I step aside. “Perrier or tap water?” I say.
“Just regular water,” the bear says.
In the kitchen, the bear removes its head and puts it on the kitchen table. The head collapses slowly, like a popover cooling. The bear has a long drink of water.
“You don’t look thirty,” the bear says.
The bear seems to be in its early twenties.
“Thank you,” the bear says. “I hope that didn’t spoil the illusion.”
“Not at all,” I say. “It’s fine. Do you know how to get back?”
“I took the train,” the bear says. “I overshot you on purpose — got my aunt’s car from New Haven. I’m going back there to have dinner with her, then it doesn’t take any more smarts than getting on the train to get back to the city. Thank you.”
“Could I have the piece of paper?” I say.
The bear reaches in its side, through a flap. It takes out a notebook marked “American Lit. from 1850.” It rips a page out and hands it to me.
I tack it on the bulletin board. The oil bill is there, as yet unpaid. My gynecologist’s card, telling me that I have a 10 A.M. appointment the next day.
“Well, you don’t look thirty,” the bear says.
“Not only that, but be glad you were never a rabbit. I think I’m pregnant.”
“Is that good news?” the bear says.
“I guess so. I wasn’t trying not to get pregnant.”
I hold open the front door, and the bear walks out to the porch.
“Who are you?” I say.
“Ned Brown,” the bear says. “Fitting, huh? Brown? I used to work for an escort service, but I guess you know what that turned into.” The bear adjusts its head. “I’m part-time at Princeton,” it says. “Well,” it says.
“Thank you very much,” I say, and close the door.
I call the gynecologist’s office, to find out if Valium has an adverse effect on the fetus.
“Mister Doctor’s the one to talk to about prescription medicine,” the nurse says. “Your number?”
Those photographs in Life, taken inside the womb. It has ears at one week, or something. If they put in a needle to do amniocentesis, it moves to the side. The horror story about the abortionist putting his finger inside, and feeling the finger grabbed. I think that it is four weeks old. It probably has an opinion on Bob Dylan, pro or con.
I have some vermouth over ice. Stand out in the back yard, wearing one of my husband’s big woolly jackets. His clothes are so much more comfortable than mine. The dog has dragged down the clothesline and is biting up and down the cord. He noses, bites, ignores me. His involvement is quite erotic.
There is a pale moon in the sky. Early in the day for that. I see what they mean about the moon having a face — the eyes, at least.
From the other side of the trees, I hear the roar of the neighbors’ TV. They are both deaf and have, a Betamax with their favorite Hollywood Squares programs recorded. My husband pulled a prank and put a cassette of Alien in one of the boxes. He said that he found the cassette on the street. He excused himself from dinner to do it. He threw away a cassette of Hollywood Squares when we got home. It seemed wasteful, but I couldn’t think what else to do with it, either.
Some squash are still lying on the ground. I smash one and scatter the seeds. I lose my balance when I’m bent over. That’s a sign of pregnancy, I’ve heard: being off-kilter. I’ll buy flat shoes.
“Do you know who I really love?” I say to the dog.
He turns his head. When spoken to, he always pays attention for a polite amount of time.
“I love you, and you’re my dog,” I say, bending to pat him.
He sniffs the squash seeds on my hand, noses my fingers but doesn’t lick them.
I go in the house and get him a Hershey bar.
“What do you think about everything?” I say to the dog.
He stops eating the clothesline and devours the candy. He beats his tail. Next I’ll let him off the lead, right? Wrong. I scratch behind his ears and go into the house and look for the book I keep phone numbers in. A card falls out. I see that I have missed a dentist’s appointment. Another card: a man who tried to pick me up at the market.
I dial my sister. The housekeeper answers.
“Madame Villery,” I say. “Her sister.”
“Who?” she says, with her heavy Spanish accent.
“Which part?”
“Pardon me?”
“Madame Villery, or her sister?” I say.
“Her sister!” the housekeeper says. “One moment!”
“Madame!” I hear her calling. My sister’s poor excuse for a dog, a little white yapper, starts in.
“Hello,” my sister says.
“That was some surprise.”
“What did he do?” my sister says. “Tell me about it.”
It takes me back to when we were teenagers. My sister is three years younger than I am. For years, she said “Tell me about it.”
“The bear rang my doorbell,” I say, leaving out the part about the phone call from the diner.
“Oh, God,” she says. “What were you doing? Tell me the truth.”
For years she asked me to tell her the truth.
“I wasn’t doing anything.”
“Oh, you were — what? Just cleaning or something?” Years in which I let her imagination work.
“Yes,” I say, softening my voice.
“And then the bear was just standing there? What did you think?”
“I was amazed.”
I never gave her too much. Probably not enough. She married a Frenchman that I found, and find, imperious. I probably could have told her there was no mystery there.
“Listen,” I say, “it was great. How are you. How’s life in LA?”
“They’re not to be equated,” she says. “I’m fine, the pool is sick. It has cracked pool.”
“The cement? On the bottom or—”
“Don’t you love it?” she whispers. “She says, ‘It has cracked pool.’ ”
“Am I ever going to see you?”
“He put me on a budget. I don’t have the money to fly back right now. You’re not on any budget. You could come out here.”
“You know,” I say. “Things.”
“Are you holding out on me?” she says.
“What would I hold out?”
“Are you really depressed about being thirty? People get so upset—”
“It’s O.K.,” I say, making my voice lighter. “Hey,” I say. “Thank you.”
She blows a kiss into the phone. “Wait a minute,” she says. “Remember when we played grown-up? We thought they were twenty! And the pillows under our nightgowns to make us pregnant? How I got pregnant after you put your finger in my stream of urine?”
“Are you?” I say, suddenly curious.
“No,” she says, and doesn’t ask if I am.
We blow each other a kiss. I hang up and go outside. The day is graying over. There’s no difference between the way the air looks and the non-color of my drink. I pour it on the grass. The dog gets up and sniffs it, walks away, resumes his chewing of the clothesline.
I’ve taken out one of the lawn chairs and am sitting in it, facing the driveway, waiting for my husband. When the car turns into the drive, I take the clothesline and toss it around the side of the house, so he won’t see. The dog doesn’t know what to do: be angry, or bark his usual excited greeting.
“And now,” my husband says, one arm extended, car door still open, “heeeere’s hubby.” He thinks Ed McMahon is hilarious. He watches only the first minute of the Tonight show, to see Ed. He reaches behind him and takes out a cone of flowers. Inside are roses, not exactly peach-colored, but orange. Two dozen? And a white bag, smudged with something that looks like dirt; that must be the chocolate frosting of my éclair seeping through. I throw my arms around my husband. Our hipbones touch. Nothing about my body has started to change. For a second, I wonder if it might be a tumor — if that might be why I missed my period.