“I want to go to a fancy place, but I want to go at a time when no concerns are hanging over our heads.”
Jane put her hands up. “Have it your way. We’ll wait.”
Kelsey shrugged.
“But I am going with you for the test,” I said.
“I’m not your baby anymore,” Jane said, impatient.
“Yes, you are,” I said jokingly, trying to loosen us back up.
“I’m. A. Big. Girl. Now. Mother.”
Be a big girl, Abbie Glenn had once said to me. Memories clogged my mind. More every day. So many memories rushing, rushing.
I felt light-headed. I felt—
“Grandma, are you okay? Grandma.”
“Let’s get her to the couch,” Jane said.
My head lolled back onto the cushioned sofa. Memories were spinning faster than I could sort through—Kelsey in college, Jane as a girl, my baby kicking, doctors and tests and results.
The woman with the beauty mark.
Kelsey forced me to sip some water. I opened my eyes.
“Grandma, say something.”
“Mom,” Jane whispered, squeezing my hand gently. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m okay,” I said. I sat erect to try to prove it. I set the tumbler of water on the end table, not too shaky.
“You had me worried.” Sweet Kelsey.
“Too much monkey bread?” Jane said. We chuckled.
I said, “Please let me be with you at the mammogram.”
“Fine. I don’t get why you’ve always been so protective. But you can take me for the test, if it will make you feel better.”
I exhaled, relieved. I’d ensure no one hurt my daughter.
But after today there was no question left in my mind. The time was coming. I would tell the girls my story. I had to get it out.
Jane and I must fully reconcile before it was too late for either of us.
CHAPTER EIGHT
August 1950
“That was delicious,” Dennis said from his seat at the head of the table. After Swiss steak, I’d served him baked Alaska for dessert. It was a layer of vanilla cake beneath strawberry ice cream and toasted meringue, which I’d scrolled into peaks and curlicues—simple though extravagant-looking, just like in the magazine. I had set the table with my Fiestaware plates in their hallmark color of old ivory. Black-eyed Susans graced the coordinating yellow vase. And two lit tapers flickered in the candleholders of classic Fiesta green.
“You make a man feel like a king,” Dennis said. “No one makes Swiss steak as good as you. And with this dessert, it’s a whole meal fit for royalty.”
I was genuinely glad he thought so, and not merely because it played into my plans. I liked to cook. And I liked making him happy.
As I poured him coffee after clearing his plate, my hands shook. It was do or die, as they say. Either my plan—well, Pauline’s plan for me—would work or it wouldn’t. By evening’s end I’d know my future fate when it came to the business.
“Honey, I have news,” I said, standing beside him and stroking the cloth of my apron. No matter how this all turned out, I was sure to have one thing I wanted: another baby, another step closer to the big family of my dreams. “Janie’s going to have a little brother or sister.”
“Mil, that’s wonderful news. Hot diggity-dog.” He scooted back his chair and stood, almost knocking it down in his excitement.
Half an hour later, breathless and sated, I looked up to Dennis, who was atop me in a tangle of damp bedsheets. “I’m feeling better at this stage than I did last time, far better,” I said. “Fewer signs of morning sickness. This pregnancy is going to go smoothly. You’ll see.”
“More wonderful news,” he said, and kissed the tip of my nose. “Maybe that means it’s a boy?”
I purred. “So there’s no need for my business duties to lessen this time.”
Dennis rolled off me and flopped onto his back in the bed.
“I mean, I can continue as I do now,” I went on. “With some work for the business from home.”
“With all the mailings and accounting? I don’t think so, Mil.”
I felt myself sink into the mattress. Managing to summon the voice of an angel, though, I said, “I do think so.”
He still faced the ceiling. “Janie hasn’t even started to walk, and you’ll soon have two little critters darting around.” He turned on the pillow to get a direct look at me. “I won’t put that kind of pressure on you. You can leave all the business worries to me.”
It was as if the metal coil springs of the bed had sprung and dug into my back. My legs stiffened beneath the damp cotton sheet. “Worries? Phooey. I—”
“All our friends’ wives care for their homes and children; they don’t have jobs. They don’t even want them. And they certainly don’t need them. You don’t either. Things are different than when I was just starting out and couldn’t afford any help. And we didn’t have kids then.”
“But I—”
“But nothing. Come on, I’m proud to support my family.”
My face burned. I couldn’t even speak anymore, as my teeth had locked together. The Gunnison home catalog echoed in my head: Man’s Greatest Gift to Woman.
Dennis brushed a strand of hair from my sticky forehead. “Running this home is job enough.” He propped up on one elbow and swept his other arm about the room. “You’re in charge of this whole domain.”
Whole domain? I wanted to oversee all these things in my domain. I loved them. I didn’t mind the dishes or running the vacuum. But I wanted my homemaking and mothering missions both—and the business, too. The business contented me in ways Dennis didn’t understand. Seemed he’d forgotten that I’d been there since the beginning—we had begun as business partners, much as his parents were on the farm. Without me Dennis wouldn’t be where he was. He had long called me the prettiest girl a guy ever got, not to mention the smartest; so why wasn’t he letting me use all my smarts?
Then my wedding vows rang in my head like tinkling little nuptial bells: I had promised to love, to cherish, and to obey.
The bells resounded in my head louder and louder. How literally was the vow “to obey” to be interpreted? And if Dennis cherished me, as the words of his vows had proclaimed, would he not in these matters consider my true heart’s content?
“Mil, you don’t need to mope,” my husband said, climbing out of the bed. “This case is closed.”
Pauline and I pushed Janie and Tommy through the Cincinnati Zoo in the kids’ matching blue strollers we’d bought at Shillito’s department store. The weather was less humid, and the zoo—the second oldest in the country after Philadelphia’s—boasted lush gardens and canopies of trees for shade. It had opened the year after Opa was born, and he’d told me of his grandfather bringing him here back when the guidebooks were printed in German. Our metal strollers were a godsend, steering easily around the path’s bends with three wheels. And they had built-in snack trays and attached colored beads that kept small, idle hands busy.
In the last two weeks my second pregnancy had continued along splendidly, yet Dennis had reduced my duties just as he’d said he would. I had only one mailing to send out per week now. And even my balancing the checkbook was in question.
“Don’t overtax yourself,” Dennis had said. “Wouldn’t want anything to lead to another medical complication. Like the first time you were pregnant.”
It was clear there was no hope for expanding my duties once my baby was born. No decorating consultations. No waiting at lots for kits to be delivered.
That morning, before leaving for the zoo, I had fried Dennis’s over-easy eggs a tad over-hard and left his starched white shirts with wrinkles.
The kiddies jiggled in their seats as we passed the giraffes eating leaves off treetops. We all enjoyed other African animals, too. “Janie, see the mommy elephant and the baby elephant?” I said, pointing. “See how their long trunks help them drink water?” Janie was only nine months old and To
mmy nearly a year. They wouldn’t remember this day. But our excursion was as much to get Pauline and me out of the house as it was them. I only had a finite amount of clothes to fold while Janie napped. And it wasn’t productive for me to sew more clothes than she could possibly wear. I was beginning to be bored out of my head.
I needed to earn. I needed to feel useful. Were I a painter, I’d need to paint with my full palette of colors.
“Tommy,” Pauline said. “Honey, sit. You mustn’t climb out of the seat.”
We stopped at a food stand, and I bought a big soft pretzel. I brushed most of the coarse salt off it, tore it into many tiny bites, and dropped them onto the children’s snack trays a few at a time. Pauline and I shared a whole one ourselves.
We soon came to the apes, chimpanzees, and monkeys. Given the season, some gorillas were exhibited in outdoor cages, instead of indoors behind glass. As I took in the sight of a female gorilla lazily lying in a hammock in her cage strewn with straw, a feeling overcame me as if I would be sick—but it had nothing to do with my pregnancy.
“Did you ever see Susie while growing up?” I asked Pauline while noisy monkeys entertained the kids.
“The Susie the Gorilla? Yes,” she said. “The one who ate table food.”
“That’s the one.” While on a date years before, Dennis and I had seen Susie, the gorilla who’d come over in a zeppelin as a baby—but who had matured into the famous “World’s Only Trained Gorilla.” I had been enthralled with her. While I was growing up, the zoo invited children to her birthday party each year, and the newspaper showed pictures of kids getting to eat cake and ice cream, with Susie eating it, too. My family couldn’t afford to take me. But Dennis had later found a way to let me see Susie, even if it wasn’t her birthday. We’d been amazed at how Susie sat on a stool at a small dining table beside her trainer, inside the cage. So polite. She drank malted milk and fed herself with a fork . . . strawberries, pineapples, and rice. When the trainer asked her to kiss him, she puckered up her full, fat lips and smacked him right on his chops. We had applauded with all of the crowd.
Now as I stood before another adult female gorilla, the only images floating through my head were of Susie surrounded by metal bars, eating with a fork, and kissing her trainer. Silverware, kisses, a trainer. And a cage.
Was I any better off than Susie?
“Millicent?” Pauline said. “Time to get off your feet for a bit?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s move on.”
Pauline was first to speak after a long time strolling. “I’ve found a new doctor. A new OB. You may like him, too.”
“Oh, really? So tell me about him.”
When Thanksgiving rolled around a few months later, the entire family gathered at the farm. The men huddled around the radio in the living room to listen to the football game. Our gaggle of nieces and nephews sprawled on the rug playing a game of Chutes and Ladders. Seven-year-old Margaret grinned up at me with her front teeth missing and said, “Auntie Millie, Mommy’s belly is bigger than yours.”
“Sweetie,” I said with a chuckle, “your mommy will have your baby brother or sister before my baby comes.” Abbie’s baby would be born in January. Mine was due in late March.
Mother Glenn’s kitchen was abuzz with the women preparing the feast. She, of course, had first baked pies with all her grandkids—letting each in their turn spoon out the pumpkin or pinch the doughy rims of the crusts. I set to chopping apples and walnuts with Abbie for the Waldorf salad. Dennis’s oldest sister basted the gobbler, a fat twenty-three pounder, and said, “This electric roaster is the most wonderful contraption Westinghouse ever invented.”
“Your Margaret is so good with Janie,” I said to Abbie in the spirit of what the day meant. Janie had loved Abbie’s daughter to play peekaboo with her months ago, and Margaret still made her laugh. “Margaret is excited about becoming a big sister.”
“She’ll be a huge help,” Abbie said. “I don’t know what she’ll think if it’s another brother, though. She’s got her heart set on a sister.”
“She’ll love the baby either way, I imagine,” I said.
“How about you? The way you’re carrying so low, everyone thinks you’ll have a boy,” she said. “What does Dr. Welch predict?”
“Actually, I’m thinking about moving to a different doctor.”
Abbie stopped chopping. “Why would you want to do that?”
“For one thing, he’s closer in. Mount Auburn. And he’s a specialist.” After more visits with Dr. Welch in the country, I had come to conclude that he was too old-fashioned. He still referred to me in the third person, and he hadn’t veered from, “Once a cesarean, always a cesarean. And no more than two babies.” Besides, I still held a grudge that his nurse couldn’t keep my private medical records to herself the last time around. She’d had no business telling Abbie my news.
Abbie resumed her chopping, her eyebrows arched. “Well, Dr. Welch is no young specialist, but he’s quite experienced,” she said so loud the others couldn’t miss it, and I caught our mother-in-law eyeing us. Did Mother Glenn side with Abbie? Or think Abbie was butting in?
Then for my ears only, Abbie muttered, “He’s talented, despite his being way out here in the sticks.”
“I just want to see what the other OB says,” I said innocuously.
Then I stood there wondering why I’d opened my mouth to her to start with—and also wondering why her opinion should matter to me. I wasn’t set on the new doctor yet, but if it meant Abbie Glenn wouldn’t have access to my medical records, perhaps that’d be the main reason to go. And I could show her that I had a mind of my own to make my own decisions.
“Well, if you insist, then—” Abbie said, dogged to have the last word.
“Papa Glenn, time to carve the bird,” Mother Glenn called out while looking warmly at me. It was as if I’d just been saved by the bell. I couldn’t help but smile at her.
CHAPTER NINE
December 1950
Dennis rolled up the blueprints for work, his gaze not meeting mine. We’d had a wonderful weekend sawing down our Douglas fir at the farm after hunting for just the right one, and stringing on electric lights with bulbs the size of my thumbs. Dennis had climbed up four rungs of the ladder to top the tree with a gold metal angel, and we’d hung glittered glass ornaments all about. Janie had squealed with delight and pointed her chubby fingers at the glow of red, green, yellow, and blue in the window of our living room. Now Dennis packed the last of his files in his briefcase.
“I’m meeting the new doctor, Dr. Collins, tomorrow,” I said in case he hadn’t heard me the first time. “Pauline will drive me if you can’t get away.”
Dennis hoped to finish one more house before the first snow, so he’d had his mind on his jobs. But he frowned as he took a rubber band and wound it around the last set of rolled-up blueprints.
“I thought we’d decided after Thanksgiving that you’d stick with Dr. Welch again.”
The conversation to which he referred had been mostly one-sided. I’d said I was going to look into a new OB. Dennis had said, “Why not stick with who the family uses? Even though he’s a little farther out.” I’d said, “It’s more than a ‘little farther’ out, but that’s beside the point.” And he’d said, “Can’t beat Dr. Welch,” and he’d left the room with my mouth poised to speak.
Now when I didn’t reply, Dennis looked up. “You’ve changed your mind?” He picked up his hard hat and went for his coat.
Nothing had changed. I had decided all by myself. I would try the OB Pauline recommended.
“I’m going to Dr. Collins. See what he says.” I smiled. “Building houses is your business,” I said. “Running our home, caring for the family, and caring for myself is mine. Choosing a doctor is in my domain, then, right?” I resisted the impulse to stress the word domain, what Dennis had called my kingdom.
“I’ll be late,” he said, ignoring me. “I’ve got an appointment tonight to review plans for a
couple on the hill.”
What couple? A new house on the hill? I felt more and more left out.
“Of course. I’ll keep some tuna-noodle casserole warm. And Pauline can take me to the doctor tomorrow.” Until Pauline got her own transportation, we’d traded off. One day each week Bob left his wife his car, and on one day each week Dennis did the same with me. The Irvings were a two-car family now. Pauline had her own Chevrolet in vista gray metallic—quite the neighborhood sensation.
“I’ll squeeze it in,” Dennis said. “If you want to meet this guy, Mil, so do I.”
I felt proud of my assertiveness. I reached to hug him, but he put on his yellow hard hat and was off. He’d left me feeling chilled.
I had my daughter to focus on, though. It was the holidays, and for the first time she had picked up on some of the season’s magic. I looked forward to the years to come. Lots of children. Milk and cookies for Santa. Carrots and celery for Rudolph. And dollies and tricycles and stuffed bears beneath the tree. I rubbed my belly, and my baby kicked. Janie’s baby sister? Brother?
Janie toddled from the ottoman to the red wool womb chair, jabbering, “Mommy, Mommy.” Her little white lace-up leather baby shoes crossed the carpeting as quick as they could go. I already planned to have those ankle-high shoes bronzed and mounted and put on display when she grew out of them.
I sat her in her high chair with a lidded cup filled with juice. Janie had four sprouts of teeth, two up and two down. I took out a piece of dense melba toast she could chew until it softened enough to swallow, which seemed to feel good on her sore gums. I put a record album of holiday carols on Dennis’s new hi-fi set and sang along to “Frosty the Snowman” with Jimmy Durante.
I wrapped gifts and washed Janie’s sticky hands with a damp cloth, attending to each tiny finger in its turn. I took my precious girl in my arms and went to change her green-knitted top and diaper. Then I carried her to the big, red womb chair.
“Janie want a Christmas story?” I sat her on my lap, though I had a lot less lap than before.
Millicent Glenn's Last Wish: A Novel Page 11