Dreams Are Not Enough (51 page)

“Now?”

“Our marriage should have been dissolved many years ago.”

“Yes, I know. But now? When she’s ill? And having a baby?”

“Yes, the baby.” Drawing a deep breath, he spoke rapidly.

“Beth, even the youngest infant has an awareness of its surroundings. It’s unfair to burden the baby with our problems. Could you take over for a while?”

“What do you mean, take over?”

“Uhh, could you, uhh, look after the baby until Alyssia’s well?”

“No.”

“What?”

“I said no.”

His entire life Beth had been a soft touch—had she ever refused him?

Their mother had often repeated the tale that in their shared playpen when he demanded a toy Beth would docilely hand it over.

“Beth, you don’t understand. Alyssia’s in no condition to manage a new infant. I’m only asking you to become custodian until she’s past the worst of her depression.”

“No. And it’s not fair to ask me.” From the honking sound of a nose being blown, he realized his sister was crying.

“I’m sorry, Bethie. I should’ve realized. You have your own problems.”

“Don’t you see? I’d become attached all over again, and then she would take the baby away. It’d break my heart. Again. I can’t do it.”

Barry replaced the receiver with a shaking hand.

That night Alyssia went into labor. She was rundown physically, and after twenty-five hours, at a point when Dr. Fauchery was readying himself to do a cesarean, she dilated so rapidly that she felt as if she were being torn apart from the rectum. Her agonized cries skittered through the clinic’s corridors as she was wheeled into the well-equipped delivery room. Fauchery was forced to administer gas, then inject a potent mixture of sedatives.

Within short minutes after Alyssia’s placement on the delivery table, her newborn son was complaining vigorously.

To Alyssia, however, the drugged labor seemed eternal.

She was condemned to a murky, Gotterdammerung world where the only brightness was her mother’s crimson blood and the flames consuming Hap’sjeep, a world where the single inhabitant was death.

When she awoke, Barry was sitting at her bedside.

“We have a little boy,” he said proudly.

She was still enmeshed in that nightmare existence, and her glazed eyes fixed on him.

“A boy?” she whispered, sighing.

“He’s dead.”

“He’s absolutely fine. Healthy as they come. And a real screamer.”

Her head turned slowly from side to side in denial.

“Hon, he’s with his nurse in the next room.”

“He’s dead….”

Barry went to the little adjoining parlor. To ensure Alyssia’s privacy, Fauchery had brought in an ugly, placid nursing nun from Alsace. At Barry’s request, the white-coiffed sister carried in her cocooned charge, holding him close to his mother’s pillow. The baby moved his mouth, letting out a mewling sound. His nose was temporarily squashed to one side, but otherwise he was pretty and pink-even his fuzz of hair was rosy.

“It can’t be my baby—my baby’s dead,” Alyssia whimpered. She began to cry. She cried so long that Fauchery summoned Plon, his goa teed psychiatric colleague. Although the anesthesia had not yet worn off, Plon started his treatment.

Barry visited again that evening. The bed was cranked up to a sitting position, and Alyssia sat bolt upright, but her face was lax, as if she were asleep.

“Hon?” he whispered.

She peered at him as if he were out of focus.

He asked, “Did I wake you?”

“No,” she said in a faded murmur.

“Seen our boy again?”

“Did I?”

“But you know he’s fine?” Barry asked.

“I think so. Barry, they’ve got me so doped up I can’t tell what’s happening.”

“Your other doctor” —he couldn’t bring himself to mention the consultant’s specialty”—explained that the birth was extremely traumatic. He prescribed medication for that, and also for your, uhh, breathing difficulty.”

“I can’t feel or think. It’s like my brain is wrapped in long strands of horrible gray pasta….” Her voice faded entirely.

“Why don’t you get some sleep,” he said, retreating.

When he visited the following morning, she stared blankly at him, without recognition.

“Hi, hon,” he said.

She closed her eyes.

Juanita hovered outside the door, her worry showing on her broad, pitted face.

“Did she know you, Mr. Cordiner?”

“She didn’t, uhh, pay much attention.”

“She’s been out of it all morning. Never saying a word. These pills they’re pushing into her—they’re no good.”

“Since when are you a medical expert?” He spoke vehemently because of his own fears.

After handing her the flowers—more daffodils—he walked in a dignified pace along the corridor. Downstairs, though, he galloped, racing next door to the house where Fauchery lived and practiced. The dining room served as his waiting room. Every needlepoint chair was occupied, and Barry, under the gaze of a dozen pregnant Tours matrons, banged urgently on the office door.

The doctor, after a glance at the new father’s face, excused himself from his patient.

The minute they were alone, Barry said, “My wife’s overmedicated.” He used his awkwardly accented French in the authoritative tone he put on during story conferences.

To his surprise, the obstetrician agreed.

“My colleague, he has prescribed an antidepressant, a tranquilizer and a new medication that he says has been successful in your country for the relief from the panic.” Fauchery clasped his hands on the desk.

“He would have started the treatment earlier, but there was the infant to consider. Last night Madame Cordiner became extremely agitated about somebody who recently passed away.”

“Yes, my cousin.”

“So he also prescribed Thorazine.”

“Thorazine? Isn’t that for schizophrenia? I’ve heard it’s dangerous.

Especially since he’s using all those other drugs. “

“He believes the medications are necessary for Madame Cordiner.”

Fauchery’s expression indicated that such heroic measures were not his own preference, but the matter being beyond his expertise, he was going along with the specialist whom he had brought in.

“How long should it be before she’s completely well?”

Dr. Fauchery raised his clean, plump hands.

“Dr. Plon, he believes that the deeprootedness of Madame’s symptoms prove her recovery will be slow.”

“Beth? It’s a boy, exactly three kilos—six and a half pounds. He hasn’t got much hair, but what there is looks red.”

“Irving, wake up! Barry has a boy.”

Irving said, “Mazeltovl Barry, give Alyssia and your new son a big kiss from me.”

Beth was back on the line.

“When was he born?”

“A while ago … actually yesterday.”

“And you didn’t call?” she reproached.

“We must talk.”

“Let me go in the other room.” After a minute she was on the line again.

“Poor Irving didn’t get in until a couple of hours ago, and he needs his sleep. Have you phoned Dad? What took you so lone to call?”

“Alyssia’s been … distraught. Beth, it’s worse than before. We’re in dire straits here.”

After a long pause Beth said, “I’m sorry, Barry, but the answer’s still no.” Her voice sounded faraway and regretful.

“You told me you wanted a child; you told me you could never accept a child who didn’t have your genes. This baby fills your specifications.”

“Why are you being so cruel?”

“I’m talking about … adoption.”

“Adoption?”

“Yes, adoption.”

There was a silence.

“What about Alyssia? Does she agree?”

“She’s thinking it over,” Barry lied.

“What … about the baby… ?”

“Alyssia, you can’t manage him right now.”

“It’s all the stuff they’ve got me on.”

“Hon, you’ve been having problems for years, you told me so yourself.

That’s what they’re treating. ” He paused.

“I’m not capable of taking charge of an infant.”

“Juanita.”

“The physical care isn’t what I’m talking about. It’s the responsibility.”

“Juanita’s reliable….”

“She quit a few months ago, hon. If another man comes on the scene, she’ll depart again. Besides, she’s a personal maid, not a nurse. Do you want our son raised by a series of hired nannies?”

Alyssia began panting.

Though this attack had none of the stridency of her previous struggles for air, her expression of dazed terror made it far more unnerving.

After summoning Juanita, who was waiting in the hall, he went into the tiny parlor-nursery.

The white-coiffed Alsatian nun placidly continued her embroidery. He stood over the antique brass cradle with its elaborate festoons of Valenciennes lace. The cradle accused him. Alyssia, before the birth and despite her precarious mental and physical state, had insisted on leaving the clinic to lovingly select baby furniture and an extensive hand-stitched yellow and white layette.

The baby was awake. The frown lines in his forehead reached to the pale, reddish fuzz. With jerky lack of coordination he rubbed the back of his curled fingers at his unfocused blue eyes.

Barry felt love aching painfully inside his throat and chest. His previous fantasies were nothing compared to the overwhelming emotional attachment he felt for this tiny scrap of humanity. He’s all that matters, Barry thought. Alyssia and I must be the worst set of parents since the Borgias, and I mustn’t let my squeamishness about pressing her interfere with what’s best for him.

When he returned to Alyssia’s room, she was pale and limp, but breathing normally.

“Hon, there’s no other choice. In this type of thing, the sooner the better. We have to let Beth take over.”

She stared dully at him.

“Beth?”

“He needs her.”

“I’m not following you,” she murmured.

“It’s all this junk in me.”

“Beth is instinctively responsible. She’s kind and loving, a true mensch of a person. She has every qualification to be an outstanding parent.”

“Clarrie,” Alyssia whispered, a spark in her glazed eyes telling him that someplace behind the pharmaceutical fog dwelt the old, spirited “Beth did the best she could with Clarrie, under the circumstances.”

“How long … will Beth look after him?”

“Uhh, permanently.”

“You mean, adopt him?”

“It’s the only way.”

Alyssia half rose up.

“Never!” she cried, then fell back in the pillow, turning her head away from him.

“Listen to me. What sort of life can we give him, you and I? To put it brutally, I’m an alcoholic and you’re in a highly questionable mental state. It’s not how we feel that counts, it’s what’s right for him.”

“I can’t lose everything….” Alyssia whispered.

“First Hap, then my baby….”

“Hon, I never thought I’d love him so much.” Barry’s voice shook with emotion.

Then, steeling himself, he went to the escritoire for a sheet of the clinic notepaper.

He knew nothing of the legalities involved in giving up a child for adoption, and doubtless the Napoleonic Code differed vastly from the laws of the state of California. He did, however, know his wife.

She kept her contracts.

He wrote with careful legibility:

We, Barry Cordiner and Alyssia del Mar Cordiner, do hereby agree to surrender our male infant to Elizabeth Cordiner Gold and Irving Gold in order that they might adopt him. We will not make ourselves known to said male child, or make any claims on him.

May 5, 1980.

He returned to the bed.

“Hon, write your name here,” he said gently.

“Never….”

Tears were rolling from Alyssia’s eyes, but she showed no other sign that she was weeping. Her face didn’t crinkle, she made no sound. Just those tears runneling d-jwn her cheeks.

He set his informal adoption paper on the nightstand.

“When you think it through, hon,” he said quietly, “you’ll see there’s no other choice.”

“Where’s the paper?” Barry asked when he returned at dusk.

Alyssia, who hadn’t greeted him, didn’t reply. He wondered if she were playing a silent game with him or if she were heavily drugged. It wasn’t important. All that mattered, he told himself, was their son.

He fished the quasi legal document from the nightstand drawer, holding it in front of her face.

“Have you decided about this?”

She closed her eyes.

“The maternity clinic’s responsible for him now. But what about when you leave?”

She turned her head.

“Alice, I ain’t letting you do it.”

Barry had left a few minutes earlier, and they were in the baby’s room, Alyssia sitting next to the cradle in the chair vacated by the Alsatian nun, who was downstairs eating dinner with the staff.

“I’m just trying to think it through,” she said in a low, Hat voice that sounded computerized.

“Beth’s good, decent. She knows all the right things to do … she’ll teach him the college kind of things.”

“You’re worth more’n all of them Cordiners put together.”

Alyssia rocked the cradle gently.

“You’ll be better soon,” Juanita argued.

“I know you’re all stoned now, but you mustn’t let Barry wheedle you around the way he always done.”

“Maybe he’s right, Nita … I’m a mess.”

“They’ve turned you into a zombie. You can’t make a decision now.”

The baby waved his fists.

“Look at how sweet he is,” Juanita said.

“Here.”

She lifted the child, setting him in Alyssia’s arms. Alyssia snuggled him closer, resting her cheek against his head.

Juanita said, “You mustn’t even think about giving him up.”

Suddenly Alyssia tensed, giving a soft gasp, and the baby slipped onto her lap. He inhaled for a scream, turning crimson. Juanita took him, soothing him.

Alyssia, gasping for air, returned unsteadily to the bedroom.

When Barry had left the clinic, he walked along the quiet, tree-lined streets without a goal in mind. The sky grew completely dark, and he found himself again in front of the vine-covered house. He halted, staring up at the dim yellow glow coming through the curtains of the second-floor suite. Torn between his desire to give his son the best possible life and his self-loathing at pressing his sorely beset wife, he had reached the limit of his self-control.