And he said, “These dumb-ass websites.”
I rolled my eyes, which of course he could not see. “Oh Pill, please, stop it. They don’t make up birth certificates. She had a child!”
“I’m going to investigate more,” William said calmly.
And he hung up.
I said out loud, “You idiot. Catherine had another kid!” I was astonished. But as I thought about it, it made a kind of weird sense.
* * *
The year before we married we were most often at William’s apartment. I didn’t live there, except I kind of did. And we were so happy. I was so happy, and I am quite sure he was too. I would try to cook us meals, although I knew almost nothing about food; I remember he was puzzled by how little I knew about food, but he was very kind about it. And he had a television, which I had never had growing up, and every night we would watch the Johnny Carson show. I had not known such a show existed until then, and every night we watched it sitting together on his couch.
I remember that year that he read to me. It was a children’s book, but for grown children, and he had liked it when he was young—it was about a boy who made up a life for himself—and he read me a few pages every night while we lay in bed, and my desire for William would just sit there on top of me. If, when he turned out the light, he did not reach for me—and most nights he did—I would feel a sense of fear and of being bereft. That was how much I wanted him.
* * *
—
We were married at a country club that William’s mother was a member of, and it was a very small wedding, some college friends and friends of his mother’s, and about an hour before it took place, when I was upstairs getting dressed in a room at the club—my parents and siblings did not attend; in fact they sent nothing and wrote me nothing after I told them about my upcoming wedding—I began to feel a weird sense of something, it is very hard to describe, but it felt a little bit like things were not entirely real, and when I went downstairs and stood next to William and the justice of the peace and we spoke our vows, I almost could not speak. And William looked at me with great love and kindness as though to help me through. But the feeling did not go away.
When we turned around at the end of the wedding, I saw his mother clapping her hands with great joy, and maybe—I am not sure—I missed my mother terribly right then, maybe I had been missing her all along, I do not know. But the feeling I have just described did not go away, and during the little reception afterward I did not feel quite like I was really there. Everything felt a little bit far away, is what I mean, like I was removed from it. And that night in the hotel I did not give myself as freely to my husband as I usually did, the feeling I had was still with me.
The truth is this: That feeling never went away.
Not entirely. I had it my whole marriage with him—it ebbed and flowed—but it was a terrible thing. And I could not describe it to him or even to myself, but it was a private quiet horror that sat beside me often, and at night in bed I could not be quite as I had once been with him, and I tried to not let him know this, but he knew of course, and when I think how I had felt such despair those nights he did not reach for me before we were married, I can understand how he must have felt during our marriage; he must have felt humiliated and bewildered. And there seemed nothing to be done about it. And nothing was done about it. Because I could not speak of it and William became less happy and he closed down in small ways, I could see that happen. And we lived our lives on top of this.
* * *
—
When we first had Chrissy I felt very scared, I had no idea how to take care of a baby and Catherine came and stayed with us for two weeks. “Go, go,” she said to us that first week. “You two go out now and have dinner together.” In my memory she seemed slightly aggressive as she took charge of the baby—and of us. So we went out to dinner, but I was still frightened, and then William, who had really said remarkably little since the baby had been born, said to me that night, “You know, Lucy, I think I would feel better if she had been a boy.”
It was as though something dropped deep inside of me, and I did not say anything about it.
But I have always remembered that. At the time I thought, Well, at least he is being honest.
But we had these surprises and disappointments with each other, is what I mean.
* * *
I could not stop thinking about Catherine. I am not sure why I knew she had had that child, but I felt certain that she had. I remembered how she’d held Chrissy when Chrissy was a baby; Catherine had taken charge, as I said, during that first visit. But as I thought about this, I sort of remembered other times—later on—when Catherine had a certain fear in her face as she held Chrissy. It is easy to recall this now, but in my memory it is true. And with Becka she was loving but also sometimes oddly distant. Imagine what she was thinking as she held our two little baby girls!