doing, it was so sickening-looking. But I almost think  .   but this has to be impossible. I'm sure they don't even start growing those things yet. But from some quick look, as it was turning around in the bowl, that I saw limbs—something, two of them sticking out on either side,” and he said “Oh sheez, that's awful. Fuck it, I knew you were pregnant; I saw it in your belly. The way it was shaped, which I knew from the two other times,” and she said “Why didn't you say anything?” and he said “I had my doubts, didn't want to alarm you, raise my hopes—you know—and I thought you knew yourself and all those signs much better than I. But I'm really sorry now. I could have stopped you from going in for that catheter. I would have asked you to have the baby if it had stayed,” and she said “How could I have? I can't even pee right or stand up straight anymore,” and he said “We could have done it; it would have worked out; women have had them under worse conditions: paralyzed; in iron lungs. Three's what I always wanted; three's the best. Maybe we can still have another. You can go off this drug; for a while you don't have to take anything. I'd take care of you from day one to the end. We'd get someone to help, you'd stay in bed—” and she said “No, this one was an accident; we just have to be more careful from now on.”