Celestial Navigation (18 page)

Mary stayed in the hospital five days, and believe me those were five mighty long days. At home the disorder grew worse, and the children got cranky and the house didn’t feel right any more. Daytimes Jeremy pottered around looking helpless; nights he worked in his studio till nearly dawn, and came to breakfast so tired and pale he could hardly speak. He never did go to the hospital. I went. I went every afternoon and every evening and watched Mary cry. Oh, I don’t mean that’s all she did. She had her cheerful moments, particularly when
she’d just been with the baby. She made friends with the mothers in her ward, she received other visitors (Buddy, Buddy’s girlfriend, a few of the women in the park once word seeped out), and she wrote little notes for me to take home to the children. But at least once on every visit she would break down and cry. “Oh, why can’t I just go home to him?” she said once, and then, “Do you think I shouldn’t have had this baby?” One evening she was telling me why she’d wanted such a big family. “I was an only child,” she said (the first mention she had ever made to me of any kind of past), “and I always promised myself I would have at least a dozen children when I grew up. Well, I’m keeping my promise, aren’t I?” Then her eyes glazed over with tears. I wasn’t at all prepared, right then. “But sometimes,” she said, “I feel that every new baby is another rope, tying me down like a tent. I don’t have the option to
leave
any more. I’m forced to depend on him. He’s not dependable.”

“Hush, now, my goodness,” I said.

“I love him more than I ever loved anyone, do you believe me? But sometimes I start falling in love with my doctor or even the children’s doctor, they’re both so sure of what they’re doing. Even the furnace man, who knows exactly where the leak is, or the man who delivers my groceries. He whistles cheerful songs and slams that big box of groceries on my kitchen table.”

“You’re just upset,” I said.

I went home upset myself, and lay awake hoping that she would forget she had ever told me such things.

In the beginning, when they were first married, she asked so much of him. It was plain that she didn’t realize he was different from anybody else. “Come with me to pick out curtains,” I heard her say once. And another time, “Why don’t we ever go to movies, Jeremy?” Of course none of us had discussed
the subject with her. Julia Jarrett always believed that for Mary’s sake he would change, and you might say that in a sense he did. He does go out more now. Why, presumably he had to go off this block for his wedding, and then there were those trips to the hospital and three years ago he went to Darcy’s school to see her play a flower in Red Riding Hood’s forest. (She gave Red Riding Hood a warning in a silvery little voice—I was there. “Be careful, little girl, remember what your mother told you.” Jeremy walked seven blocks to hear that and applauded all alone the minute she said her line, which naturally made Darcy furious. But I admired him for that. There are other kinds of heroes than the ones who swim through burning oil.) But no, he has never gone to Hecht’s to pick out curtains. He has never taken Mary to a movie. How does she explain that to herself? When did she put two and two together and realize that he never would? I really have no idea. All I can say is that bit by bit, it seemed she stopped asking him. It seemed she grew quieter, older, stronger. There was something more loving in the way she treated him. Then I heard her talking with Buddy, back before he knew us well. He was telling her about a play that she and Jeremy shouldn’t miss. “Oh,” she said, “Jeremy has nearly stopped going to plays. His eyes have been bothering him.” And I knew the pieces had finally fallen into place for her, she had stopped expecting him to be like other people. Still I worried. I realized, of course, that it was none of my business. Yet I was so anxious for Jeremy, so quick to imagine him in all possible scenes of failure with her. During the first few weeks of their marriage I sent her silent, invisible messages: If you are unkind it will be a
sin, the
worst you’ve ever committed. Don’t forget that this is a very special man you are dealing with. A genius. Not some run-of-the-mill insurance salesman. It wasn’t that I disliked her, you see; I was fond of her even that far back. But in some ways Mary is an everyday kind of woman,
and this marriage was as odd for her, as distant from her main road, as it was for Jeremy. Look at the telephone pad in the hall! Her doodles are minute line drawings of steam irons and tricycles and Mixmasters. She adds to their incomes by sending household hints to ladies’ magazines. Is it any wonder I worried? All for nothing, as it turned out. She remained her serene and contented self, while Jeremy seemed ready to burst out of his skin with pride and happiness. I remember one morning she wore a new dress to breakfast, practically the only one I have ever seen her in. She looked just beautiful. I said, “My, that’s attractive. Isn’t it, Jeremy?” But Jeremy was in that mood he gets when he is about to start a new piece—a thousand miles away. He gave her a wide, blank smile and said nothing. I said, “Jeremy? Doesn’t Mary look pretty?” Because now it seemed he
had
to answer, for Mary’s sake. Jeremy said, “What?” He stood up and left. Now, a thing like that can seem important to some women. But when I looked over at Mary I saw that she was laughing, and she said, “Don’t worry, he loves it. I know because last week he cut a patch from inside the hem and used it for one of his pieces. He thought I wouldn’t notice.”

I was so relieved when I heard that. I thought, “Well, at least she understands him.” I never dreamed she would grow to be
too
understanding.

On Thursday evening Brian came by for Jeremy’s new batch of work. Brian’s visits are quite an event in this household. He himself is so impressive, in the first place—a handsome kind-faced man with a square-cut beard—and then too it is always the first glimpse we have of what Jeremy has been up to lately. The things they brought down that night were the best I’d yet seen. It’s strange how over the years Jeremy’s pieces have grown up. I mean physically, literally. They have doubled in size, and they are so deeply textured that they are almost
sculptures. Ordinary objects are crowded into them—Dixie cups and bus tickets and his children’s plaid shoelaces, still recognizable—and his subjects are ordinary too, the smallest and most unnoticed scenes on earth. I found a man with a rake, a woman ironing a shirt, a child strapping on a roller skate. Their features were gone and they were bare of detail; they were layered over with the Dixie cups and the bus tickets. They made me sad.

Have you ever seen a television show that ends with stills from the scenes you have just finished watching? Music plays and the titles roll over them. The effect is of distance. Moments that you just witnessed are suspended forever while you yourself recede from them with every breath you take. The moments grow smaller, and yet clearer. You see some sorrow in them you had never before suspected. Now, does it make any sense when I say that Jeremy’s pieces affect me in the same way? This man with the rake, slightly stooped and motionless, reminded me that life is nothing
but
motion and passes too swiftly for us to observe with the naked eye. At least, for me to observe. Jeremy has no trouble whatsoever. He sees from a distance at all times, without trying, even trying not to. It is his condition. He
lives
at a distance. He makes pictures the way other men make maps—setting down the few fixed points that he knows, hoping they will guide him as he goes floating through this unfamiliar planet. He keeps his eyes on the horizon while his hands work blind. Am I the only one who sees this? Surely Brian never has. Brian merely tapped the pictures with his knuckles and nodded, chewing his pipe. “Good work, good work,” he said. Then he went on to talk about a boat he had bought. “In the spring I’m going to try a real trip on her,” he said. “I’m going to do it old style. I’ll eat what I catch, I’ll sail by celestial navigation.” Jeremy listened with his eyes wide, his expression awed and admiring. He stood beside his very best piece and forgot it utterly. Oh,
Jeremy, I wanted to tell him, you too sail by celestial navigation and it is far more celestial than Brian’s.

But, of course, I didn’t say it out loud.

On Friday I went to visit Mary and she said they were letting her come home Saturday. She didn’t seem as happy as you’d expect. “Why, that’s wonderful!” I said. “I have Saturday off this week. I’ll drive everybody over at ten o’clock or so, shall I?”

“Oh well,” Mary said, “this time I think you might just come by yourself if you don’t mind.”

“What, alone?”

“It’s simpler that way.”

“Who asked it to be
simple?”
I said.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have spoken out like that, but I could tell this new arrangement wasn’t really what she wanted. She was twining a wisp of hair very slowly around her fingers and not meeting my eyes when she spoke. She looked limp and uncombed. “Look,” I told her. “There’s no law that says you can’t change your mind. Call him up. Tell him you want him to come for you after all.”

“I never told him I did
n’t
want him to come,” she said.

“Then what’s all this about?”

“I’ve been waiting for him to offer, but he hasn’t.”

“You know it would be hard for him to offer.”

“I mean that he won’t even speak to me on the phone.”

“He won’t?” I said. I hadn’t realized that.

“When I telephone, one of the children always answers, and if I ask to speak to him they go off to call him and come back and say he’s in the middle of changing Hannah or frying eggs or something. He’s angry.”

Jeremy angry?

“No, he’s hurt, Mary,” I said.

“Well, I’m hurt too. I’ve been waiting all this time, thinking
surely he would give in and call me. I lie here just for hours. Don’t you think I would say yes like a shot if he called and asked to visit me and take me home?”

“Of course. Yes, I know. But
you
could call, Mary.”

“I spend my life calling!” Mary said. She sat up in bed, and a few of the other women in the ward turned to stare. “It’s always me,” she said more quietly. “Never him. I make the first move every time. I’m tired.”

“Yes, now, I know,” I said, trying to hush her. And after that she did grow more reasonable. For the rest of the hour we talked about ordinary things. But when finally I rose to go, when I turned in the doorway to say goodbye, the last thing I saw was Mary sitting with her hands folded and her eyes lowered and her face sad and wistful. She reminded me of a girl waiting for an invitation to dance. Even her lace-trimmed nightgown had a pathetic look, like a ball dress carefully ironed by some loving mother who had imagined her daughter waltzing all evening, and never dreamed it could be otherwise.

For bringing home a new baby there is a ritual in this house, and I am part of it. I go along in the taxi, to stay with the children while Jeremy is inside the hospital. We are all packed into the back seat, and up front the driver is grumbling over the noise and the crowding and the cracker crumbs. While we wait I take the children to a concrete space beneath Mary’s window. I point it out to them. “See? There it is—the one with the shade pulled all the way up.” “Where? Where?” When all the children have located it, they start shouting. “Mama!” they call—even the littlest one. It is against our rules for Mary to be watching for us. She must stay out of sight, and wait to hear their voices. Then she comes to the window. Dressed, finally, all set to go. First she waves and blows kisses, then she play-acts her impatience to come down. She pounds silently on the windowpane, she sets her fist against her forehead.
The children laugh, too shrilly. They sound a little hysterical. It occurs to me that for the smallest ones, this may be exactly how they have imagined her absence : they suspect she is being kept prisoner somewhere, forced to leave them in the fumbling care of their father. For she would never desert them of her own free
will
, would she? Then another face appears beside hers—Jeremy’s, round and blurred. Mary flings up her hands in joy, showing that the rescue squad has at last arrived. She turns and throws her arms around his neck. The two of them are framed in the window like heroes at the end of a romantic movie—wrapped together, touched with sunlight. We go back to the taxi. This will be our longest wait, while they collect the new baby and settle the bill. To pass the time we play “I Spy,” and we become so absorbed that Darcy is the only one to see her parents emerging. “Ta-taaa!” she says, like a trumpet. We look up to find them coming across the driveway, flushed and smiling. Mary carries the overnight case. She has read somewhere that if it is the father who introduces the new baby there will be less jealousy, and although I can’t see what earthly difference it makes she has given the baby to Jeremy. He holds it stiff-armed, at a distance, with his entire self concentrating on getting his prize safely to the car. He reminds me of little Pippi carrying a very full glass of water. “Here we are!” Mary says. Then the taxi is a flurry of hugs and kisses, and the baby is passed from one grimy set of hands to another. Even the taxi driver must have a turn; no one will be satisfied until he does. “Well now,” he says. “Yes sir. What do you know.” He gives it back, grins and shakes his head, and starts the motor. The ceremony is over. All requirements have been met. The rules are stashed in the back of our minds until two years from now.

I thought we would be collecting new babies that way forever. I didn’t realize the ritual could be abandoned so easily.

•   •   •

Early Saturday I went to the dimestore and chose a small toy for Mary to bring each of the children. Usually she tells me exactly what they have been wanting, but this time she didn’t seem to know. “Oh, anything,” she said. “You probably have better ideas than I do.” I entered the dimestore feeling uncertain—I had no ideas at all—but then I began to enjoy myself. I had been watching those children more closely than I suspected. I knew that Darcy would like something she could do with her hands—an embroidery set—and that Abbie had a yen for costume jewelry. The jewelry on the toy counter was not very satisfying. All I saw were pop-it beads and plastic bangles. But then in the grownups’ section I found a wealth of glittery rhinestones and great multicolored teardrop earrings. They were more expensive, but I could always chip in a little money of my own. I felt as proud of myself as if I had discovered them in a pirates’ chest. Who else would think of looking here for a child’s gift? I chose green glass earrings shaped like peacock tails and purple ones like huge bunches of grapes. I held one of each to my ears and looked in the mirror that sat on the countertop. Then I froze, with jewels dangling ridiculously below my great long earlobes.