Family Matters

by Kitty Burns Florey

  She was setting out glasses and the sherry decanter when he rang the bell loud and long and then bounded up the stairs as if he couldn’t wait. But when they were seated across from each other, sipping, and he had expressed his condolences, he was silent, looking appreciatively around the room as he had last time. Judd had met Crawford once and said he looked like Arthur Godfrey crossed with a toad—something in the wide mouth, the pouchy cheeks overlaid with freckles. He kept his eyes averted from her middle, blinking at the bookcases.

  “What’s your news, Crawford?” Betsy asked, and then, fearing she sounded abrupt, as if it was gossip she wanted and not his company, she appended, “How’s everything going this semester?”

  “All right. Feels good to be out of it, I suppose,” he said, gazing at a lamp and then at her.

  “Yes,” she said, though she suspected it wouldn’t be true much longer, and she would begin to miss the bustle of classes and meetings. The forgotten fear that her job was in jeopardy came back to her. She was being fired. That was the source of Crawford’s nameless glee: revenge.

  “You look like a rabbit at bay,” said Crawford. “Are you all right? Or has everything got you down?”

  “I’m okay. I’m still worried about my status at school.” He looked puzzled. “My job,” she said. “That I might not have one to go back to in the fall. After the fuss last semester.”

  “Who put that flea in your ear? You mean you actually feared that you’d get canned for having a baby?”

  “Crawford, it was you who said—”

  “Bosh!” He dismissed the whole thing.

  “And John Alderman is after all my best courses—”

  “My dear,” Crawford said with the air of a man about to say something quotable, “John Alderman could go after your courses with the Third Armored Division and he wouldn’t get them.” He guffawed and even slapped his plump knee. “Sweet Jesus, were you honestly worried about that? Don’t you know you’re a catch?” He had a funny, wheezy laugh, usually repressed in favor of amused archness. “In fact,” he went on when it subsided, “one of my bits of news is that your students miss you—and vocally. Hordes of them have come down like a wolf on the fold to communicate to me their outrage. They don’t want John, you see—they want you.” He lit a cigarette and threw the match on the floor, then picked it up with a shamefaced smile, and sat holding it. “Actually, one of the reasons I called was that Rachel Grace telephoned me. She couldn’t get in touch with you and was worried—afraid you’d—” He grimaced. “Who knows? What are the suicidal fancies of the young? Afraid you’d overdosed on some bizarre chemical? Put your head in the oven a la Sylvia P.? Jumped into the river with a pocket full of rocks like you-know-who? That sort of thing. But I see you’re well?” He ended on a note of inquiry, stroking his little moustache.

  “Yes, I’m well. Suicide is one alternative I never think of.”

  “Hmm,” he said, stroking. “An interesting case. Have you seen anyone about this?” His eyes twinkled benignly, impersonally, as if he had never laid his heart at her feet. It occurred to Betsy that he might not remember having done so.

  Betsy propped her hands on her belly, which felt tender and bruised. It seemed to have dropped, it was a heavy load of fruit in a sling, pulling her down. Perfectly natural, the doctor had said last time, the baby is getting into position. How clever of it, like a racing-car driver at the starting gate.…

  “I suppose you’ve heard about the Blakes?” Crawford asked.

  “I haven’t heard about anything. I haven’t seen a soul in weeks.”

  “Well, they’re splitting up. Roger and Karen.”

  “Oh, no!” It was all wrong—the warm and welcoming house, the parties, the kids, all for nothing. “That’s terrible, Crawford. It’s crazy!” She remembered kissing Roger and put her hand to her lips.

  “Apparently, it’s been coming on for years,” Crawford shrugged.

  “Oh, but it’s such a damned shame!” Betsy felt close to tears; there was a dreary predictability to the breakup that depressed her utterly.

  “Roger says he’s had it up to here,” said Crawford. “Wherever that is. Of course, that’s just what Roger would say—always ready with the inexpressive clichè. I’d like to hear Karen on the subject, personally. But she’s gone to her parents in Detroit. With the kids, I understand.”

  “Oh God.”

  “He does indeed move in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.” Crawford paused and checked out the bookcases again. “Now for the rest of my news.” He halted, smirking. The pause was meant to tantalize; clearly, this was something bigger than the Blakes’ separation or distraught and devoted students.

  “Tell me, Crawford,” she said, with apprehension.

  “Well—” He took another cigarette. “I—” He lit it, puffing through smiles. “—am getting married,” he finished, shaking out the match and beaming at her.

  “Crawford!” She felt huge relief. His words were a happy, counterpoint to his other news, Part of her relief was a form of deliverance, that a man she’d rejected had been taken in hand by another woman. “That’s wonderful!” She spoke from her soul.

  “I’m quite thrilled,” he said, dropping the burnt match on the floor this time and leaving it there, oblivious to earthly concerns. He looked dreamily toward the window. “Her name is Deanna, she’s a little younger than I am, and after we’re married she’s going back to school for her Master’s, possibly in library science.” He cleared his throat. “At the moment, she’s working as a cocktail waitress, which is how I met her. Down at the Holiday Inn.” He looked fixedly at the window as if he could see her there, carrying drinks on a tray. “She’s divorced, and she has a small son to support.” He let his gaze wander slowly back to Betsy. “She’s also a published poet,” he said with solemn joy. “She’s working on a very innovative sonnet sequence. Her son’s name’s Darius, age four. My children are enchanted with him, and with Deanna. She’s very beautiful. She’ll make me a good wife.”

  He had finished, and showed it by picking up his glass and settling back, sighing. Betsy said, “It’s wonderful, Crawford—wonderful. I hope you’ll be happy. You deserve to be.” She searched for something else. “She sounds great.”

  Crawford smoked peacefully. He looked as if he might stay there a long time, musing happily on his future wife. “The wedding will be soon—in March—and we’ll be going to Greece on the spring break. Deanna has always wanted to visit Greece.” It was a noble virtue, wanting to visit Greece. “Deanna also paints and has an uncommon flair for seascapes. She’s eager to do some work there.”

  “I hope I’ll get to meet her soon. She sounds remarkable.”

  “That’s just what she is,” Crawford said approvingly. “A remarkable woman.”

  He stayed for three glasses of sherry and then, suddenly agitated, left to pick Deanna up at work, checking his watch several times at the door. “I have a feeling this will create as much sensation, in its way, as your event,” he said. “Don’t think I’m too bemused to be aware that there’s something shocking—something downright spicy—about someone like me marrying a cocktail waitress. But no matter what anyone says, I’m very happy, Betsy.” She saw that he was; his eyes were glazed with happiness. He rushed out, with another look at his watch.

  Betsy drank another glass of wine. She refused to think about the Blakes—the Blakes wouldn’t bear thinking about. She cradled her belly and hummed tunelessly, looking around the room. She would have to buy a new coffee table, something with harmless blunt corners, and she meditated on this peacefully, blankly.

  She sat drinking wine and waiting, and she realized that she was no longer waiting for Judd’s ring at the door but for a good, hard pain. It was the baby’s birth she longed for. Everything was ready—a sheet on the crib, the diaper service on the alert, books on their shelves with her grandfather’s stuffed bear, and the driver at the wheel, ready to take off. She went to bed and slept fitfully, hoping all night for
the start of the race—for nothing else but that.

  Her grandfather called the next morning, asking facetiously if she was feeling better.

  “I feel fine,” she said. “Thanks for the bear.”

  He chuckled. “Reminded me of you—ferocious.” Oh God, she thought: big joke. He went right on. “You know, I just might take you up on your suggestion and go south for a month.”

  It was, in fact, all settled. He had rented a condominium’ on the east coast of Florida and he was leaving in two days.

  “I was lucky to get it. I had to have Ed pull a few strings for me. Oh—” He hesitated. “I thought Marion might as well go down there with me. She could use a vacation. She had that bronchial thing last winter, it’ll do her good to get away. If you really think you can get along without us.”

  “It’ll do us all good,” Betsy commented.

  “Well—I have to agree,” her grandfather said unexpectedly. “It might be best for you and me to get away from each other. I know you’re mad as hell at me, Betsy—I’m still not sure why, but maybe you’ve had too much family lately.”

  It was as close as he’d get to any kind of concession, but for Frank the words were remarkable, and Betsy felt a rush of love for him.

  The delivery of the bear was followed by an elaborate English pram, which he carted over himself and set up for her, showing off all its tricks and conveniences, and wheeling it back and forth in her tiny hall, where the Blakes’ battered old carriage sat.

  “Now you can get rid of that thing,” he remarked, giving it a delicate kick: only the best for his great-grandchild.

  Emily called her, too, with inquiries about her condition. “I want to be in on this, Betsy,” she said. “I want this baby to be my great-grandchild, too!” It was the only reference she made, even obliquely, to Frank.

  “He’s come around,” Betsy felt impelled to say. “He’s being very, very nice about the baby now. You did him a lot of good, Emily.”

  Over the phone, she heard Emily set her teacup down with a clank. “Well, that’s something!” Her voice was pleased and gratified, even amused, but that was all she said, and she changed the subject quickly.

  Two weeks after the Great Blizzard, the weather turned unexpectedly springlike, and snow dripped off the roof and down the windows. Betsy began taking a walk each day. She walked up Westcott Street to the supermarket, and to the university to check her mailbox. When Mrs. Brodsky told her about nipple shields (she had taken to sharing Pregnancy Club gossip with her landlady), she walked all the way to a drugstore on Genesee Street to get some.

  She even went on foot down University Avenue for her weekly trip to the obstetrician—hoping all the walking would speed things up. She was officially overdue, though Dr. Levine assured her that everything was fine, everything was perfectly normal.

  “I think you’d tell me that if I was pregnant with an alligator!” she said in exasperation.

  He stripped off his rubber glove and smiled at her. That was normal, too: overwrought, overdue women.

  Betsy walked slowly home, longing for her child—for the company the child would be. She was lonely. Her life seemed empty without her mother, without her grandfather—most of all without her students, she was beginning to realize. She did miss teaching, as she knew she eventually would: the daily bouncing off of ideas, the purposeful reading, the academic politics—even her grungy, cluttered office with its stained coffee mug and all her favorite books. Crawford had told her, in passing, about the proposed renovation of the Hall of Languages. She felt left out; she wanted to be in on the bitching and grousing at the inconvenience.

  But she was not unhappy. Expectation filled her, and she was proud of her patience. If she could wait this out without going crazy, she could put up with anything in the future. Pregnancy was a better discipline than studying for language exams.

  When Judd did, finally, ring her doorbell, she had ceased to expect him. She thought it might be Caroline at the door; Betsy had invited her for dinner. But it was still light when the bell rang, and it was Judd.

  He wasn’t wearing the cape: that was her first thought. He had a new jacket—brown leather lined with sheepskin. He threw it on a chair back, and she picked it up and hung it in the closet—like old times.

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” he said, sitting down.

  She sat beside him on the sofa, but at a distance. He looked different—was his hair longer?—and then he looked just the same, so familiar she could, just looking at him, remember precisely the feel of his rough cheek on hers.

  “I appreciate your going to the funeral, Judd.”

  “Well, I liked her.” Silence. The baby gave a kick. “How’s your grandfather?”

  “He’s taking it pretty well.” Betsy smiled. “He’s gone to Florida with my Aunt Marion.”

  “Oh, really?” he asked, raising his eyebrows and inclining his head—a gesture she remembered with affection—and they both laughed.

  It seemed to release some constraint in him. He moved closer to her and began to talk. He never used to talk much; now his face contorted with the necessity of it, and the words poured out. His work had suffered since they split up, he had found himself getting sick a lot, a series of colds, then flu, he thought he might be getting an ulcer.…

  “You aren’t very good at living alone, are you?” She meant it as a mild joke—knowing as she did that he probably hadn’t been alone much—but he regarded her soberly.

  “No, I’m not.”

  When she said no more—merely sat, staring down at the books on the coffee table—he continued. He had missed her so much, they had had something so good going.…

  He said nothing about Joan Arletta, and Betsy didn’t either, afraid he’d tell her some shabby lie. And he didn’t mention the baby; it was as if the huge belly under the maternity top didn’t exist. More sham! More evasion! She had tricked him—yes. But all the cards were his, nevertheless.

  She understood fully what she had dimly sensed last spring: that between them there would never be anything but the narrowest, shakiest bridge—one that would not hold her new weight.

  His feverish words ran on, and it became almost visible to her as he talked—the bridge like a spider web, so vivid that she moved her hand, to destroy the fragile thing. He caught her hand and held it tight, and at his touch her detachment almost deserted her. He rubbed her hand slowly between both of his; she was ashamed of her swollen fingers, and of the small flame of desire he was bringing to life. “I’m never unhappy and never happy, but I don’t want it back,” Emily had said. But I do, Betsy thought—a loud, insistent thought I do want it back.

  She knew, though, that if the shaky bridge held, it would be only because she put her back under it, gave all her strength to its preservation. She would be the waiter, the watcher, would spend all her life—or however long he gave her—spying out his moods and shaping herself to them. And then what? Emily in her lonely house, Marion perpetually rouging her cheeks—and her mother, with her gentle, out-of-it, accepting smile.

  “I want us to get back together, Betsy.”

  “How? How together?”

  He smiled briefly. “This time, let’s be honest with each other,” he said, looking at her straight. She took the words, meekly, as a rebuke, and nodded. “I’m still not the marrying kind,” he went on. “I still don’t mean that. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Have you noticed I’m going to have a baby any minute?”

  He looked down at her stomach, then at her linked hands. “We can work things out,” he said vaguely. “I just want you in my life—somehow. If you don’t feel the same way—” He raised his pale eyes to her face. “Then I guess I’ll go back to Texas. For a while, anyway. There’s nothing keeping me here but you.”

  “Back to Texas? To do what?”

  “There’s a lot more I want to photograph.” The glitter of excitement in the pale eyes was brief, but it made Betsy wonder. Would he really give it up for me? or does he know
I’ll refuse him? There was no telling; there never was, with him. There was just the impetuous outstretched hand followed by the turning of the Lincoln profile toward the future. And, for her, the old, silent struggle, the familiar headaches, the tears ready to slop over.

  “You go back to Texas, Judd,” she said unsteadily, and then didn’t know how to take it when he bent his head over her palm and kissed it. Was it gratitude? anguish? remorse?

  “I’m glad we saw each other again,” she said, and when he let her hand go she stood up and got his jacket from the closet.

  When he was gone, she wandered into the baby’s room. The last bit of sun lit a patch on the rug; Betsy stood in it, and it warmed her bare feet. She stretched out her hand and moved a toy train, idly, back and forth on the shelf.

  Ah, what will become of us? she asked the imaginary baby. But of course the baby didn’t answer. She was closing her eyes, nodding off, her tiny pink fingers clenching and unclenching, a dribble of milk down her chin. In her mental picture, Betsy wiped the milk away, knowing herself to be rescued by such acts.

  And, in fact, in years to come, when life was easier, there were times when Betsy would look on her daughter as her saving grace, as if it really were that simple.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1979 by Kitty Burns Florey

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-9343-2

  Distributed by Open Road Distribution