Anyway, it was about a month after he dribbled into her, and while she was undressing he noticed her belly—she was standing sideways—had a quarter-moon-like swelling to it like the first two times she was pregnant a month or so. She showed early, though she always denied she did, and with one of their kids—Josephine—he said “But look at your belly, it’s a bit bigger and has that particular pregnant swell, I should begin calling it if it turns out I’m right again, like the last time with Fanny and when I pointed it out then you said, though we’d been trying to conceive and probably did the first time we tried, ‘It’s not that, it must be something else. Maybe I need to lose a few pounds or, God help us’—I remember that expression especially, for any use of the word God like that is unusual for you—‘it’s just gas. If it is,’ you said, ‘we’ll find out soon enough,’ and then you laughed, hand over your mouth, that kind of laugh, something you also rarely do, since you didn’t mean it as a joke. You meant . .” But off the point again. This night when she was undressing and he was watching, preparing to make love to her—that’s what was on his mind and he thought hers too by the way she smiled at him but not saying anything when she was unbuttoning her shirt and saw him watching and also the slow way she was undressing and because she knew he usually got aroused when he watched her undress unless they’d made love in the last few hours—he saw a little swelling . but he said that. Recognized it from the previous two times, but that too. But didn’t mention it, feeling that if she was pregnant and didn’t know . but he’s gone over that too: later she found out the better, etcetera. Also, the longer she was pregnant maybe more attached she’d get to the baby, so less chance she’d want to abort. And this was one of those times he thought she’d stay the same or get healthier rather than sicker and where the medicines she was taking wouldn’t affect the baby much and that if they had to abort because of what they later found out in the various tests she’d take, then at least they’d tried to have another baby, though he didn’t know why he constantly switched his opinion on all this: maybe because he had no basis for either, where one way of thinking about it was as good as the other, meaning the chance of something good or bad happening to her or the baby was about as good as nothing happening. A few nights later she said her period’s late this month, probably due to the new drug she’s taking and he said “But you started it a couple of months ago,” and she said “It’s possible it’s only now beginning to have an effect on my period as it’s already had on other things: hair falling out, little more tiredness during the day, discoloring of my stools, the occasional feeling I need to vomit,” and he let it go at that. Her stomach did seem a little rounder than it had a few nights before but he was probably only imagining it. He still hoped she was pregnant but now kind of doubted she was and that it was the new medicine changing things for her as she said. Several mornings later she pointed to her stomach when she was getting up and he was doing exercises in their room and said “I’m not getting fat, so don’t worry, as I know how anxious you can get about that. Fat women—oh my dear; even unpleasantly plump ones—quite the turnoff, right? While I’d think that in some ways, all that meat, more to put your arms around and maybe another layer to get into and so much juicier to the squeeze, might turn a fellow on. But it’s the constipation now, which I was also told to expect from this new drug,” and he said “Have you started your period?” and then thought Damn, shouldn’t have mentioned it, for all the obvious reasons, but she said “No, though I thought I felt it coming on two days ago. It’s maybe a day or two away, but not even spots yet. Look, when you’re at the drugstore next time or Giant—their generic brand is as good, I hear in fact, soon as you can, if you don’t mind, could you buy me something to relieve it?” and she said it came in a tall container and gave the name. “But generic or otherwise, the powder with no sugar in it,” and he asked how to spell psyllium and when she spelled it he said “I better get this one on a piece of paper.” He looked at her exposed belly whenever he could the next week and felt it when they were making love or lying in the dark and going to sleep and it seemed to be getting a little larger and harder, and because the Tampax box wasn’t opened on the floor by the toilet bowl and she wasn’t spreading a towel under her when they made love it meant she hadn’t started her period. “I bet she knows,” he thought, “and maybe even wants the baby but hasn’t decided on that yet, so is holding off telling me.” Then she was going to the doctor’s to learn how to catheterize herself, something she had to begin doing to empty her bladder a couple of times a day to prevent the accidents she’s been having. He drove her there, went downstairs for coffee and a sandwich after he left her in the examining room, and when he came back she was sitting in the waiting room. “Something terrible’s happened,” and he said “What, the catheterizing?” and she said “We didn’t even get to finish it, so I’ll have to come back for that another day. But the nurse teaching me was poking and sticking this self-catheter tube there when suddenly blood came—” and he said “Blood, Jesus, you’re all right now though, aren’t you? I mean, what do we have to do, the hospital?” and she said “No, we can go home, I’m fine, it’s over. I thought it was my period starting, which I was thankful for, of course, and went to the bathroom—” and he said “It was a kid—you lost a baby,” and she said “I’m sure that was it. A very tiny fetus, infinitely tiny, almost nothing, a nothing blob, it was so tiny . I never had anything come out of me like that where I saw it . but how’d you know?” and he said “What about the bleeding? How bad was it? You call the nurse?” and she said “It went on a little while, but they helped me, even gave me a new pair of underpants—paper, but it feels funny, I don’t like it, I want to get home and into a real pair—and a bag for the old ones,” and she held it up, “. but how’d you know it was that? It could have been anything,” and he said “I just assumed by your expression when I came in; so worried, pained, almost afraid to tell me—that more than anything gave it away. Not ‘afraid’ so much, but you know. But you sure that was it, what came out?” and she said “I didn’t know it right at the time. I was so dumb. I’d had an abortion before—long ago, but the third or fourth month, and I was put out, so I never saw it and never wanted to. Here I thought it was a little menstrual blood at first. But also, because of the stomach cramps and my constipation, it was me all filled up with gas and crap and maybe the crap was finally coming out of me down there, but of course I wasn’t thinking. All this before I looked, because I heard it plopping into the water, so for sure thought it was crap,” and he said “That stupid fucking nurse. So what did she do, poke you up your hole without looking or even the wrong hole intentionally because she wanted you to lose the baby?” and she said “Of course not. She didn’t know; I didn’t; nobody did. She was putting it in the right place, showing me; maybe she wasn’t the greatest expert at it, because it hurt when she did it, but in the urethra, when the blood came,” and he said “And she didn’t see what hole it was coming out of?” and she said “It was just a trickle, and it was all so fast her getting me into the bathroom that she didn’t have time to look,” and he said “It was a goddamn botched-up job, a stupid screwup which nurse was it? Did you tell the doctor? Did you even see him after?” and she said “Shh, please, and it wasn’t her fault. And the doctor saw me and said, from everything I told him, that it must have been a very early fetus and there was no major hemorrhaging and everything came out and I was in no danger. It was just that this thing, this fetus, didn’t have it in it to live—that’s my opinion; the doctor couldn’t say for sure what made it abort—” and he said “He doesn’t want to take responsibility the insurance and so on,” and she said “That’s not it. But he agreed it could have been related to my illness and the way I am, so weak at times, and all the drugs I’ve been taking, and that he never specifically warned me with this new one because I’d told him I had no intention of getting pregnant again and that if I had changed my mind about it he knew I would have informed him,” and he said “Warned you
about what?” and she said “You’re really upset about this,” and he said “I am, what do you think; look what they did to you. But warned you about what?” and she said “Of getting—what I said; that women shouldn’t be that it shouldn’t, this new drug, be taken by women contemplating getting pregnant or by men with my disease who are married to women who are planning to get pregnant, though the drug company has no extensive studies on that yet, the drug’s so new; but in the little data they do have, there wasn’t a single miscarry. They were just being extra careful by making that warning,” and he said “Extra careful? If they were extra careful, or the doctor and nurse were—” and she said “He did the right thing based on the information about the drug and what I’d told him. But that—all those things working against me—coupled with the fact that the fetus wasn’t healthy itself, which can happen in women much younger than I and stronger and in perfect shape and not taking any drugs or anything—” and he said “What did it look like?” and she said “Can’t we continue this in the car, or even later? I’ve had it with it for now,” and he said “Just, while you can still remember it, tell me what it looked like, please,” and she said “I told you: nothing; a glob, dark, red, bloody. I flushed it down fast, almost before I knew what I was doing, it was so sickening-looking. But I almost think . but this has to be impossible. I’m sure they don’t even start growing those things yet. But from some quick look, as it was turning around in the bowl, that I saw limbs—something, two of them sticking out on either side,” and he said “Oh sheez, that’s awful. Fuck it, I knew you were pregnant; I saw it in your belly. The way it was shaped, which I knew from the two other times,” and she said “Why didn’t you say anything?” and he said “I had my doubts, didn’t want to alarm you, raise my hopes—you know—and I thought you knew yourself and all those signs much better than I. But I’m really sorry now. I could have stopped you from going in for that catheter. I would have asked you to have the baby if it had stayed,” and she said “How could I have? I can’t even pee right or stand up straight anymore,” and he said “We could have done it; it would have worked out; women have had them under worse conditions: paralyzed; in iron lungs. Three’s what I always wanted; three’s the best. Maybe we can still have another. You can go off this drug; for a while you don’t have to take anything. I’d take care of you from day one to the end. We’d get someone to help, you’d stay in bed—” and she said “No, this one was an accident; we just have to be more careful from now on.”
Evangeline
She put an ad in the newspaper of the university he’d been a grad student at: “Garden and lt. handyman work for room and bd; 2 months minimum, 3 preferred.” He calls, says that if she does take him he can only give her two weeks. That he was driving to New York with a friend in the friend’s car and his apartment lease will be up in three days and he’ll need a place to stay. She won’t even have to provide him bed linen; he has a sleeping bag and pillow and pillowcase, though he would like a real bed or mattress to sleep on and to have his own room to write in a few hours a day before or after he does the work she wants done.
She says to be honest the ad’s been running for several weeks and no one’s answered it so far and she’d like to get the work started, so could he come by for an interview and to see if he’d like staying here? She has a young son; he has nothing against children, does he? and he says “No, why ever would I?”
He bikes over that afternoon, rings the bell, nobody answers. Walks around the house calling her name. “Mrs. Tylic? I’m here, Mrs. Tylic—Gould Bookbinder, at the time you said.” “In here,” she says when he passes a screen door at the back of the house. The laundry room. A beautiful blond boy, around two years old, is sitting on top of the washing machine, stretching inside for clothes and dropping them into the laundry basket on the floor. She pretty, girlish-like; in shorts, T-shirt, long hair in pigtails, thin, almost no breasts, though a bra on, small, five-two at the most, bright blue eyes, black hair, pale skin, holding clothespins, one in her mouth which she takes out, shy smile, very white teeth and perfectly formed it seems, slender muscular legs, high behind, young, twenty-two, twenty-four. They talk while she sticks certain clothes in the dryer and hangs on a line above his head other clothes: man’s sweatshirt, seems an extra large; two bras, several small underpants, but a woman’s, not a kid’s, and all with bloodstains in the crotch; leotard, the boy’s socks, which he’d think would go in the dryer. She says another reason she’d like a man here is for her son, since he’s missing even a semi-steady male image with his father almost never around. He points to the boy, shakes his head a little and she says “Bronson knows; his biological pa, B-senior, pops in every third month for lunch to bitch as to how much of his inherited dough he’s given us and to spin Brons-J around in his newest nifty sports car. Now it’s a psychedelic-painted Lotus; that goofer’s loaded.” She doesn’t work, for the time being takes marketing courses at a community college and is also trying to sculpt and pot, lives off the little money her ex-husband is forced by law to give their son and what she manages to pad on the kid’s medical and daycare expenses, which her ex also pays; the house was bought with the money she got from the divorce settlement. “So I don’t have much; the meals will be skimpy. Lots of pasta and canned tomato paste and jug wine, unless you feel like springing for the real McCoy and also one night treating us to a restaurant meal. I need lots of work done that I can’t afford anyone to do. I don’t expect major plumbing repairs but I do want simple electric jobs beyond just changing light bulbs, and the fence fixed, some bamboo dug up from a friend’s property and replanted here, and if there’s time, help in wallpapering the two bathrooms, besides all the ugly old rose bushes removed. Their roots go deep, I want you to understand before you sign on.”
She takes his references, calls that night to say they all checked out and could he start in two days? and he says “As I said, my residence is only a single small room in a large house full of other small rooms filled with rowdy grad students and at night their loud mates, so I can even move in tomorrow. I’ve almost nothing to pack and I can use the sleep too before the long mostly sleepless drive back to New York.”
Years later, maybe twenty, she writes “Why are you still writing me? I don’t think our correspondence is healthy. It’s been enjoyable hearing from you. You always wrote interesting and occasionally witty letters, not that I was ever interested in anything that happened in your rat nest of a city or thought that wit was such a great thing to have. I prefer sincerity and plain-spokenness and not to think of cockroaches and rowhouses. But you’re married now and your wife probably resents your writing me and I don’t want to be the cause for any strain in your marriage. I know I’d resent a husband who was getting letters from a former lover he says he was once in love with and almost married to.” He wrote back saying “Sally accepts what I say, that we’re only friends now. And how often do we exchange letters, three times a year? I get the feeling the main reason you want to end the correspondence is because there’s nothing in it for you; in addition, you don’t like the act of writing: it takes too much of your energy and time. The phone would be far simpler and less physically taxing if all you want to know about is what’s happening and not what I’m thinking. So okay, I’ll stop, and a long good life to you and of course always my love to B-J.” She sends him a postcard: “That was extremely UNFAIR!!! Don’t be the louse and bastard you once were; I thought you had climbed out of that. And sure: ‘good life’ to me but ‘love’ to Brons. You couldn’t be more obvious. You’re a fuck!” He sends her a picture postcard of the New York skyline, and says “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I apologize; I swear my remark on the physical cost of letter writing was only a little dig I was giving and I meant no deep harm. As for the good life instead of my love, I thought saying anything approximating affection to you would be inappropriate after what you said about it. I hope this clears it up. Best ever, Gould.” She doesn’t write back, so her postcard was the last he ever heard from h
er.
Thinking about it soon after, he was glad to be through with the correspondence. He always answers when anyone writes him, so he felt stuck in it. But she was cutting him up too much in her letters and for no reason he could see and he’d wanted to say something about it but hoped she’d stop on her own. “You were usually such a sourpuss and at times acted like a fruity prude. Everyone we knew here felt that but they also thought there were decent and worthy things to you too. . You bitched too much when we were together, but about everything (especially the music and movies I liked and what I read and how I was raising B-J) and I’ve been wondering if you complain as much now to your wife. Nothing was ever good enough for you and I doubt that anything will ever be. You thought California culture the dimmest but you never convinced me that your depressing falling-apart East was superior or even its equal. And as for Europe: oh, you loved that place despite its fastidiousness, oob-la-la-ness, long serious faces and cruddy toilets and all their bloody wars and what they did to your poor Jews.
Our weather was always too beautiful for you, our shores too uninhabited and pristine. The people around here too open, good-natured and lighthearted and just all-around easy to be with and relaxed. You craved New York nastiness, impoliteness, uptightness, backstabbingness and hardships of every sort and snow so cold your skinny balls froze till they cracked. Things shouldn’t be so ‘naturally good.’” He doesn’t remember saying that, nor does he see himself as ever saying it, since he never believed it, so if she wasn’t quoting him why’d she put it in quotes? “I’m delighted you’ve finally found a woman to marry—not ‘delighted’; that was one of your fake poofy words. I’m just glad you’re getting married and I hope it works and changes you for the better (like helps you mature) as every marriage should. But honestly, I thank all the stars there are that I didn’t become your bride and that you’re no longer hassling me. . Brons doesn’t consider you his second father anymore. He became disappointed and then disgusted with you when you refused to fly out here for a week in what had become your ritual annual visit. You said you couldn’t afford to any longer because the plane fares had gone up, but do you know what it did to that kid? Now he’s too busy making money to be interested in anything you do: your work, who you marry and what’s on your mind. If there’s one person you can bet will be a multi-m man by the time he’s thirty, it’s our junior B. Why deny things for yourself so much? You were the same skinflint with us too. True, you only had menial jobs then and were basically supporting us—your ‘family’ as you liked to say (that I appreciated)—but you still could have treated yourself to something when you had a little money, or not been so penurious (cheap, man, CHEAP!). What I’m saying is that you inherited your cheapness from your father and because it is genetic it’s probably impossible to eradicate.”
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