* * *
Polly’s children. When each was inside of her she learned what they’d be like. She felt it in the way they moved. The sweep of a hand across the inside of her abdomen, the tossing and turning or kicking in distress or glee. From the very beginning she wanted to experience them, share with them, but otherwise leave them be to grow into individuals. Other women seemed to feel the opposite—as if their children were miniature versions of themselves, sources of pride and shame. They encouraged sameness rather than difference. Polly supposed that kept a society coherent, but her own feelings were too yielding for that. She was a good herder, and she was strict, too, in her way. But she was also squeamish about interfering too much.
James was conceived at Meadowlea. One moonlit night, when Polly was very tired from a day in the sun and an evening dancing at the Deel Club, she and Dick made love, not for remarkably longer than she’d so far experienced, but more languorously. She relaxed, sensing that he wasn’t pushing toward his climax. She became more and more liquid as it went on, and there seemed no reason to ever stop—they might eat and sleep and live this way.
Her thoughts drifted past, nothing sticking or catching, a river of notions and sensations, placid and cool. She had no capacity to make an emotion. She was a feeling. She herself. She was in life, a thread in the pattern. Yes. It was real, and true. Most of the time she was a jumble of states. Emotions latched on to her. They separated her from nature, from this languid flow. Now she and her feeling were one.
When it happened, she knew it instantly.
It was like—a ping. A timer going off in the kitchen. A sonar sounding. A distant thunderclap. Oh, she thought. Oh! Two vast sets of information meeting and combining, a new and powerful brew. Dick kept going, but she was in two places at once, and she had the presence of mind to have the prescient thought that she’d be that way from then on. Dual loyalties. In the next moment she sank into a stupor. When Dick moved away, she was already half-asleep. In her last moment of consciousness she told him what had happened. He assured her she couldn’t possibly have felt it, the process was microscopic. She couldn’t explain, but at the same time how could she be unaware of what had changed? “You’ll see,” she told him. “We aren’t alone anymore.”
“But I’ll always come first,” he said.
She should have heard in that remark a howl of storms on the way, but she only said, “Of course.”
Marriage was based on trust, she’d heard that all her life. Trust bypassed questions. Trust operated on the premise that all would become clear in time. She’d never asked about lovemaking or childbirth. She’d gleaned that both would hurt to some degree. Otherwise she trusted and was ill-prepared. Lovemaking stopped hurting very quickly, thank God, but childbirth hurt before she was knocked out and afterward, and she assumed the worst pain had come in the middle. It was cruel that no one had told her what it would be like, especially her doctor, who’d seen her over and over. He betrayed her, she thought darkly, in the delivery room. But afterward, beyond the pain, she was a mother. She had presents to open and notes to write and new routines to figure out and establish, and above and beyond all that was the real consideration—she had the baby to take joy and pleasure in and to marvel at, the incredible baby. She searched for joy.
He looks like your father! He looks like Dick! He looks like a Martian, what funny faces!
She smiled and agreed he looked like whatever was suggested. She couldn’t see anything in him but himself. Sometimes she wondered if he really was her baby, and sometimes if she’d even had a baby. Crazy ideas. Yet she couldn’t shake them off. Her flat stomach persuaded her that nothing had happened, it had all been a dream. She was miles away from the people who made faces and noises at the baby and reached for him, cuddled him, kissed his cheeks. All she wanted was to be left alone and to sleep.
She pretended, though. Enough so that no one knew but the baby. He knew and reacted by not relaxing when she held him or crying until Mrs. Bailey took him away. Mrs. Bailey knew, too. She gazed at Polly sympathetically while telling the world how well everyone was adjusting. Nor did she remark when they were alone that Polly would feel like a real mother soon enough. Polly noticed these considerate attentions and appreciated them immeasurably. She’d never before understood the value of being left alone or met a person who knew how to do it thoughtfully. She let the care roll over her and slept for weeks.
One day while the baby was lying next to her on the sofa, he lifted his foot and pointed it toward her. She leaned toward him and the foot wobbled, but with great effort he pushed it closer and closer and finally pressed it against her cheek. How had he done that? Did he do it on purpose? It had certainly seemed deliberate. She closed his foot in her hand and jiggled it—and he laughed. She tried it again and he laughed again, and when she let go, his wobbling foot pressed forward again toward her face. She played the game with him until she was convinced he knew what he was doing. How clever of him! What a brilliant baby! She called Bailey in to see.
“He wants attention, like all men,” Bailey said. She bent down to coo at James and emitted a puff of powder from inside her dress.
“I don’t mind giving it,” Polly said.
“That’s how they rule the world.” Mrs. Bailey sighed and ran an efficient finger into the front of James’s diaper. “Time for a change.” She bent to pick him up.
“Show me how,” Polly said.
After that, all Polly wanted to do was to wake up in the morning and see James again. Once he entered her mind, he never left. She couldn’t think without engaging him, couldn’t speak without finding a way to mention his name. She could turn any subject in James’s direction. Agnes told her that her mother, that battle-axe Grace Lee, remarked that Polly needed to beware of becoming boring, which embarrassed her. She, who was acutely aware of the feelings of others, and who thoroughly fulfilled the dictate of her upbringing not to draw attention to herself, had become a chatterbox. She knew nothing was more boring than talking about one’s children. How often had she been on the other end of it, and had that fact proved to her? But, besotted, she rattled on hectically, crazed with love.
Eventually Bailey determined that Polly didn’t need her anymore—until the next baby. Polly found a sitter who’d come three days a week so she could get out and see friends, pick up her volunteer work again. She’d have been just as happy to have no sitter and take James out with her—people did that, at least for the market—but the sitter insisted Polly needed time to herself, and that that was better for the baby. Soon she was back in her regular round but elevated above her characteristic high spirits by knowing her husband and baby were ahead of and behind her—that she now had everything. She hired a housekeeper and quietly paid for it, meanwhile thanking Dick for being such a good provider. As she gathered advice, most of it unsolicited, she heard many tips. Your child needs discipline, he’s basically an animal, always keep your eyes out, he’s going to try to get away with all kinds of nonsense. That couldn’t be right, could it? Why be suspicious of your own child?
Her mother, that gentle person, never once criticized Polly’s mothering, and waited to be asked for advice. So Polly realized where she’d gotten her ideas. Her wild love for her baby encompassed her mother, too, who had gone through the very same incredible things. Why didn’t people talk about this?