Only the Beautiful, page 11
Truman was sitting in one of the two chairs in front of the fireplace, a bottle of whisky in front of him, and a glass. A lit cigarette resting on an ashtray on the table next to him was sending curls of smoke into the air.
“What is that music?” I asked him.
He turned to face me. “Ah. That, my dear, is Duke Ellington. Do you like it?”
“I’ve never heard anything like it.” The colors were swirling in my head as if they were living things. How beautiful they were.
Truman sat forward on his chair. “You’re seeing good ones, I can tell. I mean those colors of yours. You’re seeing something wonderful, aren’t you?”
“I am,” I said tentatively.
“Tell me.” Longing graced his voice. I liked hearing it.
“Purple and yellow,” I said. “Like flowers.”
He sat back, lifted his glass to me in a salute. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”
I felt my eyes widen. I didn’t know what to say to this. I certainly didn’t feel lucky. I hadn’t for what seemed like a long time. And especially not today.
“Celine doesn’t like the Duke.” Truman raised the tumbler to his mouth, tipped it back, and swallowed. “She doesn’t like jazz. Can you believe it? She won’t let me play it in the house when she’s home.”
“Is that what this is? Jazz?”
He poured another swallow from the bottle into his glass. “It is indeed. The best there is.”
I started to reach for his dinner plate sitting next to the ashtray, but Truman waved me away from the dish as he rose from the chair. “Just leave it.” He walked over to the bar, grabbed a bottle and two wineglasses, and came back to the chair. “Join me in a drink? You need to try this. It’s our newest vintage. A sherry. The most exquisite we’ve ever made.”
He began to pour from the bottle. The liquid was a robust red, almost brown.
“Oh, I don’t think—”
But he thrust the little glass toward me. “I just found out you had a birthday.”
“Yes, I did, but—”
“And nothing was done for it, right? No cake? Nothing?”
“Mrs. Calvert gave me some chocolates. Nice ones.”
“I can’t believe it came and went and Celine just now told me. Come. Let’s toast your seventeenth year properly. You haven’t tasted sherry this fine in your life.”
I took the glass with hesitation. “I’ve never tasted sherry at all.”
“Then I insist. Did you know Columbus traveled to the New World with barrels of it? It’s Spanish. Sherry is Spanish. We don’t have the right grapes here in California, but the Rosseau muscats have helped us create something quite nice. Try it.”
I raised the glass to my lips and sipped. The wine was honey-sweet and warmed me like sunshine.
“Impressive, right? Especially for our first try.”
“It’s . . . delicious.” I took another sip, and another. The drink was easing my disappointment of being startled at seeing beautiful Alice Barrow in Celine’s kitchen and Wilson’s hand on the small of her back when she walked out of it.
Truman poured more for me and then set down his wineglass. He picked up the tumbler from before and splashed more whisky into it.
The phonograph began to play a new tune, this one as captivating as the one before it. I was feeling toasty all over, and the aches from the hours in the field were falling away as though my sore muscles were knotted threads being untied.
“Have a seat.” Truman motioned to the second chair. “We’ll pretend that today is your birthday, since we sadly didn’t do anything proper to celebrate it. We can play a game of cards and sip our drinks and listen to the Duke.”
I knew I should take his plate to the kitchen and get to bed, but my birthday had in fact gone by pretty much unnoticed. And today had ended up being a terrible day. I sat down in the other chair, telling myself it was just for one game of cards, one more glass of the delectable wine, and then bed.
Truman poured himself another tumbler and dealt the cards for gin, and soon it really did start to feel like it was not an ordinary day. We played three hands while he drank whisky and I consumed a third glass of sherry. And while we played, he told me stories of the Great War, how he’d loved being a soldier.
“I never regretted enlisting, even though it nearly killed me,” he said. “I’ve never been as close to death as I was in the trenches of Montreuil, but I swear, I’ve never felt as alive as I did then. I was part of something grand, something that mattered.”
I wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, but the room was starting to tilt a little, and I knew I needed to get to my room before I fell asleep right there in the chair.
“It’s late. I need to turn in.” I rose from where I sat, but my head was spinning. I took a step and immediately began to fall. Truman shot to his feet to catch me.
“Hold on, there,” he said, steadying me in his arms.
The phonograph started to play an enchanting melody, the kind that begged for dancers. Truman grinned and began to dance with me in his arms, but I wasn’t a good dancer, and the amount of sherry I’d consumed was making me even less of one. He started laughing when I stepped on his feet, and then I laughed, too, when he stepped on mine. We’d both drunk too much to manage even the simplest steps. The more we attempted to dance anyway, the more we stumbled. This was hilarious, too. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed like that. The sound of my own laughter spun white orbs around my thoughts. We circled to a stop when the song ended. When the next one began, Truman cupped my face with his hand.
“I wish I could go back to when I was seventeen,” he said. “You are so lucky, so lucky.”
His hand on my cheek felt so wonderful. Like the petal of a rose. “I don’t feel lucky,” I said.
“But you are. Think of it! You’re young and pretty and smart. And you have this amazing gift. You have everything.”
“I don’t think . . .”
He was staring at me in unmistakable awe and envy, one arm still around my waist. And then he bent forward and touched his lips to mine in a gentle and merely seconds-long kiss. It was my first. Truman’s lips were soft and warm, and his kiss instantly made my insides ache with an odd mix of desire and alarm. I tasted the whisky on his breath, tart and tantalizing. A ripple of unfamiliar longing sped through me as Truman pressed his lips to mine again, and this time he kept them there.
It was wrong, I knew this. A kiss from Truman was wrong, wrong, wrong. But it felt so perfect to be held like that and to be kissed like that and to be told I was smart and pretty and lucky. Everything I’d wanted Wilson to do, Truman was doing.
Before I knew it, I was kissing him back.
Truman’s arms circled my waist fully as he brought me closer and his kiss intensified. I knew I needed to break away. Truman was married to Celine. What we were doing was absolutely not a good idea, but I didn’t know how to stop him. I wanted to be kissed, and I didn’t know how to stop wanting it.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered into my hair, slurring the words a bit, but I didn’t care. He sounded like he meant it. I wanted to believe it.
My arms went around his neck as he kissed me again. The room was now swirling with color and sound and the novelty of being desired. It was like being on the roller coaster at Ocean Beach. The Big Dipper. I’d been on it just the one time, when I was twelve. It had been thrilling and terrifying at the same time.
Then Truman was lowering me slowly onto the thick rug in front of the fireplace, and a thousand sirens went off in my head.
“Wait,” I said, gulping for air and control. I seemed unable to grab hold of either one.
He was over me, kissing my neck as he slid his hands up under my blouse.
“I . . . I don’t . . . Wait, Truman,” I sputtered, and I felt like I was being devoured alive by both unrelenting desire and dread. “Stop.”
But he didn’t stop. The buttons of my blouse were suddenly undone, and his hands and lips were all over my body. He was covering me with kisses and his touch. I hadn’t known being touched by a man could feel like this. No one had told me; no one had yet touched me. Momma had only ever spoken in vague terms about the ways of men with women. I knew what sexual intercourse was, Momma had told me that much, but I hadn’t known the act began with this. This unstoppable, racing need to be wanted. Nor that it would make you feel as if you were flying.
But it was wrong. Truman had to stop.
Truman should not be doing what he was doing.
“Don’t, Truman,” I whispered, nearly choking out his name as he tugged at my underwear and then at his own trousers. But the room continued to spin with the effects of alcohol and his touch and the chilling horror that he was not listening.
Then Truman was above me and somehow inside me and I felt like I was being sawn in two as he moved. The room went golden with pain and heat and brilliance and desire that didn’t seem to belong to this world. The next moment Truman fell against me, and the scorching brightness faded, the fire in my body subsided. He rolled off and lay down next to me, breathing like I was, as if we had run a great distance. It seemed like we lay that way for a long time, but it was only seconds.
“I don’t know why we did that,” Truman said, breathless. He sounded perplexed.
We, I wanted to say. We? But my voice was frozen in my throat.
“Oh God. This . . . this can’t happen again. You know that, don’t you?”
I couldn’t think straight to answer him.
“Rosie?” Truman turned his head to look at me.
Still no words would come.
“We’re drunk. We made a mistake, okay? I let myself get carried away. We both did. This can’t happen again.” He swiveled his head to stare at the ceiling and run a hand through his hair.
I sat up and pulled my clothes about me, my thoughts a blur. I wanted my bed. I wanted sleep. I wanted to be anywhere but in this room with Truman Calvert lying there with his trousers undone.
As I rose unsteadily to my feet, Truman reached out to me. “You okay?”
I didn’t think I was, but I nodded.
“Did you hear what I said?”
Again, I nodded, and then turned to walk away.
“Hey. I’m sorry,” Truman called after me, but the phonograph was playing a happy tune, and I wasn’t sure what he was sorry for.
13
JUNE 1939
All is a blur of light and sound as Belle yells for Nurse Andrews to come. I bend forward as the sense of fullness I’ve been experiencing in the last few days turns to a peculiar churning.
Something is happening. Something not good for our plans.
“Belle!” The imagined escape begins to flit away in my mind like a panicked butterfly, and the room seems to tilt. We were so close. So close.
“Hush,” Belle whispers, mindful of our other roommates, all awake now. “You’ll be fine. We’ll go on Sunday just like we planned. You, me, and the baby. All three of us.”
“But it’s too early. It’s too early for the baby to come. Something has to be wrong!”
“Stop talking like that,” Belle murmurs urgently. “We’ll get out of here, just like I said we would. No more talking about it.”
Nurse Andrews sweeps into the room to see what all the fuss is about.
“All right, then.” She looks calmly at the puddle, as though I had merely spilled a glass of water. “Nothing to get all worked up about.”
“But I have three more weeks!” I say in a terrified voice.
“Babies come when they want to come,” Nurse Andrews replies. “You’re likely going to be fine and the baby probably will be, too. We just need to get you downstairs into the maternity ward. I’ll have Norman get a wheelchair. Just hold on to the footboard there. Don’t sit on anything and make a bigger mess.” She leaves to go find Norman.
Belle turns to me. “To hell with her. If you want to sit on your bed, sit.”
“I’m okay.” I grip the rail at the bottom of my bed. “I’m so sorry, Belle.”
But Belle gives me a quick shake of her head. The escape is not going to be discussed—all eyes in the room are on us.
Moments later Norman comes into the room with the wheelchair. As I’m wheeled away, I look back at Belle. I don’t know if it is the last time I will see my friend. What if they keep me in the maternity ward for more than three days? Will Belle leave without me? I want to tell her to go and I want to tell her to stay, but I can only stare at her as I am pushed out of the room.
I was told by the nursing staff that my labor pains would feel like monthly cramps, only much worse. The fiery twisting and turning inside me would be opening a door into my uterus through which the baby will pass, and I should not fight it. I am given an enema and shaved, and as the rest of the day wears on and the pains intensify, I try to remember the pain is a door. A door for my child to come through to me.
Dr. Melson comes late in the afternoon and pronounces that it is now time for the gas that will put me to sleep for the hardest part of the delivery.
“I don’t want gas!” I say through gritted teeth as a labor pain envelops me.
“Of course you do,” says one of the nurses.
“I don’t care if she doesn’t want it,” Dr. Melson says tonelessly. “It’s easier for me if she pushes the child out. And she’s narrow. The forceps might be a problem. Let her push if she wants to.”
For the next twenty minutes, all I am aware of are the door and the pain and the work. At the moment my baby slips from my body, I feel as if a long frigid winter has ended and at last spring is here. The infant girl the doctor holds up is tiny and beautiful. She is like a perfect bloom that has pushed its way up out of the dark ground, just like the amaryllis Helen gave me. Beauty out of nothingness, hope out of the darkness. The baby cries out, and the very room seems electrified with orbs of December red.
The name comes to me that same instant. The only name for my baby girl.
“Amaryllis,” I say as I gaze in awe at the flower that emerged from the dark confines of my body.
“What, dear?” says one of the nurses.
“Her name is Amaryllis.”
“Oh. Well, I suppose we can call her that for now if you want. That’s a pretty name, Rosie.”
“Let me hold her.”
The two nurses in the room look at each other and say nothing. Dr. Melson, who is kneading my abdomen in a not very gentle way to encourage the afterbirth to come out, does not look up when he says, “We don’t recommend that.”
“She’s my daughter!” I say, grimacing as he works on me.
The doctor looks up. “Holding the baby will only make it harder for you. I should know. I’ve seen it a dozen times.” He drops his gaze back to his task.
What has he seen a dozen times? His words make no sense. “Harder for what? What are you talking about?”
Dr. Melson looks up again. He is frowning. “Do I need to call in Dr. Townsend?”
I suddenly remember then that it is their plan to send my baby girl to a receiving home so that a suitable family will adopt her. My parental rights are already scheduled to be terminated.
Because I am not a suitable person to be a mother.
My instincts war inside me. I want with all my might to snatch that baby from the nurse who is now washing away my presence from the little bloom’s flesh. But I have to keep pretending that I am ready to do whatever it is they expect of me. Belle promised me that delivering the baby today will change nothing. She assured me we will still escape. I don’t know how we will do it now; I only know I refuse to believe that we won’t.
My baby is still crying out to be held by her mother. “I still want to hold her,” I say.
Dr. Melson thinks for a moment and then shrugs. He swivels around to address the nurse holding Amaryllis. “Only for a few minutes,” he says.
The nurse wraps my wailing baby in a blanket and places her in my arms. She quiets as soon as I begin to speak her name, over and over. “Amaryllis. Amaryllis, Amaryllis.”
The minutes I am allowed seem to condense to mere seconds as the two of us—mother and daughter—stare at each other, eye to eye. Every time I say her name, I am making a promise. I will come for you. I will come for you. I will come for you.
Dr. Melson signals for the nurse to take my child, and I feel my heart will burst. It’s only until Sunday, I tell myself as the baby is pulled out of my arms. Only until Sunday.
The nurse who handed Amaryllis to me rewraps her in the blanket and starts to walk away.
“Where are you taking her?” I call out as I try to maneuver myself to see where the nurse is going. A cramp grips me.
The doctor is seated back between my legs again, and he is tugging gently on the curly cord that tied Amaryllis to me. “You’d be wise to stop asking questions about the baby.”
“We have a nice little nursery,” the nurse interjects when Dr. Melson says nothing else.
“And when does she . . . ? When is she supposed to . . . ?” I can’t finish the sentence. I will burst into sobs if I actually ask when they are planning to send her from this place, away from me.
“The child—,” the doctor begins.
“Amaryllis,” I correct him.
“Amaryllis will stay in our care for two weeks so that we can make sure she is ready for travel and so that the institution taking her in can prepare for her arrival. She came early, you know.”
An immediate sense of relief floods me. They aren’t planning to send Amaryllis away until well after Sunday. The three of us will be gone by then.
“When can I go back to my room?” I ask. “I want to go back to my room.”
“You need to push right now,” Dr. Melson says, ignoring my question. “The afterbirth needs to be delivered.”
