Chapter Two #4
He meant, he said, the surrounding neighborhoods.
When Becky answered in a level voice that things were “working out” just fine, Roman looked a little disappointed, switched tracks.
He asked if any of them had noticed the recent influx of refugees in town from Central Europe. Trickling in, he added.
Ida said it was just like when the town had been infiltrated by German spies last year—remember that? How Roman had spotted one every time he left the house?
That was reasonable suspicion in the service of caution, Roman said. This was something that was actually happening right under their noses. “Call me a bigot,” he said. It was almost a request. They wouldn’t, so he looked at Cal and said, “Do you think I’m a bigot?”
“I guess it would depend on how you defined the term,” Cal said. The man was not only his wife’s father but his boss, after all, and he’d secured them a house.
Roman said his point was that if he kicked the bucket tomorrow and they were up to their necks in refugees a year from now, he wanted them all to remember he’d told them so.
“If you kick the bucket tomorrow,” Ida said, “I’m going to New York to become a lounge singer.
” She slid her plate toward Becky for another spoonful of casserole.
“What makes you think they’d want to come to Bonhomie, anyway?
” she asked her husband. “The stunning beauty of this place—or the splendor of your company?”
“They don’t contribute anything,” Roman said.
“Dad, please!” Becky said.
Ida burst into song: “ ‘It seeeeems…to me I’ve heard that song before…it’s from an old fa-miliar score…
’ ” She had a lovely singing voice, it was like throwing a blanket over a bird cage: they fell quiet for a moment.
Then they got back to baby names and made no real progress, which was okay with Cal and Becky, since they’d never asked for her parents’ input.
Becky eased the front door closed as the Hanovers’ Cadillac pulled away, then turned and laid her head against Cal’s chest. “That won’t be us,” she said. “I promise.”
A few days later, she got tired and stayed that way.
More tired than she’d ever been in her life.
Two weeks of exhaustion she tried to ignore, until Cal insisted they go see Dr. Clements.
Dr. Clements checked her over, asked her some questions, drew some blood.
When he called the house later, Becky, on edge, asked him to please just tell her flat out if there was any reason to worry.
Not about the baby, he said.
—
Part of it was just the physicality of things.
The baby was looking to be on the big side, which was good: big meant healthy.
But it also meant there was more to carry around—and more in there to feed, Dr. Clements said, his ear in the vicinity of her stomach.
He was monitoring her blood pressure and glucose levels, which had been high since her second month and were currently higher than ever.
He was concerned about the toll the pregnancy was taking on her body.
Nothing to do but rest and keep an eye on it, he said.
Eat fruit. Becky dragged herself out of bed in the mornings, ate a banana while she saw Cal off to work, then either went back to bed, wandered around the house pretending to clean, or just collapsed on the couch and had mean thoughts.
I hate my body. I hate Cal. I’d rather be anywhere than on this scratchy orange couch.
How was it possible that for every single person who’d ever walked the planet, there was a woman who’d gone through this?
She could panic during those long stretches of the day, while Cal was at the hardware store.
She could become hot and short of breath—two things that only underscored her fatigue.
She’d read that breathing into a paper sack helped calm you down, so she did that, and it worked.
She filled the bathtub with cool water, sank up to the tops of her ears, and imagined that she, too, was a baby in a womb, with a baby inside it, like the Russian dolls her mother collected.
One bright afternoon, almost nine months along, she walked out into the front yard and lay down on her back in four inches of fresh snow.
The older woman who lived across the street saw her and came rushing out to ask if she was okay.
Becky said yes and allowed the woman to help her up.
“I was just cooling off,” Becky said. “It’s refreshing. ”
That woman—Mrs. Dodson—had a face with no fight left in it.
Her dark hair was pulled into a top knot, and her eyes were raccooned.
She wore a green woolen coat that all but swallowed her body.
She walked Becky up the porch steps. At the front door she put one hand on Becky’s shoulder and the other on her stomach and said, “I know it’s a great burden, but it’ll be worth it, I promise. ”
Becky invited her in.
They had coffee and carrot cake at the kitchen table, and Mrs. Dodson told her that when she herself had been past her due date, it was coffee that had done the trick. She normally never had more than a cup, but one morning she had three, and presto: baby.
Becky liked this woman very much. She told her she had a calming presence but very sad eyes. When Mrs. Dodson gave a little shrug as if to say she couldn’t help either of those things, Becky complimented her locket.
The locket had belonged to her mother, Mrs. Dodson said. It still had pictures of her parents in it, but they were hidden now underneath pictures of her husband and her son.
She opened the locket, and Becky leaned in to look at the faces. She could see the resemblance in the son, she said. They were both handsome.
They were both dead, Mrs. Dodson said. Henry, Jr., had been killed on a beach in Algiers. Henry, Sr., had lasted another six months. He’d died asleep in bed next to her, without so much as a groan.
“I’m so sorry,” Becky said.
“Oh,” Mrs. Dodson said. For a while she just looked at the tabletop. Eventually she closed the locket and finished her coffee and cake.
As they were walking to the front door, Becky, curious, chanced a question: did Mrs. Dodson still feel the presence of her son and her husband?
She braced for any reaction, fully prepared for Mrs. Dodson to tell her it was none of her business, but Mrs. Dodson said, “Yes, of course.”
Becky didn’t know if it was possible, didn’t know if it would do any good, but she wanted to help Mrs. Dodson in some way. “This might sound strange, but I dabble in what I call spiriting. We could try to contact them—if you wanted to, that is. If you don’t, please forgive that I asked.”
“I already know this about you,” Mrs. Dodson said. “From ages ago. You’re the girl who found Mr. Shefflin.”
Becky led her upstairs to the spiriting room. They sat down across from each other, and when Becky asked if she would close her eyes, Mrs. Dodson did. Then Becky took a deep breath and began to summon in her mind the husband and son her neighbor had lost.
“Have you started?” Mrs. Dodson asked.
“Yes.”
“Not both Henrys,” Mrs. Dodson said. “Just Henry, Jr.”
Becky nodded again. She re-focused her thoughts.
“Make sure you get the right Henry,” Mrs. Dodson said.
—
Perhaps the strangest thing of all, during Becky’s pregnancy, was the sensation that her joints were loosening.
Her bones could seem to be dangling from one another in a way that made her unsteady on her feet (unless that was from all the coffee she was drinking).
Just when she felt she might go crazy wanting not to be pregnant anymore, she lost hold of the lid to a soup pot and it clattered to the floor.
The baby, cozied up against her bladder, kicked.
She picked up the lid and dropped it again.
The baby kicked again. Over and over: she dropped the lid, and the baby kicked. She banged the lid against the pot right in front of her stomach, and the baby kicked. It’s listening, she thought. It’s restless. She banged and banged, again and again, thinking, Come out, baby! Come out!
That evening, she went into labor. It lasted for eleven hours, and the birth hurt more than anything she could have imagined.
The delivery doctor held the newborn upside-down by its feet, smacked its bottom, and it wailed.
He wailed. A boy. Nine-and-a-half pounds and twenty-three inches long.
“Looks like a keeper,” the delivery doctor said, as he’d said about every baby he’d delivered in Bonhomie for the past two decades.
Becky felt as if she couldn’t move after all the pushing, the huffing and puffing, but when she heard that wail, she found the strength and held out her arms. Cal, when they brought him into her room afterward, was the one who looked exhausted.
She was sore from top to bottom, and she wouldn’t have minded being left alone for a little while, just her and the baby.
But here came the nurses. Here came Reverend Toomey, the Episcopal minister who’d married her and Cal, and after him a Lutheran minister she didn’t know, and a priest. (Did these people do nothing but scurry through the halls of the hospital all day?) Here came her parents, her mother teary-eyed, her father’s deep voice cooing and ca-ca-ca-ing—she’d never heard such sounds out of him.
When Janice arrived at the hospital at ten in the morning, she was dolled up as if ready for a night on the town, and Becky couldn’t help but wonder if that was maybe because she was hoping to land a doctor.
She brought Becky the new Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library, and left a lipstick print on the baby’s forehead.