by Marjorie Lee
"You did call a doctor, didn't you?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Who?"
"Winston."
"Winston? Isn't he your obstetrician?"
"Yes."
I stood up. "Why did you call him? Why not Len Perloff's uncle? He's your G.P., isn't he?"
"Him too. We had to get the letter saying it was German measles."
I sat down again. "What's it all about, Frannie?" I asked. "What aren't you telling me?"
She pulled both knees up and put her head down on her arms across them. I could barely hear her. "Pregnant," she said. "Less than three months. You know what can happen to a baby if you have German measles during the first three months? Three out of eight, Winston says: blind, cleft palates, who knows what all else..."
She was pregnant. A strange pang of envy went through me. "So he's going to do an—abortion?" I asked.
"Please. The term is therapeutic abortion. Like a D & C. Only it's a D & E: E for ejection."
"When?"
"Tomorrow—if I let him."
"If you let him? What else can you do?"
"Have the baby."
"After what he told you? Are you out of your mind?"
She put her head down again. "Jo," she mumbled, "I'm so mixed up! I know it's crazy not to let him do it; but it feels like—murder. You know what I mean? I mean, if God lets you get pregnant shouldn't you trust Him to take care of things? I mean if you step in and change His plans like that, isn't it a—sin?"
"Really, Fran!" I exploded. "I never thought I'd hear about God from you! I never dreamed you had Religion; and certainly not that one!"
"I've got it all right," she said. "And it is 'that one.' My nurse. I had her till I was eleven, you know. We went to church every Sunday morning. I even got baptized! You know what Cardinal Mundelein said? Give me a child until he is seven; then let the world have him. They had me four years longer than they needed to. It's in me; not always, but from time to time; and when it hits me it won't let go. That's how the whole thing happened in the first place. I mean, a few months ago I started practicing—Rhythm. So you see it really was in God's hands..."
"Holy Christ!" I said, because I couldn't think of anything else to say. What more could there be to find in Frannie that I hadn't known before? How many Frannies were there living beneath that funny little facade? What was she anyway—not just to me, but to herself? Who was she, and where did she belong?
"I couldn't sleep last night," she was saying. "I kept having those hellish dreams, waking up over and over..."
"What dreams?"
"You know. Those lions. It was terrible. This big cat, this terrible, beautiful, giant cat: the kind without a mane; just smooth and sleek and coming at me. And I didn't back away. I knew it was going to kill me, but I just stood there. It was only when it leaped that I screamed. And the scream stopped it, in mid-air..."
She leaned back against the pillows, mottled red, but pale underneath. Her hands were on the blanket. I laid mine over them but she pulled them away. "Look at my nails," she said irrelevantly. "Why can't I stop biting my nails...?"
The door opened and Marc walked in. "I dropped in to see the kids," he said. "They got there and everything's okay."
I realized then that they hadn't come home. "Where are they?" I asked.
"Marian's," Frannie answered. "The bus delivered Petey there, and the others took a cab from school."
"So Bad Mommy comes through in a pinch," I observed.
"Oh, yes—when it's practical. You never know when she'll get sick and have to send hers over here."
Marc unwrapped the Hershey bar and took a piece. "What's Bernadette been telling you?" he asked me. "All about brimstone and the flaming pits of Hades?"
"Shut up," she said. "It's my affair."
"The hell it is," he told her.
"It's my religion."
"Oh, is it? If you're so set on going back to God stop kidding yourself and try a synagogue!"
"They wouldn't let me in..." she said.
A while later I went downstairs to make some tea and Marc followed me. "She's crazy," he said.
I put the water on and found some tea bags in a mess of staples in a cupboard over the stove. "Don't worry," I said. "You know Frannie: she has to make a thing out of everything. But when the chips are down she's more realistic than anyone. She'll go through with it. What'll you do for dinner tonight? I could stay and throw something together..."
"Don't bother. I'll manage."
"I don't mind. I'd like to."
"No," he said. "Honestly. I'd rather be alone."
But I didn't believe him. "I'll stay," I told him. "I'll stay, and I'll—"
He turned and faced me. "Go home," he said. "For Christ's sake, go home, Jo—to Brad, where you belong!"
"Thanks," I said, pouring the water into a cup, hearing the clatter it made as I put it on its saucer because my hand was trembling.
"She doesn't need tea," he said. "She needs to be— let alone."
"Thanks for that too." Then I carried the cup up to Frannie, but she pushed it away. "I can't keep anything down," she said, "and we're all out of sheets and blankets."
"I'm leaving," I told her, "but I'll call you." I bent to kiss the top of her head. Her hair was flat and dark.
"Don't," she said, pulling off to the side. "I'm all sweaty and awful."
When I told Brad about it that evening his mouth dropped. Then he said, "Oh, God," and mixed himself a martini in a twelve-ounce highball glass.
I called the next morning, early, and got Marc. "She's going," he told me. "I'm packing a bag for her."
Brad was still asleep when I left for school. He'd really hung one on the night before. So I put a pot of fresh coffee on for him and went off in the car. But when I got to the turn I was supposed to make for Wingo I veered the other way.
It took me over forty-five minutes to get to the hospital, and when I did they wouldn't let me up the elevator without a pass.
"Are you related?" the receptionist asked. "I can't give you a pass unless you're related. We were so swamped with visitors they had to make this new rule. It's better for the patient and—"
"Yes, yes," I cut in. "We're related!"
She nodded. Eyes on the pad, writing out the date and room number in a slow and perfect Palmer Method hand, she smiled. "Mother?" she asked casually.
The blood drained out of me. I wanted to hit her. Instead I grabbed the slip of paper and ran.
I found Marc in the hall, trying to peer behind the curtain of the nursery window. (They had put her in Maternity where she would hear the babies caterwauling night and day and be reminded every minute of her stay that not one of them was hers.) I rushed towards him and he straightened; but he didn't say hello. Until that moment I had forgotten the thing in the kitchen the night before; put out of my mind the unmistakable rejection: Go home, where you belong.
But no, I thought now; it wasn't meant that way; it couldn't have been; we're all upset—and this is no time to drag up small resentments. "Where is she?" I asked.
"Upstairs—twenty minutes ago."
We went into the waiting room and sat down. I handed him my pack of cigarettes. I knew he didn't smoke, but I thought it might relax him. He took one and lighted it; but it went out and he dropped it into an ashtray. "What did you do—cut school?" he asked after a while.
"They'll do all right. I'm not indispensable."
He smiled. "Oh, aren't you?" I let it go.
We waited for what seemed to be half an hour and then we got up and went over to the elevators and waited some more. Finally they rolled her out on a stretcher and we followed them into her room. When they had her in bed they left us.
She was still pretty heavily doped; only just beginning to come to. She didn't have her glasses on and when she opened her eyes I saw the greenness, swimming and unfocused. "They took my ring away," she said, trying to touch the third finger of her left hand.
"Here it is," Marc tol
d her. "They gave it to me while you were upstairs." He leaned over and slipped it back on. "How do you feel?"
"D-drunk."
And then a nurse came in. "Oh, Mrs. Cole," Marc said.
"Who's that?" Frannie asked, squinting.
"Mrs. Cole," Marc told her. “I thought you'd better have someone, at least for today and tonight."
Frannie swallowed. Then, gathering all the force she could, she said distinctly, "Get her out of here."
"Only for a while," Marc whispered. "You may want something, and Mrs. Cole can—"
"Get her out of here."
Marc looked at Mrs. Cole and shrugged. "I'm sorry but I guess—"
"It's all right," Mrs. Cole said, patting Frannie's arm. You're right. You just take it easy for today and you'll be fine." As she opened the door to leave we were blasted by the yowling of babies being carried down the hall to be fed by their mothers.
"Get her out of here," Frannie said again.
Marc went over to the bed and took her hand. "She's gone, Fran. She isn't here anymore."
"Please make her go. Please, don't let her stay."
He leaned over her. "Listen, Fran—she isn't here. She went."
"Out of my room," Frannie murmured incoherently. "But what about my life...?"
Marc left at noon. He had an appointment to keep; and then he wanted to be at Marian's when the kids got back from school.
I stayed with Frannie all day. I wanted to. It would have been easier for both of us if she had napped; but she fought sleep and kept rambling. I could never be sure that she knew what she was saying, or that she understood me when I answered.
"Don't stay," she repeated over and over. "Don't stay, don't stay. I'll be all right. I don't need you. I'm not a child anymore. Go away and leave me..."
"I have nothing else to do. Don't worry about me."
In a while she wanted the bed-pan. I found it in the cabinet by the bed, and began turning the sheets down. "I'll do it," she said. "I'll do it, and you get out."
"Let me help—"
She pushed herself up on one elbow. "I'll do it Jo," she said, a hot pink blush spreading over her face. "Get the hell out of here!"
I left and stood in the hall. In a couple of minutes her signal light flashed on. I waited until the floor nurse came and carried it out before I went back in. "All right?"
"Yes!" (stilted, formally) "all right."
"Don't you want to sleep now?"
"No. I do not want to sleep now." Then, less formally: "I don't want to sleep while you're—awake..."
"I can read," I said. "I'll get a magazine from the waiting room. I'll—"
"Why is it all so complicated, Jo?" she broke in.
"Why is what so complicated?'
"Oh, the simplest things... like breathing; like moving from one end of a day to one end of a night; like looking out of a window, or walking through a door; like having somebody try to be kind to you. Shouldn't it all be easier? I mean, there are people who do find it easier, aren't there...?"
"If you mean do I think life is a bowl of cherries, the answer is No. But we're all going to live it anyway, and there's no point in—"
"I don't mean life. That's too big and too vast. I mean a minute, say; or an hour. That's not too much, is it?"
"Too much for what?"
"Too much to take for granted? Like maybe it's raining out. Aren't there any people who can wake up and see it's raining out and say, 'Okay, it's raining out and to hell with it'?"
"Try to go to sleep." I walked to the bed, bent over her, and straightened the sheet. Unexpectedly, she raised her hand and, with her index finger, followed, gently, the line of a scar running from my cheekbone to my chin. It was a thin scar, grown faint with the years, about which I had long since lost my self-consciousness. With pancake or just powder, it was barely visible. But that day I had worn no make-up.
"How did you get it?" she asked softly; and I knew immediately that she had been aware of it for months.
"Ages ago," I answered. "It's nothing."
"But how?"
"Oh—on a beach, when I was a kid. I—fell."
"What an unexciting way," she said, "to get something so—beautiful..."
I stepped back and covered it with my hand. "That's not funny," I said. "That's just not funny at all!"
"Funny?" she closed her eyes. "You think I'm trying to be funny? It's one of the most—beautiful things about you. But you don't believe me. When I say a thing with all my soul—you don't believe me..."
I turned away and sat down in the armchair. "Sometimes," I said, "it's hard to."
"You know something, Jo?" she asked.
"What?"
"I love you. I really do. Do you know I do?"
"Of course. I love you too. But go to sleep. Try to get some sl—"
"I don't want to. When I sleep I have those lousy dreams: all full of lions—without manes. They're so big and so beautiful and they come at me and they want to love me; but they leap, and I scream, and they're stuck—in mid-air."
"I know," I soothed. "But you're tired. Try to rest—"
"N-no..." she struggled. "No, you don't know. You don't know anything. That's the crazy thing about you, Jo: you don't know things."
"What things?"
"Things. You act so smart, and everybody thinks you're so bright. Well... you're dumber than anyone most of the time. But I love you anyway... You know, Jo, that I love you any—"
"Stop it," I said firmly. "Stop it and go to sleep."
"No; don't make me," she pleaded. "Let me say it. Let me say that I do."
I thought of the song then: the one she was always requesting; and sitting there by her bed, I tried to remember the words. It wasn't hard. It consisted of a series of short, straight sentences; the music was only incidental:
Let me love you.
Let me say that I do.
If you'll lend me your ear
I'll make it clear
The way that I do.
Let me whisper it.
Let me sigh it.
Let me sing it, my dear,
Or I will cry it.
Let me love you.
Let me show that I do.
Let me do a million impossible things
So you'll know that I do.
I'll buy you the dawn if you'll let me love you today.
And tomorrow
I'll send you merrily on your way.
That night at home Brad wanted to know everything. He'd skipped work and had spent the day reading and puttering around with the furnace. "I felt so awful," he said.
"All right," I told him. "She's perfectly fine. And," I added, watching him mix another of those twelve-ounce martinis, "you'd better get to the office tomorrow. You're going to get fired; I swear you are."
"Don't kid yourself. They need me."
"That's what you think."
"Why is it," he asked, "that you always have to tear me down?"
"I'm not tearing you down!" I barked. "I'm just telling you: if you don't start giving them their money's worth, you're going to get canned. And it just so happens I'm not in the mood to move again!"
"Of course not," he said quietly. "How could we move again? How could we possibly live without Frannie Browne...?"
"What have you got against Frannie?" I asked angrily.
He took a swig of martini. "We're fighting," he said. "What are we fighting about? We've been fighting all year, you know that, Jo? Ever since we met the Brownes we've been having trouble."
"We've been having trouble for twenty-three years."
"Yes—but not the same kind. Now it's—I don't know. It's different."
I got up and went into the kitchen for a glass. When I came back I poured part of his drink into it for myself. "You ought to call her," I said. "Or go see her."
His face set hard. "Do you mind if I don't?" he asked. "Why the hell are you always pushing me off on Frannie? Have you got a spare husband somewhere? Why are you always giving me
away?"
I stopped talking; and when my glass was empty I went upstairs.
He followed me. "Come on, Jo," he said, putting an arm around my shoulders. "I take it all back, okay? Come on."
"All right," I said. But it didn't work. It never did when I felt like that. I ended up hating him; hating myself. And I couldn't fall asleep for hours, thinking about Frannie.
When I got to the hospital the next morning she was sitting in the armchair. She was wearing a pretty plaid robe she'd gotten in Bermuda with the collar of a clean pajama top folded over the neck. Her rash was all gone. She'd put on some orange lipstick and her hair was brushed and shining.
"How are you?"
"Fine," she said. "I can go home the day after tomorrow—if I want to."
"Don't you want to?"
"I don't know. It's sort of nice here: meals served, sheets changed; what more can you ask? It'd be heaven if they'd put me on another floor. Hearing those babies all the time gets me down, sort of."
"Oh, cut it out," I said. "You've got three. Isn't that enough?"
"No," she answered, "I guess it isn't. I don't know how many would be enough. I love babies. My own, anyway. I love to hold them. I can sit around for hours and hours, just holding them. We had a nurse for Stu for eight weeks because I was new at it; and Petey was a preemie so they kept him here, boxed up for five weeks. But I had it with Blair. She didn't know what a crib was till she was five months old. I put her in a basket and carried her all over the house with me so I could be near and pick her up and hold her in my arms. Even at night we had the basket in the room. I didn't breast-feed her because I couldn't keep the milk coming, but when I gave her a bottle I did it with my clothes off so she'd be close and get the warmth. I used to feel as if my love were osmosing, kind of: from me into her; and I wondered how it made her feel. Sometimes, wondering like that, it almost seemed as if she were me and I were loving myself..."
The telephone rang. It was Jeri. Marian had told her.
A few minutes later it rang again: Marian.
Then a third ring: Jeff.
I waited for a fourth ring: from Brad. But it didn't come.
Frannie went home three days later. She could have left before; but she loved that little room. It offered, I suppose, an insulation against the world outside, and everything, unknown to me, that was bothering her.