The Room Lit by Roses

by Carole Maso

  —Samuel Beckett, FIRST LOVE

  17 FEBRUARY

  Emily, six years old today, wanted to replay the details of her birth. I was not there. I was teaching in Illinois that year. The most awful of winters and how I kept having to fly home. The worst of all times for our family. My sister in labor for days it seemed. Emily followed me around the birthday party feeding me sweet things because she’d heard that might make the baby move. Her little hand on my belly. She says Sally and Julianna are her favorite names.

  From the March Vanity Fair: “Michael L. tells Pisces to expect at least one more miracle… With Jupiter in your sign all this year, such a miracle is destined to happen at least once more.”

  I feel like a planet these days. Some heavenly body. Hauling the universe and stars. Floating into every room.

  Making a mysterious music.

  My students say that when I speak it is as if I am lit from within.

  The eight chambers of these two hearts pumping blood.

  The gush. I have never felt so flush with blood. I hear it in my ears.

  It makes a clanging sound.

  One does glow as a result. Luminous in the dark. Like those paper planets at that store on Broadway, Star Magic.

  Not without its wonder and terror.

  Language is a rose and the future is still a rose opening.

  Jason leaves a message. “I hope you are well and the one traveling with you.”

  25 FEBRUARY

  Remember man that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.

  Ash placed on my high forehead. I remember her perfect forehead from the sonogram. Next year the child’s forehead will have emerged, that extraordinary curve—we are ash—lest we forget.

  It is when the church is refreshingly direct that I find it most convincing. My sister informs me that they are even waffling on Hell now.

  Great solitude now. Largely of the thrilling kind. It’s as if I were sitting in a dark theater alone right before the film starts. The second row. Waiting. One of the headiest pleasures in this world.

  I turn inward now.

  The room lit by roses.

  Concentrate on the baby. Feel the ferocity of the life force, the tenacity, the insistence to live. One feels the child’s single goal now—to be born.

  A great throbbing inside.

  In a daydream I will the car to swerve—to go up in a blaze—before it all begins.

  But immediately after I think—one day we will have to get her a Volvo—something in which to survive the crashes when they come. I have always imagined myself in a black Saab. Yes, perhaps we will have a black Saab.

  The double life pounding in me. The two life intensities. It’s almost unbearable at times. All this life. All this living.

  Helen, as always, amazing in her flexibility, generosity, open-mindedness, devotion. Ready to change course, think again, re-imagine. A capacity almost no one else I know has. Not to that degree. It makes what is to come all the more exhilarating, exciting, new.

  9 MARCH

  Never shall there be another day like this, not ever again in my life. My birthday.

  Two lives. One birth celebrated, memorialized. One anticipated, about to be.

  To finally understand “tears of joy.”

  I am told I look ten years younger since I have become pregnant. A lucky thing given my age. I have friends, I have a younger brother with children in college.

  Fertility, ripeness, how to describe the readiness that took over me? I cannot in any way account for it.

  Mainstream heterosexual breeding sorts try to invite me into their club now. I don’t think so.

  So much freedom and bliss. I feel completely liberated—that I have done this thing, and on my own terms.

  My mother’s one request: that one day before she dies I write a happy book. This must be that book. Maybe I will publish it after all.

  I am home sick from school. Not really too sick, just a little sick. Juices and sodas—plenty of fluids. Pastina and broth, my mother brings. I am thrilled to have her so nearby all day long.

  And to myself, more or less. The baby is taking a nap. School is such a bore. I hate having to go. I’ve got my little sick station set up on the couch. My private universe of crayons and paper and music and TV and books. Nothing makes me happier.

  The failure of public education to work. In my case, certainly in my case. A sorrow to this day. The waste of so much potential for good.

  Xui-Di says in China eggs are hoarded for the pregnant women.

  This must explain my overwhelming desire for egg-salad sandwiches, something I have not eaten in thirty years probably.

  14 MARCH

  The nest outside the bathroom window fills with snow.

  As always I play music day and night and wonder if this in any way shall effect the course of this baby’s life.

  There is no money, only temp jobs, no health insurance, only a tiny rented apartment. No possibility of a child here—I cannot even keep myself together—for many, many years. When I take my first real job I am already thirty-five. At my wit’s end by then. There is no money, not for a long time, only, after a while, these books. So much hard-earned joy. To live without regret—regardless of the other consequences. Without my writing there would have been no life for me. It’s all too clear.

  l6 MARCH

  Trimester three! Twenty-seven weeks! Yipee!

  Leslie Hill, on naming, from Beckett’s Fiction: “Foisted on me by others, the name is an imposition and a falsehood, spelt or written by myself alone, it names me with radical singularity.”

  Yes, the predicament of the name. I have never once felt that Carole Maso is my real name. I wonder if anyone else feels this way.

  From another notebook altogether. From another zone of the brain. From The Bay of Angels:

  I named my child Mercy, Lamb.

  Seraphina, the burning one.

  I named my child The One Who Predicts the Future, though I never wanted that.

  I named my child Pillar, Staff.

  Henry, from the Old High German Haganrih, which means ruler of the enclosure, how awful.

  I named my baby Plum, Pear Blossom, Shining Path.

  I named my child Rose Chloe—that’s blooming horse. I almost named her Rose Seraphina, and that would have been a horse that burns.

  I named her Kami, which is tortoise, the name denotes long life.

  Kameko—tortoise child.

  Kameyo—tortoise generation.

  So she might have a long life.

  And Tori—turtle dove.

  I named my child Sorrow, inadvertently, I did not mean to. In the darkness, Rebecca—that is noose, to tie or bind. In the gloom I named my baby Mary—which means bitter, but now I name my child Day and Star and Elm Limb. I named my child Fearlessness so that she might never be frightened. An Offering of Songs.

  Vigilant was the name of my child.

  I named my baby Many Achievements, Five Ravens, Red Bird. I named her Goes Forth Bravely. Beautiful Lake. Shaking Snow, Red Echo, Walking by the River.

  I named my child War, by mistake. That would be Marcella or Martine. I named my child Ulric—Wolf Power. Oh my son! After awhile though I wised up and passed on Brunhilde, Helmut, Hermann, Walter. And Egon—the point of the sword. I do not value power in battle and so skipped over Maude.

  Instead I named my child Sibeta—the one who finds a fish under a rock. I named my child Miraculous. Sacred Bells and Ray of Light. And Durga—Unattainable. Olwynn—White Footprint. And Monica—solitary one. I named my child Babette, that is stranger. I named her Claudia—lame—without realizing it.

  How are you feeling, Ava Klein?

  I named my child Perdita, does that answer your question?

  I named my child Thirst. And Miriam—Sea of Sorrow, Bitterness. And Cendrine—that’s Ashes. I named my child Bitterness, but I am feeling better now, thank you. I named my child God Is With Thee, though I do not feel Him.

  I named her Iso
lde—Ruler of Ice. Giselle, which is pledge and hostage.

  Harita, a lovely name, derived from the Sanskrit, denotes a color of yellow, green, or brown, a monkey, the sun, the wind, and several other things.

  I named her Sylvie so that she would feel at home in the sunless forest and then handed her over to the Madame so she might live. Placed in the basket or pea pod or a hat box for now. Hidden in the goose egg, the walnut shell, the plum for now. I named her Bethany—House of Figs. I named her Lucia to protect her from the dark. Dolpin, Lion. Phillipa—lover of horses. I named her Daughter of the Oath. I gave her away. So she might live.

  I named her Clothed in Red, because for nine months I never stopped bleeding. Xing, which is star. I named her Good-bye for Now. I named my son Yitzchak—that’s He Will Laugh. And Isiah, Salvation.

  How are you feeling, Ava Klein?

  I named him Salvation. And Rescue

  And Bela derived from a word that means wave, or a word that means time, or a word that means limit. It is also indicative of a type of flower, or a violin.

  As for me? I might have been named Song of Joy. I might have been named The Lover of Flowers. As it is, I was named Bird. And what could be lovelier than that?

  I named my daughter Arabella—Beautiful Altar, and Andromeda—The Rescued One.

  I named my daughter Esme, the past participle of the verb to love. I named her She Has Peace, and Shining Beautiful Valley, and Farewell to Spring…

  The ticket man at the train station in Providence asks where I am going—a perfectly reasonable question, in fact his job, but I could not for the life of me remember. I forget my purse. I lose my bank card, my keys. Maybe it’s time to start working from home now. The absent-minded professor indeed.

  It was Stamford, Connecticut, I was going to. After a few moments it came back. To meet Helen and then go up to the house. One time in fall Laura too was at that station to greet me. How much I miss her. Sequestered out there in Colorado, the Hate State. I am hoping Laura will come here before too long. I want her to be with me pregnant. I’m not sure though. I sense her ambivalence. I pray she does not defect—she is one of the people I can least afford to lose.

  A few nights of the same nightmare: I go to sleep seven months pregnant, I wake up and my stomach is flat, the baby gone. No explanation. As if it is completely normal. As if I had only imagined it, as if I was crazy all along.

  A weird delirium. Ghost images from my past. As if my life were over. A man who came one night up the rickety sea-soaked steps. The foghorns, the fog, this rolling, oceanic body. A most memorable time… He left his footprints in ice the next morning. By noon they were gone. I never saw him again.

  I am filled with presence and spirit. It is impossible to ignore now. This boisterous other soul, making herself known. Taking my thoughts, my thinking away.

  This motion within my motion. This pulsing within my pulse.

  In the train station in Hudson on my way to the city. Just called Louis and Louise to go check on the house because I am quite certain I have left the candles on. Visions of the whole beloved house in ashes. Oh, the intensity and blur of these days. So much hope and desire it frightens me.

  In pregnancy it seems the candles are always burning.

  Turning forty, two years ago. Assessing my life. My only regret—that I had not had a child.

  In me, the refusal to refuse joy. To refuse one single thing. Tempered a little since I have gotten older. Not to cause others undue sorrow, pain anymore. Still, it is how I choose to live.

  Not sure I would advise anyone to wait until after forty if there was a choice. The statistics daunting. The quality of the worry. The personal implications—what kind of mother are you anyway?

  High risk.

  18 MARCH

  The first glucose test is a little off and so I must go for the three-hour glucose tolerance test, a more refined picture of what’s up. I’ve always had small problems with sugar and so assume this test will show the need to change my diet or something. Also my sister, pregnant with Emily, failed this one. Off then to the lab.

  East Village, 10 A.M.

  I down the awful ten-ounce sweet drink and feel the little one doing somersaults, cartwheels—incredible dizziness, headache.

  The baby going wild. I can hardly write this sentence. Sickness.

  At half-hour intervals the technician comes for blood…

  I’m feeling better the further I get away from the sweet now and can better watch the comings and goings in the lounge.

  I walk a blind man to the blood lab. There’s a young Latino man here to get a drug test. He comes once a month with his drug counselor. He is an assistant teacher now and the kids like him. He has fed the children and they are now having their naps. He likes to take them to Central Park. To the Bronx Zoo. To New Jersey, where they have ants and termites. That’s what he says to his counselor, who just sits there exhausted-looking.

  A father and little boy walk in. Blood is taken from the father’s arm. When he returns the son asks him, “Are you still strong?”

  Parole officers fight with their parolees. “I’m just doing my job, man.”

  “You’re trying to take my children away.”

  “I’m just doing my job.”

  The distance from the sweet.

  People who need blood levels taken coming in and out all day—bipolars and so forth.

  I’m feeling a little disoriented from all the stimulus. Every one of these people was born. Was someone’s baby. I could weep at the thought of it.

  My mother entering the room with a bowl of pastina. Home from school. The tyrants silenced.

  Say you are still strong.

  Before I even have a sufficient chance to worry about anything Helen calls, once more with her good news: “Your blood sugar is normal.”

  21 MARCH

  The sound of my heart and my blood, and all day nothing but Bach. His birthday (313 years).

  It’s the claustrophobia that’s a little difficult. The pancakes on the plate are too crowded. The books on the bookshelves make me crazy. There’s no bed big enough.

  When I think of how trouble-free this pregnancy has been. Especially remembering everyone else’s stories. No nausea, no bleeding, no backaches, no headaches, no swollen legs—in fact my back has never felt better—it must be the new distribution of weight.

  Also I am not in the least squeamish or hypochondriacal or neurotic about the workings of my body, and this goes a long way when pregnant.

  Fear that the good feeling cannot last, will not.

  And it has been a bliss, intellectually as well—loving as I do the place of all potential. Before anything that is going to happen has happened yet.

  I put the little tape player next to my belly and play the Clarinet Quintet in A Major for her. I can listen to Mozart again. The gift that is Mozart.

  I’m more and more tired now again.

  I see myself from far off. I see myself from the future. My life over. “During that time she traveled by train often…”

  From The Bay of Angels:

  Sophie sees a stork go by. Then another. Another. Dropping babies, another, another (how lovely) on the Normandy Coast.

  Sophie thinks the child. The child might have. The child might have pointed to the sky and said starling, larkspur, lark. She writes it down. She takes out her box of paints, thinks: the child. A flock of extinct birds pass. Sophie thinks the child. Against a setting century.

  To have had to work for money through the whole pregnancy when all I wanted to do was to sit in my chair with my legs on an ottoman draped in cashmere. Some other time perhaps.

  A dream in vivid red last night. Red sky, red sea, red in the toilet bowl. Red falling from my eyes like tears. Fear translating immediately into dream. Yesterday I fell outside my apartment in Providence. Carrying too many papers and books back from school.

  A bleeding dream in red.

  Then next, the child-gone-from-the-belly dream. And then the
dream of the car skidding out of control. A cracked windshield. A crimson wreath in the snow. A bathtub filled with blood-red roses.

  Against a terrible and extraordinary music. She takes the child’s hand. Make a mountain peak, then cross it. A. They draw an A. And the world begins again.

  I begin to worry a little about the three flights of very narrow stairs up to my garret. Why am I living the life of the graduate student I never was? No telephone. A futon. Bad take-out Chinese food. Stacks and stacks of books.

  And Sophie having washed the page in rose (before night) writes Larkspurs (she loved flowers), a book for children.

  The fantasy of hurling myself out of this too-small window. The garret stifling. I see us smashed on the street. Not a happy sight.

  I still try to write, to work on Frida or The Bay of Angels a little, but it is as if I am reaching through haze, through gauze—impossible to get to—to get close enough to. How to get to what matters most? A dying feeling. Of lights being extinguished. Blow out the candles now. It’s even getting hard to read. Intimations of the first trimester—enormous fatigue.

  She washes the page in spring (where children play).

  30 MARCH—29 WEEKS

  No getting around the baby anymore. A privacy made completely public.

  I look at my notes and see that she is everywhere. Has always been there. Asleep in the text. Rose and baby snow.

  She washes the page in rose under the title: Hope.

  Welcome to the Children’s Museum. Under glass or in a locked box preserved: what they loved, what they wanted, the games they played.