10. Dulcie
DULCIE
My mother is standing beside the flowers when we arrive.
She has worn the green jacket I helped her choose last year. Her hair is freshly trimmed. She holds her bag with both hands in front of her, listening while Dorothea explains that the flowers come from someone who does the foundation dinners.
Mom sees me and smiles.
I cross the room too quickly, then have to slow down when a stitch catches beneath my belly. Magnus’s hand moves toward my elbow. I step beyond it and kiss my mother’s cheek.
“You look lovely,” I tell her.
“So do you.”
She means it. For a moment I can rest in that.
Thirty-five weeks today. The dark blue dress has become snugger since I tried it on two nights ago, or perhaps everything feels tighter because I am here. I put my bag on the chair beside Mom’s. My keys and phone are inside. I check the strap is somewhere I can reach without searching.
Magnus’s aunt comes over to ask when the baby is due. She has a soft voice and a habit of touching her necklace while she speaks.
“Five weeks,” I say.
“Not long now.”
“No.”
“And then the real work begins.”
She laughs pleasantly. I try to laugh too.
Cressida appears in the doorway, carrying nothing, perfectly at ease. She kisses the aunt and asks after someone’s holiday. Magnus’s cousin calls her over to look at a photograph on his phone. There is no uncertain place for her to stand while somebody decides how to include her.
Magnus comes beside me.
“All right?”
I look at him, remembering the words in our kitchen.
“No announcements.”
“We’ve discussed it.”
“Yes.”
“Then stop anticipating a problem.”
He puts his hand on the small of my back as Dorothea calls us through to lunch.
The silver cup is on the dining table.
For a moment I cannot move.
It sits among low flowers, on a little tray that lifts it just above the glassware. The engraved side faces the chair set for me. My place card is propped beside it.
Magnus pauses when he realizes I have stopped.
“Why is that here?” I ask quietly.
“Mother has been keeping it.”
“On the table?”
“Dulcie.”
I look up. He holds my gaze with the calm certainty I have spent years trusting.
“You gave me your word.”
“I remember what I said.”
For a second I consider leaving. My mother is behind me. Her car is outside. Nobody has taken my bag or my keys.
Then Magnus pulls out my chair, and I hate that I still want him to keep his word. The cup can sit on a table without becoming an announcement. He knows what I asked. He repeated it back to me.
I sit.
Mom’s place is farther down, between the aunt and one of Magnus’s cousins. Cressida is beside Magnus. I am on his other side, close enough that his knee brushes mine when he sits.
Dorothea asks the person serving lunch to begin. Plates arrive. Conversation starts before I have unfolded my napkin.
Cressida asks Magnus about something at work. He gives her a longer answer than he gave me when I asked about his day yesterday. She knows which part to question. I listen to them discuss a decision as though it is a room they can both enter.
At the far end of the table, Mom asks the aunt about her garden. I can hear her working to find something they might enjoy together.
“She has a wonderful little garden herself,” I say.
Dorothea turns toward her. “Oh, do you grow vegetables?”
“Some. Flowers too.”
“How practical.”
Mom smiles politely. I feel the remark lodge under my skin, although nobody else seems to notice it.
The aunt asks whether I’ll miss the children when I go on leave.
“Yes. We’re making a book together, so they’ll have pages to show me when I come back.”
“Dulcie’s very attached to her work,” Dorothea says.
“I’m good at it.”
“I’m sure you are. But priorities change.”
Beside me, Magnus cuts his food into neat pieces. I wait for him to say that I’m returning. He knows. I have told him. The director knows too.
He asks his cousin a question about the drive over.
Mom catches my eye across the table and mouths, “I want to see it.”
“The book,” she adds aloud when the aunt looks at her. “Dulcie’s class always makes wonderful things.”
I nod, grateful and embarrassed by the gratitude. I have been married into this family long enough that saying one ordinary good thing about me should not feel like my mother taking a side.
I put down my fork.
Magnus glances at my plate. “You need to eat.”
“I will.”
Cressida reaches past him to straighten the cup on its tray. Her sleeve brushes his arm. She catches my eye and smiles.
I keep my gaze on her until she looks away.
The first course is cleared. Someone refills the water glasses. I reach for mine and take too large a swallow, trying to ease the dryness in my throat.
Magnus lifts his glass.
I know before he says anything.
Perhaps it is Cressida sitting a little straighter. Perhaps it is Dorothea’s expression, the small satisfaction of an occasion proceeding as arranged. Or perhaps I have spent enough time watching my husband make decisions to recognize the moment he means everyone else to accept one.
“Before we go any further,” he says, “I want to thank you all for being here.”
I turn toward him.
“Magnus.”
He continues.
“In a few weeks, we’ll have a new member of the family. My son, Benedict.”
My fingers tighten around the stem of my glass so hard that I have to make myself put it down.
The aunt smiles. One cousin raises his drink. Mom looks directly at me.
“And I’d particularly like to thank Cressida,” Magnus says, turning toward her, “for the care she’s already put into welcoming him, and for everything she’ll be to him as his godmother.”
Cressida’s smile opens fully.
He has given her what he promised me he would not.
I wait for the feeling to become anger. For one long moment, there is only a strange physical emptiness, as if I have missed a stair and my body hasn’t yet found the floor.
“Benedict,” Dorothea says, lifting her glass.
“No.”
The word comes from me.
Magnus turns.
I am still sitting. My glass remains on the table beside the plate he told me to eat from.
“We haven’t chosen that name,” I say. “And I haven’t agreed to a godmother.”
A cousin lowers his drink. Cressida’s hand stays raised.
“Dulcie,” Magnus says, very quietly. “Stop making a scene.”
“You promised me.”
“We can discuss this later.”
“We discussed it two days ago. In our kitchen.”
I look around the table because he chose these people as his audience, and I need them to hear me too.
“He said there would be no announcement of a name, no announcement of a godmother, and nothing presented as decided unless we’d agreed on it together. That is why I came.”
The silence becomes so complete that I hear the small click of Cressida setting down her glass.
Dorothea places her napkin beside her plate.
“This is not how we behave at a family table.”
“Then he shouldn’t have lied to get me here.”
Magnus’s expression hardens.
His mother speaks before he can.
“Being good with small children doesn’t qualify you to dictate how this family conducts itself. You have been given every advantage, Dulcie. Some grace would be appropriate.”
My face burns. The room seems crowded with people who know what to do with their hands while I cannot stop mine trembling.
Mom stands.
The movement is quick and definite. Her chair makes a small sound against the floor.
“My daughter is not a servant at this table.”
Dorothea looks at her as though she has spoken from the wrong part of the room.
I put one hand on the table and get to my feet.
“Sit down,” Magnus says.
I remain standing.
Cressida turns toward me. “Nobody is taking motherhood away from you. There is no reason to behave as though you’re the only person who matters.”
“Why do you think you can choose his name?”
“It was agreed.”
“Why do you think you can arrange who takes care of him, where I sleep, whether my mother can stay?”
Her gaze moves toward Magnus. This time he doesn’t step in quickly enough to answer for her.
“Because Magnus needed someone willing to have his child,” she says. “He didn’t need the rest of us to disappear.”
Needed.
Someone willing.
I look at her, waiting for the words to become something else.
The book on the shelf. The message to my director. The room down the hall. Cressida telling me that if I wanted my baby, I could ask whoever was on duty.
The pieces begin to fit, and I want to pull them apart with my bare hands.
Magnus sets his glass down.
I turn to him.
“Did you marry me to have a child for the life you meant to have with her?”