Nine Months in the Life of an Old Maid

by Judith Rossner

  “You made your point, Josh,” Barney said. “Don’t beat it to death.”

  “Why not?” Josh asked. “It’s something to do.”

  Barney groaned.

  Max took my hand and we began gradually edging back and out of the room.

  “Are my eyes deceiving me,” Josh said, “or am I looking at two people walking backwards?”

  “We’re going to take a little walk,” Max said.

  “Backwards?” Josh asked, mock incredulous.

  At which point Max steered me around and out of the house. He closed the door behind us and whistled. He put his arm around me and we began walking through the interior garden. The Christmas lights showed us the path.

  “Wow,” Max said. “I don’t envy you, having to live with that.”

  “Most of the time I didn’t,” I said. “Anyway, he didn’t used to be like that, not to me, anyway.”

  The night was cold and grey as though snow might still come. We started down one of the riding paths and he didn’t feel like talking any more than I did so that my anxieties began to unravel somewhat but then suddenly something, maybe the sound of the brook, maybe a twig catching in my skirt, reminded me and I stopped dead in my tracks.

  “What is it?” Max asked.

  “I just remembered,” I said. “I don’t even know where the land ends any more. I don’t even know where I can walk. My God, everything’s changed.”

  “I didn’t understand what that was all about,” Max said.

  I explained it to him. He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Well, there’s nothing to stop us from going there now. There may not be for a long time.”

  “But it feels different already,” I said.

  “It’s better than going back in.”

  “But we could go someplace else. I could show you the cottage.”

  He agreed and we walked back around the house and down to the cottage. I opened the door and turned on the lights; it was only a little warmer than the outside.

  “This will be Josh and Lily’s,” I said. “So they won’t have to stay in the house when they come.”

  “I guess you’ll like that,” he said.

  “I don’t know, I guess so. Actually I sort of had the idea that I could stay back here when the baby came. Not all the time, I mean, I wouldn’t give up my room, but it would be someplace to go.” I thought about adjusting the thermostat so the heat would go on but then it seemed unlikely we would be there long enough for it to get warm, anyway. We went into the big room that is the only actual room on the ground floor, with the kitchen at one end of it. We turned on a light and sat down on the sofa, huddling together for warmth.

  “Did you ever think of getting out all together?”

  “Leaving Yiytzo, you mean? No, of course not.” It seemed funny that he should even ask it. “Why should IF’ But I did have a reason now. No. Ridiculous. “Where would I go?”

  He smiled. “You can come to California with me.”

  “California!” My first thought was that he must be crazy. Then I thought, I’m the silly one, he’s joking, I didn’t realize it and he’s joking. But it wasn’t really a joke, either. He was asking in seriousness but with the knowledge that I would rather die than accept. “Why would I go to California?”

  “Just to see what it’s like. I bet you’ve never even seen the ocean.”

  “I wouldn’t have to go to California to see the ocean.”

  “That’s true. But it’s warm in L.A. right now.”

  “This is silly,” I said. “Why are we even talking like this?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I think about L.A. in this weather. About just taking off.”

  “You haven’t sold the house, have you?” I asked anxiously.

  He shook his head. “It probably won’t sell now until around April. People like to move after the school year. Anyway, I’m not in any hurry, it’s not as though it costs me so much to keep it up. And it’s comfortable. As a matter of fact I’ve gotten kind of attached to. it, much more than I used to be. I guess from doing all that work on it. In a way I’d just as leave hold onto it.”

  “I wish you would, Max,” I said. “I’d love it if you’d hold onto the house and come back to it and visit me.”

  “It’s complicated,” he said slowly. “If I really lived in L.A. I couldn’t hold on to the house unless I rented it. I mean, even if I could afford it, it’s no good for a house to stay empty like that most of the year. But then if I rented it, I couldn’t come back whenever I wanted to.”

  I nodded.

  “So in a way it’d be much easier to live here and just take off every once in a while. There’s no mortgage left on the house, except for the improvements I just made, so it’d hardly cost me anything to live there. On the other hand, I sure don’t need all that space, and I don’t know if I feel like it, really . . . except there’s one way I’d stay. If you’d marry me and we lived there.”

  My mind went completely blank. No, that’s not what I mean. We became blanks, Max and I, but the room existed around us. What he was saying was so ridiculous to me that I had no choice but to make us both cease to exist for a while. When he started refilling the space next to me I just stared at him.

  He laughed.

  Still I stared.

  He took my hands, which were stiff with the cold. He held them between his warm hands.

  “Do you want me to make a fire in here?” he asked.

  I shrugged helplessly.

  “I’m sorry I upset you,” he said. “I guess I took you by surprise.”

  I nodded.

  “I should’ve realized,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about asking you for a while and I sort of took it for granted that it at least occurred to you.”

  I shook my head.

  “I suppose that’s part of the reason I took to you,” he said. “Most unmarried girls, you feel as if they’re out for your scalp.”

  “I don’t want to get married,” I said. “I mean, I never even thought about getting married. I don’t want to leave Yiytzo. I’ve never even thought about leaving Yiytzo.”

  “I’m not asking you to answer me now,” he said.

  I’d thought I had.

  “Just so you know. I can wait. I don’t have to decide what I’m going to do for a while.

  I nodded. I was shivering. My hands were still in his.

  “Do you want me to make a fire?” he asked again.

  “It must be almost morning,” I said. “Maybe we should go back to the house.”

  He kissed my hands and released them. I kissed his cheek, which was rough and warm, and then we put our arms around each other, holding tightly, kissing, and I was flooded with pleasurable feelings and suddenly for the first time it seemed strange to me that I hadn’t missed these feelings in all the years since Vincent had held me like this in the forest for until now he was the only one who ever had, and for the first time now I wondered how I could have gotten along without being held and fondled and kissed, and I thought of the substitutes I’d made for myself, of the cats petted and birds tended and rugs hooked and blankets crocheted and straw nests made for myself in the meadow, and none of those things seemed adequate now. Then, suddenly uneasy at the thought that I had acquired some new dependency, I stood up and turned off the light and we closed up the cottage and went back to the house.

  Only Josh and Lily and Myrna were still downstairs. Lily glared at me, which was exhilarating. I said goodnight to Max and he left. Then I said goodnight to the others and went upstairs.

  “Beth?” Mimi called as I went past her door. “Is that you?”

  “Yes,” I said. More or less, Mimi.

  “Okay,” she said. “As long as you’re back. Goodnight.”

  • • •

  The next morning Josh had disappeared with Mimi’s car. He left a note saying the car would be at the station, and a separate note for Lily saying he’d felt the walls closing in on him again and he’d see her sometime
. Mimi said he was ashamed for the way he’d acted but I didn’t know and I didn’t care if that was the case.

  Part III.

  January-March

  The fear of death. New to me. What character defect had left me unafraid before? I would wake up and find I was sleeping with my head at the foot of the bed and not understand why until I realized I was trying to deceive the angel of death. Mimi too was afraid. Restless and afraid. I couldn’t really see why she was afraid and she couldn’t understand why I was afraid.

  “Are you awake, Beth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you feel like talking?” Laughing apologetically. “I’m so restless. When I try to turn over in my sleep I wake up.”

  “Come in if you want to.”

  “Okay . . . Why are you sleeping that way?”

  “I don’t know.” I sat up. She waddled in and sat down in the rocker. Her nightgown had no sleeves. I shivered.

  “Aren’t you cold?” I asked. “It’s freezing in here.”

  “I’m suffocating,” she said.

  I pulled the quilt up around me.

  “My room is impossible,” she said. “All the windows are open and I can’t breathe. Barney’s been sleeping in the little room, it’s so cold, but . . . I had this crazy dream. The room was sealed up and I was flying through space in it. It wasn’t so terrifying or anything except . . . the being sealed up.” She stood up and began moving around the room in her comical laborious way. “Everything seems so ominous, I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “It’s being pregnant,” I said. “It’ll go away when the baby is born.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.” She sat down again. “A baby in the village strangled on a Venetian blind cord. There were three children in the family, all of them slept in that same crib with that same Venetian blind near it, only this one got tangled in it.”

  “Where did you see that?” I asked. “It wasn’t in the Weekly.”

  “A woman told me while I was waiting for my meat in Tony’s,” she said. “Someone I didn’t even know. She just started talking to me, then she told me about this baby. People talk to you more when you’re pregnant. People you don’t know, I mean. It’s funny.”

  What was funny really was that she was dwelling on such things. People have often talked to Mimi, sensing that they would find sympathy without understanding, which is what they want. But if their stories were morbid she barely heard them, much less dwelled on them later.

  “I met Carol Wallace on the street,” Mimi said, “and we went into the fountain and had a soda together. She was all upset. Her friend’s five-year-old girl had her tonsils out and wouldn’t stop talking and something ruptured and she died. Did you ever hear anything so horrible?”

  “It doesn’t sound right,” I said. “Why didn’t they put her to sleep?”

  “I don’t know,” Mimi said. “I didn’t ask. It was too horrible.”

  “Carol Wallace always has stories like that,” I said. “Whenever she drops in here it’s because she’s got something like that to tell.”

  “I don’t know,” Mimi said. “I never thought about them before.”

  “It’s freezing in here,” I said, wrapping myself more tightly in the quilt. “I don’t know how you can stand it.”

  “Beth,” she said, “do you realize that I’m almost thirty-six years old?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course I realize.”

  “I mean, do you realize you’re not supposed to have babies at this age? First babies, at least? Do you realize that a much higher percentage of women who have first babies past the age of thirty have something wrong with them? With the babies, I mean?”

  “Who told you that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s true. I checked it and it’s true. I don’t know what I’ll do if there’s something wrong with the baby.” She sounded as if she was crying a little but I couldn’t see her face in the darkness.

  “I don’t think you should worry,” I said uncertainly.

  “I can’t help it,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it all the time lately. It’s driving me crazy.”

  “Did you tell Barney?”

  A long sigh in the darkness. Then in a very low voice with a bitterness that I had never heard until that night. “I told Barney. Barney said if it’s a real freak maybe we’ll make our money back.”

  I smiled and thanked God for the darkness.

  “What do you think it feels like to die?” I asked—and realized only when it was out that Mimi would think my question related to what she’d been talking about.

  “Oh my God, Beth! Why are you asking me that? I don’t want it to die, no matter what it’s like!”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not what I meant. I wasn’t even thinking about the baby.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “About dying,” I said. “About how it feels. I suppose it feels something like when you catch yourself falling asleep and you stop yourself, only you can’t stop yourself.”

  “I don’t think you should think about those things,” Mimi said. “I don’t see any point to it.”

  “I never thought about them before,” I said. “I don’t know why I’m doing it now. I feel like doing it now. I feel like figuring it out.”

  “What is there to figure out? It’s not as though you can do anything.”

  “Well that’s not exactly true,” I pointed out. “I mean, it’s true that you can’t defeat death but it’s not true that you can’t disarm it.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she complained. “Anyway, I’m starving. Do you want to go down to the kitchen with me and get something to eat?”

  “I’m talking about going more than halfway to meet it when it doesn’t know you’re coming. Jumping instead of falling.”

  “Beth,” she said, “do you want me to call Dr. Angstrom for you to talk to?”

  It was a vulgar question. She’d never used my illness against me before.

  “I’m not talking about madness, Mimi,” I said. “I’m talking about suicide.”

  “Well don’t!” she snapped at me, throwing me off with her vehemence. She went to the door. “There’s no reason for you to talk about it. I feel as if you’re threatening me when you talk about it.”

  “That’s silly,” I said. “It was just what was on my mind.”

  “Well get it off,” she said. “Come on, let’s go downstairs. I’ll make you some tea.”

  I wrapped the quilt more closely around myself and followed her down. The living room was dark but the kitchen light was on. Barney was sitting in there, a glass and a bottle of whiskey on the table in front of him. He stared fixedly at the bottle. Mimi got some cheese from the refrigerator and began eating it before she even put up the water to boil. I sat down opposite Barney.

  “ ’m’I in the way?” he asked.

  “Don’t be silly,” Mimi said.

  “I wanna be silly.” Drunkenly, childishly defiant.

  “Then go away,” Mimi said, more upset than his words warranted. “We’re talking about all kinds of things, important things; if you’re going to be silly then go away.”

  “I don’t wanna go away,” he said the childish thing now obviously deliberate. “I was here first. Beshides . . .” I couldn’t tell if he was deliberately making his s’s sound like sh’s or if he was really that drunk. “Beshides . . . you set off a very tender memory, trying to chase me out like that. My most distinct memory . . . from my whole childhood . . . is getting chased out of the kitchen so my mother could talk to her friends . . . talk to my sister . . . talk.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mimi said after a moment. “You’re welcome to stay, you know that, but we want to talk.”

  “What choo talking about?” he asked me.

  “Mimi or me?” I asked. “We were talking about two different things.”

  He laughed. Poured a drink. “Bot
h.”

  “Mimi was talking about babies and I was talking about death.” Or was it the other way around?

  “What a way to put it,” Mimi complained.

  “What about them?” Barney asked me.

  “I don’t know. I suppose we were both talking about things we’re afraid of. Mimi’s afraid there’ll be something wrong with her baby and I’m afraid of dying. Suddenly, I mean. I’m not afraid of suicide, there’s nothing frightening about suicide.” A contradiction more apparent than real.

  “That’s a crazy thing to say,” Mimi called out from the pantry, where she was getting cookies. “How can you be scared of one and not the other?”

  “It’s being sneaked up on that I don’t like,” I told her. “I’m not scared to seek it out. To sort of walk into it.”

  “Scientifically unsound,” Barney said. “You’ll have to think of something more effective.”

  “That’s not very funny,” Mimi said, dumping three boxes of cookies on the table. She was furious.

  “Are you sure?” Barney asked.

  “I’m sure you’re being disgusting,” she said.

  “You’re right,” he told her, draining his glass. “I’m disgusting. I don’t blame you for being disgusted with me because I’m disgusting. I don’t know how you could have married me.” He looked up at her in a sly, drunkenly canny way. “How could you have married me?” She wheeled away from him to get the tea kettle. “I know!” Suddenly he brightened. “You just walked into it!”

  Mimi poured tea, put milk and sugar in her own and began cramming Fig Newtons into her mouth. There were tears in her eyes but I hadn’t noticed them’ until she began eating, so that I briefly had the uncanny sensation of watching a machine which consumed cookies and produced tears.

  “Now this shuicide thing,” Barney began. Mimi lifted her arm as though to strike him but instead knocked over her teacup so that the hot tea spilled all over the table and into her lap. “Why would you commit shicide?” Barney went on, ignoring her and the tea.

  “To avoid death.”

  “Or to avoid babies.”

  “I don’t have to do that to avoid the baby.”