Stepping (20 page)

The girls were laughing so hard that even Charlie and I had begun to laugh, helplessly, aware of our silliness. In the back of my mind a sudden thought occurred: What nickname do they have for
me
? What jokes do they tell about me?

“And Toilet had a little boy, and you know what his name was? PETER! Ha-ha-ha, and you know what we secretly called him? Pee! Hee-hee-hee-hee.… ”

“He was awful. He came only on weekends, but he got to have his own room in our house and Cathy and I had to share a room. And he always got more presents, Mommy said to make up for not being able to live with us.”

“I never liked Pee; he stunk as much as Toilet!” Cathy said.

“Yeah, I’m glad they’ll be gone when we get back,” Caroline said.

“Gone?” Charlie asked.

“Yep,
gone
,” Caroline said. “Really gone. Mom and Toilet are getting divorced this summer. Whoops, we weren’t supposed to tell you that.”

* * *

At the beginning of September that year Charlie had a conference in New York with his publisher. Since we were going to be up in Michigan anyway, we decided to drive to the East Coast. With what we saved on plane fares we spent a week in Kennebunkport with Caroline and Cathy. It was a good time, the best time the four of us had had together. We lay on the beach or swam all day and ate like crazy at night, then took long walks all over the little town. One night we walked along the beach in the moonlight and I was humming a song, and the girls were humming it, too, more softly, and then Charlie began a sort of rhythmical clopping counterpoint noise. No one else was near us on the beach, and somehow we all began doing a silly dance-march to the music there on the sand, the cold water racing down toward our toes.

“
La plume de ma tante
, BOOM BOOM!” I sang, and

“BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!” Cathy yelled, and

“La plume de ma tante est sur le bureau de mon oncle!”
Caroline sang, and

“Clop-clop-clop-clop-clop-clop-clop-clop!” Charlie went, and we all marched, knees silly and high, funny gestures, loud singing, along the beach. It was the moonlight, and the hot sun still burning on our skins and the cool sand under our bare feet and the gay white line of surf chasing after our toes, it was a magic end of a summer night: the four of us all happy together. We were all slaphappily in love with one another, and wrapped arms around each other for warmth as we walked back toward the hotel.

We drove the girls to Massachusetts on Saturday. We had spent the morning
swimming, then cleaned up and checked out of the hotel at noon, and driven three or four hours back into the continent. We arrived in Hadley drowsy from the ride, stunned suddenly by the end of the summer.

Charlie found Adelaide’s new house, the house she and her second husband had bought. It was a lovely old white frame colonial. It had a Realtor’s “For Sale” sign in front of it, stuck into the grass.

I said goodbye to the girls and gave them quick pecks on their cheeks, then got out of the car to help them get all their luggage. Charlie took the two biggest suitcases and walked with the girls up to the door. The three of them went inside.

I got back in the car and sat and waited. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the clothes come flying out of the front door of the house.

“WET!” Adelaide seemed to be screaming, and then she appeared on the front porch of her house. She had a suitcase in her hand and was apparently trying to tell me something about it.

I got out of the car, puzzled and slightly curious.

“Wet!” Adelaide screamed, and flung more clothes from the suitcase to the grass. “You stupid little girl, don’t you know any better than to put wet swimming suits in a suitcase? Now ALL THE CLOTHES ARE WET AND WRINKLED AND I HAVE ALL THIS IRONING TO DO!”

Those were the first direct words Adelaide had ever said to me. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe she was standing on the front porch of her house on a glorious sunny day with people bicycling and walking by, that she was standing there in shorts and halter top throwing clothes all over the grass. It seemed unreal.

Behind her I saw Charlie coming out the door, and I saw Cathy’s and Caroline’s anxious little faces.

“I’m sorry,” I said, since it was obvious that I had to say something. “I wrapped the suits in towels—”

“Yes, and what do towels do, you ninny? They
absorb
!” More clothes flew about.

Well, you’re right about that, I thought, it’s just that I never thought about it before. I haven’t thought about towels, absorption, wet suits; it never interested me before—“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m terribly sorry.”

“Yes, you send home two suitcases full of wet dirty clothes—”

“I always wash and iron their clothes just before they come home,” I said. “I’ve never sent home dirty clothes—” I couldn’t believe our conversation. I was afraid people were staring. I was embarrassed. I also wanted to break out laughing, but knew it would be entirely the wrong thing to do.

“Yes, but this time you spent the last week at a
beach
. You can’t wash and iron at a beach!”

“They wore only a few shorts and tops. Everything else is—”

“WET!
Everything else is wet!
Because of those damned swimming suits!”

“I’m sorry,” I said again. I didn’t know what else to say. I felt terribly bad about the whole thing. I felt I had ruined our whole summer by getting the clothes wet. And yet the comic aspect still made my mouth twitch.

Charlie came out of the house then and took Adelaide by the shoulders and pulled her into the house. Later he told me that he gave her twenty-five dollars to pay for a woman to wash and iron the clothes. Caroline and Cathy came outside and began to pick their clothes up off the grass. They didn’t look my way or at each other, and they didn’t talk. Then Charlie came out and kissed each girl and held them against him for a long moment. He came out to the car and we both waved and got in and drove off. We were on our way to Michigan.

That evening Charlie made a phone call from our motel room to the Ascrofts. He wanted to be assured that Adelaide and the girls were okay. The Ascrofts told him not to worry. They said that now that she had her girls back Adelaide would be fine. She had probably been in a bad mood that day—she had had such a terrible summer, the Ascrofts said. As if her second marriage breaking up hadn’t been enough, the month her second husband had moved out Adelaide had found out that she was pregnant by him, and she had had an abortion in August.

Five

In the fall of 1967, Charlie was a visiting professor at a university in a small town in Michigan. He was Distinguished Visiting Professor; I was wife-in-limbo. I couldn’t take courses or teach, I couldn’t get my life to work for me. And then, that fall, when I was almost twenty-five, a strange thing happened to me. A shocking, totally unwanted and unexpected thing happened to me: I began to want to have a baby, a child of my own.

It was as if I had been strolling in the woods, innocently enjoying the peaceful day, and suddenly a huge and gloriously beautiful tiger pounced upon me, and dug his claws into me, and I was engaged in a furious struggle for survival, suddenly forced to claw and bite back, to fight him off.

Of course I was bored that semester, and dejected, and unsure of my future, and that was part of my ammunition against myself. You don’t
really
want a child, I said to myself. You’re just bored and dejected and unsure of yourself. Boy, you’re a mess. You get away from a university routine for one semester and you go insane.

Part of it, too, I realized, was Alice, and Alice’s friends. They were all such lovely women, and some were quite talented and some had professions, and some just played lots of tennis and golf, but they all had children. And even though they all had children, none of them was boring. It was amazing.

Charlie was busy all the time with his teaching or book writing, and I valiantly and dutifully kept to my reading list, preparing for my PhD work, keeping notes, reading relevant criticism. But I couldn’t read or study all the time, and Alice lived within walking distance of the house we were renting, and I wanted to take advantage of the few months I would have to live near her. So I visited her almost daily. Her home seemed like a storybook to me. All those children, each one so beautiful, and all their animals, dogs, cats, birds, turtles, gerbils, even a snake, and all the children’s friends, and the babysitters who came sometimes just to chat—all that
life
was wonderful. Alice and her husband had a great huge Victorian house that twisted and rambled and had window seats and doors in the paneling of the front stairs and alcoves and lots of big wide halls. Everything was
covered with hockey sticks or ballet slippers or sweaters and mittens or dog leashes or ice skates or dolls, except for the living room, which was majestically reserved for adults. Every evening from four till five-thirty Alice had a sitter come play with all six children in their big bright messy basement rec room while she and her husband read the paper and drank martinis and talked in the beautiful neat living room. Charlie and I often joined them and sometimes stayed for dinner, which was held in the big oak-paneled dining room with all the family. It seemed to me that Alice looked like a queen as she sat at the head of the huge oak table smiling down at her children. The four oldest children, who were twelve, eleven, nine and seven, had to help set the table and clear off. The two youngest ones had to sit up straight and eat as politely as they could or they were banished to a lonely meal in the kitchen. We never stayed after dinner; then Alice turned from queen into general and directed the table clearing, dish doing, floor sweeping, homework preparing, baths, storytime, and bed. She did it all so beautifully and elegantly that it never occurred to me to think that it could be hard work.

Alice was beautiful, her house was beautiful, and her children especially were beautiful. The oldest boy played the guitar and sang; the oldest girl was doing very well in ballet; the second son took piano and played as well as an adult and intended to go to conservatory; the second daughter could draw and paint. The two youngest children were simply very clever and very cute.

The youngest child, a girl named Vanessa, but called Nessie, was my favorite. She liked me because I always brought treats. She was just three, with great blue eyes and curly black hair. She wore her older sibling’s cast-off clothes and looked like a charming Raggedy Ann doll. One stormy winter day I sat snuggled in a window seat off the kitchen, reading Nessie a story. She was curled up against me with her old soft blanket clutched in her hand; she was almost falling asleep. The doorbell rang and Alice went to answer it, and brought back into the kitchen a young woman who had just moved into a house across the street. Alice had asked her over for tea.

“This is a friend of mine, Zelda Campbell,” Alice said, introducing us, “and that is Nessie.”

“She’s
beautiful
,” the new neighbor said, looking at me, talking to me. “And she looks just like you.”

“Why, she does, doesn’t she!” Alice laughed. “Zelda, she
could
be yours. You’ve got the same curly black hair! But actually,” she said, turning to the new woman, “Nessie’s mine. My youngest.”

The women laughed, and we went on talking and Nessie fell asleep. Alice came over and lifted Nessie out of my arms to take her up to nap in her bed. I wanted to cry out at the loss of the sweet warm weight of the little girl who looked like me. I thought: someone thinks I could have a child. I could have a child. I could have a little girl of my own. I
want
a little girl of my own! I was so agitated and excited and upset that I could scarcely keep my wits about me the rest of the afternoon. When I returned to our rented house, it seemed empty and lonely and dull.

The rest of the semester seemed like a war to me, and I was both sides and the battleground. I didn’t tell Charlie about my feelings, I told no one. I was ashamed of wanting to have a child. It seemed an enormous weakness on my part, as if I were admitting that I wasn’t enough for myself. I thought that every other woman in the world simply got pregnant by accident, that I was the only woman in the world wrestling with such a choice. I thought I was losing my mind, that my wanting to have a child was the same as admitting to be a failure as a professional person. I began to hate myself for wanting to have a child.

Christmas was the hardest time. We were invited to spend Christmas Eve with Alice and her family. The great Victorian house had been built for Christmastime, and the six children had decorated it in every corner. The Christmas tree was at least eleven feet high and almost hidden behind the sparkling lights and handmade decorations. We all sat around eating pastries and cookies and drinking laced eggnog, and the older children played Christmas carols on the guitar or piano, and then they all sang carols together in front of the fire—for Christmas Eve they were allowed in the living room. They opened the presents Charlie and I had given them, and said thank you, then were bustled off to bed.

“They’ll be up at six to see what Santa brought,” Alice grinned.

Charlie helped Alice’s husband put a little bicycle together while Alice and I kept watch to be sure no children were sneaking back downstairs.

That night Charlie and I walked home in the snow, and I began to cry, and
couldn’t stop, and couldn’t tell him why.

I felt as sad and relieved to leave Michigan at the end of the semester as a weight watcher leaving a pastry shop. Each day I was there I felt tempted toward something that I thought was intrinsically wrong and bad for me. I was glad to start my PhD work back in Kansas City, and I was grateful that it was difficult and time-consuming. I told myself that I was going to be an interesting career woman, not a boring mother. I was afraid of becoming like Adelaide: dependent on children, feeling significant to the world because of them, void and helpless when they were gone. I did not want to be that way. I told myself repeatedly that I was crazy to think of it—of having a child of my own. But sometimes on spring evenings as I worked late in the library digging up my little clusters of obscure and useless facts, I wondered what I was doing with all that dusty dead stuff when what I wanted was life.