Amanda Bright @ Home (32 page)

None of the women inquired further about Bob’s “promotion.” Amanda sought to compensate Christine’s disappointment by sharing her other news.

“There is something, however, I haven’t told anyone yet—outside of Bob, I mean.” Here she looked directly to Christine, who had resumed her admiration of her boots. “I’m pregnant.”

This news had a stunning effect, although not an overwhelmingly positive one.

“Oh, how wonderful. That’s lovely,” Kim murmured. “How far along are you?”

“Nearly three months.”

Patricia reached for one of the pieces of celery she had put out on a serving plate. “I don’t think I could
endure
pregnancy again. Not that Meredith wasn’t worth it. But it took me a year to get my figure back.”

Christine simply asked, “Why?”

The question flummoxed Amanda. “I—I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean that you have the perfect setup, a boy and a girl. I could see it if you had two boys or two girls …”

“To be honest, we didn’t exactly plan it.”

“At our age you don’t get pregnant by accident,” Christine scoffed.

“It just happened.” Amanda had not expected to be defensive about it—not in this crowd—but Christine’s reaction was the most unsettling. How often had she spoken about her satisfaction in giving up work for motherhood?

“Think about it!” Christine continued. “Just the
thought
of going back to diapers and feedings. And three! It’s just so many …”

They were interrupted by a scream from outside. The women all started in their seats but before any of them could rise, Ben ran in, the left side of his head awash in blood.

“Good God!” Amanda raced to him and began using her shirt to mop the blood from his hair. “Patricia—please, do you have a damp cloth?”

“I’m getting one. Watch the carpet.”

The other mothers clustered around.

“Is he okay?”

“It looks like a bad scrape.”

“They bleed like anything from the head.”

“It’s not deep. I don’t think he needs stitches. The blood’s stopping.”

“Ben, sweetie, what happened?”

“I f-f-fell.” In one hand he clutched a large chunk of stone.

Amanda pried apart his fingers. “What’s this, honey?”

There, plainly, was the carved feathered tip of a wing.

Amanda knew, as Patricia’s door closed behind her, that this would be her last visit with the mothers.

Through the rest of the fall, Amanda would see one or another of them in the hallways of the school, at assemblies, in the three o’clock carpool. Every time they would pause to say hello and effuse how happy they were to see her and gosh, wasn’t she looking well—“Your tummy, Amanda! Can you feel the baby moving yet?”—and every time they expressed regret that “things had been so busy” that they hadn’t been able to get together.

Amanda was not wounded by these exchanges. In retrospect it seemed odd that they should have remained friendly for as long as they had. So many of the friendships Amanda had formed in the early years of motherhood had long since fallen away. She never saw the women she used to know in Sophie’s infant play group, and yet those friendships had felt so intense at the time—like the friendships soldiers form in battle, a camaraderie based on the besieged circumstances of the moment. When the shelling ceases, the smoke lifts from the field, and the troops return home to resume the normal lives they thought they would never experience again, there is little left to say to former comrades-in-arms except “Hell of a time, wasn’t it?” For now, Amanda felt only relief at not having to keep up with the other mothers as her girth expanded and she became ever more preoccupied with the upheaval of the coming spring.

As for Ben and Sophie, after an initial burst of curiosity and an argument over whether the baby would be a boy or a girl, they seemed to have forgotten about Amanda’s pregnancy—except to wonder occasionally where the baby would sleep or whether it would covet one of their toys. Each month Amanda checked in with the midwife; each month the midwife listened for the baby’s heartbeat—a swishing sound like windshield wipers going full speed; each month, the midwife announced that the baby was doing well. Amanda felt the baby’s movements increase in strength: first tiny flutters, then gentle motions like the finning of a fish resting among reeds.

Amanda barely thought about returning to work anymore. She decided to pass her spare hours volunteering at the public library, sorting books and reading stories to groups of school-children. The satisfaction of helping in the library was as ephemeral as that of housework; the smiles and gaping stares of the little faces gathered before her on the carpet lasted no longer than a clean countertop. But the clean countertop did not run up and embrace her or trill excitedly to the other countertops that “Amanda is here today!” For now, the hours she logged among the library’s tiny carrels and overburdened carts would have to fill the space inside her that once held greater ambitions. There would be time later, she assured herself, for dreams that reached farther—and yet those dreams did begin to take shape in her mind. The children’s reaction made Amanda think she could be a teacher, a vocation she had never considered before. It was impossible to consider it now, of course, and Amanda kept the vision to herself; but she found herself looking to it, like a beacon on some distant horizon flashing through fog.

Sometimes that fog was dense. Often she would awake in the middle of the night, tormented by doubts. The darkness, rather than cloaking her worries, relentlessly exposed all the cracks and fault lines of her daytime logic. It marched out the exhibits of her life thus far: thirty-five—nearly thirty-six—and what did she have to show for it? What sort of return would there be at the end of all these years of investment in her children? Maybe she would be too old to try something new. Who would hire her? Her own mind framed the accusations her mother would hurl at her, if they were speaking. Mercifully, they were not. The morning after their last encounter, Ellie Bright had risen early, said an unrepentant good-bye, and returned home to New York. When Amanda telephoned some weeks later with news of the pregnancy, Ellie said “Huh.” That was it—“Huh.”

When daylight came, however, Amanda’s thoughts would reorder themselves and settle in their places as solidly as her dresser and bed. If any demons persisted, she’d call her friend Liz, her unofficial exorcist. When Amanda repeated Christine’s remark—“you have the perfect setup, a boy and a girl”—Liz sneered that this attitude reflected “pure consumerism—children as items of consumption to adorn a successful lifestyle.” To Amanda’s distress over her fattening figure, Liz declared, “Carry yourself proudly—like a galleon under full sail!” One day Amanda wondered wearily, “Is every mother wondering all the time about whether she’s doing the right thing?” Liz responded with a teacher’s enthusiasm when a slow learner finally masters a lesson. “My point exactly! You’re allowing yourself to be victimized by our anti-mother culture. You know in your heart what you’re doing is right. So stop thinking about it.”

“I try, Liz. I just wish sometimes that I felt more comfortable in my own life.”

Then, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, Amanda began suffering stabbing headaches. “Your blood pressure is fine,” said Sarah Blumstein, removing the Velcro band from Amanda’s arm. “Slightly elevated but within normal range. And my, you’ve put on a lot of weight this month—that’s good so long as it’s from healthy foods. I’d suggest you just lie down when the headaches come. Put on some soft music. Take a bubble bath, or have your husband give you a massage.”

The massage remedy lasted about thirty seconds. Bob squeezed and poked at her shoulder blades, but he was no shiatsu artist. His clumsiness reminded Amanda of her first labor. Bob’s ministrations to her then—the cool cloth on the forehead, the tennis ball in the lower back, his reminders to breathe, everything the books and Sarah Blumstein taught him to do—had only annoyed her and aggravated her pain. Amanda had longed to crawl away to a dark corner and be left alone like a cat, and she hadn’t been sorry when Bob became faint during the birth’s final stages and had to be led from the delivery room.

More usefully, Bob arranged for them to spend Christmas at his parents’ house in Syracuse, sparing Amanda the ordeal of decorating a tree and cooking Christmas dinner. They drove through Pennsylvania in a blinding snowstorm, and stayed the night with Liz and her family in Binghamton. It was hardly a visit: Amanda’s headaches were growing more persistent and almost immediately after arriving and getting the children to bed, she had to lie down herself, excusing herself from the elaborate meal Liz’s husband, Steve, had cooked.

“Are you cold?” Liz asked, entering the darkened porch that served as a makeshift guest room. “I brought you some of Steve’s soup.”

“I’m okay. I’m piled with blankets.”

“Do you think you ought to call the midwife?”

“She’s away for the holidays. There will be no one there but some on-call doctor. Did you get headaches when you were pregnant?”

“Sometimes. Not as bad as yours. Drink some soup.”

Liz stroked Amanda’s head like a baby’s. Her maternal hand was effective, and within a few minutes Amanda was asleep.

The next day, Amanda felt much better.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t a better guest.” Amanda embraced her friend as Bob and the children waited for her in the car.

“Don’t worry. Next time. Get in the car—it’s freezing.”

The headaches subsided somewhat, and Amanda was able to pull herself through the next few days. Bob’s mother, a retired nurse, commented once or twice that she didn’t like the look of “Amanda’s puffy eyes.” Amanda balked at the fuss and reiterated Sarah Blumstein’s objections to treating pregnancy like an illness.

“I’m not saying it’s an illness, dear,” replied her mother-in-law as she stirred gravy for the turkey. “I’m saying you
look
ill. You should be flushed and energetic at this stage. If I were you—not that I’m trying to interfere—I’d call a doctor as soon as I got home.”

Amanda suspected her poor health might have been aggravated by the three-day stay with her in-laws. Their little house looked cozy from the outside—a modest suburban box with a big snow-laden spruce on the front lawn. But inside, the thin drywall and warped hollow doors offered little defense against the noise of two bored children and the voice of her mother-in-law as she strained to make herself heard by her increasingly deaf husband. Bob sheltered Amanda as best he could, but the headaches returned, and Amanda was grateful when everyone was finally loaded back into the car, and they were waving good-bye to Bob’s parents through frosted windows and puffs of exhaust.

By mid-January, Amanda was back on Blumstein’s examining table, her ankles swollen.

“Twenty-nine weeks now, is it? Par for the course, I’d say. Try elevating them when you sit down.” Blumstein detected faint traces of protein in Amanda’s urine—“nothing to worry about. We’ll just keep an eye on that.”

“I don’t remember feeling this bad last time.”

“What’s that?”

Blumstein had been distracted by a phone call from one of her other patients, who was in labor. Ten minutes of Amanda’s appointment had been spent “talking the client through” some contractions.

“Well, you’re older than you were—even a few years makes a difference,” the midwife said when Amanda repeated her complaint. “But why don’t we see you again next week if you’re worried—let’s not wait a month. Get plenty of rest until then.”

Blumstein bustled off with her “catching kit,” as she called it (she didn’t “deliver” babies but “caught” them), and left Amanda alone to change back into her clothes and see herself out.

Two nights later Amanda awoke with more pain, this time in her right side. It felt suspiciously like indigestion—she and Bob had gone out that evening for Indian food.

“Are you okay?” Bob whispered sleepily.

“I think it’s the curry.”

“Can I get you something?”

“No—I’ll just lie here for a little bit. I’ll be okay.”

He fell back asleep, his hand resting on her belly.

The midwife was away for Amanda’s next appointment—another “catching.” The office was unusually busy: babies, like customers in shops, seem to arrive all at once. One of the junior doctors reviewed her symptoms.

“I’ve taken down the information, and I’ll give it to Sarah,” the young man said. “She should be back later.”

Amanda read his markings on her chart.

“I’ve gained five pounds in one week?”

“Seems so.”

“Isn’t that unusual?”

“Depends. Sometimes it can be water. You look a little bloated.”

“I thought so myself.”

“Well, we’ll have the tests back to see if anything else is up. Baby moving around okay?”

“Not a lot. It seems to have been sleeping a good deal lately.”

“Uh-huh.” He made a notation on the chart. “Well, I’ll pass this all along to Sarah.”

The midwife phoned Amanda that evening.

“Your blood pressure’s up a little, hon. Still some protein in the urine.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you keep resting. We’ll watch this—I’d like you to come again next week.”

“Is it serious?”

“No, it’s probably nothing. You’re otherwise feeling okay?”

“I had some indigestion the other night. Indian food.”

“Stay away from the vindaloo,” Blumstein said, amused, “and I’ll see you in my office.”

Amanda finished her lunch and rose to clear her plate from the kitchen table. A sharp stab near her stomach winded her and she sat down again. As she bent over as far as she could, taking a few deep breaths, she caught sight of her ankles: they were hugely swollen and blue-veined, like those of the old ladies she used to see as a girl riding the Madison Avenue bus. All she lacked were the rubber galoshes. Amanda pulled herself up, and her whole body sloshed and jiggled like a pudding. A galleon! More like a garbage trawler.

The telephone rang, and by the time she made it across the room to answer it she was out of breath.

It was Bob. “Are you okay?”

“Just fat and slow.”

“You sound terrible.”