“She really wants to put it behind her, Lily. It’s her wish. She didn’t even want me to mention it to you. We’re going to try again. That’s what she wants—to try again.”
At this, Lily sobbed, and for a few moments was unable to speak. Her father’s voice continued, murmuring. She couldn’t hear the words. She felt as if her own recent happiness had been selfish, and the fact that she herself was pregnant made everything worse. It rode over her in waves, and at last her father was simply quiet, breathing on the other end, waiting for her to subside.
“God, I’m sorry,” she got out.
“Is everything else all right?” he said, and she heard the doubt in his voice. It was clear that her reaction had surprised him. “Your mother’s here,” he went on.
And she heard her mother’s voice, tearful, faintly raspy with cigarettes. “We hated to call you with this.”
Lily wanted to explain everything to them beginning with the cruel remark she’d made. She wanted to make sure Peggy would know how bad she felt. Of course, this wasn’t the time. Her mother went on about the hospital, and how she wished Lily would stay in closer touch.
“Sorry,” Lily said again. She couldn’t manage more. She said it still again when her father came back on the line.
“I’ll tell Peggy,” he said. “I’ll give her your love.”
“Yes,” Lily said. “Do.”
When she had hung up, she went to the room downstairs, with its cement floor and its set-off-to-the-side bookshelf, and lay down. She could hear everyone in the pool, splashing and talking loudly to be heard. Tyler came to the outside door, opened it, and leaned in to look at her. “Is everything all right?”
“No.”
He came into the room and closed the door. He hadn’t gotten into the water yet. He sat on the edge of the bed and took her hands in his own. “Tell me, Lily,” he said. “Is it your mother?”
“Peggy lost her baby.”
He said nothing, and there was nothing in his face. He merely returned her look. Then, very low, he said: “Jesus.”
“I said a terrible thing to her, Tyler. And it happened.”
“There’s no connection, Lily.”
“I know but I feel awful. I need to be alone a little, Tyler, please.”
“Come on outside and be with everybody. Don’t be in here by yourself with that.”
“In a while,” she said. “Please?”
“You want me to stay here with you?”
“No, please.”
After he had gone, she rose and went into the bathroom and was ill, nearly retching, holding her abdomen and trying to breathe. Looking at herself in the mirror, she saw the blotched look of her skin, the redness around her eyes. She washed her face, then stepped out, and to the door of the room and on, along the corridor to the stairs up into the kitchen, where she found Millicent, who had put on a light linen blouse over her dark bathing suit, and was standing at the refrigerator, pouring orange juice into a glass half filled with vodka. The small portable television was on. Lily saw a weather map in front of which a man stood smiling.
“Hello,” Millicent said. “I was just catching up on the weather.”
They watched in silence.
“You look a little under the weather,” Millicent said, “speaking of weather.” Then: “You’ve been crying.” She put the backs of her fingers on Lily’s forehead. “No fever.” She tilted her head to one side. “Sugar—Tyler told us, about Peggy. Is there anything we can do?”
“Oh, thank you—but no.”
The newscaster was now talking about a special report on the recent violence in Beijing, the gathering of forces to stop the popular revolt. The voice was grave, deep, and fake. Millicent turned the television off.
“Do you need to get home?”
“They don’t want me to come home. Peggy didn’t want a fuss.”
“That happens sometimes. And sometimes it goes the other way. I have a friend who wanted a funeral, a coffin, all of it, for a three-month fetus. It helped her, too. The hard thing is always the assumptions people make about it. Someone said to this woman, this friend of mine, ‘Why don’t you adopt a baby?’ It appalled her. As if it had been a commodity she’d lost. Something simply replaceable, like a car or an appliance. But the person who said it was sincerely trying to help.” She touched Lily’s forehead again. “You’re a little warm. Have you been feeling all right?”
Lily cast her eyes down and said, “Yes.”
The older woman took her chin and lifted it, so that they were eye to eye. “You know, I hear it whenever anyone uses the bathrooms in this big old house—I’m a light sleeper and I hear the plumbing working. Someone has been getting up at all hours to use the bathroom down there.”
“I’m not sure,” Lily said, unable to believe the turn things had taken. She wanted to step into the other’s arms and cry. She felt something of an invitation to do so in the gentle pressure of the hand on her chin.
“But you think so,” Millicent said.
Lily nodded. Millicent’s expression was of a kind of acknowledgment of what had already transpired between them. They were women together, navigating the cares and complications of life in the world. Lily felt it almost as a caress.
“You don’t want anyone else to know yet.”
“I told Tyler. He—he—I said it wasn’t sure.”
“But you’re pretty sure.”
“Yes,” she said, beginning to let down again.
Millicent embraced her, a wonderful sheltering gesture that brought forth a long sigh. “You come with me.” She led her into the living room. The dark shapes on the wall were like listening, staring presences. “You didn’t plan this, sweetie, is that right?”
Lily had the feeling that the older woman was reading her mind, looking through all the layers of her soul to the place where she was most uncertain. She couldn’t stop crying. “I wasn’t supposed to say anything. Tyler didn’t want me to say anything.”
“Sometimes young men have a little trouble adjusting to the idea. They usually come around. And I’ve never seen anybody as in love as you two.”
Lily put her head on the other woman’s shoulder, sniffling.
“This’ll be our secret, for a while,” Millicent said.
“I’m sorry,” said Lily, not quite understanding why she felt the need to say it. Partly it was from the sense that she had been privy to something the older woman would have preferred no one else see, or know. She took the Kleenex Millicent offered and dabbed at her eyes, and went on to tell about what had happened between her and Peggy.
“You mustn’t trouble yourself about it, now, sweetie, given the circumstances, and from what you say, Peggy knew you felt bad about it.”
They heard sounds in the kitchen, Buddy’s voice, calling Millicent.
“Do you want me to say you’ve got a headache?”
“No,” Lily said. “I’ll come out.”
“Sweetie, you look awful.”
“Hey,” came Buddy’s voice. “Where are you?” He came to the door of the room. He filled the doorway. Lily saw his friendly face with the continual questioning expression in it. “What’re you two doing sitting here in the dark?”
“It’s not dark, Buddy.”
“Whyn’t you open a curtain or something. Let some sun in.” He walked to the windows and drew the drapes aside. The sudden brightness hurt Lily’s eyes, and abruptly she did have a headache.
“Go away, Buddy,” Millicent said.
Buddy walked over and sat down across from them, hands on his knees. He leaned toward Lily and said, in the gentlest voice, “I’m sorry to hear about what happened, kid.”
His confiding tone troubled her, and she realized that it was because of what she had seen and heard of Millicent with the contractor. She couldn’t get control of the crying. It seemed that everything was in question now, and all her happiness of the morning had fallen away into the darkness of herself. It occurred to her that in the middle of all
the good talk and the stories and the convivial evenings, she had been making judgments about these two people; they had broken the rules and prospered, had sundered a family and left a lone boy without a mother, and they seemed to feel no regret about anything. She had allowed these thoughts, however unacknowledged, into her consideration of them. And here was their kindliness, like a reproach.
“I’ll be all right,” she told them, without quite believing it.
“You go lie down for a while,” Millicent said. “You need some rest.”
She thanked them and went downstairs to the room. It was gloomy, here, with the single thin slot of light along the sliding door, where Tyler had pushed the closed curtain aside to step in. The others were still in the pool, though they were all quieter now. She heard only the sound of the water and their motions through it. If they talked, it was in tones so low that no words reached her. Everyone knew what had happened. She undressed and got into the bed, and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t sleep. She replayed those minutes in her mother’s kitchen with Peggy, and remembered with a shock that she herself was pregnant. She knew it, now. There is a moment when rational thought gives way to the truth of experience; her whole being was different, and she knew what it meant. There was no doubt at all in her mind.
2
July 2, 1989
Surprise!
I’ve been meaning to write you lo these months, and not getting around to it, and feeling guilty, and wondering how you are and if you’ve forgotten me, and if you remember that I said I would come visit you and Tyler. And I’m writing you now to assuage these guilty feelings and to ask how things are with you, how you like it there in the old magnolia-blossomed southern climes, living in the bosom of your husband’s family and being married. I have, as it happens, some good news about myself. I am living with a wonderful person named Manny, whose family disowned him ten years ago when he decided he couldn’t take over the family business, which he will only describe as “imperialistic” and “exploitative,” not to say “colonial” (I supplied that last), and he’s very kind and loving, and we are not lovers either, though I think I would. (I know I would.) Instead of availing himself of the protection I’ve suggested, he’s decided on celibacy, and of course that decision stands because of the terrible obvious reason. But we don’t dwell on this. We keep a good attitude, and he manages his worry and his knowledge with amazing grace (that has become our song). He’s always and in all instances thinking about everyone else. Sometimes, I can’t help myself, and I come back here with someone, and when I do, he’s like a great roomie who understands, and is fun to be with, too. He’s perfectly and naturally gracious, as if it isn’t in his makeup to be otherwise, and I suppose that’s true. Lily, he even forgives my petty anger at his choosing to be noble. I love him. I know I have the power to hurt him and that what I sometimes do hurts him, and he never gives a hint of it, and sometimes I get mad at him for that. But then I resolve to do better as a friend and companion. The fact is, I have never known anyone kinder than he, though you, dear girlie, are in all ways his peer in that rare quality. Conversation with him can be a bit halting at times because he’s from Chile (the name is Manuel, but he has Americanized it, and insists on that). I met him at the bar where you and Tyler and I had dinner that time. That strange time that is so recent and feels so faraway and long ago.
I wonder how you’re doing as a married lady and I think you were in love with Tyler all along, and now I’ll bet you know this, too. You didn’t like to be romantic, and of course you’re the most romantic of souls. Nobody else could be so bereft at its absence.
Tyler, I’m working in a bookstore called The Portico—it has a restaurant attached to it. Some movie stars bought a farm in Ivy, and they come in regularly. They have lunch, and they’re so good-looking and somehow so ordinary, too. Everybody leaves them alone, and you can feel everybody leaving them alone. It’s so cool. You get the feeling it’s not a courtesy so much as it’s a kind of snub. Also, writers come in. I think of you, Lily, when I see them.
Anyway, both of you, I expect that you’re thriving in your new environs, and I’m tenderly hoping to be asked for a visit. In November, if things go all right here, Manny and I are supposed to go to New Orleans to see his great-aunt Violet Beaumont—he calls her “Great-aunt,” but there’s no blood relation actually. She’s ninety-one years old, a former schoolteacher—and still drives a pickup truck. When you are ninety-one, you make plans tentatively, as she put it to Manny on the telephone last week. She calls her own death “the big exit” and seems not the least bit worried about it or frightened. That is, after almost a century alive, she seems to have no particular quarrel with life. Anyway, Manny and I could leave a week early and stop in Oxford for a couple of days. What I’m saying is that we could be talked into making Oxford one of our stops along the way. This would be in the second week of November (I’m guessing you’ll have a place of your own by then, if you don’t already have one). I hope we can see you both. And of course I understand if we can’t.
I like working in a bookstore. I’m trying to sample everything. It’s a good thing I don’t sell liquor. I’d be drunk every day. Lily, assuming you’re still pursuing your work on Mary Kingsley, I’m sending along something I found in a rare-books catalog we have here. Also, I actually read it before packing it up for you. What a marvelously humorous and bright intelligence. I’m betting that you have already read it, of course, but wanted you to have it anyway, on the chance that being a married lady may have carried you away from your maidenly interests. Does that last sentence sound like me? You see I’ve been immersed in Victorian prose. In any case, please note the address on the envelope and act accordingly. I’d love to hear from you and I would love for you and Tyler to meet Manny.
Love,
and ever your friend,
Dom
“It’s written to both of us,” Lily said. “Here.”
“I’ll read it later,” Tyler said. “I’m beat just now.”
They were standing in the hallway just inside the front door. Lily had brought the mail in and found the letter and opened it, while he watched. He had come in from the dealership, holding his sport coat draped over his shoulder, looking happy and relaxed, though for the past three days, after it had become generally known that Lily was expecting, and that the baby was due in mid-February, he had been anything but relaxed. That first day he had bought toys for both sexes, provisionally favoring toys for boys. And he talked about the future, even speculating on what colleges the child might attend. The others in the house teased him for being so much the cliché of the expectant father. But the coming change had worked in him, of that she was certain.
He was more quiet when they were alone. He would lose track of their conversation, his mind wandering away, or he would sit staring at what he was reading, obviously far removed from it. Sometimes it was as if there was a shadow on his soul, though he denied that anything was wrong, and deflected her questions about it by acting silly, or claiming not to understand what was worrying her. And it was worrying her, even as she was concerned that her own mood might be influencing his. It was possible that he wished simply to avoid aggravating her, and she did notice that things she used to ride over with ease now unnerved her. She wished for one moment’s clarity, a way to cut through the fog that seemed to have settled over their lives.
“Tyler,” she said now. “Dom wants to come visit. He’s got a new—a friend. It won’t be until November. And we should have our own place by then.”
“Who’s his new friend?”
“Read the letter,” she said. “It’s all in there.”
He took it, kissed her, and strolled into the house with his sport coat still slung over his shoulder. She saw him stop at the dining room table and take an orange from the fruit dish there. Then he went on into the kitchen, where Rosa was preparing dinner.
Buddy Galatierre came up the walk, followed by Nick Green. They were both still in their jackets, looking tire
d and hot. Buddy stopped and put one hand on Lily’s shoulder and said, “Hello there, you fragrant darling. Was that mail from home?”
“It’s from a friend of ours,” Lily said, patting his hand. “He was the witness at our wedding.”
“Tell him to come visit. And tell him no hotel.”
“It won’t be until November, and he’ll have a friend with him.”
“A woman?”
She shook her head, and supposed that her facial expression told him everything. He showed no sign of having fully understood her, but then when he spoke it was clear that he had. “I had an uncle who was gay,” he said to her. “Wonderful company. And people put him through a lot of unnecessary misery, too.”
“‘Wonderful company,’” she said. “That’s exactly what I’d say about Dom.”
“You tell him he spends no money on a place to stay in my town. And he stays here. You guys probably won’t have as much room, right?”
She kissed him on the cheek.
“Riches,” he said.
Nick Green came by her and smiled, but said nothing.
3
IN THE NIGHT, she turned to Tyler and put her hand on his hip, moving it slowly around to the front of him. He took her wrist and stopped her. “Not now, baby,” he murmured. “I don’t feel very good. My stomach’s bothering me.”
“You’ve been so quiet. Are you coming down with something?”
“I’ll be all right.”
She moved close. “Does this bother you?”
“Never,” he said.
After a pause, she murmured, “Is something else—is anything else wrong?”
“No. Just my stomach.”
“If you’re nervous about the responsibility of a baby, let’s talk about it. I’m nervous about it, too.”
“I’m okay,” he said. “I thought being nervous was sort of normal.”
“But you’ve been so pensive.”
He was quiet for a long time—long enough for her to wonder if he might have gone to sleep. But then he moved closer, and kissed her ear, the side of her face. “Lily, you keep looking at me all the time. It’s like you’re gauging me or something.”
Hello to the Cannibals Page 24