Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
“I didn’t mean to pick on you. You wouldn’t be working anymore anyway,” Honora soothed contritely. “Not with the Lump.” (This had become the family catchphrase for the baby.)
“And anyway,” Joscelyn said, “I don’t notice you rushing off to do battle brandishing your briefcase?”
“I never went to college; I don’t have your kind of brain. But I do wish I had some meaningful work that I loved to do.” Honora was winding a silky strand of black hair around her finger, and her eyes evoked past griefs.
Joscelyn’s expression of defensiveness altered to one of sympathy. “You’ve forgotten your gardens.”
“A hobby.” Honora’s tone was self-deprecating.
“Sure, sure. That’s why people come from all over to see them.”
“Oh, Joss, if you only knew how utterly useless I feel.”
Joscelyn could not recollect ever hearing Honora gripe, not even about waiting tables. “What sort of talk is this? Aren’t you wrapped in the best bunnyskins? Doesn’t Curt kiss you goodbye every morning like he’s going to the moon?”
“And I’m cuh-razy about him, too, Joss, do try to understand. He’s altering the world—you know the Ivory projects better than I do. He has his work. My entire life is centered around him. He’s my everything. It’s not fair.
If anything goes the least bit wrong between us, he knows I collapse. He’s my only resource.”
“What some people won’t complain about!” Joscelyn said in a determinedly joshing tone. “Being married to a powerful, wildly attractive guy who gives you everything.”
“If I were doing something constructive I wouldn’t be such a psychological burden.”
“Somebody’s been stuffing you.”
Honora looked strained, anxious. “But you do have a glimmer of what I’m saying?”
“Sure I do, and you might as well know it’s not total fulfillment to ponder what would clean the red waterstains out of a Lalarheini toilet trap. But Malcolm’s doing fabulously, so it’s worth it. And I
am
pregnant.” Joscelyn stopped. Honora was yanking at the strand of hair.
Is this whole whine because I’m having a baby?
It was difficult to imagine Honora suffering the pangs of an ignoble emotion like jealousy.
She’s flesh and blood
, Joscelyn told herself. After a moment, she asked, “Honora, have you and Curt ever discussed adopting?”
“He’s cold on the idea. I think it’s got to do with not knowing who he is or where he comes from. He wanted his own children.”
“Sometimes life’s the pits, isn’t it?” As Joscelyn spoke she was hit by the irony that she was about to perform the prime female function, a function that her lovely, rich older sister was incapable of.
* * *
Just before seven thirty that night, Joscelyn, Curt and Honora arrived at a spacious early
Victorian mansion on Bayswater Road that had been renovated into a private gynecological hospital. A trim, middle-aged Irish nurse stood on the curb, holding an outsize umbrella over a wheelchair. In her lilting voice, she directed Curt and Honora to a graciously proportioned room. On one of the small tables sat a telephone—no institutional wall fixtures to send out tidings of a new member of the ruling class. Curt dialed long distance before sitting back with the latest
Time:
calls to Lalarhein took anywhere from three hours to a day to go through.
They were served tea and small sandwiches that Curt ate hungrily—Joscelyn’s pains had canceled dinner. The Irish nurse came to stand in the doorway. “Mrs. Peck would like to see you, Mr. Ivory,” she said.
“You mean Mrs. Ivory,” Curt replied.
“She asked for you, sir.” The song of the Celt. “It will be a short little visit. She’s getting her sedation.”
* * *
Joscelyn’s hospital-gowned bulbousness was dammed in by the railings of her narrow bed. The Demerol hadn’t taken hold yet, and as Curt came into the labor room she was arching her back, sweat popping out on her distorted face. He reached out and she clutched both of his strongly tendoned hands. When the pain relaxed, she asked, “Honora’s not hurt, is she?”
“She understands,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “What’s up, Joss? What can I do?”
“If anything happens to me—”
“Nothing’s going to. Jenks didn’t get his knighthood by bungling.”
“Let me be dramatic; it’s my big moment. Promise if anything happens, you’ll keep Malcolm in Ivory?”
“If you’re making final requests, try something worthwhile. It’s not my habit to go around firing good people.” He gave her the less caustic version of his smile. “Joss, Heinrichman’s not one to hand out compliments, but he told me Malcolm’s completely knowledgeable about pumping stations.”
Her seminars had paid off.
Another pain started, but the Demerol was dividing her mind into two compartments. One side was becoming a receptacle for the contraction, absorbing the jagged hurt in the small of her back, the unrelenting pressure that hardened her stomach to concrete, the ripping apart of her rectum. Thanks to the drug, this compartment floated blessedly farther and farther away.
By contrast the other half of her mind jumped with brilliantly edged details. The green walls of the labor room, the persistent hiss of the glinting metal sterilizer, the shadow cast by the scalloped fringe of the drawn blind. She could smell the woodiness of Curt’s aftershave—he must have shaved when he came home, before her pains had suddenly crowded together. She noted that the lines on the left side of his forehead were deeper, where his eyebrow went up. His firm grasp generated strength and energy.
Being married to Malcolm is like whirling through space
, she thought, not questioning why this had leaped into her mind.
I can be so dizzy with joy that I could die, or I can plummet into the cold void. I’m trapped forever in his gravitational pull.
A faraway pain clutched her, and another thought blossomed, sharp and clear-edged.
The world threatens Malcolm and he placates everyone but me. He loves me and therefore takes out his fear and frustration on me.
Curt pushed back her sweaty hair, and she felt the coolness of his fingers on her forehead.
Curt
, she thought.
He’s not afraid.
I wish he were the baby’s father.
“Good morning Mr. Ivory, Mrs. Ivory,” said Sir Harold in a loud, cheerful voice. Wearing blood-streaked surgical greens, he stood in the doorway dangling his mask.
It was ten past six and Honora, who hadn’t slept, rose to her feet. Curt, dozing on the couch, came instantly alert.
“You have a beautiful niece, born fifteen minutes ago, at ten past six,” the titled obstetrician said. “Armistice day, so there’ll be no difficulty remembering her birthday. A most perfect little girl.”
“And m-my sister . . .?” Honora coughed to loosen her throat.
“Other than a routine episiotomy, she’s as good as new. In a few minutes she’ll be coming up—she’s still rather drugged, but you can see her for a minute. I congratulate you both.” Briskly waving his mask, he disappeared.
Giving a soft little laugh, Honora threw her arms around Curt. “A little girl,” she cried. “Isn’t this heaven?”
He kissed her on the mouth. “Girls are the best. Damn, why doesn’t that call come through!”
A broad little Cockney nurse led them up a floor to Joscelyn’s airy room with the three long, narrow windows that overlooked the darkness of Hyde Park. The patient, followed by a small retinue, was wheeled in. Beneath the green blanket Joscelyn looked flat. Her eyes were closed, her pallid face slack.
“Joss?” Honora said.
Joscelyn looked up with a wearily triumphant smile. “A girl!”
“We heard,” Honora said. “I’m so happy I’m crying.”
“Wait until you see her.” Joscelyn’s voice was slurred. “She is gorg-ee-ous.”
The two orderlies transferred Joscelyn to the bed. As if on cue, the bedside telephone buzzed.
Curt answered. “Hey, Malcolm. Yes, we’re here. But let Joss give you the news.”
Joscelyn lay back in the pillows, her chin drawn back with worry. “We have a little girl, Malcolm, seven pounds two ounces, twenty-one inches. The most perfect baby. All the nurses raved, and so did Sir Harold. And you
know how many babies
they
see. She’s an absolute dream.” There was a feverish intensity to her drugged voice. After a pause, she said, “I can’t quite hear you, darling. Oh, now you’re clear. You’re sure you don’t mind a girl?” Another pause. “Yes, I’m glad, too. Malcolm, not to be gushy, but she has these perfect miniature fingers and toes, the tiniest fingernails.” A pause. “No, it’s very dark, like yours. I’m calling her Rosalynd Joanna, like we agreed—is that all right? We’ll register her with the American Embassy, and—”
“Mrs. Peck, you can talk to your husband later,” said the heavyset floor matron. “Now you must sleep.”
After her farewells, the phone drooped in Joscelyn’s hand and she closed her eyes. Honora touched her lips to her younger sister’s slightly clammy forehead. “I’ll be back this afternoon, Joss, we’re so happy.”
Going up in the small elevator to the nursery, Curt said, “That’s some mouthful, Rosalynd Joanna.”
“She told me before that it’s a Peck family name. She sounded apologetic about having a girl, didn’t she?”
“The drugs.”
“When she told
us
about the baby she was daffy with excitement.”
“Maybe Malcolm had his heart set on a Rodney Jeremiah.”
They had reached the top floor. Curt tapped on the glassed wall. A capped, masked nurse nodded and went to the farthest canvas cot,
carrying her small pink bundle upright to the window.
Rosalynd Joanna Peck’s head showed none of the results associated with the arduous journey through the birth canal. Her skin was a luminous, rosy pearl, her button of a nose had a miniature bridge. Her eyes—they had lashes—were closed. As they watched, she opened her well-delineated lips in a prodigious, toothless yawn, then blinked unfocusing. The eyes were a bright blue.
“Joss was right.” Curt’s voice was low with awe. “She really is something else.”
“Exquisite. Curt, except for the coloring, she’s the image of Crystal.”
“I don’t see it.” Curt’s tone was noncommittal.
“It’s so obvious. Look? She even has Crystal’s darling cleft in her chin.” Honora’s cheeks were wet and she accepted that her tears were only in part the product of joy for this niece. She was also weeping for her lost sister, for the unrecapturable past; she was weeping because this baby was not hers.
* * *
Three weeks later, Joscelyn and her daughter—whose name had been shortened and softened to Lissie—returned to Lalarhein.
* * *
Malcolm’s skills as a father amazed Joscelyn. After only one demonstration he knew exactly how to hold Lissie’s lovely head while bathing her, he patted her dry, turning her this way and that on the bassinet as he shook the can of
Johnson’s Baby Powder, he cleaned her miniature, flat-set ears with a Q-Tip, he knew how to burp her after orange juice or water. (Joscelyn was breast feeding, and for the first time in her life had the pleasure of real if minor cleavage.) He didn’t even mind changing dirty diapers, a chore that other mothers in the compound assured Joscelyn
their
husbands adamantly refused.
He showed Lissie off to Fuad and Lelith, who gave an antique, hand-knotted silk rug for her room. He carried in the baby for the inspection of Khalid’s flashing eye, and even held her out for silent, thin Harb Fawzi to admire. He exulted to the neighbors when she held her silver rattle, staring at it.
“Lissie’s got a first-rate mind,” he informed Joscelyn. “You better start giving her some mental stimulation.”
“Malcolm, she’s six weeks old.”
“Send away for one of those alphabet mobiles like the Duchamps’ kid has dangling over his crib,” he said.
On the weekends, Joscelyn would awaken to find him sitting in the nursery rocker, his dark head bent to nuzzle the soft, black down of Lissie’s apple-size skull.
“I heard her moving around,” he would whisper. “She’s not hungry, she just needed a bit of holding.”
Lissie was not only exquisite, she was a good baby, seldom crying, eating on a four-hour schedule, sleeping through the night and through every sort of household ruckus and domestic
discord. She didn’t even have a fussy period.
What did women mean, postpartum blues? For the first time in her entire life, Joscelyn awoke in the morning without that sense that something dreadful might happen to her. She had no need for constant striving. How strange that she, of all women, should glory in motherhood.
But why not? Hadn’t she given Malcolm the perfect child?
* * *
In March Honora arrived for a visit.
The house had only two bedrooms. “You lucked out, auntie,” Malcolm said, only half jestingly. “You get to sleep with my daughter.”
This time there were no parties. “I’m only here a few days,” Honora said firmly when Malcolm suggested another bash.
“My daughter’s the greatest, true,” Malcolm retorted. “But you can’t sit and admire her the whole time.”
“Just watch me,” Honora said.
He returned to work early Sunday. Afterward, Honora and Joscelyn, wearing short nylon robes, sat in the living room drinking coffee and talking idly. Lissie lay on the floor, protected by one of her flannel blankets: she lifted up her head to stare soberly at her toy giraffe.
“Have you ever noticed that she doesn’t turn at voices, Joss?” Honora asked.
“Our conversation isn’t very stimulating.”
“She didn’t pay any attention to the trucks, and that’s a real din. When do they
notice noises?”
Joscelyn waved her finger in front of Lissie. The blue eyes followed the movement. “That,” she said in an arrogantly authoritative tone, “is what she’s meant to do. That’s her developmental stage.”
But when Honora went to run her rusty bathwater, Joscelyn flew to the bookshelf, flipping through Gesell and Ilg. Infants as young as four weeks respond to sound. Lissie was sixteen weeks.
Joscelyn clapped.
Lissie didn’t turn.
Joscelyn clapped so smartly that her palms stung.
Lissie continued rubbing her pretty button nose on yellow-flowered flannel.