Stepping

by Nancy Thayer

  Now it is Christmas night. We have gone to the America Center for a Christmas party complete with champagne, and to other Fulbrighters’ homes for cocktails and canapés, and people have been kind. But still there is a sense of isolation here on this day; still I feel lonely, and miss everything: the Christmas parades on television, football games, friends, relatives, home. Christmas has made the time go faster, at least, but still not fast enough. I have made plane reservations for the fourth day of January, but I see obstacles growing up around that day like bramblebushes around a sleeping princess. Perhaps Lucy will not be well enough to travel then—I must always watch out for “complications” from the chicken pox—or Adam might be ill with something else, or there might be a blizzard to stop all air travel and postpone things for days. Any number of things could happen; I hardly dare leave the apartment to go get groceries for fear that I’ll slip and fall down the stairs and break my leg. I do so want to go home.

  “My bum hurts, my bum hurts,” Lucy cries as I sit rocking her in front of the Christmas tree. She is restless and whiny and miserable, and she rubs at her chest where scores of pox have popped out under her pajamas.

  I open her pajamas to look at her bum and see that more, even more pox have broken out. It seems impossible for more to come, her skin will be completely covered. I try to rub cornstarch and water on it as a salve, but it seems to make her only more miserable. And some of the pox are clearly broken open and infected; an angry red. How can this happen, how can my modern child be so riddled with something as antiquated as pox?

  “Charlie,” I say, “we have to call a doctor.”

  “It’s Christmas night,” Charlie says. “Can’t it wait till morning?”

  “Look, I was up with her all night. We didn’t sleep at all; you know that. I’m exhausted. She’s exhausted. We can’t go through another night. She is miserable.”

  Charlie calls several friends who recommend physicians, but we are unable to reach them, and finally we call Gunnel. She tells us of an emergency clinic near the large open market at Hakaniementie, and wonderfully she offers to drive us there. Adam is contentedly playing with the toys Santa brought him, and it is senseless to take him out into the cold dark night, so Charlie stays home with him. But as I walk down the stairs with Lucy squirming in my arms I feel a horrible sense of dread. I want Charlie, his tall, strong presence, near me, to protect me, to make everything right. “I can’t do it by myself,” I want to scream.

  Gunnel’s presence in the car is like a balm. She talks sweetly to Lucy, and tells me of the times when her own boys, who are now grown, were sick. She doesn’t seem Finnish to me, Gunnel, for she talks and laughs so readily, radiates such warmth. The strange car and bright city lights distract Lucy for a while from her itching, and soon we arrive at the clinic.

  It is seven in the evening, and the clinic has several sets of people sitting in the waiting room. Some are coughing; one little boy looks quite sick, and a new sense of panic floods me: what if Lucy, so weakened now by her pox, becomes infected with one of the illnesses floating around this room? I was probably wrong to bring her here. I am endangering her even more. I twist in my chair, and bounce and cuddle Lucy, and smile and chat with Gunnel, but inside I am screaming loud and shrill with fear. Will the physician be able to speak English?, I wonder. Will he know the Finnish word for chicken pox, will he be able to do anything, will “complications” develop? We wait and wait and wait, and Lucy fusses, and my stomach grinds into itself.

  Finally we are admitted into the inner office, where a surprisingly young doctor waits. Yes, he speaks English.

  “She has chicken pox,” I say.

  “And they are infected,” he tells me.

  I feel like a child at a confessor: “She hasn’t slept for two nights, I’ve walked her and rocked her constantly, but she can’t sleep. I’ve kept her clothes on, but she still scratches.”

  “I will give her an antihistamine for the itching,” the doctor says, “and an internal antibiotic for the infection, and also a local antibiotic which you must apply to the infected poxes. The local antibiotic will turn her skin blue, but after a few days it will wear or wash off.”

  It is a religious experience, going to the doctor: the sense of fear and dread and guilt, and then the hot glory of being saved. I pay the physician his seventy Finnmarks (about sixteen dollars) for the office call, and then Gunnel and I rush back out into the night to find an open pharmacy.

  I give Lucy her medicine in the car, and before we are home she falls asleep. I thank Gunnel and lug my sleeping daughter up the four flights of stairs and into our apartment. She lies sprawled on the bed while I dab the blue antibiotic on her infected pox, and I see how deep and blissful her sleep is; she feeds on it like a starved animal.

  And now the tears well up and fall. The physician has given us medicine, she will get better, she will get well. Already she is better, she is sunk in a healing sleep. At times like this I think how intolerable it is to be a mother, to have to see a child suffer, and I feel endlessly, helplessly grateful for the medicine that saves both my children and me. At times like this I feel a huge and resounding pity for all the mothers who lived before this century, who had to watch their children suffer without the cure of penicillin, antibiotics, miracle drugs. I wish compassion were retroactive; I wish I could somehow send some sense of strength and consolation back through the past into the endless dark nights, to help those other mothers as they rock and grieve over a sick child.

  Lucy sleeps, and in the other bed Adam sleeps. I leave the room so that my crying, which has become exhausted sobs, will not wake them. Charlie takes me in his arms and holds me for a while, and kisses the top of my head.

  “Come have a drink,” he says. “I made something especially for you.”

  It is hot tea with brandy in it. He has also fixed a light snack left over from the Christmas dinner which I dutifully cooked earlier but was too worried and nervous to eat.

  We sit in silence for a while, looking at the tree, enjoying our meal.

  “Charlie,” I say at last, “how will I ever be able to live without you? I can’t.”

  “You can,” Charlie says. “Of course you can. You will be in your own home, you’ll have friends to help you, and if there is an emergency I’ll be able to fly home to you. I’ll only be twenty-four hours away. It will be good for you; it will make you even stronger.”

  “It’s going to be hell for us both, isn’t it?” I say, smiling.

  “Yes, but it will be a nice, clean, healthy hell, with a light at the end.”

  It is Christmas. It is snowing outside, both my children are sleeping and out of harm, and my husband, with his words, has just given me the best present he could possibly give me.

  Until now December had been a terrible month. When Charlie came home from his Swedish lecture tour in November, I arranged for a babysitter and made him take me out to dinner. We hadn’t eaten out very often in Helsinki simply because we could not afford it, but that night in November we went to the Havis Amanda, one of the more expensive restaurants in Helsinki. It is located at the south end of the Esplanade, across from the famous fountain-statue of the naked woman, and the restaurant bears her name, but it shares nothing of her voluptuous and open sensuality. It is a dark, low-ceilinged serious restaurant, with first-class service and excellent, painstakingly prepared food.

  During the meal we ate and talked lightly. Charlie told me about his trip; I told him about the children. But over dessert and liqueurs I told Charlie what I had gone there to tell him: about Stephen and our almost affair, about the job I was going to take in January.

  Perhaps I was wrong to tell him about Stephen. I am certain that Charles will never be his friend again, and although he has agreed not to make a scene, not to kill him or hit him or tell Ellen about it all, still I know he will never be able to accept Stephen as his friend. That is one consequence of all this: we—Stephen and I—have ruined a friendship. It was strange that to Charl
ie that was the most important thing, the past, that I had almost had an affair with another man. When all the time it was the future that I felt guilty and tremulous about, that I was going to leave Charlie alone in Helsinki and go back to the States with my children so that I could work again.

  It got to be embarrassing in the restaurant, that cool, reserved place, where the waiters moved as stiffly as if they were automated and everyone else laughed softly if they laughed at all, and spoke in German and Swedish. There we sat in our corner booth, Charlie and I, hissing at each other, trying not to yell. Finally we had to leave. It was difficult to argue on the streets, and worse on the bus, for most Finns know enough English to understand us, but we could not keep still. Once it was out, my secret, it was like a monster that we had to continually flail and fight with in order to beat down and away from our lives.

  I had not thought it would be so bad. I had not thought it would take so long. We yelled and cried and argued all night long, while the children slept. Charlie could not believe that I had not actually slept with Stephen, and he could not believe that I wanted to go home only for the job; he thought I wanted to go home to continue my affair with Stephen. I felt helpless. There seemed no way to convince him that what I said was true; there was no proof I could give him.

  Through the end of November and into December we raged at each other. We led a strange schizophrenic life after that first night. It was obvious that we couldn’t continue the discussion all the time, obvious that we could not settle it immediately, and so we were kind and cool and formal with each other in the daytime when we had to work, tend to the children, buy the groceries, attend Fulbright functions, and so on. But at night, as soon as the children were asleep, I would kiss both their smooth, sweet foreheads, and tuck their blankets about them, and leave their room, pulling the door shut behind me so they would not hear. And zap: there would be Charlie, standing there, his words ready.

  “I can’t believe Stephen would spend the time and money to fly all the way here if you weren’t sleeping with him,” he would say, or:

  “Come on, Zelda, let’s sit down and finish this. Tell me the truth.”

  “But I am telling you the truth,” I would wail, and we would be off. We would talk frantically, furiously, deep into the night, only to give up in disgust or despair and to fall into our beds into a tossing, bothered sleep.

  I described every encounter I had had with Stephen in great detail. I told Charlie to call Stephen on the phone and ask him. Of course, Charlie said he knew that Stephen would lie about it. I could see Charlie’s point; it was ridiculous that we had done all the sneaking and hugging and trembling but not actually had intercourse.

  “But that’s the POINT,” I would scream at Charlie, “that’s the whole POINT! I didn’t sleep with him. I was faithful to you!”

  Toward the middle of December, Charlie changed. He stopped being angry and became instead saddened, heavy with despair. “I haven’t given you what you want in life,” he would say. “I haven’t satisfied you. You should go to someone else.”

  “Look, Charlie,” I would plead, “don’t be that way. Look, look at my side, please. You have me, and your children, and your work. I don’t feel guilty because your work is so important to you. I know your work is a part of you. Can’t you see that my work is just as important to me?”

  “I thought you wanted children, you wanted to be a mother,” he would say.

  “I did. I do. I want my children, I want to be a mother, I want to be a wife. But I also want to be a teacher. I also want my work. I want everything. You have everything; why can’t I?”

  “I’ve never had a lover,” Charlie said. “All these years, I’ve never held another woman in my arms. I’ve been satisfied by you, but I haven’t made you happy. You’ve needed another man.”

  “Charlie, Charlie, stop. I haven’t needed another man. I haven’t even had another man. Probably I do need someone to look at me a certain way from time to time; it feels so good, it’s an ego trip. Everyone needs that. But I don’t need Stephen, I don’t want him, I didn’t sleep with him. I’ve been faithful to you. And yes, you have been faithful to me, I believe that, but good heavens, you’ve had Adelaide and how many other women before me! I’ve always been faithful to you.”

  It got to be humorous, absurd. We would be together in Stockmann’s department store, looking at dolls and Lego sets for Santa to give Lucy and Adam for Christmas, and Charlie would look up from a battery-operated train and say, “You should go to him, Zelda. You really should. You should divorce me and go marry Stephen.”

  And once on Bus 16, coming home, surrounded by grim housewives with fur hats and shopping bags, we got into an argument over the meaning of faithfulness: Charlie argued that I was not faithful to him because I had wanted to sleep with Stephen; I argued that the important point was that I hadn’t. “Jesus Christ,” I whispered, tears coming into my eyes, “I wish I had slept with him, I really do. At least then I would have the experience to remember. I’m getting the same punishment, the same anger, whether I’ve done it or not.” Several Finnish women sat staring at me, impassive, as the tears rolled down my cheeks.

  The crisis came just four days before Christmas, as we were walking along the Esplanade. It was a clear, painfully cold day, but pretty even so. There were seven grand tall evergreen trees along the center path of the Esplanade, all covered with lights and Scandinavian flags. Bright orange tents rimmed the circle around the tall central square statue, and fur-coated women from different charity groups huddled inside the warmth of the tents to sell handmade toys and hand-knit scarves and mittens to give as Christmas gifts. We had brought Adam and Lucy downtown with us to show them the Christmas window at Stockmann’s and Sokos and Elanto-Centrum. The large window at Stockmann’s was full of Snoopy dogs of all sizes, which made Adam squeal with delighted recognition. Lucy fell asleep in her stroller, and Adam walked along beside us, eating a fat sweet pretzel. As we came to the orange tents in the Esplanade, a handsome young man passed us and smiled, and I smiled back: it was Christmas. I suppose it was the young man’s smile that Charlie noticed.

  “Now that there’s been one lover, how do I know there won’t be more?” he asked.

  “How do I know you haven’t had hundreds of lovers on all your damned weeklong conferences?” I replied. It was an offhand comment, not a serious one. I was thinking of Christmas, enjoying myself.

  Charlie was silent for a moment. “You’re right,” he said. “I see your point. Actually, I could have slept around at the conferences; certainly a lot of people do. And I’ve had plenty of offers.”

  “Have you really?” I asked, stunned. I looked up at my husband. The Esplanade vanished, and I suddenly saw only Charlie’s face. He was older now, of course, with gray in his hair and a thick beard, but he was still monumentally attractive. He was large, virile, wise. “Graduate students, right?” I asked. “I’m sure. They hear you talk, they know about you. Why, they’re like academic groupies; they want to sleep with the great Charles Campbell. Right?” For some reason I was excited.

  Charlie smiled. “Right,” he said. He smiled almost foolishly, and I could tell he was remembering. “But I haven’t slept with anyone else but you, not since the day I met you,” he said. “And I won’t.”

  “And I haven’t and won’t, either. Sleep with anyone else but you,” I said. “Oh, Charlie, I’ve trusted you, and trusting is a way of loving. Can’t you trust me? I’ve told you everything. And the important thing to me is not that Stephen wanted to sleep with me, but that he acted like a friend. He helped me get a job. He was my friend. The job is the important thing to me.”

  “Mommy, can I have one of those little Santas?” Adam, oblivious to our discussion, pulled at my hand. He pointed to an orange stand where little red-hatted Santas made out of pinecones and wooden balls dangled from bright yarn strings.

  I gave him a mark and said, “Be a big boy, go up and buy it yourself.” Adam walked off toward the tent. I t
ook Charlie’s arm. “Please,” I said, “don’t be my enemy anymore. Be my friend.”

  Charlie wrapped me in his arms and hugged me tightly to him. “Oh, God, Zelda,” he said, “it’s so painful to think of you in someone else’s arms.”

  “Charlie,” I said, “believe me. He held me, but we never even had our clothes off. He never saw so much as my belly button.”

  “Oh, Zelda,” Charlie said. “Oh, Zelda.”

  Adam came back then, radiant with delight that he had been able to communicate to the Finnish woman and buy his pinecone Santa. Lucy whimpered in her stroller, and Adam said, “I’m brrrr,” and Charlie and I unwrapped from each other enough to realize that it was time to get on a bus and go home, night was falling, our feet and fingers were cold. As we walked out of the circle on the Esplanade, we noticed several people staring at us, probably because we had been standing out in the open hugging each other, which is not comme il faut in Helsinki. Charlie walked ahead of me, holding Adam’s hand and talking to him, and I followed behind, pushing the stroller. My heart felt lighter, easier. There on the Esplanade something had happened between us, some sort of unspoken settlement had been made. It occurred to me to wonder if Charlie had had an affair during one of his conferences, or if he slept around; he had certainly backed down once I brought the topic up. But I sensed that he had been telling me the truth, that he had been approached, but had never followed through, that he liked the approaches, the pleasure of desire, the sensations of longing and lust, but that he had, like me, not wanted or needed anything more. At any rate, I knew it would be crazy to start worrying about whether or not he had been unfaithful. I wanted him to trust me. I would have to trust him. Trust. In the next few months, I realized, we would have to trust each other as never before.