Nine Months in the Life of an Old Maid

by Judith Rossner

  But I couldn’t stop crying.

  “Elizabeth isn’t convinced,” Barney said. “I think maybe we ought to drop the whole thing.”

  Mimi told him he wasn’t being very funny and Barney told her he wasn’t sure he intended to be. He said that actually now that I’d brought up the matter, he didn’t think that he liked the sound of babies crying, either. He said he admitted that he hadn’t had any unpleasant experiences in that direction, that he had been the crybaby in the house where he was raised by his mother and his older sister, but it seemed to him that that was much the better of the bargain and he should have quit while he was still ahead.

  “Nobody likes the sound,” Mimi said to me, then turned to Barney, “but most people just do whatever they can about it, they don’t sit around worrying about it before the baby’s even born.”

  Silence. No response from either of us.

  “Some women,” Mimi said quietly, “when they announce they’re going to have a baby, everyone becomes very solicitous. Their husbands make them sit down all the time, and carry things for them, and hover over them.”

  There it was again. It was such a totally incongruous thing for Mimi to say. Mimi cant stand being hovered over.

  “You’re too late, Mimi,” Barney said to her.

  “What does that mean?” she demanded.

  “It means,” he said slowly, “that you’re nearly thirty- five years old and I’m forty-two and we’ve been married for fifteen years and it’s too late to decide that you want to be hovered over.”

  “What you really mean is that it’s too late to have a baby.”

  He shrugged.

  “It’s not my fault it took so long,” she said. “I mean if it is, I didn’t will it this way, God knows I didn’t. Ten years ago, even six and seven years ago, I was crying myself to sleep-every night because I couldn’t get pregnant.” This was something new to me about Mimi. “I used to lie in bed wondering if . . .” She cut herself off.

  “Wondering if what?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I don’t know why we’re talking like this in front of Beth, Barney. I don’t know why we’re talking like this at all.”

  “It’s called getting things out of your system,” Barney said. “You’ve never been very good at it.”

  “I don’t want to be good at it, I don’t see why we have to talk like this. Ever. I don’t see how it can do any good at all. I don’t even know what we were talking about, so how important could it be?”

  “You were saying,” Barney told her, very slowly and deliberately, “that you used to think you were being punished for having an abortion.”

  She stared at him in horror. I stared at her in shock. Not possible. Not Mimi.

  “That isn’t what I was saying,” she choked out.

  “Sure it is. You were saying you used to lie in bed at night thinking you couldn’t get pregnant because you’d had—”

  “Stop it!” she screamed. “I don’t know why you’re doing this but stop it!”

  “As a matter of fact,” Barney said, “I don’t know why I’m doing it either. Maybe Beth knows. Beth, do you know why I’m—”

  “When, Mimi?” I asked, feeling as though I were dreaming. “When did you do that?”

  “What difference does it make?” She was terribly upset. More upset than I was because she knew it was true while I didn’t believe it.

  “I didn’t say it made a difference.” A Be.

  “Then let’s talk about it some other time. All right? Bethie?”

  Of course not, Mimi. Of course it’s not all right. It’s not all right that it happened and it’s not all right that it was you who did it. You. Because in a sense my whole existence depends on the value that you place on human life. After all, I toil nor do I spin. I inhabit this house very much as any living parasite inhabits a larger benevolent organism; my value lies in my existence. How could you think it would be all right? And if you really thought so, why would you have taken such pains to keep it a secret?

  “I was in the hospital. I must have been in the hospital or I would have known something.”

  Mimi turned very pale. “It wasn’t that.” Denying what hadn’t even occurred to me yet, that the burden of having me in the hospital in addition to a baby was what had made her do it “We were just married,” she said. “We weren’t ready. We had no money.”

  Money. Money had never been a reason for doing something or not doing it.

  “I know it’s hard for you to think of it, Beth, we’ve never bothered you with all that stuff. But Josh only pays the most basic house expenses. Taxes, major repairs, a couple of service contracts. We have living expenses. I know you’ve never given any thought to things like that, I never wanted you to, but we do have them. Barney wasn’t even an assistant professor then and it was years before I started Virginia.”

  “In point of fact,” Barney said, “you started Virginia thirty-four years ago.”

  “Damn it,” Mimi shouted, “haven’t you said enough?”

  There it was again. Mimi being angry. Being somebody else.

  “None of this makes sense,” I said.

  “Since when are you so big on sense?” Barney asked me.

  “You’re all turned out, Barney,” I said sadly. “Usually you’re turned in on yourself and now you’re turned out on us.”

  He stared at me for a moment and then he laughed his old inward kind of laugh. An announcement he’d turned back on himself. He went to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of tomato juice, added a large quantity of vodka almost as an afterthought, and quickly drank it down. Then he made another one and left us. Mimi began clearing away the half-full breakfast dishes.

  I said, “I always thought of Lily as a murderer.”

  Mimi said, “Well, you shouldn’t have. It’s ridiculous. Plenty of people have abortions. It’s just not that big a deal. Anyway, you never should’ve known about it. Lily should never have told.”

  True. Lily should never have told. Lily should never have announced that she’d had an abortion before Vincent and one after him and the only thing she regretted was the one in between.

  “It’s a medical thing,” Mimi said. “If you don’t make a big deal out of it.”

  “Someone once told me that when a baby—a foetus . . . that two months after conception it has all the lines of its palms and fingerprints engraved in its skin already.”

  “Some nut, probably,” Mimi said.

  “No, it was a doctor. It was when I was in the hospital the last time. I asked him. He was interesting, he seemed a little more open-minded than the rest of them, not so quick to dismiss things. I asked him if he ever looked at people’s palms when he was trying to understand them. He said it would be like reading Sanskrit—the meaning might be all there but he wouldn’t understand it. And he didn’t believe the palmists did either. And then he told me about the lines.”

  “All right,” Mimi said after a moment. “So Lily’s a murderer and I’m a murderer. What do you want to do about it, Elizabeth? Lock us up?”

  A joke. Jokes and abortions were unbecoming to you, Mimi. Long ago you agreed to be the mother of us all and now we were your victims as all children are their parents’ victims. All parents being doubly victims in that they are victimized by both their parents and their children. Children. Babies. Why did I have to hear about the two things, the baby and the abortion, at the same time? One would have been enough to think about. As it was, the two things became hopelessly intermingled in my mind so that I couldn’t react separately to them, feeling upset and horrified by both. That Lily had had abortions was upsetting because the nature of the act was upsetting. But it was neither surprising nor confusing because everything in Lily’s nature prepared one for the likelihood that she could treat any form of human life in the most casual way. Lily had never been convinced that human life existed outside the boundaries of her own skin. Lily would not care what would happen to me when you had your baby, Mimi, a fact
which I could easily accept when I was certain that you cared enormously.

  • • •

  In the afternoon Vincent came home from the Peeks- kill Library chortling that the Peekskill Evening Star was as big a rag as any paper in the Midwest. I’d been at loose ends all day, trying to embroider, trying to sort clothes, unable to do anything for more than a few minutes, and I was contented to let him try to absorb me in what he was saying.

  “Listen to this, Beth, this is gorgeous, are you listening? It’s an editorial:

  “It appears that Peekskill is to be ‘treated’ to another concert visit by Paul Robeson, renowned Negro baritone.

  “Time was when the honor would have been ours—all ours. As things stand today, like most folks who put America first, we’re a little doubtful of that ‘honor,’ finding the luster in the once illustrious name of Paul Robeson now almost hidden by political tarnish.

  “His magnificent voice, which thrilled millions, opened up a brilliant career for him that easily could have led to a place in the alls of American fame. His influence with his people, properly directed, could have won a place for him beside Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, as truly great white niggers . . .”

  “Pardon me,” Vincent said, “truly great Negro Americans.

  “Any possibility of such attainment is now, in the opinion of most Americans, lost to him forever.

  “The time for tolerant silence that signifies approval is running out . . .”

  “How do you like that for incitement to violence?” Vincent asked happily.

  “But I thought you liked violence,” I said abstractly, only half paying attention.

  He stopped for a moment; then he laughed. “It’s the flaw in my position,” he said. “I like the violence but I don’t like most of the idiocy that causes it. Now you ask me, if I like violence how can I afford to be fussy about the causes . . .”

  But of course I wasn’t asking him anything at all. I turned away from him, walked aimlessly around the room, picked up a smooth stone from the bowl on the mantel, rubbed it, put it down, took another.

  “Something wrong?” Vincent asked.

  I couldn’t tell him.

  “What is it, Beth?” he asked. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Mimi,” I began. Trying to say it.

  “Mimi,” he nodded. “Mimi what?”

  “Baby,” was all I could say.

  “Mimi baby,” he repeated, uncomprehending for just an instant. Then, “Mimi’s going to have a baby?” Incredulous.

  I nodded.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, “you’re kidding. Where are they? Hey, Barney, hey, old man, where are you, did you know your wife was going to have a baby?”

  • • •

  Max dropped by that night. Vincent met him at the door and apparently told him quickly because when Max came in he seemed uncertain of what to say. Vincent had been a little strange, himself. He hadn’t congratulated Mimi or anything—at least not in my hearing—but his manner at dinner had been somewhat circumspect. As though the fact of her pregnancy made it less tempting to provoke her.

  “I just wanted to tell you,” Max said to me, “I finished the outside wall. I’ll take you up any time you feel like it.”

  I nodded. My lips were very dry. “Thank you,” I said stiffly.

  “She’s a little thrown by this baby business,” Vincent apologized for me. “It’s a big thing for her, you know, a big change. She’s got to get used to it.”

  “Sure,” Max said.

  Pause. Uneasiness. Barney came in, so drunk that he was weaving. As often as he was a little drunk, I had never seen Barney in that condition.

  “Hi,” he said. “We’re taking a poll here. How do you feel about babiesh?”

  Max laughed. “Babies are babies.”

  “Babies are a pain in the ash,” Barney said. “Check yesh or no.”

  “I guess so,” Max said. “I guess they are.”

  “Thish baby should be dishposed of. Check yesh or no.”

  Max ignored him. Barney flopped down on the sofa.

  “My mother delivered a few babies,” Max said to Vincent. “When I was little. Her whole family was up in Peekskill, her three sisters, and she was midwife when they had their babies. I helped a couple of times.”

  Vincent gaped. I stared. It seemed incredible.

  “You’re kidding,” Vincent finally said.

  “Uh uh,” Max told him, “I’m not kidding. I’d bring the hot water, you know, just like in the movies, and clean sheets and newspaper and stuff like that. I was around nine or ten for the last one. They started using doctors after that.”

  Barney seemed about to throw up. Gagged audibly. Then with some difficulty he got up and lurched out of the room.

  “How the hell did you do it?” Vincent asked. “How the hell could you stand it?”

  “I don’t know,” Max said. “I threw up the first time but after that I was all right. It was interesting.”

  • • •

  Expecting Josh’s arrival soon, Lily came back from Westport, her immediate concern being that Josh should return before her suntan had faded. Mimi said she had something to tell Lily but Lily said she simply wasn’t in condition to hear anything, she was exhausted, maybe some mild form of sunstroke or something, she must take a shower and a nap before she had anything to do with anybody. Then she swept up the stairs, leaving Mimi staring up at her.

  “She doesn’t want to hear it,” I said.

  She doesn’t want to hear it.

  She doesn’t want to hear it.

  No one wants to hear it.

  “What do you mean?” Mimi asked.

  “I mean she doesn’t want to know you’re pregnant.”

  “That’s a funny thing to say. She doesn’t know what I’m going to tell her.”

  “Then why doesn’t she want to hear it?”

  Mimi laughed as though I’d made a joke but later on, when Lily had washed and slept and put on another dress and come downstairs, and Mimi had followed her from room to room trying to talk but being interrupted by successive requests for a drink, a tissue, windows open a little wider, and so on, I tried to catch her eye and finally realized she was avoiding mine.

  I was standing at the open terrace door in the living room when Lily floated toward me on her way out.

  “Lily,” I said, without premeditation, “I’m going to have a baby.”

  Lily stopped short. Mimi laughed. Lily looked back and forth between us, gratifyingly bewildered.

  “You’re terrible, Beth,” Mimi said, and came over and put an arm around Lily. “She’s teasing, Lily. I’m having a baby. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “What a silly joke,” Lily said, frowning.

  “No, I’m not joking,” Mimi told her. “. . . Oh, you mean Beth’s joke.”

  Lily nodded.

  “But I really am going to have a baby, you realize that, don’t you?” Mimi asked anxiously.

  “Yes,” Lily “said, “well, that’s all right . . . I mean, it’s all right if you want it . . . of course there’s no rule that says you have to have it if you don’t want it . . . I know millions of people in L.A. who take care of those things . . . if you feel you’re too old . . . or you just have too much to do . . . any reason . . .”

  At first Mimi couldn’t believe what she was hearing. When she did believe it, tears came to her eyes and began rolling down her round cheeks.

  “It’s nothing to cry about, dear,” Lily assured her. “It’s perfectly harmless.”

  “Not to the baby,” Mimi said, struggling to hold her voice together.

  “But if you don’t want the baby,” Lily said reasonably.

  “But I do want the baby,” Mimi said. “I’ve wanted a baby for years. I’m dying to have a baby.”

  “Oh, well . . .” Lily shrugged. “That’s all right, then.” And she wafted past me out to the balcony.

  Mimi began crying in earnest. I wa
nted to say something to comfort her but just as I was about to try I suddenly remembered her saying to Barney, Some women, when they announce they’re pregnant, everyone gets very solicitous, and somehow that memory frightened me into silence, reminding me of that feeling I’d had of not knowing who Mimi was any more. Mrs. Cushman came in to say that dinner was ready and I finally asked Mimi if she would like me to cut some mums for the table but she didn’t stop crying. Mrs. Cushman seemed about to go to Mimi but then she changed her mind and went back to the kitchen so I went up to Barney’s study to get him. The door was open and he and Vincent were talking quietly. I stood in the doorway but they ignored me for a moment.

  “. . . no question of provocation,” Barney said. “Of course the Reds provoked it. Especially after the veterans and the other idiots stopped the first concert and they realized what fertile ground they had here. But the Reds were smart enough to let the locals take the initiative . . . and also to stick with legal weapons. Baseball bats, can openers, cans of pepper, stuff like that. Josh was past all that by then, of course. If he went up there at all it was most likely to laugh.” He turned and looked at me expectantly.

  I said. “Dinner is ready. Please come down right away. Mimi is very upset.”

  “Are you suggesting,” he asked after a moment, “that if I’m a good boy and eat my dinner my wife will cease to be upset?”

  “No. It has nothing to do with that.”

  “What does it have to do with?”

  “Lily.”

  “Lily? Lily doesn’t upset my wife. Lily upsets my wife’s sister but . . .” He trailed off and I could see he’d realized. “My wife,” he said, “has told her mother that she is pregnant and has been disappointed with her mother’s reaction.”

  I nodded.

  “What happened?” Vincent asked with sudden intense interest.

  “Mimi told Lily she was going to have a baby,” I said. Knowing that what I was doing was evil. “And Lily said if Mimi doesn’t want the baby she knows a lot of people in Los Angeles who take care of those things.” Never taking my eyes off Vincent’s face, although I heard Barney laugh abruptly, murmur, “Good old Lil.” The outside of Vincent’s body remained motionless. The inside curled up into itself until it didn’t exist any more. I shuddered.