Montauk

by Nicola Harrison

  The husband glanced up at me, perhaps feeling my gaze, and I quickly looked away, picking up a medical journal from the side table and flicking through the pages, wondering what they thought of me, in the waiting room alone.

  I had been to the lady doctor before; in fact, it was a group outing in the first two weeks of college. One of the girls got a steady boyfriend and the talk started about taking “the natural next step.” So a few of us went with Cat Fowler, big bosomed and wide hipped with a tiny waist and a confident smile. She made as if it were no big deal, four of us walking into the Birth Control Clinic, stuffing pamphlets into our bags that described everything from sponges to pessaries to coils to thimbles to jellies, while she asked for the name of a doctor. We hovered nervously in the waiting room, until we were kicked out for whispering too loudly, and out she walked with a small plastic box in her hand, holding the magic contraption that would allow her to engage in sexual intercourse freely without fear of an unwanted pregnancy.

  Back in the dormitories we crowded into her room, sitting on the bed, the desk, wherever there was a space to see, while she removed her undergarments, took out the round plastic cap dusted with talcum powder, folded it the way the doctor instructed, then crouched down and stuck it between her legs while we all looked on in wonder. She then stood up and walked around the room, even did a little dance just to prove it was firmly in place.

  Intentionally or not, I saved myself for my wedding night and never had the need for a diaphragm or contraceptive jellies or a douche bag that hung on the back of the bathroom door.

  But this was an entirely different visit. I was not trying to block the happily swimming sperm from making their voyage to my ovaries with some rubber dam; I wanted instead to help them on their way, find out why they were getting lost or distracted or just lazy before they reached their destination. To save my marriage and to give myself a chance at motherhood I needed to expedite the process, and lately I had the feeling that time was running out.

  Harry and I were trying to go back to normal, I suppose, but things still felt tense and distant between us, despite our talk about having a baby. We tried to be close before he went back to the city, but my body didn’t loosen up and cooperate. It felt as though we didn’t fit each other anymore.

  And yet after he left, when alone at night, my mind wandered freely and my body seemed womanly and just fine. Falling asleep, I’d drift into different scenarios, my body relaxing into each chance encounter. I wondered what life would be like if I lived in a small town like Montauk, working hard to make ends meet, sitting down at the end of a long day with a big, busy family around the kitchen table, everyone ravenous. Hungry but happy, me cleaning the dishes as the kids got washed and changed into pajamas, putting them to bed one at a time, except for the older ones who put themselves to bed, dog tired, their long, awkward limbs hanging over the sides of the bed. After the kids were asleep, falling into bed tired but satisfied. The man beside me in the wood-framed bed, tired after working all day but eager for me. I imagined his body without his damp undershirt, the salt, the taste, the scent of him, and my body worked just fine.

  They were silly thoughts, fantasies, but I needed to put an end to them if I still wanted to bring Harry back into my life and back into our marriage. Giving him a child would remedy everything, a child for him, for us and for his family. It was the missing piece and it was the thing that had sent our relationship into this awkward state of uncertainty for too long. If I could just get to that point, I was sure everything else would fall into place.

  “Mrs. Bordeaux,” the middle-aged woman with small, round glasses called my name, and I felt relieved that I’d be seeing a woman about this matter. But my relief was short lived.

  “Take it all off,” the woman instructed. “The brassiere, the girdle and the stockings,” she said, handing me a robe as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world.

  After she took my vitals and measurements in the examination room she introduced me to the doctor. He was completely bald except for a thin ring of wiry-looking grey that wrapped around the back of his head from ear to ear.

  “Name?” he asked.

  “Beatrice Bordeaux.”

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Any pregnancies? Stillborns?”

  “No.”

  “So,” he said finally, peering at me. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Well.” I shifted uncomfortably, pulling my robe around my body and crossing my arms over my chest. “My husband and I are trying to conceive a baby and we are having no luck.”

  “How long have you been trying?”

  “Since we were married five years ago,” I said.

  “Ah,” he said, pulling at the longest parts of his moustache on either side of his downturned mouth. “And how frequently do you engage in sexual intercourse?”

  I blushed, then swallowed hard. This was, after all, the whole reason for my visit, so I had to be honest.

  “Well, we used to engage quite frequently.…”

  “How frequently?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know, two times a week.” I was horrified to be telling this perfect stranger about my marital relations and I suddenly pictured him imagining them. I squeezed my arms tighter across my chest. “But lately it’s been significantly less. Just once in a long while.”

  “Well, there is your problem,” he said. “Lie back.”

  I did as I was told and felt all the muscles in my body tense up as he opened my robe and surveyed my body.

  “You mustn’t limit your sexual activity,” he said. “In some women the cervix is too tightly closed and the only way to train the body to do its reproductive job is practice.” He pushed down on my stomach with his cold hands, glanced at my breasts, gave them a little squeeze and a lift and told me to cover up and sit up.

  I wrapped the robe around me tightly and once again crossed my arms over my chest. What did my breasts have to do with getting pregnant? He looked concerned, remaining silent, tugging on his moustache again and scratching the back of his shiny head.

  “Are you an anxious woman?”

  “Anxious?” I repeated. “I’m a little concerned about why I can’t get pregnant. I’d like to have children, like every married woman.”

  “No, I mean in general, do you consider yourself to be a highly nervous person?”

  I hadn’t thought of myself in that way before, but I suppose I did feel anxious quite often, especially given the state of my marriage, my inability to become pregnant, and it was true that I didn’t particularly enjoy the company of most of the women out at the Manor. I tended to avoid them, and my run-ins with Jeanie Barnes and her group left me somewhat unsettled, going over in my head what they had said and what they meant by it. Did that make me a highly nervous individual, I wondered, or did that just make me human?

  “I wouldn’t say highly nervous,” I said, “perhaps moderately so, at times.”

  “Your body is very tense, under stress perhaps. Do you engage in relaxing activities? Do you knit or crochet? I often tell nervous patients to take up crocheting or knitting or needlepoint.”

  “Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” I asked. “Or with my husband?”

  The doctor gave me a puzzled look. “Is there reason to believe there’s something wrong with your husband? Has he had mumps or chicken pox?”

  “No.”

  “Has he been injured?”

  “No.”

  “And does he fulfill his duties and perform during sexual intercourse?”

  “You mean…”

  “Does he climax?”

  I cleared my throat. “Yes. Usually, I mean he sort of forces himself to, I think, unless he’s drunk and falls asleep.”

  “Well, then clearly there are no problems with your husband. And you, do you climax?”

  This was awful; I wished I had never set foot in this office.

  “It’s very important that you do,” he con
tinued. “The male sperm can only travel to the desired location if the woman reaches an orgasm and opens up the interior passages.”

  I looked to the floor and suddenly felt filled with grief. I couldn’t remember the last time I had climaxed with Harry. It had been at least a year, maybe two. I didn’t think it mattered and now I felt filled with shame and responsibility. This had been my fault all along.

  The doctor must have sensed my disappointment, because he softened slightly. “What’s important in situations like these is that you find a way to relax and nature will most certainly take its course. My suggestion for you is to take up relaxation in any way that feels right to you; rest, sleep in the afternoons before your husband arrives home, sew and at night relax with a small glass of brandy, every night.” He jotted these thoughts down on a prescription pad, tore off the page and handed it to me. “Take this seriously,” he said. “It’s your duty to your husband and to America.”

  I nodded.

  “And if it still doesn’t work after you do all these things then you may just have to face up to the reality that you waited too long, that the opportunity has passed you by. How old are you again?” He looked down to his chart. I couldn’t even remember my own age; the thought of missing my chance to become a mother just swallowed me whole. “Almost thirty!” he said with zest. “You’re really getting on, maybe it’s just too late, but try, really try. If nothing else do it for the sake of your husband and try to give him a son; the father always does better with boys.”

  As I walked out of the doctor’s office and into the bright daylight outside on 34th Street I thought of President Roosevelt and his announcement that voluntary childlessness was an unpatriotic act. Had I been unpatriotic in my failure to climax? In my failure to conceive in my early twenties? I was light-headed and felt as if I needed to lie down. I went into a bar next to the Empire State Building, feeling miniature and insignificant. I sat down at the bar and ordered a brandy, double, knocked it back in one shot and ordered one more.

  At the train station there was a commotion on the platform of the incoming train. Everyone was hurrying away from the last car and there were sounds of disgust and repulsion coming from passengers. I was on the opposite platform, but I could see that there was a general feeling of dissatisfaction from everyone who had been on board.

  Eventually I saw a postal worker emerge from the train car covered in what looked like dirt, carrying two large cylinders. Everyone stepped away and clearly wanted nothing to do with him. Two men in suits next to me started laughing. “Poor bugger,” one said. “Wouldn’t want to be going home to him tonight,” said the other.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Miss, you don’t want to know,” said one man.

  “I do. I do want to know; please tell me. Is he okay?”

  “This is the third time it’s happened in a week. The diaper tubes exploded again ’cause of the heat. That poor fella just got sprayed with crap that came all the way from Montauk.”

  I put my hands over my mouth and gasped.

  “You said you wanted to know.”

  * * *

  The next few days I took the doctor’s “prescription” seriously. I lounged at the Surf Club; the combination of sun and breeze felt good on my bare shoulders and legs. I kept going over in my mind what the doctor had said and it gave me alternate feelings of disappointment and newfound resolve. If all I needed to do in order to have a baby was relax and enjoy sex more, then I would do just that. Harry was planning to take a few days off work that week and come out on the Wednesday night train. I was determined to have some kind of metamorphosis before he arrived.

  At the Beach Club on Wednesday Clarissa wowed us all in a printed linen halter top and swimsuit bottoms showing an inch or two of her midriff while Jeanie remained covered up in a floor-length hooded cape that looked more appropriate for the bathroom than the beach.

  Clarissa was reading out loud from a dating advice section of Parade magazine and the others were chiming in.

  “‘Don’t drink too much, as a man expects you to keep your dignity all evening,’” Clarissa read.

  “Tell that to Betty’s cousin Susan!” Kathleen shouted out, referring to a games night they’d attended at the yacht club where the woman in question had vomited on her way to the ladies’ room from too much rum punch.

  “‘Don’t use the car mirror to fix your makeup. The man needs it in driving, and it annoys him very much to have to turn around to see what’s behind him.’” The ladies laughed.

  “Oh, I use the car mirror to put on lipstick every time we go somewhere.” Jeanie laughed.

  “Me too,” Kathleen chimed in.

  “Oh, speaking of driving, Harry’s taking the rest of the week off work. He and I are going to drive around and explore Montauk this weekend, just the two of us,” I said. I was really trying.

  “How lovely,” Jeanie said. “Saturday, I hope, not Sunday; don’t forget the golf tournament.”

  “Saturday,” I said. “I thought I might order a picnic lunch from the Manor to surprise him; there are some beautiful trails up on the cliffs for walking.”

  The ladies all thought this was a wonderful idea and started chatting about how they should do that, too, sometime, and for a moment I felt that I was fitting in quite well and this prescription for relaxing was working.

  “Yes, usually Harry doesn’t take time out for himself to just relax and take in the beautiful surroundings, he’s always going, one thing to the next to the next to the next, so I thought it would be good for him to slow down a little.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Mary Van de Coop said. “My husband is such a lazy slug, I wish he’d get off his backside and do some more activities; all he wants to do is lie on the beach chairs and be waited on.”

  Everyone chuckled because it was so true; we’d all seen it.

  “Okay, here’s a good one. ‘Do your dressing in the boudoir to maintain your allure,’” Clarissa continued to read. “‘Be ready to go when date arrives; don’t keep him waiting. Greet him with a smile!’”

  “I agree with that,” Jeanie said from her spot in the shade. “I didn’t let my husband see me dress or get made up until we had been married for several months already. Even now I try to get dolled up in private; it keeps the mystery alive.”

  “And ‘don’t talk about clothes or try to describe your new gown to a man. Please and flatter your date by talking about the things he wants to talk about,’” Clarissa read.

  “Well, that doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why couldn’t you describe a new gown to your husband? Especially if you plan to wear it in his company.”

  “Because that’s boring to men,” Jeanie said. “Fashion doesn’t appeal to them.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Dolly works in fashion; I’ll bet she talks to her husband about style.”

  Jeanie rolled her eyes. “Her husband’s old, ancient; he probably can’t even hear what she’s saying.” She laughed and the other women joined in.

  “He’s not old,” I said, feeling protective of Clark. “And Dolly is anything but boring.”

  “He’s got to be at least fifty,” Jeanie said, “and she’s no spring chicken either; she must be pushing forty. I don’t know how her husband stands it. No children, she’s out at work making those ridiculous hats while he’s left to take care of himself. And now we find out she talks to him about nothing other than herself and fashion. What a horrific bore.”

  “She’s the furthest thing from a bore.” I couldn’t stand to hear Jeanie talk of Dolly that way. I sat up and pulled my cover-up around my shoulders. “That’s what makes her interesting,” I said, “the fact that she has something else going on in her life besides parties and gossip.”

  “No children, though,” Clarissa chimed in, almost absently, flicking through the next pages of her magazine. “It’s so sad.”

  “Having a child doesn’t make a person interesting,” I snipped. I had liked Clarissa, but now she seemed as mean a
s the rest of them.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart.” Jeanie sauntered over to me and put her hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t know that childlessness was such a sensitive subject for you. You must feel quite a lot of pressure seeing all of us with our little darlings. Let’s drop it, shall we? I don’t want to see you upset.”

  “I’m not upset,” I said, feeling the blood pump through my veins. “I just think you can all be terribly rude sometimes.”

  I stood up, grabbed my beach bag and walked to the concession stand. Once there I ordered a Coca-Cola and felt all eyes on me. After a few moments I heard the conversation start up again. I didn’t look back. I drank my Coca-Cola down in one sitting, threw the bottle in the waste can and headed to the pickup area, where I flagged down George the driver.

  “Back to the Manor, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Yes, please, George,” I said as he closed my door and walked around to the driver’s side of the car. “I can’t be around these people all the time; they drive me mad.”

  He nodded his head, turned back to the steering wheel and started the engine.

  I made a beeline for the elevator. I didn’t want to see anyone in the reception room or get pulled into any afternoon activity, but the front desk receptionist called my name.

  “Mrs. Bordeaux, telephone message for you!” she called out, rushing over to me. “Your husband called. He said he’s terribly sorry, but he won’t be able to make it out to Montauk until next week due to work commitments.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Such a shame he’ll miss the golf tournament.” It was one more punch to the stomach. The doctor, the women and now this, after all that Harry had promised. “Perhaps you’ll join the synchronized swimming class tomorrow, since you’ll have more time on your hands without your husband to care for,” she said, in an apparent attempt to cheer me up.