Full of Life (2 page)

Ten times a night she bolted from bed and dashed to the bathroom, flushing the toilet with defiant loudness, gargling, brushing her teeth, taking showers. Then back to bed with a hop, skip and jump, to enthrone herself in a place that had become an eating tavern, a bloated goddess comforted with pillows. If I moved or murmured, she cared not.

Aye, I was very glad to sleep alone, to lie in a bed
that was not also a delicatessen, to spread my arms and legs. It was an eerie pleasure, an atavistic revel, a return to Mother Earth. But she sensed my joy; she must have felt it through the wall, for she began to want things. A glass of milk, a sandwich, a match, a book. And if none of these, the light at my bedside would go on suddenly as she stood there, heavy and white and sad, saying quietly, “I can’t sleep.” It was a bed for one, and when she got in beside me there was no room at all unless she lay on her back with the mound sticking straight up. I backed away. It was like sleeping at the edge of a ditch.

“You hate me, don’t you?” she said.

“I don’t hate you.”

“Why do you recoil? Is something wrong?”

“I can’t sleep on top of you.”

“You can, if you want.”

“It leaves me cold. I’m sorry.”

“Is it my breath?”

She blew it into my face. Her mouth that used to be warm and sweet now had that I’m-pregnant odor, not unpleasant but not pleasant either.

“It’s on the fuzzy side.”

For a little while she lay motionless, staring at the ceiling, the white mound moving up and down evenly, her hands folded across it. She began to cry, a little brook of tears coursing down her face.

“Honey! What is it!”

“I’m constipated,” she sobbed. “I’m always constipated.”

I held her close, smoothed back her hair, and kissed her warm forehead.

“Nobody loves a pregnant woman,” she sobbed. “I
see it everywhere I go. On the street, in the stores, everywhere. They just stare and stare. It’s awful.”

“It’s your imagination.”

“That nice butcher. He used to be so sweet. Now he hardly even looks at me.”

“Is that important?”

“It’s
very
important!”

She wept a great deal that night, until her cheeks were puffed and there was no more tension, until the activity in the nest distracted her. She flung back the covers.

“Look.”

The child squirmed like a kitten trapped in a balloon. It kicked painfully and you saw what looked like a tiny foot thumping away at the walls of its prison.

“Girls don’t kick like that.”

“Oh yes they do.”

I put my ear against the soft warm mound and listened. It was the noise of a brewery, hissing pipes, fermenting vats, steaming bottle washers, and far away, on the roof of the brewery, someone calling for help. She took my hand.

“Feel the head.”

I found the place; it was the size of a baseball. I felt what I thought were the hands, the feet. Then I got a start, but I said nothing lest I alarm her. There were two baseballs down there, there were
two
heads!

I told her it was wonderful, but my throat ached with fear because they were there all right: my adorable Joyce was carrying a most awful burden. I felt the place once more. There could be no doubt about it. The child was a monster. I gritted my teeth and lay back with a heart full of sickness, too frightened to speak. It was not brave to weep
at a time like this, but I couldn’t hold back my grief, and when she saw my tears she drenched me with tenderness, pleased with my weeping.

“You darling! You’re so emotional.”

I got hold of myself finally, but I wanted to be alone, to think things out, to call Dr. Stanley, to see if something couldn’t be done. Her hunger gave me an excuse. She wanted an avocado sandwich. I rose to get it. But I had to be reassured that I had been wrong, and I came back.

“Let me feel it once more,” I said.

“Of course.”

My palm went over the place. I nearly fainted as the two protrusions pressed my hand. So it was true: we had begot a monster. I staggered downstairs. In the little room off the kitchen where we kept the telephone, in that small place I stood in the darkness, my head against the wall, and began to cry again.

Many things were clear now, the past revealed like an upturned garbage can. For it was not the fault of Joyce. Her life had been pure, spotless. But the premarital years of John Fante were foolish years of helter-skelter romances. There was much to bring blushes; there had been sins, grievous sins, and somewhere in this evil swirl the penalty had been sown, and now it was time to reap the wicked harvest.

I prepared the sandwich and brought it upstairs. Joyce was ready, floating in pillows, her arms out to receive the food. I couldn’t bear it. I went downstairs, pulled the telephone into the kitchen, closed the doors, and dialed Dr. Stanley’s number. He was at the hospital, waiting a delivery.

“I’ve got to see you right away.”

“How’s Joyce?”

“She’s fine. It’s me. And the baby.”

“You?”

“Ill come down. It’s very important.”

I went upstairs again. Joyce had finished the sandwich. She lay full length, watching the mound.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Everything’s beautiful.”

She was soon asleep. I dressed and tiptoed downstairs and out the side door to the garage. It was a quarter to three, the streets deserted, a kind of madness in the weird quiet of that vast metropolis. In ten minutes I pulled up before St. James’s Hospital. The receptionist told me that Dr. Stanley was on the twelfth floor. He delivered so many babies that the hospital reserved a room for him in the maternity ward, where he could take cat naps. The door to his room was open. He lay on a studio couch in his shirt sleeves. My soft knock wakened him instantly and he got to his feet. He was a small man with the face of a baby, the large eyes expressing constant amazement. We shook hands.

“You pregnant too?”

I told him it was no joking matter.

“Really?”

“I think I’m a very sick man.”

‘You look all right to me.”

“Wait’ll I tell you. It won’t be so funny.”

“I’m waiting. Sit down.”

I dropped to his studio couch and fumbled for a smoke. “There’s something terribly wrong with the baby.”

“I thought you said it was you.”

“I’m coming to that. My sickness is related to the baby. My disease.”

“What disease is that?”

I couldn’t tell him. I didn’t want to tell him.

He said, “When did you have your last Wasser-mann?”

I told him about a year ago.

“But they’re not infallible, Doc. I read it in a magazine article.”

“Have you been unfaithful to your wife?”

“Yes. I mean, no. What I mean is, before I was married, there was a girl. I mean
some
girls. What I mean is, I’m worried, Doc.”

“What makes you think there’s something wrong with the baby?”

“I felt him.”

“Felt him? How?”

“I put my hand on Joyce’s stomach.”

“And?”

“I felt something funny.”

“What did it feel like?”

“I read that article in a medical journal, Doc. Sometimes the Wassermann is inaccurate.”

“What did it feel like?”

Suddenly I didn’t want to talk about it any more. Suddenly I realized I had been a fool, that the baby was fine, that it didn’t have two heads, that the whole thing had come to my mind in one big undigested hunk of guilt-feeling, and that my being there on the twelfth floor of St. James’s Hospital at three-thirty in the morning talking to Dr. Stanley in the maternity ward was absolutely ridiculous. I wanted to be out of there, in my car, on my way home, to crawl into bed and cover my head with blankets and wake up bright and fresh to a new day. Instead, I stood before this tired doctor, pestering him with my idiocies, and there was
nothing to do but make some kind of civilized exit.

“Dr. Stanley, I think I’ve made a grave mistake.”

“So you felt the baby, and it felt funny. Tell me about this funny feeling. Describe it.”

The answer was: two heads. Better to leap from the window than say it.

“I’m sorry, Doc. I was wrong. I just thought I felt something. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

I began to leave, backing out, but he stopped me and pushed a buzzer in the wall, and in a moment a nurse was there. He ordered me to take off my jacket and roll up my sleeve, because he wanted to reassure me, to rid my mind of any doubts.

“But it’s preposterous, Doc. There’s nothing wrong with my blood—absolutely nothing.”

He wound a rubber hose around my arm until the veins bulged and I felt the prick of the needle and watched my own blood being sucked into a syringe.

“Come back tomorrow night,” he said. “Any time. I’ll be here with your analysis.”

I rolled down my sleeve and put on my coat.

“This is silly, Doc. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Go home. Get some sleep.”

Through the quiet streets I drove home, thinking of those other girls, sweet Avis and dear Monica, and I was suddenly very lonely for them after all those years, for they had been so beautiful and so tender, with such superb bodies, not bloated by pregnancy, girls I longed for with a ravishing cloying desire now, gone forever, and I almost cried as I realized I could never have them again. This was marriage, this entombment, this vile prison where a man out of an overpowering desire to be good and decent and
wholesome allows himself to be made a fool of at three in the morning, with no reward save children, and a thankless brood at that. I could see them now, my children, kicking me into the street in my old age, running me out of the house, signing papers so they could get me an old-age pension and wash their hands of me, a doddering old man who had given the best years of his life in honest toil that they might enjoy the full taste of life. Here was my thanks!

The next night I was back at the hospital, waiting for Dr. Stanley’s report on my blood analysis. I hated being there. Dr. Stanley was delivering a baby, and the nurse asked me to wait in the Fathers’ Room. Two other fathers were there, one asleep in a leather chair, the other reading a magazine. I smoked cigarettes and paced up and down. It was preposterous. I didn’t belong there—yet. But there I was, going through all the motions, and the man with the magazine thought we shared a common fate.

“How’s your missus?” he asked.

“Fine. How’s yours?”

“Not good.”

His eyes were slits of red, his face beaten with worry. His hair was long and he needed a shave. “She’s been in labor thirteen hours.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“They may do a Caesarean.”

This was no place for me. I was profaning this place where life was born, where women suffered and men worried. These people had real problems, but I was only fooling around, a victim of myself. Then the nurse appeared.

“Mr. Fante…”

The Caesarean father shook my hand. The other man got up too and offered his hand. They wished me good luck. I thanked them and went down the hall after the nurse to Dr. Stanley’s little room. He was there, holding a slip of paper.

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“I knew it all the time.”

He smiled.

“What’d you have for dinner last night?”

I told him: spaghetti, meat balls, salad, wine, ice cream. “Why, Doc?”

“Cholesterol. The analysis shows an excess. What you had for dinner explains it.”

“Cholesterol! Good God, Doc! I read about cholesterol in a magazine. It’s dangerous. It blocks up the arteries and causes heart attacks. I read about it in
Hygeia.”

“Do you have heart trouble?”

“Not yet, but…”

“Forget it.”

“Cholesterol! Me, of all people.”

He advised me to stop reading medical articles and forget the whole matter, but I could not forget it, staggering down the hall, groping for the elevator button, sweat popping from my palms, going down the elevator shaft, bubbles in my belly, cholesterol, heart attacks, author collapses and dies of sudden attack, down into the street, staggering to my car, sitting behind the wheel, feeling my pulse, counting it against my wrist watch, John Fante, taken suddenly, career cut short, seventy-two beats a minute, my God, cholesterol: I had to look it up, do some more research, get better acquainted with this dread substance.

Joyce was asleep when I got home. It was around midnight. I went to bed with the light on, making frequent pulse counts. It was a rough night. I remember the coming of daylight, and then I was asleep. At noon I woke feeling fine.

Joyce was in her room writing letters.

“How’d you sleep?”

“Terrible,” she said. “I was awake all night.”

“Let’s not have spaghetti any more. It’s full of cholesterol.”

“Is it, really?”

“Let’s have green salads, carrots. Fresh vegetables right out of the soil, crisp and good for you.”

I went into the bathroom and took my pulse. It was sixty-eight. Down four. A slow pulse was better than a fast pulse. That was certain. I had read it in several periodicals.

At 9:27 on the morning of March 18th, in the seventh month of her confinement, Joyce Fante fell through the kitchen floor of our house. The sheer weight of her—she had gained twenty-five pound and tipped the scale at one hundred and forty-four—plus the condition of the woodwork, came to a shuddering climax as the termite-infested floor boards collapsed beneath the tearing linoleum and the woman with the big bump sank to the ground three feet below.

I was upstairs in the bathtub at the time, and I remember distinctly the minute events coming before and after the calamity. First there was this fine quiet morning, all decked out in the golden gloss of the sun, there was the
placidity of the bath, the mysterious evocations of confined water, the conjuring of faraway things, and then, from somewhere, from everywhere, the quivering of the atmosphere, the ominous portent of chain reaction in fissionable materials. A moment later I heard her scream. It was a theater scream, Barbara Stanwyck trapped by a rapist, and it plucked my spinal column like a giant’s fingers.

I jumped out of the tub and opened the door. Down there I could hear Joyce shrieking. My one thought was the child—the precious white melon.