“Do you think Mark and I should go?”
“I don’t see why you have to. Your condition is always a good excuse, but even if you weren’t. You could make a call tonight, or even that you could skip. I would say skip it. What you can do, you can send a contribution. Mrs. Joseph Robbins, and put that acknowledgment should be sent to Mrs. Harold Davis, and I’ll give you the address, or you could get it from the phone book. It’s on Chatham but I don’t remember the number.”
“I’ll find it.”
“I wanted to tell you in case you missed it in the paper. Send a couple of dollars to the prayer-book fund or for research on the disease, whatever you want. Well, I don’t want to keep you. You’re probably busy.”
“No, not really. Eileen Fradin was here but she left a few minutes ago.”
“It’s nice the two of you are getting friendly. How does her husband get on with Mark?”
“Well enough, I guess. They don’t have too much to say to each other. Mother?”
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t know. We were talking about how many children to have.”
“One at a time is usually a good policy.”
“God, imagine having twins!”
“Well, people do it and survive, although I wouldn’t recommend it. Eileen’s having another?”
“In ten or eleven months.”
“Well, that’s very nice, but I think they can wait awhile before booking the hospital room.”
“That’s not what — oh, I was just thinking about something she asked me, and wondering, and — oh, wondering what it would have been like if I’d had any brothers or sisters.”
There was a pause, and when her mother spoke her voice was pitched lower. She said, “Well, you know I lost a baby when you were three.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Well.”
“That’s what I was thinking about. Was it that you couldn’t have any more after that or did you decide not to or what?”
“Well, Andrea—”
“It’s just that I’ve wondered about this, you know, for years, and I thought I would ask.”
“It’s funny talking about it on the phone.”
“I’m sorry, it’s stupid of me. Some other time.”
“No. Just a second, let me get a cigarette.” She waited, and then her mother said, “It’s not that there’s any reason not to talk about it. And there was nothing physical to stop me from having another baby. But it was very upsetting, losing the baby. To your father also, but especially to me, because whatever they say it’s always different for a woman. You carry it, it’s physically a part of you. And then to lose it, and after such a long time.”
“Did you carry it almost to term?”
“I carried it to term. Andrea, I did not want to go through that again. And we already had one healthy child that we loved, and I did not want to go through that again. I didn’t want to take the chance. Even if there was no chance involved I didn’t want the anxiety. Do you understand?”
“Of course I understand. Mother, I—”
“It was a normal baby, Andrea. If you were worried.”
“I never even thought about that, Mother. I just—”
“What happened was a freak. Purely a freak. What happened, the baby, the cord got wrapped around the baby’s throat—”
“Mother, stop. Please.”
“I’m all right, Andrea.”
“Of course you are.”
“I’m perfectly all right. It’s funny how things can take you back so completely in time. You suddenly get a total recollection of a moment from years past and you feel emotions you thought were gone forever. It was, it would have been, it was a boy—”
Her mother’s voice broke, and when Andrea tried to speak her own throat wouldn’t unlock. For a long moment both women were silent.
Then briskly: “Well, I wanted to tell you about Mrs. Robbins.”
“Yes, I’m glad you called.”
“My love to Mark.”
“I’ll tell him. And we’ll see you Friday night for dinner as usual.”
“I look forward to it.”
“So do I.”
“Maybe I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Fine.”
She wrote out a small check for the American Cancer Society and enclosed an appropriate note. There was a mailbox on the corner and she walked to it and dropped the letter in the slot. It was a good clear September day, the sun high in a cloudless sky, the heat softened by a steady breeze. When it was good, Buffalo’s weather was very good indeed.
Well, that was done, she thought, heading back to the apartment. She felt an immediate sense of satisfaction at having attended to a duty so promptly and efficiently. Then, climbing the single flight of stairs to the apartment, she wondered why she had been so quick to send the contribution in Mrs. Robbins’s memory. To get it done with? To act on something on her own...?
She let herself into the apartment. She walked through the rooms in turn, the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen, the dining area. She picked up objects at random, reading them with her hands like a blind person, feeling their weight and substance, returning them carefully to their places. This ashtray. This picture in its silver frame. This candy dish. This table lighter.
You are being silly, she told herself.
Eileen Fradin wouldn’t have these thoughts. Eileen Fradin had wondered if perhaps it might not be wiser to wait longer before getting pregnant, and then she had found out that she was indeed pregnant, and so she had stopped thinking along those lines. Simply stopped. Told the brain to point itself in another direction entirely.
How nice to be able to do that.
Or was it?
She paused for a moment in front of the portable television set and flicked it on. But even as the picture was coming into focus she shook her head firmly and pushed the button to extinguish it.
No, not daytime television. Too much of a symbol, thank you all the same. Sit and stare at the walls if you must but do not sit and stare at that brainless box.
Back to the kitchen to pour more coffee into her cup. Back to the living room to shake a cigarette out of the pack and light it with the heavy Ronson table lighter (a wedding gift, everything was a wedding gift). A drag on the cigarette, a sip of coffee. She thought of Prufrock complaining (or was it precisely a complaint?) that he had measured out his life with coffee spoons.
And she? How did Andrea Benstock measure out her life?
With phone calls from her mother. With little checks in memory of old people she had known only by name. With breakfast in the morning and lovemaking at night. With Friday dinners at the club with her parents and Sunday dinners with his parents. With Eileen Fradin dropping in for coffee or Sondra Margolis calling to ask her if she wanted to go shopping.
Weren’t you supposed to do something? Could you just walk through it like this?
But this was ridiculous. She was happy.
She had everything she could want. Her family. Her friends. A husband who loved her. A baby quick with life inside her. Enough money — she didn’t know what Mark earned but knew that it seemed to be enough. She’d never asked him, he’d never volunteered. It was something, by tradition, one didn’t talk about... besides, she liked it this way. It was part of her safe refuge not to know about certain things. The apartment was attractive and comfortable and would do at least until the baby was born, and perhaps for a year beyond that.
Of course a house would be more work than an apartment, and a baby would make more demands on her after its birth than before. Perhaps that was what she needed. Perhaps she had too much time to think, and that was the problem.