Family Happiness (31 page)

“Here I am,” said Polly.

“I brought you a little present,” Lincoln said. “Put it on.” It was a gold medallion of a cupid on a chain made of woven silk.

“I have something else to show you,” Lincoln said. “It's your portrait.”

He pulled it out from behind a stack of canvases. It was based on the drawings in his sketch book. There she was, in her gray skirt and sweater, standing in a doorway as if just about to enter the room. In the room was a flock of animals—a lamb, a tiger, a mouse, a gray-and-white terrier, a long-haired tabby cat, an owl, and a fox. There was a large bowl of poppies next to a fireplace. Lincoln had added two babies with curly hair, sitting in a basket with their arms around each other. The light in the room was greenish yellow, like the light before a storm.

“I finished it a while ago,” Lincoln said. “It's yours but I want to keep it here.”

Tears sprang into Polly's eyes.

“I have nothing to give you,” she said.

“You give me yourself,” Lincoln said. “That's quite enough.”

Sixteen

Early Sunday morning Wendy called, waking Polly to tell her that Beate had gone into labor.

“How lovely for her,” Polly said sleepily.

“I'm all in a dither,” said Wendy, whose usually firm, decided voice sounded rattled and uncertain.

“Calm down, Mum,” yawned Polly. “You've had grandchildren before.”

“Well, come to breakfast early,” Wendy said. “I'm quite frazzled.”

Polly sank back into the pillows. She had no intention of going early to her parents'. Although Wendy didn't say it, the fact was plain: Polly having a baby and Paul's wife having a baby were not the same thing at all. If I had sixty babies, Polly thought, and Paul had a baby the size of a walnut, his would be more sublime in every way.

She yawned again; Today she had actually set the morning aside for herself. Henry was in the kitchen making coffee and giving the children their pancakes. Polly was worn out. In addition to everything else—everything else being Lincoln and Henry—the spring report was now printed, bound, and had been presented to the Board of Education. It had been a considerable job, and, for the first time, Polly had made it known. The children had actually tiptoed around her when she worked at her desk, and Henry got out of bed every morning and made the coffee.

She sent Henry and the children on ahead to breakfast, reminding them to stop at the bakery for Henry, Sr.'s Swiss peasant bread and Wendy's
pain au chocolat
. For the first time in living memory, Polly was going to be late.

When she arrived the mood was official. The subject of birth was in the air, and Wendy was clearly displeased with Polly, whom she allowed to peck her cheek. Henry, Sr., seemed not fully present. He wore the expression of someone meditating on art, or justice, or freedom.

Wendy was telling the table at large at what time Beate had actually gone into labor.

“Do we have to talk about this?” Henry, Jr., said. “I think it's disgusting.”

“It isn't disgusting, you silly ape,” Polly said. “You saw me in the hospital after Pete and Dee-Dee. Did that look disgusting?”

“Those were
babies
,” Henry, Jr., said. “I mean all the gore and blood and screaming before the babies.”

“It isn't like that,” Polly said. “Is it, Mum?”

“I'm afraid I don't remember,” said Wendy. “I had you all in twilight sleep.”

“What is twilight sleep?” Andreya asked.

“Oh, a lovely sort of half haze they used to put you in,” Wendy said. “It was the fashion at the time. It made everything look rather bluish. Perhaps that was the color of the delivery room. All I can remember from each of your births was that heavenly Dr. Marshammer smiling at me.”

“Dr. Faulhaber,” Polly said.

“Now how do you remember that?” Wendy said.

“Because his granddaughter Linda is our pediatrician,” Polly said.

“Is she? I never put the two together, since I always thought of him as Dr. Marshammer and her as Dr. Faulhaber,” Wendy said. “The birth itself, Andreya dear, seemed rather unworldly in twilight sleep, not like all this natural childbirth, which always seems to me so rugged.”

“It's wonderful,” said Polly.

“I thought it was wonderful, too,” Henry Demarest said. “I saw the whole thing.”

“Geez, that's really disgusting,” said Henry, Jr.

“When my brother was born at home,” Andreya said, “the nurse brought the
Nachgeburt
—this is the afterbirth—in on a white porcelain dish.”

“Can't we talk about something else?” Henry, Jr., said.

“If you can't stand it, go into the library and wait for Pete and Dee-Dee to come and play with you,” Polly said.

“I don't think certain things are
quite
table talk,” Wendy said.

“
Nachgeburt
,” said Henry, Jr.

“I
am
worried. I hope all that placid Swiss birth-environment thing they feel so strongly about works out,” said Wendy.

“Oh, for goodness' sake,” said Polly. “Having babies in the ordinary way is good enough for most people.”

“Polly,” said Wendy, “be more patient.”

“Mother, I don't think you know how often and how persistently the subject of this placid-birth nonsense comes up. This whole thing has the effect of trying to make me think I had my babies all wrong. And you go along with it!”

“Darling,” said Wendy, “she's much older.”

“So what?” said Polly. “The night before Pete was born we had ten people for dinner, and the day before Dee-Dee was born I went to help you go shopping, for upholstery fabric, remember?”

Pete and Dee-Dee, meanwhile, had begun to fidget, and were excused from the table.

“You can tell they never had a placid birth environment,” said Henry Demarest.

“I think it's snooty of Beate and Paul not to come to dinner, and not to go with us to a restaurant, for fear of poisoning their little twins. I think they're pious and preachy and very silly,” Polly said.

“I didn't know you felt that way, Polly,” said Wendy.

“Yes, you did,” Polly said. “We talked about this once before. You know exactly how I feel.”

“Aw, come on, Pol,” said Henry, Jr.

“Listen, Henry,” said Polly. “You probably won't even be required to go to the hospital to visit. You won't have to show up with an expensive baby blanket. You don't have to do anything, but I will have to sit around and listen to Paul and Beate tell me how superior the birth of their children was to the sloppy, noisy, incorrect birth of mine. I'll have to hear how the champagne I drank while I was pregnant will turn Pete into a bank robber or Dee-Dee into an unwed mother. You don't have to put up with this and you aren't expected to, but I am, and I'm awfully tired of it.”

The horizonal look of disapproval flickered through Henry, Sr.'s eyes. He did not approve of bickering at the table. He did not approve of dissension of any sort.

“I'm sure you'll do what's proper to do,” he intoned.

“I'm not so sure I will,” said Polly, building a sandwich. “Somebody pass me the capers.”

Nothing more was said, but Polly knew what was to come. Wendy would be icy cold for several days, and then Polly would receive a lecture. Wendy did not believe in sibling rivalry or favoritism, for all she practiced it. If Polly did not knuckle under, she would be asked out to lunch by her father, who would further lecture her. The family would be in a minor uproar. The idea of these lectures and this commotion had kept Polly nicely in line. Now she did not seem to care. She had no intention of listening to anyone's lectures, and she was not going to buy an expensive pair of baby blankets. She would doubtless end up baking a cake or taking a covered dish to Paul and Beate—that was the proper thing to do—but at the first mention of birth environments, she was going home.

As they sat drinking coffee, the telephone rang. It was Paul to announce that the Solo-Miller twins had been born, a boy and a girl. They would be called Matilda Zoë and Paul Heinrich. The little girl would be called Zoë and the boy Henry so as not to have two Pauls in one household.

At this news Wendy touched her eyes with her napkin. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” she said, and seemed quite overcome with emotion.

Polly thought of Pete and Dee-Dee upstairs. Their grandparents doted upon them, but they had not doted upon Polly for producing such fine children. Whereas Paul—well, Paul had provided them with a priceless treasure. After all, daughters are expected to provide their parents with grandchildren. And Paul had always been so odd and unmarried that it made the event twice as wonderful. Polly looked at her mother. There was nothing you could do with Wendy, Polly realized, but she did not have to honor Wendy's feelings, especially when they hurt
her
feelings.

“Oh, come on, Mum,” she said. “It's just another pair of grandchildren. Besides, another Henry will give us all a lot of confusion to cope with.”

Wendy wiped her eyes. “I'm afraid I'm overwhelmed by the idea of having a grandchild called Zoë,” she said. “I don't like an exotic name.”

Meanwhile, Henry, Sr., reported, Paul had given specific orders. To ensure continuance of the placid birth environment, Beate would not see visitors at the hospital, nor would she see them for the first two weeks at home.

“According to their Dr. Ping,” said Henry, Sr., “the babies must be kept in a softly lit room, with soft music, and wrapped in soft cotton blankets, I think Paul said.”

“Maybe they should keep them in the fridge,” said Henry, Jr.

“I think it sounds very intelligent,” said Henry, Sr., who thought Paul was a normal person.

“I think it sounds very boring for the babies,” said Henry Demarest.

Polly had stopped thinking about Beate's placid birth. She was thinking about Lincoln. They had arranged not to see each other on Sundays, since it put too much of a strain on Polly, who was running out of reading seminars.

She looked around the table. She smiled at Henry Demarest and realized that to marry her he had had to take his place at the family table, and he had done so graciously and generously. Perhaps that wall of Solo-Millers had been oppressive to him, yet he had fitted in.

This was her family, her tribe, her flesh. She felt not forced to love them, or condemned to be angry at them, but as if she were merely seeing them. Her place at this table was optional—she did not have to be there if she did not want to. But she did want to. Martha Nathan believed that strife got you from one part of your life to the next. Polly was not sure what her strife had produced. Her heart did not feel light, but free. If you were forced to experience the terrible things in life—loneliness, deprivation, anxiety, the fear that everything is going to be taken away from you—it left you tempered like steel and strong enough to feel anything. She was not going to be her old self and she was going to live with a certain amount of certain discomfort. If you were going to have a love affair you had to endure the fears and trials that went with the job—like a coal miner or a lion tamer.

She felt some new self emerging out of her terrible sorrow, and she did not know what it would be like, but it would be idiosyncratically hers. Her family did not know the secrets of her innermost heart and there was no reason to tell them. Furthermore, they did not deserve to know. If she changed, they would have to change. She was not their old Polly anymore, and never would be again.

It had been arranged that Henry, Jr., and Andreya would take the children kite-flying. Squeals from the study upstairs reminded everyone that breakfast was over, and that it was time to go to the park. Pete and Dee-Dee came bounding down the stairs.

“It's all that champagne you drank during pregnancy,” Henry Demarest said to Polly.

“I'm sure it was the lobster Newburg,” said Polly. “Pete and Dee-Dee. Listen to this. You have two new cousins. Beate and Uncle Paul have had their twins. They're called Zoë and Paul, but Paul will be called Henry.”

“Zoë,” said Pete. “What a dumb name.”

The children did not find this news thrilling. They would have been much more enthralled if Polly had told them that a beagle puppy was coming to live with them.

The children were helped on with their jackets. It was spring, but there was still a slight chill in the air. Off they went—Henry, Jr., and Andreya, Polly and Henry Demarest and the children—to the park.

Henry, Jr., liked a plain, ordinary kite. He bought them at the toy store and made them more aerodynamic at home. He had loaned Henry Demarest his second-best kite—an old army weather kite. Andreya had made herself a box kite out of pink linen, and for each of the children she and Henry, Jr., had bought a Japanese kite—Pete's in the shape of a dragon, and Dee-Dee's in the shape of a fish.

Polly stood on a little rise and watched. I am a fallen woman, she said. I am wearing my husband's grandmother's wedding ring as well as a medallion of a cupid given to me by my illicit lover. She could not help it, but her heart was full of love—for Henry, for Lincoln, for her brother and sister-in-law and parents and for her children.

All the kites went right up. Henry, Jr.'s, being more aerodynamic than the others, went higher. Henry Demarest's sailed up magisterially. Andreya's bobbled up, and then hung sweetly in the sky. Polly thought of Lincoln's kite, which hung on the wall of his studio, black and silver in the shape of a sting ray, with the two mean little red eyes Lincoln had painted on it.

The children's kites zigzagged. The dragon's green tail rattled in the wind and the fish wriggled. At the sight of these jaunty, ornamental kites, Polly's eyes filled with tears. The dragon had been made so that it would swoop, and when it did, Polly felt her heart break open to love and pain, and to the complexity of things.