Tomorrow Will Be Better, page 23
The Paolski family lived on the second floor. The bathroom at the head of the stairs served family and nurse. (Aunt Tessie had her own private toilet in the basement.) The bathroom also served as a repository for the patients’ bedpans. The “den” upstairs had been made over into a kitchenette and the master bedroom into a living room. The two daughters shared the other bedroom. Doctor and his wife slept in the attic. It was “finished off” and had one window. It had no heat in winter but Doctor and wife agreed it was healthful to sleep cold. It was inclined to be stifling in summer but Doctor explained that it was good to perspire; some body wastes were eliminated that way.
Sometimes Doctor decided to spend the night downstairs on the assumption that Mrs. So-and-so might decide to hemorrhage and he’d feel better if he were on the spot. On such occasions he stretched out on the black leather couch in his consulting room and Mrs. Paolski, who didn’t like to sleep alone in the attic because she was afraid of mice, rested on the living-room divan. Of course these emergencies didn’t come often; only on a sweltering night in August, for instance, or a bitterly cold night in January.
The house was home and hospital. It had provisions for everything except a corridor for husbands to pace off the agony of becoming fathers. They had to do their pacing on the street in front of the house. The neighbors were used to the sight of some man always pacing the sidewalk with slow measured steps. The neighbors liked it. Day and night there was a pacer. It was like having a perpetual watchman in the neighborhood. It gave householders a sense of security. There were never any burglaries on the block. Sometimes two men awaited birth; either they struck up a friendship and paced side by side or else passed each other every half-minute at a given point. At such times they looked like men picketing to protest the unfairness of life.
Dr. Paolski provided fair facilities for mothers who couldn’t afford regular hospital fees and who were too proud to lie in at a charity hospital and too literate to call in a midwife. His fees were reasonable: twenty-five dollars for the delivery which included pre- and post-natal care. (Five dollars extra if it were a boy and circumcision was desired.) He asked three dollars a day for bed, food, nursing and care of the newborn. If a woman needed or wanted an anesthetic, that was three dollars extra.
All in all, Dr. Paolski provided a needed service at a low cost. He couldn’t be blamed for cutting corners.
33
MARGY WORKED OUT her budget. Delivery and anesthetic—she’d have to have one, she was not brave enough—hospitalization—that came to seventy-two dollars. Cab each way, two dollars. She’d have to tip the day and night nurse a dollar each. Seventy-four. Make it seventy-five. She’d like to have a dollar extra in case she wanted to send out for a newspaper or something. Yes, seventy-five dollars would do it. It seemed very expensive to Margy.
Two weeks before the baby was due she had a conference with Frankie on finances. “We need seventy-five dollars,” she said. “At the least, seventy-four. I’ve saved and I’ve saved but I only have fifty-six dollars.”
“You said you’d manage,” said Frankie.
“I meant it. And I tried. I saved your two-dollar raise. I tried to economize. But somehow the food bills got higher. I seem to be so hungry all the time.”
“Well, don’t worry, Margy. It’s too bad that you have to go through the pain and trouble of childbirth and worry on the side about paying for it.”
“Oh, the worry’s good. It takes my mind off my own scaredness at least.”
“Well, it’ll work out all right. I’ll cut out smoking altogether.”
“Oh, no, Frankie! Your one comfort; your only extravagance. Besides, you don’t smoke much.”
“I’ll lay off for two weeks then—the two weeks you’re in the hospital. It won’t be hard. Every time I feel like a cigarette, I’ll think of you in the hospital. Doing without a smoke won’t seem like anything at all, considering.”
“We’ll save two weeks on the gas, electric and ice bills while I’m in the hospital,” she suggested hopefully.
“And food,” added Frankie. “I’ll stay at my mother’s house and eat breakfast and supper there. That will save a lot.”
He didn’t feel too happy about the idea of eating at his mother’s house. If he ate too eagerly of anything she’d say: “That’s right, Frankie. Eat more! You don’t get good cooking like this in your house.”
“We ought to take out hospital insurance,” he said. “I’ve been reading the ads. ‘You never know when illness will strike,’” he quoted somberly.
“No, Frankie.” She was firm about it. “I’ve never been sick, neither have you. We can’t afford to pay out premiums year after year on such a gamble. We have life insurance. That’s enough.”
“But you never can tell,” he persisted. “Like they say, illness strikes suddenly.”
“People like us can’t afford to be sick. We’ve got to keep well. If we lose our health . . .” she knocked on wood, he followed suit, “we’re sunk.”
“Everything’s all right now, maybe. But what about when we get old?” he asked, feeling the full weight of his twenty-two years.
“It will be forever before we get old. And by that time we’ll be on Easy Street. We’ll have our own home, you’ll have your own business and our children will be all through college.”
“Children?” he groaned. “Gee, Margy, we can’t have any more. Honest! A guy’s got children, he gives hostages to fortune. I read that somewhere when I was in high school.”
“What do you mean—hostages?”
“I mean when you have children you’re in hock for the rest of your life.”
“But if you bring up one you might as well bring up two or three; two close together and when they’re ten and twelve, one more. So that when the two oldest leave home, there’s still a child left in the house.”
“No, Margy. One’s enough. And I’ll see to it personally,” he said evenly, “that there’ll be no more.”
“But what good is a normal woman without children?” she cried out. “I’ve got to have children, Frankie.”
“Why? Why? Give me one good reason why.” He thought of his mother’s reason. “Aside from the fact that you want to tie me down.”
Then she said something she hadn’t known was in her mind. “We’ve got to have children because you and I have nothing between us.”
There was a sudden intense quiet like the throbbing stillness after the cutting off of a high note in music that has been held too long. Her hand went to her mouth as if she would put back the words. She fought frantically for something else to say—something that would nullify her words to him. But she couldn’t think of any magic phrases. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, she whispered to an invisible Confessor. She wanted to kneel before Frankie and ask him to forgive her for hurting him so. She moved forward in her chair but just then the baby stirred within her and she had a foolish notion that the baby would be harmed somehow if she knelt to ask forgiveness of its father.
His eyes were drawn to the little sudden movement under her taut skirt as the child within her stirred. And he winced with pity. She’s the one who’ll have all the pain and risk, he thought. Why does she fight so for it, he wondered, as if it were some great privilege? He got his hat and coat out of the closet. He spoke to her quietly.
“So you finally said it, Margy.”
Familiar from childhood with the dread ritual of quarreling, she made no answer, knowing that like steps, one angry word made a path for another angry word to follow. He put his hat on carefully; he buttoned his coat slowly.
“Where are you going?” she asked as she had heard her mother ask her father many a night.
“Out,” he said.
And his inflection was the same as her father’s.
OF COURSE THEY made up later that night. He explained his attitude quietly and logically and he begged her to understand. She assured him she did. And she really did understand. Unfortunately, understanding doesn’t always connote sanction, conversion or forgiveness. She had an idea that whoever wrote something about to understand all is to forgive all, just didn’t know what he was talking about. She apologized tearfully for what she had said. She assured him that they had everything in the world between them.
They made up and were close for an hour. But there was a tear in the fabric of their marriage and in spite of meticulous mending with words of forgiveness and understanding, there was a ridge that showed where the rent had been made.
IT TURNED OUT, however, that their hurting quarrel had been for nothing. Frankie was never called upon to assume the responsibilities of parenthood.
The baby, a girl after all, was born dead.
34
SHE HAPPENED TO get the best bed in the room—the one next to the window. Visitors had room to stand at the side of this bed. Visitors to the other beds had to stand at the foot. Frankie took off from work and came over to see her as soon as they phoned him the news. Lines of grief took away the last vestige of boyishness left in his face. Embarrassed by the stares of the other five women, all newly made mothers who were pityingly curious as to how he’d take it, he bent down to speak into Margy’s ear. His back bumped the window ledge so he knelt down and rested his chin on the pillow.
“I’m sorry, Margy. Awfully sorry.”
“I know, Frankie. I know.”
“I can’t tell you how terrible I feel.”
“Poor Frankie!”
“Don’t hold things against me, Margy.”
“Why should I?”
“I acted like a heel saying I didn’t want the baby and all. But you know.”
“I know.”
“I sounded off a lot but it was just talk. I would have been crazy about her.”
“Would you, Frankie?”
“Don’t you believe me?”
“Of course I believe you.”
She knew he was sincere in what he was saying. He had been sincere, too, when he gave all his reasons why he didn’t want children. Well, he was right, she was right. Or maybe they were both wrong. She didn’t know. She didn’t feel like talking about it. She wanted to go to sleep and forget for a while.
“Talk to me, Margy.”
“About what?”
“Anything. Get it off your chest—the way you feel and all.”
“Why?”
“What? Oh, because you were always such a one to talk things out. You’d talk a streak about the way wax looked dripping off a lighted candle. And now you have nothing to say about this. It doesn’t seem natural.”
“But there’s nothing to say, Frankie. I was in labor for a day. You know about that. Then I heard the doctor say, ‘Breech presentation.’ Then the nurse said, ‘Which forceps?’ Then they gave me ether or something. When I woke up they told me the baby had been born dead. That’s all.”
“Didn’t you cry when they told you?”
“I don’t remember. I was too busy turning another corner at the time.”
“What? Where? What corner?” She turned her head away. “Margy?” he whispered. She closed her eyes. “Margy!” he called in a little panic. Her breath went in deep and she held it shudderingly.
He got to his feet, mechanically brushing off his knees, a habit that was automatic with much kneeling in confessional and pew and at the altar. On his way out of the hospital he spoke to the nurse.
“I wish you’d have the doctor take a look at my wife,” he said.
“What seems to be the trouble?” asked the nurse with bright routine interest.
“She talks a little like she was out of her mind—about turning around corners—things like that.”
“She’s still feeling the effects of the anesthetic, probably. But I’ll have Doctor take a look at her.”
“WHAT SEEMS TO be the trouble, Mrs. Malone?” asked Dr. Paolski.
“Nothing. Only where I carried the baby, it’s empty. But the emptiness hurts like it was a live thing. It seems to be eating me away inside.”
“Oh, you’re merely feeling afterbirth pains. They’ll pass after a while. In the meantime, I’ll have Nurse give you something.”
IT WAS A small funeral. No need for hearse, flowers or outside mourners. Frankie, his father and mother and Margy’s parents rode out to the cemetery in the undertaker’s limousine. Henny Shannon, holding the small white casket on his knees, sat next to the driver. Frankie, having had to take another day off from work, sat between his mother and mother-in-law. Malone sat on the drop seat facing them. The driver pointed out things of interest along the route. The passengers looked obediently and murmured conventional replies.
They should have felt tender and understanding, one toward the other, because they should have been drawn together in what people call the common bond of sorrow. But the bond between them was horror and hate and it pulled them away from each other. There was horror of being in that small closed space with something dead among them. Malone, for all his study of the dead, felt the same horror as the others. And there was hatred. Flo sat there hating the Malones. She’d always hated them anyhow—all except Frankie. And she only liked him because he was her son-in-law. Henny hated Frankie because through him grief had come to Margy. The Malones hated the Shannons because their daughter had brought this hardship on their only son.
Frankie was the only one not hating anybody. He was too busy worrying about his job and about money. He’d be docked two days’ pay this week and there hadn’t been enough money in the first place for the doctor and hospital. And now this! Forty dollars for the burial—very reasonable, the undertaker had assured him. Frankie knew it was reasonable but he worried all the same. He’d have to ask Margy could he pawn her wristwatch and her silver. Birth and death were two expensive items.
IT WAS MARGY’S first Sunday afternoon in the little hospital. The narrow room was crowded with visitors. Frankie, his parents and Margy’s parents stood in an ungraceful line on the window side of Margy’s bed. The stares from the five pairs of eyes beat down on her face like a hot noon sun.
Mrs. Malone wished she had been nicer to Margy. At the moment she thought of her more as a suffering woman than a girl thief who had stolen her son. She meant to be comforting and understanding.
“Well, Marge,” she said, “it’s God’s will.”
“Yes, Mrs. Malone,” said Margy obediently.
Mrs. Malone twisted her corseted hulk and looked behind her. “Lose something?” asked her husband.
“No, I’m trying to see where the stranger is,” she said.
“What stranger?”
“A stranger to Marge who goes by the name of Mrs. Malone.” Mr. Malone got the joke and guffawed. Everyone in the room stopped talking to stare at him, and Frankie was embarrassed.
“There’s no Mrs. Malone here as far as you’re concerned, Marge,” she said. “Call me Mother.”
“Yes, Mother.” But the word stuck in Margy’s throat and had to be washed down with another word. “Yes, Mother Malone.”
Mr. Malone, bright as a new nail, came in with, “Mother Macree. Shure I love the dear silver . . .”
“Shut up,” she said. He shut up. “Yes, you figure it all out,” she said to Margy, “and you’ll see it’s God’s will.”
Margy tried to figure it out. If there’s a God, she thought, and her fingers twitched with the instinct to make the sign of the cross to exorcise her blasphemous if, I can’t believe He’d give a woman this great longing to give birth only to take the baby back. No! God must have more to do with His eternal time than to punish birth-torn mothers that way. Something went wrong and no use putting it off on God.
“If you can only make yourself believe it’s all for the best,” continued Mrs. Malone.
How can it be for the best? thought Margy. What best? What is gained by the way you suffer if no living child comes as a reward? All you get out of it is knowing you can suffer an awful lot without dying. And of what use is information like that to a person like me?
Mrs. Malone wanted to give Margy some kind of a gratuity. “Maybe I didn’t always treat you right,” she began. (No. That was giving too much away.) She made a fresh start. “Maybe you think I didn’t treat you right. But it wasn’t because it was you. I would have acted the same about any girl Frankie married. Suppose your baby was a boy and lived and you brought him up and sacrificed for him and just when he got old enough to be a comfort to you, he meets a strange girl and marries her and . . .” Flo interrupted because she couldn’t keep still a moment longer.
“And how do you think I felt, Mrs. Malone, when a strange boy came along and took away the only child we had? But I try to be nice to Frankie just the same.”
“And why not?” bridled Mrs. Malone. “You got a good son-in-law, Mrs. Shannon, believe you me.”
“And if you ask me, you people got a damned fine daughter-in-law,” said Henny.
Margy tossed restlessly. Frankie worried. “You’re all bothering Margy,” he said.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter, Frankie,” she said wearily. “I’m not listening anyhow.”
“I guess we wore out our welcome,” said Mrs. Malone.
Flo tried to fix things up. “If you didn’t mean nothing out of the way, Mrs. Malone, neither did I,” she said.
The apology was accepted. They dropped the argument and began to talk brightly of casual things. Flo saw a tear slide out from under Margy’s half-closed lids. She took a try at comforting her.
“No use feeling bad, Margy,” she said. “What’s done is done and crying won’t help. We must think of the living,” she concluded vaguely.
Margy sat up in bed. “You mean well, Mama. You all mean well. But nothing you say seems to mean anything to me.” She tried to explain.
“I don’t miss the baby. How could I miss something I’ve never seen? I miss waiting for it to come. I miss planning for it.” She started to talk fast and feverishly. She didn’t mean to say all she did but once started, much of the accumulated heart hurt of her short life tumbled out in fast-spoken phrases.
