A Week as Andrea Benstock

by Lawrence Block

  “Sure.”

  “So now I think things worked out for the best. Jason’s three and I’m not even twenty-three yet. If I get pregnant right away and have the second one in, say, July, they’ll both be in college and I’ll be how old? Twenty-three and eighteen, I’ll be like forty-one. That’s still young.” She thought for a moment. “I think we’ll probably stop at two. Especially if the second one’s a girl. To have one of each. Or is it better to have two the same? What do you figure?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know Roger wanted a son to begin with, but I wonder does it matter to him if he has two sons or a son and a daughter? What he said the first time is all he wanted was a healthy baby.”

  “That’s what Mark says.”

  “I think that must be what everybody says, but I knew Roger wanted a boy, and afterward he admitted he was glad it was a boy. Does Mark want a son do you suppose?”

  “I don’t honestly know. I suppose most men do, don’t they? But I don’t honestly know in Mark’s case.”

  “I’ll tell you who was happiest Jason was a boy and that was my father. Having three daughters of his own and then my sister Marsha had a girl and I guess he never thought he’d see a grandson. Sometimes I think I’d like a little girl and other times I just don’t know. You didn’t have any brothers or sisters, did you, Andrea?”

  “No.”

  “I had Marsha three years older than me and Rochelle two years younger. Just a couple of weeks ago I was reading a magazine article about the middle child and it suddenly hit me. That’s what I was, a middle child! It gives you a lot to think about.”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. To put it into words. But I was thinking, how many children are you supposed to have? If you got one it’s an only child and that can be a problem, and if it’s two they’ll be competitive, and if it’s three you’ve got the middle-child situation, and if it’s four—but a person could go crazy trying to bring up four children. Listen, don’t laugh.”

  “You don’t want to be late picking up Jason.”

  “Yeah, that’s the truth.” She set her cup on the end table, got to her feet. “Listen, give me a call or I’ll call you, huh, Andrea? Don’t bother, I’ll find my own way out. I think I can remember where the door is.”

  “I’ll walk down with you. I want to see if the mail’s here yet.”

  “I could bring it up, save you a few steps.”

  “Oh, come off it, Eileen.”

  “Listen, I’m telling you. Take advantage of it while you can. Once they’re born you never stop running.”

  She carried the mail upstairs and sorted through it. All of it was addressed to Mark except for her Alumnae Bulletin from Bryn Mawr. She put Mark’s letters on the sideboard and sat down with the bulletin, but before she could open its envelope the telephone rang.

  It was her mother. “I know I talked to you this morning,” she said, “but I just had a phone call. Sadie Robbins passed away. That’s Essie Davis’s mother.”

  “Oh, that’s a shame.”

  “In this case it’s a blessing. I won’t say what she had, but she was wasting away to nothing and they couldn’t even stop the pain toward the end.” The word cancer, of course, could not be spoken aloud, Andrea thought. “The funeral will be tomorrow. Your father and I will go, of course.”

  “Do you think Mark and I should go?”

  “I don’t see why you have to. Your condition is always a good excuse, but even if you weren’t. You could make a call tonight, or even that you could skip. I would say skip it. What you can do, you can send a contribution. Mrs. Joseph Robbins, and put that acknowledgment should be sent to Mrs. Harold Davis, and I’ll give you the address, or you could get it from the phone book. It’s on Chatham but I don’t remember the number.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “I wanted to tell you in case you missed it in the paper. Send a couple of dollars to the prayer-book fund or for research on the disease, whatever you want. Well, I don’t want to keep you. You’re probably busy.”

  “No, not really. Eileen Fradin was here but she left a few minutes ago.”

  “It’s nice the two of you are getting friendly. How does her husband get on with Mark?”

  “Well enough, I guess. They don’t have too much to say to each other. Mother?”

  “What?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. We were talking about how many children to have.”

  “One at a time is usually a good policy.”

  “God, imagine having twins!”

  “Well, people do it and survive, although I wouldn’t recommend it. Eileen’s having another?”

  “In ten or eleven months.”

  “Well, that’s very nice, but I think they can wait awhile before booking the hospital room.”

  “That’s not what—oh, I was just thinking about something she asked me, and wondering, and—oh, wondering what it would have been like if I’d had any brothers or sisters.”

  There was a pause, and when her mother spoke her voice was pitched lower. She said, “Well, you know I lost a baby when you were three.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Well.”

  “That’s what I was thinking about. Was it that you couldn’t have any more after that or did you decide not to or what?”

  “Well, Andrea—”

  “It’s just that I’ve wondered about this, you know, for years, and I thought I would ask.”

  “It’s funny talking about it on the phone.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s stupid of me. Some other time.”

  “No. Just a second, let me get a cigarette.” She waited, and then her mother said, “It’s not that there’s any reason not to talk about it. And there was nothing physical to stop me from having another baby. But it was very upsetting, losing the baby. To your father also, but especially to me, because whatever they say it’s always different for a woman. You carry it, it’s physically a part of you. And then to lose it, and after such a long time.”

  “Did you carry it almost to term?”

  “I carried it to term. Andrea, I did not want to go through that again. And we already had one healthy child that we loved, and I did not want to go through that again. I didn’t want to take the chance. Even if there was no chance involved I didn’t want the anxiety. Do you understand?”

  “Of course I understand. Mother, I—”

  “It was a normal baby, Andrea. If you were worried.”

  “I never even thought about that, Mother. I just—”

  “What happened was a freak. Purely a freak. What happened, the baby, the cord got wrapped around the baby’s throat—”

  “Mother, stop. Please.”

  “I’m all right, Andrea.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “I’m perfectly all right. It’s funny how things can take you back so completely in time. You suddenly get a total recollection of a moment from years past and you feel emotions you thought were gone forever. It was, it would have been, it was a boy—”

  Her mother’s voice broke, and when Andrea tried to speak her own throat wouldn’t unlock. For a long moment both women were silent.

  Then briskly: “Well, I wanted to tell you about Mrs. Robbins.”

  “Yes, I’m glad you called.”

  “My love to Mark.”

  “I’ll tell him. And we’ll see you Friday night for dinner as usual.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  “So do I.”

  “Maybe I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Fine.”

  She wrote out a small check for the American Cancer Society and enclosed an appropriate note. There was a mailbox on the corner and she walked to it and dropped the letter in the slot. It was a good clear September day, the sun high in a cloudless sky, the heat softened by a steady breeze. When it was good, Buffalo’s weather was very good indeed.

  Well, that was done, she thought, heading back to the apartment. She fel
t an immediate sense of satisfaction at having attended to a duty so promptly and efficiently. Then, climbing the single flight of stairs to the apartment, she wondered why she had been so quick to send the contribution in Mrs. Robbins’s memory. To get it done with? To act on something on her own … ?

  She let herself into the apartment. She walked through the rooms in turn, the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen, the dining area. She picked up objects at random, reading them with her hands like a blind person, feeling their weight and substance, returning them carefully to their places. This ashtray. This picture in its silver frame. This candy dish. This table lighter.

  You are being silly, she told herself.

  Eileen Fradin wouldn’t have these thoughts. Eileen Fradin had wondered if perhaps it might not be wiser to wait longer before getting pregnant, and then she had found out that she was indeed pregnant, and so she had stopped thinking along those lines. Simply stopped. Told the brain to point itself in another direction entirely.

  How nice to be able to do that.

  Or was it?

  She paused for a moment in front of the portable television set and flicked it on. But even as the picture was coming into focus she shook her head firmly and pushed the button to extinguish it.

  No, not daytime television. Too much of a symbol, thank you all the same. Sit and stare at the walls if you must but do not sit and stare at that brainless box.

  Back to the kitchen to pour more coffee into her cup. Back to the living room to shake a cigarette out of the pack and light it with the heavy Ronson table lighter (a wedding gift, everything was a wedding gift). A drag on the cigarette, a sip of coffee. She thought of Prufrock complaining (or was it precisely a complaint?) that he had measured out his life with coffee spoons.

  And she? How did Andrea Benstock measure out her life?

  With phone calls from her mother. With little checks in memory of old people she had known only by name. With breakfast in the morning and lovemaking at night. With Friday dinners at the club with her parents and Sunday dinners with his parents. With Eileen Fradin dropping in for coffee or Sondra Margolis calling to ask her if she wanted to go shopping.

  Weren’t you supposed to do something? Could you just walk through it like this?

  But this was ridiculous. She was happy.

  She had everything she could want. Her family. Her friends. A husband who loved her. A baby quick with life inside her. Enough money—she didn’t know what Mark earned but knew that it seemed to be enough. She’d never asked him, he’d never volunteered. It was something, by tradition, one didn’t talk about . . . besides, she liked it this way. It was part of her safe refuge not to know about certain things. The apartment was attractive and comfortable and would do at least until the baby was born, and perhaps for a year beyond that.

  Of course a house would be more work than an apartment, and a baby would make more demands on her after its birth than before. Perhaps that was what she needed. Perhaps she had too much time to think, and that was the problem.

  Or, more likely, there was no problem in the first place. She was pregnant, and she had heard and read enough about pregnancy to know that it tricked the mind. It put odd thoughts into a head that would otherwise not entertain them.

  She was very lucky. She had to remember that. Because right now she was feeling almost as she had felt at times in New York, experiencing a similar vulnerability.

  Those black holes, black holes circling at the perimeters of thought. You had to be very careful not to sail near them. If you fell into them you would fall forever in emptiness. You had to keep a very tight hold on your own mind, and whenever your thoughts approached the edge you had to tug them back and keep them where they belonged….

  The baby kicked. She stubbed out her cigarette, placed the palm of her hand over her stomach. She felt a smile forming automatically on her lips, on her whole face. Mark told her often that she glowed with pregnancy and she liked that particular verb, with its connotations of warm radiance enveloping her in an aura. There were times when she could feel herself seeming to glow. This was one of them.

  Another kick. She thought of the conversation with her mother, of the brother she had never had. But that memory steered her toward the black holes and she pushed it resolutely aside.

  “Jeremy,” she said aloud. “Or Robin. I honestly don’t care which you are, you know. You’re going to make all the difference in the world. You really are.”

  She was still sitting on the sofa when she heard Mark’s car in the driveway. She got quickly to her feet and went into the kitchen to make drinks. When she met him at the door he kissed her and held her close for a moment, then released her and accepted his drink.

  “I think I need this,” he said.

  “Rough day?”

  “Oh, I don’t suppose you could call it rough. Let’s just say it was a long day.”

  “Poor baby.” She heard herself saying the words, was shocked by them, and then relieved he didn’t question them, however condescending they seemed to her.

  “There’s something the matter with the air-conditioner in my office. The guy was supposed to come around to look at it today but he didn’t show up.” He tugged at his tie, removed it, arranged it over the back of the chair. “So I was hoping to get away early, but then I had that schmuck Siegel at four o’clock and I couldn’t get rid of him. It’s bad enough that he’s stupid but on top of that he gets offended easily.”

  “Do I know who he is?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s in Lester Kalisher’s office. Nobody ever accomplishes anything with Siegel. That’s not what he’s for. Lester always sends him around for the opening rounds. It’s his method of softening up the opposition. After a few hours with Siegel you’re prepared to give ground when Lester comes over and pretends to be the reasonable one.”

  She took a sip of her own drink and asked him about the case.

  “Oh, it’s all boring as hell,” he said. “You don’t really want to hear about it, do you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Really? Well, a client of ours is buying a restaurant from a client of theirs. It’s a German place way over in South Buffalo on Cazenovia, and the whole deal shouldn’t be complicated but it is. Our guy wants a clause to prevent the seller from opening a restaurant under his own name or within a two-mile radius for the next ten years, which is fairly standard, and the seller is supposedly going to Florida to spend the rest of his life in a trailer court in St Pete, but Kalisher wants to stick on this point to prove he’s a lawyer, and I’m just as determined to prove I’m a lawyer, and—you can’t really be interested in all this crap.”

  “I am vitally interested in everything my darling husband does.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s what I thought.” He dropped an arm around her, squeezed her bottom, brushed her forehead with his lips. He had taken his jacket off and she could see the sweat circles under his arms. She liked his smells—the fresh one after a shower, the sweet-sour smell of his perspiration, the darkly pungent man-smell of him when they made love.

  The sense of smell, she sometimes thought, was rather more important than people realized. It was somehow so much more evocative than the other senses. A suddenly familiar aroma brought back the past much more sharply than a comparable sight or sound or taste or touch.

  Just a few weeks ago there had been a hot, sultry night, and the air had had a particular flavor to it, and she and Mark had turned to each other simultaneously to reminisce over their honeymoon in Puerto Rico. It had convinced him that they were telepathic, but she was sure it was merely an identical response to the scent and taste of the air, which that night had been distinctly tropical.

  “Why don’t you sit down, baby?”

  “I’ve been sitting all day. Don’t give me that delicate business, huh? I was getting enough of that from Eileen.”

  “Oh, did you see her today?”

  “She came over for coffee and insisted on racing me to the kitchen. She
says I should milk this pregnancy for everything it’s worth.”

  “Well, she’s right.” He scooped the letters from the sideboard and leafed through them. “Bills and junk mail,” he said. “Just what I always wanted. Is this all we got?”

  “It’s all you got.”

  “Emphasis noted, counselor. What did you get, a mash note from an old flame?”

  “Nothing that exciting. Just the Alumnae Bulletin from Bryn Mawr.”

  “Oh, thrills and chills! Can we read it together in bed?” They’d done that once, taking turns reading social notes from the Bulletin in a mock Main Line accent.

  “Oh, come on,” she said.

  “But I’m looking forward to it! I can’t wait to find out what’s new with Woofer and Tweeter and all those other sweet little preppy Protestants.”

  “Woofer and Tweeter!”

  “Well, that’s what they all sound like. I don’t know who gives them those nicknames—”

  “That’s perfect, Mark. Woofer and Tweeter.” She picked up the Bulletin and began to flip through it. Already, in the few years since she’d graduated from Bryn Mawr, she had noticed the beginning of change in the Class Notes. At first virtually all of the items about her class members had been marriage announcements. Now there were fewer marriages and more birth announcements, and lately divorces had been making their appearance in the listings.

  When she held the Bulletin in her hands it was always 1959 again. But whenever she read the notes of her classmates it quickly became present time again.

  “I’ll be sending in an announcement soon,” she said.

  “For the baby. Good ol’ Jeremy-Robin. How’s J-R been behaving today?”

  “All right. Kicking a lot.”

  “I don’t see what he’s got to kick about. He’s got a pretty soft life if you stop to think about it. Meals served on time, perfect weather, not too many responsibilities.”

  “You sound as though you’d like to trade places with him.”

  “Well, I do what I can. Come on, read me about Woofer and Tweeter and Poopie and Guppy and—honey?”

  She felt the blood drain from her face. Her chest was constricted and her stomach felt as though she had been kicked. She opened her mouth and tried to breathe through it. But she couldn’t breathe.