The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

  He couldn’t sit in the small, over-fragrant room any more, staring at the neatly made bed that was waiting for his wife. He got up and went, out into the corridor. He looked at his watch. It wasn’t midnight yet, and it seemed to him that he had been in the hospital all his life…

  He walked down the dark corridor toward the spot of light near the elevator where a nurse sat at a desk, making notations on charts. She looked up and smiled at him and he managed a smile in return. Above her head little green lights winked on and off mysteriously. The nurse paid no attention to the lights.

  There was a little waiting room with, two stiff couches across from the elevator and Archer went in there and sat dawn. He put out the light and sat in the darkness, rubbing his eyes.

  The telephone rang on the nurse’s desk, and he heard her say, “Yes, Doctor, he’s here. Yes, I’ll tell him.” Then the nurse came into the dark room and said, tentatively, “Mr. Archer …”

  “Yes?” Archer reached over and switched on the light. The nurse was young and pretty, with a soft red mouth, and she had a vulnerable, gentle way of smiling that didn’t fit with her cap and uniform.

  “That was Dr. Graves on the phone,” she said. “Mrs. Archer has just given birth. To a little boy. She’s fine, the doctor said.”

  “How’s the child?” Archer said, thinking, A boy. Kitty kept saying it was going to be a boy.

  “He didn’t say anything about the child,” the nurse said softly. “He’s coming right down. He said he’ll tell you himself.”

  “Thanks,” Archer said. “Thanks very much.” He was conscious that he must look unkempt, in the same clothes that he’d been wearing for two days, and that he needed a shave and that his face must be sagging and old-looking after the long, hideous day. He wondered what this pretty young girl must think about men, after seeing them in this place in the hours of the night, torn and dishonored by pain or shabby with anxiety. Could she go out gaily with them, dance, laugh at their jokes, touch their bodies tenderly in lovemaking with the memories of all the nights in the dark, anguished corridor constantly with her? Some day, he thought, I must talk to a nurse.

  “Can I get you anything?” she was saying. “A glass of milk? A cup of coffee?”

  “Thank you,” Archer said, “Not at the moment.”

  She went back to her desk and Archer stood brushing his clothes, arranging a stolid front to present to Graves.

  Graves had his business suit on when he got off the elevator. He looked fresh and executive-like. First he shook Archer’s hand, looking at him soberly.

  “Well?” Archer asked.

  “Mrs. Archer is fine. She’ll be down in a half hour or so. We used a spinal and she’s conscious. She’s a little tired, of course, but she came through splendidly. Splendidly,” he repeated. “She had a very easy time,” he said. He sounded as if he were congratulating himself.

  “And the child?” Archer asked.

  Graves shook his head. Archer decided he didn’t like the way Graves shook his head. It was practiced, and denoted restrained, rehearsed, quiet, gentlemanly regret, like the performance of an actor who has been on the stage a long time and has studied his craft conscientiously but who is fundamentally without talent. You knew what he was driving at, but you didn’t believe him. “The child is very small,” Graves said. “As I predicted.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “As of this moment,” Graves said. “Yes. We didn’t weigh him. We put him into the incubator immediately, but I doubt if he weighs as much as two pounds. He’s breathing, but that’s about all just now. I wouldn’t raise our hopes too high.”

  “Did Mrs. Archer see him?”

  “I don’t think so,” Graves said. “At the moment of delivery we gave her some gas. Just enough to put her out for a minute or two. Do you want to see the child?”

  “No.” It was spoken before he thought about it. He felt confused and hurt and he knew he didn’t want to expose himself to any more pain that night.

  “I think you ought to go up and take a look,” Graves said, surprisingly insistent. “You’ll feel better about it later. No matter what happens. Take my word for it, Mr. Archer.”

  “All right.” Archer started out of the room. There were tears in his eyes and he didn’t want the doctor to see them.

  They went up to the top floor in the elevator without speaking. In the premature nursery, there were two incubators. A fat old white-haired nurse was seated between them, looking in through the plastic sides.

  “Mrs. Grogan,” Dr. Graves said, “this is the father of the Archer baby.”

  Mrs. Grogan smiled. She had no teeth and her mouth collapsed around her gums. “Here he is,” she said, with a brogue. “The poor wee thing.”

  Archer looked down. It was small and crumpled and scarlet and the clamp on the umbilical cord looked cruelly surgical. Archer flushed. For a queer moment, standing there before these two strangers, he knew he felt ashamed, responsible for the struggling, freakishly tiny, inadequate creature in the plastic box, living on oxygen.

  “He’s perfectly formed,” Mrs. Grogan said, “in every detail.”

  “He’s breathing though.” Archer looked for a moment more, then stepped back.

  “He’s breathing now,” Mrs. Grogan said. She shook her head. “But I’m fearful it’s going to be too much for the poor lad. He’s sorrowfully small, you know.”

  “Yes.” Archer looked at the other incubator. There was a little girl there who looked gigantic and powerfully alive compared to his son. “How about that one?”

  “Oh, that one,” Mrs. Grogan said gaily. “That one will be ready for the world in no time. She’s a darling.”

  “She had four weeks more,” Graves said, “four very important weeks.”

  Four weeks, Archer thought.

  “Of course,” Mrs. Grogan said, “I’ve seen them this size before and they’ve lived to marry and raise a family. But it’s a miracle when it happens. But at least you’ve had the pleasure of seeing him alive. You’ll be thankful in days to come.”

  Archer turned and went out of the room. The corridor seemed very cold after the moist warmth of the nursery. Graves came out and said, “They’ve probably got Mrs. Archer back in her room by now.” Archer nodded and walked back to the elevator.

  Miss Kennedy was in the room with Kitty when Archer got there. The nurse was making last little arrangements, filling the vacuum jug with fresh water and putting it on the bedside table and placing the electric plug with the call-button on it near Kitty’s head, beside the pillow. The room was quiet, lit by the light of one lamp, with only a cold whisper of wind coming in through the slightly raised window, and Miss Kennedy moved in accurate silence about her tasks and greeted Archer only with a little nod when he came in. Kitty was lying still, stretched out, her head thrown back on the flat pillow and her eyes closed and Archer thought that she was asleep. But she turned her head and opened her eyes when she heard Archer’s step. Archer went over and stared down at her. Kitty looked queerly young, childish and exhausted, and Archer remembered photographs he had seen during the war of boys who had just come out after many days of combat. Kitty had been where he could never go and she had fought a battle he could never fight. He sank to the bed and put his arms around her, clutching her tightly. Kitty’s arms went around him and he could feel her silent tears against his cheek and he began to weep.

  Miss Kennedy went softly out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  “Clement …” Kitty whispered, holding him. “Clement.”

  For Kitty’s sake, Archer struggled to stop crying.

  “It’s all right,” he said senselessly. “It’s all right.”

  “I couldn’t do it,” Kitty wept. “I tried so hard. I swear I did. But I just couldn’t do it. I let you down.”

  “You mustn’t say that.”

  “I did. The one last thing you wanted from me. The one thing you depended on me for.”

  “Kitty, please, don’t talk like tha
t.” He held her closer, trying to smother her self-accusation.

  “I’ve been so bad, so selfish.” Kitty wrenched her head away and whispered into the pillow. “And I’ve been punished. Only you’ve been punished, too.”

  “Nobody’s been punished, darling. You mustn’t think that. It’s an accident, that’s all.”

  “It’s not an accident. It’s a judgment …”

  “Kitty …” Archer rocked her in his tight arms, not wanting to hear any of this.

  “A judgment because I’ve been a useless wife. These last months, when they’ve been torturing you so—I didn’t help. I made it worse. I joined them. I tortured you too. I was frivolous and I was mean and I only thought about myself. All those things I said about you and Vic and Nancy. How could I say them? How can you bear to live with me any more?”

  She took her arms away from Archer’s shoulders and let them fall limp behind her head. Archer lowered her gently onto the pillow and stood up. He turned away and wiped his eyes. Kitty had never seen him cry before and he felt embarrassed, as though he had exposed a shameful secret about himself that he had cunningly hidden for twenty years.

  “What’s happened to me?” Kitty whispered, staring up at the ceiling. “How did I get so bad? I used to be so proud of myself, I used to think I was so strong, I used to think I was a protection for you, that I paid my way, that we had a real marriage, you and I …”

  Archer put his handkerchief away. He stopped crying suddenly. His nose felt as though he had a cold. “We do have a real marriage,” he said. He sat down in the chair beside the bed and rested his hand under Kitty’s head, low-down, feeling the damp hair and the warm, firm skin on the back of her neck. “You mustn’t ever think anything else.”

  “And the way I fought you,” Kitty went on, disregarding his attempt to comfort her. “When you were in the worst trouble of your life. When you had to act the way you did, because that’s the sort of man you are and that’s why I love you. And I yelled at you like the worst kind of money-loving, comfort-loving bitch …”

  “Kitty …” Archer pleaded. “Not tonight. Wait …”

  “And I was so wrong about Jane,” Kitty went on inexorably. “I was so offhand and modern and superior. I was too lazy to see what was happening, I was too busy making myself comfortable, I didn’t want to bother … I let her slide away. I let her hurt herself and get beaten and shamed …”

  “You’re being too harsh with yourself,” Archer said, believing that what he was saying was half-true. “It’s only because you’re exhausted and you’ve been through so much tonight.”

  “No good as a mother,” Kitty whispered. “No good as a wife. All the time I was up there in that room, waiting, I kept thinking of what I said a month ago … I said, ‘I hope he comes out in seven months, I’m getting so tired of carrying him around.’ Do you remember?”

  “You never said anything like that,” Archer said, although he remembered when she had said it and remembered the slight superstitious twinge of fear he had felt when he’d heard it.

  “Oh, yes, I did,” Kitty said. Her voice turned into a flat sing-song. “I said it and you remember it, because I remember the look in your eye when I did. Well, I got my wish. Better than my wish. I was tired, I said. I was annoyed at the inconvenience. Oh, God, what sort of woman am I?”

  “Look,” Archer said, “we’re going to forget everything you said and everything I said and all the mistakes we’ve made and all the chances we’ve muffed. And we’re going to start over again …”

  “I’m not going to forget anything,” Kitty said. “And neither are you. Why don’t you leave me? I’m no good for you, nobody’ll blame you if you just put on your hat and coat and go right now.”

  “Kitty, darling,” Archer said desperately, “I’m going to call Miss Kennedy and tell her to give you some dope and let you sleep for awhile.”

  “You can’t call Miss Kennedy,” Kitty said in the toneless singsong. “She’s gone off duty. She’s going to church. Clement …” Kitty’s face was distorted with grief. “Clement, she said she was going to pray for our son.”

  He put his arms around her again, letting her weep, kissing her cheek. She cried for a long time before she grew quiet and then she was very sleepy and she said in a small, but clear and surprisingly calm voice, “I’m all right now, darling. Why don’t you go out and get some air and a drink and something to eat?”

  Then she fell asleep.

  Archer stood up. He felt broken and unsteady and it was hard for him to believe that he had ever slept in his whole life. Kitty’s mouth was open, and she was snoring softly, the sound hoarse and domestic in the strange, cold room. As he watched his wife sleep, he wondered how much of what she had said was true, how much of what had happened to them was really a judgment. But on whom, he thought, who has been judged?

  He took his hat and coat off the rack carefully and went silently out of the room, closing the door gently on the soft, defeated, snoring noise within. As he walked down the dark corridor, surrounded by the convalescing, the delivered, the doubtful, the dying, he remembered that Kitty hadn’t asked him whether he had seen their son, whether he was dead or alive.

  The night was cold and Archer put up the collar of his coat as he walked down the empty street toward the river. A drink would have been good, but he didn’t want to see people, he didn’t want to hear saloon laughter or jukebox music.

  The river slid past blackly, looking wintry and dangerous, and there were only occasional cars rushing home in a quick flare of headlights along the highway. Downstream, bulking out of the night, punctuated by weak, irregular patterns of light, were the islands on which were the hospitals and the prisons. Upriver were the swinging, mathematically spaced lights of the great bridge, unsubstantial in the darkness. There was no moon, but the stars were bright and frosty in the cold darkness of the sky.

  The biting air was insistent against Archer’s face, waking him up, but making him feel a little lightheaded, as he stared out over the water and smelled the brackish tidal salt of the river.

  I should go to sleep, he thought. Tomorrow’s another day. Not correct. It was past midnight. Today’s another day. He turned around and looked at the hospital behind him. It was almost completely dark. Only here and there a light shone, people refusing to die in the dark, nurses having coffee, doctors probing pain with experienced fingers, saying, This will wait till morning. And in a room high up on top of the building, Mrs. Grogan, without teeth, watching the two incubators, waiting placidly, because it was her job and that’s how she earned her ten dollars a day and bought her tea and her chop and her cotton stockings, waiting placidly, as she. had done how many times before in her cheerful, kind-hearted way, for a small, inadequate, hurried heart to stop beating. All sorts of strange jobs in the world and all sorts of ordinary people to fill them. Airs. Grogan, keeping an eye on the oxygen gauge, comfortably sucking her toothless gums, on the death watch for infants. Thinking what, under her thin gray hair? You’re well out of it, lad, and don’t let anyone tell you different. Listen to an old lady who’s been through it all. There’s nothing to it, lad, only disappointment and leavetakings, and people telling you one thing and meaning another, and fight, fight, fight all the long days of your life. You’re not missing much, lad, and that’s a fact. And from what I read in the papers, we’re all to be blown up any day now, in one thorough explosion, and left to rot in the rubble with our bones turning to water and our blood thinning to acid and giving off signals like a radio station and the signals always saying the same thing, good-bye, good-bye. And here you are dying comfortably in a nice warm box, and not old enough to regret any of it, and there’ll be many on that day who’ll envy you tonight.

  Archer turned his back on the hospital. Down the river, on the Queens side, among the factory-stacks, an enormous sign wrote a message across the sky in electric red letters. PEPSI-COLA. Look past the borders of the city at death-time, look for comfort and omens, and see the cryptic, shi
ning words of the oracle, steadfast in mists and storms, saying PEPSI-COLA.

  Archer stared out across the river, conscious of the cold and the silence and emptiness of the streets around him, and it made him remember that other night, such a short time ago, when he and Vic had walked side by side along Madison Avenue after the program was over and they were both feeling good, and the night was promising, and the evening’s first drink was waiting for them in the warm bar.

  Where had that feeling gone? What had happened to that promise? That night he had chuckled at Pokorny because he was so comically over-serious, and how comic was Pokorny tonight? And he had kissed Alice Weller and congratulated her and assured her she would work again, and on what grounds could he congratulate her now? And he had criticized Barbante for using too much perfume and had joked about his passion for women, and where was the joke now and was he expected to laugh at it tonight? He had been annoyed with Atlas because Atlas was independent and scornful and only Atlas had really survived. And Atlas had survived because he was suspicious and despairing from the beginning and had built a defense for himself out of a protective combination of shrewdness and loathing. Perhaps there were lessons to be learned from Atlas, but who could learn them?

  And Vic … Fifteen years. The lanky student with the black eye and the bruised nose and the pretty girl in the summery classroom. The ferocious boy on the football field, playing with that curious mixture of violence and disinterest, disdainful of the praise or friendship of his fellows, coldly unmoved by the pleas of the coach or the dislike of his classmates, making his own rules as he went along, arrogantly, confidently, not taking anybody else’s advice or, at least when he was young, serving anyone else’s system of values. The gay, inventive, useful, inevitably successful man. You’re not satisfied just to adore, Kitty said. You have to be like your hero. You ape him, the way he talks, the way he walks, the way he wears his hat. I don’t have my own husband any more. I have a carbon copy of another man, and I’m disgusted with it. And now, here’s your final, great chance. The final identification. You can suffer for his sins. How could I expect you to pass up an opportunity like that?