The Pursuit of Happiness (2001) (61 page)

A week slipped by. Then another. Then another. I read. I walked. I slept. I received one letter - from Joel Eberts, informing me that the seventy-five-thousand-dollar insurance check had cleared. Through his ‘tax guy’, he had also cut a deal with the IRS on the matter of Eric’s back payments.

They settled for $32,500. I wanted to push them lower, but as my tax guy pointed out, we still managed to haul them down quite a bit. So we have to be grateful for that. I had a chat with Lawrence Braun - your stockbroker. He plans to invest the balance in solid blue-chip companies - unless (as he put it) ‘Miss Smythe has suddenly become adventurous’. I told him that, unless I heard otherwise from you, blue chips were the way to go.

That’s all my news from this end, except to say that you do have a stack of private correspondence here. I’m happy to keep it in storage. When you want it, just say the word.

In closing, Sara - let me add this one personal hope: that you are somehow coming to terms with all that has happened. No one deserves what you had to face in the past couple of months. By its very nature, life is unfair. But it has been, of late,
mercilessly
unfair to you. This will change. You may never get over the loss of your brother. Just as you may never get over Mr Malone’s act of betrayal. But I know you will eventually come to terms with both events. Because to move forward, we all must somehow come to terms with every damn thing that life throws in our path.

For now, however, take your time. Put the world on hold. Find your way through this difficult juncture. And do know that I am here, whenever you need me.

But I needed no one. Until the beginning of my fourth week at the cottage. It was a Tuesday morning. I woke up feeling odd. Two minutes later, I was violently ill. I spent a ghastly quarter-of-an-hour in the toilet. The next morning I was sick again. On Thursday, the dawn chorus of nausea passed me by. But it returned again on Friday, and hit me throughout the weekend.

I needed to see a doctor. Especially as my period was also two weeks late. So I made contact with Ruth again. I didn’t go into the nature of my complaint. I simply told her it was a medical problem. She dispatched me to her family doctor - a severe-looking man in his fifties named Grayson. He wore a crisp white shirt, a crisp white medical jacket, rimless glasses, and a permanent scowl. He looked like a mean-minded druggist. His offices were on Center Street in Bath. His patients were the men employed at Bath Iron Works and their families. He had no bedside manner whatsoever. I told him the nature of my problem, and the fact that my period was so late.

‘Sounds like you could be pregnant,’ he said tonelessly.

‘That’s impossible,’ I said.

‘You mean, you and your husband haven’t been having …’

He paused, then uttered the word
‘relations’
with considerable distaste.

‘I’m not married,’ I said.

His eyes flickered down to my left hand. He noticed the absence of a wedding ring. He hesitated, then said, ‘But you have been having
relations
with …’

‘With someone, yes. But there is no medical way I could be pregnant.’

Then I explained about my earlier failed pregnancy and how the obstetrician at Greenwich Hospital told me I could never have children.

‘Maybe he was wrong,’ Dr Grayson said, then asked me to roll up my sleeve. He drew some blood. He handed me a glass vial and directed me towards the toilet. When I returned with the urine sample, he told me to come back two days later for the results.

‘But I already know the outcome,’ I said. ‘I can’t be pregnant. It’s an impossibility.’

But I kept getting sick every morning. When I returned to Dr Grayson’s office two days later, he looked up briefly from my file and said, ‘The test was positive.’

I was dazed beyond belief. I didn’t know what to say. Except, ‘That can’t be.’

‘These tests are rarely wrong.’

‘In this instance, I’m certain it’s mistaken.’

The doctor shrugged with disinterest.

‘If you want to be delusional, that’s your choice.’

‘What a horrible thing to say.’

‘You are pregnant,
Miss
Smythe,’ he said, putting particular emphasis on my single status. ‘That is what the test said - so that is my clinical diagnosis. Choose to believe it or not.’

‘May I have a second test?’

‘You can have as many tests as you want - as long as you are willing to pay for them. But I would also advise you to see an obstetrician as soon as possible. You’re staying locally, yes?’

I nodded.

‘The nearest obstetrician is Dr Bolduck in Brunswick. He’s located off Maine Street, right near the college. I’ll give you his number.’

He scratched a few numbers on to a prescription pad, then tore it off and handed it to me. ‘You can settle with my receptionist on the way out.’ I stood up. ‘One last thing, Miss Smythe,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘ Congratulations.’

Ruth was waiting for me in the lobby. I paid my bill, then nodded that I was ready to leave. Prior to this, I hadn’t told her about the pregnancy test. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her now. But my face betrayed my worries. Because, as soon as we were outside, she touched my arm and said, ‘It isn’t anything fatal, is it?’

I nearly managed a laugh. ‘I wish it was.’

‘Oh dear,’ she said. And I instantly realized that I had given the game away. Suddenly I put my head against her shoulder. I felt stunned, stupefied.

‘How about a nice breakfast somewhere?’ she asked.

‘I might throw it all up.’

‘Then again, you might not.’

She brought me to a little diner near the Iron Works. She insisted that I eat scrambled eggs and home fries and two thick buttery slices of toast. I was reluctant at first - but quickly dug in. After three days of nausea, the food tasted wonderful. It also helped dull the shock of my news.

‘I know you’re a private kind of person,’ Ruth said, ‘so I’m not gonna pry. But if you want to talk about it …’

I suddenly found myself telling her everything that had happened to me since my last stay at the cottage. It all came pouring out. She blanched when I told her about losing the baby and being told I would never conceive again. She took my arm when I informed her about Eric - and Jack’s role in my brother’s collapse.

‘Oh, Sara,’ she whispered. ‘I wish to God I’d known about your brother.’

‘I doubt his death made the Maine papers.’

‘I never read ‘em anyway. No time.’

‘Believe me, you’re better off.’

‘What a terrible year for you.’

‘I have known better ones,’ I said. ‘And now, just to unhinge things completely, it turns out I’m pregnant.’

‘I can only begin to imagine the sort of shock you’re feeling.’

‘About a ten on the Richter scale.’

‘Are you pleased?’

‘I’ve never been in a train wreck - but I think I now understand what it feels like.’

‘I don’t blame you.’

‘But once the after-shock wears off … yeah, I’m going to feel pretty damn pleased.’

‘That’s good.’

‘This is like news from outer space. I had accepted the fact that I would never have kids.’

‘That must have been hard.’

‘Very.’

‘Doctors often get things wrong.’

‘Thankfully.’

‘May I ask you something?’

‘Of course.’

‘Are you going to tell him?’

‘No way.’

‘Don’t you think he deserves to know?’

‘No.’

‘I’m sorry - it’s none of my business.’

‘I can’t …
won’t
… tell him. Because I can’t forgive him.’

‘I could see how that would be hard.’

I heard the ambivalence in her voice.

‘But … ?’ I asked.

‘Like I said, Sara - it’s not for me to be sticking my nose into some tough stuff.’

‘Go on - say what you want to say.’

‘It’s his kid too.’

‘And Eric was my brother.’

Silence.

‘You’ve got a point there. Matter dropped.’

‘Thank you.’

I raised my coffee cup. And said, ‘But it’s good news.’

She raised her cup and clinked it against mine. ‘It’s great news,’ she said. ‘The best news.’

‘And totally unbelievable.’

Ruth laughed.

‘Honey,’ she said, ‘all good news is unbelievable. For a lot of very obvious reasons.’

I
WENT TO
see Dr Bolduck a few days later. I braced myself for another flinty, stern medic - who would glare at my ringless finger and play the New England Puritan. But Bolduck was a pleasant, genial man in his late thirties - a Bowdoin graduate who’d returned to his college town after medical school to set up practice. He put me at my ease immediately.

‘So, Dr Grayson referred you to me?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘Has he been your doctor for long?’

‘I’m new to the area. And I’m already on the lookout for a new GP.’

‘Really?’

‘I don’t think we hit it off too well.’

‘But Dr Grayson is such a delightful man,’ he said, arching his eyebrows in Groucho Marx style. ‘With the most wonderful bedside manner.’

I laughed, then said, ‘I don’t think he liked the fact that I wasn’t married. Does that bother you, Doctor?’

He shrugged. ‘Your private life is your private life, Miss Smythe. All I care about is getting you and your baby through the pregnancy safely.’

‘I still don’t believe I’m pregnant.’

He smiled. ‘That’s a common complaint.’

‘What I mean is: medically speaking, I cannot be pregnant.’

Then I took him through everything that had happened five years ago at Greenwich Hospital. Unlike Dr Grayson, he expressed immediate interest, and asked for the name of the obstetrician who’d dealt with me then.

‘I’ll write to him and request your medical records. In the meantime, I agree with you: a second pregnancy test would be prudent.’

He took a blood sample. I filled a vial with urine. I arranged to see Dr Bolduck in a week’s time. I returned to the cottage at Popham Beach. I tried to come to terms with my news. I had craved a child. I had quietly mourned my inability to have one. When Jack came back into my life, this grief intensified - though I refused to articulate it in front of him. Now I
was
pregnant (unless, of course, that test was very wrong). Had I been a Christian I would have called it a miracle. Had I still been with Jack, I would have been thrilled beyond belief. Instead, I felt a curious mixture of elation and despondency. Elation because I would finally have a child. Despondency because I would never speak with the child’s father again. As bad ironies go, this one was particularly grim.

My mind was constantly haunted by thoughts of Eric and Jack. My grief overtook me without warning. One moment I would be reasonably collected; the next, I would be transported to the edge of the abyss. I remembered the distress I felt in the months after I’d miscarried - how grief became a shadowy companion, stalking me unawares. This time, its presence was more acute, more constant. Because Jack had decimated everything. That knowledge strengthened my resolve to make no contact with him about my pregnancy. He could not be trusted. He was beneath contempt. He would have nothing to do with this child.

Yes, I was being hard, steely. But the hardness was necessary - a means by which to cope with the all-permeating sense of loss. Initially it gave me a
modus vivendi
to get me through days which often seemed bottomless. But now there was the astonishing prospect of a baby. And though that prospect wouldn’t soften my stance towards Jack, I knew it would give me a sense of possibility; a destination at the end of all this anguish.

I kept my appointment with Dr Bolduck seven days later. He was as genial as ever.

‘I’m afraid the delightful Dr Grayson was right: pregnancy tests rarely lie. You are definitely going to have a baby.’

I smiled.

‘Well, at least you seem pleased with the news,’ he said.

‘Believe me, I am. And flabbergasted.’

‘That’s understandable. Especially as I’ve just been reading your file from Greenwich Hospital … which only arrived yesterday. The doctor attending you was, in my opinion, wrong to inform you that your damaged womb ruled out all possibilities of carrying a child to term. Yes, one of your fallopian tubes was badly damaged, which does significantly lessen the potential for conception. And yes, the internal injury that the wall of your womb suffered also decreases the possibility of a pregnancy. But it doesn’t rule it out altogether. I personally know of several cases where conception happened after this sort of medical event, and the pregnancy was carried to full term. Which, in plain language, means that your doctor at Greenwich Hospital may have just been a tad pessimistic about your chances of having a baby. Personally, I think what he did was shameful, because it caused you years of unnecessary distress. But don’t quote me on that. Part of the Hippocratic oath has a clause saying you can never censure another doctor … especially in front of one of his patients.’

‘Don’t worry - I’ll censure him myself. He was an awful man. So awful he made Dr Grayson look like Albert Schweitzer.’

Now it was Dr Bolduck’s turn to laugh. ‘I might use that,’ he said.

‘Be my guest.’

His smile changed into a look of professional seriousness. ‘Though this is wonderful news, I really am going to want you to take it easy.
Very
easy. Because of the previous internal damage, this will be a delicate, finely balanced pregnancy.’

‘Is there a chance that I might lose it?’

‘There is always a one-in-six chance of miscarrying in the first three months of term.’

‘But with my previous history … ?’

‘The odds might be as low as one-in-three … but they’re still in your favor. You will simply have to be as careful as possible. As long as you don’t go climbing Mount Kathadin or decide to play ice hockey for Bowdoin, you should have a good shot at holding on to it. I’m afraid luck also has a lot to do with these things too. Are you planning to stay around here?’

I had nowhere else to go. And since rest and lack of anxiety were going to be crucial over the next eight months, there was no way I would be returning to Manhattan.

‘Yes, I’m staying in Maine.’

‘Again, this is none of my business … but do you really think it’s a good idea being alone in an isolated place like Popham Beach?’

I had to admit that it wasn’t. So - as much as I rued the loss of that extraordinary sweep of sand, sky and ocean - I moved a week later into Brunswick. After scanning the Classifieds in the
Maine Gazette
for a few days, I managed to find a pleasant, if somewhat rustic apartment on Federal Street. It was a one-bedroom unit in an unprepossessing white clapboard house. The decor could have been politely described as ‘tired’: yellowing walls, cast-off furniture, a basic kitchen, a brass bed in urgent need of a polish. But the morning light flooded the living room. There was a large mahogany roll-top desk and a wonderful old-style editor’s chair (the desk and chair were actually what sold me on the place). And it was close to the college, the town, and the offices of Dr Bolduck - so I could walk everywhere.

Ruth helped me move. I set up an account with the Casco National Bank on Maine Street, and (via Joel Eberts) arranged to have my weekly
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning
checks dispatched there. I had another four months to go on my alleged ‘leave of absence’. The weekly retainer easily covered my eighteen-dollar weekly rent and all basic necessities. It even left me enough over to buy a radio, a Victrola, and a steady supply of books and records. I also started reading newspapers again: the local
Maine Gazette
and the
Boston Globe
(as it took three days for the
New York Times
to reach Brunswick). Joe McCarthy and his band of cronies were in full demagogic flight. The Rosenbergs were entering the final appeal process against their death sentence for allegedly smuggling atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets. Eisenhower was looking a dead cert to beat Adlai Stevenson for the presidency in the coming November election. And the blacklist seemed to get longer with every new Associated Press wire report from Washington. On a minor personal level, I knew that this ever-deepening Red scare meant that there was no way I’d be welcomed back to
Saturday/Sunday
after my residency in purdah was over. Eric’s death had been all over the papers - and his Godship the Editor would be far too nervous about upsetting the board by reinstating me. After all, I was the sister of a deceased man who had the unpatriotic nerve
not to
rat on others. Surely that made me damaged, unAmerican goods … and unworthy of access to the precious column inches of
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning.

So I figured that, halfway through my pregnancy, the guilt money from
Saturday/Sunday
would run out, after which I would have to start tapping into the insurance cash from NBC or my stock portfolio … though a certain corner of my frugal puritan brain fretted about the idea of raiding my capital at such a young age. Especially as I would definitely need that money to help bring this child up on my own. I also worried about the fact that - thanks to the Winchell piece and my reluctant furlough from
Saturday/Sunday
- the word around town was that I was politically suspect and best left unemployed.

But every time I started to have one of these nervy reveries about my future employment prospects (or lack thereof), I managed to calm myself down with the thought that, one way or another, I’d find a way of making a living. More tellingly, I was luckier than most. I had money in the bank and an apartment in Manhattan which I owned outright. They might take my career away from me … but they couldn’t snatch the roof over my head.

Anyway, there was no chance I’d be back in Manhattan for some time. Just as there was also no chance that I’d be telling anyone about my pregnancy. Ruth was the only person who knew - and she promised to keep quiet on the subject.

‘Trust me,’ she said, ‘I know how small towns work. The moment word gets out is the moment you’ll start getting interested stares on the street.’

‘But won’t I begin to get those stares once I start to show?’

‘It really depends how high a profile you choose to adopt; how many people you get to know, and what you tell them. I promise you - if you let it be known that you’re the Sara Smythe who writes for
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning,
your social diary is going to get very full. Half the English department at Bowdoin will probably want to meet you - because new people in town are few and far between. And new people who are nationally prominent columnists

‘I’m hardly Walter Lippmann, Ruth. I’m a very minor figure who writes very minor stuff.’

‘Listen to Miss Modesty.’

‘It’s the truth. And, believe me, I’m telling no one about what I did in Manhattan. I’ve had enough intrusiveness - courtesy of the FBI - to last me for the rest of the decade.’

So I maintained a very low profile. Following Dr Bolduck’s advice, I did nothing strenuous - limiting my exercise to walks in the Bowdoin Pines behind the campus, or to the college’s library (where I managed to wangle a Brunswick resident’s reader’s ticket), and to the shops that lined Maine Street. I found a grocer who delivered, and a newspaper shop which agreed to order the Sunday edition of the
New York Times
for me. I became a good customer of the town’s main book and record shop. I was soon on first-name basis with the librarians at Bowdoin, Mr Cole at the grocer’s, Thelma the chief cashier at Casco National Bank, and Mr Mullin, the druggist. Though everyone initially asked me my name - and whether I was new in town - the line of enquiry stopped there. There were never sly questions about what I was doing in Brunswick, or whether I had a husband, or how I was supporting myself. As I came to discover, this lack of obtrusive curiosity was the Maine way. People respected your privacy … because they wanted you to respect theirs. More tellingly, in true Maine style, the state’s unspoken social code was a fiercely independent one:
your business is your own damn business, not mine.
Even if they were interested in your back story, they forced themselves to appear disinterested … out of fear of being labeled meddlesome, or the village gossip. Maine was probably one of the few places in America where taciturnity and reserve were considered civic virtues.

Brunswick, therefore, was an easy place to live. After five years of turning out journalistic copy week after week, it was pleasant to take a sabbatical from my typewriter. I caught up with reading. I audited a conversational French course at the college, and spent at least three hours a day studying verb conjugations and vocabulary. Once a week, Ruth insisted on picking me up in her Studebaker and bringing me to her house for dinner. Once a week, I would walk the three blocks to Dr Bolduck’s office, and submit myself to an examination. Six weeks into the pregnancy, he pronounced himself pleased with my progress to date.

‘So far so good,’ he said after I got dressed and sat down in the chair opposite his desk. ‘As long as we get you to the second trimester without complications, you really should have a good chance of seeing this all the way through. You are taking it easy, right?’

‘Brunswick isn’t exactly a strenuous town.’

Dr Bolduck winced. ‘Do I take that as a back-handed compliment?’

‘I’m sorry. That came out all the wrong way.’

‘No - you’re right. This is a pretty quiet place.’