Looking Back

by Belva Plain

  “Lucky boy,” Cecile said. “God bless him with all these people to love him, a grandfather and all the rest of you. I just left a family downstairs, a broken family. The father left home last week with another woman, and this morning the mother’s going home with their third baby.”

  “Poor little thing,” Norma said. “But what’s new? It’s all luck for every one of us. Yes, lucky Stevie, God bless him as you just said.”

  Can I blame them? Amanda asked herself. What they’re saying is perfectly normal. It’s the kind of thing people always say when a child is born.

  The sandwich, made with Larry’s habitual generosity, was enormous, and an almost untouched pitcher of orange juice remained from breakfast, so she had enough excuse not to talk. It would have taken too great an effort to pick her cautious way through conversation. Slowly she ate and drank, keeping an unfocused gaze upon the snow as it drifted and fell sadly, without purpose, onto the earth.

  Now and then, in answer to some question or remark that took no effort to acknowledge, she turned toward the others. In her strange state of mind, and she was aware how strange it was, she seemed to be seeing them in broken segments, as in one of those modernist paintings where features have been deliberately misplaced, or exaggerated, or left out. Norma was a small-shouldered body with huge, anxious eyes and a mass of bulging legs; Cecile was elongated with huge, perfect teeth in a head too small for them …

  She blinked, grasped the chair’s arms, and sat up straighter.

  “Are you okay?” asked Norma.

  “A little woozy, maybe. I think, maybe.”

  “You’d better get back into bed. Or at least lie on it,” Cecile said quickly. “Here, let me help you.”

  It was better there with the pillows behind her. Things came back into shape. Norma’s eyes were her own. Cecile was wearing her warm Irish tweed overcoat, four seasons old, but still rich looking. Waste not, want not.

  “We’re going to the nurses’ station and ask somebody to take a look at you,” Norma said. “Maybe you need something.”

  “Norma, you worry too much,” Amanda protested.

  “No, she’s right,” Cecile said. “This is only your first day, after all.”

  It had been very good of her to come and see the baby; it must have hurt her terribly, although she would never show it, or maybe not even admit it to herself. She was like a calm ocean with only a few ripples in it now and then. Storms did not brew in Cecile. She would never be where I am now, Amanda thought. Nor would Norma, either, she added as their voices faded away down the hall.

  Reality struck Amanda as she stepped through the front door. It was as if a trickster had suddenly jumped out of the hall closet and said, “Boo!”

  So here you are, said Reality, with proud husband at your side and new baby sleeping in your arms. Here you are with diapers, bottles, formula, and the rest of the paraphernalia. Here comes your good neighbor Joan with a hot dinner, and your good friend Cecile has left another hot dinner. Your good sister-in-law has stocked your freezer so that you will not have to market or cook for two weeks. There is a pile of unopened baby gifts on the floor. There is a bouquet of white tulips and white narcissi in the living room. This welcome, given what is in your heart, is enough to break your heart.

  Joan, who has three children and is expecting another, has advice. “They send you home too early these days, Amanda. You really should go right upstairs and get a long night’s sleep in your own bed. You’ll probably think that’s pampering yourself, active as you are. But it isn’t. Take my word for it. You’ll be needing all the energy you’ve got. That seven-and-a-half-pound person you’re carrying has as much energy as you have, maybe more. You’ll see.”

  “I’m taking the whole week off,” Larry said. “She’s going to rest. After that, she’ll be on her own. Hey, you haven’t had a good look. Pull the blanket back, honey, and show him off.”

  “Look at his hair!” cried Joan. “I think it’s going to be fair like yours, Amanda.”

  She only wanted to be free of them all, free of their friendliness and their talk. Lightly and cheerfully, she replied, “Hair? It’s merely fuzz.”

  “No, I think he’ll be blond. But you know what, Larry? He looks a lot like your father.”

  “Do you think so? Here, honey, I’ll take him up and lay him in the bassinet. Go on upstairs with Norma. Norma, make her lie down. Have you called Dad? Did he know what time we’d be home?”

  “He said he’d try to come over this evening.”

  “Try! What does that mean? He hasn’t seen Stevie yet.”

  “Calm down, Larry. He’ll be here.”

  “You’d think,” Norma said as she went upstairs with Amanda, “that Larry had just given birth, wouldn’t you? Men really are funny.”

  Now that Norma’s married, Amanda thought, she knows all about men, doesn’t she? She thinks she does, poor soul.

  Alone again, she lay back on the pillows, staring at the ceiling. Larry had left the newspaper on the night table. Norma had brought a small plate of fruit. Cecile had gone home, and the house was still except for the murmur of voices across the hall where Norma and Larry were tending to the baby. It was he who had listened to all the instructions that the nurses at the hospital had given. And a good thing, too, because they had simply passed through her head and been at once forgotten. There was no space in her head for anything but fear.

  After a while when she thought she heard the doorbell, the fear seized her by the throat. She knew who it was before Larry came into the bedroom.

  “I just wanted to see whether you were awake, honey. It’s Dad. He’s coming up to see Stevie, and he’ll want to stop in and say hello.”

  “No, no!” she cried. “I’m only half awake, I’m not dressed—”

  “For Pete’s sake, you’re under the blanket, and it’s only family, anyway.”

  “Larry, I said no. I don’t care who it is. Close my door. I just got home, and I want some privacy.”

  “Okay, okay. It’s ridiculous, but I’ll tell him another time. He’ll understand.”

  Listen to me, he told me. Take one day at a time.

  * * *

  Is it possible that she didn’t want the child, that it was an accident? Norma wondered on the way home. Her face looked like stone when she walked in. And not to see Dad when he came was really inexcusable, really rude, and one thing I’ve always said about her is that her manners are perfection. Yes, I wonder.

  And later Cecile, at home, was thinking about the lovely baby. Perhaps if I had some marvelous talent, if I could create, as Peter does with his whole mind and heart devoted to the Grand Project—he thinks of it in capital letters—I might not have such painful longings for a baby. To have one of your own is to create the most marvelous—Her thought broke off. I am so envious of Amanda.

  Larry was disgruntled. “If I were a healthy woman like you, I would want to breast-feed the baby. Look at Joan next door. She’s nursed all three. It’s nature’s way.”

  “Joan’s a lovely person, but I’m not Joan,” Amanda said. “What I want is to go back to work. I’m hardly the only woman who wants to these days.”

  “I don’t know how you can bear to leave him. I can’t wait to get home to him every night. He smiled at me when I changed him just now.”

  Let him think so if it makes him happy. At one month, babies don’t smile. Soon, though, he will smile, and I’ll want to look away. For why should he smile, my little boy? A sword hangs over his head. I am the one who hung it there. Larry can’t bear to leave him, and I can’t bear to be with him because he breaks my heart. So dear and innocent! What have I done to him?

  Larry complained, “Sometimes I can’t make any sense out of what you do. I told you my father was going to stop in yesterday afternoon. He’s so darn busy, I had to lasso him. And when he gets here, he finds the sitter, the kid from down the block, instead of you.”

  “I’m sorry, but I explained to you that my tooth bothered me and tha
t was the only time the dentist could see me.”

  “I don’t know what Dad thought.”

  “He didn’t think anything. You’re super sensitive, Larry.”

  “It seems to me that you are. You’ve got the world in a jug. Nice house, loving husband, baby boy, and you act as if you’re in a fog. I don’t understand it.”

  “I told you I want to go back to work.”

  “Well, who says you can’t eventually? But right now, you belong here. It costs a fortune, anyway, to get first-class care at home. That’s if you can even find somebody.”

  I have to get out of here, she thought. I can’t be cooped up here all day with my guilt. I can’t.

  “So it’s not unusual,” the doctor concluded. “You’re undergoing a slight postpartum depression. I’ll give you a mild prescription, and I’ll recommend again that you not stay isolated in the house all day. Get together for walks or a little tea party in the yard with other mothers. Your neighborhood must be loaded with them.”

  “But will you please tell my husband that I want to go to work? Not a year from now, but now? Please. I need to.”

  The doctor looked at her. “Is there something else you want to tell me?” he asked gently.

  “Thank you, no. Only that I need to go to work.”

  “I’ll tell him,” he said, still gently.

  He knows there is something really wrong with me, Amanda thought as she left. After a while, unless—unless what?—everybody will know it.

  Larry had predicted that it would not be easy to make arrangements, but he had been mistaken. A pleasant young woman, Elfrieda Webb, had been found to take care of Stevie while Amanda was at work, and Mrs. Lyons was happy to have her back.

  Now that she was out in the car, it was possible to reach L.B. by telephone. Without having any contact with him, she had been feeling as if she were floating alone on a life raft in mid-ocean. All this she explained to him as, for the first time in months, they met in the familiar room two flights above Lane Avenue. They were sitting side by side in the pair of chairs. She had thought that perhaps, after so long, they would—but no, it was impossible, anyway, so soon after giving birth. So having said all that she could think of to say, she fell silent, and since L.B. was also silent, they simply sat there staring at each other.

  Amanda spoke first. “Don’t mourn. Now it’s my turn to remind you that we love each other and we are not hurting anyone. I feel a little better already, just being in this place with you.”

  “I hate this place, Amanda, you know I do.” “There isn’t any better one for us, is there?” “That’s why I hate it, and hate myself,” he said vehemently.

  “Yes, I know. Don’t you think it’s the same for me?

  How do you think I feel when I hold that baby? I can’t even look at him sometimes. I think—I think, if he ever has to suffer because of what I did—and then I run to pick him up and hold him and cry.”

  L.B. put his hands over his face. “Oh, my God, my God,” he groaned.

  She got down on her knees and cradled his head. “Don’t, don’t,” she whispered. “You’re the one who told me that we’d get through it.”

  “That was before I saw him, and Larry holding him with that look on his face. Such joy and pride—oh, my God!”

  That simile about the raft on the ocean had meant nothing other than that she depended upon him to guide it. He had always been the stronger of the two. Now he was clinging to her, literally clinging, and she was suddenly very afraid. There was no one; her family, her mother who was so gentle and loving, were out of the question as confidantes or guides. And now L.B., the rock, was giving way.

  “I wish you hadn’t told me,” he murmured.

  “Told you what?”

  “If I thought he was Larry’s, don’t you see, we could go on.”

  “And now we can’t go on? Is that really what you’re saying?”

  “How can we?” he repeated.

  She jumped up. “You’re saying that it’s over, that you and I will forget it all as if it had never been?”

  “What do you want me to say? Whatever can we do?”

  “We can go on somehow. Haven’t you always told me that as long as nobody is hurt, we’ll be all right? We can see each other once a month, or every second month, I don’t care. There’s always the telephone in between times. As long as I know you are there, and that you are thinking of me.”

  “I am always thinking of you. But there are always the others, especially my son.”

  “Now you think of him? Now? Why not before we—we became what we are to each other?” She paused for breath. “Oh, you shouldn’t have done this to me, L.B.”

  “I didn’t have to coax you, did I? Be realistic. It happened. It was something both of us wanted.”

  Her eyes went to the couch on which they had so often lain together. “What can we do?” she asked, very low.

  “The best thing that could happen is for me to go away.”

  “And leave me with Larry, when you know what that means for me?”

  “Maybe if I were gone, then you and he—”

  “You know very well that can’t be! You who know me, my heart and my soul, as nobody else ever has known me, how can you even say such a thing?”

  “Do you think I want to say it? Look at me. But if there is no other way, then I have to say it, don’t I?”

  “If you are serious about this, then I might as well give up.”

  “I have to be serious, Amanda. Oh, please.”

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing, and hearing from you.” In terror and anger, she lost control. And snatching her handbag, she went to the door. “I’m going. My life is in shreds. I’m losing my mind. I’m getting in my car and driving home. With any luck, a truck will hit me and smash it.”

  “Where are you going? Sit down. You can’t go out this way.” L.B. caught her arm, but she wrenched it free. “You drove here in your car? You know you can’t do that. If you should be seen—”

  “Is that all you care about?” she called back when she was halfway down the stairs. “I was so eager to see you, I hadn’t the patience to ride in the bus. I was so eager—”

  “Stop!” he cried as they clattered downstairs.

  He beat on the car door, but it was already locked, and in a blur of tears she drove away, leaving him almost in tears on the curb.

  No doubt each of them knew even then that this was no final break. It lasted, in fact, only until the next morning, when the phone rang in Amanda’s car on her way to Cagney Falls.

  He had not meant what he said. He had been at a low point, fearful, desperate, and overloaded with guilt. He had clutched at the thought of moving away. And it had been cowardly, he admitted. More than that, it had been impossible, because he loved her. He loved her too much to do it. And therefore it was impossible. Surely she knew that.

  And so they would go on as they had been doing, seeing each other whenever they could, no matter how seldom. The simple knowledge that they were still together, would that not be enough to sustain them?

  When she entered the shop a few minutes after the call, there had been such a change in her that Dolly remarked it.

  “Now Amanda looks like herself again,” she said, and the seamstress observed that motherhood must be agreeing with her.

  * * *

  How well motherhood agreed with Amanda was arguable. Surely the little boy had not lived for nine months within her and left her with no awareness of that blood-and-bone connection. Yet when she gazed at him asleep in the crib with his fists curled and his eyelashes resting on his cheeks, or when she met his curious scrutiny as she changed his diaper, or when at six months he sat up and reached for the rattle that was held out to him, she had an awful feeling that he was a stranger. She was seeing him through the eyes of pity and horror, as one would see a lost child abandoned on a public street.

  And as if there were some devil at work in the background, Larry kept asking her and everyone who knew
L.B. whether Stevie did not look “exactly like my dad.”

  “I don’t know,” she replied one day. “He looks like himself. He’s a beautiful child.”

  “You always say ‘the child,’ as if you were talking about John Doe’s baby in the next block. His name is Steven. Stevie,” Larry said crossly.

  His moods, since Stevie’s birth, had changed. Indeed, he had rarely had any “moods.” Had not his placid, dull good humor been an irritant to her? But lately, so it seemed to Amanda, he was given to these small, cranky reprimands, or else on the other hand, to bursts of euphoria when he walked around the house humming to himself, or more often, to Stevie, whom he liked to carry around like a trophy.

  He was the father of a son; now he could proudly measure himself alongside any other man on the street: prosperous householder and father of a handsome boy. He wanted to assert himself. It still angered him that Amanda had had her way about working in the shop. Old-fashioned as he might be, he still believed that there was something unnatural about a woman who, without any real need, could choose to leave her baby with somebody else all day.

  How could he know that the shop was her savior? It kept her mind busy. It kept her away from Stevie. Nobody could know that the long, long walks she took, pushing the stroller on weekend afternoons when sometimes Larry was not home, had their reasons: One was to quiet her nerves, and the other to avoid having to play with Stevie at home. This way the stroller was in front of her, and she did not see his wisps of new hair, unmistakably curly like her own, or his face, already so like L.B.’s.

  How she could have rejoiced in this baby if things had been different! There was such a struggle within her not to love him too much, because—well, because who knew what lay ahead? What punishment waited? She wondered about L.B.’s confidence. Was he really feeling it or was he, for her sake and for Stevie’s, only pretending?

  Nothing, nothing must ever happen to hurt this little boy of hers, he with his fat little legs, his fat little fingers clasped around his bottle, and his big, serious eyes! Often she imagined that those pretty eyes were asking her a question: Who am U And once, without meaning to, she had given a cry, weeping into her hands while he in his innocence stared at her.