It is nice at least to have a reason for this fatigue — which Dr. R. promised would go away but has not yet.
I dream of the cord filled with blood like a garden hose. The light bluish green gel that shines through the pale sheath. Glistening. Its swimming-pool light. In my mind it is remarkably beautiful. In fact I cannot imagine a more beautiful thing.
This pregnancy calling up all the other moments of bliss. Swimming at the health club in Cape Cod every day. Almost no one else in the pool. That feeling. The light streaming through the glass roof in winter. Each time I turn my head for a breath and lift my arm I see a piece of the sky. Blue with clouds. A little bit of paradise. I am writing AVA with every stroke. I remember thinking then I am living my life exactly, exactly as I have always wanted to.
Blood travels at four miles an hour and completes the round trip through the cord in only thirty seconds. All that moves in me. No wonder I am light-headed.
I worry about telling my sister Christine about the baby — as I do not want to hurt her any more than she has already been hurt. I consider getting her a new kitten in preparation for the news. She probably will not have children. She feels as if she has missed out on everything on account of her illness. I have had bouts of the same thing — but without the intensity, or relent-lessness — without the degree. I love her. More than she can know.
All that has always moved in me.
No American breasts are allowed out under any circumstances in the 1950s — that would have given women too much power and disrupted the societal order too extremely — breasts are just too sexual, too threatening, just too too — the entire society geared toward the feelings of men. So I am formula-fed, “better than breast milk” the doctors bragged back then. The fools. Arrogance of the 1950s. And as a result I am colicky and miserable for a whole year.
Most men have found me a little intimidating for a variety of reasons, but now it is exaggerated. Exactly where did you get that baby? they ask nervously.
Brown quibbles with me about pay for my sabbatical and has no official policy on maternity leave. All a little outrageous for such a self-proclaimed bastion of liberal thinking. In my exhaustion they attempt to bargain with me. Very tricky. I have to begin imagining a plan of escape. They might have been more grateful for these three years of servitude — directing a whole creative writing program for God’s sake — a preposterous notion. I wore the hostess crown most reluctantly. On occasion even displayed bad manners. Handled the administration without grace or flare. Not made for it. It was only the students I ever felt comfortable championing and protecting.
Talked to Judith. She is decidedly sadder, more vulnerable, since Zenka’s death. I hear the solitude in her voice. She is in London now. I speak back double-voiced, the child’s voice speaking with mine, and I wonder if this is somehow painful for her to hear. She has always been a great advocate for children. Zenka, on the other hand, I can still hear her: never, never, never! But Judith is pleased. I had told her first, before just about anyone, when the news was only a few days old and all we could do was hope. She was making her first trip to New York City. We sat next to one another at the White Horse Tavern — a place she insisted on going. “Dylan’s pub.” I am having a baby. And she in response: You will teach the rest of the world how to live.
And on another occasion: You always know in the end what to do. If you are doing it it must be exactly the right thing. And others will flock to copy you. I miss them both every day. Come stay in Tourettes, she says. The babies drink wine with their water and they stay up all night!
Semitic blood intermingling with my own now to create this little being. Two great religions meeting in my body. On both sides there are survivors. From both World Wars. Armenian, Jewish. She shall be some child.
The tenacity of the born.
The tenacity of the unborn.
The impossibility of having a child — I began believing it was not to occur — I had done nothing toward making it occur, and I found that to be significant.
Take loving note — for you have never seen this curve, this swell before in your body — and you shall never see it again.
The most alarming failure of imagination — that I never dreamt I could ever feel this way.
Embryo from the Greek, to swell.
The embryo floats in its amniotic envelope.
A gift unanticipated — this ability to simply shed all that once disturbed so. My war with the literary mainstream ended. I have no desire to press against them. It is part of this great letting go now. It clears the path for me at forty-two to begin my real work, my real writing. I needed it once, I suppose, in order to grow, to keep my edge, to push myself, to write up against. A way of clarifying, even defining my intentions. But no longer. It was part of my apprenticeship. Useful. It served its purpose well. It is, I must say, a strange feeling to be at last ready to write something finally of my own. After all this time.
It’s lovely to be in this gorgeous fog carrying all this miracu-lousness inside.
Provincetown in winter. I was writing AVA, surrounded by ocean. And another winter there grieving — as alive as I would ever be — and trying to write The Art Lover. Failing at everything, it seemed. Still I felt the hard work of living, the cost of loving too much. This flood of hormones. I’m waking up at odd hours now — wide awake, sitting straight up in bed and worrying about the strangest things. Dreamt I drowned in the bay at night. A small circle of friends trying to resuscitate. I could see them from on high. Don’t even bother trying, I instruct them serenely.
There were in fact papers to sign on that amniocentesis table before the procedure. Some risk of miscarriage. Are you sure you want to do this? Helen asks. She is ready to pack us up and get out of there. Yes, I am sure, I say, though I don’t on reflection have any real idea why I am sure. Something is protecting me. I am as calm as I have ever been, will ever be. It will be OK, I said that day, and squeezed her hand.
The hospital after the months and months of Gary’s dying a familiar place. Strangely I am glad to be back in the intensity of the emotion, the pain I felt back then. If I could live through that… It has given me a crazy courage. A weird fearlessness. Since that day, 1 October 1986, I have lived a free person.
The worst possible thing had already happened, so what else was there to fear?
That was twelve, thirteen years ago now. Afterwards I left for the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Never had the desire been so great as then to have a baby. Replace, replace, as if one could. That year for my birthday Helen got me a blue Maine coon cat. I was working on The Art Lover, I named him Fauve.
Most lovely of purring consolations. How I wept and held him tightly to me and kissed him around the collar.