'So, Dr Grayson referred you to me?' he asked. I nodded. 'Has he been your doctor for long?'
'I'm new to the area. And I'm already on the lookout for a new GP.'
'Really?'
'I don't think we hit it off too well.'
'But Dr Grayson is such a delightful man,' he said, arching his eyebrows in Groucho Marx style. 'With the most wonderful bedside manner.'
I laughed, then said, 'I don't think he liked the fact that I wasn't married. Does that bother you, Doctor?'
He shrugged. 'Your private life is your private life, Miss Smythe. All I care about is getting you and your baby through the pregnancy safely.'
'I still don't believe I'm pregnant.'
He smiled. 'That's a common complaint.'
'What I mean is: medically speaking, I cannot be pregnant.'
Then I took him through everything that had happened five years ago at Greenwich Hospital. Unlike Dr Grayson, he expressed immediate interest, and asked for the name of the obstetrician who'd dealt with me then.
'I'll write to him and request your medical records. In the meantime, I agree with you: a second pregnancy test would be prudent.'
He took a blood sample. I filled a vial with urine. I arranged to see Dr Bolduck in a week's time. I returned to the cottage at Popham Beach. I tried to come to terms with my news. I had craved a child. I had quietly mourned my inability to have one. When Jack came back into my life, this grief intensified – though I refused to articulate it in front of him. Now I was pregnant (unless, of course, that test was very wrong). Had I been a Christian I would have called it a miracle. Had I still been with Jack, I would have been thrilled beyond belief. Instead, I felt a curious mixture of elation and despondency. Elation because I would finally have a child. Despondency because I would never speak with the child's father again. As bad ironies go, this one was particularly grim.
My mind was constantly haunted by thoughts of Eric and Jack. My grief overtook me without warning. One moment I would be reasonably collected; the next, I would be transported to the edge of the abyss. I remembered the distress I felt in the months after I'd miscarried – how grief became a shadowy companion, stalking me unawares. This time, its presence was more acute, more constant. Because Jack had decimated everything. That knowledge strengthened my resolve to make no contact with him about my pregnancy. He could not be trusted. He was beneath contempt. He would have nothing to do with this child.
Yes, I was being hard, steely. But the hardness was necessary – a means by which to cope with the all-permeating sense of loss. Initially it gave me a modus vivendi to get me through days which often seemed bottomless. But now there was the astonishing prospect of a baby. And though that prospect wouldn't soften my stance towards Jack, I knew it would give me a sense of possibility; a destination at the end of all this anguish.
I kept my appointment with Dr Bolduck seven days later. He was as genial as ever.
'I'm afraid the delightful Dr Grayson was right: pregnancy tests rarely lie. You are definitely going to have a baby.'
I smiled.
'Well, at least you seem pleased with the news,' he said.
'Believe me, I am. And flabbergasted.'
'That's understandable. Especially as I've just been reading your file from Greenwich Hospital . . . which only arrived yesterday. The doctor attending you was, in my opinion, wrong to inform you that your damaged womb ruled out all possibilities of carrying a child to term. Yes, one of your fallopian tubes was badly damaged, which does significantly lessen the potential for conception. And yes, the internal injury that the wall of your womb suffered also decreases the possibility of a pregnancy. But it doesn't rule it out altogether. I personally know of several cases where conception happened after this sort of medical event, and the pregnancy was carried to full term. Which, in plain language, means that your doctor at Greenwich Hospital may have just been a tad pessimistic about your chances of having a baby. Personally, I think what he did was shameful, because it caused you years of unnecessary distress. But don't quote me on that. Part of the Hippocratic oath has a clause saying you can never censure another doctor . . . especially in front of one of his patients.'
'Don't worry – I'll censure him myself. He was an awful man. So awful he made Dr Grayson look like Albert Schweitzer.'
Now it was Dr Bolduck's turn to laugh. 'I might use that,' he said.
'Be my guest.'
His smile changed into a look of professional seriousness. 'Though this is wonderful news, I really am going to want you to take it easy. Very easy. Because of the previous internal damage, this will be a delicate, finely balanced pregnancy.'
'Is there a chance that I might lose it?'
'There is always a one-in-six chance of miscarrying in the first three months of term.'
'But with my previous history . . . ?'
'The odds might be as low as one-in-three . . . but they're still in your favor. You will simply have to be as careful as possible. As long as you don't go climbing Mount Kathadin or decide to play ice hockey for Bowdoin, you should have a good shot at holding on to it. I'm afraid luck also has a lot to do with these things too. Are you planning to stay around here?'
I had nowhere else to go. And since rest and lack of anxiety were going to be crucial over the next eight months, there was no way I would be returning to Manhattan.
'Yes, I'm staying in Maine.'
'Again, this is none of my business . . . but do you really think it's a good idea being alone in an isolated place like Popham Beach?'
I had to admit that it wasn't. So – as much as I rued the loss of that extraordinary sweep of sand, sky and ocean – I moved a week later into Brunswick. After scanning the Classifieds in the Maine Gazette for a few days, I managed to find a pleasant, if somewhat rustic apartment on Federal Street. It was a one-bedroom unit in an unprepossessing white clapboard house. The decor could have been politely described as 'tired': yellowing walls, cast-off furniture, a basic kitchen, a brass bed in urgent need of a polish. But the morning light flooded the living room. There was a large mahogany roll-top desk and a wonderful old-style editor's chair (the desk and chair were actually what sold me on the place). And it was close to the college, the town, and the offices of Dr Bolduck – so I could walk everywhere.
Ruth helped me move. I set up an account with the Casco National Bank on Maine Street, and (via Joel Eberts) arranged to have my weekly Saturday Night/Sunday Morning checks dispatched there. I had another four months to go on my alleged 'leave of absence'. The weekly retainer easily covered my eighteen-dollar weekly rent and all basic necessities. It even left me enough over to buy a radio, a Victrola, and a steady supply of books and records. I also started reading newspapers again: the local Maine Gazette and the Boston Globe (as it took three days for the New York Times to reach Brunswick). Joe McCarthy and his band of cronies were in full demagogic flight. The Rosenbergs were entering the final appeal process against their death sentence for allegedly smuggling atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets. Eisenhower was looking a dead cert to beat Adlai Stevenson for the presidency in the coming November election. And the blacklist seemed to get longer with every new Associated Press wire report from Washington. On a minor personal level, I knew that this ever-deepening Red scare meant that there was no way I'd be welcomed back to Saturday/Sunday after my residency in purdah was over. Eric's death had been all over the papers – and his Godship the Editor would be far too nervous about upsetting the board by reinstating me. After all, I was the sister of a deceased man who had the unpatriotic nerve not to rat on others. Surely that made me damaged, unAmerican goods . . . and unworthy of access to the precious column inches of Saturday Night/Sunday Morning.
So I figured that, halfway through my pregnancy, the guilt money from Saturday/Sunday would run out, after which I would have to start tapping into the insurance cash from NBC or my stock portfolio . . . though a certain corner of my frugal puritan brain fretted about the idea of raiding my capital at such
a young age. Especially as I would definitely need that money to help bring this child up on my own. I also worried about the fact that – thanks to the Winchell piece and my reluctant furlough from Saturday/Sunday – the word around town was that I was politically suspect and best left unemployed.
But every time I started to have one of these nervy reveries about my future employment prospects (or lack thereof), I managed to calm myself down with the thought that, one way or another, I'd find a way of making a living. More tellingly, I was luckier than most. I had money in the bank and an apartment in Manhattan which I owned outright. They might take my career away from me . . . but they couldn't snatch the roof over my head.
Anyway, there was no chance I'd be back in Manhattan for some time. Just as there was also no chance that I'd be telling anyone about my pregnancy. Ruth was the only person who knew – and she promised to keep quiet on the subject.
'Trust me,' she said, 'I know how small towns work. The moment word gets out is the moment you'll start getting interested stares on the street.'
'But won't I begin to get those stares once I start to show?'
'It really depends how high a profile you choose to adopt; how many people you get to know, and what you tell them. I promise you – if you let it be known that you're the Sara Smythe who writes for Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, your social diary is going to get very full. Half the English department at Bowdoin will probably want to meet you – because new people in town are few and far between. And new people who are nationally prominent columnists
'I'm hardly Walter Lippmann, Ruth. I'm a very minor figure who writes very minor stuff.'
'Listen to Miss Modesty.'
'It's the truth. And, believe me, I'm telling no one about what I did in Manhattan. I've had enough intrusiveness – courtesy of the FBI – to last me for the rest of the decade.'
So I maintained a very low profile. Following Dr Bolduck's advice, I did nothing strenuous – limiting my exercise to walks in the Bowdoin Pines behind the campus, or to the college's library (where I managed to wangle a Brunswick resident's reader's ticket), and to the shops that lined Maine Street. I found a grocer who delivered, and a newspaper shop which agreed to order the Sunday edition of the New York Times for me. I became a good customer of the town's main book and record shop. I was soon on first-name basis with the librarians at Bowdoin, Mr Cole at the grocer's, Thelma the chief cashier at Casco National Bank, and Mr Mullin, the druggist. Though everyone initially asked me my name – and whether I was new in town – the line of enquiry stopped there. There were never sly questions about what I was doing in Brunswick, or whether I had a husband, or how I was supporting myself. As I came to discover, this lack of obtrusive curiosity was the Maine way. People respected your privacy . . . because they wanted you to respect theirs. More tellingly, in true Maine style, the state's unspoken social code was a fiercely independent one: your business is your own damn business, not mine. Even if they were interested in your back story, they forced themselves to appear disinterested . . . out of fear of being labeled meddlesome, or the village gossip. Maine was probably one of the few places in America where taciturnity and reserve were considered civic virtues.
Brunswick, therefore, was an easy place to live. After five years of turning out journalistic copy week after week, it was pleasant to take a sabbatical from my typewriter. I caught up with reading. I audited a conversational French course at the college, and spent at least three hours a day studying verb conjugations and vocabulary. Once a week, Ruth insisted on picking me up in her Studebaker and bringing me to her house for dinner. Once a week, I would walk the three blocks to Dr Bolduck's office, and submit myself to an examination. Six weeks into the pregnancy, he pronounced himself pleased with my progress to date.
'So far so good,' he said after I got dressed and sat down in the chair opposite his desk. 'As long as we get you to the second trimester without complications, you really should have a good chance of seeing this all the way through. You are taking it easy, right?'
'Brunswick isn't exactly a strenuous town.'
Dr Bolduck winced. 'Do I take that as a back-handed compliment?'
'I'm sorry. That came out all the wrong way.'
'No – you're right. This is a pretty quiet place.'
'Which makes it the right place for me at this moment in time.'
'I've been meaning to ask you: are you doing any writing while you're here?'
I went white. He immediately looked apologetic.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'That was intrusive of me.'
'How did you know I was a writer?'
'I do subscribe to Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, Sara. Just as I also read the Maine Gazette every afternoon. Your brother's death made the paper up here, you know.'
'I don't believe it.'
'It was a wire service report: a short piece about his sudden death, and his earlier dismissal from NBC after Winchell exposed his past. And how Sara Smythe of Saturday Night/Sunday Morning was his sister.'
'Why didn't you mention this before?'
'Because that would have been nosy. In fact, now I feel like a right fool for that slip of the tongue. I really would never have mentioned anything.'
'Do you think other people in Brunswick know who I am?' He shifted uneasily in his chair. 'They do, don't they?'
'Well . . .' he said hesitantly. 'It is a small place. And though no one would directly ask questions to your face, they do talk among themselves. The other night, for example, I was at a dinner with a couple of college people and Duncan Howell – the editor of the Maine Gazette. I don't know how your name came up in conversation, but Duncan turned to me and said, "Do you know who I hear is living in Brunswick? Sara Smythe – who wrote that really smart column in Saturday/Sunday. I'd love to approach her about maybe writing something for us . . . but I don't want to intrude. Especially as I gather she's up here to get away from New York and that whole business with her brother . . .'
I suddenly felt ill.
'Dr Bolduck, you didn't say anything about me being a patient of yours?'
'God, no. That would have been completely unethical. I'd never, never dream of . . .'
'Fine, fine,' I said weakly.
'I now feel terrible. But I promise you this: Maine being Maine, people will never let on they know who you are.'
'Who I am is completely inconsequential. What worries me is the stares in the street I'll begin to get once my pregnancy is apparent.'
'Once again, no one will ever shun you because of your marital status.'
'They'll just gossip behind my back.'
'As small towns go, this is a pretty tolerant place. I think you'll find more sympathy than anything else. And I tell you this: everyone at that dinner the other night said what happened to your brother was an awful thing . . . and wasn't he a brave man to stand up for what he believed.'
'So you don't think he was a Communist stooge? A flunky of Stalin, disguised as Marty Manning's top banana? You're smiling. Why?'
'Because encountering Manhattan wit, face to face, in Brunswick is a rare thing. But can I say something? Like a lot of people I know around here, I have great doubts about what McCarthy and his ilk are up to. Especially as they are supposedly running this witch hunt in our name . . . which makes me very uncomfortable. And I just want to say: I am truly sorry for your loss. Do you have other siblings?'
'He was my only family.'
Dr Bolduck said nothing . . . and I was grateful for that. I quickly changed the subject back to medical matters, asking whether my need to urinate every half-hour was particularly worrisome.
'I'm afraid it's a common complaint during pregnancy,' he said. 'And one which medical science has no answer for.'
The Pursuit Of Happiness Page 59