Behave

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

  “Not at all.”

  Did I feel threatened, anticipating some loss, whether of him, of my own youth and beauty, financial stability, or the prospect of a future reproductive mate?

  Now he wasn’t really talking with me; he was studying me, and ticking boxes off some theoretical checklist. I was displaying something of interest to him. I was depicting the emotional trajectory of a typical wife and mother, operating not out of instinct—this was no instinct—but in reaction to some change in my environment.

  The primary environmental change I recognized was John’s own aloofness and increasingly frequent absences. First, all that time he had spent shopping for boats—and yes, he had finally bought one, christened Eutopia. In August, we’d taken the motorboat out for a spin together, but I’d been about three months pregnant with Jimmy, and the slamming over the waves had made me so nauseated, I begged John to turn around and deposit me back at the shore club, where I stood in the window, sipping a tonic water with lemon, letting my stomach settle as I watched him depart again, thrilled with his new purchase. A woman had come up to me—she introduced herself as a fellow “yacht club widow”—and pointed out her own husband in the small harbor below us, busily shouting introductions to the fuel jockey before backing out his own motorboat.

  “Rodney hates traffic, straight lines, and speed limits, any kind of obstacle,” she’d said, lifting her chin toward the shrinking figure of her husband, speeding into the distance. “At sea, he thinks he doesn’t have to follow any rules. Your husband the same?”

  “Yes, actually,” I said, grateful she’d explained this latest male mystery to me.

  But the boat was only a weekend distraction. The rest of the week, always in addition to his day job, of course, John busied himself with an ever-increasing amount of work at the New School and Columbia, overseeing Mary Cover Jones’s research and teaching the occasional night class, as well as recruiting interesting speakers to come lecture. The tide was turning back toward scientific positions John had tried to stamp out while at Hopkins: increasing emphasis on instincts and innate qualities, and from there to measuring and selecting for intelligence. A Princeton prof we knew was working on a book about Nordic superiority. John, playing the fair-if-never-wholly-impartial referee, tried to get the scientists, including the ones he disagreed with, talking openly about their claims. The ad man part of his personality was being continually reinforced, most tangibly by his ever improving salary, but it hadn’t laid claim to all of his allegiances. His belief in logic—and in his fellow Americans’ ability to see through others’ dangerous, sometimes racist illogic—remained strong, regardless of his primary profession, in which he took advantage of people’s illogical emotionalism. Even though academia didn’t count John as a serious member anymore, he hated to see ignorance flower there.

  Lately, John had been exchanging barbs with a British-born Harvard professor named William McDougall, who was strongly invested in the notions of instinct, inherited traits, and eugenics. Negroes, McDougall believed, were inherently inclined to violent emotions but also had, conversely, “happy-go-lucky dispositions.”

  John was reading a review copy of McDougall’s newest book one Sunday evening in his armchair while I knelt on the floor not far away, sorting through a bag I was packing in advance for my maternity trip to the hospital. As I counted undergarments and tucked in a few comforting items—thick slippers, a favorite rose-scented hand lotion—he quipped, “So he thinks the colored are irascible idiots. Well, I think the same of him. Listen to this: about the ‘tall, elegant, white race,’ McDougall writes that we have ‘great independence of character, individual initiative, and tenacity of will.’ Well, obviously, we should rule the world, then, and breed only the finest of our own Nordic specimens to create an even purer race.”

  “Obviously.” I picked up the two new novels I’d thought to bring in case I was stuck recuperating longer than expected. Janine, our neighbor from the corner, had told me that her second childbirth created more complications than the first. Her first, born when she and her husband were newlyweds restricted to a tight budget, had come into the world with the help of a simple midwife. Her second child, born three more-affluent years later, was delivered with the help of a doctor of considerable repute, known for his belief that all childbirth was inherently problematic. His prediction had come true. He’d tried a few experimental procedures, from which she spent six weeks recovering.

  Just in case my doctor was equally innovative, Janine loaned me Men Like Gods, the new “scientific romance” by H. G. Wells. Flipping open the dark green leather cover now, eyes landing on “utopia” and “liberty” and “perfected anarchy” and “the promises of advanced science,” I felt I was proofreading a more flamboyant version of my husband’s next lecture or ad-man-club speech. Janine might have thought it a playful fantasy, given its setting on a distant planet, but it bore no trace of the exotic for me. I rejected Men Like Gods and put my faith in a British collection of comic stories called Jeeves, instead.

  John interrupted his McDougall reading long enough to squint at the cover of Men Like Gods, sitting in the discarded “don’t pack” pile.

  “You get that from Elaine?”

  “No, from Janine.”

  He nodded, satisfied. Janine was acceptable. She didn’t drop by uninvited early in the morning or late at night; she didn’t seem to endlessly smooch or baby talk to her son Tommy, with whom Billy was allowed to play on occasion; and she didn’t press her religious or political views on us.

  Elaine, by contrast, had relocated from Indiana soon after we’d moved in, and she’d brought some less-than-cosmopolitan views with her. I hadn’t planned to tell John, who was already so dismissive of our neighborhood women. But then I’d started to notice how frequently he was chatting with her after work, on his way into the house. Somehow, his arrival home—whether at six, seven, or eight o’clock—seemed to coincide, more often than random chance would suggest, with Elaine being outside, planting bulbs at twilight or picking up a forgotten child’s toy from the sidewalk. It was almost as if she listened for the sound of the cab that John took home evenings from the train station, and raced out in time to banter. I finally thought it prudent to mention: yes, she was nice enough, and pretty, too, with those dimpled cheeks and cute figure. But she was also a little too insistent about those meetings, always wondering when we’d like to give one a try.

  “What meetings?”

  “Oh, you know. The Ku Klux Klan.”

  Who knows? Maybe it wasn’t even a fib.

  John had blown his top. Did he look like a Klansman? Did she really think he’d walk around in a white bedsheet and pointy dunce cap, like those Birth of a Nation imbeciles? That was the end of his friendly banter with cute Elaine; the end, also, of getting sprigs of spring lilac and summer tomatoes from our across-the-street neighbor.

  The 1920s rise of the Klan and the growing conservative backlash—both paradoxical and probably predictable, given the explosive liberality of popular culture—made views like William McDougall’s more concerning, even if he claimed not to be a racist. The Harvard professor agreed to debate John publicly at the Psychology Club in Washington, DC, on February 5. The vast majority of those attending were not psychologists or even up-to-date on psychological terms, which only showed how many people knew of my husband through his more popular writings and speeches.

  John won the Battle of Behaviorism debate, as it was called, but only narrowly. That was fine with John. He didn’t truly want to vanquish his enemies. He needed them. Without open debate, ideas—including the superstitious or jingoistic ones—just became common currency, unquestioned.

  A thousand people attended that historic debate. I was not one of them, having given birth on February 3rd to little Jimmy (yes, after William James—John had gotten his way with both part one and part two of that little inside joke). My mother had taken Billy for a few days—som
ething John might have objected to, except that he had his debate plans and was won over by convenience. I was kept in the hospital for fewer days than the doctors wanted, but more than I personally desired.

  I arrived home before John, who had extended his public performance with some business and research meetings. He apologized later, but I reassured him: I was happy to have been released early. When your name was on everyone’s lips, you didn’t squander the week-long whispers, the collegial nods days later from someone who had heard about the big event. Surely, John must have spent several nights in a row, dining out on the notoriety. But where, and with whom? I just wanted to know, that was all, especially because I’d missed the big event.

  I hadn’t resented John’s absence at the birth—I’d missed it myself, of course, being heavily sedated. I hadn’t resented his absence when I first walked into the door of our home, leaning on the elbow of the temporary nurse I’d hired. Irene drove me home from the hospital and helped me bathe and dress on the first few tender days, scheduled to depart when John and Billy came home. After then, I’d also have Cora to help with both the children during the midday hours. I wasn’t going to put myself in the same position I’d been in last time, too tired to make a sandwich or clear out a bathtub’s clogged drain.

  My mother still wondered why we didn’t have a live-in baby nurse, or at least someone who worked full days, but Cora’s limited schedule suited Billy and me both. It gave our son those quiet mornings after John left to play alone, constructing block towers or rolling his trucks near my feet as I folded towels or picked out socks for us to put on our hands for impromptu sock-puppet theater before the serious part of the day began—but only when no one was watching. Billy had started noticing: fun was something easier to have when witnesses weren’t around. Cora’s early departure also gave me a few hours while Billy napped and before John came home, to do whatever I wanted: bath, cocktail, looking at old photos, and wondering—I was doing more wondering, even then—how our lives had become as they were, the very opposite of what I’d expected as a younger woman.

  John planned to leave Washington, DC, travel by train up through Baltimore to pick up Billy, and from there to New York. I mentioned that my own mother had offered to drive Billy to us, but John was adamant. He wanted to arrive at the same time with Billy. Meeting a new brother for the first time was a milestone.

  Cora had departed for the day, leaving me a chicken casserole in the oven, when I heard stamping feet and voices at the door: Billy’s happy recounting of his Baltimore winter adventures, missing some consonants, so that “snow” came out as “no.” John, who spent less time with Billy, sometimes had a hard time translating, but today, he seemed unusually patient and willing to try.

  “Alboo played outside with you, did he?” I heard John say.

  Billy answered in high falsetto, “Alboo like da no!”

  A few more lost syllables, Billy’s excitement about the rare big snowfall and a new sled pushing his voice higher and higher, and tipping over into a tinkling cascade of little-boy giggles, remembering his first snowball fight with my own dear father, who’d clearly taken him to our boulevard-long park, where I’d had my own very first snowball fight.

  “That’s just fine,” John replied, most likely understanding only one word out of three. “Let’s focus on the boots. Keep pulling.”

  Billy’s giggles had turned to grunts. The final one—I heard the thunk of it landing—suggested a sudden dramatic victory over the tight boot.

  “Where did the sock go?” John asked in a serious voice.

  A puzzled pause. Then Billy erupted in laughter all over again: “It’s still in da boot!”

  I smiled, on the verge of giggling myself, listening to that youthful insistence on humor and joy, knowing that even if John was scowling, Billy couldn’t help but find it hilarious that his boot had swallowed his sock.

  “That isn’t funny, Billy,” John said calmly. “It won’t be funny tomorrow when you can’t find the sock.”

  Billy didn’t care what anyone else thought. And he didn’t care about tomorrow. Why should he? “Dat silly boot!”

  Listening to his continuing giggles, I had to press one hand over my mouth to keep from laughing with him, even from the next room. Having adapted to motherhood less than gracefully, it surprised me now when I had these bursts of visceral joy, triggered by something as simple as a little boy’s high-pitched laugh. It was a feeling of bubbly pleasure that bypassed my intellect and went right to my stomach and toes, making everything feel lighter.

  Then Billy remembered where he was and what was coming next. Snow, sled, boots, socks: done. “Where Mama?”

  John issued a quick, but still gentle, rebuke: “Mittens off. Coat on the peg. No, you can reach it if you stretch. I’m not hanging it up there for you. There you go.”

  At that moment, as I listened to the two familiar voices negotiating a routine I’d shared with Billy many times, little Jimmy was nursing at my breast. The milk had come in as it had before, with a pulsing, prickly heat. But there was less engorgement the second time around, less pain even in the first days. Was my body more practiced and better able to manage the flow, or was I just more relaxed and less of a silly baby myself, better able to handle minor, passing discomforts?

  I looked down to watch the little movements of Jimmy’s round cheek and tiny pointed chin, the rhythmic sucking, his eyes closed, eyelashes and brows so light they were almost transparent. He twitched once, sighing hard through his tiny nostrils as he swallowed. So happy. And I was happy, too. The most contented I had ever been—thinking of Billy and his lost sock and the good Baltimore visit he’d had and my own father playing in the snow, and John warming to all of it, getting more used to his own son’s playful nature, perhaps. We all made accommodations and were better off for it, every one of us. Finally.

  They were just outside the door now.

  “Where Mama?” Billy asked again.

  John’s voice remained steady, betraying nothing out of the ordinary. “In the nursery.”

  Around the corner they came. Billy’s eyes lit up. “Mama!”

  He trundled ahead and bumped into my knees, patting them, folding his hands for a moment behind my calves, so that I could feel the winter-cool freshness of his sweater against my shins. Then he let go and came alongside, reaching up to pat at my nearest shoulder with his flat hand, cheek pushed up against the back of my arm. I freed the hand I’d been using to cradle Jimmy’s head and reached back, shaking Billy’s hand, and held it a long moment. What I wanted, of course, was a big breathless hug. What I wanted was to bury my face in the top of his head, to fill my senses with the touch and smell of him. Oh, why didn’t I? Because we were handshakers in this family, especially when John was around, and that’s what Billy was used to.

  All the jostling had wakened Jimmy. His eyelids flickered, but then he closed them again, resuming his diligent emptying of one breast.

  Billy looked at Jimmy, reached out a hand and patted one sleeper-covered baby leg as if he were clapping the shoulder of an old working buddy in a bar. Then, after what appeared to be a tranquil and even half-bored moment, he looked across the room at the toy shelf he hadn’t seen in nearly two weeks. His eyes lit up again. “‘Dere you are!”

  Hurrying across the room, he retrieved his favorite red truck, which we hadn’t allowed him to bring to Alboo’s house, and set it down on the ground at my feet, immersed in play. It wouldn’t be the first time a boy had decided a truck was more interesting than a baby.

  From the doorway, John said in a commanding voice, “Billy, you know who that is?”

  My sweet boy answered without a pause and without looking up, “Dat’s our baby. Dat’s Jimmy.”

  “That’s your brother. Do you understand? Mother is home from the hospital with your new brother.”

  I’d talked to Billy for several weeks about what would hap
pen, and what we were planning to call the new baby if it was a boy or a girl, and what he would probably look like, and about how little he would be able to do at first, and how we’d have to take care of him until he could talk and walk and eat regular foods and play. After the birth, I’d even telephoned my parents to confirm the gender and ask them to use Jimmy’s name in conversation. Billy, who didn’t seem to need any more explanation from John or from anyone else, continued playing.

  “What’s Mother doing now, Billy?” John asked.

  Billy shrugged, but he didn’t look unhappy, just excited to see a toy that had disappeared from his little-boy universe for too many days.

  I asked more gently, “What’s Jimmy doing now, Billy? Do you think he’s sleeping?”

  Billy looked up and smiled. “He’s eating.”

  Well, well. My advance explanations had hit the mark. Billy even looked a little proud, as if to say: You’re all grown-ups, and you can’t tell what the baby is doing?

  I looked from Billy’s bright uncomplicated face to John’s. I knew that look: eyebrow cocked, mouth a tight line, a shadow of a smile, but not a convincing one.

  “Hmmm,” he said.

  “The baby’s eating, John,” I repeated, smiling. “That’s all. And thank goodness he’s almost done, since I’m hungry myself and that casserole Cora left in the oven smells divine.”

  “Hmmm,” John said again, looking back down at Billy, utterly absorbed, on the watch for any sign of anxiety or duplicity.

  In all the excitement over Billy’s first response—over whether he would show signs of jealousy, preparation for a life of more complicated and damaging jealousies—even I had forgotten something basic. This was John’s first exposure to little Jimmy as well.

  “John,” I said to get his attention. “Would you like to get a closer look at your new son?”

  Chapter 26

  Billy’s equanimity had puzzled John enough that he was still mulling it over, days later. I tended to drift into exhausted sleep even while John was having a last nightcap in the living room, reading journals or catching up on correspondence. Among his newer pen pals was the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who had been attracted to John’s behaviorist theories as a reconciliation of the mind-body dualism that had bedeviled philosophers for centuries.