A Jest of God (23 page)

“Are you going out, Rachel?” Mother says.

“Yes. But only for an hour. To Calla’s.”

“You won’t be gone long, will you, dear?”

“No. Not long. I promise.”

“That’s all right, then, dear.”

She sighs a little, as though relieved. She believes me because she must, I guess. If I came back late a thousand nights, I now see, and then told her I’d only be away an hour, she’d still believe me. As I leave, she looks at me trustingly, like a child.

Calla has painted the outside door of her apartment. I marvel that they allowed her to, whoever they might be. I’d never try, anticipating someone’s refusal. The door is quite a mild lilac, but in this warren of cream and beige doors, it makes its presence known. She’d do it and ask afterwards. I wish I were like that.

“Rachel – well, hello. Come on in.”

I don’t know what to say to her. She takes my coat, fusses me to a chair, slaps on the kettle for coffee. She is still in her teacher clothes – navy blue skirt which makes her hips and rump look like oxen’s, and a green long-sleeved smock that bears dashes and smears of poster paints.

“I haven’t even changed yet,” she says. “I’ve just been – Rachel, what’s the matter?”

“Why should you think there’s anything the matter?”

“Only that you look like death warmed over, that’s all. Honey, what is it?”

“I – wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you – but now I don’t believe I can.”

“Rachel, listen –” Calla is standing beside me, and her voice compels me to look at her. Her face looks as though she were trying very hard to get something across, to explain in words of genuine simplicity to someone who might find everything difficult to comprehend. “I don’t know what it is, and if you don’t want to say, then okay. But if you want to say, then I’ll listen, whatever it is. And whatever it is, if you need to get away sometimes, you can always come here. I won’t ask any questions.”

“How can you say that? Wouldn’t you make any conditions?”

“You mean, what would I ask from you? I don’t know. I hope I wouldn’t ask anything. But I can’t guarantee. I’d try – that’s all.”

“Whatever it was, with me, even if it was something you hated? I could still come here?”

“I guess I can’t promise. You have to gamble on where the limits are. I don’t know where they are.”

“Calla –”

“Honey, it’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right. Okay – so go ahead and cry. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. Here – have a Kleenex.”

Then, finally, I’m sufficiently restored to myself. She hands me a lighted cigarette and brings coffee.

“What if I was pregnant, Calla?”

She doesn’t reply for a moment, as though she were considering carefully what to say.

“Staying in Manawaka wouldn’t be a very good thing, but you might have to, until after, when you could get organized,” she says. “If your mother couldn’t take it, the only thing to do, probably, would be to find a housekeeper for her so she could stay where she is. You could move in here, if you wanted. Or if you wanted to move away entirely, beforehand – well, there isn’t any particular reason why I couldn’t move, if you wanted someone by you. It might be kind of a strain on your finances for a time, but I don’t think you need to worry all that much. We could manage. As for the baby, well, my Lord, I’ve looked after many a kid before.”

She halts abruptly. When she begins again, her voice is different, subdued.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have said any of that, should I? You think you’re not asking anything of someone, and then it appears you’re asking everything. To take over. I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s all right. I know.”

“I don’t know what I can say or offer to do. Nothing much, I guess. Except that I’m here, and you’ll know, yourself, what you need to ask.”

“Calla –”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know – I want to thank you, but –”

“Don’t bother,” she interrupts. “It’s for nothing. I’ve got a collection of motives like a kaleidoscope –
click!
and they all look different. Would you like a drink, child? I’ve got some wine. It’s foul, but it’s better than nothing.”

She doesn’t realize that she has called me
child
once more.

“No, thanks. I don’t think so.”

She looks at me, trying not to appear worried.

“Are you going to be all right, Rachel?”

If I’d been asked that, yesterday, I wouldn’t have known. Maybe even an hour ago I wouldn’t have known.

“Yes. I’m going to be all right.”

Maybe she’ll pray for me, and maybe, even, I could do with that. But she hasn’t said so, and she won’t, and that is an act of great tact and restraint on her part.

My mother’s tricky heart will just have to take its own chances.

The waiting room is full of people, and I sit edgily, tucking my cotton dress around my knees, edging away from the stout-skirted mother bidding a spectacled five-year-old to behave himself and shush. We are waiting to be called for examination, as though this were death’s immigration office and Doctor Raven some deputy angel allotted to the job of the initial sorting out of sheep and goats, the happy sheep permitted to colonize Heaven, the wayward goats sent to trample their cloven hoofprints all over Hell’s acres. What visa and verdict will he give to me? I know the country I’m bound for, but I don’t know its name unless it’s limbo.

Rachel, shut up. Shut up inside your skull. Yes, I am, that’s it. Oh, stop this nonsense.

Death’s immigration office indeed. You have to watch against this sort of thing. Is it madness, though? That bleak celestial sortinghouse, and the immigrants’ numb patience, all of us waiting with stupefied humbleness to have our fates announced to us, knowing there will never be any possibility of argument or appeal – it seems more actual than this deceptively seeable room with red leatherette chairs and a cornucopia of richly shiny magazines spilling out across the narrow table, and an aquarium of tropical fish, striped and silvered, fins fluttering like thin wet silks around the green and slowly salaaming reeds and weeds of this small sea.

“Miss Cameron – in here, please.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

And I’ve drawn together my tallness and loped through the waiting room, sidestepping chairs and outstretched feet, an ostrich walking with extreme care through some formal garden. Rachel, hush. Hush, child. Steady. It’s all right. It’s going to be all right.

I can’t tell him. I can’t be examined. I have to leave, right now. I’ll just have to make some excuse. Say I’m not feeling well. That would be splendid, wouldn’t it? To rush out of a doctor’s office because you weren’t feeling well.

“Hello, Rachel. It’s for yourself, this time?”

We’ve had so many dealings, Doctor Raven and myself – mother’s heart, my persistent winter headcolds, the bowels and bones of both, the inability to sleep, the migraine and dyspepsia, all the admittable woes of the flesh. This is a new one I’m bringing now.

“Yes.”

“Sit down, my dear.” He looks at me from his old eyes, still competent and able to appraise. “What’s the trouble? Not the bronchitis again, I hope?”

“No. I – I’ve missed my period this month.”

I sit here, waiting once more, waiting for him to speak. “It’s none of my business, Rachel dear, but I’ve known your family for a long time, and as a doctor I have to ask –” What will I say?

“Well,” Doctor Raven is saying in his comfortable and comforting voice, “at least we know there’s no question of one thing, anyway, with a sensible girl like yourself. That at least can be ruled out, eh? Can’t say the same for them all, I’m afraid.”

I can’t believe he’s saying it, and yet it’s only too easy to believe. No words for my anger could ever be foul or wounding enough, against him, for what he’s saying. I could slash gouges out of his seemly face with my nails. I could hurl at him a voice as berserk as any car crash.

I sit on the chair opposite his desk and I do not say anything. I see now that when he discovers what it is, with me, he won’t be able to stop himself expressing the same feelings as my mother will. Subdued, maybe, but the same. What right has he? He’s my doctor, not my father or judge. The hell with him. And yet I’m inheld so tightly now that I don’t see how I can consent to any examination.

“Don’t worry,” Doctor Raven says. “I know what you’re worried about.”

I strain to meet his eyes. “You do?”

“Of course. Look, Rachel, you’re an intelligent woman. I can say this to you. Half the people who come into my office are worried about a malignancy, and with most of them it’s been absolutely unnecessary, all that worry. This could be due to any number of causes. But for heaven’s sake don’t jump to the worst possible conclusion. Wait until we’ve seen. I may as well examine you internally now.”

He calls the nurse. There must always be a nurse present, even though he’s pressing seventy. Where one or two are gathered together. I don’t know what I’m doing. Will he be careful enough? If a person expects to find something lifeless, he wouldn’t worry, would he, whether he was careful or not? What if he damages the head? Would it be formed enough, yet, to be hurt? Would it be formed enough for him even to feel it? I have to tell him. I must. I have to warn him.

“Doctor Raven –”

“Yes?”

“Look, before you examine me, I wanted to say –”

“It’s all right, Rachel. What is it? Don’t be nervous, my dear. This is nothing.”

“I just wanted to say –”

A hesitance. A silence.

“What is it, Rachel?” he asks gently.

“Just be careful, won’t you?”

“Certainly, certainly. You’ve had an internal before, Rachel, I’m positive. Haven’t you? Yes, of course you have. It was when you had a little trouble with your periods a few years back. No need to be tense, now. This won’t hurt.”

“I don’t mind – it isn’t that.”

“Just relax, now,” he says. “Just relax.”

Relax, Rachel. And I said
I’m sorry.
Nick – listen. Even if I couldn’t talk about any of this, even if I couldn’t tell you, if I could just be beside you, with your arm across my breasts, through a night. Then I would be all right. Then I would be able to do anything that was necessary.

This coldness pierces me more than any physician could. The intense and unearth-like coldness of this metal table I’m lying on, like the laying-out table in the deodorized anteroom to the chapel where the jazz hymn plays in the blue light.

I’m frightened. And now I think for the first time that maybe it will kill me after all, this child. Is that what I am waiting for? Is that what is waiting for me?

“Mm, all right,” Doctor Raven is murmuring. “You can get down now, Rachel. There’s certainly something there. Now, you’re not to get worried. My guess is that it’s a small tumour, just inside the uterus.”

I cannot speak for a while, and then, gradually, I can.

“Are you sure? Are you sure that’s what is there?”

“Certainly, I felt it.”

“No – I mean –”

“Yes, there’s definitely a tumour of some sort there. What we don’t know yet is what sort. I’m being frank with you, Rachel, because I know you can’t stand me to be otherwise, and I know you can take it. There’s every chance that it’ll turn out to be benign. You’ll have to go into hospital in the city – you need a specialist. I’ll arrange it, and let you know when.”

“Are you sure it’s a – tumour?”

“Oh yes, quite sure. No mistaking it. I’ve diagnosed this kind of thing often enough.”

He’s quite sure. He could be mistaken. But how could he? His hands have a knowledge beyond his brain. A foetus doesn’t feel the same to those seeing hands as the thing in me. He’s diagnosed this kind of thing often enough before.

“Rachel, listen –”

Doctor Raven puts a hand on my shoulder. His face is anxious. He is anxious about me. Anxious in case I should be too concerned over the nature of the thing in me, the growth, the non-life. How can non-life be a growth? But it is. How strange. There are two kinds. One is called malignant. The other is called benign. That’s what he said. Benign.

Oh my God. I didn’t bargain for this. Not this.

“Rachel – please –”

It is Doctor Raven’s voice, but I cannot any longer see him, or else I’m seeing him through some changing and shimmering substance utterly unlike air. I looked down once through the water at the lake, and it trembled and changed, and still I could see, far below, the thousand minute creatures spinning in a finned dance, and my father said
Fishes, only just spawned
, and there were thousands of them, thousands. The waters are in front of my eyes.

“All right, my dear. Just sit down. I know it’s been a shock.”

“No. No, you don’t know –”

My speaking voice, and then only that other voice, wordless and terrible, the voice of some woman mourning for her children.

How long? I don’t know. What does it matter? It does not matter now that I’ve been sitting here, touchily attended to by one embarrassed nurse and one well-meaning physician who wants to help me pull myself together and yet can’t help having an eye on the clock, the waiting room still full.

“I’m sorry. I’m all right now.”

“Take your time,” he says.

“No, I’m fine, really. It was just for a minute –”

“Of course. I know. But try not to think of it too much. Not at this stage. These things are operable, you know, even if it’s what we hope it isn’t.”

“Yes. Well – thanks.”

I am outside now, walking on the streets, walking somehow along in the late afternoon sun that gilds the store windows and turns everything to a dusty brightness.

Only now do I recall the long discussions with myself.
What will I do? Where will I go?
The decision, finally. It cost
me something, that decision, you know? Then telling Calla. I did tell her. What if I was pregnant, I said. And she said, my Lord, I’ve looked after kids before.

All that. And this at the end of it. I was always afraid that I might become a fool. Yet I could almost smile with some grotesque lightheadedness at that fool of a fear, that poor fear of fools, now that I really am one.

H
e was right. Doctor Raven was right, dead right. And now that I’m back at home, the time in hospital seems to have been anaesthetized, bled of any shade except the pallor of dreams or drugs, the colour of sleep. I hardly noticed what they were doing to me, or who they were. As though it were all being imagined in one of those late-night spook features repeated with eerie boredom on the inner
TV
. As though I might be able to switch it off, finally, or turn away, and come back to life and find that the child had begun perceptibly to move.