Or, more likely, there was no problem in the first place. She was pregnant, and she had heard and read enough about pregnancy to know that it tricked the mind. It put odd thoughts into a head that would otherwise not entertain them.
She was very lucky. She had to remember that. Because right now she was feeling almost as she had felt at times in New York, experiencing a similar vulnerability.
Those black holes, black holes circling at the perimeters of thought. You had to be very careful not to sail near them. If you fell into them you would fall forever in emptiness. You had to keep a very tight hold on your own mind, and whenever your thoughts approached the edge you had to tug them back and keep them where they belonged...
The baby kicked. She stubbed out her cigarette, placed the palm of her hand over her stomach. She felt a smile forming automatically on her lips, on her whole face. Mark told her often that she glowed with pregnancy and she liked that particular verb, with its connotations of warm radiance enveloping her in an aura. There were times when she could feel herself seeming to glow. This was one of them.
Another kick. She thought of the conversation with her mother, of the brother she had never had. But that memory steered her toward the black holes and she pushed it resolutely aside.
“Jeremy,” she said aloud. “Or Robin. I honestly don’t care which you are, you know. You’re going to make all the difference in the world. You really are.”
She was still sitting on the sofa when she heard Mark’s car in the driveway. She got quickly to her feet and went into the kitchen to make drinks. When she met him at the door he kissed her and held her close for a moment, then released her and accepted his drink.
“I think I need this,” he said.
“Rough day?”
“Oh, I don’t suppose you could call it rough. Let’s just say it was a long day.”
“Poor baby.” She heard herself saying the words, was shocked by them, and then relieved he didn’t question them, however condescending they seemed to her.
“There’s something the matter with the air-conditioner in my office. The guy was supposed to come around to look at it today but he didn’t show up.” He tugged at his tie, removed it, arranged it over the back of the chair. “So I was hoping to get away early, but then I had that schmuck Siegel at four o’clock and I couldn’t get rid of him. It’s bad enough that he’s stupid but on top of that he gets offended easily.”
“Do I know who he is?”
“I don’t think so. He’s in Lester Kalisher’s office. Nobody ever accomplishes anything with Siegel. That’s not what he’s for. Lester always sends him around for the opening rounds. It’s his method of softening up the opposition. After a few hours with Siegel you’re prepared to give ground when Lester comes over and pretends to be the reasonable one.”
She took a sip of her own drink and asked him about the case.
“Oh, it’s all boring as hell,” he said. “You don’t really want to hear about it, do you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Really? Well, a client of ours is buying a restaurant from a client of theirs. It’s a German place way over in South Buffalo on Cazenovia, and the whole deal shouldn’t be complicated but it is. Our guy wants a clause to prevent the seller from opening a restaurant under his own name or within a two-mile radius for the next ten years, which is fairly standard, and the seller is supposedly going to Florida to spend the rest of his life in a trailer court in St Pete, but Kalisher wants to stick on this point to prove he’s a lawyer, and I’m just as determined to prove I’m a lawyer, and — you can’t really be interested in all this crap.”
“I am vitally interested in everything my darling husband does.”
“Uh-huh. That’s what I thought.” He dropped an arm around her, squeezed her bottom, brushed her forehead with his lips. He had taken his jacket off and she could see the sweat circles under his arms. She liked his smells — the fresh one after a shower, the sweet-sour smell of his perspiration, the darkly pungent man-smell of him when they made love.
The sense of smell, she sometimes thought, was rather more important than people realized. It was somehow so much more evocative than the other senses. A suddenly familiar aroma brought back the past much more sharply than a comparable sight or sound or taste or touch.
Just a few weeks ago there had been a hot, sultry night, and the air had had a particular flavor to it, and she and Mark had turned to each other simultaneously to reminisce over their honeymoon in Puerto Rico. It had convinced him that they were telepathic, but she was sure it was merely an identical response to the scent and taste of the air, which that night had been distinctly tropical.
“Why don’t you sit down, baby?”
“I’ve been sitting all day. Don’t give me that delicate business, huh? I was getting enough of that from Eileen.”
“Oh, did you see her today?”
“She came over for coffee and insisted on racing me to the kitchen. She says I should milk this pregnancy for everything it’s worth.”
“Well, she’s right.” He scooped the letters from the sideboard and leafed through them. “Bills and junk mail,” he said. “Just what I always wanted. Is this all we got?”
“It’s all you got.”
“Emphasis noted, counselor. What did you get, a mash note from an old flame?”
“Nothing that exciting. Just the Alumnae Bulletin from Bryn Mawr.”
“Oh, thrills and chills! Can we read it together in bed?” They’d done that once, taking turns reading social notes from the Bulletin in a mock Main Line accent.
“Oh, come on,” she said.
“But I’m looking forward to it! I can’t wait to find out what’s new with Woofer and Tweeter and all those other sweet little preppy Protestants.”
“Woofer and Tweeter!”
“Well, that’s what they all sound like. I don’t know who gives them those nicknames—”
“That’s perfect, Mark. Woofer and Tweeter.” She picked up the Bulletin and began to flip through it. Already, in the few years since she’d graduated from Bryn Mawr, she had noticed the beginning of change in the Class Notes. At first virtually all of the items about her class members had been marriage announcements. Now there were fewer marriages and more birth announcements, and lately divorces had been making their appearance in the listings.
When she held the Bulletin in her hands it was always 1959 again. But whenever she read the notes of her classmates it quickly became present time again.
“I’ll be sending in an announcement soon,” she said.
“For the baby. Good ol’ Jeremy-Robin. How’s J-R been behaving today?”
“All right. Kicking a lot.”
“I don’t see what he’s got to kick about. He’s got a pretty soft life if you stop to think about it. Meals served on time, perfect weather, not too many responsibilities.”
“You sound as though you’d like to trade places with him.”
“Well, I do what I can. Come on, read me about Woofer and Tweeter and Poopie and Guppy and — honey?”
She felt the blood drain from her face. Her chest was constricted and her stomach felt as though she had been kicked. She opened her mouth and tried to breathe through it. But she couldn’t breathe.
“Andrea, what’s the matter? Are you all right?”
She looked up at him. He was standing but he was so very far away and there was a fog between them that blurred his features. She opened her mouth again and made herself breathe, in and out, in and out. He was talking but the words wouldn’t cut their way through the fog.
“Andrea—”
Her own voice, now, returned to her as from a distance. She seemed to understand her own words only by hearing them.