Morning

by Nancy Thayer

  The examining room was cheerful, with flowery wallpaper and more pictures of babies. After undressing in the bathroom and putting on a paper robe, Sara lay down on the table with her feet in metal stirrups, her knees drawn up. She had always hated this part, the feeling of vulnerability, the exposure. She had asked for it, but her body informed her mind that as far as it was concerned, she was being violated. Her muscles tensed.

  Dr. Crochett pulled on rubber gloves and put his hand inside her. “I had a patient once,” he said, “who tried for three years to get pregnant. She finally made it. She really wanted that baby. When it came time for her to deliver, I met her at the hospital, lifted her gown, and saw that she had had her pubic hair shaved into the shape of a heart all around her vagina.” He laughed a booming laugh.

  Sara laughed politely, thinking that all sounded a little bizarre, but the image flashed before her mind and then the doctor was dropping the paper sheet between her legs. So soon the examination was over.

  “That’s fine. You can sit up now. Why don’t you get dressed and come back to my office? We’ll make a plan of attack.”

  In the office, Dr. Crochett said, “You’re fine. All the right equipment in all the right places. Perhaps a slight case of endometriosis, but I can’t tell much.”

  “What’s that?” Sara asked, alarmed.

  “Endometriosis—briefly, it’s tissue that forms in the abdominal cavity. It can cause painful intercourse if it’s bad enough. If often occurs in women as they grow older and haven’t had children. Interestingly enough, the cure for it is pregnancy. But that’s something we’ll check into later, if necessary. There are some other things we can do first, some tests we can do right away that will tell us a lot. Where are you now in your cycle?”

  “I’m on the tenth day,” Sara said.

  “That’s great!” Dr. Crochett said, so enthusiastically that Sara almost jumped. “Now let’s see,” he went on, musing aloud, “you probably ovulate on the fifteenth day. By the way—keep on taking your temperature. That chart will be very helpful after a few more months.”

  A few more months, Sara thought. Here we go again. How wonderful it would have been to come here and have a gynecologist wave a magic wand so that she would go home and get pregnant immediately. The thought of having to go through a few more months of waiting and hoping and being disappointed made her spirits plunge.

  “Now,” Dr. Crochett was going on cheerfully, “I want to do a postcoital on you. I can tell a lot from that. Cut through some steps. And I want to do it just before you ovulate. Now, can you come back here on the fifteenth day? Let’s see, that puts us on December twenty-three. Well, close to Christmas, hmm? The last day I’ll be in the office. You and your husband will have to have intercourse on the twenty-second of December. Then I’ll need to examine you first thing in the morning. Can you arrange that?”

  “Will you need my husband here, too?” Sara asked.

  “No, that won’t be necessary. Either the two of you can come up to Boston for the night, then you come see me in the morning, or, if you want, you can have intercourse on Nantucket on the twenty-second and fly up here on the morning of the twenty-third. Whichever you wish. The important thing is that you do have intercourse then and that you get your body in here to me as soon as possible after that.”

  Sara thought a moment. The twenty-second was the night of Jamie and Sheldon’s Christmas party. And Steve had to work on the twenty-third. But she could fly up.

  “Yes,” she said. “I can do it.”

  “Fine,” Dr. Crochett said. “We’ll schedule an early-morning appointment with my secretary—and pray for clear weather. I know what those Nantucket fogs can be like.”

  “Yes,” Sara said, suddenly worried. She hadn’t thought about the weather not cooperating. And this could be such a difficult time of the year.

  “Don’t look so troubled,” Dr. Crochett said. “You’re a young, healthy woman. Your body seems to be in good shape. You’ll get pregnant.”

  “I hope so,” Sara said. She rose and followed the doctor from his office into the reception room and made an appointment for the morning of the twenty-third.

  “Oh, and here!” Dr. Crochett said. He scribbled something on a pad and handed it to her. “I want you to get this prescription filled. It’s for multivitamins. We’ve found that women who take these for a few months before they get pregnant have a smaller incidence of babies with spina bifida. See you soon!”

  Then he was gone, back into his office. Sara looked at the piece of paper in her hand, his indecipherable scribbling black and definite on the page. Magic pills, she thought, just what I wanted, a prescription for magic pills.

  Buttoning her coat against the chill as she stepped out of the office into the day, Sara felt buoyant. She felt she had done the absolutely right thing, had set something in motion, had somehow begun a chain of events that would lead to her pregnancy. Dr. Crochett’s optimism was infectious. He had given her body his seal of approval; maybe that was all she needed, maybe she only needed this bit of authoritative go-ahead to get pregnant. Certainly she felt more fertile now; she felt wonderful.

  Dr. Crochett’s office was in a brownstone in Brookline; Sara took a cab from there to Fanny Anderson’s house in Cambridge.

  She was going to do something she had never done before, something aggressive and pushy—but what else could she do? She was so frustrated.

  During the past week, after finishing the Jenny material that Fanny Anderson had sent her, Sara had tried at least fifteen times by telephone to reach Fanny Anderson. Each time she had been thwarted by the same person, Fanny’s housekeeper or maid, who always said, in a cold hostile voice, “Mrs. Anderson is not available at the moment.”

  “Well, could you please ask her to call me?” Sara had asked, politely at first, then, as the days passed and her calls were not returned, with increasing anger.

  “I’ll give Mrs. Anderson your message,” the woman said, and hung up before Sara could say another thing.

  Sara was beginning to envision the housekeeper as some kind of awful tyrant, some jealous jailer, who saw Sara as an enemy, an intruder to be fended off. Certainly she sounded that way on the phone. Perhaps she was the writer’s lover? A neurotic lesbian, afraid to let any other woman come in contact with Fanny Anderson? In any case, it was strange and maddening, how the woman with her cold, thin voice refused to put Sara through to Fanny. Sara remembered Fanny’s voice, by contrast so warm and soft and welcoming, so personal. And Fanny had sent her more of the Jenny pages, so she wanted to keep in touch with Sara. Something odd was going on, and Sara wanted to know what it was. More, she wanted to try to persuade Fanny to finish this book, she wanted to help her to shape it, she wanted to be a real editor in a way she seldom had been before.

  So, once she had made the appointment with a gynecologist in Boston, she tried Fanny Anderson’s number once again, and after she once again received the same response, the cold, hostile “Mrs. Anderson is not available at the moment. I’ll give her your message,” Sara had written a letter.

  Dear Fanny Anderson,

  I have tried numerous times over the past week to reach you, day and night, but the person who answers your phone seems unwilling to let me speak to you, and since you have not returned my calls, I’m afraid you haven’t gotten my messages.

  I would like very much to talk with you about the Jenny book. I’ve finished reading the pages you sent me, and they are wonderful. Jenny is a fascinating person, and your writing style is at once elegant and intimate. I want to read more! And I know that many others will want to read this book, and will love it.

  I have to come to Boston for medical purposes on December 19th, a Thursday. I would like to stop by your house around two-thirty, to see you and return the material you sent to me, and I hope, to pick up more. And if possible, I would very much like to sit down and talk with you about what you’re writing. I don’t know your writing schedule, but I promise I won’t take up too m
uch of your time. Perhaps on Thursday we could meet briefly and then set up another time for a longer talk about your book. I would be very grateful if you could afford me just a few minutes in your day.

  With very best wishes,

  Sara Kendall

  There, Sara had thought, that should do it. She had praised the book, she was offering to make the trip from Nantucket to Cambridge, she was practically groveling. If only she could get past the dreadful housekeeper, or lover, or envious spinster aunt, or whatever she was.

  Fanny Anderson’s house was a tall old Victorian set behind a wrought-iron fence, graced with towering ancient maple trees that arched and draped their naked winter limbs over and in front of the house like giant garlands. The windows were long and narrow and shuttered. Stained glass glittered on either side of the massive oak door.

  The woman who opened the door to Sara’s knock was so much like Sara’s mental image of her that Sara almost gasped. A woman in her fifties, perhaps, she had dark hair pulled back into a bun, and forbidding brown eyes set in a wrinkled somber face. She was wearing a drab brown wool dress and the heavy brown laced shoes of a woman who has no claim to vanity.

  Jesus, Sara thought, but gave her most winning smile. “Hello,” she said confidently, “I’m Sara Kendall. I’ve been corresponding with Mrs. Anderson—” She stopped a moment, waiting. Surely this woman couldn’t be Fanny Anderson? When the woman showed no change of expression, Sara pressed on, “—and I have some material that I’d like to return to her.” She nodded down at the packet in her arms. “I wrote Mrs. Anderson a note last week, telling her I would be in town and would like to see her—is she in?”

  “Mrs. Anderson is not available,” the woman said.

  Oh, no, Sara thought, and nearly burst into tears. “Well, I could wait,” she said. “If she’s out. Or if she’s writing and might be available later. I could wait, or I could come back later today.”

  “Mrs. Anderson will not be available today,” the woman said coldly.

  Angered, Sara frowned. “Oh, really,” she said. “You mean she will not be available at any time today, not free for even a moment?”

  “Mrs. Anderson is indisposed,” the woman said.

  Well, Sara thought, I can’t argue with that. I can’t protest that she’s not sick. “Indisposed,” what an old-fashioned word.

  “Well,” Sara went on, conceding defeat, “would you please give her this package? It contains some writing of hers, and a few notes I’ve made. And would you please tell her I stopped by? And that I would like to hear from her as soon as possible?”

  “Very well,” the woman said, and took the manila envelope. “Good day,” she said, and shut the thick oak door in Sara’s face.

  “You old harridan,” Sara said aloud, with quiet rage. “You Nazi.”

  She turned and traced her steps back down the winding slate walk, out of the wrought-iron gates to the street. She had dismissed the cab. That was all right, she could walk to Harvard Square from here, then get a cab to the airport.

  On impulse, she turned and looked back up at the Victorian house. She saw, on the second floor, a woman looking down at her through parted heavy drapery. It was not the woman who had answered the door—this woman’s face was fuller—but that was the only judgment Sara’s mind could make before the woman, seeing Sara’s gaze, drew back, disappearing from view.

  My God, Sara thought, I wonder what’s going on? She stood a few more minutes, watching, but the woman did not appear again. Then, shivering, for it was a cold day, Sara turned her back on Fanny Anderson’s house and walked toward Harvard Square.

  Chapter Four

  Morning.

  An amazing morning, really. It was barely nine-thirty, and here Sara was, not curled up in her robe with a manuscript in her lap, but lying back on a medical table in a white paper gown with her legs drawn up and her knees spread apart.

  She had been so tense about it all. Last night at the Joneses’ Christmas party she had hardly been able to hear people talk, so obsessed was she with thoughts of what had to be done later that night and early the next day. What if the weather turned bad, if it snowed or got foggy? Or what if the plane crashed? Or if the cabdriver had an accident? Last night, the more she thought about it, the more impossible it seemed that she would actually make it from the island thirty miles out at sea into the civilized serenity of Dr. Crochett’s office.

  But there she was. Everything had gone smoothly. They had made love last night, and Steve had driven her to the airport this morning, and the plane hadn’t crashed, nor had the taxi, and there had been no fog or snow. In fact it was very mild for the twenty-third of December. It might easily have been April.

  Sara closed her eyes and relaxed against the table. She was tired. She had awakened very early this morning, around four o’clock, afraid that the alarm—which had never failed before—would, for some reason, not go off on time. When it did go off, she was lying in bed rigidly, staring at it, waiting for it, and so certain that it wouldn’t go off that when the buzz came, she jumped, startled.

  She had taken her temperature at exactly the right time, and noted what it was: she would write it down on the chart tonight. She wouldn’t forget what it was; it had skyrocketed, up eight points.

  “Sara! Get up! Get in here, quick!”

  She raised her head, puzzled. Was that Dr. Crochett calling her? He had done something between her legs that took only a few seconds, and then rushed out of the room. She had lain there, expecting him to come back. Instead, here was his voice again, urgent, excited.

  She got herself off the table, and pulled on her panties, and clutching her gown around her she peeked out from the doorway of the examining room.

  Dr. Crochett was standing in the hall. He gestured to her to come to him. “Hurry!” he said. “I’ve got something to show you!”

  He looked a bit like the mad scientist this morning, his white lab coat unbuttoned and hanging unevenly, his hair slightly mussed. Sara went down the hall and into a small laboratory.

  Dr. Crochett took her arm and led her over to a counter. “Look!” he said, triumphantly, indicating a small microscope. “Just look at that!”

  Sara bent over the microscope. For a moment she could see nothing. Then she saw them, a swarm of tiny sperm swimming around like maniacs, their tiny tails wiggling.

  “Wow,” Sara said. “They look just like what the textbooks say they look like. This is amazing.” And in that moment she had much more faith in all the outer world with its technological paraphernalia. For there they really were, sperm, Steve’s sperm, miniature tadpoles, fat round heads, wriggling tails, zipping around the slide with determined energy.

  “So!” Dr. Crochett said. “That is great, isn’t it! You should be very happy. Your husband’s got plenty of sperm—look at all those little critters. And your mucus is compatible with his sperm. Another point in your favor.”

  Sara looked up at Dr. Crochett, who was beaming as proudly as if he had just that moment created the sperm himself. She couldn’t help but feel fond of him. “Do you mean there was a chance that it might not be?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes, oh, yes indeed,” Dr. Crochett said. “It happens quite often. Sometimes the woman’s mucus kills off the sperm! Quite a problem, you can imagine. But not in your case. Now—watch.”

  He picked up the specimen slide and held it over the flame of a cigarette lighter. “Aha!” he said, “just look at that!”

  Sara couldn’t help smiling. He was so excited. She looked, not certain what she was supposed to see. But she did see it, clearly, how the mucus from her body dried into a delicate, intricate fern pattern on the glass slide.

  “Do you see that? That fern pattern? That’s a sign that you’re ovulating today! Hurry home now and have intercourse—you’re ovulating today. This is the proof. And your husband has plenty of sperm and your mucus is compatible. All points in your favor.”

  Sara smiled, elated. She was going to get pregnant today, she felt
it, she felt as inspired as a sinner at a revival meeting; she had just been saved by the evangelist. “Yes, yes, all right, thank you,” she said.

  “Now look,” Dr. Crochett said, his voice slowing a little, “if you don’t get pregnant this month, call me right away. Then I want to schedule a uterotubalgram. Don’t be alarmed, it’s just a little test to see if your Fallopian tubes are blocked.”

  “Blocked? But—how?” Sara asked.

  “Oh, easily, with anything. Happens all the time. Sometimes a bit of menstrual matter attaches itself to the Fallopian tube at the wrong place, then the eggs can’t get down from the tube into the uterus. And if that’s the problem, the solution is easy, because when we run the dye through it blows the tube clean. This procedure can be therapeutic as well as diagnostic.”

  “Well,” Sara said. “Hmm.” She was trying to envision all that he was telling her, her Fallopian tubes, and a procedure that would clear them.

  “Don’t worry, don’t even think about it, the uterotubalgram is just another step, but we may not even have to take it. Just think about going home and having intercourse. Today. And listen,” he said, leaning forward, smiling, giving her this one last gift, “you know, quite often when I take the mucus from a woman’s body, that procedure in itself makes pregnancy a little more possible. Because I opened the cervix slightly, it makes it possible for those little devils to swim right up there and—wham! You might be getting pregnant right now!”

  Instantly Sara was covered with goose bumps. She might be getting pregnant right now. Oh, God, wouldn’t it be wonderful?

  “Thank you,” she said. If she was pregnant she would come back to his office and fall on her knees and kiss his feet. She would bring him gifts. She would name her child after him. What was his first name? Hiram. Well, maybe she wouldn’t do that. “Thank you,” she said again.