Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty (22 page)

“I’m so sorry,” she said to the professor, whose nose hair quivered with each breath he let out. “It’s not an excuse, but I’m pregnant.”

“Congratulations,” the professor said. For a moment, she thought he might have meant it. Perhaps he saw kinship in their shared adulthood—a person might get tired of looking out at a sea of nineteen-year-olds. But no. “Good for you,” he said, with a skip of mockery to his voice, “you’ve achieved the biological imperative. But here at Radcliffe we have other projects. You can stay in the class provided you stay awake in it, despite your condition.”

—

The neighbor was watering the hacked-back stubs of rosebushes out front. “Tell me again where you all have come from?” the woman asked when Fern got out of the car.

Fern just wanted to get inside and hate the professor while
eating ice cream and sitting in a warm bath. “We lived in the South but we’re from Chicago. The North Shore,” said Fern. Fern knew that this fact, which had been so heavy to carry on the base, would keep her afloat on the sunlit surface of this particular social sea. They were wealthy with other wealthies, all of them having had the same upbringing, the same training, the same assumed values. This was not the whole of it, though—she did not care which wife was at the top of the pyramid, which wives were working their way up and which wives had slipped lower having made the wrong dish for a party, having gotten too drunk, been too honest. The woman sprayed her hose over a new tangle of Princess Graces and Polar Stars and Black Magics. “If you need anything . . .” she said, but her back was already turned.

That night Edgar put Cricket to bed and came downstairs humming. He had written two thousand words, some of them good. He was reading James Baldwin and wanted Fern to read it too so they could talk about it. He got a drying rag and began to work on the pile of dishes she had amassed in the rack.

“If you want me to say something about ‘the off-modern condition,’ then forget it,” she said.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

“I’m dropping out of school,” she told him. “I’m having a baby—what’s the point of pretending I’m a serious student?”

Edgar went to the freezer and took out a pint of vanilla ice cream. He got two spoons and patted the counter. They hoisted themselves up and ate big scoops.

She told him about the professor and Edgar said, “Don’t drop out. Take a semester off. Take a year off.”

“Do you think it’s lonelier to be a foreigner around people who obviously don’t understand you or to be among people who seem just like you but whom you don’t like?”

He kissed her on the neck. “Both,” he said.

“Maybe we should go far away.”

“I was as far away as a person can be and it didn’t help.”

Edgar would convince Fern not to drop out and give the professor the satisfaction. She would finish the semester with Bs, but she would not reenroll in the spring.

A few weeks later they would learn that Fern was carrying twins, and though twins ran in her family and this set was nothing more than genetics, it would feel to Fern like a direct apology from whatever god had made Ben and taken him again. Replacement plus addition. Fern was afraid and she was hopeful—here was a chance for a twin-pair to be broken up; here was a chance for a twin-pair to remain whole. It made her miss Ben too much. How good it would have felt to sit on a sofa next to her brother, both of them grown, a baby on each of their laps. She imagined the photograph of that day, how they would both smile the particular smile of a twin holding a twin and how she would have pinned the picture beside her vanity so that she could look at it every single day.

Fern remembered when she had first bought a razor and how she had sneaked off with it, embarrassment and excitement humming in her, and how, when she had come out of the steam and wrapped herself in towels Ben had been sitting on the sink and his face was thin and sorry and they both knew that the years when they were the same had just ended. Maybe they will both be boys or girls, Fern thought, rubbing her belly. Maybe they will always be each other’s mirrors.

At night, Fern dreamed about the end of the world, only the dreams were cheerful. It was the end of the world and she had a nice bow and arrow and was an extremely good shot. It was the end of the world and everyone played softball all the time.

The twins kicked her hard from the inside. So many little feet.

—

All through the fall, winter and spring, Edgar sat at his desk and he tried to explain to the white space of the page what it meant to be a son and a father. He tried to explain to the white page what it meant to have so much and yet to feel mostly the emptiness of desire, unfillable. He tried to explain that there was no life without want. He thought that if he could get these thoughts to make sense in language he himself might make sense in the world. Edgar was trying to write himself a way to exist.

Some days the magic trick almost worked. He got a few sentences that felt true, a scene of a boy in a limousine in a poor neighborhood, a scene of a young man in a bar in Kentucky feeling more companionship with the miners than he had with his own parents, except the miners died from their jobs and he was safe, a scene of a new father and his baby who was filled with a midnight-sadness that she could not explain and he could not discern, both of them weeping by dawn. Other days he reread his pages and saw there the whine of privilege, a character fooled by the sound of his own voice. Edgar wondered whether he even deserved to tell a story. Because of his father’s money, because of the men who earned pennies in the mines, pennies in the mills, he could sit at this slab of wood and write. His clothes were paid for by their effort, his glasses, his lunch. He did not know what it felt like to work close to the edge of survival. Maybe severe lack brought clarity—the skin-bone monk at the top of the mountain, having given up everything but his mind. Edgar was supremely lucky, but luck was a lonely place.

He turned on the radio and listened to the news of the war that had continued even after he himself had been sent home. The American position had grown weaker and weaker. Forty boys had died that day. Edgar thought of the unknown person whose job it
now was to write to their mothers and fathers. He put his pen down and went walking. It was warm outside after having been cold for so long. The trees were tipped with buds.

In the windows of all the stores were objects made to shine and beckon, to distract. Edgar went inside a shop and felt the cold porcelain of a set of nested white and green mixing bowls. He weighed the bowls in his hands. “Shopping for someone special?” a pretty young salesgirl in a long flowered dress asked. The promise of this transaction was so simple—an object, a certain price and everyone left smiling.

“My wife,” he said.

“Is she a cook?”

“Not really,” he admitted.

“Can I show you something? It’s brand-new. We haven’t even put it out yet.” The girl touched Edgar’s elbow, led him to a locked case where she pulled out a box. Within: a gold chain with a deep locket. “It’s meant to hold a lock of hair. It’s old-fashioned and I think it’s so romantic.”

Edgar opened the latch. “It’s beautiful,” he said.

“I could cut the hair for you,” she said, her thin fingers miming a pair of scissors, closing. It was not something Edgar knew how to say no to. It was expensive, this locket, etched gold with a ruby in one corner. This was a gift his mother would have congratulated him for. The girl took out a pair of scissors from behind the register and pulled a curl at the back of Edgar’s head. “Hold still,” she said. He could feel her breath on his skin. She cut.

—

The day after the incident with the professor, Fern, seeking comfort, had ordered a desk from a famous modern designer in Sweden. She had not asked Edgar because the price was absurd and the
shipping costs even more. It took months to arrive. She had received postcards letting her know of its progress, as if the desk was a friend who greatly anticipated this visit:
Hello from Denmark
;
Love from London
. The desk had traveled all through her pregnancy, as if it was following the same gestational calendar.

There had been a long break between mailings while the desk had sailed across the ocean. Fern had thought of it, crated up in the belly of a ship, rocking against the waves. Her own belly had grown enormous. She could hardly fit in the car anymore and baths were impossible, half of her sticking up out of the water. Then the correspondence resumed:
I’m here in New York.
Then, days before her due-date, two men knocked on the door, tall men with thick blond eyebrows and matching blue worksuits.

“We have come with your desk,” the first man said. The dog barked at him.

“Flower, shush,” Fern said.

The men had suitcases and another bag full of tools. The crate was on wheels, and they brought it in. The two men looked tired and thirsty, so Fern waddled into the kitchen and offered juice in juice glasses and slices of cheese and crackers on a plate. “Sit down a minute,” she said, “before you begin unpacking it.”

“Thank you. It was a long journey.” They had to fold themselves up carefully to fit at the table.

“Where are you coming from?” she asked, thinking of a shipping hub in a nearby city.

“Stockholm,” they said, surprised. “We traveled, with the desk.”

“You traveled with the desk from Stockholm?” The shipping costs made a new kind of sense.

“An American would do wrong setup.”

Fern looked at the clock. She was glad that Cricket was at preschool. Edgar would be home in a few hours and she wanted very
badly for him not to walk in and discover that his wife had bought a completely unnecessary piece of furniture from across the world, and accidentally ordered two blond men along with it. “Shall we get to work then?” she asked. Another thing: she had begun to feel contractions. They were mild enough if she breathed right.

The Swedes looked too big for the house, for the chairs. She imagined that where they lived, everything must be much larger. Larger table, larger chairs, larger juice glasses, larger wives.

“It’s a big desk?” she asked.

“It is a Swedish desk,” said one of the men, revealing his yellow teeth. “It is right size.”

“So,” she said, trying to make conversation but not wanting anyone to get talking too long. Her body cinched up. She could feel the babies pressing down. The dog circled her as though she knew what was going on.

“We began the first day much early,” the yellow-toothed man explained. “Travel by train.” He smiled, waiting to see if she understood him. “That day was a cold day. How do you say this weather, like rain but not rain?”

“Fog?” she asked.

“Fog?” he asked back.

“Fog,” she said to confirm, and he repeated the word again.

For such big men, they took surprisingly small sips of their juice. Fern said, “I’m sorry, I think I am in labor.”

“For the baby?” said one.

The other Swede continued the previous conversation. “The last herring, we ate in the train. After, only bread and butter and meat from a can.”

“You have some herring?” the yellow-toothed man asked.

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t have any herring. Only meat from a can. Very old meat from a can,” Fern said, hoping to discourage
them from wanting anything else to eat. She breathed through a wave of what was now definite pain. The two men watched her patiently. One went over to the crate, knocked on it.

“I should call my husband,” Fern said but when she dialed Edgar’s studio number it just rang and rang.

“We can help,” said yellow tooth.

Fern watched the clock, had to kneel while the pain peaked. She remembered this pain now—how could she have forgotten it? She also remembered that it went on and on, and figured that she had many hours to go. Flower whined with her. When Fern was back in her chair the first man said, “London was nice city. Having bad weather, but having good time.” Did the men have return tickets? Fern wondered.

“There are many dark people here in America,” one Swede said. “Do you feel fear of them?”

“Of the dark people? The black people?” Fern stumbled. “No, no, we like them.” It came out sounding wrong, as if they were a kind of animal some people thought of as pests and others found sweet.

“But not in this neighborhood,” the second man said.

“No,” she said, “not so much in this neighborhood.” Pain and shame peaked at the same time.

Finally, finally, yellow tooth stood up and stretched. He gave the small chair a dirty look. Fern wanted to defend it—we Americans can fit in chairs that size. We are not being cheap. He came to stand beside her and wiped her forehead, which was sweating. “You have a cloth? I can make it cold for you.” He wet a red gingham dishtowel in the sink, squeezed it in his big hand and draped it over Fern’s forehead. The contractions were closer together but she could not keep track of the time and survive at the same time. She kept expecting Edgar to walk through the door and drive her to the hospital.

The two blonds began to unfasten the nails in the crate, pulling at them with the back of a hammer. Boards fell away. It was like excavating a tomb. Musty, woodsy smell came out when they opened the door panel and the inside of the crate was so dark. The bigger man reached inside and pulled at a handle. Inside was a ramble of wool blankets.

Tape was cut and the two blonds pulled the blankets off, revealing the desk. Just a desk. It was rectangular and sleek and the wood was rich and marbled like meat. But it was only wood, not some precious material. It seemed now like a very strange thing to do—spend money to have some nailed-together boards brought from the other side of the ocean, complete with two handlers. And there was no assembly. All the Swedes had to do was take it out of the crate and run a soft rag over it to remove the shipping dust.

When Fern was between waves, yellow tooth pulled one of the kitchen chairs over to the desk and said, “Sit down.”

The desk was big. It was technically too big. Fern felt like a little girl sitting at it. She thought of her father at his big desk in his big study, a fat novel in front of him and a red pen.