Life Among the Savages (7 page)

Jannie sat down in the middle of the floor and began to take off her sandals. “Something in my shoe,” she told me. “Wait a minute, boys, till I get my shoe fixed.”

“Get into a safe place,” Laurie shouted at her, “you want to get killed, woman?”

“Bang,” Jannie said, aiming her water pistol at him. “Bang,” she said, at Stuart, and “Bang” at Robert. “I killed you all three,” she said. “Now I can fix my shoe.”

Laurie began to inch out from behind the chair until he was standing free of it. “Reach,” he said suddenly. “Drop them guns.”

Obediently, Stuart and Robert dropped their guns and raised their hands. Laurie walked over, gun ready, and frisked them both. Then he shot them. They both fell, dying fearfully. Robert raised himself on one elbow and said, “Joe, Joe.”

“What, Joe?” Laurie said, turning.

“Get the guys that did this, Joe,” Robert said.

“I shore will, Joe,” Laurie said. He turned thoughtfully and shot Jannie, who looked up, surprised. “I said I was fixing my
shoe,”
she said irritably.

“Y'got it anyway,” Laurie said.

“Okay,” said Jannie. She fell obligingly over onto her side and went on putting on her shoe that way.

“Well,” I said, applauding again, “this has certainly been an exciting—”

“Listen,” Laurie said earnestly, “this is only our
practice.
You're only seeing the
practice,
so far.”

“We're going to do a real play when we finish our
practice,”
Stuart confirmed.

“Reach,” Laurie said to him.

“I won't,” Stuart said pettishly. “Why do
I
always have to be the guy that reaches?”

“Keep them hands up,” Laurie ordered. Robert stole up behind him and put a gun into his back.
“You
reach,” Robert said.

Laurie dropped his gun and Stuart picked it up. Robert shot Stuart and Laurie and they both fell groaning.

“Who's the good guy,” Stuart asked suddenly. “I forget.”

“I'm Gene Autry,” Laurie said.

“I'm Roy Rogers,” Robert said.

“I'm
the good guy, then,” Stuart said with satisfaction. “Reach.”

Stuart shot Robert and Laurie

“Listen,” Laurie said from the floor, “we don't die right. We ought to roll more.”

“Sometimes we ought to get dragged by our horses,” Robert added.

“Reach!” Jannie said suddenly. Stunned, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Hopalong Cassidy turned; Jannie had them all covered with her water pistol.

“It's a
dame,”
Stuart said.

“A cowgirl,” Robert amplified.

“It's Jesse James,” Laurie said. “Now you must shoot us all, Jan.”

“Bang, bang, bang,” Jannie said, and the heroes fell, rolled, goaned, and were even dragged a little by their horses.

While they were still groaning I stole away, back into the kitchen, where I poured four glasses full of fruit juice and put cookies on a plate. When I came back into the living room the actors were dusting themselves off.

“That was a great show,” I said.

“We'll do a
real
one tomorrow,” Laurie said. Then his face fell. “I forgot,” he said.

I thought briefly and comfortably of the quiet mornings, the long lovely afternoons, the early bedtimes. “Well,” I said, with immense heartiness, “it will be summer again before we all know it.”

 

 

 

“A WHAT?” said Jannie.

“What
for?”
said Laurie.

 

 

 

EVERYONE ALWAYS SAYS the third baby is the easiest one to have, and now I know why. It's the easiest because it's the funniest, because you've been there twice, and you know. You know, for instance, how you're going to look in a maternity dress about the seventh month, and you know how to release the footbrake on a baby carriage without fumbling amateurishly, and you know how to tie your shoes before and do knee-chests after, and while you're not exactly casual, you're a little bit off-hand about the whole thing. Sentimental people keep insisting that women go on to have a third baby because they love babies, and cynical people seem to maintain that a woman with two healthy, active children around the house will do
any
thing for ten quiet days in the hospital; my own position is somewhere between the two, but I acknowledge that it leans toward the latter.

Because it
was
my third I was spared a lot of unnecessary discomfort. No one sent us any dainty pink sweaters, for instance. We received only one pair of booties, and those were a pair of rosebud-covered white ones that someone had sent Laurie when he was born and which I had given, still in their original pink tissue paper, to a friend when
her
first child was born; she had subsequently sent them to her cousin in Texas for a second baby and the cousin sent them back East on the occasion of a mutual friend's twins; the mutual friend gave them to me, with a card saying “Love to Baby” and the pink tissue paper hardly ruffled. I set them carefully aside, because I knew someone who was having a baby in June.

I borrowed back my baby carriage from my next-door neighbor, took the crib down out of the attic, washed my way through the chest of baby shirts and woolen shawls, briefed the incumbent children far enough ahead of time, and spent a loving and painstaking month packing my suitcase. This time I knew exactly what I was taking with me to the hospital, but assembling it took time and eventually required an emergency trip to the nearest metropolis. I packed it, though, finally: a yellow nightgown trimmed with lace, a white nightgown that tied at the throat with a blue bow, two of the fanciest bed-jackets I could find—that was what I went to the city for——and then, two pounds of homemade fudge, as many mystery stories as I could cram in, and a bag of apples. Almost at the last minute I added a box of pralines, a bottle of expensive cologne, and my toothbrush. I have heard of people who take their own satin sheets to the hospital, but that has always seemed to me a waste of good suitcase space.

My doctor was very pleasant and my friends were very thoughtful; for the last two weeks before I went to the hospital almost everyone I know called me almost once a day and said “Haven't you gone
yet?”
My mother- and father-in-law settled on a weekend to visit us when, according to the best astronomical figuring, I should have had a two-week-old baby ready to show them; they arrived, were entertained with some restraint on my part, and left, eyeing me with disfavor and some suspicion. My mother sent me a telegram from California saying “Is everything all right? Shall I come? Where is baby?” My children were sullen, my husband was embarrassed.

Everything was, as I say, perfectly normal, up to and including the frightful moment when I leaped out of bed at two in the morning as though there had been a pea under the mattress; when I turned on the light my husband said sleepily, “Having baby?”

“I really don't know,” I said nervously. I was looking for the clock, which I hide at night so that in the morning when the alarm rings I will have to wake up looking for it. It was hard to find without the alarm ringing.

“Shall I wake up?” my husband asked without any sign of pleased anticipation.

“I can't find the
clock,”
I said.

“Clock?” my husband said. “Clock. Wake me five minutes apart.”

I unlocked the suitcase, took out a mystery story, and sat down in the armchair with a blanket over me. After a few minutes, Ninki, who usually sleeps on the foot of Laurie's bed, wandered in and settled down on a corner of the blanket by my feet. She slept as peacefully as my husband did most of the night, except that now and then she raised her head to regard me with a look of silent contempt.

Because the hospital is five miles from our house I had an uneasy feeling that I ought to allow plenty of time, particularly since neither of us had ever learned to drive and consequently I had to call our local taxi to take me to the hospital. At seven-thirty I called my doctor and we chatted agreeably for a few minutes, and I said I would just give the children their breakfast and wash up the dishes and then run over to the hospital, and he said that would be just fine and he'd plan to meet me later, then; the unspoken conviction between us was that I ought to be back in the fields before sundown.

I went into the kitchen and proceeded methodically to work, humming cheerfully and stopping occasionally to grab the back of a chair and hold my breath. My husband told me later that he found his cup and saucer (the one with “Father” written on it) in the oven, but I am inclined to believe that he was too upset to be a completely reliable informant. My own recollection is of doing everything the way I have a thousand times before—school-morning short cuts so familiar that I am hardly aware, usually, of doing them at all. The frying pan, for instance. My single immediate objective was a cup of coffee, and I decided to heat up the coffee left from the night before, rather than taking the time to make fresh; it seemed brilliantly logical to heat it in the frying pan because anyone knows that a broad shallow container will heat liquid faster than a tall narrow one like the coffeepot. I will not try to deny, however, that it
looked
funny.

By the time the children came down everything seemed to be moving along handsomely; Laurie grimly got two glasses and filled them with fruit juice for Jannie and himself. He offered me one, but I had no desire to eat, or in fact to do anything which might upset my precarious balance between two and three children, or to interrupt my morning's work for more than coffee, which I was still doggedly making in the frying pan. My husband came downstairs, sat in his usual place, said good-morning to the children, accepted the glass of fruit juice Laurie poured for him, and asked me brightly, “How do you feel?”

“Splendid,” I said, making an enormous smile for all of them. “I'm doing wonderfully well.”

“Good,” he said. “How soon do you think we ought to leave?”

“Around noon, probably,” I said. “Everything is fine, really.”

My husband asked politely, “May I help you with breakfast?”

“No, indeed,” I said. I stopped to catch my breath and smiled reassuringly. “I feel so well,” I said.

“Would you be offended,” he said, still very politely, “if I took this egg out of my glass?”

“Certainly not,” I said. “I'm sorry; I can't think how it got there.”

“It's nothing at all,” my husband said. “I was just thirsty.”

They were all staring at me oddly, and I kept giving them my reassuring smile; I
did
feel spendid; my months of waiting were nearly over, my careful preparations had finally been brought to a purpose, tomorrow I would be wearing my yellow nightgown. “I'm so pleased,” I said.

I was slightly dizzy, perhaps. And there
were
pains, but they were authentic ones, not the feeble imitations I had been dreaming up the past few weeks. I patted Laurie on the head. “Well,” I said, in the tone I had used perhaps five hundred times in the last months, “Well, do we want a little boy or a little boy?”

“Won't you sit down?” my husband said. He had the air of a man who expects that an explanation will somehow be given him for a series of extraordinary events in which he is unwillingly involved. “I think you ought to sit down,” he added urgently.

It was about then that I realized that he was right. I ought to sit down. As a matter of fact, I ought to go to the hospital right now, immediately. I dropped my reassuring smile and the fork I had been carrying around with me.

“I'd better hurry,” I said inadequately.

My husband called the taxi and brought down my suitcase. The children were going to stay with friends, and one of the things we had planned to do was drop them off on our way to the hospital; now, however, I felt vitally that I had not the time. I began to talk fast.

“You'll have to take care of the children,” I told my husband. “See that . . .” I stopped. I remember thinking with incredible clarity and speed. “See that they finish their breakfast,” I said. Pajamas on the line, I thought, school, cats, toothbrushes. Milkman. Overalls to be mended, laundry. “I ought to make a list,” I said vaguely. “Leave a note for the milkman tomorrow night. Soap, too. We need soap.”

“Yes, dear,” my husband kept saying. “Yes dear yes dear.”

The taxi arrived and suddenly I was saying goodbye to the children. “See you later,” Laurie said casually. “Have a good time.”

“Bring me a present,” Jannie added.

“Don't worry about a thing,” my husband said.

“Now, don't you sorry,” I told him. “There's nothing to worry about.”

“Everything will be
fine,”
he said. “Don't worry.”

I waited for a good moment and then scrambled into the taxi without grace; I did not dare risk my reassuring smile on the taxi driver but I nodded to him briskly.

“I'll be with you in an hour,” my husband said nervously. “And don't worry.”

“Everything will be
fine,”
I said. “Don't worry.”

“Nothing to worry about,” the taxi driver said to my husband, and we started off, my husband standing on the lawn wringing his hands and the taxi tacking insanely from side to side of the road to avoid even the slightest bump.

I sat very still in the back seat, trying not to breathe. I had one arm lovingly around my suitcase, which held my yellow nightgown, and I tried to light a cigarette without using any muscles except those in my hands and my neck and still not let go of my suitcase.