“I mean, we have a serious problem here,” Elaine said.
“Actually,” Amy said, refusing to be drawn in, “I don’t think we have it.”
There was another pause.
“Well,” Elaine said, “it is Tim’s child.” She spoke imperiously, as though she were in charge of everything.
“I’m sorry,” Amy said, “but how do we know that?”
She’d really only meant to stop Elaine from being so imperious; as soon as she’d spoken she knew she’d gone too far.
Now the silence was furious.
“We know it’s Tim’s child because Hilary says it is. They were living together. She wasn’t seeing anyone else. She hadn’t seen anyone else in years. Do you want a blood test?”
Amy waited again. She tried to make her voice neutral.
“Elaine, did you and Hilary ever talk about an abortion?”
This was unfair, she knew, as well as openly hostile, because Amy had heard from Tim that they’d talked at great length about an abortion. Elaine had urged her daughter to have one; Hilary had refused. Hilary had refused over and over, each time her mother had brought it up, week after week after week, until it was too late.
Elaine said grimly, “The baby is here now. This is what’s happened, Amy. This is what we need to talk about.”
Amy resented Elaine’s saying her name, hated the way it sounded in Elaine’s insufferable accent. Still, if Elaine had stopped right then, Amy would have given way, because it was true, the baby was there. But Elaine went on.
“Responsibility. That’s what we need to talk about, Amy.”
And at that, at Elaine’s bullying, hectoring manner, Amy balked.
“Elaine, Hilary has made her choice. And Tim has made his choice,” she said. “We can’t change any of that.”
“Is that all you have to say?” Elaine asked. Her voice now was furious. “Is that your position?”
Amy could hear Elaine winding up to deliver a tirade.
“I’m afraid it is,” she said. “I’m afraid it is all we have to say.” She was bringing Walter in for support. “I’m sorry it’s gotten so complicated.”
“‘Complicated,’” Elaine began energetically, but Amy cut her off.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s going to be productive to discuss this any longer.” Then she hung up, her heart pounding at her own abruptness. Also, she’d sounded just like Walter, really, which surprised her. What she’d said wasn’t even what she thought.
The problem was that she didn’t really know what she thought.
Some months after he’d found out about the pregnancy, Tim had moved out of the small apartment in Brooklyn he was sharing with Hilary and moved in with a friend. Hilary, who didn’t have a job, and now didn’t even have a boyfriend, let alone a husband, had left too, and moved up to Connecticut to live with her mother. Who didn’t have a job either: Elaine lived on the alimony from several husbands, though she claimed to be a decorator. It was all really a mess.
“We weren’t planning to have a baby,” Tim had told Amy. He’d sounded tense but determined. He’d come out for the weekend; it was before the baby was born. Amy came down on Saturday morning to find him alone in the kitchen. She wanted to talk, though it was clear that Tim did not. He was ready to leave the moment he saw her. Amy held him still with questions; he answered with his hand on the doorknob.
“But if a baby comes . . . ,” said Amy.
“She never told me about it,” Tim said, his face turning angry. “All of a sudden, one day she’s pregnant, and then, boom, our whole lives are changed. All of a sudden I’m told I have to get married, I have to do this and I have to do that, whatever she says. We’d never talked about it, we’d never planned it, and it wasn’t my decision, it was only hers. It wasn’t a decision that she should have made by herself.”
He let go of the doorknob now and folded his arms defiantly on his chest. Tim was twenty-three, still in business school. Hilary was only twenty-two, just out of college. They seemed so young, so unready—though Amy had been only twenty-two when she married, she reminded herself. But it was different now; this generation, wary and preoccupied, married late.
“I’m not getting married just because she tells me I have to,” Tim said. His head was lowered and truculent, his mouth pursed. He was tall, like Walter, with a wide flat face and bright blue eyes. His body was solid: he was now full-grown, as big as he would ever be. But the truculence, the pursed mouth, the lowered head, reminded Amy of the lanky, obstinate teenager, testing his awkward strength against the world, his parents. His voice was swollen with something—aggrievement, self-absorption. Hearing that note—the whine—made Amy impatient; she wanted to tell him to grow up.
“What I mind is her deciding without me,” Tim said. His voice had quieted. He looked up at his mother, hurt in his eyes.
At that, Amy had felt a sudden loyal flare of anger against the young woman. Tim was right, she thought, that was fair. Amy had, until then, always liked Hilary: the long fall of silky blond hair, the languid eyes, the sweet smile. Hilary had sat at her table many times; Amy had believed she’d loved Hilary. Hadn’t she? She’d been prepared to love her—or was it all provisional? Did you like your child’s mate only as long as your child was happy? If the mate made your child unhappy, didn’t you turn against the outsider? Didn’t you close the gate, draw the wagons in a circle, close out the interloper? What if the interloper had given birth to someone who belonged inside the circle?
Now, in the hotel, Amy took off her skirt and folded it on the chair. She struggled into her bathing suit—were they made tighter now? Or were her arms weaker? It had not been a struggle to get into a bathing suit when she’d been twenty. She stepped back into her sandals.
In the pool, Walter watched her approach from where he was floating in the deep end, the water slapping up toward his chin. In the shallow end a group of dark-eyed French children were playing; a spray of silver drops splashed boisterously onto the grass. Amy waded carefully down the steps and began a cautious breaststroke toward her husband, squinting her eyes against the children’s splashing. She could see from Walter’s expression—watchful, forebearing, tentatively friendly— that he was ready for a truce. She swam up to him and stopped, treading water, feeling the loose surge against her body.
“Nice, isn’t it?” he suggested, about everything: the line of feathery sycamores along the drive, the beneficent sun overhead, the wide green lawn stretching out to the orchard beyond.
“Very nice,” Amy agreed, looking around, smiling. She too wanted a truce. “What do we do about the baby?”
Walter sucked in his breath, opening his mouth into a wide O. Raising one arm over his head, he threw himself sideways, into the chopping surge, and began to swim away. Amy, watching him, felt his wake drift against her limbs. At the far end he stood and walked deliberately up the steps without looking back. His bathing suit had slid downward around his hips, without a waist for it to clasp, Amy noted disloyally. He hitched it up from the front as he mounted the steps.
The baby had been in a dark blue carriage, parked outside the hardware store, next to a bright red wheelbarrow and a shiny garden cart. That was what had made Amy look at it—the three brand-new vehicles, lined up side by side—it was a sort of sight gag. She glanced idly into the baby carriage, to see if it was for sale.
It was occupied.
The baby lay under the deep shadowy cave of the canopy. Amy, leaning in, was drawn out of the harsh bright sunlight, the noise of passing traffic, the quick staccato footsteps of the passersby. In this dim sheltered space the baby was small and quiet, lying flat and tranquil on the smooth white sheet, her eyes points of liquid light. She was very young, her body was not yet plump. She was lean but solid, dense, like a loaf of bread, a tiny motionless island beneath the blanket. The small head was furred with fine blond down, the skin pale and translucent. The arms were free from the covers, and the tiny starfish fingers moved
gently about, testing the air. The body seemed barely large enough to hold life. As Amy looked down into the shadows at her, the baby blinked, moved her chin, then focused her calm blue radiant gaze on her grandmother.
It was a shock. Amy knew suddenly who this was, she could feel awareness run up through her like a breath through her chest. For a moment Amy hung motionless over the carriage, fixed in that wise blue stare, trying to memorize the broad pale forehead, the small delicate mouth, the sense of peace in that dim sheltered space. She knew that at any moment she’d be discovered. Heart beating, she turned and left, quickly, not looking at the shop door. She walked rapidly on down the street, hearing her own heels echo on the sidewalk, her head lowered, feeling like a thief. Well: she had stolen something. That illicit moment alone with the child.
Walter hadn’t seen the baby. She’d told him, but he’d only shrugged his shoulders: it would be different if he’d seen her. As he certainly would, since Elaine and Hilary lived only one town over from them. They’d see each other inevitably, and what would happen then? What was the baby to call them, as she grew up? How would they be introduced? The baby was called Emily.
“Emily,” Amy said out loud in the pool. “Emilie.” It was just as pretty in French. No one heard her, the French children were shrieking, and Walter was stalking across the lawn to the chair where he’d left his towel.
At lunch they sat at a table shaded by an umbrella.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” Amy said.
“You’re right about that,” Walter said.
“So, just tell me what you think should happen in five years? How do we deal with this for the future?”
“The point is that this is something Hilary has decided,” Walter said firmly. “She had all sorts of alternative options available to her, and this is what she chose: to have the baby without being married to Tim, and without his agreement or support. What are we supposed to do? Adopt it?”
“She’s a girl,” Amy said. “Not an it.”
“You answer me for a change,” Walter said.
“No matter what we do, or what Hilary did or shouldn’t do, this is our grandchild,” said Amy.
“Well, I feel as though our son has been manipulated and tricked, and I don’t like it,” Walter said. “And no, you’re right, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why is it always the men who are manipulated, and not the women? Why didn’t he manipulate her, by moving in with her and acting as though he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her?”
Walter concentrated, frowning, on his frites.
“It made a lot more sense before the sexual revolution,” Amy said, “when girls didn’t have to sleep with everyone they went out with. Sexual liberation turned out to be a very poor deal for women. Now they have to whine and beg for marriage.”
“Your point is?” Walter asked.
“I don’t know what my point is,” Amy said, giving up. “I don’t know what we should do. But she’s our granddaughter.”
Walter did not answer. He went on chewing, his eyes focused on a cypress tree on the other side of the lawn.
That night they were seeing Claire for the first time; she’d asked them to dinner. Her parties were large and casual, and it would not be the moment to tell her about Emily. Amy would wait until they saw each other alone. Claire’s opinion, whatever it was, would be instantaneous and absolute. She would view Amy’s uncertainty with incomprehension. “Mais chérie,” she would say, “c’est évident!”
In the evening Walter and Amy drove into the hills, through the transparent dusk. The air was turning dim; darkness was washing over the crepuscular landscape. The olive trees were becoming dense and mysterious. Claire and Daniel lived up in the Alpilles, on a quiet back road near the lake. Their long dirt driveway was rutted, and big clumps of lavender stood on either side of it. The soft shrubs crowded against the car, breathing out their sweet sharp scent.
Claire was out under the trees.
“Amy, Walter,” she cried, when she saw them. “Vous êtes arrivés! Quel plaisir!” Crisply she kissed them on each cheek. She held on to Amy’s shoulders, smiling at her. “Tu parais merveilleuse, comme toujours.”
“Toi aussi,” Amy said, smiling back.
Claire was thin and tan, with thick short hair. She wore a narrow long skirt and a tight off-the-shoulder sweater that showed off her strong throat and the bones of her shoulders. She held a cigarette: Claire smoked constantly, drawing in the long hot breaths with authority and satisfaction, as though there had never been such a thing as medical research, or the word cancer.
“Alors, que voulez-vous boire?” Claire walked them toward a table with wine; they found glasses and began to mingle. There were some expat Americans, some French writers, musicians, artists—Claire’s circle was eclectic. Handsome Daniel came up and smiled into Amy’s eyes. Gilles, Claire’s son, tall and burly, was moving through the crowd, and someone’s small child, only two or three years old, squeezed her way between people’s knees. Amy began talking to a violinist who played at the Avignon festival; Walter stood with a short tanned woman with wavy blond hair.
Dinner was outside, and they sat at two round iron tables dragged together. People served themselves to a rich aromatic chicken stew, then sat anywhere. Stars began to prick the deep blackness of the Provençal sky. Daniel came out with a box of matches and the candles sprang into being; light flickered on the animated faces. Everyone argued about everything: food, theater, movies, politics. “Mais non, mais absolument pas,” people said to each other, voices and eyebrows raised. “Mais si, mais si.” Only in French was there a special word for contradicting someone, si, the extra-assertive yes-after-someone-has-just-said-no.
Afterward, Amy helped clear. Carrying a stack of plates, she followed Claire into the tiny kitchen. The house was small and spare and casual. Stuck onto the refrigerator were photographs of people asleep—friends curled on the sofa, stretched out on the lawn, Daniel in a hammock, Claire on an airplane.
“Where shall I put these?” Amy asked, looking at the photographs.
“Wherever you can,” Claire answered, balancing her own stack on the old iron stove.
“I like the musician,” Amy told her. She set her plates in the sink.
“He’s the friend of Michelle,” Claire answered. She took down a salad bowl from the open shelves over the sink.
“Who’s Michelle?”
“She’s the one who was talking to Walter before dinner.” Claire turned and looked at her. “You haven’t met her? I haven’t told you about Michelle?”
Amy shook her head.
“Eh bien,” Claire said. She set down the bowl and leaned back against the big porcelain sink. She lit a cigarette and shook the match out with a quick authoritative snap.
“Michelle is an old friend. She used to live in Lyon, but a few years ago she called me.” Claire took a long deliberate drag on the cigarette and exhaled a smooth white plume. “She was in despair, she said. She was forty-three, with no husband and no children. She desperately wanted a child, but she didn’t even have a boyfriend.” Claire shook her head.
“So I said, come down here. There are lots of men. If you want a baby, we’ll find you a father.” Claire shrugged. “So, Michelle arrived. At first she stayed with Jean-Louis, my ex-husband. You know Jean-Louis is gay?” She added this parenthetically, and Amy, who had wondered, nodded. “Daniel and I were still fixing this place up, and we didn’t have room for her. That summer, Gilles and a friend were also staying with Jean-Louis. They were both nineteen.” Claire took another long drag on her cigarette, exhaled. “So. That summer, Michelle became pregnant.” Claire shrugged neatly, to show the speed and elegance of the solution. “Perfect. Just what she’d wanted. But”— she paused—“after a few months, Jean-Louis called me and said, ‘Michelle doesn’t dare tell you.’” Claire looked at Amy. “I said, ‘Tell me what?’ He said, ‘She says the father is either Gilles or his friend.’ She’d spent o
ne night with each of them.”
Claire pursed her lips and shook her head. “I said to Jean-Louis, ‘Fine. Tell her she wanted a baby, now she’ll have one. It doesn’t matter whose it is. It will be hers.’”
Claire shrugged again.
“A few more months go by, and now she’s eight months pregnant. Jean-Louis calls and says again, ‘Michelle doesn’t dare tell you.’ I said, ‘Tell me what?’” Claire shook her head. “‘Michelle is sure it’s Gilles.’” She paused. “‘She wants a blood test.’”
“Oh, my God,” Amy said. “What did you say?”
Claire stood up very straight. “This time I called her myself. I said, Michelle, the child is yours, and that’s all there is to it. You wanted it, and now you’ll have it. Gilles is nineteen years old. This has nothing to do with him, or with his life. You have no business drawing him into it. He has a whole life ahead of him—he’ll get married, he’ll move away—and it has nothing to do with this child.”
Amy remembered suddenly. “That little girl who was here tonight?”
Claire nodded composedly. “Denise.”
“And who does she look like?”
“Exactement comme la mère,” Claire said firmly.
“Where is she?”
“Asleep on my bed.”
“But she’s here? With Gilles? And you?”
Claire looked surprised. “Bien sûr. Michelle is my friend. Of course I love Denise. I see her all the time. I babysit for her.” She put out her cigarette in the sink, twisting it against the porcelain, then tossing it in the trash. She folded her arms and looked at Amy.
“But she is not my granddaughter,” she said. “Even if there were a blood test, and it showed that Gilles were the father, she would not be my granddaughter.” She paused for emphasis. “If Gilles marries, and if he and his wife cannot have children, and if they adopt a child from China, that will be my granddaughter. Denise is the daughter of my friend.”
There was a pause.
“And what does Gilles say?” asked Nina. She was spellbound by the story, its opulence and vitality.
A Perfect Stranger Page 7