The Troubled Air (56 page)

O’Neill hesitated. “Will you call me if you need anything?” he asked.

Archer looked gravely at him. Then he said something he was going to regret for a long time. “Just what do you mean by anything?” he asked.

O’Neill took a step back. Then the elevator came and Archer got in and the door slid shut, blotting out O’Neill’s baffled, shamed, rejected face.

H
E SAT IN THE AMBULANCE, GOING UPTOWN. IT WAS DARK BY NOW.
Kitty had said she was feeling better when Archer got home from O’Neill’s office, and the bleeding hadn’t been bad until about six o’clock. The doctor, who hadn’t been able to come in person, had told Archer over the phone that it probably was only false labor and merely to keep Kitty quiet and give her a couple of sleeping pills. But then the bleeding had begun again, and regular pains, although not too severe and not too closely spaced, and Archer had called for the ambulance and phoned the doctor’s office (he was still out) and left word, rather roughly, that they were going to the hospital immediately and that he wanted the doctor to put in an appearance in the next half-hour.

The interior of the ambulance was dim, and Kitty was almost buried under the blankets: The two large, gentle attendants had wrapped her head in a wool scarf, so that only the pale small glimmer of her face, occasionally reflecting the lights of a shop window, could be seen. Archer remembered a black puppy he had had when he was ten years old. His mother, who was a fanatic on the subject of cleanliness, whether for small boys or small dogs, used to wash the puppy in the tub, then wrap him in towels and old blankets, leaving only his mournful, soap-betrayed muzzle sticking out, and put him on a chair to dry. The puppy, Archer remembered, had had distemper later in the summer and had to be killed.

“Really, Clement,” Kitty said, her voice dreamy from the sleeping pills, “we didn’t have to go to the hospital. I feel fine. Really I do. And we didn’t have to take an ambulance. It’s so expensive and here’re so many nicer ways of spending the money.”

“How do you feel, Kitty?”

“Fine. Honest. A little sleepy, that’s all, only I don’t want to sleep. “Clement …”

“Yes?”

“Are we passing red lights?”

“Yes.”

“That’s nice. I know how you always yearn to pass red lights. You’re so impatient.” She chuckled. “You always cheat a little, when you’re driving. You never
quite
wait for them to change. Did you lave dinner?”

“Not yet.”

“You can have dinner at the hospital. You can even have a drink. It’s a very fancy hospital. I inquired especially. They’ll even send up a Martini. Do you feel like a Martini?”

“I think it’d be tempting fate to ask a hospital bartender to make a Martini,” Archer said.

Kitty moved under the blankets and she closed her eyes and the lines of pain bit around her mouth. It took nearly a minute; then she was all right again.

“You feel so important riding in an ambulance,” she said. “What’re the initials they used for big shots in the war?”

“VIP,” Archer said. “Very Important Personage.”

“VIP Kitty Archer,” she murmured. “Passing all the red lights.” She was silent for a moment and he thought she was falling asleep again. “Clement,” she said. “Yes?”

“Is it still raining out?”

“No. It’s turning cold.”

“Did you ever ride in an ambulance before?”

“No.”

“VIP. You’re not worrying, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“There’s really no reason to worry. A lot of women go through this in the sixth month. A little bleeding, a few pains. Just a warning to take things easy. You mustn’t worry.”

“I’m not at all worried.”

“I’m going to hold on, you know,” Kitty said. “I’m absolutely sure.”

“Of course.”

“And it’s going to be a boy. I’ve told you that, haven’t I?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve always wanted a son. You never said it, but I knew. We’ll start a whole new life with a son. Would you like to move to the country? Some place where there are a lot of fields and he can run around and not worry about traffic or about having his mother watch him all the time? I think it’s about time we moved to the country, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Archer said.

“New York …” Kitty’s voice almost trailed away. “New York’s nice, but it’s sort of all used-up, isn’t it?”

“Kitty, darling, why don’t you try to sleep? Then when you wake up you’ll …”

“What street are we on, Clement?”

Archer looked out the wide, clean window over Kitty’s head. “Sixty-seventh street.”

“We’re going so slow. It’s taking so long.” There was the grimace of pain again, and the twitching under the blankets. She sighed once, then opened her eyes again. “Look away, Clement,” Kitty said. “Please. When that happens.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Archer said.

They rode in silence for awhile. The driver wasn’t using the siren now and there was only the muted, careful hum of the tires in the ambulance, and the slight creaking of the jump seat on which Archer was sitting, near Kitty’s head.

“You know what would be nice, Clement?”

“What?”

“If Jane would get married and come and live near us. In a house in the country. A nice man that we all could like,” Kitty murmured. “And we would have time to get to be friends again. There are so many things I never had time to tell her …”

Archer closed his eyes momentarily. Jane had been gone when he got home that morning, and they hadn’t mentioned her name all day.

“You don’t mind that I sent her away, do you, Clement?” Kitty asked.

“Of course not.”

“You understand, don’t you?” Kitty pleaded. “This is just between you and me. I—I didn’t want us to be—divided—at a time like this. It’s—it’s more like when we were young, this way, when you took me to the hospital when I had Jane—what kind of car was it we had then?”

“An Essex,” Archer said. “A 1928 Essex.”

“It worked out so well, then,” Kitty said, ramblingly. “It was so easy … And there was no family, nobody else, just you and me. For luck. Am I superstitious, darling?”

Archer made himself smile at her. “Yes, dear,” he said.

“Just you and me,” Kitty said. “The Essex had plaid seat covers. It smelled of apples, because we’d brought home a basket of apples from my mother’s place the week before.” She looked around her vaguely, her head moving uncertainly in its swathing of wool. “A 1950 ambulance,” she said, “going uptown. Oh, I give you so much trouble,” she whispered. “So damn much trouble.”

“Sssh. Sssh.” Archer put out his hand and touched her forehead. It was hot and dry. They rode that way until they reached the hospital.

“The chances are three to one that she’ll abort,” Dr. Graves was saying judiciously, making Kitty sound like a bomber turning home before reaching the target because of engine failure. Graves and Archer were walking slowly down the corridor after the doctor had examined Kitty. Graves hadn’t been able to come for almost two hours, but he had left word to have Kitty given morphine to quiet her. Unfortunately, the morphine had made Kitty vomit again and again, and the pains were coming more and more regularly now and with greater severity. “These things happen, Mr. Archer,” Graves said, professionally resigned. “There is always a certain irreducible percentage of cases.”

“Why?” Archer asked. He didn’t like the plump, self-satisfied man and his complacence about making Kitty an irreducible percentage. “Why does it: happen?”

Graves spread his soft, clean, delivery-room hands in an almost religious gesture of wonderment. “The way of Nature,” he said devoutly. “The mysterious; intention of God.”

“If it’s all the same to
you,”
Archer said sharply, “I don’t like to hear about the mysterious intention of God from doctors.
I
prefer hearing about the certain remedies of science.”

Graves looked at him obliquely, and Archer could almost sense the doctor pigeonholing him in, the category of nervous and irascible relatives of the patient who are likely to blame the physician, and who have to be treated delicately but with firmness. “Technically,” Graves said, his little mustache moving deliberately over the words, “there is no reason why labor should have been premature. Mrs. Archer is fundamentally healthy and normally formed. Of course, she is no longer young. … His glance was almost accusing, or as accusing as Dr. Graves; who had a polite and expensive practice and a large office on Park Avenue, would permit it to be. Somehow he made Archer feel as though wanting another child was a bestial and depraved desire for a man his age.

“But one never knows,” Graves said. They were standing at the elevator now, and there was just the slightest rumor of polite impatience in Graves’s stance, as though there were many children who were delaying being born because he had to stand here and talk to Archer. “The emotional state has a great deal to do with it. Has Mrs. Archer been emotionally disturbed recently?”

Now, what does he expect me to say to that? Archer thought. “Yes,” he said.

Graves nodded. “The way I prefer, to look at it,” he said, well-rehearsed, “is, if it happens, it is probably all for the best. There is an imperfection perhaps, an improper development, an indication of future malfunction, that Nature, in her wisdom, tries to reject. That is not to say,” he added hastily, “that we will not do everything in our power to prolong the pregnancy. But if it happens …” He shrugged with plump resignation. “Perhaps in the long run it is something to be thankful for.”

You be thankful, you scientific, pious old lady, Archer thought. It’s not your child, it’s not your wife, you don’t have to go home with her to the empty house.

“What are the chances,” Archer asked, noticing that Graves was inching imperceptibly up to the elevator button, “what are the chances of the child’s surviving?”

“If it is born tonight?”

“If it’s born tonight.”

Graves shook his head. “I don’t want to raise your hopes, Mr. Archer. It is my policy to be as candid as possible at all times. This is only the beginning of the sixth month, and it is really little more than an embryo at this stage, and most likely terribly small. Of course, there have been instances, but I would say the chances are a thousand to one. It will not really be viable, Mr. Archer.”

The elevator door opened and a tall, blonde girl, whose time was obviously imminent, got out of the elevator with her husband. They were a handsome couple, both of them well dressed, and they were holding hands and smiling. They walked slowly down the corridor, the girl’s head proudly thrown back. She walked gracefully on long legs, even though she was very large, and the expression on her face was serene and confident.

That’s the way it should be, Archer thought jealously. You should be young and beautiful and be absolutely certain that everything would go neatly, by the calendar, without terror or loss.

“I have to go now,” Graves said. “I expect a delivery upstairs very soon. I’ll be in the hospital all night.” He moved plumply into the elevator, which had been waiting for him, and went off behind the silently closing door, to his place of business on the upper floor.

God, Archer thought, standing there, not wanting to go back to Kitty’s room, how did we ever pick this one?

He walked slowly down the corridor, smelling the hospital odors, the flowers, the roses and carnations and medicines, mingling in the dimly lit, severe perspectives of the hall.

Kitty’s face above the blanket was flushed and feverish and her eyes were dilated and dark from the morphine and her hair was tangled and drenched with sweat. But she smiled when Archer came into the room, and her voice was clear and cheerful as she asked, “What did old Nature Boy have to say?”

“Everything’s fine,” Archer said, sitting down in the chair next to the bed. “The chances’re very good. You ought to sleep and try to keep quiet,” he said.

“I can’t sleep.” Kitty chuckled. “Isn’t it just like me?” she asked. “Allergic to morphine. The one lady in the whole world who can’t be doped. Are you ashamed of being married to a freak?”

“That’s all right,” Archer said, making himself match the mood she was desperately trying to maintain. “As long as we don’t tell our friends.”

“Friends …” Kitty moved her head drowsily from side to side on the creased pillow.

That’s one subject we won’t talk about, Archer thought grimly. “I’ve told the office,” he said hastily, “to keep trying to get a private night nurse, and they said there’s still a chance.”

“I don’t need a private nurse,” Kitty said. “I’m fine. And the floor nurses are awfully nice. Miss Kennedy told me all about the Army, in between throw-up periods. She was a lieutenant in the Army and she was in a hospital on the Riviera. She used to go swimming on the beach at Cannes. I’d love to see her in a French bathing suit.” Kitty chuckled again. “She has a face like the Palisades and she’s built like a restaurant icebox.”

Then the pains came. Kitty turned her face away, arching agonizedly in the bed, the muscles in her throat showing rigid and sharp. She moaned softly and Archer held her hand and she clutched it hard, her nails biting into his skin. Then it was over and she settled back, spent, into the pillow, her body slowly relaxing into the bed.

“It’s going to be all right,” she said, looking straight up at the ceiling. “I promise you. I solemnly promise you. I’m going to hold on. I only have one thing in the whole world that I have to do now and that’s hold on. All I have to do is concentrate and I’m going to do it. I promise.”

In a strange way, Archer realized, Kitty was welcoming the pain, welcoming the problem and the challenge, because, for the time being, at least, it blotted out the necessity of thinking about or resolving all the other things. With a shock he understood that he was welcoming it, immersing himself in it, for the same reasons.

Kitty moved in the bed, making herself more comfortable as her strength returned once more. “Clement,” she said, “did you call Jane? And tell her I was all right?”

“Yes,” said Archer.

“She’s really a very nice girl, isn’t she, Clement?” Kitty said, pleading.

“Yes,” Archer said.

Then Kitty screamed. She put her hands over her head and gripped the narrow pipes of the bedstead and screamed wildly and continuously and Archer knew that it had started and that there was no going back now.