The Sabbathday River (16 page)
Read The Sabbathday River Online
Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz
Heather stared at her, perplexed and horrified, and more than a little dazzled. Naomi, oblivious, went on.
“I like these flowers, though. They're very subtle, not cloying at all. For boys you can do, I don't know, trees or something. Pine trees? For girls I think this is just perfect. You leave the corners blank so people can custom-order. Did this take you long?” she asked Heather.
“No,” Heather said. “Well, yeah, ten days, but I've only been working at night.”
“Fantastic.” Naomi nodded. “So, what do you think? The sheets would be wonderful. Your sampler sounds great, too. You've got to bring it in, let me have a look. When can you start?”
Heather looked at Stephen. When could she start? Had she quit her job at the sports center? Was she fired? “When can I start?” she asked him.
“Whenever you want,” he said.
“I'll start now,” said Heather. She took the sheet from Naomi's hands. She took her bag. The circle in the room beyond did not exactly open for her. It was an effort, lifting a chair from against the wall and wedging open a place for herself. She looked at everyone in their turn, so everyone else would have a chance to see what Ashley's wife had done, it seemed like years before. Her belly was too big to cross her legs, so she had to lean forward a bit, spreading her baby's sheet across her knees. A bitterness broke out, and in its hush, her new life began.
The Country of Childbirth
HE WAS EMBARRASSED BY WHAT SUE HAD DONE. This was why he did not call her immediately. Two weeks, in fact, would pass before he found her again at Naomi's mill, materializing suddenly in his truck with a load of new clapboard for the dilapidated rear of the building. They did not talk in depth about what had happened, but Heather could see how badly he felt. His feelings, at any rate, were unchanged, his ardor untempered, despite the fact that Heather, surging into her third trimester, grew increasingly distended by the hour. She didn't want to stop either, and so they didn't stop.
Only two days before Polly was born, Ashley waited for her on the porch step of the mill, deflecting the incensed stares of the women who walked past with their shopping bags of cloth and thread. She felt, when she first drove off with him, the beginnings of unwell, but her greed drove most of the nausea away and his mouth on her nipple banished the rest. This latest actâthe last, she must have known even then, of their life alone togetherâhad had a quality of almost mournful solemnity, but also of fervor, as if they both were trying to get things in, or
perhaps out, before the inevitable division awaiting them. Ashley's physical movements were small, but each seemed charged with object, symbol, perpetuity. She told his ear that she loved him. Their child woke and spun.
perhaps out, before the inevitable division awaiting them. Ashley's physical movements were small, but each seemed charged with object, symbol, perpetuity. She told his ear that she loved him. Their child woke and spun.
She knew, by then, that she was close, but Heather had never been given an actual due date for the baby. The midwife didn't hold with due datesâmore patriarchy, she claimed, and more mystification for Heather, who, in her ignorance of the patriarchy, figured the baby would come when she was good and ready. And Polly did, a bare twenty-four hours later, in the middle of an August night and with a herald of the sharpest, most precise pain. Heather was awake in the moment before the pain, and so she was not surprised when it came. After it had passed, Heather got stiffly to her feet in the dark room and went downstairs to phone the midwife. She arrivedâa brown woman with a pinched, serious face and a tendency to humâabout seven, which was when Heather woke Pick, and everybody got down to the business of having the baby.
It wasn't so bad a business, all in all. The midwife had early on declared Heather an eminently suitable candidate for a good, soul-enriching birth, with her wide pelvis and strong legs. The midwife had been to Costa Rica, where the women hung from branches and dropped their infants in the way nature intended, and she was forever urging Heather to squat over her open hands, but Heather didn't want to squat. She wanted to walk. All morning she led the two women around the lower field, pacing from the murky, mud-clogged pond down to their own modest bit of the Sabbathdayâa narrow spur off where the river split a mile to the northwestâthen back to the house, stopping every five minutes along the way, then every four minutes, then every three minutes. Then they went back inside.
The midwife, who had no children of her own, thought childbirth was ennobling and purifying, the ultimate expression of female power. Analgesics had no place in the ritual, not for a healthy young girl like Heather. She endorsed fluids and breathing deeply through contractions to feel the baby in its slow descent, and suggested Heather use the time between pains to visualize her cervix opening like rings on a pond's interrupted surface. To her credit, she remained pleasant and unruffled through the long day and then the long night, but Heather herself was wrung by the time it was dark. She wanted to call a halt and get some
sleep, to start again in the morning with a fresh reserve, but the baby had expanded, not ebbed, in its demands. It wanted her attention all the time now, even between its assaults on her cervix, and it had turned hard inside her, like a stone dropping down away from her. What annoyed her about the pain was not its immense, battering force but its unwillingness to share her with anything else. The pain pushed everything awayâevery thought not relevant to itself, every optimistic groping toward when its opaque moment might pass. She could not believe the baby was doing this to herâshe had been so used to loving it. To loving her.
sleep, to start again in the morning with a fresh reserve, but the baby had expanded, not ebbed, in its demands. It wanted her attention all the time now, even between its assaults on her cervix, and it had turned hard inside her, like a stone dropping down away from her. What annoyed her about the pain was not its immense, battering force but its unwillingness to share her with anything else. The pain pushed everything awayâevery thought not relevant to itself, every optimistic groping toward when its opaque moment might pass. She could not believe the baby was doing this to herâshe had been so used to loving it. To loving her.
It was the new day before the midwife said it was time to start pushing. Heather's strong legs weren't strong any longer. She lay on her side across the foot of her bed, her arms outflung, surrendering without protest to the agony that gripped her. She was glad Ashley was not here to see her like this, a swollen bug with spindly appendages, flailing about in a pointless frenzy of suffering. The midwife tried to pull Heather up onto her hands and knees, and when this didn't work she knelt by the bed at Heather's head and gave her a talking-to. Pick sat behind her, rubbing her back, but the truth was that Heather couldn't even feel that anymore.
Part of it, it came to her, was that she had loved being pregnant. The term of her baby's gestation had been the precise term of her life with Ashley, and they had been the sweetest months she had yet known. Not being pregnant, no longer being pregnant had about it a whiff of life without Ashley, though she knew this was irrational and needlessly hurtful to herself, since Ashley adored her. She didn't want it now. She would send it back when it came, though first she would get it out of her. Out of her first, then back where it came from. She climbed back onto her hands and knees.
The midwife crooned her hum from the country of childbirth. The baby dropped. Through the blood and cheesy mess, Heather took one look and felt a brutal, rapturous devotion. “Polly.” Heather reached for her, but she was across the room, she had left the room, she was in the bathroom being doused by the midwife, shrieking her beautiful head to pieces, her newly stumped umbilicus darkening in rage. “Polly.” Heather's voice was unaccountably soft, which was maddening, because she was actually furious. “Give her to me!”
“All right,” the midwife said, laughing, passing the bundle along. “We're not quite finished, you know.”
But Heather was finished. She barely followed the rest of itâthe dense, livid placenta, the three stinging stitches, the sponges of water and disinfectant. She had Polly in her arms, that queer scrunched version of her father's beauty. So this was why she had never been able to conjure her baby's features from the disparate strains of mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother; Polly was Ashley's in the end; his beauty had stamped her face just as his love had set her in motion. Heather could barely bring herself to wait until the midwife had left.
By then it was fully morning. Heather made herself stay in bed until the car was gone, and until Pick, sapped from the exertions of the day, had returned to her bed. Then she crept downstairs to the kitchen. The eyelet curtain nearly fluttered in a just perceptible morning breeze. The painted floorboards were cool under her bare feet, but the air was hot âsteamy, end-of-summer heat. She held the baby between her breasts, like a pendant, and took the phone from its cradle to dial a number she had never dialed but knew by heart, regardless. She would have hung up if Sue answered, but Sue didn't answer.
“It's me,” said Heather, her voice cracking with relief and euphoria. “Ashley?”
“Yes,” he said.
She took a breath. “I'm calling about the baby.”
His joy flooded the hush between them. She glowed, waiting for him to ask, but in that stillness something gave beneath her: the earth on its undependable axis, the legs that had crouched to deliver his child.
“It's a boy!” he crowed. “He's bigânine pounds, two ounces. His name is Joseph.”
Gifts
BY THE TIME POLLY HAD LEARNED THE DIFFICULT physical skill of smiling, she was already a child who did not smile generally. She looked at things as if she knew them already and would prefer to look at something she didn't know. She learned the specific comfort of her own left thumb. She learned to beat her mother's breast with one efficient fist. Even in sleep, she made mountains of laundry. Her father did not come to see her.
Naomi came on the eighth day, when the baby had fully lost her strained and put-upon demeanor and was radiantly plumpâa bit like her mother, who had lost the bloated look of her pregnancy but kept the general padding. As gifts, she brought bags of the kinds of things a non-mother gives a new motherâtoddler toys and dolls with bits that could break off and frilly, complicated baby clothes. There was an embarrassing munificence of it, about which Naomi made various self-deprecating comments. Heather, who in fact had everything she needed already, felt a little badly for Naomi and wondered how friendless the Flourish circle had implied her to be, and how bleak her prospects.
With Polly crooked in her arms and ardently, efficiently pulling the stiffness from her heavy breasts, she cared even less about such matters than she had before, and indeed the circle of women felt mindlessly distant from this primal, tender connection. Naomi, Heather noted, tended to avert her eyes, and so she put Polly, who was sated and dropping sweetly to milky sleep, into Naomi's arms, less as a gesture of friendship than out of some impulse to see what would happen, and indeed Naomi began abruptly, if noiselessly, to cry. Her lips brushed the fine white hairs of Polly's scalp. Then she smelled the baby's talcy smell, wiped dry her face, and made an embarrassed escape. Pick watched Naomi leave, then came out onto the back porch to take the baby.
With Polly crooked in her arms and ardently, efficiently pulling the stiffness from her heavy breasts, she cared even less about such matters than she had before, and indeed the circle of women felt mindlessly distant from this primal, tender connection. Naomi, Heather noted, tended to avert her eyes, and so she put Polly, who was sated and dropping sweetly to milky sleep, into Naomi's arms, less as a gesture of friendship than out of some impulse to see what would happen, and indeed Naomi began abruptly, if noiselessly, to cry. Her lips brushed the fine white hairs of Polly's scalp. Then she smelled the baby's talcy smell, wiped dry her face, and made an embarrassed escape. Pick watched Naomi leave, then came out onto the back porch to take the baby.
“Surprised she has none of her own,” said Pick, binding the new-born's arms tight to her sides in a swaddle. “Maybe the husband doesn't want kids. He's a strange one.”
“He is?” said Heather. She hadn't even known Naomi had a husband.
“Wanted to get people into some community maple-syrup scheme. Then he put up a solar-type thing on his house and tried to get Corbet Hodge to do the same, Janelle said.”
“Oh,” said Heather. “Solar what?”
Pick smirked. She put the baby into her wicker cradle. “Who knows. âLiving off the land.' I'm an open-minded person, you know. I don't think I'm better than anybody. I'm not prejudiced. I just think some people are good at some things and some people are good at other things.” She shook her head. “What a fellow like that thinks he knows about living off
this
land I'll never understand.”
this
land I'll never understand.”
Heather wiped a drop of her own milk from the baby's lower lip. “A fellow like what?”
Pick gave her a look. “It isn't about religion, you know. I'm not saying somebody's better or worse than somebody else just because he's Jewish. People have their own place and I feel they ought to stay in their place. When somebody moves into another person's place and tries to tell them how to get along, I'm not surprised they don't get a welcome wagon saying come on in. Come on in and tell me how to live my life, cause you obviously know how to better than me that's been doing just fine until now!”
Heather frowned at her. “I didn't even know she was Jewish,” she said. She was trying to think if she'd ever met anyone Jewish. Or anyone else.
Her grandmother contemplated the baby, then reached down into
the crib and wiggled a pacifier against her tiny pursed lips. She had been trying to interest Polly in this device, but Polly was interested only in the genuine article. “You know, Heather,” her grandmother sighed, abandoning her efforts, “if everybody could sew like you, nobody would pay a hundred and fifty dollars for a baby sheet.” (This fact continued to amaze and bemuse Pick.) “I just think in life you stick with what you're used to. If you ignore your gifts, it's like you're telling God thanks but no thanks.” Pick sighed. “This is what I'm saying. It's not an insult. You just should stick with what you can do. That gal came up here, and she started making money. And she's good at it, I'll grant you that. Ina Hodge said they're putting up aluminum siding on their house next month. That's a five-thousand-dollar job at least, and she and Janelle made that money themselves. And it's what I said, we're all good at something. Jewish people are good at business.” She looked at Heather. “Janelle came around last year, tried to get me up to make quilts for that gal. I told her no and said it was because of my hands, you know. It's different for you. You have a baby to support. But I have no intention to sew quilts to make somebody else richer.”
the crib and wiggled a pacifier against her tiny pursed lips. She had been trying to interest Polly in this device, but Polly was interested only in the genuine article. “You know, Heather,” her grandmother sighed, abandoning her efforts, “if everybody could sew like you, nobody would pay a hundred and fifty dollars for a baby sheet.” (This fact continued to amaze and bemuse Pick.) “I just think in life you stick with what you're used to. If you ignore your gifts, it's like you're telling God thanks but no thanks.” Pick sighed. “This is what I'm saying. It's not an insult. You just should stick with what you can do. That gal came up here, and she started making money. And she's good at it, I'll grant you that. Ina Hodge said they're putting up aluminum siding on their house next month. That's a five-thousand-dollar job at least, and she and Janelle made that money themselves. And it's what I said, we're all good at something. Jewish people are good at business.” She looked at Heather. “Janelle came around last year, tried to get me up to make quilts for that gal. I told her no and said it was because of my hands, you know. It's different for you. You have a baby to support. But I have no intention to sew quilts to make somebody else richer.”
“Well, I don't really think Naomi's that rich,” Heather said. “She wears these old clothes, and she's always saying how her house is falling apart and it doesn't even have a real bathroom. And anyway, the mill isn't like a factory at all. Naomi says it's a collective. Everybody, like, owns a part of it. There's no boss or anything.”
“Who hired you?” Pick said, somewhat sarcastically. “That gal did. So she's the boss. You sew, she earns money from it. If she stops liking what you do, she can fire you. Is that right?”
Heather, who figured it was, nodded grimly.
“She can call it whatever she wants, but she's the boss, and you work for her. These things are in the blood, sweetie. You're good at sewing, she has a head for business. Now just so you understand, Heather, I'm not unhappy about this arrangement. I wasn't too thrilled with you working at the sports center.” She tried to look disapprovingly at the baby, but didn't quite manage it. “But that gal isn't running a charity, and no matter what she might claim, she sure isn't turning Goddard Falls into some Iron Curtain country. Just keep it in mind.”
“Okay,” Heather said, but she couldn't help adding, “Naomi's really nice, though.”
“I never said they weren't nice,” Pick said. She frowned. “Why do you think she cried?”
Heather shook her head. The baby was sleeping now, so quietly that Heather had to touch her stomach to make sure she was breathing. She had begun to do this rather obsessively. “I don't know. I don't know her very well.”
She didn't really want to talk about it anymore, so she sat down on the bed beside the crib and got out her work. Pick had been right about Naomi's business acumen, at least; the picture of Polly's baby sheet in the spring catalogue had provoked a modest phenomenon. Fourteen of her embroidered sheets had been dispatched around the countryâshe kept a list of the towns in her sewing basketâand there was a current waiting list for eleven more. She could sew baby sheets and baby samplers for the rest of her life, Heather thought, or at least till she got tired of it. Then she could sew something else. She could stay at home for a bit, till the fall at least, and then she could take her baby to the mill and put her down in the crib with a mobile or a toy and sit in the circle until Ashley was able to bring them home.
She could not wait for Ashley to see their daughter. She had berated herself for catching him so off guard andâwith such weird timingâso soon after baby Joe was born, but of course he had told her not to feel badly and that he was happy to know about their Polly. He was pretty much tied to home, though, Ashley said, with relatives and all descending in their streams. It would not be easy to get away just now. It might be a week, Ashley said, before he could come to see them.
But it was more than a week. In fact, more than four weeks passed before he rattled his old Volvo down their drive. It began to puzzle her. She nearly telephoned again, to be more insistent about it, but the moment passed in a fresh cry for milk. Once, in the middle of the night, she even conceived the angry plan of going herself to see him, of bringing Polly to him, but by morning the impulse had been overwhelmed by practicalities and caution. Exertion of any kind was torturously difficult, in any case, since the summer's end had sunk into a steamy, enervating lull, and the extent of her movement was to bring the baby out behind the house, where they were shaded by the roof's overhang, and there they sat, still sticky hot, watching haze hang over the back field as it sloped down to its little murky pond. But it nagged her, more and more, as their daughter's beauty seemed to grow hourly, that he wasn't there to exclaim over it, over her calmly alert expressions, the premature furrow of her brow. There had been mornings she woke to find Polly staring at her, her blue gaze steady, and it had struck Heather
with a paralysis of humility, the depth of that gazeâthe way it made her feel so completely
known.
It seemed to her that the baby's understanding was unmarred by prejudice, and hence perfect, and that if she could herself learn to see herself in the same way, she might be free of whatever trouble dogged her, simpering at the peripheries of her awareness. Because it did hurt, what was thought of her, whatever she might have said to Stephen Trask or to her grandmother, and the truth was that she did not precisely
like
to be stared at, or thought ill of. She could not, for example, remember the austere and tired Dean of Freshmen in her small gray office without a spike of unease, the brief punch of an old but not entirely inactive wound. She could not think of her pregnant self, turning in the circle of women with her own fierce and bitter expression, without fighting the strongestâif briefestâurge to cover her face. But when Ashley finally came and stood over the crib with her, and took her hand to look down at their child, with their love, then she would be strong enough for whatever petty cruelties lay strewn in her path like bad flowers.
with a paralysis of humility, the depth of that gazeâthe way it made her feel so completely
known.
It seemed to her that the baby's understanding was unmarred by prejudice, and hence perfect, and that if she could herself learn to see herself in the same way, she might be free of whatever trouble dogged her, simpering at the peripheries of her awareness. Because it did hurt, what was thought of her, whatever she might have said to Stephen Trask or to her grandmother, and the truth was that she did not precisely
like
to be stared at, or thought ill of. She could not, for example, remember the austere and tired Dean of Freshmen in her small gray office without a spike of unease, the brief punch of an old but not entirely inactive wound. She could not think of her pregnant self, turning in the circle of women with her own fierce and bitter expression, without fighting the strongestâif briefestâurge to cover her face. But when Ashley finally came and stood over the crib with her, and took her hand to look down at their child, with their love, then she would be strong enough for whatever petty cruelties lay strewn in her path like bad flowers.
But when he came at last, he never got close to the crib. Indeed, he poised at the door with one foot idling behind the other, as if in preparation for a crisp about-face and sprint in the direction he'd come. Pick came to the door, scowled at the visitor, and called for Heather, but she stood her silent ground until Heather came downstairs. “This,” Heather began, breathless, “isâ”
“I can tell,” said Pick. She threw a glare diamond-sharp at her granddaughter's defiler, then huffed away. Heather shifted the baby in her arms to cover her belly. She felt still fat. Ashley looked painfully fine.
“Well, Heather,” he said, “I can't really stay.”
“Look,” Heather said, thrusting Polly forward. “Look at her. She's beautiful.”
“Of course.” He was sweet. “I told you she'd be beautiful. So. How are you?”
“I'mâ” Heather began, but stopped. She had no idea how she was. “Isn't she wonderful?” she reverted. “She has your eyes.” This was not precisely true. The baby had nobody's eyes in particular, and at any event, she was sound asleep against Heather's breast, with her eyes firmly shut. “Come in.” She stepped back. “Come on in, we'll go into the living room.”
“I can't stay,” he said again, not moving, but a touch more affably. “I just came to see you. And I brought you a present.”
“Oh,” Heather said. Involuntarily, she glanced at his hands, but they were empty.
“You going back to work at Naomi's soon?” he asked.
“Well, I'm working already. She comes and brings me the assignments, and she picks them up. I don't need to go into the mill at all.”
Ashley nodded at this, as if she'd said something considered, with deeper meaning. “Maybe that's best.”
“I miss it, though.” She sneaked a smile. “I miss the rides home.”
Ashley smiled, his line of sight shifting slightly, past her. “Well, that's going to be harder now, you have to realize. Things are kind of a mess.”
“What things?” Heather said. “Is something the matter with your car?”
“What?” he said. “My car? No, it's ⦠Well, actually, I got a new car. Station wagon. Sue insisted. No, I mean, it'll be harder now. To see you. Now that I've got a kid.”
In her arms, the baby squeaked and stirred.
“Two kids,” Heather said, wounded. “You have two kids.”
“Well,” Ashley said. “You know what I mean.”
“I don't actually,” Heather said, because she actually didn't.
Ashley reached back behind his neck, idly twisting his ponytail around one long and elegant finger. “She wants me around all the time. She isn't like you, Heather. I mean, look at you. You're more beautiful than ever. You look healthy, and you're just a great mother, it's obvious. But Sue's a wreck. She can't do breast-feeding, even though she tried. She can't take care of the baby without a lot of help. She's got that new-mother-depression thing, so it's like she's the baby and we all have to take care of her, too.” He shook his small head. His face was tight. “And that's just how it is. I get to leave the house to go to work and the supermarket, or pick up people at the bus station in White River Junction, but that's it.” He smiled piteously, inviting her to feel sorry for his plight. “So like I said, it's all going to be harder now.”
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