Family Happiness (18 page)

“It explains itself,” said Polly.

“Now we must give you coffee,” said Andreya. “As a child my heart was slow, and I was made to drink coffee three times a day. Even now, if I do not have my cup in the evening, I became so full of lethargicness that I cannot sleep right. Kirby! Coffee!”

Andreya made very strong, muddy coffee. For the sake of Polly, Henry, and Kirby, who was always given a taste, she boiled up milk. She herself drank from what looked like a child's cup without milk or sugar. Henry hunkered over his mug, blew on it violently, and drank it in a couple of gulps.

“Polly,” asked Andreya, “why is your brother eating like a savage? Your family are not savages.”

“He's our noble savage,” said Polly, who could not help doting on her oafish brother.

“Food doesn't interest me,” Henry said. “I use it for fuel.”

“Really,” said Polly. “Well, in that case I won't have to bake slumped brownies anymore.”

“I mean regular food,” Henry said. “Vegetables. Stuff like that. I don't mean the good stuff.”

“He thinks of food day and night,” Andreya said. “Come here, Kirby.” She turned to Polly. “I put the coffee in his dish and he becomes offended. I must put it in my saucer or he does not drink it happily.”

Polly sneaked a look at her watch. She was getting edgy. Half of her wanted to go to Lincoln's. Half of her was tired and cold and wanted to go home. Supposing Wendy called Henry and Andreya after she was gone, and then called Polly, who was not home? How would Polly explain those two hours? Oh, love affairs! Polly felt she was becoming something of a seasoned trooper. Everyone in her office took a long lunch. There were a number of people who took an extra hour for their psychoanalytic appointments. As long as the work got done, no one was very sticky about time, and Polly, who had never missed a deadline, was a past master at schedule juggling. It certainly wore a person out, she thought.

“I'm going home,” she said. “Henry, Andreya, put on Kirby's leash and you can all walk me to a taxi.”

At Lincoln's she was edgy. “Stop watching the clock, Dottie,” Lincoln said. “I must say, you're no fun at night. You get all antsy.”

“Oh, Lincoln,” Polly said. “I am consumed with guilt.”

“Well, inch over a little closer,” Lincoln said, “and you can be consumed with me.” They were under the covers, pressed together. Lincoln's hands on her were cold.

“It's always one or the other of us,” Polly said sadly. “Either you're watching the clock, or I am.”

“It's all right,” said Lincoln. “It's what we have. Pretty soon you'll be snug at home with the grubs. Close your eyes and think of that.”

Polly closed her eyes and what she thought of was the particular smell of Lincoln's flesh. Smoke from his cheroots perfumed his clothes, and left a spiciness on his neck. He smelled of cigars and lavender aftershave. One day, in a fit of abstraction, Polly had found herself automatically following the scent of cigar smoke down the street to find its source—a tiny old man smoking the same kind of cheroot Lincoln smoked.

When she left Lincoln she felt she had to be torn away, but once she was in a taxi on the way home, despair settled over her. If life held in store for her more sorrow, more anger, more chaos in love; if she would tear herself from one place to another; if true enjoyment—of her family, of her children, of her husband and household—left her; if her life would always be divided and split, she did not see why she would want to go on living. In the dark back seat she felt that her heart was pierced, that she was like the person in the Tarot deck who woke up in a room hung with swords.

The instant she got home, the telephone rang. It was Wendy.

“I've got to settle up with the baby-sitter, Mum,” Polly said. “Hang on just a second.” She treated Nancy Jewell with reverence: good baby-sitters were very rare. She kissed her good night. “Bye, Polly,” Nancy said. “We're set for Wednesday, right?”

“Yes, and if I need you once more this week are you free?”

Nancy nodded yes, and left by the back stairs to go home to her apartment.

“You let that child call you Polly?” Wendy asked when Polly got back on the telephone.

“Mother, she's sixteen years old. Of course she calls me Polly.”

“You let Consuelo call you Polly, too.”

“Mother, did you call me at eleven o'clock at night to tell me not to let Concita and Nancy Jewell call me by my first name?”

“Of course not, darling,” Wendy said. “I called because Beate will probably call you tomorrow and ask you to have lunch.”

“I can't have lunch with her tomorrow.”

“Darling, please do. She really longs to see you and she and Paul are so disappointed not to be able to have dinner with you.”

“They can easily have dinner here. All they have to do is come here.”

“That isn't how they work, darling. You have to bend a little. You're less rigid and more open than they are. You have to extend.”

“Why do I? I always bend to Paul, and he never bends to me. Besides, I don't want to have another conversation about proper birth environments.”

“Your temperament is stronger and sweeter,” said Wendy. “Poor Beate is just nervous, that's all.” Polly knew Wendy's tone well—it was a warning. “I've told her you'd be glad to have lunch with her.”

Polly's blood froze. “You don't have the right to do that, Mother,” she said. “Supposing I had a meeting.”

“Well, in that case, darling, call her up and cancel her!” said Wendy.

Polly had lunch with Beate in Beate's chaste office. The walls were white with apple-green trim. All the furnishings were apple green. On the wall was a painting in the style of Paul Klee. Polly sat in an apple-green upholstered chair, and Beate sat in an apple-green leather chair. They ate salad, bread, and mushrooms.

“We have here a little fridge,” Beate said. “Dr. Jacobson, in the other office, and I share it. There is also a little stove, so I can make us some herbal tea.”

Polly had never eaten such plain food. Nothing tasted of anything at all. Where had she found it? Polly wondered. This was her diet for pregnancy, Beate explained; she believed that exciting and therefore overstimulating food crossed the placental barrier. She wore a green wool maternity smock, gold disks at her ears, heavy green stockings, and beautiful suede shoes. Perhaps she felt the bright colors crossed the placental barrier, too.

“Most natural of births would be a home or field birth,” Beate was saying. Polly found it entertaining to think of Paul, who never took off his jacket even for dinner, assisting Beate as she delivered in a field. “We are having as homelike an atmosphere as possible, but there will always be harm to the infant and future adult from the intranquillity of hospital birth.”

“I had both Pete and Dee-Dee by natural childbirth,” Polly said. “Dee-Dee, I think I told you, was born in the hospital elevator.”

“I cannot consider birth in an elevator as natural,” Beate said.

“I mean without drugs of any sort,” said Polly.

“The American standards for these things are so low,” Beate said. “I and Klaro were born at home. My mother was forty-five when she bore us. Her mother was forty-four when she was born. I hear the tea kettle. Just a minute and I will bring the tea.”

Eventually Polly was given something that tasted vaguely of moss.

“Now I will tell you something,” Beate said. “Tonight we will tell Henry and Wendy. There are two fetal heartbeats. Paul and I will have twins.”

“How wonderful!” Polly said. “Two little future Supreme Court justices!”

“We have had such trouble with the contractor to build the right sort of double nursery. The twinned infants should be separate, but not apart, we feel. We do not want them to think that they
are
each other.”

Polly wondered how a twin might feel that.

“Oh, it is quite amazing what twins feel. I know this from being a twin myself,” Beate said. “Klaro and I, although fraternal, have such connection. When he broke his arm in Paris I was in Berne and did not know, but my arm was in pain. When he called to say that his arm was broken, I understood all.”

There was little Polly could say to this, not being a twin. So she asked what Paul and Beate had come up with by way of names.

“In our families names are simple,” Beate said. “If two boys, Heinrich for my father and John Felix for your grandfather.”

“Another Henry,” Polly said. “That ought to confuse everyone once and for all.”

“I see nothing confusing,” Beate said. “In our family girls are called either Beate or Matilda from one generation to the next. My great-grandmother was Matilda, my grandmother Beate, my mother Matilda, and I, Beate. If two girls in our family, they are called Beate and Matilda. No one is confused. As to our twins, if one twin is a girl she will be Matilda. If both are girls, Matilda and Elizabeth, for your great-grandmother. If a boy and a girl, Heinrich and Matilda.”

She passed Polly a plate. To go with the tea, Beate provided a dish of hard wheat biscuits that tasted very much like compacted sawdust.

“I've been wondering for a long time about your work, Beate,” Polly said. “Now that I'm in your office, it seems a good time to ask. I'd love it if you could explain to me a little how you differ from traditional psychiatry.”

“I am so sorry,” Beate said, “but really I cannot speak of my work. It does not lend itself to conversation. In order to understand it, you would have to go through the process of it.”

“I see,” Polly said. “But what about Paul? Isn't it hard on you not to be able to talk to Paul about your work?”

At the mention of Paul's name, something like a smile settled on Beate's features. It was not a true smile but, rather, an expression of uplift and recollection, as if inspired by a memory of some noble event.

“The world of the Law is not my world,” Beate said. “We each understand the
Gestalt
, if you will, of the other's work. Is more necessary? I think not. We have our home and our impending birth. That is a great deal to talk about.”

Polly imagined Beate and Paul at dinner, dining in state. She imagined them walking down the hallway to the bedroom, removing their clothes in some magisterial, methodical way. In bed, not asleep, but lying in state.

Beate had stood up. It was time for Polly to leave: her fifty minutes were up. In Beate's presence Polly felt fussy and over-agitated, the sort of woman who gives birth in hospital elevators after having allowed chocolate, coffee, red wine, and other exciting foods to cross the placental barrier.

Polly felt it might be appropriate to kiss Beate's ring and ask for a blessing, but instead Beate kissed both her cheeks.

“Thank you for coming to lunch,” she said. “Now I must call Paul before my patient arrives.”

“Do you call him often?” Polly asked.

“I do, rather,” said Beate. She seemed almost to blush. “I do call him often. During the day, I find I miss him.”

She looked flushed and bridelike, even in her maternity smock. How private private lives were, Polly thought. How hidden were the real lives people lived!

It was not like Polly to fill up a week with plans. Usually when Henry was away she liked to stay at home with Pete and Dee-Dee, except for an evening with Lincoln. She usually limited herself to one since in her heart she knew she would have liked to spend every evening with him, and she could not quite bring herself to announce or act on this desire. It showed her up, she felt, for what she really was: a mother who would rather spend time with her lover than her children; an adulterous wife; a sinful, unfit person in a state of moral lassitude.

Lincoln accused Polly of viewing their love affair as if it were a dangerous drug whose dosage had to be carefully controlled, and he was right. But where, Polly wondered, did this love affair go if it got out of hand? Her real life was with Henry, and Lincoln's real life ought to have been in serious combat with his craving for solitude. Their love affair was especially unfair to him: if she turned back to her real life, what would be left for Lincoln? If she were the upright, sensible, and helpful person she had been brought up to be, Polly would have insisted that Lincoln find a replacement for her, but it broke her heart to think about this. Instead she frequently hectored him on the subject, knowing very well that if a replacement turned up she would be desolate.

She did not think she ought to spend a great deal of time with Lincoln, but on this trip of Henry's, she did not want to be alone. She had made plans out of desperation, and also to prove that Lincoln was not uppermost in her mind.

“You do exactly what you accuse your mother of doing,” Lincoln said to her. “When you want to believe a thing, you simply think it.”

“I don't,” said Polly, who feared this tendency greatly.

“Sure you do,” Lincoln said. “You make all these plans. They make you feel normal. You
know
you're going to see me after Henry and Andreya, and after Martha, and if Paul and Beate had come to dinner we could have smooched at your house all day long. So you end up seeing a lot of me after all but don't have to admit it. You tell yourself one thing, you do the other, and it makes you feel as if it all worked out fine.”

“I don't like to say to myself how much I like to see you,” said Polly. “It's undeniable, and I wish it weren't.”

Polly rushed home from work, sat with Pete and Dee-Dee while they had their dinner, waited until they were being read a story by Nancy Jewell, and dashed over to Martha's. She had been promising Martha that she would come and visit.

“I'll never get you here,” Martha had said. “It's too dingy. And after all the times you've dragged me to your house and fed me! It isn't fair. I'm just a convenience because I'm always around and you can always bring me home at the last minute.”