“I would like to tell you a little secret. No one knows outside of my relations.” She paused. “I’m going to have a baby in December.”

  A flash of disappointment showed in his face. Then he smiled. He took her hand in both his and pressed it. “I’m glad, Margy, very glad.”

  She didn’t hear what he was saying. She was rocked from head to toe again by that electrical shock at the touch of his hands.

  “Thank you.”

  He released her hand slowly. “I always wanted to marry and have a lot of children.”

  “It’s not too late,” she said.

  “I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “I like children,” he added. “I don’t see any other reason for marrying. I’d have to be sure there’d be children.” She felt that he was putting into words some doubt of himself.

  “A lot of people marry just for companionship,” she said.

  “Companionship! I’ve had enough companionship to last me two lifetimes,” he said almost bitterly.

  “Yes, well . . .” she said, a little embarrassed at his emphatic tone. “I’m wishing for a girl.”

  “I’d want all daughters, too,” he said. “If I had a son, I’m afraid I’d bring him up to hate his mother.”

  She didn’t ask why. She knew.

  RIDING HOME IN the trolley she thought: What’s the matter with me getting all thrilled and excited just because a man held my hand a second or two? Why I could easily turn into a loose woman, she assured herself with pleasant fear. The whole trouble, she told herself bluntly, is that I’m a married woman and don’t get to sleep enough with my husband.

  31

  MARGY WAS PROUD of her swelling breasts. She admired herself. But that wasn’t enough. She wanted Frankie to look and admire.

  She stood before him in her slip. “Look!” she said.

  “At what?” he asked.

  “My bust.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s filled out.”

  “So what?”

  “So I look better. So I won’t have any trouble nursing the baby.”

  “That’s good.” He turned away as if to terminate the conversation.

  “Feel!” she commanded.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said.

  “Don’t you be silly.”

  She took his hands and placed them on her breasts. His hands started to curve instinctively over the breasts, then flew open with the fingers rigid. With a sudden laugh she released his hands with a throwing-away motion. He was relieved and angry.

  “Say it,” he said. “Say what you’re thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?” she asked, puzzled.

  “That if I won’t, someone else will.”

  “I thought no such thing,” she said indignantly. “Besides, I don’t know anybody else.” She thought of Mr. Prentiss.

  She got into her bathrobe and knotted the cord firmly about her waist. He relaxed, knowing that nothing more was expected of him. But obscurely, he was ashamed of his relief. He tried to make amends.

  “I’ve been noticing,” he said, “that your dresses do fit better.”

  “That’s right,” she agreed, then with unashamed vanity added, “I can wear the cheapest dress now and it looks as though I’m modeling it.”

  Her vanity went deeper than that. She felt that she looked very feminine and desirable now and she walked the streets to the stores with her head held proudly.

  She was content. She was fed, housed, clothed and fulfilling her destiny as a woman. She felt no woman should want more than that. Of course she wanted more, but it was a dreamy want and nothing that had to be fought for at the moment. She wanted love and companionship. Well, she had Frankie’s love such as it was and his companionship, such as it was. Maybe, she thought, that’s all there is to marriage and I mustn’t look for more. Bluntly, she felt the need of a more satisfying mating. She felt the need of security; an owned home so that there’d be no worry about being asked to move, or the rent raised. She wanted to be sure that there would always be food—that she’d never have to say to her child, “Eat that, and be lucky you got it.” No, she thought, no child should be commanded to feel lucky just because he had the food and shelter and care that all children born are entitled to.

  Her days were filled with household duties and sewing for the baby. She enjoyed making the bed and it became quite a ritual because she had her most satisfying thoughts then. She thought: About two years from now there’ll be a little girl following me around when I make the bed. And when I smooth the sheets she’ll make the same movements with her little hands and I won’t say, go away, you bother me. I’ll say, that’s a good girl.

  She wondered whether anybody had ever written a book about a bed. I would if I was a writer, she thought. People are conceived in bed, born in bed and die in bed—most of them. When we have trouble, we lie on the bed and cry. When we’re happy we lie on it smiling, looking at the ceiling with hands clasped under our head. You go to see a girl friend but you don’t talk real confidential until you’re sitting on the bed together. Your first party dress is laid out on the bed and your wedding dress, too. And the night before a girl marries and lies smiling at the ceiling, her mother comes in and sits on the bed and talks. (Well, Mama tried to, anyhow.) And the mother seems like a girl again, talking confidentially to another girl.

  She wanted to tell somebody her ideas about the bed but there was no one. Frankie would think she was silly and her mother would be embarrassed. She would write Reenie about it but her thoughts never came out well in written words.

  Well, when my baby’s old enough, she thought, I can talk to her about things like that and she’ll understand. She’ll understand because she’s coming from me—is part of me. She has to be like me. It wouldn’t be fair if she was like the Malones considering that they don’t like me and Frankie isn’t so happy about her coming.

  Always she thought of the child as a girl. She knew that most women wanted sons. She didn’t blame them. In some ways girls were a drug on the market and certainly they never got the breaks a boy got. A boy could be president or make a million dollars. What else could a girl do except marry? Well, she could work of course. In a factory? Never. An office? Maybe. Schoolteaching’s about the best work for a woman.

  Some teachers, she thought, are nice and some are terrible. Some hate the children they teach because they can’t marry and have their own. Some love children. They love ’em—well just because they love ’em or because they wanted their own children but no man ever . . .

  I liked my Home Economics teacher. I was in love with my science teacher. I don’t remember her name but I remember everything she said. Then there was that English teacher, Miss Griggins. It was hard to learn even how to parse a sentence from her because she was so mean. She’s the one who went to the principal and reported that girl, Glad—her name was Gladys something—because she did poor schoolwork. Glad was smart in school but Miss Griggins tormented her because she came to class in spike heels and lipstick—because she had the nerve to do at fourteen what that teacher, with all her money and age and nobody to be accountable to, didn’t have the nerve or feeling to do.

  Maybe my daughter won’t want to be a schoolteacher. Maybe she’ll want to go on the stage. Oh, I hope so! I’ll buy her ballet slippers and manage to get dancing lessons for her as soon as she’s old enough to walk. She might turn out to be another Marilyn Miller.

  I’m in love with you, Sunny,

  she hummed happily.

  Oh, the baby must be a girl! If I have a son I might get to be like Mrs. Malone or Mrs. Prentiss. I can well see how that could happen. Frankie’s not affectionate. So I’d look for affection in my son. Without meaning to, I’d bring him up to believe that I was the only perfect woman in the world. I’d be jealous of his girls and I’d think he was too good for his wife. Maybe I’d really believe that he was trapped into marriage. I don’t want to be like that. So it’s got to be a girl.

  FRANKIE TALKED THE situation over with his best friend and newly made brother-in-law, Marty.

  “Look, Marty, we were getting along pretty good and then this had to happen.”

  “It’s a trap of nature,” explained Marty, “to keep the world populated.”

  “Well, what has to be, will be,” sighed Frankie.

  “Is that bad, after all?” Marty wanted to know. “Ask me now if I want kids and I’ll say, hell, no! But if they come along, I’ll get used to it, I guess. I figure this way: Things is got to be kept going on.”

  “True enough,” agreed Frankie.

  “Of course, there are enough other dopes in the world to keep it going,” philosophized the friend, “and maybe a couple guys like us should be allowed to step aside.”

  “Yeah. I’m only one guy. Who’d ever miss my addition to the world?”

  “They say,” offered Marty consolingly, “that a lot of guys feel that way—don’t want a kid at first. But when it comes along, why they’re nuts about it.”

  “There’s something in that. Right now I don’t want it,” admitted Frankie. “But somehow I got the feeling that I’m going to be crazy about the little feller.”

  “Sure you are,” agreed Marty. “That’s how nature makes suckers out of all of us.”

  FRANKIE DID THE best he could. Since the pressing need was money, he economized on his only luxury—cigarettes. He took to waiting a half-hour longer when he wanted one. He changed to a brand that cost a penny less a pack. He controlled the instinctive gesture of pulling the package from his pocket and inviting “Smoke?” when he stood talking to someone for a moment. And when someone offered him a cigarette he said, “You bet! Thanks!” instead of, “I got some of my own here.” He saved a few cents a week that way. As he dropped the coins in the dime-store piggy bank on which Margy had painted BABY in red nail polish, he’d say: “He might take a notion to go to Notre Dame someday, you know.” Margy’d answer: “I’ll see that she gets to college if it’s the last thing I do.”

  All in all, he did the best he could for Margy. Each morning before leaving he said: “Don’t do any lifting today, hear? Wait’ll I get home.” And although she contemplated no heavy lifting during the day, she was touched by his concern and promised to move no furniture during his absence.

  Carrying the baby seemed to satisfy all of Margy’s emotional and physical needs. She seemed to need nothing from Frankie. He, knowing this, was relieved, and enjoyed her little affectionate overtures, knowing nothing would come of them. They held hands while walking, and he slept with his arm about her. It was an ideal arrangement for him: affection without sex. They lived like two loving and understanding friends.

  He wished it could last.

  Obeying the doctor’s orders to do a lot of walking, Frankie and Margy went for long Sunday hikes in Highland Park. These autumn, Sunday-morning walks were wonderful to Margy. Never had she enjoyed sun and wind and cool air and green grass and trees more. She breathed deeply and felt that the clean earth-scented air was good for the unborn baby.

  They had to walk through narrow streets and pass several corners before they could get to the park. As her time came nearer and she began to look unwieldy, he got in the habit of releasing her hand from his, grabbing her elbow and steering her fast past groups of fellows loitering at newsstands in front of candy stores. Unduly sensitive, perhaps, she was quick to notice how the loafers stopped talking as she and Frankie drew near. She noticed the quick sharp look they gave her and the knowing one they gave Frankie; how they looked up at the sky as if unconcerned and whistled a bit of popular song as she and Frankie went by. At such times Frankie’s fingers tightened on her arm and didn’t relax until they were well past the newsstand.

  Margy didn’t care about the loafers. She felt that people were the way they were and there wasn’t a thing you could do about it. She knew that Frankie as a young fellow himself used to hang out with a gang in front of a candy store after Sunday Mass and, while maybe he himself hadn’t made dirty remarks about pregnant women who passed by, certainly the other fellows had and he had listened. That’s what made him ashamed now. He knew what the fellows were thinking and saying.

  Margy wished that Frankie was the sort of person who wouldn’t be concerned about the remarks. But he was concerned and that was that. Her pleasure in the walks wasn’t worth the embarrassment she knew he felt. So when she was eight months gone she told him that the walks were getting to be too much for her.

  She couldn’t help feeling a little hurt when she saw how relieved he was—even though he protested that the walks were good for her and that she really ought to keep them up.

  32

  MARGY CHOSE DR. PAOLSKI because he was the obstetrician recommended by the general practitioner of the neighborhood. She got to know a lot about Dr. Paolski during the six months of her relationship with him. She learned some things from him, others from observation and a lot from talking with other patients during the long hours of waiting in his reception room.

  Dr. Paolski’s grandfather had been a Polish boy, working—he was a serf almost—as stable boy on a baronial estate in Poland. He fell in love with one of the scullery maids—the one whose job it had been to pluck chickens all day for the baron’s lavish household.

  The stable boy and the scullery maid had a dream—a dream of starting a new life in America, a land where all men were equal. They married with this dream in mind. Their fellow-servants, servants on near-by estates and neighboring serflike peasants, thought enough of this dream to contribute a hoarded coin or two toward it. Enough money was raised to buy a steerage passage to America. The newly wed pair left without the knowledge of, and minus the blessings of, their master.

  They found a home in America, half of a four-room cold-water flat on McKibben Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Their first son was born in America. He went to the public school of the neighborhood and grew up to be a smart boy. He started working in a sweatshop when he was sixteen. When he was twenty-two, he banded with four other sons of Polish emigrants and the combine rented a small one-window store on 28th Street in Manhattan and went into the raw fur-pelt business. In time, Stan Paolski accumulated enough money to buy a small detached house in East New York which, in spite of its name, is still in Brooklyn. He took his bride there. In the course of time he had a son whom he named John.

  John Paolski, obstetrician, was a Brooklyn boy born and bred. He studied at a Brooklyn college, interned at a Brooklyn charity hospital. He married a Brooklyn girl, the daughter of one of his father’s partners in the fur business, and he set up practice in a semidetached, yellow-brick veneer house on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. He purchased the house with his wife’s dowry.

  His office, delivery room, hospital ward, diet kitchen and living quarters for his wife, himself and two daughters, and for his wife’s aunt, were all under the same roof. Unlike most doctor’s wives, Mrs. Paolski knew where her husband was at any hour of the day or night.

  The entrance hall to the house served as reception room. It always seemed more crowded than it actually was. Five or six pregnant women, some in the last stages, could take up a lot of space. The dining room had been converted into a combined office, consultation and examination room. The kitchen adjoining, stripped of gas range and icebox, served as the delivery room.

  There were six beds in the long, narrow, two high-windowed living room. The beds were so close together that there was no room for bed tables. Each bed had a small shelf over the foot of it which held the personal belongings of the patient. Most of these footboard tables held the same articles: a magazine or two of the true-story type, a plant always on the point of withering, cut flowers cramped into vases too small for them, a half-filled candy box and a pile of little envelopes containing whimsical or sentimental rhyming couplets signifying satisfaction on the birth of a baby. A milky glass tumbler, holding a colored-handled toothbrush, stood like a stiff expressionistic flower among the envelopes. Purses, containing makeup, comb and small change were kept under the pillows of the owners.

  There was a little sun parlor, glass enclosed on three sides, attached to the dining room. The babies were kept there and visitors who wanted to gape fondly at the little bundles had to go out into the yard and look in from the garage driveway which separated the Paolski house from the house next door.

  A kitchen had been set up in a corner of the basement. The babies’ formulas (that is, those babies who were not breast fed), and the mothers’ meals were prepared there. Another corner of the basement contained washing machine, tubs and ironing board.

  Mrs. Paolski’s spinster Aunt Tessie did the cooking and laundry work. It was considered a fine arrangement. Aunt Tessie had no man, no home of her own. It was lucky for her that she had relations to look after her. Aunt Tessie slept on a cot near the washing machine. Once, Mrs. Paolski’s mother, who was Aunt Tessie’s sister, asked was it right that Tessie lived and slept in the cellar? It was not a cellar, Mrs. Paolski told her mother indignantly. It was basement living quarters and quite ideal, too—warm in winter from the furnace and cool in summer from being underground—or did Mama want to take Aunt Tessie to live with her and Papa? Mama agreed that it was a very fine basement—not damp like some.

  A little beaverboard closet held Aunt Tessie’s sparse wardrobe consisting of reluctant discards from her relatives’ outfits. Since Aunt Tessie was supplied with room, board and clothes, and never went anywhere, she had no need of money. Naturally. Nevertheless, the good doctor often slipped her a five-dollar bill now and again—on Tessie’s birthday and at Christmas. Sarah always said that Doctor would wind up in the poorhouse—the way he was generous. But since Aunt Tessie saved the five-dollar bills and since her meager will left her estate to the Paolski children, Sarah didn’t worry too much about her husband’s big heart.

  Sometimes Aunt Tessie had a very disloyal thought. She thought that maybe her working for food, shelter, old clothes and ten dollars a year to keep in trust for the Paolski girls was kind of a break for Sarah and Doctor. But she never said anything about it because it was quite true that she had nowhere else to go.