The Amateur Marriage (6 page)

They were such a perfect couple. They were taking their very first steps on the amazing journey of marriage, and wonderful adventures were about to unfold in front of them.

2. Dandelion Clock

Pauline said, “Once upon a time, there was a woman who had a birthday.”

Michael stopped pouring his cereal and looked across the table at her.

“It was January fifth,” Pauline said. “The woman was twenty-three.”

“Why, that’s
your
birthday, too!” Michael’s mother told her. “That’s how old
you
turned, only yesterday!”

“And because this woman happened to be at a low point in her life,” Pauline went on, “she was feeling very sensitive about her age.”

Michael said, cautiously, “A low point in her life?”

Pauline rose to reposition the baby in her high chair. The baby had reached the stage where she could sit up, but just barely. Left on her own, she tended to slide gradually downwards until her chin was resting on her chest.

“Yes, she wasn’t awfully attractive just then,” Pauline said, taking her seat again. “She was two months pregnant and sick as a dog, and she still hadn’t got her figure back from the
last
time she was pregnant. Also, her husband was a quarter-year younger than she was. For three months after every birthday, she was an Older Woman. Can you imagine how that felt? She was old and fat and ugly, and her bosom was starting to sag.”

Pauline herself was prettier than ever, in Michael’s opinion. This early in the morning, unrouged and unlipsticked, wearing a flowered chintz housecoat, she looked as fresh as a child. The second pregnancy had not begun to show yet, whatever she might imagine, and the only apparent effect of the first was the thrilling new roundness and weightiness of her breasts. Michael could almost feel them filling his hands as she spoke. He smiled; he tried to catch her eye. But Pauline was saying, “More coffee, Mother Anton?”

“No, thank you, dear. You know what it does to my stomach,” Michael’s mother said.

“Luckily for this woman,” Pauline continued, “her husband was very understanding. He hated for her to feel bad! He decided he would devote himself to making her birthday perfect.”

Michael stirred uneasily. He had certainly not
forgotten
her birthday—nothing so unforgivable as that—but neither could he say he had devoted himself to making it perfect. (It had fallen on a weekday this year. He did have a business to run.)

“He got up in the morning,” Pauline said, “he tiptoed out to the kitchen, he fixed her French toast and orange juice. He came back with a tray and said, ‘Happy birthday, darling!’ Then he brought her the flowers that he’d stowed earlier on the fire escape. A dozen long-stemmed roses; never mind the expense. ‘You’re worth every bit of it, darling,’ he said. ‘I just wish they could be rubies.’”

Pauline was bright-eyed and her voice had a cheery ring to it, so that Michael’s mother was fooled completely. She gave a sigh of satisfaction. “Wasn’t that romantic!” she told Michael. (Since those two dizzy spells last summer, she had seemed less quick-witted.) But Michael watched Pauline in silence, his fingers tight on his napkin.

“And her present,” Pauline said, “was . . .”

For the first time, she faltered. She turned to untie the baby’s bib.

“. . . was something personal,” she said finally. “A bottle of cologne, or a see-through nightie. He would never give her anything useful! And he’d never just tell her to buy it herself! He’d never say, ‘Happy birthday, hon, and why don’t you stop by Zack’s Housewares and pick up one of those family-size canning kettles you’ve been telling me you needed.’”

Michael felt his mother send him an uncertain glance. She said, “Oh. Well . . .”

“But what am I boring
you
with this for?” Pauline caroled. “It’s not as if we live that way ourselves, now, is it?”

And she sprang lightly to her feet and lifted Lindy from the high chair and carried her out of the kitchen.

Downstairs in the grocery store, Michael slit open a cardboard carton and unpacked tins of peaches. He stacked them on a shelf above a tab that read 17¢—18
POINTS
. In his head he was defending himself. “Was I supposed to read your mind, or what?” he silently asked Pauline. “How would I know what you want for your birthday? I’m twenty-two years old! The only woman I’ve ever bought a gift for is my mother! And Mama’s always loved getting presents that were useful!”

He recalled the moment when the inspiration of the canning kettle had hit him—the flood of relief as he remembered Pauline’s complaints about his mother’s little dinky one. He had been so proud of himself! Now a wounded feeling swept through him.

And notice how she had said nothing about her birthday cake. Chocolate cake, with chocolate icing spread not just across the top (“flat top” style, as the Ration Board called it) but down the sides as well. Who did she imagine had asked his mother to make that cake? Left to her own devices, his mother probably wouldn’t have remembered what day it was, even.

Eustace emerged from the stockroom, toting a crate of eggs. He set it down by the refrigerator case and straightened, groaning, to massage the small of his back. “Must be going to snow,” he said, “achy as my bones has been.”

“Yup, my hip says the same,” Michael told him.

“You got them items ready for Miz Pozniak?”

“They’re over by the register.”

Eustace went to check. The groceries were in a canvas sack of the sort that newsboys carried, with a strap that crossed the chest bandolier-fashion. (Eustace was too old, he claimed, to learn to ride the delivery bike with its oversized wire basket that Michael had used as a boy.) He heaved the sack onto his shoulder and approached the door just as Mrs. Serge walked in. “Morning, Eustace! Morning, Michael!” she said, stepping to one side so Eustace could pass.

“Good morning, Mrs. Serge,” Michael said. He rose from the carton of peaches and reached for his cane. “Cold enough for you?”

“Oh, yes. My, yes,” she said, and she clutched her coat collar more tightly around her throat. In fact, coming from just next door she must have barely had time to feel the cold. But people seemed to expect this kind of small talk, Michael had found. “How’s your mama?” she asked him. “How’s Pauline? How’s that darlin’ Lindy?”

“They’re all fine. What do you hear from Joey?”

“He’s coming home on leave tomorrow afternoon.”

“That’s wonderful!”

“Yes, so I’ll need some tinned milk, because I want to fix him some ice cream.”

“Tinned milk,” Michael said, and he turned back to the shelves. “One can, or two?”

“Better make it two. You must think I’m crazy, doing this in January.”

“No, ma’am,” Michael said. “I know how Joey loves ice cream.” He set the cans on the counter. “Anything else?”

“Well, let’s see. A box of gelatin, and I might as well get some vanilla extract just to play it safe . . . Did Pauline try that ginger tea I was telling her about?”

“I’m not sure,” Michael said.

“A quarter-teaspoon of powdered ginger in half a cup of hot water, I told her. Sip it real slow before breakfast. I did that every morning back when I was expecting Joey and it worked just like a charm.”

“I’ll make her some tomorrow,” Michael said.

“Poor thing. Skinny as
she
is, she can’t afford to stop eating.”

“No, it’s been hard on her,” Michael agreed.

Although later, when Mrs. Serge had left, he added to himself, “And she’s not the only one it’s been hard on.”

Well, he knew he shouldn’t complain. How would
he
behave, if he couldn’t keep a morsel of food down? Plus pregnancy in general, all those female troubles.

He wasn’t certain, though, how much of Pauline’s moodiness was due to pregnancy and how much just, well, things going wrong between the two of them. Oh, women were so mystifying! And he was so inexperienced! “What did I say? What did I do? What
was
it?” he always seemed to be asking. Did other men have this problem? Was there anyone he could discuss this with? If he somehow had the right words—the right touch, the proper instincts—would his wife be a happier person?

She’d been a constitutionally happy person when they met, he believed. Pauline with her soft dimples and her liquid, chuckly laugh! She had slipped her hand into his so trustfully the first time they went on a date—her slim fingers, impossibly smooth, nestling into the cup of his palm when he had assumed it would be weeks before he could hope they would get so familiar. He had felt himself expanding with the sense of responsibility. He had wished for something dangerous—a bully, a runaway car—so that he could protect her.

But then he’d made some mistakes. He was willing to admit that. The time he asked her to meet him at the Kowalskis’ party, for instance, instead of calling for her and escorting her, just to spare his mother’s feelings. That was wrong, wrong, wrong, and Pauline had been perfectly right not to show up. He’d realized that almost at once—had had a sudden, disturbing view of himself as a mama’s boy, a coward, and run all the way to her house and rung her doorbell and begged Mr. Barclay to fetch her so that he could apologize and persuade her to come back with him. But then later that same evening, when his mother had crumpled up in a faint—well, what was he to do? He couldn’t just ignore her! So Pauline had disappeared, vanished into the night, and he’d had to go to her house all over again and bother Mr. Barclay again (now in bathrobe and pajamas) only to be turned away. “Sorry, son, afraid she’s not accepting visitors at the moment.” Not at that moment and not the next day, when Mrs. Barclay had stepped in to offer one excuse after the other. Pauline was still asleep; then she was indisposed; then, “I guess it’s best to stop calling, dear,” or something of the sort, some statement to that effect. With all the many times since that he’d stood on the Barclays’ front porch, these scenes tended to blur together in his mind.

But he knew that on his deathbed, the last, best memory he would cling to would be the sight of Pauline in her red coat, flying down Aliceanna Street to see him off to war. Wasn’t that worth all the rest? Every other edgy, imperfect, exasperating moment of their marriage?

Mrs. Piazy came in wanting Spam and a box of elbow macaroni. “I’m serving this new recipe for supper,” she told Michael. “I cut it out of a magazine. How’s Pauline feeling today?”

“Still not so good,” he said.

“Has she tried saltine crackers? That’s what I used to do. She should eat six or eight as soon as she wakes up, and more any time she feels queasy.”

“I’ll tell her, Mrs. Piazy. Thanks.”

“And stop that worrying, Michael. You can’t fool me! I see that long face! I know how you fret about her! But take my word, she’ll be fine. Just fine.”

“Well, thank you, Mrs. Piazy.”

“You two are so precious together,” she said.

And she gave a fond, indulgent smile as she dug in her bag for her change purse.

At noon he went looking for Eustace, who had finished all his deliveries and was hidden away in the dimness of the stockroom. “Eustace?” he called. “You there?”

“I’m here.”

“Guess I’ll be going to lunch now.”

“Okay, then,” Eustace said, and he struggled up from behind a pickle barrel, a half-eaten sandwich of homemade bread clutched in one gnarled hand.

Michael said, “Oh. You want me to wait till you finish that?”

“No, sir. You just go on now.”

What Michael had meant to say was that he preferred for Eustace not to eat in front of customers—something he himself wouldn’t do. But he wasn’t sure how to put it. The fact was, he felt uncomfortable bossing around an employee. Before the war they’d never had an employee. But first with his enlisting, and then his mother’s health, and Pauline so tied up with the baby . . .

He continued through the stockroom and climbed the stairs at the rear, relying on the handrail instead of his cane for support. Not that he needed much support anymore. His limp had become just a hitch in his step, a side-to-side motion as he swung the one leg forward, and he was sheepishly aware that he used the cane primarily to fend off strangers’ questions about why he wasn’t in uniform.

Pauline said that was silly of him. “What do you care what people think?” she would ask. “You and I know the truth of the matter.”

In many ways, Pauline was a much stronger person than he was.

His mother was already seated at the kitchen table while Pauline stood at the stove, the baby astride her waist, and stirred a saucepan of soup. “Hi, there,” Michael said, and his mother said, “Hello, dear,” but Pauline was silent. He pretended not to notice. He said, “Lindy-Lou!” and reached for the baby, and Pauline let go of her so carelessly and abruptly that Michael almost dropped her. He sank into a chair with her, holding her compact little body close against his rib cage. “Daddy’s here,” he told her. “Say, ‘Daddy! Welcome home! I’ve been pining for you all morning!’”

Lindy studied his lips intently. She was a solemn, focused sort of baby, with Michael’s black hair and straight features. Her eyes were a shade of slate that would probably turn brown like his as she grew older, and already she had his thin hands and long, thin fingers. Was it only her resemblance to him that made him feel so connected to her? He had always just assumed that he would have children, the way he’d assumed he would have a wife and maybe someday an automobile, but he had never imagined that a child could tug on his heart so.

His mother was relating a recent run-in with Leo Kazmerow. “He takes his duties too seriously,” she said. “An air raid warden’s not God. Leave one little light on during a drill and ‘Mrs. Anton,’ he says, ‘how would you feel if Baltimore got bombed clear off the map and you were the household responsible?’”

“It’s all because he’s 4-F,” Pauline told her. “He thinks he has to make up for it.”