Morning (11 page)

“Mrs. Anderson will not be available today,” the woman said coldly.

Angered, Sara frowned. “Oh,
really
,” she said. “You mean she will not be available at any time today, not free for even a moment?”

“Mrs. Anderson is indisposed,” the woman said.

Well,
Sara thought,
I can’t argue with that. I can’t protest that she’s not sick. “Indisposed,” what an old-fashioned word
.

“Well,” Sara went on, conceding defeat, “would you please give her this package?
It contains some writing of hers, and a few notes I’ve made. And would you please tell her I stopped by? And that I would like to hear from her as soon as possible?”

“Very well,” the woman said, and took the manila envelope. “Good day,” she said, and shut the thick oak door in Sara’s face.

“You old harridan,” Sara said aloud, with quiet rage. “You Nazi.”

She turned and traced her steps back down the winding slate walk, out of the wrought-iron gates to the street. She had dismissed the cab. That was all right, she could walk to Harvard Square from here, then get a cab to the airport.

On impulse, she turned and looked back up at the Victorian house. She saw, on the second floor, a woman looking down at her through parted heavy drapery. It was not the woman who had answered the door—this woman’s face was fuller—but that was the only judgment Sara’s mind could make before the woman, seeing Sara’s gaze, drew back, disappearing from view.

My God
, Sara thought,
I wonder what’s going on?
She stood a few more minutes, watching, but the woman did not appear again. Then, shivering, for it was a cold day, Sara turned her back on Fanny Anderson’s house and walked toward Harvard Square.

Chapter Four

Morning.

An amazing morning, really. It was barely nine-thirty, and here Sara was, not curled up in her robe with a manuscript in her lap, but lying back on a medical table in a white paper gown with her legs drawn up and her knees spread apart.

She had been so tense about it all. Last night at the Joneses’ Christmas party she had hardly been able to hear people talk, so obsessed was she with thoughts of what had to be done later that night and early the next day. What if the weather turned bad, if it snowed or got foggy? Or what if the plane crashed? Or if the cabdriver had an accident? Last night, the more she thought about it, the more impossible it seemed that she would actually make it from the island thirty miles out at sea into the civilized serenity of Dr. Crochett’s office.

But there she was. Everything had gone smoothly. They had made love last night, and Steve had driven her to the airport this morning, and the plane hadn’t crashed, nor had the taxi, and there had been no fog or snow. In fact it was very mild for the twenty-third of December. It might easily have been April.

Sara closed her eyes and relaxed against the table. She was tired. She had awakened very early this morning, around four o’clock, afraid that the alarm—which had never failed before—would, for some reason, not go off on time. When it did go off, she was lying in bed rigidly, staring at it, waiting for it, and so certain that it wouldn’t go off that when the buzz came, she jumped, startled.

She had taken her temperature at exactly the right time, and noted what it was: she would write it down on the chart tonight. She wouldn’t forget what it was; it had skyrocketed, up eight points.

“Sara! Get up! Get in here,
quick
!”

She raised her head, puzzled. Was that Dr. Crochett calling her? He had done something between her legs that took only a few seconds, and then rushed out of the room. She had lain there, expecting him to come back. Instead, here was his voice again, urgent, excited.

She got herself off the table, and pulled on her panties, and clutching her gown
around her she peeked out from the doorway of the examining room.

Dr. Crochett was standing in the hall. He gestured to her to come to him. “Hurry!” he said. “I’ve got something to show you!”

He looked a bit like the mad scientist this morning, his white lab coat unbuttoned and hanging unevenly, his hair slightly mussed. Sara went down the hall and into a small laboratory.

Dr. Crochett took her arm and led her over to a counter. “Look!” he said, triumphantly, indicating a small microscope. “Just look at that!”

Sara bent over the microscope. For a moment she could see nothing. Then she saw them, a swarm of tiny sperm swimming around like maniacs, their tiny tails wiggling.

“Wow,” Sara said. “They look just like what the textbooks say they look like. This is amazing.” And in that moment she had much more faith in all the outer world with its technological paraphernalia. For there they really were,
sperm
, Steve’s sperm, miniature tadpoles, fat round heads, wriggling tails, zipping around the slide with determined energy.

“So!” Dr. Crochett said. “That is great, isn’t it! You should be very happy. Your husband’s got plenty of sperm—look at all those little critters.
And
your mucus is compatible with his sperm. Another point in your favor.”

Sara looked up at Dr. Crochett, who was beaming as proudly as if he had just that moment created the sperm himself. She couldn’t help but feel fond of him. “Do you mean there was a chance that it might not be?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, oh, yes indeed,” Dr. Crochett said. “It happens quite often. Sometimes the woman’s mucus kills off the sperm! Quite a problem, you can imagine. But not in your case. Now—
watch
.”

He picked up the specimen slide and held it over the flame of a cigarette lighter.
“Aha!”
he said, “just look at that!”

Sara couldn’t help smiling. He was so excited. She looked, not certain what she was supposed to see. But she did see it, clearly, how the mucus from her body dried into a delicate, intricate fern pattern on the glass slide.

“Do you see that? That fern pattern? That’s a sign that you’re ovulating today! Hurry home now and have intercourse—you’re ovulating today. This is the proof. And your husband has plenty of sperm and your mucus is compatible. All points in your
favor.”

Sara smiled, elated. She was going to get pregnant today, she felt it, she felt as inspired as a sinner at a revival meeting; she had just been saved by the evangelist. “Yes, yes, all right, thank you,” she said.

“Now look,” Dr. Crochett said, his voice slowing a little, “if you don’t get pregnant this month, call me right away. Then I want to schedule a uterotubalgram. Don’t be alarmed, it’s just a little test to see if your Fallopian tubes are blocked.”

“Blocked? But—how?” Sara asked.

“Oh, easily, with anything. Happens all the time. Sometimes a bit of menstrual matter attaches itself to the Fallopian tube at the wrong place, then the eggs can’t get down from the tube into the uterus. And if that’s the problem, the solution is easy, because when we run the dye through it blows the tube clean. This procedure can be therapeutic as well as diagnostic.”

“Well,” Sara said. “Hmm.” She was trying to envision all that he was telling her, her Fallopian tubes, and a procedure that would clear them.

“Don’t worry, don’t even think about it, the uterotubalgram is just another step, but we may not even have to take it. Just think about going home and having intercourse. Today. And listen,” he said, leaning forward, smiling, giving her this one last gift, “you know, quite often when I take the mucus from a woman’s body, that procedure in itself makes pregnancy a little more possible. Because I opened the cervix slightly, it makes it possible for those little devils to swim right up there and—
wham!
You might be getting pregnant right now!”

Instantly Sara was covered with goose bumps. She might be getting pregnant right now. Oh, God, wouldn’t it be wonderful?

“Thank you,” she said. If she was pregnant she would come back to his office and fall on her knees and kiss his feet. She would bring him gifts. She would name her child after him. What was his first name? Hiram. Well, maybe she wouldn’t do
that
. “Thank you,” she said again.

“Well, well, we’ll see what we see. You call me, either way. All right?”

“All right,” Sara agreed.

Now she hated parting from the doctor, hated going from the lab room to the reception room where other patients sat waiting. She felt that if she could only stay at his side, soaking in his enthusiasm, his optimism, she would effortlessly swell outward with
pregnancy. She sat down a moment in the waiting room, pulling her knee socks up inside her high boots, then just sitting a moment, thinking. So many terms had been thrown around this morning, and Dr. Crochett spoke with such intimate familiarity about the mysterious movements of minute things: sperm, tubes, eggs. All those reproductive objects that she had read about but never really paid much attention to before, because they had been no more relevant to her than the existence of another galaxy of stars.

But now. Now. She might be getting pregnant even now.

She wanted to sit there in his room all day waiting, all month waiting, not moving, willing it to happen, as if the combination of his energy and her desire would make her wish come true.

She had intended to do some last-minute Christmas shopping in Boston, but really she had gotten everything already, and she wanted to be back on Nantucket, back at home, like a bird ready to sit on the eggs in her nest. She would not try to go to Fanny Anderson’s house today—she had not heard from her, and was miffed. And she did not want to encounter the dragon lady, she did not want to have any negative experience today. She wanted to stay in this happy, hopeful state.

Steve picked her up at the airport when the heavy old PBA DC-3 clunked down at eleven-thirty. Only eleven-thirty, and so much had happened. As she came toward him where he stood waiting for her at the gate, looking ruggedly sexual in his weathered work clothes, her heart swelled with love for him. Look at that man! He was so handsome, so good. He should have a son. She ran toward him, threw her arms around him, and kissed him as passionately as if they had been parted for months instead of a morning.

“Hey.” Steve laughed, pulling away, embarrassed a little by her display. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m great. Come on, I’ll tell you about it in the car.”

As they drove back to the heart of town, Sara described the doctor and his procedure. Steve listened intently.

“So,” he said, very quietly, “so it seems I’m okay then. That … I’ve got enough …” He didn’t finish the sentence.

Sara studied her husband’s face. He was driving the car very seriously, not looking at her.
Oh
, she thought,
of course. Of course he would worry about that
. Although it had never really occurred to her that it could be his body at fault.

“Oh, Steve,” she said, laughing, and imitated Carl Sagan’s enunciation about stars, “you’ve got
b
illions and
b
illions and
b
illions of sperm; I saw them swimming around, I really did. It is amazing,” she went on, “what science can do. I mean, they tell you in textbooks that all these teeny-weeny things are going on inside your body, but it’s so hard to believe.”

“Teeny-weeny,” Steve said, grinning. “There’s a textbook term.”

She laughed from relief because he was kidding her, he was back to normal, he was relaxed. He was fine.

So now, she thought, sobering, now they had to see if she was just as fine.

At their house, Steve stopped the car but kept the motor running. “I’ve got to get right back to work, babe,” he said, running his hand along the back of her neck, gently rubbing. “Will you be okay?”

“Sure,” Sara said, smiling, “I’ve never felt better.”

“Well, I’m sorry you have to do all this running around. I hope you know I appreciate it. All you’re doing. The flying and the examinations and all.”

“Oh, Steve.” Sara leaned across the seat to hug him. She knew how hard it was for him to say something like that. “I love you.”

“I love you. See you tonight.”

“Yeah. You bet you’ll see me tonight.” She grinned.

Once in the house, Sara hung up her coat, then sank down on the sofa to think. She realized then how tired she was, and leaned back on the pillows and instantly fell asleep.

She awoke to the sound of the mail thumping on the floor through the slot in the door. She looked at her watch; it was just after two. She stretched. She looked down at her stomach. She smiled. Maybe she had been so tired, had fallen asleep like that, because she was already pregnant?

After daydreaming awhile she rose and crossed the living room to the hallway to see what the mail had brought. Some Christmas cards, some bills, a magazine, and another manila envelope from Fanny Anderson.

Dear Sara Kendall, [again the dark-blue gracefully round handwriting on heavy cream-colored stationery]

I understand that you have been trying to reach me and I’m so very sorry if I’ve caused you any inconvenience. I haven’t been well lately and have needed to envelop myself in a cocoon of complete peace and quiet. I hope you will forgive me for not seeing you when you stopped by the other day and also for not answering any of your phone calls. It is just that I have been ill, and need to put my health first these days.

But also please believe me, I am grateful for your appreciation of my Jenny pages, and your encouragement means a great deal to me, more than you could ever know, more than I could ever express. And the notes you sent me with my last pages—marvelous! So helpful. You are a gifted editor. You are perhaps the perfect editor for me.

So please bear with me, if you will. I would love to meet you personally when I am better. Until then, I have sent you some more of the Jenny pages. Again let me say that you mustn’t feel obligated to read them or to like them. But your criticism is immensely helpful, immensely appreciated.

Happy Holidays to you and yours. Perhaps we can talk after the new year.