“God, I’m going to die!”
“No, you’re not, Merit,” said Audrey. “It just feels that way, remember? Now just—”
“Agghhh!” cried Merit through clenched teeth, her fingernails digging into Audrey’s arm.
“That’s right, push,” hollered Audrey as pain zipped through her arm. “Push!”
The chair had jerked all the way back to its fully reclined position, but Merit pushed forward and the chair became upright. She sat so close to the edge of the cushion that she would have fallen off had she not had the support of Kari and Audrey, who held on to her arms and offered soothing words and calm assurances as she screamed or panted or moaned.
“I called the ambulance,” said Faith, breathless, running in from the kitchen. “They’re on their way.”
“And the water’s boiling,” said Slip. “I’ve got some clean dish towels too.” She knelt to place one under Merit, but there wasn’t room on the chair. “Holy laboring mother,” she said, her voice hushed. “Somebody better be ready to catch that baby because it’s coming.”
“Well, you’ve got the towels,” said Audrey.
“Okay,” Slip said to Merit, who after panting through a break in contractions was now keening again. “I’m your quarterback, Merit. Hut one, hut two . . .”
“No,” said Faith, kneeling by Slip. “You’d be the receiver. Merit’s the quarterback.”
Merit’s face scrunched into a red mask of pain.
“Help me!” she cried. Baring her teeth like a dog ready to strike, she issued a deep, low growl.
“It’s coming! It’s coming!” said Slip, and in one amazing rush, the baby slid into Slip’s arms and the embroidered dish towel that said Thursday.
“It’s a girl,” said Slip as the perfect little baby released her first cry to the world. Merit collapsed in the chair and held her arms out for her daughter, the love that washed over her unfortunately tinted with dread: this was not Eric the fourth.
“We’re done kidding around,” Eric the third had told her throughout her pregnancy. “I do not want another girl. This one’s a boy—all right? This one’s my son!”
By the time the ambulance arrived, the placenta had been delivered and Kari had tied off and cut the cord with twine and with scissors that had been sterilized in boiling water.
It was only when they were gently putting Merit on the stretcher (“Why do I have to go to the hospital?” she asked. “The baby’s here and I feel fine.”) that she thought to have her girls brought up from the basement to see their baby sister.
“I’ll get them,” volunteered Faith.
“Well, we haven’t got all day,” said the ambulance technician.
“We’ve got time for that,” said the other one.
Her leg stiff from kneeling, Faith limped toward the kitchen. As she passed the dining room table, she yelped in surprise.
“Oh, my goodness, Beau, you scared me. When did you get up here?”
But he didn’t need to answer; Faith could tell by his round saucer eyes how long he had been upstairs.
She knelt down, holding her son by his shoulders.
“Did you see Merit’s baby getting born?”
The six-year-old nodded, and Faith wanted to cry, thinking of her little boy all alone, hiding in the dining room, watching a woman give birth. Her mind scrambled as she tried to think of words that would lessen his trauma.
“Then you just saw a miracle.”
Disagreeing, Beau shook his head. Then, as if to set his confused mother straight, he said slowly and deliberately, his eyes wide, “Mama, that baby came out of Reni’s mommy’s butt.”
March 1974
HOST: FAITH
BOOK: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
REASON CHOSEN: “I think it’s one of the most beautiful titles in the history of books.”
Sometimes Faith wondered what had happened when the twins were in utero. Had Bonnie hogged all the space or taken more of the important nutrients out of the placenta? Why did she have all the bravura, the confidence? Why wasn’t she afraid of anything, whereas Beau thought monsters and danger were everywhere?
Slip’s daughter Flannery was like Bonnie; in fact, their three-year age difference did not pose a big obstacle to their friendship. They were two smart, bossy girls who thought the world should revolve around them and loved trying to convince their brothers of this essential truth. But Joe and Gil weren’t cowed by their sister’s demands and fought them, unlike Beau, who as far as Faith could see was practically Bonnie’s handservant.
“Beau, honey, what are you doing?” she had asked that morning after finding her son in Bonnie’s room, making her bed.
“Bonnie told me I could play with her troll dolls if I made her bed,” he said, tucking the chenille bedspread underneath the hump of pillows.
Faith’s stomach took an elevator ride. “Well, Beau, honey,” she said, trying to keep her voice light, “you shouldn’t have to make Bonnie’s bed just to play with some of her toys.”
“I don’t mind,” said Beau, scampering off the mattress to smooth the last wrinkles out of the spread. Satisfied, he placed Bonnie’s stuffed parrot in the center of the pillows. “I like to make beds.”
Faith pushed down an impulse to grab Beau by his shirt collar and holler, No, you don’t! Little boys don’t like making beds!
She scraped her upper lip against her teeth, tasting the perfumy taste of lipstick. “Listen, Beau,” she said, kneeling down and taking the boy by the shoulders, “why don’t you run outside and play? All the kids are out there. Bryan and Mikey built a fort in their backyard and—”
“Can’t I play troll dolls, Mommy? I made a little house for them out of two shoeboxes. There’s windows that open and shut, and a little—”
“Beau. Beau, I want you to play outside.” Even as Faith’s voice was stern, she grabbed her son to her chest, holding him so tight he began to wriggle. To get out of her suffocating embrace, he promised he’d go outside and play.
Faith couldn’t imagine a child with a sweeter disposition; while Bonnie’s one great concern—like that of most kids—seemed to be herself, it was Beau who climbed into Faith’s lap when she was feeling sad, who presented her with dandelion bouquets and crayon portraits and vows that he would marry her when he grew up.
The twins’ faces matched their personalities too. Bonnie looked like the tomboy she was, with a little snub nose and eyes the color of her straight brown hair, and Beau—well, Beau was beautiful, with his tumble of sandy curls and eyes a startling pale blue-green color.
Up until he was four, Faith never worried that he was different from the other boys; on the contrary, she thought herself lucky to have such an affectionate little boy. But then she began to notice things: how the other boys had no interest in playing dolls or dress up, how he cried so easily, how when he ran, he held his elbows to his sides, his arms flailing back and forth. The more she noticed, the more scared she felt.
“My God,” said Wade after trying to play baseball with him in the backyard, “the kid swings the bat like a little fruit.”
Faith had forced herself to laugh, to show Wade how ridiculous she found his comment.
“He just needs a little practice,” she said. “It’s not as if you’re out there every day pitching balls to him.”
Wade muttered something, and Faith swallowed down her fear. But she began to watch Wade watch Beau, and she could see the look of disgust that would pass his face when Beau fluttered his hands in excitement or when he sat on the ottoman, softly talking to Bonnie’s Barbie dolls as he changed their clothes.
It’s just a phase, she told herself, just like Bonnie’s tomboy stage. He’ll probably grow out of it by the time he gets to kindergarten.
But he didn’t, and Faith changed her projected deadline to first grade. Much to her surprise, she did notice a change in his behavior; it was as if his personality was less flamboyant, had been tamped down.
“Beau, ho
ney, do you like your teacher?” she asked casually one day as he sat at the table, eating his after-school milk and cookies.
“Miss Carlson?” asked Beau, and after licking his milk mustache, said, “Sure, Mama. She’s real pretty and she reads to us every day.”
“Well,” said Faith, lifting cookie crumbs off the table by pressing her finger against them, “do you like the kids in your class?”
“Mom, Gina and me’ll be outside,” said Bonnie, racing into the kitchen with the friend she’d brought home from school. They stopped at the table to take another cookie before running out the back door.
Beau smiled, watching the girls. “Gina’s nice.”
“Yes, she is,” agreed Faith, and then, searching her son’s face for clues, she asked, “Do you like the other children in your class?”
Beau’s long lashes fluttered as he stared up at the ceiling, thinking.
“Well,” he said finally, “Sunshine’s nice to me.”
What are you, a plant? Faith thought before remembering that Sunshine was a little girl whose parents no doubt had conceived her on a commune or an acid trip.
“Well, why wouldn’t she be nice to you?” asked Faith. “You’re a very nice little boy.”
Beau nodded even as tears filled his eyes. “I am. I am nice, but only Sunshine likes me. Gina likes me, but she’s in Bonnie’s class. Everybody else calls me bad things and pushes me down on the playground.”
Outrage, like adrenaline, surged through Faith’s body.
“They push you down? They call you bad names? What kind of names?”
Beau shrugged, a picture of misery. “Sissy, mostly. Sometimes Tie-a-Pretty-Beau. Sometimes Fruity-Tooty. Those are bad names, right, Mommy?”
“Yes, those are bad names.” Suddenly Faith was angry at everyone, including Bonnie, who should be protecting her brother against these thugs. “What’s your sister doing while you’re being pushed down?”
“If Bonnie knew they were pushing me down, she’d help me,” said Beau, his head jiggling in a nod. “But she always plays by the swings.”
“Where do you play?”
Beau bowed his head and the sun glanced off his sand-colored curls. “I usually don’t play ’cause I don’t want to get pushed down. So I go and sit by the tree. There’s a woodpecker in there, Mama!”
Faith wondered if her heart could hurt any more if someone grabbed it out of her chest.
“Beau, have you told your teacher what these bad kids do?”
The little boy’s blue-green eyes widened. “Oh, Mommy, they’d do even worse things if I did that.”
Faith called for a meeting with the principal and Miss Carlson the next day.
“You’ve got to do something about these hoodlums!” she said, rapping the purse in her lap with each word.
Chuckling, Mr. Talbert, the principal, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his narrow nose. “Mrs. Owens, kids’ll be kids. A certain amount of name-calling, while we don’t encourage it, is bound to happen.”
“Well, you shouldn’t let it!”
“Mrs. Owens,” said Miss Carlson, “believe me, I do not allow any name-calling or bullying in my class. However, I cannot always control what happens on the playground—have you seen the size of our playground?”
“Of course I’ve seen the size of your playground,” said Faith, wondering how her son could find this lantern-jawed woman pretty. “But if it’s too big to supervise the children properly, maybe you—”
“Mrs. Owens,” said the principal, “you need to calm down. Now that we’re aware there’s a problem with Beau, we’ll keep a closer eye on him.”
“The problem isn’t with Beau!” Faith said, her voice raised to a level that Mr. Talbert’s secretary, sitting in the next room, could hear. “The problem is with the other kids—with those evil little brats who need to be given a taste of their own evil medicine!”
Faith drew in a quick breath and bit her lip. She was so angry she wanted to hit both of them, and yet even in her anger she was embarrassed by her outburst, was aware of how her accent came out.
“Mrs. Owens,” said Mr. Talbert, standing up behind his desk, “we’ll do everything we can to ensure the safety of your little boy. Now if you don’t mind, I have another appointment.”
Appointment my ass, thought Faith, but she got up, offering her hand to the surprised principal and teacher (that was something she had learned from Slip—Slip always offered her hand to men and women, explaining, “People know you mean business when you shake their hand instead of just standing there, nodding and smiling”), and left the office vowing that she would find ways to protect her son because she sure couldn’t count on anyone else to.
And she did. She played endless games of catch with him, pitched him balls until her shoulder cramped, taught him how to run faster by “not moving your arms around so much; see, clench your fists instead of leaving your hands open.” Her goal was to never give Beau any indication that the way he did things was wrong, but that they could be done in an easier way.
And Beau was a smart little boy; he picked things up. He learned it was easier to ask Joe or Bryan if they wanted to play pirates or bank robbers rather than house (no real skin off his nose, as he loved to play make-believe); he learned that his dad didn’t throw his newspaper down and yell to his mother, “Don’t we have some damn trucks he can play with?” if he didn’t play dolls in the living room; he learned to not cry so easily, at least not in front of people. Most of all, he learned that he had secrets that he had to hide. He was his mother’s son, after all.
It didn’t take long before Wade started making comments like “Thank God, Beau seems to be coming around,” or “He doesn’t seem to be so girly anymore.” When asked about school, Beau told his mother, “No, the kids don’t push me down anymore,” and he actually came home one day beaming, having been picked for a kickball team. He wasn’t the first pick, the second, third, or even fourth, but he hadn’t been picked last, and that was a first for him. And because he was her precious, sweet little boy, Faith promised herself that she would always find ways to make him feel wanted and needed, to make him beam.
July, 1975
HOST: SLIP
BOOK: The Total Woman by Marabel Morgan
REASON CHOSEN: “I was drawn to it the way you’redrawn to a horrible car accident.”
While my eleven-year-old daughter has her piano lesson, I wait for her in Mrs. Klanski’s doily-infested, camphor-smelling den. It’s a half hour I thought I’d use as uninterrupted reading time, but it turns out Mr. Klanski likes to converse, and I oblige him, seeing as he’s old and I don’t seem to have much choice. In fact, the conversations (accompanied by faint piano scales or halting attempts at “Greensleeves”) are generally one-sided and concern his daytime form of entertainment now that he’s retired: soap operas. He likes to update me on the happenings of the people who live in towns with names like Rose Haven or Port Rogers or Eden Prairie.
“And then Dr. Marshall revealed to Teryn that not only had he delivered her of her baby, he was her real father!”
“Wait a second. Are you saying Dr. Marshall is Teryn’s father, or Teryn’s baby’s father?”
“Well, Teryn’s father, of course! Wouldn’t you think she’d know who her baby’s father is?”
Sometimes I want to tell him, Wait a minute, if you want soap opera, come on down to Freesia Court.
For example, in a plot twist none of us saw coming, Todd Trottman ran off with a nineteen-year-old teller at his bank.
“He went in to make a deposit and instead took out a big withdrawal,” Leslie Trottman explained gamely when AHEB decided to make a charitable contribution (a pan of brownies and an afternoon’s worth of sympathy) to the Collections Queen. “And the thing that really gets me is she used to wait on me! She was always so nice, writing in my balance, telling me how she liked my outfit, how cute my kids were. I even complimented her to the bank manager—I said, ‘You ought to give that Miss Jenson a rais
e, she’s just the most polite teller.’ Oh, I’ll bet she and Todd got a big laugh out of that!”
Even though Leslie Trottman was my personal syrup of ipecac, I was able to stop gagging long enough to feel sorry for her. I think she really did believe in the life she was living; she really did believe that Todd was her Prince Charming, that the 2.3 children (their snarly Pekinese is included because Leslie always treated him like a baby) they had created would be heirs to their entitled Republican kingdom, that by wearing headbands that matched your clothing you somehow made a stand against chaos.
Leslie moved back to Missoula—Audrey says her father owns half the state of Montana—and Helen Hammond got a postcard whose message was pure Leslie: It took some teeth-pulling, but I’m engaged to an orthodontist!!!!
Then it turns out our friend Audrey has a psychic gift, although I just think it’s women’s intuition revved up a notch (which of us hasn’t known when something’s not right with our husband or one of our kids?). She doesn’t really talk about it, not like she talked about what was happening between her and Paul (who now look headed for divorce court). See, Mr. Klanski—scandal, ESP, divorce, and we even have a gay couple on the block, now that Stuart and Grant bought old man McDermitt’s house. Not only is Stuart gay, he’s Japanese! I mean, we’re covering all kinds of demographics here.
Seeing as she lived next to him, Audrey had known Mr. McDermitt the best, and so I asked her, “When did the old man get so liberal?”
“Topping the list of things that old man McDermitt really hates is kids,” said Audrey, laughing. “And I’m sure my boys did their share in reinforcing that particular bias. Remember when they were trying to dig to China in his tomato patch?”
“I could hear him hollering, and I was down in my basement doing laundry.”
“Exactly. I think the idea of more kids trampling through his backyard or, heaven forbid, through the house where he and his beloved Mrs. McDermitt had shared so many happy, childless years was just too much for him. When Stuart and Grant appeared, he couldn’t put up the Sold sign fast enough.”
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