Morning (10 page)

That form: how reassuring. It was like being in school again and taking a test to which she was certain she knew all the right answers. She was healthy, Steve was healthy, their parents were healthy. Sara’s father had died of a cancer that was particular to males. Sara and Steve had no allergies, asthma, heart problems, ulcers, kidney stones, VD, arthritis, anemia, hepatitis, tuberculosis, history of mental illness. They had health insurance. If there was an intelligence looking down at the available gene pools on earth, undoubtedly that intelligence could see how superior theirs was. This test rated an A.

If that had anything to do with anything.

Dr. Crochett lifted his head and looked at Sara. “You have written here, next to ‘reason for visit,’ ‘desire to get pregnant.’ ”

Sara cleared her throat. This was difficult. “Well, I probably should have written infertility. But I couldn’t put that down in black and white. It would have seemed so definite. So—
final
.”

Dr. Crochett smiled and leaned back in his chair. “You have been trying to get pregnant for how long?”

“Just over a year now. Thirteen months.”

“Your periods are regular?”

“Yes. Very. Every twenty-nine days.”

“Have you ever been pregnant before?”

“No.”

“So you have never had an abortion.”

“No.”

“Has your husband ever impregnated a woman before, to your knowledge?”

“No.”

“What has been your usual method of birth control in the past?”

“Diaphragm and condoms.”

“Did you ever take the pill?”

“No. Never. My sister told me not to. She’s a nurse.”

“Ah. I see you’ve come from Nantucket. A lovely place to live. I used to summer there as a child.”

“Yes,” Sara agreed. Then, realizing he was waiting for something, she told him, “There are no gynecologists on the island. Only general practitioners. And … it’s a very small place in the winter. And I’m a very, well, I don’t think
neurotically
private person, but a very private person. If I did go to a doctor on the island about this … problem … well, I know some of the nurses … everyone on the island would know in a matter of minutes. Small-town living. That would make it even harder on me.”

“Of course it would,” Dr. Crochett said. “This can be such an emotional issue, can’t it? You did the right thing, coming to me. The GPs would have sent you to a specialist anyway. What are your periods like?”

“Heavy. I mean the flow is heavy. The first few days. Then it tapers off and is light. I go seven days, but the first three days are the really terrible ones. I have cramps. And I get chilled and depressed and ravenous and nutty before my period. I go insane.”

Dr. Crochett smiled. “Good old PMS,” he said. “We’re just now beginning to learn about it. Well, you seem healthy enough, normal.”

“Do you think I am too old?” Sara asked.

Dr. Crochett laughed. He had a good hearty laugh, throwing back his head. “No, my dear, I certainly do not! You are”—he consulted his form—“thirty-four. That’s a perfect time to get pregnant. Why, I have women in their early forties getting pregnant. No, you are not too old.”

“I brought this,” Sara said, reaching into her purse and handing him her
temperature chart.

The doctor took it and studied it, then handed it back. “So far, so good,” he said. “One month doesn’t tell us much, you know. You’ll have to keep that up for several months if you want accuracy. How often do you and your husband have intercourse?”

As often as possible
, Sara thought, and stifled a smile. “Um, perhaps four times a week.”

“Fine,” Dr. Crochett said. He stood up. “Let’s take a look at you, shall we? I notice you had a Pap smear seven months ago. You don’t need another one so soon. But I want to do a pelvic, to see if everything’s in the right place.”

The examining room was cheerful, with flowery wallpaper and more pictures of babies. After undressing in the bathroom and putting on a paper robe, Sara lay down on the table with her feet in metal stirrups, her knees drawn up. She had always hated this part, the feeling of vulnerability, the exposure. She had asked for it, but her body informed her mind that as far as it was concerned, she was being violated. Her muscles tensed.

Dr. Crochett pulled on rubber gloves and put his hand inside her. “I had a patient once,” he said, “who tried for three years to get pregnant. She finally made it. She really wanted that baby. When it came time for her to deliver, I met her at the hospital, lifted her gown, and saw that she had had her pubic hair shaved into the shape of a heart all around her vagina.” He laughed a booming laugh.

Sara laughed politely, thinking that all sounded a little bizarre, but the image flashed before her mind and then the doctor was dropping the paper sheet between her legs. So soon the examination was over.

“That’s fine. You can sit up now. Why don’t you get dressed and come back to my office? We’ll make a plan of attack.”

In the office, Dr. Crochett said, “You’re fine. All the right equipment in all the right places. Perhaps a slight case of endometriosis, but I can’t tell much.”

“What’s that?” Sara asked, alarmed.

“Endometriosis—briefly, it’s tissue that forms in the abdominal cavity. It can cause painful intercourse if it’s bad enough. If often occurs in women as they grow older and haven’t had children. Interestingly enough, the cure for it is pregnancy. But that’s something we’ll check into later, if necessary. There are some other things we can do first, some tests we can do right away that will tell us a lot. Where are you now in your
cycle?”

“I’m on the tenth day,” Sara said.

“That’s great!” Dr. Crochett said, so enthusiastically that Sara almost jumped. “Now let’s see,” he went on, musing aloud, “you probably ovulate on the fifteenth day. By the way—keep on taking your temperature. That chart will be very helpful after a few more months.”

A few more months
, Sara thought.
Here we go again
. How wonderful it would have been to come here and have a gynecologist wave a magic wand so that she would go home and get pregnant immediately. The thought of having to go through
a few more months
of waiting and hoping and being disappointed made her spirits plunge.

“Now,” Dr. Crochett was going on cheerfully, “I want to do a postcoital on you. I can tell a lot from that. Cut through some steps. And I want to do it just before you ovulate. Now, can you come back here on the fifteenth day? Let’s see, that puts us on December twenty-three. Well, close to Christmas, hmm? The last day I’ll be in the office. You and your husband will have to have intercourse on the twenty-second of December. Then I’ll need to examine you first thing in the morning. Can you arrange that?”

“Will you need my husband here, too?” Sara asked.

“No, that won’t be necessary. Either the two of you can come up to Boston for the night, then you come see me in the morning, or, if you want, you can have intercourse on Nantucket on the twenty-second and fly up here on the morning of the twenty-third. Whichever you wish. The important thing is that you do have intercourse then and that you get your body in here to me as soon as possible after that.”

Sara thought a moment. The twenty-second was the night of Jamie and Sheldon’s Christmas party. And Steve had to work on the twenty-third. But she could fly up.

“Yes,” she said. “I can do it.”

“Fine,” Dr. Crochett said. “We’ll schedule an early-morning appointment with my secretary—and pray for clear weather. I know what those Nantucket fogs can be like.”

“Yes,” Sara said, suddenly worried. She hadn’t thought about the weather not cooperating. And this could be such a difficult time of the year.

“Don’t look so troubled,” Dr. Crochett said. “You’re a young, healthy woman. Your body seems to be in good shape. You’ll get pregnant.”

“I hope so,” Sara said. She rose and followed the doctor from his office into the reception room and made an appointment for the morning of the twenty-third.

“Oh, and here!” Dr. Crochett said. He scribbled something on a pad and handed it to her. “I want you to get this prescription filled. It’s for multivitamins. We’ve found that women who take these for a few months before they get pregnant have a smaller incidence of babies with spina bifida. See you soon!”

Then he was gone, back into his office. Sara looked at the piece of paper in her hand, his indecipherable scribbling black and definite on the page.
Magic pills
, she thought,
just what I wanted, a prescription for magic pills
.

Buttoning her coat against the chill as she stepped out of the office into the day, Sara felt buoyant. She felt she had done the absolutely right thing, had set something in motion, had somehow begun a chain of events that would lead to her pregnancy. Dr. Crochett’s optimism was infectious. He had given her body his seal of approval; maybe that was all she needed, maybe she only needed this bit of authoritative go-ahead to get pregnant. Certainly she felt more fertile now; she felt wonderful.

Dr. Crochett’s office was in a brownstone in Brookline; Sara took a cab from there to Fanny Anderson’s house in Cambridge.

She was going to do something she had never done before, something aggressive and pushy—but what else could she do? She was so frustrated.

During the past week, after finishing the Jenny material that Fanny Anderson had sent her, Sara had tried at least fifteen times by telephone to reach Fanny Anderson. Each time she had been thwarted by the same person, Fanny’s housekeeper or maid, who always said, in a cold hostile voice, “Mrs. Anderson is not available at the moment.”

“Well, could you please ask her to call me?” Sara had asked, politely at first, then, as the days passed and her calls were not returned, with increasing anger.

“I’ll give Mrs. Anderson your message,” the woman said, and hung up before Sara could say another thing.

Sara was beginning to envision the housekeeper as some kind of awful tyrant, some jealous jailer, who saw Sara as an enemy, an intruder to be fended off. Certainly she sounded that way on the phone. Perhaps she was the writer’s lover? A neurotic lesbian, afraid to let any other woman come in contact with Fanny Anderson? In any case, it was strange and maddening, how the woman with her cold, thin voice refused to put Sara through to Fanny. Sara remembered Fanny’s voice, by contrast so warm and soft and welcoming, so
personal
. And Fanny
had
sent her more of the Jenny pages, so she
wanted to keep in touch with Sara. Something odd was going on, and Sara wanted to know what it was. More, she wanted to try to persuade Fanny to finish this book, she wanted to help her to shape it, she wanted to be a real editor in a way she seldom had been before.

So, once she had made the appointment with a gynecologist in Boston, she tried Fanny Anderson’s number once again, and after she once again received the same response, the cold, hostile “Mrs. Anderson is not available at the moment. I’ll give her your message,” Sara had written a letter.

Dear Fanny Anderson,

I have tried numerous times over the past week to reach you, day and night, but the person who answers your phone seems unwilling to let me speak to you, and since you have not returned my calls, I’m afraid you haven’t gotten my messages.

I would like very much to talk with you about the Jenny book. I’ve finished reading the pages you sent me, and they are wonderful. Jenny is a fascinating person, and your writing style is at once elegant and intimate. I want to read more! And I know that many others will want to read this book, and will love it.

I have to come to Boston for medical purposes on December 19th, a Thursday. I would like to stop by your house around two-thirty, to see you and return the material you sent to me, and I hope, to pick up more. And if possible, I would very much like to sit down and talk with you about what you’re writing. I don’t know your writing schedule, but I promise I won’t take up too much of your time. Perhaps on Thursday we could meet briefly and then set up another time for a longer talk about your book. I would be very grateful if you could afford me just a few minutes in your day.

With very best wishes,

Sara Kendall

There
, Sara had thought,
that should do it
. She had praised the book, she was offering to make the trip from Nantucket to Cambridge, she was practically groveling. If only she could get past the dreadful housekeeper, or lover, or envious spinster aunt, or whatever she was.

Fanny Anderson’s house was a tall old Victorian set behind a wrought-iron fence, graced with towering ancient maple trees that arched and draped their naked winter limbs over and in front of the house like giant garlands. The windows were long and narrow and shuttered. Stained glass glittered on either side of the massive oak door.

The woman who opened the door to Sara’s knock was so much like Sara’s mental image of her that Sara almost gasped. A woman in her fifties, perhaps, she had dark hair pulled back into a bun, and forbidding brown eyes set in a wrinkled somber face. She was wearing a drab brown wool dress and the heavy brown laced shoes of a woman who has no claim to vanity.

Jesus
, Sara thought, but gave her most winning smile. “Hello,” she said confidently, “I’m Sara Kendall. I’ve been corresponding with Mrs. Anderson—” She stopped a moment, waiting. Surely this woman couldn’t be Fanny Anderson? When the woman showed no change of expression, Sara pressed on, “—and I have some material that I’d like to return to her.” She nodded down at the packet in her arms. “I wrote Mrs. Anderson a note last week, telling her I would be in town and would like to see her—is she in?”

“Mrs. Anderson is not available,” the woman said.

Oh, no
, Sara thought, and nearly burst into tears. “Well, I could wait,” she said. “If she’s out. Or if she’s writing and might be available later. I could wait, or I could come back later today.”