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Authors: Joyce Maynard

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BOOK: Baby Love
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“And last week in home ec I thought I was going to puke.”

“You do look kind of swelled up here.”

“I know just when it happened too. That day they let us out early, when Didi Hatfield spilled sulfur in the chem lab? And Virgil and me drove to Manchester because Bi-Rite had a sale on tires. And on the way home he said, ‘I feel like a quick one,’ and we pulled over right on 114 and he didn’t think he was ready yet but then they played ‘Tonight’s the Night’ on the radio. That part where Britt Eklund talks dirty in French always gets to him. Anyway, he was just going to pull out of me and then he said, ‘It’s too late.’ And that was just about ten days after my period. And you know the next song they played? That one Stevie Wonder does about his daughter, with the kid crying in the background. That’s when I knew. Boy, is my mom going to be pissed.”

“Do you think you’ll get married?” Sandy asks.

“Search me.”

Jill is trying on a pair of white maternity pants. She examines the stretchy knit panel in the front, stuffing a pillow inside. She’s still naked on top. She begins walking around Sandy’s living room like Mia Farrow in
Rosemary’s Baby.
Sandy laughs, and Jill’s walk becomes more exaggerated. She rocks from side to side with her legs spread apart and her breasts bouncing. The door opens. Virgil and Mark stand there.

Early evening is a hard time for Ann. If she has been in town, and she’s driving back, she can see the lights on in houses. Mothers fixing dinner. TV sets flickering. Babies sitting in high chairs, waving their spoons. She remembers evenings with Rupert, going down to the garden together to pick squash and peas and tomatoes for dinner. Turning on Lawrence Welk and dancing to that corny music. Sitting beside him while he read, making dirty pictures of the two of them that she would stick in the pages of his book.

Late at night it’s better. Ann feels she is coming close to perfecting loneliness, putting together the most poignant evenings possible. There’s something almost delicious for her about the hours between 11 and 3 a.m.

She turns out most of the lights, first of all, and lights the oil lamps. She may write a letter to Rupert, though she won’t finish it. She paces the floor, sipping Kahlua. She pours some bubblebath in the tub, turns on the water, very hot, and puts a little bamboo stool beside it with another glass of Kahlua and ice. She puts a stack of records on the stereo. She doesn’t care if this is bad for her records.

She does not play rock music on these nights. Rock-and-roll reminds her of her college dorm, mixers when she stood by the wall all night, or exchanged SAT scores with some boy from Amherst. Even then these boys seemed young to her.

Now she plays Tammy Wynette and George Jones: “Help Me Make It Through the Night” and “Nothing Ever Hurt Me Half as Bad as Loving You.” She heard some organ music on a classical radio station once that made her cry. She called the station to ask what it was and got the record—the composer is Albinoni. It’s a very lonely piece of music and she plays it a lot.

What she plays most are her Dolly Parton records. The old songs: “I Will Always Love You,” “On My Mind Again,” “Sometimes an Old Memory Gets in My Eye,” “If I Cross Your Mind,” “Lonely Comin’ Down,” “Living on Memories of You.” She also likes the duets Dolly Parton used to record with Porter Wagoner. She has studied very carefully their photographs on the covers of these albums. On one—
Burning the Midnight Oil
—there are two pictures, juxtaposed. One shows Dolly in a long red dress sitting in front of a fireplace reading a letter. An oil lamp is burning. In the other picture is Porter, wearing a flashy shirt, sitting in a black leather chair. The ashtray next to him is full of cigarette butts and he is pulling his hand through his blond pompadour. Tearing at his hair, really. Ann has spent nights like that.

She thinks people completely miss the point when they focus on Dolly’s breasts all the time, and the crazy blond wigs. Ann is not fooled. She knows Dolly could not have written these songs, could not sing them this way, if she had not experienced real heartbreak. She knows that Dolly has been married since she was eighteen to a man named Carl Dean, who is in the asphalt-paving business. She wonders if Dolly Parton was actually in love with Porter Wagoner, with whom she never records duets anymore. Porter Wagoner is thinner than ever now. One seldom sees him, now that Dolly has gone off on her own.

Last summer Dolly Parton came to Hanover to sing at Dartmouth. Ann drove an hour and a half to see her. She is singing more upbeat songs these days, trying for a broader appeal. She herself makes jokes about her bust—needing a fire department to put out the flames when she tries burning her bra. Her backup band nearly drowns out the guitar on “Coat of Many Colors.” She doesn’t even sing most of the old songs anymore. But Ann feels she understands: Dolly has made a decision to go on with her life, even though it means leaving the best part of herself behind. She will smile and make jokes, even if her heart is broken. She will be a bigger star than ever, and almost no one will ever know the real truth.

Ann pictures herself doing the same thing. She will find a kind, good man someday. He will be nothing like Rupert. She will never tell him about Rupert, although he will know that she can only care for him deeply—never precisely love him. They will not talk a great deal: he will tell her how things went at work; she’ll ask him what he’d like for supper. They’ll have several children.

Here’s what all of this builds to, in her mind, as she lies in the tub—the water lukewarm by now and the bubbles gone, the Kahlua glass empty, Dolly and Porter singing “Just Someone I Used to Know.” Ann will be in the supermarket, standing at the checkout with her husband. She will have a baby on her hip and another child about Trina’s age beside her, and she will be pregnant, although her face will be very thin. She hears a voice behind her, asking, “Do you have Birds Eye Tender Tiny Peas?” Rupert used to eat them for breakfast. Their eyes meet; he studies the baby’s face, and he does that trick where he makes his ears wiggle, for her older child. Neither of them says anything. Ann’s husband pushes their cart out to the car and she looks over her shoulder one last time. He’s standing in the magnetic door holding his single box of peas with the saddest look on his face. They never see each other again.

Carla has taken the top three drawers for her shirts and jeans, just like at home. The bottom drawer’s for Greg. He puts his box of painting clothes in the wooden camp locker Dan and Sally use for a coffee table. His paints, for now, sit in boxes by the door. Tomorrow he’ll set up a studio in the little room overlooking the falls that Dan and Sally use for guests.

Carla is putting the last of her cast-iron pots in a Hoosier cabinet Sally refinished. It has a built-in flour sifter; you open a little door at the bottom and crank out the flour. Carla thinks she will learn how to bake bread this summer. Maybe English muffins. There’s a recipe in one of her Julia Child books.

For dinner they had smoked salmon and cream cheese omelets and wine that Greg chilled in the icy water at the falls. The stove is from the thirties—pale-green enamel, on legs, with a warming oven. The refrigerator has not been plugged in yet, and they’ll have to prime the pump (Dan has left instructions) before they have water. There’s also a wood stove and a pile of dried ash, split, outside the door. Greg doesn’t have the hang of the stove yet. His fire went out. But it’s not a cold night. Carla’s just as glad that they will have to lie very close under the covers tonight.

On the walls of their sleeping loft is a series of photographs Sally must have taken. At first Carla thought they must be pictures of hills, one behind the other, with long shadows falling in the foreground and some kind of fuzzy boulder in the distance. Then she realizes Sally must have taken these pictures while she and Dan were making love. Knees, one elbow, part of a breast, and Dan’s testicles hovering overhead like a bomber.

Greg stands at the window watching the falls. There is an almost full moon. “I’ve got to learn how to fly cast,” he says. “We can have trout for breakfast.”

Carla finishes the last sip of her wine and leans against the sink, watching him. That almost flat ass, his pants hanging loose at the hips. The piece of hair that always stands up on the top of his head. (When they go out to a good restaurant he uses a dab of Vitalis. She used to make fun of him for that.) He looks so hopeful, excited. How she feels about him, sometimes, is almost maternal. She never thought she would ever want more for another person than for herself. “This is going to be great,” he says.

Ronnie Spaulding is pleased. He bowled 144 tonight: three strikes and two spares. His date—Wanda something—threw mostly gutter balls. A couple so bad he thought they might end up in the next lane. She’s not very coordinated: takes three steps, winds up like a pitcher, and then when she gets to the line she just stands there. Stops. Bends over (what a big ass) and lets it go more like she’s launching a baby duck in a pond.

No point spending another dollar on a second string. “Want to get some pizza?” he asks her. Of course she will.

Wanda’s just as glad to leave the bowling alley. She feels very self-conscious when she gets up to bowl. She knows she looks worst from the back. Wanda is actually a pretty good bowler, but she feels so uncomfortable that she can’t concentrate. Just as she is about to let go of the ball, her brain flashes something like a picture of her rear end or the little roll of flesh that she can feel hanging over the top of her jeans. This makes her stop. Then all she wants is to get it over with so she can go sit down again, with her sweater across her lap. There are so many skinny girls here tonight. She’s going to start on a diet very soon.

He asks her if she’d like to go for pizza. She says sure.

Chapter 3

J
ILL CANNOT IMAGINE WHAT
to do. She bends over to get a shirt to cover her top. The Erik Estrada shirt has been buried in the pile of maternity things. She rummages in the pile, can’t find it. She can feel her nipples getting hard, sticking out. She must just cover herself up.

The shirt she pulls over her head turns out to be the one that says “Baby.” She’s still wearing the pillow stuck in the maternity pants. Mark is the first one to speak. His voice is flat; he sounds dead.

“Congratulations,” he says.

Wanda and Ronnie are sitting in the corner booth at Rocky’s. He has got them a large double cheese pizza and two Cokes. “New Kid in Town” is playing on the jukebox.

“ ‘It’s those restless hearts that never mend,’ ” Ronnie sings along with the Eagles. He takes a bite of pizza. I’ll just have one piece, Wanda thinks.

“ ‘Johnny come lately, new kid in town,’ ” Ronnie sings.

“Are you in a league?” Wanda asks.

“Second in the division,” he says.

Jill and Virgil pass by the door. She stands outside. He comes in for a pack of cigarettes. Wanda waves to Jill, who does not notice.

“Friend of yours?” Ronnie asks. “Cute.”

They watch Virgil leave, Jill follow him to the car.

“Cops better not be around tonight,” says Ronnie. Virgil is driving very fast.

Wanda reaches for another slice of pizza. Ronnie looks at the piece of cheese sticking to her chin. “You done?” he says.

He parks outside the mill. He can see this spot out the window when he works the second shift. It’s his private thing, looking out the window while he’s working, remembering the night before. He unzips his fly.

This is her first time since Melissa was born. The doctor said she could do it in six weeks, but no one asked before. She figures it will be safe.

She is thinking about her stomach. There’s a dark black line from her navel to her pubic hair. The thing that’s worse is the stretch marks. It’s hard for her to believe now, when she takes out her bikini from last summer, that she ever fit into that thing. Now it’s like she’s carrying a wrinkled old parachute around her middle. Her skin is all covered with wavy lines with white spaces in between. Her belly, which was so hard when she was pregnant—like a rock—feels like one of those crocheted pillows of Mrs. Ramsay’s that has lost half its stuffing. Her breasts are not so big as they were when her milk came in—before the pills the doctor gave her made them dry up—but they have stretch marks too, and her nipples have turned brown. She never used to wear a bra. Now, when Ronnie unhooks her, tugs the straps off (he is not gentle like Sam Pierce), her breasts drop heavily.

He is not interested in her breasts, does not kiss her. He sticks his penis in her right away and rams it in very deep. She remembers the feeling, as Melissa’s head shot out, before they had time to cut her. She thought she could hear her skin rip. Her throat was too dry to scream.

She’s dry now and it hurts. He is pounding her, back and forth. She can picture her skin—red and sore—being rubbed raw. She has not looked at herself yet, since Melissa was born, but in her mind she sees her baby daughter’s pink, hairless genitals—surprisingly large, in proportion to the rest of her, and a tiny dot of bright red blood on the tip of that little piece of skin whose name she has forgotten. Melissa had a drop of blood on her like that, in fact, the day after she was born. Wanda got very scared when she saw it and rushed into the hall, dripping blood herself, to find a doctor. “She’s having a little menstrual period,” the nurse said. “Sometimes mother’s hormones affect baby that way.”

Ronnie groans, flinches, goes limp. He lies there for a minute, his breathing slowly coming back to normal. Then he rolls away from her, zips up his pants.

“You want me to drop you at the baby-sitter’s?”

Carla takes her diaphragm out of her makeup case, squeezes out a little Koromex. She is careful not to get any on her hands because there is no water to wash it off.

She pulls off her shirt, her underpants. Naked, she climbs the ladder to the sleeping loft. Pulls back the goose-down quilt, thinking: Tonight I will take the left-hand side of the bed.

Greg is curled up, hugging the pillow. He’s asleep.

It’s a little past eight-thirty in the morning and Wayne is sitting in the sunroom on the fifth floor of the Good Samaritan Hospital, looking out the window. Actually, he is always on the fifth floor—has been for five and a half years—except when they have a field trip. Even then he is seldom allowed to go out, because forensic patients require one-to-one supervision and there are not often enough orderlies for that.

BOOK: Baby Love
5.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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