“What’s that?”
“You’ll find out. I’ll in fact drive East after you give birth and bring you everything you need — clothes, crib, carriage, changing table and my breast pump. But listen. You’re my dearest friend and have been for years. We’re as close as close only-sisters. I know times are tough for some women — even most. Anyway, they’ve been complaining more than usual lately about men — the shortage and also the sexuality of potentially good ones. But you? Men have to be scratching at your windows no matter how many flights up you’re up and purring and panting behind your door.”
“Not so.”
“So. I know. New York’s just a holler away. I heard about ten wonderful men at least over the last few years, two of them nonpareil and childless and who wanted kids, who fell for you or would have at the slightest sign and you for a while with two of them, although not the peerless ones of course. But for your own reasons none ever quite stacked up to your—”
“Once.”
“Okay, him, once. Tried to forget him but okay, him, once. And the man you were married to — let’s not forget that winner long as we’re at it. Anyway, all these other wonderful recent obtainable champing-for-children men, your reasons you dropped them, one dropped you — let’s bless him — but — hey, can you really afford this call, late as it is to ask that?”
“It’s ultradiscount time, and even if it—”
“Drop, drop, except for the one you wanted to marry and am I glad he didn’t. But reach out for someone — not off the street, but if that happened to be, go with it: you never know who you’ll meet leaving the movies — and let the thing happen again. Fall freely and deeply and get married in a year and go off on your honeymoon a month pregnant. And I want it to be a girl. I want our children to have children together. I want us to grow old together as related in-laws. I want you, past all kidding, to be supremely happy again as you were with your first husband when we all should have known better, and I know the only way you can. Forget books, forget teaching — they’re all great and worthy but secondary, and you can always go back to them. And the—”
“Okay, enough. And maybe the phone bill is running up too much.”
“And the man who’s coming by tonight—”
“Mara, let her alone,” Bob says.
“The two of you — let me finish — get your hand off the phone, for I see an opening here that could change her life — And the man who’s coming by — don’t turn him away just because the time’s long passed when he should have been there and so on. Maybe the cab he caught crashed and he’s crawling this moment to your door. Think of that.”
“Will you stop being silly,” Bob says.
“Or the subway he might have been on caught fire and he’s now maneuvering his way to you underground through pillows of smoke and will probably end up coming to you from your building’s basement. Or the helicopter he took exploded in midair and he’s now parachuting to your building’s roof and, if he can get the roof door unlocked, will walk to your apartment downstairs. Or the — or, picked up for suspicion while running to your place, he wanted to get there so fast—”
“Pay no attention to her, Helene,” Bob shouts. “Once she starts in—” “—and this will happen right after we finish talking. He’ll call you from the police station, in his one allowable call, to set him loose. Who can say in your city? But I have good instincts, and a rather adolescent imagination — too many movies and maybe living in movieland too long and maybe also too deep a belief in down-to-earth romance. But anyone who’d get himself locked out of his apartment, if we can believe him — and if it’s not true, then that’s saying a whole lot about his feelings and determination for you too. But anyone who would and then phone the same night he met you for only how long did you say? Anyway, you know what I think would make you the happiest, and Bob, for all his criticizing my silliness, agrees completely with me. So we hope you do it — with the one coming over or some other man you take the plunge for, and now you can hang up on me if you like. Wouldn’t blame you the slightest, but first tell me this fellow’s name again, in case I maybe know him and can warn you against him if my instincts about him were a hundred percent wrong.”
“The name of the man who’s supposed to come over but never will? Daniel Krin.”
“Krin. No. Well, we beat the band for Dan.”
“It won’t be Dan but—”
“Seriously, Helene, you can’t know how wonderful almost everything is in having a baby. Even to doing it in one room while the kid’s sleeping peacefully in another. I mean, he sleeps in our room at night, but sometimes, in the afternoon, when Bob—”
“I’ll consider it if at the time we have two or more rooms.”
“And breast-feed it too.”
“At the same time or different? Anyway, if the man comes, baby comes and then the milk comes, I will.”
“You’ll be such a relaxed mother, it’ll just spill. I’ll start saving the money to fly in for your wedding. Not with Dan-the-man so much, but you know what I mean. If you gear yourself up for it to happen, it’ll happen, listen to me. Before Bob there were plenty just as highly desirable and a couple even more so — I don’t kid you and I never did him. But I wanted to go to grad school, travel, work, kick it up a little and so on — you know me — till I said it was time to, since I was approaching thirty-five and beginning to risk Down’s for the kid and along came Bob. Whups — sleepytime yawn. And look at this. Bob — and it seems to be a straightout nonfake — fell asleep holding the bottle to Nick’s lips and Nick’s asleep too, on Bob’s chest. So it’s one big sleepy family. But he has to be burped. Minimal ten minutes or we get a magnum of gas. But before that I’ll get my hard-wrung expressed back into the refrigerator, get the Polaroid and flash attach and snap a few pictures of these two. So, my dearest dream of a generous friend — refrigerator, pictures, burps, then rock Nick in his carriage a bit and probably one more diaper change — I’ve got a lot to do so really must say toodle-ee-oo.”
“Much love to Bob from me and a big kiss on the tuchis for Nick.”
“That a way to go.”
“Hey, come on there, get this wagon moving — move it along,” man in the subway car says into his newspaper. He stands up, slaps the paper against his leg, opens the window by his seat and sticks his head out of it and says “Hey, come on there, get this — conductor. Hey, conductor there, what’s going on? We’ve been — hey there, you. The one in the blue coat. Yell to the conductor there we’ve been parked in this station for the last two days…With the Parka — that’s right, the blue one, you. Yell to the conductor there I want to see him. That we — damn it. Conductor, hey, conductor. What’s with this train? Get it moving, get it moving. When are we supposed to be here to, next Thanksgiving parade?”
“Any minute,” a man yells from where this man’s yelling to. “We got a light up ahead to stop and haven’t got one to go.”
“Then get that light. Call them up and tell them to put on that light because a mistake’s been made and nothing’s in your way. Get that light and go. People like me have to get to work or lose our jobs. Jesus,” and he sits, looks around, realizes he’s sitting on it, pulls his paper out from underneath him and starts reading it.
“Will you please close your window?” a woman across from him says.
“What are you worried for? The doors are open and not going to close.”
“When the train starts the doors will close. Will you please be so kind as to close the window you opened?”
“It’s only a little fresh air.”
She gets up, says “I knew you wouldn’t,” makes sure the four shopping bags at her feet are positioned against one another and the seat so they won’t fall, says “Excuse me if it’s no trouble” to the man, he moves over a couple of feet, and squeezes the levers at the top of the window but can’t get the window to move. “Mister,” she yells to Dan sitting at the other end of the car. “You’re my last hope here and not because you’re the only one left. Could you please help me close this window — it’s stuck.”