The Room Lit by Roses

by Carole Maso

  He takes an impossibly long needle that he will insert into my abdomen to get the amniotic fluid. I decide to look away. They will grow a few cells in a dish. Fingers, tiny hands, tiny feet, toes, lungs, bladder, a beautiful brain—we must wait six to ten days for the results. Just a few years ago it was more like a three-week wait. I imagine I’d be a basket case by then. I know in my heart of hearts that it will be fine—just as I knew all along that she was a girl. I buy a red rosary in the hospital gift shop.

  We go to have Mexican food on Greenwich Avenue and begin to wait. I am supposed to remain fairly quiet. There is a slight risk of miscarriage as a result of the procedure. But I have seen her, and she has held on so fiercely, so tenaciously for so long. I visit Dixie in the afternoon—for luck.

  Before the test there were papers to sign. As with everything there is a slight risk. Helen had been ready to march out of there. But I need to know. I have no idea what I would do. But I need to know.

  Of course it is a girl—still, sometimes one’s instincts let one down. Once I was immensely happy, it was a beautiful winter day in the city, I had just bought a new coat—when the phone rang. I could not have been more shocked. My sister Cathy in the hospital in Florida with a horrendously high fever. No one knows what it is. Toxic shock syndrome—before it had a name. Maybe she will die. I sit in a stupor. She does not die, but I am never the same person after that.

  Back to the country. I light church candles that say Santa Teresa.

  I stare hour after hour into the Christmas tree. That piney, floating feeling. On the surface I am nervous, but at the center I am calm.

  With that kind of fever the palms and the soles of the feet begin to peel. I remember this all of a sudden tonight.

  One holds—one tries to hold the heart in abeyance until after the results of the amniocentesis.

  Not possible.

  I had read a book on how to conceive a girl. It had all made good sense. I believe in books. Once when I was dissatisfied with something about my swimming stroke, I got a book and read again and again the pertinent chapter, and presto it was fixed.

  Most of my friends who have waited for children have boys. It comes from being overly attentive, overly conscientious, neurotic, over-anxious in the timing department. Too perfect, too desperate, too something. At any rate, it is possible a boy was never in the cards for me—I cannot conceive (pun intended) of having a boy. Still I am grateful for that book.

  Though for a boy Beckett Kenneth was chosen as his name way in advance. Though I never said it out loud. Strange. For Samuel Beckett of course, and for my father.

  I cannot lie down now without a cat draped over my belly. They must hear her or feel her heartbeat. They must smell the little varmint. This small beating sweet thing. Coco and then Fauve—they alternate, take turns. Purring and purring. And the baby moves.

  I play her over and over in my mind. She is seven inches long. She has teeth. Her heart in flight. She is sucking her thumb. Then she is playing with her feet. Astounding does not begin to describe.

  I call back those Italian charms—for what other word is there? Bagno Vignoli—those warm, fizzy, iridescent, luminous waters—a perfect blue-green. Those astounding mineral springs. And all the other charms of that most charmed trip.

  The Poor Clares, scurrying through the dark streets.

  The Piero de la Francescos.

  Saint Francis.

  A very quiet New Year’s Eve. A glass of champagne. A tour of the night sky. A dark meditation on the baby’s cells growing under glass. Tears.

  The week I waited—from the last days of the dwindling year—waited in fog for the results of the amniocentesis. Descended into water. The mist I could not see my way through.

  6 JANUARY, THE FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY

  Still waiting for that last bit of news to be released from the amniotic fluid. Star, rose, snow. A private prayer. And then my litany of Hail Marys. I pray to the Virgin and keep wait as the Kings arrive.

  8 P.M.

  Helen, who has over so many years delivered so much news. Helen brightly calling out over the answering machine: The baby is fine!

  Never known such happiness.

  I call my parents: She is perfect.

  I close my eyes now and see the ferocity of the image on the screen. The will at all costs to live. Without knowledge of what that is. I feel the pure life force, pounding in me.

  15 JANUARY

  Having decided to wait until after the amnio to tell most people, more and more now know. How I long already for those days when it was mine—my secret, and the two of us would walk—to class, to readings, in silence, in innocence. Or go for a swim.

  I am really beginning to swell now. There really wouldn’t have been much more time for the two of us alone in this, after all—without anyone knowing. Still wanting to preserve what we had together just a moment longer—isn’t that always what I wanted, longed for—one more minute.

  The joy now unalloyed. The days pass blissfully. I work on The Bay of Angels a little and dream.

  Still on Christmas break. Louis and Louise come for a visit. We go back to their house. I am up here alone. Helen at work in the city. They pamper me. Cook me comforting dinners. We chat by candlelight—these precious nights—until I begin to shut my eyes. Louis walks me to my door. We have started calling each other Hansel and Gretel. We are dwarfed by the forest, a little lost. He takes my arm. He assures me it will be OK. Throws breadcrumbs.

  I go back to Saint Vincent’s for a follow-up sonogram. Again measurements of all sorts are made. The length of the arm from the elbow to the wrist—that sort of thing. The heart beating on the screen. It looks like a bird in flight, they say, and it is true. The heart spreading its wings.

  The heart like a cat’s paw or a rose opening.

  Very happy to imagine having this baby in my neighborhood. After twenty years here—this is the last thing I might have expected… Always believed deep down that I would never have a child.

  Once I had planned to marry, believing that it was the only way. The conventions of my mother. Hearing them all too loudly in my head. Get married. Why does everyone always assume that what was right for them would be right for anyone else? No matter how happy they are? I was far too young at any rate. Had not even written Ghost Dance yet. He was the most lovely of men. Helen and I heartbroken, resigned. The life we had. Maybe it is best—if you really want a child… But mine is an intelligence so impossibly oriented toward self-preservation that I cannot go through with it. I did not know this before I took it that far. I did not know. I did not mean to hurt him—or anyone. I wonder where he is today. I know he’s published a few books. I know his father died.

  I have not thought of this in twenty years, and yet here it is back tonight. A scene for a film I wrote when I first moved to the city. A woman who is going increasingly mad (but no one can be sure of it until this scene) believes she is nine months pregnant and about to have a baby, but she has no swollen belly whatsoever, no physical manifestation of her pregnancy. It was how I mourned the idea of never having children, I think. I knew I was not going to ever become a writer if I had them then, and I assumed, in those days, that if I waited until after, should I ever actually become a writer, it would be far, far too late. Written in 1978.

  On the other hand I wrote a little screenplay—a relief from the sorrow of the novels—in 1993 about a universe of women, and of one woman in particular who is pregnant. The last line: It’s a girl!

  I send supplies to her through the placenta. The placenta, as it turns out, performs the functions of the adult lungs, kidneys, intestines, liver, and some of the hormone glands. It combats infections. Within it CO2 leaves the baby’s bloodstream and is exchanged for oxygen brought by the mother’s bloodstream through her lungs across the porous walls of the closed blood vessels. No wonder I can’t breathe. No wonder I am so tired.

  It is nice at least to have a reason for this fatigue—which Dr. R. promised would go away but
has not yet.

  I dream of the cord filled with blood like a garden hose. The light bluish green gel that shines through the pale sheath. Glistening. Its swimming-pool light. In my mind it is remarkably beautiful. In fact I cannot imagine a more beautiful thing.

  This pregnancy calling up all the other moments of bliss. Swimming at the health club in Cape Cod every day. Almost no one else in the pool. That feeling. The light streaming through the glass roof in winter. Each time I turn my head for a breath and lift my arm I see a piece of the sky. Blue with clouds. A little bit of paradise. I am writing AVA with every stroke. I remember thinking then I am living my life exactly, exactly as I have always wanted to.

  Blood travels at four miles an hour and completes the round trip through the cord in only thirty seconds. All that moves in me. No wonder I am light-headed.

  I worry about telling my sister Christine about the baby—as I do not want to hurt her any more than she has already been hurt. I consider getting her a new kitten in preparation for the news. She probably will not have children. She feels as if she has missed out on everything on account of her illness. I have had bouts of the same thing—but without the intensity, or relent-lessness—without the degree. I love her. More than she can know.

  All that has always moved in me.

  No American breasts are allowed out under any circumstances in the 1950s—that would have given women too much power and disrupted the societal order too extremely—breasts are just too sexual, too threatening, just too too—the entire society geared toward the feelings of men. So I am formula-fed, “better than breast milk” the doctors bragged back then. The fools. Arrogance of the 1950s. And as a result I am colicky and miserable for a whole year.

  Most men have found me a little intimidating for a variety of reasons, but now it is exaggerated. Exactly where did you get that baby? they ask nervously.

  Brown quibbles with me about pay for my sabbatical and has no official policy on maternity leave. All a little outrageous for such a self-proclaimed bastion of liberal thinking. In my exhaustion they attempt to bargain with me. Very tricky. I have to begin imagining a plan of escape. They might have been more grateful for these three years of servitude—directing a whole creative writing program for God’s sake—a preposterous notion. I wore the hostess crown most reluctantly. On occasion even displayed bad manners. Handled the administration without grace or flare. Not made for it. It was only the students I ever felt comfortable championing and protecting.

  20 JANUARY

  Talked to Judith. She is decidedly sadder, more vulnerable, since Zenka’s death. I hear the solitude in her voice. She is in London now. I speak back double-voiced, the child’s voice speaking with mine, and I wonder if this is somehow painful for her to hear. She has always been a great advocate for children. Zenka, on the other hand, I can still hear her: never, never, never! But Judith is pleased. I had told her first, before just about anyone, when the news was only a few days old and all we could do was hope. She was making her first trip to New York City. We sat next to one another at the White Horse Tavern—a place she insisted on going. “Dylan’s pub.” I am having a baby. And she in response: You will teach the rest of the world how to live.

  And on another occasion: You always know in the end what to do. If you are doing it it must be exactly the right thing. And others will flock to copy you. I miss them both every day. Come stay in Tourettes, she says. The babies drink wine with their water and they stay up all night!

  Semitic blood intermingling with my own now to create this little being. Two great religions meeting in my body. On both sides there are survivors. From both World Wars. Armenian, Jewish. She shall be some child.

  The tenacity of the born.

  The tenacity of the unborn.

  The impossibility of having a child—I began believing it was not to occur—I had done nothing toward making it occur, and I found that to be significant.

  Take loving note—for you have never seen this curve, this swell before in your body—and you shall never see it again.

  The most alarming failure of imagination—that I never dreamt I could ever feel this way.

  Embryo from the Greek, to swell.

  The embryo floats in its amniotic envelope.

  A gift unanticipated—this ability to simply shed all that once disturbed so. My war with the literary mainstream ended. I have no desire to press against them. It is part of this great letting go now. It clears the path for me at forty-two to begin my real work, my real writing. I needed it once, I suppose, in order to grow, to keep my edge, to push myself, to write up against. A way of clarifying, even defining my intentions. But no longer. It was part of my apprenticeship. Useful. It served its purpose well. It is, I must say, a strange feeling to be at last ready to write something finally of my own. After all this time.

  It’s lovely to be in this gorgeous fog carrying all this miracu-lousness inside.

  Provincetown in winter. I was writing AVA, surrounded by ocean. And another winter there grieving—as alive as I would ever be—and trying to write The Art Lover. Failing at everything, it seemed. Still I felt the hard work of living, the cost of loving too much. This flood of hormones. I’m waking up at odd hours now—wide awake, sitting straight up in bed and worrying about the strangest things. Dreamt I drowned in the bay at night. A small circle of friends trying to resuscitate. I could see them from on high. Don’t even bother trying, I instruct them serenely.

  There were in fact papers to sign on that amniocentesis table before the procedure. Some risk of miscarriage. Are you sure you want to do this? Helen asks. She is ready to pack us up and get out of there. Yes, I am sure, I say, though I don’t on reflection have any real idea why I am sure. Something is protecting me. I am as calm as I have ever been, will ever be. It will be OK, I said that day, and squeezed her hand.

  The hospital after the months and months of Gary’s dying a familiar place. Strangely I am glad to be back in the intensity of the emotion, the pain I felt back then. If I could live through that… It has given me a crazy courage. A weird fearlessness. Since that day, 1 October 1986, I have lived a free person.

  The worst possible thing had already happened, so what else was there to fear?

  That was twelve, thirteen years ago now. Afterwards I left for the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Never had the desire been so great as then to have a baby. Replace, replace, as if one could. That year for my birthday Helen got me a blue Maine coon cat. I was working on The Art Lover, I named him Fauve.

  Most lovely of purring consolations. How I wept and held him tightly to me and kissed him around the collar.

  Wanting a baby so much. Of course it would have been the wrong time. It did not happen then. Though it seemed the only thing that might mend me.

  Someone to be there once the absences began to accumulate.

  How to redeem the saddest of childhoods? How to become a mother when she had none?

  She became a super mom. She gave us everything. Smothered with attention and love. Too much? Who can say? As a result of being over-loved I have become the person I am today. With little concern for other’s approval or acceptance. Little desire to fit in—an extraordinary gift, that freedom.

  My father once said that my mother was never more happy than when she was pregnant—or more beautiful.

  I feel claustrophobic. That the two of us can’t do this together anymore. Share the same body. I want to throw myself from my tiny attic garret onto Waterman Street and have it be over. I can’t breathe.

  We are two hearts, four arms, four legs, two brains, four eyes, in one body. It’s the oddest thing. I don’t know how I’m supposed to walk around and go to school and act like an ordinary person.

  As if I were not strange enough already—now, this eight-chambered heart.

  The abundance of love I have always felt. Surfeit of emotion—now focused. An unborn music.

  Such expectation.

  The demands of love. Having poured it into
my books without hesitation, only to find on completion that I had been refilled again.

  Duras, Le Camion: “She might have said straight off there is no story outside love.”

  Pregnancy. The attempt in part to keep the deaths of those one loves at bay. And in the case of the dead, to bring back—somehow.

  Sat on a panel in Boston about the usual thing—writing on the fringe, breaking the rules. A little tedious in the end… My mind’s a blur these days. Increasingly I can’t remember things. A strange sensation—as if I were sloughing off all but the essential. And yet would I retain even the essential, I wonder? When members of the audience asked questions of us, their panel, I found it necessary to write the question down, because if another panelist answered first, I didn’t have a clue what it was I was supposed to talk about. Shouldn’t one learn to write traditionally first?—that sort of thing. I dislike making public pronouncements (though I’ve made plenty), but with my weird amnesia and laissez-faire attitude I felt little pain—well, less pain than usual. I am feeling increasingly free of everything that has constricted. That has conspired to keep me caged. Including myself. Amazing.

  Dixie was there taking photos of my ever-evolving shape. Dixie, that sweet documenter. We drove back to Providence afterwards. I stretched out in the back seat happy as a cat.