Against the Season

by Jane Rule

  At intermission, he went to the phone and called her apartment, but there was no answer. Then he called the Larson house, but there was no one home there, either. Had something happened to Amelia Larson? He wanted to call Harriet’s mother, but he hesitated. What if Harriet wasn’t there? He would only worry the old lady.

  Peter could not go back to hear the second half of the program. He waited in the lobby to make certain that Harriet didn’t come in. When the doors were closed again, he went out onto the street. There was no sign of her. He drove by her mother’s house to see if her car was there. It was not. But perhaps she’d gone home by now. He crossed town again and drove slowly by the old house, looking for her Volkswagen. It was not there. Not knowing where else to go, he parked his car and simply sat. Perhaps he should go home, but, even if she thought of calling him, she would not try to reach him before the concert was over. Where was she? What had happened to her?

  This was just the kind of anxiety Peter did not want and could not bear in a relationship. Harriet Jameson, so dependable and independent and undemanding, had seemed to him a woman he could trust not to do this sort of thing to him. No Grace Hill, who must spend most of her neurotic energies concocting sexual and social anxieties for Feller. No Rosemary Hopwood, either, who, though she was a sensible enough woman obviously, would threaten a man by the attention she attracted without any effort, would seem to him a possession to live up to while she quite unconsciously refused to be a possession. So undeniably beautiful, the no less so as she aged, he would always have to think of what could happen to her, what the loss of her would mean. Harriet: nothing could happen to someone like Harriet. But what had happened to her? It was ridiculous for him to sit here. Whether she’d call him or not, he should go home. Just as he was about to turn out into the street, he saw her Volkswagen pull in two cars behind him. His relief exploded in his chest like rage.

  “Where in hell were you tonight?”

  “Peter!” Harriet said, startled at seeing him there in the street and at his apparent anger.

  “I was at the hospital with Miss A.”

  “What’s happened to her?” he asked, baffled at his own lack of control.

  “Nothing. It’s that Kathy’s having her baby. I just went down to keep Miss A company.”

  “You might have let me know.”

  “Why?” Only as she asked the question did she remember the concert. “Oh, Peter, I’m so terribly sorry. I completely forgot. Dina brought the chest over and told me about Kathy, and I…”

  “I see,” Peter said. “It was stupid of me to be concerned. Good night.”

  “Peter?” He had turned and was walking back toward his car. “Peter, I’m so really sorry. I don’t know how… Couldn’t you come in for a drink?”

  “It’s late. I’ve had a bad day,” he said, not looking at her as he got into his car. “Good night.”

  He pulled away from the curb, leaving Harriet standing in the street.

  “Oh Peter!” Her own regret turned suddenly into anger, and she wanted to shout after his car. “You don’t really care whether I live or die anyway!” But she didn’t. She just stood there, stupid with misery.

  “I wonder what did happen to Harriet tonight?” Ida said, as they drove back to her house after the concert.

  “Don’t know,” Carl said. “He left after the intermission.”

  “Yes, I noticed.”

  “The something of true love ne’er runs smooth,” Carl said.

  “I thought you thought it didn’t have anything to do with true love.”

  “I said I didn’t think he’d marry her.”

  “Which is not the same thing?” Ida asked, sounding arch in a way she wasn’t sure she liked.

  “Some people can and some people can’t,” Carl said.

  “Will you come in for a drink?”

  “It’s late,” Carl said. “Thanks.”

  He showed her to the door and only touched her arm in saying good-night, Ida stood in her own front hall, feeling uncertainly guilty. The emotional debt most girls learn to accept in high school Ida had never experienced before. What, after all, should she owe Carl? He had said he loved her. But some compliments are too expensive to return without real consideration. Still, she felt ungenerous, and she did not like that.

  “Well, I offered him a drink,” she said. “He doesn’t usually even wait to be asked.”

  It occurred to Ida then that Carl felt as burdened by what he had said as she did. Perhaps he even regretted it.

  “How silly we are, past all that complication and then inventing it!”

  Once Harriet had left and the doctor suggested that Kathy try to sleep awhile, Amelia settled herself again in the chair she had claimed when she first arrived. Now there were two men also waiting, a young truck driver who wanted this second child to be a boy and a prematurely balding man who sat apparently absorbed in a book. It was a good time for Amelia to rest, but the amount of walking she had done had stirred the arthritic pain in her joints which sent sore messages along her skin so that even to rest her hands in her lap was awkward. Defense against that was concentration or distraction, not a nap. But she was very tired in a way that she had not anticipated, and it made her a little afraid. Beatrice had always been fearful in these last hours, as if disaster and death were her images of birth. There had been deaths. There had been deformities. But, in thirty years of vicarious labor, the habit was hard and perfect birth. What troubled Harriet—the pointlessness of it for Kathy—and the emptiness that Kathy herself anticipated had troubled Beatrice as well. Amelia couldn’t accept or couldn’t understand that. The child was born into the world and for it, whatever the circumstance. Then why was she fearful? Had the energy of her faith come all those years from the need to reassure Beatrice? Or at least counteract her?

  Too old, she was simply too old. “We’re all too old to be doing what we’re doing, but we go on doing it.” A good man, Carl Hollinger, and it couldn’t be easy for him to spend the time he did at the Veterans’ Hospital with the collective stench and senile promise of what each death would be until his own. Pain: her own, Sister’s, Kathy’s, the fierce, outraged face of birth.

  “Amelia?”

  She opened her eyes to Rosemary Hopwood and was for a moment confused.

  “What time is it?”

  “A bit after midnight,” Rosemary said.

  “You shouldn’t be down here at this hour,” Amelia said.

  “I was restless,” Rosemary said. “I thought maybe you’d like company for a while.”

  “You’ve been worried about Kathy.”

  “Not seriously,” Rosemary said, but her face was strained.

  The young truck driver was dozing. The bald man was still intent upon his book. It was very quiet.

  “I’m sorry I missed meeting Agate this afternoon,” Amelia said. “I hope it wasn’t hard on her.”

  “No,” Rosemary said. “But I was interested in her reaction. She thought maybe she’d better stay right away since you’d have no one to look after you now.”

  “No one to look after me?” Amelia smiled, pleased and amused.

  “Why don’t I take you home now? You could come over early in the morning. Kathy’s asleep. I’ve just looked in on her.”

  Someone cried out. Everyone in the waiting room looked up to the space in front of him. Then the balding man put down his book and left the room.

  “That will have wakened her,” Amelia said.

  The cry came again, not so surprised this time. There was pity in it, not like self-pity, detached, as if the mind could express sympathy for the struggling body. There were several sets of hurrying footsteps, voices in the corridor. The young truck driver, looking casual enough, stood up, stretched, and left the room. Amelia started her own process of getting up.

  “I’ll go,” Rosemary said.

  “No,” Amelia said, for she seemed refreshed from the nap she must have taken and wanted to move against her own pain. “Kathy doesn
’t call, but she’ll want me.”

  “I love you, Amelia Larson,” Rosemary said, kissing Amelia on the cheek.

  “It’s nice to know,” Amelia said, though the declaration had fallen short in the wide space there was to her own need. “Go along home now. I’ll phone you tomorrow.”

  Kathy would hear her coming down the long corridor and compose her face. “A good brave girl” she wanted to be, and maybe she’d be able to manage it for herself. Being good at pain, for most people, was a matter of practice rather than courage, or so it seemed to Amelia.

  “How is it now?” she asked as she swung into Kathy’s curtained bed and look at the whitely wakened face.

  “I think maybe I’ve begun, too,” Kathy said.

  “Good.”

  “But maybe it’s only her baby,” Kathy added, an uncertain shake in her voice.

  Amelia smiled at her.

  “I mean, like wanting to throw up because somebody else is,” Kathy tried to explain, then suddenly grunted and closed her eyes.

  “That’s you, all right,” Amelia said. “And that’s fine. Get the idea, get the rhythm. It’s hard work, child, but you’re good at that.”

  After a moment Kathy eased herself again and took her breath. Then she said, “They try to tell you, but it isn’t like they say.”

  Amelia had trouble hearing her because of a sharp complaint from the woman in the next bed and the busyness of nurses around her.

  “Time for you now,” one of the nurses said.

  “I wish it was for me,” Kathy said.

  “It will be; just go with it,” Amelia said.

  It was clear that her hard labor had begun, but, as the hours passed and each of the other two women went in to be delivered, Kathy stayed caught in the prerhythm of pain. There were nurses to talk with her, guide her. The doctor was there, his tired young face sometimes intent, sometimes impatient, knowing he had been called back too early. He and Amelia went into the hall occasionally, taking coffee together.

  At six o’clock in the morning, Kathy whispered to Amelia, “Am I going to die?”

  “No, child. You’re going to have a baby.”

  “All right, Kathy,” the doctor said. “Let’s get this job done.”

  As they wheeled her into the operating room, Amelia went back to the waiting room, empty again, her own. She sat down in her chair and immediately slept, exhausted and peaceful, her part of it done.

  “Miss Larson?” The doctor shook her gently. “Miss Larson?”

  “Over?” she asked, opening her eyes.

  “Over,” he said. “A nine pound, four ounce girl.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Amelia said.

  “I’ve called you a cab, and don’t argue with me,” he said, as a nurse came into the room with a wheelchair.

  “I can walk,” Amelia said.

  “You worked nearly as hard as she did.”

  “All right. Just wheel me down to see her before I leave.”

  “You’re a good, brave girl, Kathy,” Amelia said and saw the characteristic euphoric smile of accomplishment that comes of birth. “And that’s what you’ve had. We’ll all get some sleep now, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  The nurse wheeled Amelia out into a sunny morning. What an old fool she must look, carried out in a wheelchair after having someone else’s baby! Without Sister, she had no style. Sister had been her style, her right arm, the last bit of strength she did not have by herself. It didn’t really matter, however, since Sister was not there to mind.

  VII

  AGATE, IN A YELLOW cotton shift and sandals, lounged in the early sun on the front steps of the Larson house. She had rung the bell when she first arrived just a little after seven, but either no one was home or everyone was still asleep. As she debated walking back to a small store several blocks away to buy something for her breakfast, a cab pulled into the drive. Agate stood up and walked down the steps to meet it.

  “Good morning,” she said to Amelia. “I’m the new maid.”

  “Agate?” Amelia asked.

  “Yes. Are you Miss Larson?”

  “Yes,” Amelia said. “I’m just getting back from the hospital.”

  “You’ve been there all night?”

  “Yes,” Amelia said. She was paying the driver. “Don’t get out, Freddy. Agate will get me out. Stand there, and give me one hand.”

  “Have you had breakfast?” Agate asked.

  “I don’t think I have,” Amelia said. “Now stand up ahead of me, two steps. That’s it. Thank you, Freddy,” she called over her shoulder. “Isn’t Cole home?”

  “Nobody answered the bell.”

  “He’s probably asleep.”

  “Shall I get you breakfast?” Agate asked.

  “You haven’t even seen the kitchen.”

  “Does it look different from other kitchens?” Agate asked.

  “I expect not.” Amelia unlocked the front door and went in.

  “Then why don’t you go right to bed and I’ll bring you something. Do you need help now?”

  “No. I’ll tell you,” Amelia said. “The kitchen’s right down the…”

  “I’ll find my way. What will it be?”

  “No coffee. I’d like juice, hot milk, perhaps an egg, whatever you want to do with it,” Amelia said, turning herself into the chair lift.

  Agate went off in the direction Amelia had indicated, the adventure of the morning modified by the concern she felt at the color of the old lady’s face. Maybe she always looked like that, but Agate doubted it. She wondered if, once she’d made Miss Larson breakfast, she’d better call the doctor. Poached egg, probably, and there were the eggs, the orange juice, the milk. The girl who had been keeping this kitchen was tidy. After Agate had opened cupboards to find pans and china and a tray, she poured herself a large glass of milk.

  “There you are,” she said to her stomach. “You’ll have to wait for more.”

  Within ten minutes she had the breakfast ready to take up and decided, at the bottom of the stairs, to give herself a ride. She pressed the button to recall the chair lift, then climbed aboard with the tray. It hummed steadily until it got to the landing where it strained and jerked a little, threatening the milk and juice. Agate, who had been reading the mottoes with amusement, had to turn her attention to the balance of the tray. Wouldn’t do to have the first thing she served awash in itself.

  “Did Rosemary Hopwood bring you over?” Amelia asked from her bed.

  “No, I walked.”

  “Walked!”

  “I like to walk,” Agate said, putting the tray in Amelia’s lap. “And I thought you had to have somebody to cook breakfast.”

  “It’s very nice,” Amelia said, “but your room isn’t ready…”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll find my way around.”

  “Perhaps when Cole wakes up …”

  “Do you want more butter?”

  “No, thank you. It tastes very good.”

  “You must be hungry.”

  “I’ll be down again in the early afternoon. Then we can have a real talk.”

  “Will you sleep?” Agate asked.

  “Yes, easily.”

  “What will Cole want when he gets up?”

  “Eggs and bacon, fruit, coffee, toast. He probably won’t be up before ten.”

  “I don’t know how to bake bread,” Agate said. “I notice that’s homemade.”

  “Thank fortune,” Amelia said.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, just very tired. Thank you, child. It’s a very kind thing you’ve done, getting here this morning.”

  The old lady was falling asleep as Agate took the tray. Probably that was all she needed. Agate needed food. The sooner she had some breakfast, the better. Seated at the kitchen table with a plate of eggs and toast, Agate felt relaxed and content.

  “Maybe what I’ve wanted all along was to be some old lady’s maid,” she said, and then she laughed.

  A large, ugly cat appe
ared and made a single, commanding noise.

  “Who are you, hideous?”

  She got up to look for the cat food she had seen in one of the cupboards, but the phone was ringing.

  “Larson residence,” Agate said.

  “Is that you, Agate?”

  “Yes, Miss Hopwood,” Agate answered in a tone she hoped would indicate pride in being a menial.

  “How did you get there?”

  “I walked.”

  “But Miss Larson wasn’t even expecting you, and you have the whole staff here in a state.”

  “Somebody had to cook breakfast,” Agate said.

  “What do you want to do about your clothes?”

  “I’ll pick them up sometime,” Agate said.

  “Would you like me to bring them to you?”

  “That’s kind of you,” Agate said, liking Miss Larson’s word, given her own tone.

  “I’ll be by later this afternoon,” Rosemary said.

  “Oh, about the books,” Agate said. “You might just donate them to the library there.”

  “Of course,” Rosemary said with answering sarcasm.

  The cat did not weave about Agate’s legs as hungry cats are supposed to. It stood in the middle of the kitchen and glared at her.

  “All right,” Agate said to it as she hung up the phone. “I agree. The customer on the spot should get the attention, but that’s not how the world works.”

  She found the box of dry cat food and was shaking some into a plastic bowl when Cole came into the kitchen.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Everybody in this house is such an awful color,” Agate said. “Hangover? Bad trip?”