“Because I must. I’ve just received word that he’s…he’s…” A tear appeared in the outside corner of her left eye. She took a deep breath and went on. “He’s all alone now, a broken man, and I’m catching the first plane to Buffalo. In less than two hours I’ll be in Evansdale, by his side.” She reached out and stroked his hand. “I shall always treasure the memory of your kindness to me.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek good-bye.
Waiting for the elevator, he tried to remember the soft touch of her lips on his face, but it was impossible. Some woman was filling the echoing hallway with shrill laughter.
14
THE WALLS of the hospital room were not the usual white; they could have been a light green. The iron frame of the bed was chipped brown. One of the patient’s legs was covered by the sheet; the other was suspended at a thirty-degree angle from his body. His face and head were heavily bandaged.
Mitchell did not know whether or not the patient was awake until the door began slowly to open and Nancy entered. Then through the layers of bandage, the patient sighed.
Seeing her, Mitchell sighed too. She wore the white silk blouse, somehow clean, and a dark, tight skirt. Her nose was no longer swollen. “Greg?” She stood close to the door, as if expecting to be chased away.
The bandaged head moved from side to side.
She stepped into the room. “I came as soon as I heard, Greg. How do you feel?”
He did not answer; the bandages muffled his sobs. “Go away, Nancy. Go back to Buffalo, or go to New York. Go anywhere, but leave Evansdale and start yourself a new life.”
“Do you really want me to go? I mean—do you still want to marry Crystal Blair?” She stood now at the foot of his bed, grasping the iron railing with her white gloved hands.
“Didn’t they tell you?” He shook his head. “Crystal’s dead. She was driving. She’d picked me up and I’d just told her that I wasn’t going to divorce you.” He tried to sit up, excited. “That’s the truth, Nancy. Really the truth. It was all over between Crystal and me.”
“I know, dear. I know you never loved her.”
“I don’t think I ever did, not really, not in any deep and lasting way.” He paused for a moment, as Nancy took a seat next to his bed. “I told her I wasn’t going to leave you, that I couldn’t live her kind of life. She became furious and began to drive faster, up and down those roads out near Lyma. We must’ve been going a hundred, and I tried to make her slow down, but she wouldn’t. She opened the window and the wind was blowing through her raven-black hair. She turned to me and called me a coward. ‘You don’t know how to live, Greg,’ she said. ‘You don’t know how to live because you don’t know how to take what you want. You’re a coward because you always, always, always ask.’ Those were her last words. Headlights appeared out of the blackness…on our side of the road. And that’s all I remember until I woke up here. Oh Nancy, will you ever forgive me? Can I ever make it up to you?”
Mitchell saw Nancy’s hand creep across the sheet and into Greg’s. “We’ll see, dear. You can, if you try hard enough.”
Mitchell left the room, knowing they would want privacy. Or perhaps he himself wanted privacy. He was glad the German woman and Tam were not at home. For a while, he thought about getting into bed, but finally decided against it; in bed, he would think about Nancy. No, he did not want privacy at all.
He showered, shaved, and put on fresh clothes. If he hurried, he could put in a full afternoon of work, the best thing for him.
* * *
—
THE BLANKET ON their bed was light green. Beneath it, Tam slept on her back, her stomach silhouetted against the window’s square of dark sky. It reminded him of a magazine photograph he had once seen, of an Indian burial mound in the middle of the prairie.
He rolled over, away from her, and wondered if the new baby would come early. At seven and a half months, she was almost as large as she had been just before Jake was born.
“You awake, Mitchell?” She did not sound as if she had been sleeping.
“Yes.”
“Why?” She waited, then asked another question. “Not doing anything nasty, are you?”
“No, Tam.” He did not want to talk to her.
She was silent for a moment. “Whatever happened to that girl you wanted to leave me for?”
“I’m sorry, Tam.”
“All right. But whatever happened to her?”
“She went back to her husband.”
“So you had to limp home.” The bed shifted; she must be on her side now. “You see, Mitchell, your mistake was that you spoke too soon.” She was whispering. “You should have made sure of her, before you said anything to me.” Her hands were moving up and down his back, from his shoulders to his waist. “You played your cards all wrong. For a while, you could’ve had us both.” She pulled loose his pajama top, began to scratch his back with her fingernails.
After a while, he rolled to face her, to kiss her, but she pushed him away. “You can’t now, Mitchell. You’ll break my water.”
“I’m sorry.”
It was light before he finally got to sleep…
Twins
1
“TWINS?” All these long months Mitchell had imagined one baby, sexless, faceless even, coiled, waiting—tube, arms, and legs. Now he tried to picture two babies. But the four hands, four legs, and two heads would not separate. Mitchell’s mind created a monster. “Why didn’t you tell us she’d be having twins?”
“You’re no special victim, Mr. Pierce.” The doctor’s beard was a Vandyke, a gray triangle that dripped to a point just between the wings of his bow tie. He squinted over the rim of his coffee cup, as if even he could not believe it. “I usually don’t tell until the last month or so. But you really had plenty of warning.” He lit a cigaret and exhaled, smoke clinging to his beard. “Have another cup of coffee. They won’t be cleaned up yet.”
“Plenty of warning?” Mitchell wondered if he could have forgotten such news.
“Certainly. I told Mrs. Pierce last month—six weeks ago.” He rested on his elbows. “You see, there’s more than enough worry connected with childbirth, even for a second-timer like Mrs. Pierce, so when I realized she’d be doing, as they say, double duty, I kept it from her until the last possible moment. That’s my usual procedure.” He stopped, then as an afterthought: “Of course, I do tell the…charity people right away. They have a great deal to prepare for. But then, they always seem to know anyway. Black magic.” Suddenly, for no reason, he was stricken with a series of dry coughs.
“But our apartment is too small.”
The doctor nodded, the beard-point stabbing downward into his chest. “Fraternal twins.” He stared at Mitchell, his gray eyes fastening for a long moment on Mitchell’s nose, then moving up to his hair. “Mrs. Pierce is darker,” he mumbled into his cup.
Mitchell smoothed his dry hair. “What?”
“I was just…wondering…” He was watching Mitchell’s nose again, almost as if he expected it to move.
“What?”
“You say Mrs. Pierce didn’t tell you?”
Mitchell shook his head. He and Tam had very little to say to each other.
“That’s it then. Perhaps somehow she sensed…” He turned toward the counter of the hospital’s cafeteria. Mitchell did the same, his eyes sliding along the dull aluminum until they came to a nurse’s plump buttocks. Her black neck and face grew out of her white collar. Her nurse’s cap sat atop close-cropped crinkly hair. “Many Africans study here. Very eager, those people.”
“Do you mean she knew it’d be twins before you told her?” Mitchell realized that his confusion must flow from the entirely new idea that he was the father of three, not two.
The doctor sighed; Mitchell looked at him.
“Mr. Pierce, I think I owe it to you, not as a doctor to a
patient’s husband, but as one man to another, to give you a little course in elementary genetics. Would you like another cup of coffee?” He stopped. “By the way, just where are you from?”
“Me? New York.”
“Would you mind me asking how long your…people have been here?” The doctor squinted again, pained.
Mitchell was embarrassed; he did not like talking about his family. “Since 1664. My whatever-you-say was one of the three hundred men with Colonel Nicolls when he took New Amsterdam from the Dutch. But—”
“And your wiffffe?”
Mitchell did not like the way the doctor held onto the “f” in the word. “Washington, the city. What is all this?”
“That must be it. Mr. Pierce, I have to explain something to you, about your babies. But first I feel compelled to say that with conditions as they are today, this is a very understandable situation. It’s a pity, I suppose, you must discover it under these circumstances. After all, the children are not really responsible. As I started to say, it’s no more than a genetic accident. According to scientific theory, things like this aren’t supposed to happen. But then,” he shrugged, “we don’t know everything.”
Mitchell did not at all understand the doctor, but something terrible was lurking in the air between them. He leaned forward into that terrible thing. “Is something…wrong…with one of the babies?”
The doctor hesitated. “No…no…not the way I think you mean it. They’re both…healthy. But one of them…its appearance…” He stopped to light another cigaret. “You understand, they are fraternal twins. That means—”
“That two eggs? Dropped into the…the…”
“That’s right. Just the same as if your wife had two perfectly normal pregnancies, only at the same time.”
“But one isn’t normal. What’s wrong with it?”
Two or three nurses looked at their table, toward his rising voice.
“As I say,” the doctor whispered, “nothing is exactly wrong with it. In fact, if anything it’s the healthier of the two. Tell me, Mr. Pierce, how much do you know about your wife’s family?”
Mitchell’s confusion was tiring him; he slumped into his chair. “About as much as the usual, I guess.”
“Yes, well, these things can go all the way back to before the Civil War, though the chances are remote that it would show itself so alarmingly.” A look of deep sympathy, even pity, came into the doctor’s face. “You don’t understand, do you, Mr. Pierce.”
Mitchell shook his head.
The doctor looked at his watch. “We can go up now. I imagine that’s the best way. Nothing I can say will make it any less difficult.” He stood up. “Shall we go?”
Mitchell followed obediently.
2
THE ELEVATOR RIDE was smooth, and silent; they did not speak. Stepping into the corridor, Mitchell noticed a group of nurses gathered before a large plate-glass window. Among them was the nurse who had taken Tam’s suitcase when they arrived at the hospital early that morning. She did most of the talking now, while the others, some Black, some white, listened quietly. The nurse who lectured was white and the faces of the other white nurses seemed troubled. The Black girls, most of them standing on the outside of the group, were smiling. As Mitchell and the doctor got nearer the window, the lecturer saw them, and whispered to the others. They all scattered, disappearing into rooms and hallways, except for a Black nurse, who came toward Mitchell and stopped. “You have a lovely baby, Mr. Pierce.”
Mitchell noticed the doctor turn away. The girl was gone before he could thank her.
The doctor reached out his hand. “Have you those cards I gave you, Mr. Pierce?”
Mitchell searched his pockets, found the cards, and handed them over. The doctor marched ahead of him. By the time Mitchell reached the glass, the doctor had stepped back. “They’re already right in front.” He seemed not to know what more to say. “I’m going to look in on your wife.”
And he was gone.
Mitchell stepped up to the window. Four babies lay in white plastic baskets just inside the glass. The first, on the left, sleeping on its side, was Black, a film of gray over its brown skin, its curly hair matted to a lumpy head. Its nose seemed much too wide for its face, the nostrils large and round. The second from the left was bald. Its skin too was grayish, its nose half the size of a dime. On its left wrist was a tube of plastic: inside the tube, a strip of paper with Mitchell’s name: PIERCE.
“It looks all right,” he whispered to himself.
He inspected the third, bald also, with the same gray skin as the one he knew was his. He could not see its bracelet. But it was his; he knew because the fourth baby was much redder, must have been at least a week old, its straight black hair dry.
So numbers two and three were his. But he was puzzled; neither seemed at all deformed. There were no strange bumps; their limbs looked straight. He counted the fingers on the three hands he could see; one of number three’s hands was hidden beneath the thin blanket. Perhaps the trouble was inside, no stomach, or two stomachs in one and none in the other. That happened sometimes. But the doctor, he remembered now, had mentioned something about its appearance.
He bent closer to the window and inspected them again, and noticed now that number three was a bit more pink than number two. That was it; either number two was too gray or number three was too red. But he could not decide which and wished the doctor would return.
“Hey, I want you to got a cigar. He from home; qué palabra? smug-led from Cuba.” The Cuban, a large head and chest on short bowed legs, was slapping Mitchell’s left shoulder. He was fair, with light eyes and straight, oily black hair. “You look at my son, hah? Wow, I got a big, beautiful son there.”
“He’s big, all right.” Mitchell looked at the week-old. “How old is he?”
“Three hours already. He big.” He began to pound his chest with his fist. “He big, right? Like me. I’m bull. Big chest, little legs. A bull.”
Mitchell was truly impressed. “Three hours? He’s big, all right.” He took a step to his right to get a better look at the week-old. Perhaps at close range, he would be able to see signs of the battle of birth. He found none. The baby was indeed a bull. “Three hours? I wouldn’t believe it if you weren’t telling me.”
“What you do?” The Cuban’s voice was brittle with suspicion.
Mitchell straightened up and smiled. He had not meant to question the Cuban’s honesty. He had heard that such people were very tender about these matters. “I only meant…” He stopped when he saw the puzzled look on the Cuban’s face.
“What you do? You look at wrong baby. This one.” He tapped the glass, leaving a fingerprint. “This one.”
The Cuban pointed not at the week-old, but at one of Mitchell’s new twins, number three.
“Oh. Well. I think…you must be mistaken.”
“Me taken? Shit! What you say, hombre? Aquí, aquí. My son.”
Mitchell shook his head slowly; he would continue to be reasonable. “If you could see the band on its wrist, you’d see it was mine.”
“No, mine!” The Cuban snapped to attention, then quietly: “You crazy, man.” For the next twenty seconds, it was all Spanish, very fast, not popping like Puerto Rican, but a little clearer with a whistling quality to it.
Mitchell reached out and tried to calm him, but the Cuban shook away his hand.
“You no touch me, crazy! Listen, I am here before about five minutes. Are cuatro niños here. Número uno: el negrito. Número dos: el blanco. Número tres: muchacho mio. Número quatro: el grande. You understand? Now, número cuatro, he is here when my son is come. Even I meet his father. Mr….Mr….Papaleo, an Italian? Bald? You see him? No, you don’t see nothing. So, I go away five minutes, to the john, and when I come back, you are here and you are so in love with my son that you him want to steal.” He squared his s
houlders, which were quite broad. “I no let you, man. I no let you.”
Mitchell had read about such situations, hospital mix-ups, courtroom battles, the fathers grim as winter, the mothers crying. And worse. He looked at the four babies, especially at number three and thought he saw now that not only was it red, but that it did not look anything like him or Tam.
He tapped, then pounded with his fist on the window, which began to quiver. Behind the glass, in their plastic baskets, the noise broke into the babies’ sleep. The week-old, Papaleo, began to cry, arms and legs jerking like an unoiled mechanical doll. The Cuban’s son—Mitchell knew now that it was not his own—began to rock from side to side. His baby wrinkled its face as if the sound of Mitchell’s fist was an evil odor. Number one rolled from side to back, yawned, and for the first time, Mitchell could see the band on its wrist.
He stopped pounding.
El negrito, as the Cuban called it, was named Pierce.
3
BUT THE KNOCKING had already brought seven nurses running and the doctor. On the other side of the glass, two nurses, bandits in white masks, were snatching the babies away from the window. The remaining five nurses ringed Mitchell and the Cuban as if to pounce with straitjackets and hypodermic needles loaded with tranquilizer. The doctor hovered behind them; now and again his head would appear over the shoulder of one of the nurses. Mitchell backed up against the glass and waited.
“He’s all right. He’s all right.” Mitchell could not see the doctor.
“But, doctor, he was trying to break the glass.”
“No, no. He’s all right. He’s just had a shock.” The doctor moved from nurse to nurse, an advocate. “He didn’t know. You understand? He didn’t know until just now. But,” peering at Mitchell through a space between two nurses, “he’s calm now. He’s all right.”
The nurses began to relax. The Cuban looked at the crazy North Americans.
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