The Marriage Bed (24 page)

“I’ll think about it,” I muttered.

“What you mean is, go to hell. Sorry. I know it’s none of my –”

“Max, it isn’t that. Only right now I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. I just have no idea. I feel as if there’s only today. I mean, as if there might not be any tomorrow.”

“Hey, that’s no way to talk, at your age.” His voice was sharp, and when I glanced at him I found his whole face dark with a frown that made him look frightened. He added crossly, “Women don’t die in childbirth any more. I read an article.”

“Of course not. Don’t be silly.”

But I said this without much real conviction. Giving birth, as I’d had two chances to discover, could bring you unpleasantly close to that hooded character with the scythe. My ward-mate after Martha was born lost her nine-pound boy on the second day – a plug of mucus in the airway – crazy bad luck, and fatal. They told her behind drawn curtains, and in nightmares I could still hear that terrible, animal howl of hers. As for me, I started to hemorrhage after Hugh … not, probably, very dangerously, but zip went those curtains, they cranked my bed up fast, they gave injections, and urgent hands massaged my abdomen. A little later I heard the gynecologist tell a young intern, “They can empty in half an hour; you have to watch ’em like a hawk.” Out of kindness I spared Max these reminiscences, but there were times – and this was one of them – when I thought I’d been not brave but dotty to choose these risks instead of the nice clean curettage everybody so warmly recommended.

“After all,” I said, trying to dismiss the subject lightly, “dying can’t be worse than living, so why not be a good sport about it.”

“No, it’s not that I mind it, really, for myself,” Max said slowly. And I remembered that he was sixty. It could be that in spite of my
adventures in maternity, he’d given death more thought than I had. I tried to imagine the world without Max in it and gave a sudden shiver.

“What’s the point in whining about it,” he went on. “After all, we were given life for free in the first place; it’s not decent to complain. But what I’d like is the chance to die for some good reason, you know? Not some stupid accident or a physical screw-up like cancer. Hardly anybody does die for a good reason, if you think of it. Maybe some in wars. In fact, that may be why wars keep on being popular. Seems to me you have to respect even those nuts killing each other in Belfast or Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, because they’re dying for something, and that gives them some kind of dignity, even if the cause is stupid.”

In spite of the rather morbid subject-matter, Max’s slow, rich voice soothed me so profoundly I felt myself relaxing into an almost drowsy state of contentment.

“But enough of this philosophy. Time I got down to business. Because the fact is, dear, I’m the guy wants something here. I’ve come to ask a favour. Maybe you already figured that.”

My eyes snapped open. “Eh? What favour?”

“Well,” he said, stirring his tea carefully, “first thing I saw when I got home last night was that Billie had been crying.”

I frowned uneasily. Billie, for all her helpless, little-girl ways, was not a weeper. Indeed, I literally couldn’t remember ever seeing her cry. And after what she’d told me yesterday, that simple fact seemed the most revealing thing I might ever know about my mother.

“Are you sure?” I said foolishly. “I mean, did she tell you why?”

“No need for that. Only the day before, she was all excited about this holiday plan to take you to Santa Lucia. Told me all about it, thrilled as a kid. So I’m no great detective to guess you turned the offer down, right?”

“Yes, Max, because I simply can’t leave –”

“I know, I know.”

“But why does everybody think it’s so
abnormal
for me to want to look after my own kids?”

“Nobody said that, doll.”

Long ago he’d picked up Billie’s absurd set of endearments in the silly way married people echo each other’s speech habits. It was one of the few things I disapproved of in Max.

“She
did
say that,” I muttered sulkily. “She talked about my mental health.”

Max’s lips twitched, but he looked at me squarely under the black bar of his heavy eyebrows. “Tell me, did it strike you that Billie isn’t looking too good these days?”

“No, it didn’t.”

“No?”

“Well – nobody looks good this time of year.”

“There’s something wrong with her, sweetie. I don’t know what, but she’s running to the bathroom every couple of hours these days. Gets up two or three times in the night. Now it could be those stingers, or a chill, or a little touch of cystitis; no need to get all that worried, maybe. Just the same, I made her tell me about it, and I got her a doctor’s appointment for Monday. I’ll take her there in handcuffs if I have to. She’s scared, Anne. So that’s the story.”

“Well, she should have seen a doctor ages ago, if it’s like that. But what can I do?”

“You can make her happy. Go with her to the Islands.” Something in the straight line of Max’s lips reminded me that rich men get that way by having plenty of well-founded confidence in their own will-power.

“Max, I explained to her that I simply can’t leave my kids with some hired goon that could be anything – how can you tell? – a
glue-sniffer, a religious nut, somebody with nits or the clap –”

“Boy, what a pessimist. Look, what if I tell you I know somebody could do the job, the worst you could say about her is she wears arch-supports.”

“I’d still say –”

“Let me finish. Our cleaning lady’s been sick all winter and her daughter’s been coming over instead. Might be forty, big laugh, keeps everything so clean it squeaks. Looks around for curtains to wash, slip-covers … has half an hour to spare, she doesn’t just go home, she knocks you out a great lemon pie. You drop a dime, she follows you all over the house to give it back. Brought up three of her own; one’s a student at York. I took the trouble and got to know Hilda, because I’m like you, I don’t trust just anybody in my house where I have people and things that matter to me. Now this is my suggestion. Or if you like to put it another way, this is what I want from you. Let Hilda come here while you take a holiday with your mother.”

He hesitated a moment and then went on more quickly, “And after that, Anne, if Hilda’s willing and you trust her, why don’t you keep her on and go back to college for your doctor’s degree? If Ross can’t afford it, I can. It’s a crime, and you know it, with that head of yours, not to be using it. With a Ph.D. you could get some high-class academic job, or a post at the Museum maybe, and get the hell out of this kitchen.”

I looked at him grimly. He gave me a broad, ingenuous smile intended to disarm.

“So you want to rescue me, too. Take me away from all this. Arrange my future for my own good. Improve my mental health.”

Long before I ran out of breath, his smile had disappeared.

“Now, doll, don’t be sarcastic. It’s not nice.”

But I was so angry now I felt slightly drunk. “Max, will you do me a favour and get this straight. I
like
being at home with my
children. I’m not a victim or a martyr. I’m a natural, normal woman. There is nothing being
wasted
here. Do you really think what happens in kitchens and bedrooms isn’t important? I tell you, half of what goes on in labs and offices and classrooms is trivial by comparison.
This
is where it’s all at, not out there. Anyhow, that’s how I see it. For the next five years at least, these kids are going to need me here, and here is where I’m going to be. Full time. After that, sure, I might get a part-time job, or go back to graduate school. For God’s sake, I’m barely twenty-four. So will you get it through your head, I’m not some poor victim in chains. Even if I were, I’d stay in them. My kids are not going to wander the streets with a door-key round their necks. They are not going to be entertained by the neighbourhood flasher while I’m somewhere else being liberated.”

I concluded this tirade with the greatest firmness and dignity, and then burst into loud, childish sobbing. Max got up from his chair and held me, rocking me to and fro in silence. “There now, my poor baby,” he said.

“You don’t know what it was like for me,” I blubbered, incoherent with the self-pity that had been festering silently for too many years. “With Billie – that life – it took away my childhood. You just don’t know.”

He pushed a clean handkerchief into my hand and turned away to pour more steaming tea into our cups.

“No,” he said. “You’re wrong. I know a lot about what it must have been like for you. Not that I’m blaming Billie. She couldn’t do any different, being what she is. But that’s why – well, it was one of the big things in my life that I could send you to university, give you the chance you needed to be somebody really special. For me, right from the first, you were no kidding some kind of princess I found in the cinders. It meant a lot to me, with no kids of my own, to sort of rescue you.”

“Did it, Max?”

The bitter edge to my voice startled him. He tried to smile, but didn’t make a very good job of it. “Well, it takes a guy born over a tailor’s shop in Cabbagetown to appreciate a chance like that. I mean, to be a sort of Jewish Pygmalion.”

But the truth was sour in my mouth. It was an act of egoism, then, all his goodness to me; not really love? I pushed the rocker into motion. It creaked with my double weight. My burning eyes closed. At the sink Max rinsed the teacups very quietly, as if it were important not to disturb anyone or anything.

The fetus kicked and twisted so restlessly I had to sit up. Max was putting on his jacket, twitching down his shirt-cuffs.

“Well, dear, time I took off. You go on up to bed – you need rest, the shape you’re in. Only be damn sure you put the chain up on that front door first.” He tried to make these banalities sound normal, in his calm, practical, parent’s voice, but it didn’t quite work.

“Yes, Max.”

“And tomorrow I’ll give you a ring and we’ll maybe talk about Hilda. I’m not pressing you, mind. Talk it over with Ross, why don’t you. I suppose he’s in touch. See what he thinks about it. Plus other things.”

My mouth opened and I closed it again. No, it was not possible to risk any more discussion with Max. Already too many delicate checks and balances between us had been threatened. There were heavy pouches under his eyes; I could see that in his way, he too was adjusting his defences, recovering balance. But the role each of us had for so long played for the other was irrevocably changed, and we both knew it.

“Give my love to Billie,” I said.

“Right.”

“And take care.”

“Sure.”

At the door he turned. “And cheer up, doll,” he added. “Things could always be worse. You heard the one about the optimist fell off the top of a skyscraper? Some horrified guy in an office saw him falling past the window and gave a yell, but the optimist only smiled and yelled back, ‘Okay so far!’ ”

I forced a smile. He patted my cheek and we parted, pretending that nothing of any significance had changed. What else, after all, could we do?

T
he door of Max’s Lincoln chunked shut. His snow tires crunched over ice and faded off down the street. I wandered into the dark sitting-room and lay down on the sofa instead of going up to bed. It was only nine-thirty, after all. I was tired, but all my systems were electrically supercharged. As I lay there restlessly scratching my belly, I wondered whether Max would ever write me another letter. Would we ever be able to play that game again? Probably not.

At this point it seemed appropriate to give myself a severe talking- to along the following lines. Anne Graham, you will now, I mean immediately, stop snivelling just because you’ve discovered your father is a human being. Face it, all these years you’ve tried to cast him as a sort of hybrid of God and lover, exactly as you saw him at fifteen. Jocasta came to a bad end, right? So grow up, will you? Even if it hurts.

This lecture had a somewhat calming effect, but my nerves were still inclined to twitch. Far too much tea and philosophy. There was something grim and final about turning the dry eye of experience on myself and all my illusions, past and present. When the phone shrilled, I heaved myself over to it with alacrity. Any change in the old stream of consciousness would be welcome.

“Anne baby? How are you doing? It’s Tim here. Not too late to call, I hope.”

“Hi, Tim” I said without enthusiasm. I’d never much liked Ross’s other partner. He had a husky adolescent voice and a crass, ebullient manner to match; but he was the toughest, the most mature, and much the meanest of the three. I’d often thought that Ross and Randy would sooner or later regret sharing the practice with him.

“Well, what’s new with you, kid?” he demanded heartily.

“Oh, nothing very much. And you?”

“Just groovin’ along. You know how it is.” There was a slight, uncomfortable pause.

“Jean and the kids okay?” I ventured.

“Sure, great. Just fine. They’re at a movie.”

“That’s nice.” I took a deep breath to ride out another strong contraction. Then I thought, All right; let’s have it. “Everything all right at the office?”

“Ah, well now.” He cleared his throat and then made a subdued, gulping sound that meant he had a drink beside him. The trouble was that liquor didn’t change Tim, it only made him more intensely himself.

“Ah well, what?”

“Now Anne baby, don’t get hostile. You’ve got to admit this isn’t exactly one of your easy situations we’ve got here. I’m just trying to do my best for all of us.”

“Just tell me what it is, Tim.” Mentally I doodled a sketch of his wide, fleshy face. He had little or no neck, and his eyes were a formidably pale blue – the eyes of a winner. Just the same, there was a look of acute anxiety in them sometimes, perhaps because his father was a millionaire.

“Well, of course you realize with Ross and Larine in the same office … I mean this kind of thing just doesn’t work, right? For a while they were very discreet and undercover about it – come to that, Ross still is – but the trouble is Larine’s been wagging her ass
around here lately, making waves, bitching at the other two girls – you know the kind of thing. It’s raising hell, anyhow. So much so I actually had to say something about it to Ross the other day. If it goes on, she’ll have to get out of the office, that’s all. Of course, he hit the roof when I told him that, but Randy agrees, and now he hardly speaks to either of us. So things are now pretty tense, I don’t mind telling you.”