Authors: Marjorie Lee
She was pregnant. A strange pang of envy went through me. "So he's going to do an
—abortion?" I asked.
"Please. The term is
therapeutic
abortion. Like a D & C. Only it's a D & E: E for ejection."
"When?"
"Tomorrow
—if I let him."
"If you
let
him? What
else
can you do?"
"Have the baby."
"After what he told you? Are you out of your mind?"
She put her head down again. "Jo," she mumbled, "I'm so mixed up! I know it's crazy not to let him do it; but it feels like
—
murder.
You know what I mean? I mean, if God lets you get pregnant shouldn't you trust Him to take care of things? I mean if you step in and change His plans like that, isn't it a
—sin?"
"Really, Fran!" I exploded. "I never thought I'd hear about God from
you!
I never dreamed you had Religion; and certainly not
that
one!"
"I've got it all right," she said. "And it
is
'that one.' My nurse. I had her till I was eleven, you know. We went to church every Sunday morning. I even got baptized! You know what Cardinal Mundelein said?
Give me a child until he is seven; then let the world have him.
They had me four years longer than they needed to. It's in me; not always, but from time to time; and when it hits me it won't let go. That's how the whole thing happened in the first place. I mean, a few months ago I started practicing
—Rhythm. So you see it really
was
in God's hands..."
"Holy Christ!" I said, because I couldn't think of anything else to say. What more could there be to find in Frannie that I hadn't known before? How many Frannies were there living beneath that funny little facade? What was she anyway
—not just to me, but to herself? Who was she, and where did she
belong?
"I couldn't
sleep
last night," she was saying. "I kept having those hellish dreams, waking up over and over..."
"What dreams?"
"You know. Those lions. It was terrible. This big cat, this terrible, beautiful, giant
cat
: the kind without a mane; just smooth and sleek and coming at me. And I didn't back away. I knew it was going to kill me, but I just stood there. It was only when it leaped that I screamed. And the scream stopped it, in mid-air..."
She leaned back against the pillows, mottled red, but pale underneath. Her hands were on the blanket. I laid mine over them but she pulled them away. "Look at my nails," she said irrelevantly. "Why can't I stop biting my nails...?"
The door opened and Marc walked in. "I dropped in to see the kids," he said. "They got there and everything's okay."
I realized then that they hadn't come home. "Where are they?" I asked.
"Marian's," Frannie answered. "The bus delivered Petey there, and the others took a cab from school."
"So Bad Mommy comes through in a pinch," I observed.
"Oh, yes
—when it's practical. You never know when
she'll
get sick and have to send hers over
here."
Marc unwrapped the Hershey bar and took a piece. "What's
Bernadette
been telling you?" he asked me. "All about brimstone and the flaming pits of Hades?"
"Shut up," she said. "It's
my
affair."
"The hell it is," he told her.
"It's my religion."
"Oh, is it? If you're so set on going back to God stop kidding yourself and try a synagogue!"
"They wouldn't let me in..." she said.
A while later I went downstairs to make some tea and Marc followed me. "She's crazy," he said.
I put the water on and found some tea bags in a mess of staples in a cupboard over the stove. "Don't worry," I said. "You know Frannie: she has to make a thing out of everything. But when the chips are down she's more realistic than anyone. She'll go through with it. What'll you do for dinner tonight? I could stay and throw something together..."
"Don't bother. I'll manage."
"I don't mind. I'd like to."
"No," he said. "Honestly. I'd rather be alone."
But I didn't believe him. "I'll stay," I told him. "I'll stay, and I'll
—"
He turned and faced me. "Go home," he said. "For Christ's sake, go home, Jo
—to Brad, where you belong!"
"Thanks," I said, pouring the water into a cup, hearing the clatter it made as I put it on its saucer because my hand was trembling.
"She doesn't need tea," he said. "She needs to be
— let alone."
"Thanks for that too." Then I carried the cup up to Frannie, but she pushed it away. "I can't keep anything down," she said, "and we're all out of sheets and blankets."
"I'm leaving," I told her, "but I'll call you." I bent to kiss the top of her head. Her hair was flat and dark.
"Don't," she said, pulling off to the side. "I'm all sweaty and awful."
When I told Brad about it that evening his mouth dropped. Then he said, "Oh, God," and mixed himself a martini in a twelve-ounce highball glass.
I called the next morning, early, and got Marc. "She's going," he told me. "I'm packing a bag for her."
Brad was still asleep when I left for school. He'd really hung one on the night before. So I put a pot of fresh coffee on for him and went off in the car. But when I got to the turn I was supposed to make for Wingo I veered the other way.
It took me over forty-five minutes to get to the hospital, and when I did they wouldn't let me up the elevator without a pass.
"Are you related?" the receptionist asked. "I can't give you a pass unless you're related. We were so swamped with visitors they had to make this new rule. It's better for the patient and
—"
"Yes, yes," I cut in. "We're related!"
She nodded. Eyes on the pad, writing out the date and room number in a slow and perfect Palmer Method hand, she smiled. "Mother?" she asked casually.
The blood drained out of me. I wanted to hit her. Instead I grabbed the slip of paper and ran.
I found Marc in the hall, trying to peer behind the curtain of the nursery window. (They had put her in Maternity where she would hear the babies caterwauling night and day and be reminded every minute of her stay that not one of them was hers.) I rushed towards him and he straightened; but he didn't say hello. Until that moment I had forgotten the thing in the kitchen the night before; put out of my mind the unmistakable rejection:
Go home, where you belong.
But no,
I thought now;
it wasn't meant that way; it couldn't have been; we're all upset
—and this is no time to drag up small resentments.
"Where is she?" I asked.
"Upstairs
—twenty minutes ago."
We went into the waiting room and sat down. I handed him my pack of cigarettes. I knew he didn't smoke, but I thought it might relax him. He took one and lighted it; but it went out and he dropped it into an ashtray. "What did you do
—cut school?" he asked after a while.
"They'll do all right. I'm not indispensable."
He smiled. "Oh, aren't you?" I let it go.
We waited for what seemed to be half an hour and then we got up and went over to the elevators and waited some more. Finally they rolled her out on a stretcher and we followed them into her room. When they had her in bed they left us.
She was still pretty heavily doped; only just beginning to come to. She didn't have her glasses on and when she opened her eyes I saw the greenness, swimming and unfocused. "They took my ring away," she said, trying to touch the third finger of her left hand.
"Here it is," Marc told her. "They gave it to me while you were upstairs." He leaned over and slipped it back on. "How do you feel?"
"D-drunk."
And then a nurse came in. "Oh, Mrs. Cole," Marc said.
"Who's that?" Frannie asked, squinting.
"Mrs. Cole," Marc told her. “
I
thought you'd better have someone, at least for today and tonight."
Frannie swallowed. Then, gathering all the force she could, she said distinctly,
"Get her out of here."
"Only for a while," Marc whispered. "You may want something, and Mrs. Cole can
—"
"Get her out of here."
Marc looked at Mrs. Cole and shrugged. "I'm sorry but I guess
—"
"It's all right," Mrs. Cole said, patting Frannie's arm. You're right. You just take it easy for today and you'll be fine." As she opened the door to leave we were blasted by the yowling of babies being carried down the hall to be fed by their mothers.
"Get her out of here,"
Frannie said again.
Marc went over to the bed and took her hand. "She's gone, Fran. She isn't here anymore."
"Please make her go. Please, don't let her stay."
He leaned over her. "Listen, Fran
—she isn't here. She
went."
"Out of my room," Frannie murmured incoherently. "But what about my life...?"
Marc left at noon. He had an appointment to keep; and then he wanted to be at Marian's when the kids got back from school.
I stayed with Frannie all day. I wanted to. It would have been easier for both of us if she had napped; but she fought sleep and kept rambling. I could never be sure that she knew what she was saying, or that she understood me when I answered.
"Don't stay," she repeated over and over. "Don't stay, don't stay. I'll be all right. I don't need you. I'm not a child anymore. Go away and leave me..."
"I have nothing else to do. Don't worry about me."
In a while she wanted the bed-pan. I found it in the cabinet by the bed, and began turning the sheets down. "I'll do it," she said. "I'll do it, and you get out."
"Let me help
—"
She pushed herself up on one elbow. "I'll do it Jo," she said, a hot pink blush spreading over her face. "Get the hell out of here!"
I left and stood in the hall. In a couple of minutes her signal light flashed on. I waited until the floor nurse came and carried it out before I went back in. "All right?"
"Yes!" (stilted, formally) "all right."
"Don't you want to sleep now?"
"No. I do not want to sleep now." Then, less formally: "I don't want to sleep while you're
—awake..."
"I can read," I said. "I'll get a magazine from the waiting room. I'll
—"
"Why is it all so complicated, Jo?" she broke in.
"Why is what so complicated?'
"Oh, the simplest things... like breathing; like moving from one end of a day to one end of a night; like looking out of a window, or walking through a door; like having somebody try to be kind to you. Shouldn't it all be easier? I mean, there are people who do find it easier, aren't there...?"
"If you mean do I think life is a bowl of cherries, the answer is No. But we're all going to live it anyway, and there's no point in
—"
"I don't mean life. That's too big and too vast. I mean a minute, say; or an hour. That's not too much, is it?"
"Too much for what?"
"Too much to take for granted? Like maybe it's raining out. Aren't there any people who can wake up and see it's raining out and say, 'Okay, it's raining out and to hell with it'?"
"Try to go to sleep." I walked to the bed, bent over her, and straightened the sheet. Unexpectedly, she raised her hand and, with her index finger, followed, gently, the line of a scar running from my cheekbone to my chin. It was a thin scar, grown faint with the years, about which I had long since lost my self-consciousness. With pancake or just powder, it was barely visible. But that day I had worn no make-up.
"How did you get it?" she asked softly; and I knew immediately that she had been aware of it for months.
"Ages ago," I answered. "It's nothing."
"But how?"
"Oh
—on a beach, when I was a kid. I—fell."
"What an unexciting way," she said, "to get something so
—beautiful..."
I stepped back and covered it with my hand. "That's not funny," I said. "That's just not funny at all!"
"Funny?" she closed her eyes. "You think I'm trying to be funny? It's one of the most
—beautiful things about you. But you don't believe me. When I say a thing with all my soul—you don't believe me..."
I turned away and sat down in the armchair. "Sometimes," I said, "it's hard to."
"You know something, Jo?" she asked.
"What?"
"I love you. I really do. Do you know I do?"
"Of course. I love you too. But go to sleep. Try to get some sl
—"
"I don't want to. When I sleep I have those lousy dreams: all full of lions
—without manes. They're so big and so beautiful and they come at me and they want to love me; but they leap, and I scream, and they're stuck—in mid-air."
"I know," I soothed. "But you're tired. Try to rest
—"
"N-no..." she struggled. "No, you don't know. You don't know anything. That's the crazy thing about you, Jo: you don't know things."
"What things?"
"Things.
You act so smart, and everybody thinks you're so bright. Well... you're dumber than anyone most of the time. But I love you anyway... You know, Jo, that I love you any
—"
"Stop it," I said firmly. "Stop it and go to sleep."
"No; don't make me," she pleaded. "Let me say it. Let me
say
that I do."
I thought of the song then: the one she was always requesting; and sitting there by her bed, I tried to remember the words. It wasn't hard. It consisted of a series of short, straight sentences; the music was only incidental:
Let me love you.
Let me say that I do.
If you'll lend me your ear
I'll make it clear
The way that I do.
Let me whisper it.
Let me sigh it.
Let me sing it, my dear,
Or I will cry it.
Let me love you.
Let me show that I do.
Let me do a million impossible things
So you'll know that I do.
I'll buy you the dawn if you'll let me love you today.
And tomorrow
I'll send you merrily on your way.