Property (Vintage Contemporaries) (6 page)

I TOOK A spoonful of tincture to get back to sleep and woke up feeling dead, unable to move my limbs. I heard the clock strike and knew I must get up and prepare myself to appear in the dining room, a thought that made my stomach turn. I lay clutching my sides and panting for a few moments, then, as the sensation passed, I managed to get to my feet. I washed my face at the basin, trying not to see my reflection in the mirror, but I did see it, and it frightened me. I rang the bell, waited a moment, and rang it again. Shortly I heard Sarah’s step on the stair. “For God’s sake, help me dress,” I said when she came in.

She opened the armoire and pulled out my blue lawn morning dress, the lightest, least-confining thing I own. “Yes,” I said. “Put it right over my shift; there’s no time for the corset.” I drank a little water and collapsed at the dresser. “Just pin up the braid,” I said. She took the brush to the front and secured the back with a dozen pins, while I rubbed a little rouge into my cheeks. “What is wrong with my eyes?” I said, for they were red-rimmed and staring, the pupils like black saucers in a band of pale blue. We heard the bell to the dining room. “I best go,” Sarah said.

“Go on,” I told her. “Tell him I’ll be down directly.” When she was gone, I pulled on my shoes and fastened a tucker in the bodice of the dress. “A cup of coffee will bring me round,” I said. Abruptly I remembered the man, but I had no time to think about him. I hurried out across the landing and down the stairs, clutching the rail like a woman in a swoon. As I approached the door, I could hear the clatter of dishes, the steady scraping of my husband’s fork against his plate. When I went in, he was sopping up gravy with a piece of bread. He looked up at me without stopping. I took my seat, turned my cup over, adjusted my skirt.

“Are you ill?” he asked by way of greeting.

Sarah came between us with the coffee pot. Blessed coffee, I thought as the fragrant steam rose from the cup. I took a careful sip before answering. “I slept poorly,” I said.

“It is because you take no exercise,” he said. I waved away the plate of eggs Sarah held out before me. “Just toasted bread,” I said.

“And you eat nothing,” he continued. “It’s no wonder you’ve made yourself ill.” He shoved in the last of his dripping bread, smacking his lips appreciatively. “More coffee,” he said to Sarah.

I dipped my toast in my cup. My head was beginning to clear a little. As Sarah leaned across him, he gave her a perplexed inspection. “Send Walter to me,” he said.

“Oh, please, no,” I exclaimed.

“What objection could you have?” he said coldly.

“My head is bursting,” I complained.

Sarah set the urn back on the sideboard.

“Send him to me,” he said again.

When she went out, he said to me, “Joel Borden is right. You should go to town and visit your mother. Why don’t you write to her?”

“My place is here,” I said. Then the door opened and Walter was upon us, followed by Sarah, who was making a study of the carpet. Walter was wearing only a slip, such as the field children wear. It was too big for him and hung off one shoulder; the skirt came nearly to his ankles. My husband pushed his chair back from the table and called the creature, holding out his arms to him, but the child just ran around the table, as is his wont, babbling and giving high-pitched shrieks for no reason. At length he passed close enough for his father to grab him. “Hold still,” he said, struggling with his squirming catch. “Hold still, hold still, and I will give you some muffin.” He pinned the boy’s arms behind his back with one hand and with the other reached out to Sarah, demanding “Muffin, muffin.” She quickly broke up a few pieces onto a plate and set it before him. This got the boy’s attention. He began a low crooning, straining his head toward the plate. My husband took up a bit and pressed it to the child’s lips, quieting him momentarily. “How old is he now?” he asked Sarah.

“He seven,” she said.

He ran his hand through the boy’s wild red hair. “Doesn’t anyone ever comb his hair?” he asked.

“He won’ stand for it.”

My husband looked into Walter’s mad face, feeding him another bit of muffin to keep his attention. “No,” he said approvingly. “Why should he?”

Walter’s eyes opened wide; he brought his face close to his father’s, swallowed the last bite, and shouted “Poo-poo, poo-poo” at the top of his lungs. Sarah jumped away from the sideboard, grabbed the horrid creature by one arm, and dragged him toward the doors. “He have to go out,” she said. When the doors were open, he scurried across the bricks into the azaleas and squatted down in the dirt.

“A charming child,” I observed.

Sarah closed the doors and resumed her post at the sideboard. “More coffee,” I said.

My husband looked abashed. It delighted me to see him trying to make his dull brain work over the problem presented by this monster he has brought among us. “So he can speak?” he said.

“Delphine taught him that.”

“Can he say anything else?”

“Maybe Delphine understand him sometime.”

“But you don’t.”

Sarah studied his face for a moment without speaking. Then she said, “Delphine say he don’t hear.”

“He’s deaf,” my husband said softly, as if a deep revelation had just come to him. Then, tersely, “I shall send for Dr. Landry today.”

I RARELY VISIT in town because I can’t bear my mother’s prying into the state of my marriage, her constant insinuations about my failure to conceive a child. For a few years I didn’t mind, I even felt a mild curiosity about it myself; as I explained to Mother, it wasn’t for lack of trying. She cherished the hope that the fault was with my husband, and I foolishly did too, until Walter was born. Then I knew the reason. In a way, Walter
is
the reason, but I could speak to no one about it. In the fifth year of my marriage, Mother and my husband consulted a doctor reputed to have helped other childless couples, and then there was no living with either of them until I agreed to be examined by this man. So I went to town and, at the appointed time, presented myself at the offices of Dr. Gabriel Sanchez.

He was a small, swarthy man, his thin hair gray at the temples, his eyes slightly crossed; perhaps one eye was only weak. I was required to undress behind a screen, wrapped in sheets by a nurse, then partially unwrapped, my modesty consulted to absurd lengths. The physical examination was extremely repugnant, but I did not object to it. I thought if I would submit, the doctor might find some physical reason for my failure to conceive, thereby freeing me of my detested conjugal duties, and also putting an end to my mother’s tiresome queries. When it was over, a girl was sent in to help me dress and I was escorted into the office where Dr. Sanchez awaited me. It was a surprisingly sunny room. The floor was covered with a rush mat; the chairs were in summer covers. The doctor motioned me into one facing his desk, which was really a table covered with papers, books, and, oddly enough, a potted geranium. As I took my seat I noticed a large wrought-iron cage hanging from a chain near the open window in which two canaries hopped about. During our conversation, one of these birds sang plaintively.

He began well. He told me that he was obliged to ask me a number of personal questions, and that I could be assured my answers would not travel beyond the walls of his office, that in particular he would not repeat anything I said to my mother or my husband. I found the darting, unfocused looks he gave me reassuring, and I made up my mind to tell him whatever he wanted to know. I wanted to enlist him on my side. He asked about my monthly discharges, were they regular, copious, clotted, or clear, attended by pain or swelling? He asked about my general health, my diet, how much riding I did, if I ever suffered from dizziness or fainting spells. As my health has always been excellent, I answered these questions readily, nor could he have been much surprised at my responses. He listened closely, occasionally making a note in a leather-bound book he had open before him.

Then he questioned me about my marriage, and in particular about my sexual congress with my husband. How often did our relations take place, did I experience pain, was there ever bleeding afterward? He asked most delicately if I was certain that my husband ejaculated into my womb, a question which made me laugh, though I could not look at him and felt a hot flush rising in my cheeks. “I apologize for being so indelicate,” he said, “but I have known cases of infertility caused by inadequate knowledge on the part of the husband.”

“My husband knows very well how babies are made, I assure you,” I said coldly.

He fiddled with his pen and made no answer. I looked past him at the window where the bird was singing. There was a plantain tree just outside with a big bruised purple pod of unripe fruit hanging from it. One of the leaves lay across the windowsill like a fold of impossibly bright satin. I thought of my husband’s embraces, so urgent and disagreeable, his kneading and sucking at my breasts until the nipples hurt, his fingers probing between my legs, his harsh breath in my face.

“I see no physical reason why you can’t have a child,” the doctor said at last.

“No,” I agreed. “There is no physical reason.”

“Do you want children, Mrs. Gaudet?”

I gave this question thought. I had assumed I would have children, the question of whether I wanted them had never occurred to me. What sort of woman doesn’t want children? Dr. Sanchez waited upon my answer, but he had a calm, patient air about him, as if he wouldn’t mind waiting forever. Suppose I had married a man like him, I thought, a man who knew everything about women’s bodies and was never impatient. I arrived at my answer. “No,” I said.

He nodded, pressing his lips together. He had known all along. “Do you fear the pain of childbirth?”

“No,” I said.

“Perhaps you feel anxiety about the disfigurement of pregnancy?”

“That passes, surely,” I said.

“There is some other reason,” he concluded.

“Yes,” I said. He produced a handkerchief, picked up a pair of eyeglasses that lay upon a stack of books on his desk, and began methodically rubbing the lenses. “It is because I despise my husband,” I said.

He looked up at me briefly, but without surprise, then returned his attention to his eyeglasses. “Unhappy marriages still produce children,” he said.

“Perhaps they are not unhappy enough,” I replied.

“Has it occurred to you that a child might be a comfort to you in your suffering?”

“I am not in need of comforting,” I said.

He put the glasses down and gave me his full, unfocused attention. “Did you love your husband when you married him?” he asked.

“I hardly knew him. Ours was considered an advantageous match.”

“And how did he earn your enmity?”

“Well, let me think,” I said. “Would the fact that the servant I brought to the marriage has borne him a son, and that this creature is allowed to run loose in the house like a wild animal, would that be, in your view, sufficient cause for a wife to despise her husband?”

He shrugged. “Mrs. Gaudet, there are many such cases. This cannot be unknown to you.”

“That is precisely my grievance,” I explained. “That it is common.”

“Why not sell the girl?”

“No. He would only find another. And this one suits me. She hates him as much as I do.”

I saw a flicker of sympathy cross his expression, but I didn’t think it was for me. He was feeling pity for my husband, trapped between two furies. “Well,” he said. “God willing, you will have a child. You’re young, in good health.”

“That’s what I fear,” I said. “That’s why I consented to see you. I want you to tell my husband that I cannot bear children. That it endangers my life even to try.”

“You want me to lie? I would never do that.”

“Not to save my life?” I said desperately.

“Your life is not in danger.”

Against my will, tears sprang to my eyes. I felt one of my headaches tightening across my forehead. I drew my handkerchief from my sleeve and pressed it against each eye. Dr. Sanchez was speaking, but I could hardly make out what he was saying through the awful red clamp of pain. It was something about a child, my child, who would secure my husband’s affections to me. “Can’t you at least give me something for these headaches?” I blurted out, interrupting him.

He paused, midsentence, as if to draw attention to my rudeness, but I no longer cared what he thought of me. “And something to make me sleep,” I added.