Claude came in just then, all smiles. “Hello, darling. So, did I hear it’s going to be Rose?” This was one of several finalist names that we’d come up with – or rather, that I’d come up with. Claude had been indifferent about names.
“If you don’t mind. It seems so perfect. Look, she has your long eyelashes. Isn’t she beautiful, Claude? She looks just like you.”
He reached down and took Rose up carefully into his arms.
“Oh, look, she’s yawning,” Claude said, “and her mouth is much more yours than mine. What a terrible time you’ve had, my little Katie. But everything went smoothly after all. I’ll have to take such good care of you now that it’s over. Two days here, then full-service pampering at home.”
“You weren’t in the operating room,” I said. “I – I mean we – missed you.”
Claude frowned. “Well, of course there was no coaching needed, given the C-section route. It was hard to know how I could help and, you know what they say, too many cooks… No physician wants a lot of unnecessary bodies getting in the way.”
I remembered my necessary, hand-holding nurse and her smiling eyes.
“Well, the baby is in beautiful shape,” – he handed her back to me – “and so are you, darling. And I have a surprise for you.”
He dangled a brass door key in front of me.
“What’s this?”
“I bought you a house in Nantucket,” he said. “I know how much you love it there, and how much you loved it when you were growing up, and now you can continue the tradition with Rose.”
“Oh, Claude, that’s wonderful! Tell me all about it.” I was touched by the news, but too tired and uncomfortable to feel much excitement. All I really wanted to think about or talk about was Rose, the sudden, amazing reality of her, and I needed to rest. But I didn’t want to seem ungrateful – Claude was so excited.
“It’s a nineteen-twenties-style four-bedroom with a widow’s walk, white picket fence, and a circular driveway large enough for you to plant as many hydrangeas as you want in the center. It’s in perfect condition.”
“How beautiful. Where is it?”
“Up above Steps Beach with the most incredible ocean views.”
“It sounds out of this world,” I said.
“Yes, I think it is. It’s a real showplace and at least twice as big as your father’s house.” He glanced at his watch. “Well, you’d better try to breastfeed a little, darling, even before your milk comes in, the action will stimulate you.” He stood to go. “What a Christmas! A beautiful daughter and a new house.”
“You’re leaving?”
“You need your rest. And I promised a colleague I’d have a bite with him. You don’t mind, do you, angel?”
I did mind, but I didn’t want to pressure him. He’d need to take his time getting used to Rose, getting used to me as a mother. Imagine buying me a house in Nantucket! What an overwhelmingly thoughtful gesture.
And you’ll be alone and safe here with Rose.
“Not a bit,” I said. “As long as you come back. Oh, and please call Gillian and tell her the good news, if you haven’t already. And tell her about Nantucket, too.”
“Of course, sweetheart. I’ll be back before you know it.” He smiled down at me, open and relaxed, the way he used to, then turned and walked out of the room.
Your husband is back.
He’s going to be a great father.
I gazed down at my daughter.
Rose will fix what’s wrong and hold the three of you together.
*
But Rose did not fix anything that was wrong with our marriage. Wonderful though she was, she had no such power, and gradually I came to understand that I’d been foolish to think that this fascinating, beautiful creature – I was truly smitten – could knit up what was clearly a loosely woven, and then all but unraveling, relationship.
All through Rose’s first year, I took advantage of a well-to-do new mother’s privileges and threw myself into being a full-time mother to my baby. Following all the up-to-the-minute experts’ advice – and some surprisingly sound direction from my mother – I nurtured Rose. Although our house was big, the nursery became its focal point, its pilot house, where I attempted to steer our ship straight and keep us off the rocks. Mornings with Rose, naptimes, her evening feeding (and later, bottle), the endless diapers… I loved all of it. Well, who can love diapers? But our days, most of them, were Heaven: shopping when weather permitted, getting to know the local merchants, casual chats with other mothers in the street and in the shops, Rose’s first burbly noises and chuckles and smiles – Heaven.
In late Spring we packed up and headed for Nantucket. Once there, surrounded by more than a few members of our Boston set, we commenced the round of dinners, parties and girls’ get-togethers. The men came up from the cities on the weekends. But the best part, for me, was Rose. Always Rose. I dabbled her toes for the first time in a gentle surf and she shrieked – whether from happiness or fear, I couldn’t tell. I watched her watch the seagulls wheel and dive, and sang her to sleep as the ocean coughed and sighed a hundred yards below.
There was never much let-up in Claude’s schedule. He was expensive, he was the best, he was in demand, and so naturally, his clients (and would-be clients) were demanding; and the money was pouring in. He spent weekends with us, throwing himself into the summer fun, then rising before sunrise on Monday morning to head back to the city. And while he’d been nicer to me, he was also more mercurial; his flashpoint was lower, his temper hotter. So as the summer weeks dwindled to days, I coddled and coaxed and waited and suffered the occasional slap in the face for my pains.
But at some point I realized I was waiting for Claude to catch up, to join Rose and me; and he did, in his way and according to his schedule. He could be tender or playful with Rose – cooing, belly-blowing, comically imitating a horn when she squeezed his nose with strong, fat little fingers – but then he’d put her down or hand her to me like a book or magazine he was finished with and retreat to his study. I seldom stopped talking about her, but my dinner-table recitations began to sound more and more like field reports to which Claude gave cursory, if polite, attention.
As her first birthday came around, my mind began to drift against the current: I began thinking about having another baby. I chose my moment to bring it up – in bed, why not? That’s where the baby would begin…
“The thing is, I was an ‘only’ and so were you,” I said, snuggling up to Claude. The glossy pages of the medical journal he was reading reflected light softly onto his face. “Imagine Rosie with a little brother or sister. Too sweet! I would’ve given anything for a sibling when I was a kid.”
“I wouldn’t have,” he said, turning a page.
“Well, but what about your imaginary friends, and your frogs?”
“My frogs?” He snapped the journal aside impatiently. “What in the world…”
“Okay, but we did talk about children, and—”
“No, you talked about children. And now we have a child.”
“Yes, dear, but remember? You said you wanted lots of children. Rose is wonderful. Oh, Claude, but just think. The more the merrier! We can afford it, and Rose would love it.”
“Rose is fine just as she is. She has you to play with.”
I clutched at whatever straws appeared.
“Yes, of course, but they learn so much more from another—”
“Will you please drop this! Your incessant nagging is driving me crazy.” He got up out of bed and left the room. I heard his study door close.
And that was that.
7
January 1997
On the day Rose had her one-year checkup, the examination and the Hepatitis A immunization left her cranky and a little feverish, and I suppose I wasn’t in much better shape. The doctor said she was right where she should be for height and weight, and he seemed very pleased with her progress. I knew the numbers would make Claude happy; he loved Rose. In the past year,
he had occasionally come home in time for her bath and then spent half an hour playing with her.
The night before the checkup, I had watched from the bathroom doorway while Claude held Rose in the tub. Bubbles and floaty toys sloshed around her. “Rosie, blow the bubbles onto Papa,” he said and then laughed when she smacked the water, splashing his shirt. “What sound does the boat make?” he asked, holding up her blue tugboat, and Rose giggled.
“Come now, don’t tease Papa. I know you know.” He gently ran a washcloth across her back.
“Tooh, tooh Daddy!” Rose cried, and threw her arms up in the air.
“Bravo, ma petite belle. And what about your favorite? Where is duckie?” Rose smacked the water more emphatically and grabbed for her rubber duck. Claude kissed her soft wet hair.
He was so sweet and gentle with her when he was in the mood – such a loving father when he wanted to be. I wished I could have my loving husband back, too, but Claude thought my Cesarean scar was hideous. He didn’t say so in so many words, but the first time he ran his fingers over the rough little rope of flesh he flinched – an odd reaction for a surgeon, I thought. Especially one who’d made the scar possible.
He even offered to give me a tummy tuck. But I said no. “This scar is part of me, Claude.” And he just turned away.
So I undressed in my closet to avoid his critical eye.
Back at home in the afternoon after the checkup, I prepared Claude’s favorite dish, coq au vin, while Rose fussed around underfoot. I tried to change her mood with playing “cook” and singing songs, but with little results.
Claude called to find out how his little girl was, and I told him she was cranky from the shots – I thought the sooner she went to bed the better. At bedtime, it was a relief to see Rose nodding off while I read to her, then falling asleep in my arms as I softly sang to her in the dimly-lighted room before putting her in her crib. I was rocking her gently, humming, when Claude came upstairs and into the room.
A tingle of apprehension went through me – a feeling I was getting used to. I hadn’t even heard the car pull into the driveway.
“Where’s my dinner?” he said in a flat voice.
“Oh, hello, sweetheart,” I whispered. “I didn’t hear you come in. It’s on the stove. Help yourself if you’re starving and can’t wait. She’s almost asleep. I’ll put her to bed and be out in a minute.”
“What did you say?”
“Shh, Claude, you’ll wake Rose.”
“Don’t you tell me what to do,” he rasped.
I moaned inside. It was starting again: the challenges, the dead tone, then the rising voice and the rage. Each time it had happened – every month or so, or more often, lately – I was as shocked as if it had never happened before. But now I was less shocked than usual. Since I’d become a mother, I knew that soothing an unhappy baby was the most important task of all. Claude seemed like a huge, furious baby, unsoothable and intractable.
“Please,” I said calmly, “I just wanted to get her settled. I told you she had a hard day at the pediatrician.”
“She’s had a hard day? Is that right? What about my day? Do you know what it’s like dealing with the most spoiled women in all of Boston?” He drove the toe of his shoe into the frame of the playpen, then kicked it again and again. Rose startled, then clutched me and began to cry. Claude kicked the playpen as if he were intent on destroying it.
“Claude, stop! Why are you so angry?”
“You see these hands?” he shouted. “I work hard all day for you two, and this is what I get!” He grabbed my throat.
“Stop, you’re hurting me!” I cried. He jerked my head back and forth against the slats of the rocking chair and began to shout obscenities. Rose was screaming now, her body rigid in my arms, but I barely heard as he tightened his grip, and I struggled to breathe. I clung to Rose, terrified I would drop her or that Claude would hurt her. Little black gnats swarmed in my vision and the room began to blacken. Don’t pass out! I ordered myself.
Suddenly, Claude let go of my neck as if he’d been yanked back by an invisible wire. He stared at me and then looked down at his hands, then turned and walked out. I took ragged breaths as the room came back into focus, but it was hard to swallow. I rocked and shushed Rose, but she was terrified and cried hysterically. I kissed her forehead. I could feel her heart pounding against me. Finally, she calmed down and I rocked her some more. I looked at her stuffed monkey, Gigi, and the soft blocks tangled and trapped in the torn mesh and bent frame of the playpen. I closed my eyes and my mind raced.
You should have gotten up and greeted him properly when he came home tonight. You forgot to tell him you had made him his favorite dish. You didn’t remember that he gets this way when there’s a change in what he expects. Maybe if you—
Rose shifted, and I snapped back. She moaned and looked up at me intently, her eyes huge in her sweet face, her hands clinging to mine. I smiled to send a reassuring message. “There, there,” I said softly. “Everything’s okay. That’s over now.”
No, it isn’t.
“Everything is going to be fine, you’ll see,” I whispered. I could hear dishes and cutlery clinking in the kitchen. “He caught himself before it went too far,” I thought. “He’ll apologize later. He loves me. Deep down inside, he does.”
I looked down at Rose. She had fallen asleep.
“I just want it to stop,” I whispered.
*
The next morning Claude didn’t mention the events of the night before. I waited, but it was surreal – it was as if nothing had happened. As I prepared and served him his breakfast I thought about the aftermath of all the other times when nothing seemed to have happened. He paged through the paper while he ate.
When we had finished, I said, “What happened last night can never happen again, Claude. I can hardly swallow.”
“What are you talking about?” he said. “Goodness. You know that was just me blowing off steam. You know the pressure I’m under. Come now, darling, nothing serious happened – just a little bruising on the neck. If you’d just served me my dinner…”
“Claude, look in the nursery. The playpen is in pieces. Did you hear your daughter crying?”
“For heaven’s sake. I have to take out my frustrations somehow – I’ll buy a new playpen.” He got up and collected his things. “Look, I’m really getting concerned. You exaggerate things so, and your memory is just not accurate.”
“My memory? Claude—”
“Here, let me get rid of those marks – my concealer works like magic,” he said, running his make-up stick across my neck.
He just happened to have it handy.
“You see, just a dab, a pat or two, not too much rubbing, and voilà, those little surface marks are gone. Okay? Good. I have a wonderful idea. Let’s go to the Four Seasons tonight and have a quiet champagne supper. It’ll be a great change of scene.”
I stared at him, my mouth open.
He bent down and pecked me on the cheek. “’Bye, darling.”
After Claude left, I gave Rose her breakfast, then took her down the street to my parents’ house, hoping my father had not yet left. The bruises from Claude’s fingers wound around my neck like a choke collar, even if they were concealed, but my voice had mostly returned.
My mother answered the door in a long pale-yellow satin dressing gown, looking like Lana Turner in Imitation of Life.
“Darling, what brings you here? And hello, little Rose. Grandmamma is very happy to see you.” Rose tottered over and hugged her grandmother, then made her way over to the collection of snow globes that were arranged on the corner table. I followed her. Rose picked up her favorite one and shook it and smiled.
My mother frowned. “Something’s wrong, Katie, what’s going on?”
I turned to her and untied my neck scarf. “I told you about Claude and his temper, now look.”
My mother gaped at my bruised and mottled neck. “Jesus, Katie, what did you do?” she said.
“What did I do? Ask your son-in-law what he did!”
My mother’s face seemed to cave in, and she began to cry. “I just don’t believe it,” she said.
“You don’t want to believe it.”
“Claude worships you,” she said. “He would never want to hurt you. Perhaps it was an accident.”
“An accident that he strangled me? Are you joking?”
“Marriage to a surgeon takes work. They can be as demanding and imperious at home as in the operating room – Rose, darling, please be careful with those! – but it’s up to you to keep things running smoothly. Men have tempers, and we women just have to put up with them. God knows, your father could be a brute.”
“That’s true. I remember the way he punished you, the way he doted on me, and how I feared losing that.” I suddenly felt furious. “You told me that you had to live with him, and I didn’t. Well, now I have my own brute.”
I’ve told her the truth, I thought, feeling simultaneously shocked and relieved.
“Oh, that can’t be true. I always wanted the best for you, Katie.” My mother’s voice trembled as she drew the back of her hand across my cheek. “I was hoping you wouldn’t remember what happened between your father and me. Besides, I always made a point to comfort you after his transgressions. You were our beloved girl. As you know, we tried so hard to conceive. All those miscarriages…” She shook her head as if to dispel the memories. “But when you came along and miraculously made it to term, you were so loved,” my mother said, picking up one of the snow globes and shaking it gently, then watching the swirling particles, as though within the glass she might be able to see the scattering of all the little lives that hadn’t happened, the babies she’d been denied.
“Why did you have so many miscarriages, Mama? Was it Daddy? He beat you, didn’t he?”
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