Three Women at the Water's Edge (39 page)

Oh, it was clear that the fluids from the unborn baby were pressing on her brain and making her feel and think strangely. For as Daisy sat smiling politely at Jerry, nodding and commenting at appropriate times, all the queerest thoughts were running through her head. She wanted to taunt him like a child with a new toy, a better toy. She wanted to interrupt him to ask, “Tell me. You’re a man. Do you think I’m sexy? Do you think any man will want to marry me? I mean after I’ve gotten back in shape. Do you think anyone would want to marry a woman with three children? What do you think of my legs, look at my legs, they’re still good.” What would poor Jerry do if she pulled up her skirt and showed him her legs? Daisy wiggled on the sofa. She felt restless, crazy. She wanted suddenly to turn on the radio or a record and dance, she really felt like dancing—al
though she knew that if she did she would probably pass right out on the floor, because she could scarcely walk anymore without struggling for breath. But Jerry did not sense her itchiness; he talked on.

Finally the children came thundering into the living room with Sara behind them.

“Are you still here?” they asked, and Jenny attempted to jump on Daisy’s lap while Danny stood openly scrutinizing Jerry with the same suspicious look Daisy’s father had worn on his face when she had started dating at fifteen.

“We’re just leaving,” Jerry said, to Daisy’s relief. “Good Lord, look how long I’ve been talking. We’ll be late; I made reservations.”

Daisy struggled up from the sofa, kissed the children goodbye, and awkwardly fit as much of her body as she could into her coat. Last week she had tried to button the coat and the strain of her enormous belly against the fabric had made two of the buttons pop right off, so now she had to be satisfied with having her arms and back covered while her stomach sailed ahead of her into the cold, covered only by the bright blue wool of her dress. Jerry was a gentleman; he took her arm and steadied her as they went out the door and down the steps to the car. He was quiet in the car for a while until they were headed in the direction of the restaurant, and when he finally spoke he said, “I should apologize. I can’t believe I talked so much. I hope I didn’t bore you.”

“No, no, not at all,” Daisy answered, smiling. But, in fact, her mind was wandering even then, so that she had to almost physically force herself to pay attention to him. She was foolishly staring at the lights of cars and houses and shops they drove past, she was letting herself get lost in the patterns of light. She found it difficult to concentrate on the man sitting next to her.

“I don’t usually talk so much about myself,” Jerry said. “But you are so sympathetic. You’re so nice.”

“I’m so
pregnant,
” Daisy said. And as she spoke, she felt a most surprising warm gush of fluids between her legs. It startled her. Her first thought was that she had wet her pants, but then she realized that she hadn’t sneezed or coughed or laughed and that in fact this fluid felt different. It was so warm, so sticky—there was so much of it—”Oh, my God, Jerry,” Daisy said. “My water just broke!”

“What does
that
mean?” Jerry asked, looking sideways at Daisy with apprehension.

“It means I’ll owe you some money to get your upholstery cleaned,” Daisy said. Even as she spoke she could feel the fluid seeping through the material of her dress and coat and into his car seat. But she felt strangely apathetic about it all; the fluid was warm, and the car heater was warm, and she was both comfortable and uncomfortable; most of her body had gone relaxed and somnolent, but her belly was drawing into itself with a deep pulling cramp. She put her hands on her belly to check; it was as if she had become schizophrenic and had to feel with her hands and see with her eyes if that strange foreign country, her stomach, was doing what she thought it was. It was. Her belly was as hard as the shell of a walnut, but it was a vulnerable, living hardness, an animate hardness, and as she moved her hands over her stomach she felt the hardness relax of its own accord.

Daisy sat very quietly for a few minutes, intent on herself, on the workings of her body, listening with her hands: and there it was again, that deep and irresistible pull. So it was starting. The baby was finally coming. In a few hours she would hold her new living child in her arms; in a few hours her life would be once more completely changed. She was ready for it, she was more than ready, she was eager. She welcomed the labor, the entire wracking process of giving birth:
giving
birth, giving life to a new person through her own efforts. This time she knew she would not be afraid of the pain, for she had been through it all before. The first time, with Danny, she had been frightened. She had lain in the high labor-room bed for hours, trying to breathe, trying to be brave, and staring at the chart on the wall that showed how the cervix dilates from two centimeters to something the size of a grapefruit. And she had tormented herself with crazy, uncontrollable fears: that might be what happened to other women, but it could never happen to her. Her body couldn’t possibly change that much. It would be impossible for something as large as a baby’s head and body to push its way through her muscles and bones without breaking her apart in the process. And with both Danny and Jenny, as the pain had grown stronger, she had really been convinced that she would die, with the next contraction, of a broken back. She had thought the pain truly unendurable.

But she had endured it. She had endured it twice, and her back had not broken after all, and she knew now that it would not break with this new baby. She knew now how babies came, she knew that on the other side of the mountain of pain which she was beginning to climb was a really glorious valley of hormonal delights, a sensual paradise of relief, relaxation, rest, and love. With Danny she had felt, at a certain point, when the labor pains grew severe, that she had somehow gotten on a roller coaster: it was just as it had been when she was a child, and had willingly sat down on a roller coaster, and then realizing the inescapability of her act, had screamed and screamed as the rickety cars went clanking up and up and up the steep incline, “I didn’t mean this at all! I don’t want this! I’m scared! Let me off, let me
off
!” It had been terrifying to realize that there was no way off that particular mad ride, that she was locked into it, and had to go through with it, even if it resulted in her death or in pain past describing.

But this time it was different, this time it was better. She felt so much more supported than before, she felt supported by the memories of the births of Danny and Jenny, she felt supported by the love and concern of her family and friends, and she felt really strengthened within herself by what she had gone through in the past few months. If she could go through all of that—the pain of the divorce, the pain of the loss of Paul and her marriage, which in its own way had been as intensely agonizing as the pain of labor—if she could go through all of that, and come out on the other side intact and smiling at life, then she could certainly go through the birth of this new and already loved child. This time she was not on a dry dreadful roller coaster whipping up and down toward a fate she could not foresee. This time, she could feel already, was more fluid, more graceful; as if she were riding the surge of a wave. Yes, it was like that, as if she were a raft, a liferaft, being borne forward by a great and billowing wave, and the wave supported her, held her up, carried her forward with no effort on her part, and she in turn supported the baby, she was the vessel that would carry it safely to the shore. And so she was not frightened; she was glad.

Her stomach continued to tighten and release rhythmically. It was all coming on very fast this time. The contractions were less than four minutes apart, and were rapidly growing fierce.

“Jerry,” Daisy said, “I don’t think we’re going to make it to dinner tonight. I think you’re going to have to drive me to the hospital instead.”

“Really?” Jerry asked, turning to her with a face bright with surprise. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. But the contractions have started, and they are serious ones. God, I’m sorry. I didn’t intend for this to happen at all.”

“Oh, it’s okay, it’s okay. My God, it’s wonderful! It’s exciting!” Jerry stopped at a red light and frankly studied Daisy’s body as if by looking he could tell what was going on.

“Yes, well, just don’t let it worry you if I should all of a sudden stop being a good companion,” Daisy said. “You see, usually the pains start at four minutes apart, and then gradually come quicker and quicker, but now it seems to be hitting me hard all at once. I’m going to have to do some breathing exercises, and I’m going to have to—Just a minute—” And she ignored Jerry and began the quick shallow panting that she remembered from her earlier labors. There it was, for sure, just like the other times, the enormous hand that grasped her body and squeezed. She knew she would have to give in to it, she knew she would have to not fight, but surrender. She pulled her coat about her as tightly as she could, wanting not to look too horribly disheveled and out of control in front of the poor man she had so inadvertently trapped into sharing this particular trip. The next contraction was so hard that she scrunched down in the seat and pressed her knees up against the dashboard of the car, and grabbed onto the door handle. “Ouch,” she said. “Oh, my God. Jerry, you’d better drive fast.”

“I will, I will,” Jerry said, and pressed down on the accelerator. He drove studiously, rapidly, for a few minutes, then suddenly said, “But where are we going? Which hospital?”

This made Daisy laugh, causing her to lose control of her cadenced deep breaths. “St. Mary’s,” she said. “And hurry. And Jerry—thank you. I’m—I’m not going to be able to talk to you anymore—”

“Do you think we should stop and call the police? Or an ambulance?” Jerry asked.

But Daisy this time could not speak to answer him, she could only shake her head in reply, and moan. How hard the contractions were hitting, how the pain was pulling her down and down. She had to give in to it, she had to submerge, she had to let go. She turned her face away from Jerry so he would not be frightened by how she looked, all contorted and lost and inhuman, and she braced herself as well as she could in the car, and she concentrated on the breathing, and she let her body be taken over. She rose and fell with the pain, she billowed and plunged, she let herself be pulled under, and she heard herself sob when she was lifted for a few seconds up free from the pain.

“God,” she said to no one in particular, “it feels so good when it stops.”

By the time they got to the hospital she had to push.

“Jerry,” she said, “you’ll have to go in and have someone come out for me with a wheelchair or a stretcher. I can’t possibly walk.”

Jerry burst from the car and ran toward the emergency room. As soon as he was gone, Daisy let herself indulge a bit in sounds that she had been holding in, afraid that she would scare him. “Oh damn, oh shit, oh hell,” she yelled into the dark night, “oh, I don’t like this, oh, baby, I hope you’re quick.” Her back was arching in spite of herself and she was immensely uncomfortable in the car. She was extremely hot inside her coat and wool dress and tried her best to take off the coat, she felt so mussed and wretched, but all she could manage to get off was one sleeve. And then the attendants were there with a wheelchair, and as Jerry stood helplessly watching with eyes as large as Danny’s, they managed to get her from the car and into the chair with a gentle clumsiness that came from the fact that she could no longer control her body to help them. She could scarcely stay in the chair, her back was arching so furiously.

“Are you okay, are you okay?” Jerry kept asking, running along beside her into the bright clean emergency room, his eyes vivid with worry.

Oh, poor man, poor man, Daisy thought, he doesn’t know. “I’m fine,” she told him.

“But you’re crying!” Jerry said.

“Well, I
hurt,
” Daisy shouted at him. “I hurt a lot. But it’s okay, Jerry, don’t worry. It’s fine—” Then she was talking to a nurse, babbling almost incoherently her name, her doctor’s name, her telephone number, her address, her insurance number, her social security number, and the nurse wrote frantically on a set of forms until Daisy screamed, “If you don’t get me into the delivery room, I’m going to have this baby right here!” The last thing she saw before they wheeled her away was Jerry standing helplessly wringing his hands, and her last civilized thought was: Why, he’s actually wringing his hands! I’ve never seen anyone wring his hands before!

And then they were in the delivery room and were half carrying her, half throwing her onto the table. A young doctor she had never seen before came rushing in, pulling on his white jacket and gloves, strings flapping about him. Almost before anyone could move to help her, Daisy had arranged herself: Now she was better, now she was in a place she could remember, now she knew what to do. She gripped the armholds on either side and pushed against the stirrups and let her head fall back. She stopped holding in, she stopped puffing, she let her body remember the fearful rhythm of the past, and she took an enormous breath and pushed. When she looked up, she saw that the doctor had taken scissors and simply cut her pantyhose and underpants away from her body. “Hahahaha!” she laughed, suddenly overtaken with a lunatic glee. She was in such pain she was almost demented; perhaps this time her back
would
break. When she pushed again, the doctor said, “The head is crowning.” So she pushed again, moaning deep in her throat, knowing she sounded like nothing so much as a mad dog, and hoping with one clear part of her mind that poor Jerry was not standing outside the door listening to her, listening to her lose all control of her civilized, human self. For one excruciating minute the baby seemed to be stuck inside her; it seemed lodged tightly, it seemed stuck; it seemed suddenly far too large to be able to leave; it hurt like hell; it hurt, it hurt, the round fluorescent light above her went square and blurred with her pain—and then the baby was out.