In the movie she reached for his hand. He put her hand on his knee and held it there, the way he used to at the many movies they had gone to in earlier times. This was an Italian film about love and politics, something for everyone. As the couple on the screen embraced Ivan put his arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder. In the public darkness they performed mild rituals of touching that she remembered from high school, tentative gestures ventured by tentative children who knew each other only slightly, emboldened by the dark. When they came out there was still a vestige of light in the west. They faced each other on the street, blinking. Caroline was overcome with desire. He stroked her cheek slowly, perusing her.
“Do you want to go out to dinner?” he asked. “Or home?”
“Home.”
They were caught up in a rush of passion that went on for weeks. And why not indulge it, since it would all be over soon? They were not talking about their angers and failures, working out differences and devising compromises as friends did who went to marriage counselors, a procedure Ivan regarded with disdain. They were at each other like cats. They confessed that they felt old and lecherous and didn’t care, they had been through too much to care. In this rampant excess, born of the loss of faith and with no reasonable future, Caroline became pregnant. She was thirty-one years old.
AFTERWARDS SHE LIKED TO say that she had known the moment it happened. It felt different, she told Ivan, like a pin pricking a balloon, but without the shattering noise, without the quick collapse. “Oh, come on,” he said. “That’s impossible.”
But she had dealt for so long with infinitesimal precise abstractions, and she did know how it happened. The baby was conceived one late-September night, Indian summer. All day the sun had glowed hot and low in the sky, settling an amber torpor on people and things, and the night was the same, only now a dark hot heaviness sank slowly down. The scent of the still-blooming honeysuckle rose to their bedroom window. Just as she was bending over to kiss him, heavy and quivering with heat like the night, he teased her about something—could she spare the time from her latest paper on link groups?—and she punched him lightly on the shoulder. In response Ivan stretched out on her back like a blanket, smothering her, while she struggled beneath, writhing to escape. It was a wordless, sweaty struggle, punctuated with wild laughter, shrieks and gasping breaths. She tried biting but he evaded her, and she tried scratching the fists that held her down, but she couldn’t reach. All her desire was transformed into physical effort, yet he was still too strong for her. She refused to say she gave up and he wouldn’t loosen his grip, so they lay locked and panting in a static embrace.
“You win,” she said at last. As he rolled off she jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.
“Aha!” Ivan shouted, ready to begin again, but she distracted him. Once the wrestling was at an end she found pleasure tinged with resentment. And later, when they were covered with sweat, dripping on each other, she said, “You don’t play fair.”
“I don’t play fair! Look who’s talking.”
“It isn’t fair that you should always win.”
Ivan laughed gloatingly and curled up in her arms. She smiled in the dark.
That was the night the baby was conceived, not in high passion but rough strife.
When she phoned him at work after seeing the doctor, he was incredulous. He came home beaming foolishly, and when they wanted to make love, he asked, “Do you think it’s all right to do this?”
“Oh, Ivan, honestly. It’s microscopic.”
He was in one of his whimsical moods and made terrible jokes that she laughed at with easy indulgence. He said he was going to pay the baby a visit and asked if she had any messages she wanted delivered. He unlocked from her embrace, moved down her body and said he was going to have a look for himself. Clowning, he put his ear between her legs to listen. Finally he stopped his antics as she clasped her arms around him and whispered, “Ivan, you are really too silly.” He became unusually gentle. Tamed, and she didn’t like it, hoped he wouldn’t continue that way for months. “Ivan,” she explained patiently, “you know, it really is all right. I mean, it’s a natural process.”
“Well, I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“I’m not sick.”
Then, as though her body were admonishing that cool assurance, she did get sick, with a paralyzing nausea that resembled violent hunger. Mornings, she had to ask Ivan to bring her a hard roll from the kitchen before she could risk stirring from bed. Something needed to be filled, a menacing vacuum occupying her insides. The crucial act was getting the first few mouthfuls down. With enough roll inside to stabilize her, she could sometimes manage a half-cup of tea, but liquids were risky. They sloshed around inside and made her envision the baby sloshing around in its cloudy fluid.
The mornings that she taught were agony. Ivan woke her early, brought her a roll, and gently prodded her out of bed.
“I simply cannot do it.” She placed her legs cautiously over the side of the bed.
“Sure you can. Anyhow, you have no choice. You have a job.” He was freshly showered and dressed, and his alertness irritated her. She rose to her feet and swayed.
Ivan looked alarmed. “Do you want me to call and tell them you can’t make it?”
“No, no.” That frightened her. She needed to hold on to the job, to defend herself against the growing baby. Once in the classroom she would be fine. With waves of nausea roiling in her chest, she stumbled into the bathroom.
She liked him to wait until she was out of the shower before he left for work, because she imagined herself fainting under the impact of the water. At the end she forced herself to stand under an ice-cold flow, leaning her head way back and letting her hair drip down behind her. It was torture, but when it was over she felt more alive.
After the shower had been off awhile Ivan would come and open the bathroom door. “Are you okay now, Caroline? I’ve got to get going.”
He kissed her lips, her bare damp shoulder, gave a parting squeeze to her toweled behind, and was gone. She watched him walk down the hall with some trepidation, hoping she wouldn’t have to carry a large, inflexible baby. She used to pride herself on strength. When they moved from Boston she had worked as hard as Ivan, lugging furniture and heavy cartons. He was impressed. Now it took all her strength to move her own weight.
Very slowly she would put on clothes, keeping her hard roll nearby and examining her body in the full-length mirror through the stages of dressing. Naked, then in bra and underpants, then with shoes added, and finally with a dress, she looked for signs, but nothing was changed yet. With the profound narcissism of women past first youth, she admired her still-narrow waist and full breasts. She was especially fond of her shoulders and prominent collarbone, which seemed fragile and inviting. That would be all gone soon, gone soft. She scanned her face for the pregnant look she knew well from the faces of friends. It was an intangible change, a membrane of transparent vulnerability that layered the face; a pleading look, a beg for help like a message from a powerless invaded country to the rest of the world. It was not on her face yet.
From the tenth to the fourteenth week she slept, with brief intervals of lucidity when she taught her classes. She had to put aside the paper on link groups. It was an eerie, dreamy time. The nausea faded, but the lure of sleep became potent. In the middle of the day, even, she could pass by the bedroom, glimpse the waiting bed, and be overcome by a soft, heavy desire to lie down. She fell into a stupor immediately and did not dream. She forgot what it was like to awaken with energy and move through an entire day without lying down once. She forgot the feeling of eyes opened wide without effort. She would have liked to hide this strange, shameful perversity from Ivan, but that was impossible. Ivan kept wanting to go to the movies. Clearly, he was bored with her. Maybe he would become so bored he would abandon her and the baby and she would not be able to support the house alone, and she and the baby would end up on the streets in rags, begging. But of course that
was highly unlikely.
“You go on, Ivan. I just can’t.”
One night he said, “I thought I might ask Ruth Forbes to go with me to see the Charlie Chaplin film on High Street. I know she likes him. Would that bother you?”
She was half asleep, slowly eating a large apple in bed and watching Perry Mason on television. “No, of course not.” Ruth Forbes lived down the block, a casual friend and not Ivan’s type at all, too large and loud, divorced and depressed. Caroline didn’t care if he wanted her company. She didn’t care if he held her hand on his knee in the movies, or even if, improbably, he made love to her afterwards in her sloppy house crawling with children. She didn’t care about anything except staying nestled in bed.
She made love with him sometimes, in a slow way. She felt no specific desire but didn’t want to refuse him. It was painless, and she could sleep right after. Usually there would be a moment when she came alive despite herself, when the reality of his body inspired a wistful throb of lust, but mostly she was too tired to see it through, to leap towards it, so she let it subside, grateful for the sign of dormant life. She felt sorry for Ivan, but helpless.
Once she fell asleep while he was inside her. He woke her with a pat on her jaw. Actually, she realized from the faint sting, it was more of a slap than a pat. “Caroline, for Chrissake, you’re sleeping.”
“No, no, I’m sorry. I wasn’t really sleeping. Oh, Ivan, it’s nothing. This will end.” She wondered, though.
Moments later she felt his hands on her thighs. His lips were brooding on her stomach, edging down with expertise. He was murmuring something she couldn’t catch. She felt an ache, an irritation. Wryly, she appreciated his intentions, but she couldn’t bear that excitement now.
“Please,” she said. “Please don’t do that.”
He was very hurt. He said nothing, leaped away violently and pulled all the blankets around him. She was contrite, but fell instantly into a dreamless dark.
Right after New Year’s, when classes were beginning again for the next semester, she woke early and dashed briskly into the shower. She was brushing her teeth with energy when she grasped what had happened. There she was on her feet, sturdy, before eight in the morning, planning how she would introduce the differential calculus to her new students. She stared at her face in the mirror, her mouth dripping white foam, her eyes wide and startled. She was alive! She didn’t know how the miracle had happened, nor did she care to explore it. With shocked elation, she zipped up her tight slacks and checked in the mirror. No sign yet. For the moment, she was a survivor.
“Ivan, time to get up.”
He grunted and opened his eyes. When they focused on her leaning over him, they darkened with astonishment. He rubbed a fist across his forehead. “Are you dressed already?”
“Yes. Guess what. I’m slept out. I’ve come back to life.”
“Oh.” He moaned and rolled over in one piece like a seal.
“Aren’t you getting up?”
“In a little while. I’m so tired. I must sleep for a while.” The words were thick and slurred.
She was strangely annoyed. Ivan always got up with vigor. “Are you sick?”
“Uh-uh.”
He was tired for a week. Caroline wanted to go out every evening—the January air was crisp and exhilarating. But all Ivan wanted to do was lie on the bed and watch prizefighting movies on television with a can of beer in his hand, like the New Yorker cartoons he laughed at. Could this be Ivan? Was it some sort of atavism? It was repellent. Sloth, she pointed out to him, was one of the seven deadly sins. The fifth night she said in exasperation, “What the hell is the matter with you? If you’re sick go to a doctor.”
“I’m not sick. I’m tired. Can’t I be tired too? Leave me alone. I left you alone, didn’t I?”
“Ah, but you’re much better at that than I am,” she snapped. “You have more experience.”
One evening soon after Ivan’s symptoms disappeared, they sat reading the paper in opposite corners of the living room sofa, her legs stretched diagonally across his. Caroline touched her stomach.
“Ivan.”
“What?”
“It’s no use. I’m going to have to buy some maternity clothes.”
He put down the paper to stare, looking distressed. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Well, don’t buy any of those ugly things they wear. Can’t you get some of those, you know, sort of Indian things?”
She laughed. “Okay. That’s not a bad idea. I will.”
He picked up the paper again.
“It moves.”
“What?”
“I said it moves. The baby.”
“It moves?”
She laughed again. “Remember Galileo? Eppur si muove.” They had visited Galileo’s birthplace in Pisa, on the way back from Lucca. He was a hero to both of them because he kept his mind free even though his body succumbed to tyranny.
Ivan laughed too. “Eppur si muove. Let me feel it.” He touched, then looked up at her, his face full of longing, marvel, and envy. In a moment he was scrambling at her clothes in a young, eager rush. He wanted to be there, he said, please, now. She was taken by surprise, on the floor, in silence; it was swift and consuming.
Ivan lay spent in her arms. Caroline, still gasping and clutching him, said, “There’s no one like you. I could never love it as much as I love you.” She marveled then, hearing her words fall in the still air, that after everything, this could be so. When the baby was born, would it be so?
But after she began wearing the Indian shirts and dresses, Ivan appeared to forget about the baby. When she moaned in bed sometimes, “Oh, I can’t get to sleep, it keeps moving around,” he responded with a grunt or not at all. He asked her, one Sunday in March, if she wanted to go bicycle riding.
“Ivan, I can’t go bike riding. I mean, look at me.”
“Oh, right. Of course.”
He seemed to avoid looking at her, and she did look awful, she had to admit. Besides the grotesque belly, her ankles swelled up; the shape of her legs was alien. She took diuretics and woke every hour at night to go to the bathroom. Sometimes it was impossible to get back to sleep, so she sat up in bed reading. Ivan said, “Can’t you turn the light out? You know I can’t sleep with the light on.”
“But what should I do? I can’t sleep at all.”
“Read in the living room.”
“It’s so cold in there at night.”
He turned away irritably. A few times he took the blanket and went to sleep in the living room himself.
When they drove out to picnic in the country on warm April weekends he seemed to choose the bumpiest, most untended roads. She would always need to find a bathroom. At first this amused him, but soon his amusement became sardonic. He pulled in at gas stations where he didn’t need gas and waited in the car with folded arms and a sullen expression that made her apologetic. They were growing apart again, fading away from each other. She could feel the distance between them once more like a patch of fog, dimming and distorting the relations of curves in space. The baby that lay between them in the dark was pushing them apart.
Sometimes as she lay awake at night Caroline brooded over the deformities the baby might be born with: clubfoot, arms like fins, two heads. She wondered if she could love a baby with a gross defect. She wondered if Ivan would want to put it in an institution, and if there were any decent places nearby, and if they would be spending every Sunday afternoon for the rest of their lives visiting the baby and driving home heartbroken in silence. She lived through these visits to the institution in vivid detail till she knew the doctors’ and nurses’ faces well. There would come a point in her fantasies when Ivan, selfish with his time and impatient with futility, would refuse to go any more, and she would have to go alone. She wondered if Ivan ever thought about these things, but with that cold mood of his she was afraid to ask.
One night she couldn’t bear the heaviness any longer so she woke him. “Ivan.
I’m so lonely.”
He sat up abruptly. “What?” With the dark hair hanging down over his stunned face he looked boyish and vulnerable. She felt sorry for him.
“I know you were sleeping but I—I just lie here forever in the dark and think awful things and you’re so far away, I can’t stand it.”
“Oh, Caroline. Oh, baby.” Now he was wide awake, and took her in his arms. “I know. I know it’s hard for you. You’re so—everything is so different, that’s all.”
“But, Ivan, it’s still me.”
“I know it’s stupid of me. I can’t—”
She knew what it was. It would never be the same. They sat up all night holding each other, and talking. Ivan talked more than he had in weeks. He said the baby would be perfectly all right and it would be born at the right time too, late June, so she could finish up the term, and they would start their natural childbirth class in two weeks so he could be with her and help her, though of course she would do it easily because she was so competent at everything. Then they would have the summer for the early difficult months, and she would be feeling fine and be ready to go back to work in the fall. They would find a good person, someone like a grandmother, to come in, and he would try to stagger his schedule so she would not feel overburdened and trapped. In short, everything would be just fine, and they would make love again like they used to and be close again. He said exactly what she needed to hear, while she huddled against him wrenched with pain because he had known all along the right words to say but hadn’t thought to say them till she woke him in despair. Still, in the dawn she slept contented. She loved him; it was a tropism.
They went to the opening of a show by a group of young local artists. Ivan had helped them get a grant and was to be publicly thanked at a dinner. Caroline, near the end of her eighth month, walked around for an hour looking at paintings and refusing the glasses of champagne thrust at her, then whispered to Ivan, “Listen, I’m sorry but I’ve got to go. Give me the car keys, will you? I don’t feel up to it.”
“What’s the matter?”
Rough Strife Page 13