Behave

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

  (We couldn’t know it that day in the park, but Mae would be fired, as it turned out, for being a chatterbox. Her insistence on playing games as she spooned cereal into Billy’s mouth couldn’t be tolerated.)

  After breakfast, he would be set on the toilet for a bowel movement. Suppositories could be used, if necessary, and sometimes were. It was only a matter of conditioning to make these movements routine. Billy—and later his brother as well—were to be strapped, safely and contentedly, in place. No toys, no company or distractions.

  (Eleanor would be fired for joining Billy in the bathroom, no matter how many warnings we gave her. She hated to see a child left alone for long. She hated to see me left alone as well, in my bedroom at midday, for example, revising part of a chapter for John’s forthcoming book on behaviorism into a stand-alone article for a national magazine. Her endlessly social company was terminated after six unproductive weeks.)

  Outdoors by 10:00. Buggy rides for baby, but by age two, the child should be free to exercise his own legs. In the best scenario, an outdoor area would be safely penned. Should the child be left alone? Certainly, within reason. Our yard wasn’t haunted by overflying birds of prey, after all. A sunny room was a less ideal option, but the important thing was for baby or child to play or “work” (as John liked to call solo activity) alone. Endless minding and interacting would only create dependence.

  (A string of other nurses were let go for being either negligent and unsafe, or conversely and more commonly, safety paranoid and determined to respond too quickly to a child’s every movement and burble.)

  Lunch with nurse, or alone. Good dining habits emphasized, regardless of age.

  Bath at 5:30 p.m. Shallow water, no celluloid toys, a simple but not gloomy affair. We were never shy about nudity—theirs or ours—but John still insisted, once we had two boys, that they should always be bathed separately.

  (Nicole, who would be enviably firm in most matters but also highly efficient in the matters of dressing and bathing, seemed not to understand the depth of John’s feelings on this matter. She was one of our very best nurses to yield to a swift termination. I’m afraid I cried the day she left, and off and on for a week, though never at a time when John was home to see. He would have thought I was going soft in the head, and maybe I was. My fault again, for all these problems, for not choosing the right help or delivering our instructions clearly enough to make things stick.)

  A light meal—child or children alone, manners enforced at a distance but no adult company necessary—and then bed by 7 p.m.

  Did this mean, as Billy grew old enough to notice, and was later joined by his brother, Jimmy, that they almost never ate with their parents, especially their father, who often enough returned home after they were asleep? Well, yes. But it was just food, after all. They ate alone, and often enough, after they were sleeping and the house was quiet, so did I, with a stack of newspapers and magazines at my side, relishing the quiet moment to read New Yorker columns about the latest speakeasies and dance parlors, the nightlife just across the bridge, the life of ease and entertainment—and yes, relaxed morals—that still called to us, even though our hired help kept coming and going and John worked so very hard.

  John was helping to create the mood of the 1920s, but we weren’t getting to take part in it. Maybe no one was playing all that much, but the columns and the ads—ads my own husband was helping to create—certainly made it seem that there was an endless party going on. Had men ever looked so charming? Had women ever looked so lovely? Had nightclubbing and drinking, now that it was illegal, ever seemed so much fun? Other people would characterize the 1920s as a time of frivolous excess, but for most of us, I realize only now, it was a time of vicarious, incomplete pleasures. John was in the envy trade himself, making people want more in order to sell them things they didn’t usually need, because that’s what scientists-turned-ad-men—regardless of their previous inclinations and callings—did.

  But much of that came later. For the moment, in the early winter of 1922, I was inexperienced, and Billy was only Billy, or an infant with the potential to become a child named Billy—not even able to “work,” or to read a book, or even to hold a little wooden block in his chubby hands. Infants are the hardest. The blankest of all, and so—you would think—the easiest, but also the most manipulative, the most able to shape a parent’s behavior with their tracking gazes, and their cries and coos, their silky hair and soft cheeks and appearances of endearing vulnerability.

  On that day of my parents’ first visit, I already wanted Billy to be older. I already wanted to be in that near future, in which our routines would be firmly established, our help hired at least for the moment, even if personnel changes would be frequent over the years. I wanted to be irreproachable, with our standards very much time-tested and in place. But that sort of true expertise was hard-won.

  “It’s time we write a book—together,” John mentioned that very morning, on the way back home from the park, with Billy asleep in his buggy. Maybe he noticed my baffled response to Mary’s combined maternity and dissertation ambitions; maybe it was our talk of where to lodge a nurse and the need to maintain the den as a professional sanctum. “It should open new doors for us,” he continued. “Something for the popular market.”

  I hadn’t said anything yet about stumbling across John’s notes for what appeared to be a parenting guide. I didn’t mention that I had wondered how a person who had raised only one baby at home—and not even raised him fully yet—could imagine himself capable of writing a how-to guide for the next generation. So I said simply, “How about a general overview of behaviorism instead? A textbook for the layman?”

  “Maybe that to start,” he said. “Establish the science a little better, and then write down to an even simpler, everyman level after that.” And off he went, not only about the parenting book that might follow, but all kinds of books: about marriage, about personal investing, even about boats, his latest nonpsychological interest—even though he knew very little about boats, beyond what he’d been learning by visiting various Long Island weekend boat shows, his way to relax when he wasn’t at the office. Did I mind? Not very much. When John was home, Billy had to behave perfectly, which only made more work for me. When Daddy was away, I could choose to ignore unfinished lunches and failed bowel movements.

  John’s hubris seemed the key to both his happiness and his tremendous success. I didn’t resent it; I admired and envied it. My relative insecurity and anxiety wasn’t a sign of healthful modesty or cautious wisdom, but only proof of lesser energy. He dreamed, more than ever, of changing the world. On an exceptional day, I dreamed of going out for a night on the town, drinking champagne, and splashing through fountains. (Perhaps I had been reading the gossip columns too much.)

  On an average day, I dreamed only of taking a long, hot, silent bath.

  Chapter 24

  “It smells delightful,” Mother said, leading the way into our cottage, trying to push past me even before I was able to slide her second arm out and pass the coat to John, who was standing by, looking handsome in one of the new gray suits he’d bought with his latest JWT raise.

  Mother barely looked at John—me, either, except for the quickest of ribcage squeezes. “How did you lose the baby weight so quickly? Aren’t you a little too thin? And oh my.” She paused long enough to stare me in the face. “Those eyebrows are a little severe, aren’t they?”

  “The style is to pluck them,” I said. “I might have been rushed.”

  But she was already in the center of our small living room. “Well, where is he?”

  My father entered more slowly, patting down his overcoat before handing it wordlessly to John. “Hello darling,” he said to me, sounding tired. “Evelyn intends to come later, if she can manage it.”

  My sister had changed her plans several times, and I was under the assumption that she wouldn’t be eating with us, and most likely wouldn
’t show at all. Still, my parents seemed to need to pretend, and I pretended with them. “You gave her our new telephone number, didn’t you, Mother?”

  “I think your father did. Yes, I’m certain. But I’m so glad you have a telephone, finally.” That word—finally—wouldn’t sit well with John, I knew. But never mind: he’d promised to be on his best behavior. I’d made sure he was given plenty of quiet since our walk, leaving him to read in his armchair, with a bowl of nuts and a ham sandwich, even if it spoiled his appetite, and a drink at his side. Anything to take the edge off.

  Mother added, “I’d hate to think of an emergency without any way to get help, all the way out here.”

  One neighbor’s house was visible from the kitchen window, the other was directly across the road, close enough that John had promised that, come spring, we’d smell their lilacs blooming through our very own windows.

  “We’re not exactly alone out here.”

  Mother asked, “And do your neighbors have telephones?”

  “I’m not sure. I think we’re the second on the street.”

  “We were the first at the top of Eutaw Place,” Mother said. She seemed to have become, even in her letters lately, a little more brittle, a little more vain. “There’s pluses and minuses. You may have all kinds of people bothering you to use it. You’ll have to set limits.”

  I had to laugh: First, it seemed the problem was that we lived in the wilderness. Now, we were on the verge of being ambushed by our neighbors. But I’d been just as uncertain about Long Island that first week—thinking of it as somber and rural, when I now saw it as a little whirlpool of activity, with new houses springing up near us, and tony neighbors moving into the older, larger mansions to the east. I suppose I was accepting this new life and trying to make the best of it, if only I could get others to see it the same way.

  Father joined Mother in front of our small fireplace, from which we had a view of—well, almost everything. Living room, small dining area, doorway into the kitchen.

  “It’s rustic,” Father said.

  Mother added apologetically, eyes lifted to the low ceiling, “It must be affordable to heat.”

  John was busy in the closet, hanging coats, but he’d heard everything so far. When he came out and faced us, hand already patting at his pocket for a calming cigarette, I saw his eyes narrow, in that Valentino stare that women found handsome. With a big intake of breath meant to last the next three hours, his shoulders broadened, preparing to bear the brunt of being judged.

  “It has a nice yard,” I hurried to say. “That’s important for a boy.”

  Mother hurried toward me, taking both my hands in hers. “See, Albert. I told you we drove too slowly. A boy, already! We missed his babyhood.”

  “Actually,” John said, crossing to his easy chair and lowering himself into the seat, “You are late. Billy is down for his nap.”

  “But it’s only a few minutes past three,” my mother smiled, purse still over her forearm, pinching my hands even more eagerly.

  “Half past,” John corrected, rotating his wrist to confirm. My father had a pocket watch he carried only on workdays or when he was in formal attire, not for a simple Sunday drive, in other words. My mother didn’t wear one at all. At home, there was a grandfather clock in the second parlor, and if Mother needed to know the time, she’d call out to one of the servants and ask them to go check it for her and come back with the news.

  “You said we should come for supper at three,” Mother said. “I wouldn’t call that late.”

  I gave John a warning glance. “It isn’t late. But all the same, we do put him down for his nap at three o’clock.”

  “On Sundays, too?”

  “Do you think an infant can tell a Sunday from a Wednesday?” John asked.

  “Yes, every day, the same routine,” I said, trying to sound cheerful and matter-of-fact. “That way we can have pleasant adult conversation before he wakes up and gets hungry or tired again.”

  “You couldn’t have waited a few more minutes, just so we could help put him to bed?”

  John tapped a cigarette on the back of his hand. “Oh, it doesn’t take any help. He’s a good baby.”

  Mother, surrendering, fell back into the sofa. “Well, of course he’s a good baby! He’s our grandchild!”

  I gave John a steadying glance, hoping he would restrain himself from saying what he was surely thinking: that their genetic contribution had nothing to do with it. It was all environment: an environment in which they’d had zero influence.

  “Have a cigarette, John,” I said. “And I’ll get us all drinks. Father, have a seat.”

  “Just any seat?” he asked, standing next to the only available armchair. When no one laughed, Father coughed into his hand. “Doctor says a little smoking will be good for this irritated throat. Darn cold lasted about three weeks.”

  “We were so sorry to cancel last weekend,” Mother hurried to add, the first of what would be many apologies about prior absences. “Both weekends. We know you’re both so careful.”

  “We’re not unusually careful,” John said. “In many ways, we’re less anxious and convention-bound than most parents.”

  “Just with germs, I meant.”

  “That was your concern, not ours.”

  Father interrupted. “That isn’t a pack of Luckies you have there, is it, John?”

  He’d finally acknowledged John by name. We were moving ahead. The ice was melting. I actually felt a little tingle lighten my step and hurried to get the glasses tray.

  “No,” John said. “They’re not Luckies.”

  There was an awkward moment, as John lit his own cigarette and didn’t offer Father one.

  “I do wish Evelyn would come,” my mother said. And then, giving me a meaningful look, “I’m afraid she isn’t very happy. Not like you—you and John.” She was saying this to be encouraging and complimentary. But to John, I knew it would all sound like meddling. Evelyn was nearing middle age, already divorced once, with a daughter from her first marriage, and now a new husband with whom she already seemed at odds. If she wasn’t happy by now, it was her own job to fix things and square up her life, John would have suggested, if he hadn’t been holding his tongue as a favor to me.

  When the telephone jangled from the guest bedroom we’d converted into a den, we all turned toward the sound. Mother smiled, as if her expressed wish for Evelyn’s arrival had magically triggered the call. John jumped up to get it and closed the den door behind him, as he did whenever the telephone rang. A workplace habit, I supposed. He wasn’t sheltering Billy, asleep in his nursery one door down, from the noise; John believed in exposing babies to a steady thrum of normal noise, or else they’d become too sensitive and wake at every murmur. Even when we made love, John made no attempt to quiet our sounds. Let the baby get used to it. Let the baby—and later, the child—understand that love between a man and his wife came first.

  “It wasn’t Evelyn,” he said when he came out from the den. “Wrong connection.”

  We’d only had the telephone for a week, and we’d had more wrong numbers than right ones. Perhaps they’d assigned us an existing number. It was still a novelty for us, that telephone, and one of the best gifts John had ever given me, knowing I yearned for a way to reach him at work, or to telephone our small handful of city friends and acquaintances who had their own telephones, to make all the festive plans we’d be making once Billy was a little older, once we had more hired help, and once we became real adults with real lives again—not a moment too soon.

  Later, John was serving the roast and I was carrying more dishes to the table when we heard Billy’s halfhearted, soft, and stuttering cry. It was the cranky sound of a baby waking too soon, musing over his options, perhaps on the verge of going right back to sleep. (I’d watched him do it, in the half dark: roll over, fingers of one hand stuffed into his mout
h, and find sleep again. I needn’t have been watching, but once in a while, I did.)

  Mother clapped her hands over her plate and then, noticing John’s glare, set both hands flat on the table, reaction contained.

  “Carrots, Mother?” I asked.

  “You don’t really think we came for the roast and carrots, darling. It will be so much more fun when we get to have our new grandchild at the table with us!”

  John flashed her a cool smile. “That reminds me of a story.”

  “Oh, do tell it,” I said. Anything to spark conversation.

  “Well all right. I was speaking to a New York audience. After the event, I was signing some programs. A matronly lady—I’m sure you know the type—came up to me, arms crossed over her very large bosom, and declared, ‘Dr. Watson . . .’”

  The little crying lamb sound came from behind the door again. Mother interrupted John’s story. “Rosalie, let me.”

  I didn’t answer or look up. I could see everything without looking: Mother’s plaintive face, body perched at the edge of her chair, frantic to rise; John’s irritated expression, dark eyebrows scowling at his story being derailed.

  I swallowed. “Go on, John.”

  He didn’t.

  “Please, John, tell the rest of your story.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Mother noted the tension only belatedly. “Yes, John. I’m sorry. Go on.”

  I dared to look up. I smiled at Mother. Thank you. Thank you for at least trying.

  “All right,” John said. “So the woman says, ‘Dr. Watson, I’m so glad I didn’t hear your talk until after my own children were grown, so that I had a chance to enjoy them.’”

  Mother looked at him blankly. “Yes?”

  I explained, “She thought it was a cutting remark.”