He’s pushed in, is moving inside her, but she can’t remember him pausing first—“Did you get one?” she asks.
“We’re out of them, don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” and she tenses at this and feels his tempo quicken and then begins to feel alert in a cold, scared way, because he’s going too fast, and she says “Stop now?” and he grimaces in agreement but then bucks and groans, and by the time he leaves her body it’s already happened.
Dr. Schirmer recommends she take the desPLEX tablets again, and Kay takes the prescription from her and tucks it in her purse, not sure if she’ll fill it. What if she lets nature decide? There would be no sin in that, would there? Her existence four weeks earlier, that seemed so handicapped by need and want, now seems a faraway dream of stability and ease. She remembers the deals she made with God last time, and the way she put each desPLEX tablet to her lips as if it were a Communion wafer, her overwhelming gratitude and relief when the pregnancy lasted. But she didn’t ask for this baby; she doesn’t want it.
When Dixie still lived next door, she and Kay would put Stevie and Rose together on a blanket at one of their houses, and it was lovely to let the babies kick and wriggle and scooch around side by side while Kay and Dixie smoked an afternoon cigarette and had a cup of coffee together, comparing notes about everything. They pushed their strollers side by side in the neighborhood as the seasons went by, and sat in their lawn chairs with iced tea in the summer, watching Stevie and Rose toddle in the kiddie pool, scooping and pouring buckets of water. Dixie had two more babies in quick succession, and Kay helped out by taking Rose as much as she could. She saw how hard it was on her friend, even with Jimmy earning a good living and getting a promotion. She made Carl keep using the prophylactics, and the more time that went by, the more certain she became; after all, Carl was already fifty-three. If they could barely keep up now, what would things be like when he was too old to work?
Kay will be thirty-seven when this baby is born, and has nothing to show for her life except her son. When Stevie goes to kindergarten in the fall she was going to take a correspondence course in writing newspaper and magazine features. She’s clipped out the advertisement for it. She feels sure that, given some training, she could sell pieces. What heaven that would be, to work from her home, be published, get paid for it, and still be a good mother.
Now she’ll be sleepless, exhausted, and taken up every minute of every day with laundry and baby care until she falls into bed at night. And Dixie and Jimmy moved to a large house in Beaverton; there’s no sisterly friend next door to buck her up, and there will be no money for the correspondence course—all her savings for that going now to pay the bills for the doctor and hospital. She’d like to make the most of this time with Stevie while she has it, but she’s too sick to her stomach now to even do that, to take him on bus trips downtown to the zoo, or to walk in the neighborhood while he tricycles beside her.
She feels herself slipping into the dark place where people seem to be living their lives on the other side of a glass wall that separates her from everyday forms of happiness. Carl is being as considerate as he can be—taking Stevie to parks and Celia’s farm on Saturdays so she can lie home in bed—but she is angry with him for the selfishness of what he did, and has to bite back accusing words whenever the panic and sick feeling rise up in her, and he knows it and seems glad to get away from her.
Kay can barely rise from bed on the weekdays when Stevie is there for her to take care of, and it is he who ends up taking care of her, bringing her saltines and 7-Up. He plays quietly in her room or watches Lamb Chop or Captain Kangaroo on television. She tells herself it is the morning sickness keeping her down, but it is also this blackness covering her, a lead apron of despair. So far, they have told Stevie only that Mamma has the flu, and it is making her feel sick to her stomach.
Four weeks slip by and it is time for her to go to her second doctor’s visit. Stevie bounces with excitement as they wait for the blue bus they’ll ride downtown. It’s a damp day at the end of February and they still wear gloves and hats and their heavy woolen coats, but the strip of garden behind the bus stop already shows the tips of crocuses poking up. Downtown they’ll head to Auntie Vera’s apartment building, where Stevie will stay for lunch and play with the cars he brought while Kay walks the few blocks to the Stevens Medical Building. She wonders what she’ll answer if Dr. Schirmer asks her if she’s taking the desPLEX tablets. It’s not that she decided not to take them; she just never got around to filling the prescription. She asks herself what her mother would say about the tablets. Her mother would only be joyful at the prospect of taking another baby into her arms. Her mother would praise God; her faith would light the path in front of Kay. But her mother is not here.
“Well, my dear, you’re looking fine,” Dr. Schirmer says, when Kay has gotten dressed again. Kay sits in the chair in the examining room and Dr. Schirmer on her rolling stool. “Let’s continue with the desPLEX tablets. You might keep this pregnancy without them, but better safe than sorry. And you’re moving into your second trimester, so the morning sickness should resolve very soon.”
Kay opens her mouth to confess that she hasn’t been taking the tablets, closes it when she realizes that she doesn’t have to confess, and then dissolves into tears that prevent her from saying anything at all.
“There, there, my dear,” Dr. Schirmer says, rolling closer on the stool and patting her shoulder. She peers with concern at Kay through her glasses. “What’s upsetting you? It’s an emotional time, I know. Hormones are wreaking havoc.”
Kay pours out everything—her confusion, her guilt at not taking the desPLEX after she was so happy to have it before, the doubts she has about her ability to cope with another child, and the darkness that she moves through daily.
Dr. Schirmer takes this all in, her hands calmly folded in her lap. “I’m so glad you told me this. You have a lot to carry right now.”
She puts her finger to her mouth, tapping thoughtfully. “The most recent diethylstilbestrol data hasn’t been as convincing as we thought that it prevents miscarriage.”
“You mean—”
Dr. Schirmer nods. “You might have carried your last child to term with or without the desPLEX; we can’t say definitively. So I’ll leave it entirely up to you whether or not you take it. And you certainly mustn’t feel guilty if you don’t. At least I can relieve you on that point.”
Kay nods.
“And if you’re feeling worry over the bill, I want to assure you that you can pay my fee over time. You have only to make an arrangement with Jane as you leave.”
Kay nods again. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“Thirdly, you must continue to tell me how you’re feeling emotionally. You shouldn’t hold it against yourself that you’re ambivalent. For one thing, your hormones are all in flux. But for another, let me assure you you’re not the first mother who doesn’t think she’ll have the strength or room in her heart for a second baby. I’ve seen it many times. And in the great majority of cases, all doubts dissolve when the baby arrives. But not always. If the second outcome is the case with you, there are things we can prescribe to help. Do you have family nearby?”
Tears threaten again as Kay thinks of her Illinois aunts and cousins, and her mother, gone now nearly twenty years. But six blocks away is Vera, feeding Stevie cookies and root beer this very minute. “Yes,” she says.
“Well, use them, now and later. There’s no shame in asking for help to carry out the largest job God ever created for anyone.”
Kay nods, feeling overwhelmed by the doctor’s kindness. This brilliant, professional woman who, she’s gathered, never married, saying that mothering is the biggest job of all.
“One more thing, Kay. Contraception after this baby. If you remain certain that you want no more children, I recommend that your husband get a vasectomy. Don’t look so startled. It’s a surgical procedure, yes, but a very simple surgery that has only one long-term effec
t: permanent sterilization. It’s a much easier surgery for men than a tubal ligation is for women. We can view this as a matter of your future health. Will he say yes?”
Kay blows her nose and laughs faintly. “Right now? I think so. He’s afraid of me, I’ve been so mad at him.”
“So think about the timing. You may wish to wait until this child is born to make sure you’re absolutely certain. But if there’s no doubt in your mind, have him do it while you’re still pregnant, before it becomes an issue again.”
In another couple of months, when the sickness has cleared up and Kay is beginning to show, they tell Stevie. He can’t believe his luck. He tells everyone he meets he is going to be a brother, and regards it now as the central fact of his identity, the thing that suddenly makes him who he is. Kay catches a little of his excitement; if she can’t be eager for this new child’s arrival for her own sake, the least she can do is look forward to it on behalf of her little boy. The baby kicks and she puts his hand on the spot on her belly, and he feels the little nudge and runs shouting to Carl, and then the two of them sit still with their palms down and wait. The baby, maybe sensing an audience, does a little dance number for them, and Kay looks at their delight, and her husband’s tender expression, and lays down her weapons.
Early in the summer, Dixie and Jimmy have them over to the new house for a cookout, and Stevie and Rose run off together on important big-kid business in Rose’s room while Jeffy and Patrick, Dixie’s little ones, painstakingly transport shovels of sand from the sandbox to Kay’s feet.
“Mountain,” Jeffy informs her. “Mownun,” Patrick confirms. They head off for another load.
“You’ve inspired them, Kay,” Dixie says. “When they grow up to be engineers making dams I’m going to chalk it up to this day and your magnetic presence that brought out the earth movers in them.”
“You’re welcome,” Kay says, shaking some sand out of her flats.
“My goodness, I wish we were still next door to each other.”
“Please, don’t even say it. I’m going to start bawling like I did the day your moving truck left.”
“Buy a house somewhere around here,” Dixie urges.
“Beaverton’s a little rich for our blood,” Kay says. Then she looks around and says, “You have such a lovely yard. Room for a swing set and everything.”
“You’re going to have to size up eventually for the new baby,” Dixie presses. “The four of you can’t live in two small bedrooms forever.”
Kay has thought of this, and has been checking listings to see where there might be bargains to be had in neighborhoods farther out. When she feels too panicky at the thought that they’ll need a bigger house and never be able to afford one, the Psalm comes to her, unbidden: Those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. She guesses she can still qualify as a seeker, at least; hadn’t she gotten them—mostly for Stevie’s sake—to a church?
“Have you thought about looking out Division and Powell way in the Centennial district?” Jimmy asks. “I’m part of a utility planning group for that area. It’s still mostly berry farms and dairies out there, but take my word for it, you’re going to see a lot of new neighborhoods. And the house lots will be big. Plenty of room for swing sets.”
“Stop, Jimmy!” Dixie scolds. “That’s even farther from Beaverton than they are now! Kay and I would never see each other!” She rises. “Anyway, let’s get those burgers on. The kids are going to realize any minute that they’re hungry, and you ain’t seen nothin’ until you’ve seen the triple tantrums that can break out around here. By the way, that little Stevie is the most adorable creature ever. I hope you realize, Kay, that I’m already planning his wedding with Rose.”
In early August, Kay sees the ad she’s been waiting for. Not a brand-new house, but one built only five years ago in a ranch development in the district Jimmy told them about.
“Already?” Carl asks. “Don’t we have enough on our hands?”
“You’re working now, so this is the time to get a loan. And I’ll be too exhausted to house-hunt when the baby comes.”
So they take a spin down Division Street, Stevie on his knees between them on the front seat. After 122nd, they pass pastureland interspersed with pleasant residential blocks. They follow the Realtor’s directions to a street with ranches that already have their own identities, with mature rhododendrons and dogwoods and differing paint colors and trims. The house in the listing is on a corner lot, has an attached garage, and rooms that are all double the size of the ones on Wygant. The dining room opens to the back with a sliding glass door. Light pours in. Beyond the backyard fence are tall fir trees. And there are three bedrooms, so the baby won’t wake Stevie in the middle of the night.
It’s the backyard that clinches it. “I could put a patio right here,” Carl says, spreading his hands to indicate the space beyond the slider.
“And a clothesline there.” Kay points. “And that side for the swing set.”
Kay feels as if she can breathe out here. They’re a short drive from the interstate, which would take Carl to the shipyards and into town for jobs in that direction, and out to the Columbia Gorge, Rooster Rock, Crown Point, Benson Lake, and Multnomah Falls in the other.
It’s madness, but they make a bid on the house that gets accepted and put their own on the market that weekend. The Wygant cottage sells quickly, bought by newlyweds. Carl’s sisters and nieces help Kay paint the rooms of the new house. Vera keeps Stevie with her at her downtown apartment for a few days, and he reports to them on the phone every night about the restaurant meals, the new toys, and the television shows he watches from the hideaway bed. Everyone makes Kay sit down and rest—the baby is due in a month—but she has mysterious fires of energy. She has no time to fuss over herself like she had with the first pregnancy, when she and Dixie pored over layette patterns and sewed themselves cute tented blouses and set each other’s pin curls. Finally, they borrow a truck from Carl’s genial nephew Elmer, a contractor, and move the furniture over Labor Day weekend, and the enormous task is done.
Stevie begins kindergarten right away at Lynch Wood Elementary, and Kay waits with him at the bus stop in the mornings. The other women on her street are pleasant and invite her to coffee, though she feels desperate to use these hours to advantage while Stevie is at school. She lines the bureau drawers and cupboard shelves. She sews new curtains for all the rooms. She organizes their clothing and hangs the pictures.
At first, she meets the bus at the end of the day, too. But a couple of boys in Stevie’s class live on their street and the bunch of them are already a trio. His friends’ mothers don’t meet the bus and, after a week, he asks if he can walk himself from now on, even in the morning. The teachers call him “Steve,” not “Stevie,” and he thinks that’s okay. He tells her he’ll be Steve now, at school and in front of his friends.
Most afternoons, as soon as he’s burst in the door to drop his lunchbox and grab the snack she has ready, he asks to be off with Danny and Frank, playing in one of their backyards. Frank has a tree house, and in Danny’s yard they can get to the forest through an opening in the fence, and they catch salamanders and frogs there and bring them home in jars. After the first salamander dies, Kay persuades Stevie to release the others, so before bedtime they go out into the cool grass of their backyard, the crickets chirping and strange things rustling beyond in the trees, and Stevie sends his latest captives off into the dark with his blessing.
She barely has time to miss her little boy, now growing so independent. Carl has assembled the crib and set up a cot for Vera, who moves into the baby’s room. She’ll get Stevie off to school while Kay is in the hospital. Not long after Vera’s been with them, Kay’s water breaks at four a.m., a few days before the due date. The contractions are manageable while she gets up and dressed. Carl takes her bag out and idles the car in the driveway, headlights shining against the white garage door, while Kay lets Vera know they’re leaving. Then Kay goes in to whi
sper to Stevie to have a good day and to give him a kiss on his forehead while he sleeps on. She won’t wake him; he needs his energy for school. Every night when she’s been tucking him in this week she’s been talking about what will happen, how Daddy will take her to the hospital, half an hour away, and how if he wakes up one of these mornings without them in the house, that’s the day his baby brother or sister will be arriving.
It’s a sister. They tell Kay this as she wakes up from the general anesthetic in the recovery room, queasy and flattened with exhaustion. They wheel her into her room, where she has no roommate yet. The nurse raises the back of the bed, causing pressure to shift to her lower region, which suddenly feels loose and wobbly and pinched by the stiches. After the nurse does some further arranging of her bed table and water pitcher, she exits, and Carl is allowed in, who says he saw the baby through the glass in the nursery, and that she’s beautiful. “You still like the name Samantha?” he asks.
“Yes,” Kay says. She is so tired, and so sick-feeling from the anesthetic, that she can’t imagine how she ever had the kind of energy that got her through a house move just a few weeks ago. She does like the name Samantha. It was her college roommate’s name, and she liked that girl for her wit and her generosity. It’s a different sort of name from all the Marys and Sues and Debbies.
The nurse comes back and says, “Dad, you can come back in a few minutes. Your little one is going to get her first feeding from Mom.”
Dr. Schirmer recommended that Kay nurse this baby. “It’s so convenient,” she said. You won’t have to worry about sterilizing bottles, and it will help your body feel normal sooner, and mother’s milk is the best nutrition there is. It will also help you bond.”
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