Chapter 39
A LUCKY STAR
A late September Saturday, and autumn hadn’t begun to touch us yet. I told Joe, as I stood before the fan set next to the open patio doors, “Why doesn’t California have trees that change color? How can one feel time passing if every season is the same?”
He looked up from the legal pad on which he’d been scrawling notes in his messy handwriting. “The bedroom might be cooler. Do you want to lie down in there? I can bring you a cold towel.”
“No, I don’t want to lie down like an invalid!” He looked startled, and I sighed and rubbed the sweaty back of my neck. “I’m sorry. I’m being very unreasonable and not feeling at all stoical. I’m wishing we’d dug out a basement. Imagine how cool. Why didn’t we think of that?”
“Earthquakes, mostly,” Joe said.
“Oh. Earthquakes. Yes.” I sat on the couch and flipped through a magazine, then set it down.
“Can I bring you a lemonade?” Joe asked.
“No. Yes.” I sighed again. “No. I’m sorry.” I was wearing exactly three garments: a bra, a pair of panties, and a pink maternity smock that made me look like a beach ball. All of them clung damply to my skin.
“Don’t be sorry,” Joe said. “You’re pregnant, and it’s hot. Want to hear some music? Want to play some music?”
“Yes,” I decided. “To play it. Please. Bach will annoy me with his precision, though. I require Saint-Saens, perhaps, and Pachelbel, with a great deal of melody.”
“Then let’s do it.” He pulled out his chair and went for his cello, and I hauled myself to my feet and went to my piano. It was an upright, but very beautiful, and its purchase had been an adventure.
Joe and I had gone first to one shop, then to another. The Steinway had had the finest tone, but oh, the price! Joe had said, when I’d hesitated, “Let’s go home and sleep on it.”
“The Everett will be fine,” I’d said. “I’m not the musician you are—or that my mother was—and don’t require the perfect instrument.
” A little short-tempered even then, though I’d been only seven months pregnant—but it had been July, and very hot.
I’d suffered so from the cold in Germany; wouldn’t I have been happy to be warm then!
And why hadn’t I realized how suffocating heat could be?
But pregnancy, I’d found, was rather difficult, especially when one was small and tended to ache.
“We’ll think about it,” Joe had said. “Next week is soon enough.”
I’d wanted to offer another sharp remark, but he’d taken off his hat, and whenever I saw the three-inch patch of scalp that was bare and would always be so, I couldn’t remain annoyed.
I’d apologized instead, and he’d taken me out to the deli so we hadn’t had to heat up the house.
We could afford to eat in finer establishments now, but the deli was still our favorite.
The next weekend, Joe had come home with a barbecue grill and set it up on the deck, and he’d stood out there manfully on every especially warm day for the rest of the summer, cooking everything possible on its racks: hamburger, fish, chicken, vegetables—even slices of watermelon.
He always made it seem like he was enjoying it, too.
“Look at it this way,” he'd joke. “I’m drinking a beer on my deck. How much better does life get?”
No, I really must get the better of this irritability. Especially after the piano.
The piano? We had not revisited the piano idea the next week. Instead, a truck had pulled into our driveway and dropped its ramp. I’d gone out to tell them they were in the wrong place, and the driver had taken off his cap, scratched his head, looked at his clipboard, and said, “Mrs. Joe Stark?”
“Well, yes,” I’d said, “but—”
“Nope,” he’d said. “It’s for you, all right.”
“What is for me?” Had Joe bought an automatic dryer? But I’d told him most explicitly that I didn’t want one! An automatic washing machine was luxury enough, and besides, the clothes always seemed fresher after hanging out in the sun and the breeze.
Then they’d started wheeling the thing down the ramp, and I’d known.
It was the Steinway.
I’d cried. Stood there in front of the house and cried.
The man had been concerned, but when I’d explained rather incoherently that it was a present from my husband and that I was merely overcome, he’d said, “Well, that’s all right then.
And don’t you worry about crying. I’ve got two and one on the way, and every time my wife’s in that condition, the tears run like somebody turned the faucet on. ”
So you see why I couldn’t stay annoyed while sitting on the piano bench today.
When Joe began to play Saint-Saens, I most definitely couldn’t.
I even managed not to be irritated by Bach’s precision, eventually.
Until at last, when Joe was saying, “What do you think? Pachelbel?” I said, “I think we must pause now.”
“What?” he asked. “Too hot even to play?” He was perspiring freely—playing the cello is hard work, and it was very hot. He’d only done it for me.
“No,” I said. “Some discomfort in my back only.” I attempted to rise from the bench, sank down again, and said, “It’s a spasm, I think, but—” and then had to break off.
“Marguerite.” Joe had set the cello down and was crouching before me, his hand on my belly, which had tightened as if somebody had drawn an elastic band around it. “Is it the baby, do you think?”
“I—” I held onto the keyboard, and then I held onto Joe. When it was over, I said, “I think so. Joe. What if—”
He was still there before me, and now, he took my hands in his and pressed them. “This is what you’ve been worrying about, isn’t it? I haven’t wanted to ask, in case it wasn’t, but—”
“Yes,” I said, “you’re right. I’ve been rather anxious. Oh. This is why I’ve been so out of sorts. I didn’t even realize I was—” There the tears were again. “Joe. Were we wrong to try?”
“No.” What a world of reassurance was in that one syllable!
“No. We needed to try. I can’t tell you not to worry, that everything will be all right, but I can tell you what I said at the beginning.
Whatever happens, we’ll get through it together.
You and me. Just like we’ve gotten through everything else.
How about if you sit here and drink some lemonade, and I’ll play for you? ”
“But you’ll be very hot,” I said.
“Nah,” he said, and grinned. With some effort, I knew. “You do your work, and I’ll do mine. Or would you rather I went and got Susie?”
“No,” I said. “I want you.”
There’s no point detailing the rest of it, for what is the birth of a child but the oldest miracle in the world?
A most uncomfortable miracle; how well I understood Barbara’s annoyance when David had explained that her ordeal wasn’t so very bad after all!
Joe called his parents, then played for me until the pains were closer together.
When I told him it was time, he tipped the seat back in the car, took two pillows from the bed and my packed suitcase from the closet, and drove me to the hospital.
I could see the whites of his knuckles on the steering wheel, but that was the only sign of nerves.
I wished for him very much when I was on the hospital bed.
They wouldn’t let him in, though, so I prayed instead.
I knew that the composition of the baby had been ordained long before, and there was no changing it now.
So I prayed as David had prayed in the Bible.
Not for everything to be perfect, but for the strength to bear it if it wasn’t.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me. We may own diamonds and emeralds and palaces, but all we have in the end, whether princess or pauper, is our strength and our endurance and our faith and our love.
My last thought before the twilight sleep took me was the same as on that day with the mountain lion.
Please, God. Please. Please.
And then,
Joe.
The nurse said, “Let’s smarten you up for your husband. There, your hair looks lovely now. A little lipstick, I think. Are you ready to see him?”
“I’ve been ready to see him,” I said, “since you brought me in here. Please go get him now.”
When he came in, did I greet him with a radiant smile? Well, partially. Of course, I was crying at the time.
“Joe,” I said, with the tiny bundle that was our daughter in my arms. “Joe. We have a baby girl. She’s a carrier, but she’s a girl. A girl.” After that, I broke down completely.
Joe was on the bed with one arm around me and the other hand on the baby. The nurse was saying something, but I didn’t care. When I’d calmed down a little, Joe said, “But it’s all right that she’s a carrier. Darling, it’s all right.”
“I … I know.” I’d made such a mess of his shirt.
I picked up a corner of the sheet and wiped my tears, and couldn’t care that I was no longer combed and lipsticked and pretty.
“I’m just so relieved. So relieved. She isn’t going to die.
We’re not going to have to …” Here I went again. “To watch her die.”
“No,” Joe said. “We aren’t. We’re going to watch her live.”
“Can it be …” I did my best to calm myself. “Can we be finished, though? I’m sorry. I know it— But I was so worried when I woke up, before they told me. As bad as with the mountain lion. I know you think I’m strong, but—”
“I don’t think it,” Joe said. “I know it.”
“And you’re the strongest man I know,” I said. “But I was so worried, and I don’t think I can do this again. Can we be enough for you, Elise and I?”
The baby was in a little white cap, her face surely too beautiful to belong to a newborn. I can close my eyes even now and see that face, and Joe’s hand cupping her head. “Yes,” he said. “We can be enough for each other. You bet we can. You bet we are.”
“You’re the best husband in the world,” I said. “The best—”
“I’m the luckiest one, anyway,” he said. “But it’s like I told you: I was born under a lucky star. And you? You were born under a whole galaxy. It’s you and me from here on out, Marguerite. From here until forever. You and me and Elise.”