Only the Beautiful, page 12
I obey and I feel something soft and wet fall away from inside me. Dr. Melson slides the afterbirth into a basin and gives it a cursory glance. Then he turns back to me. “You’re going to need a few stitches. Hold still.”
He pricks my tender flesh with a needle and I wince at the sting. And then he is sewing me back together. I wait until he is finished and he stands to pull off the surgical gown he’s been wearing over his clothes.
“Can I go back to my room now?” I ask.
“You’ll stay here overnight. Maybe longer.”
“But if I am fine by tomorrow, may I go back to my room?”
The other nurse in the room laughs. “You should take advantage of having a little peace and quiet in the maternity ward. You’re the only one here right now. It will be like having your own room. The kitchen brings you your meals. And you really should rest.”
“I just want to go back to my room.”
Dr. Melson frowns at me. “That’s my decision to make, not yours. But if you’re recovering nicely by tomorrow, I might allow it.” He turns to the nurse. “Take her to the ward.”
It is past suppertime when I am escorted on shaking legs to a ward down the hall, a room with four beds in it, all empty. The nurse gives me a package of sanitary pads and tells me I’ll bleed for several days and not to worry—heavy bleeding is normal.
“And don’t express any milk from your breasts,” she says. “You’ll be tempted to, but don’t. You’ll just make it worse. When the milk starts to come in, I’ll give you some warm compresses for the pain.”
The nurse leaves me, and I study my breasts under my hospital gown after she is gone, anxious for my milk to appear. Amaryllis will need it.
Dinner is brought to me on a cart, and I devour the meat loaf and whipped potatoes on my plate.
I am beyond exhausted, but sleep eludes me. The nursery is somewhere close, I am sure of it. Amaryllis isn’t far. I finally fall asleep gazing at yellow feathery wisps that float on my mind at the sound of an infant’s tender cry. Somewhere here on the second floor, Amaryllis is crying for me. My breasts ache to nourish her.
In the morning, I awake from fitful sleep that has been interrupted by after-birth pains, soreness in my breasts, the lingering echoes of Amaryllis’s cries, and dreams of escaping. One of the delivery room nurses from the day before brings me breakfast and asks how I slept.
“Fine,” I say. “Can I go back to my room now?”
The nurse gives me a mildly quizzical look. “Dr. Melson won’t be by until the afternoon.”
“But I’m fine! I just want to go back to my room.”
The nurse gazes at me for a moment and then says she’ll check. But an hour later, it isn’t Dr. Melson who comes to my room, but Dr. Townsend. He does not congratulate me on having given birth to a beautiful baby. “I hear you’d like to go back up to the third floor,” he says.
I tamp down alarm that I’ve tipped him off that I’m up to something. “It’s hard for me to be on this floor. I can hear the baby crying and I’d rather not.”
He studies me carefully before answering. “I suppose I can understand that. I hear you forgot yesterday what the plans are for the baby.” His gaze is penetrating.
“I didn’t forget,” I said, holding that gaze. “Dr. Melson wasn’t being clear.”
Several seconds tick by before he continues.
“If you are allowed back to your own room, you’ll still be on a minimal schedule,” Dr. Townsend says. “You will not be returning to your job at the kitchen for a week or two, and you should stay off the stairs between floors.”
“I understand.”
“All right,” he says. “I’ll have Dr. Melson come in to make sure the postpartum bleeding is under control, and if he sees no problems, you can go back to your room this afternoon.”
“Thank you, Dr. Townsend,” I say.
“You’re welcome.” He turns to leave the room.
He has only been gone a few seconds when I rise to go to the lavatory in the hall to change my pad and use the toilet. I stop just short of the entrance to the hallway when I hear the nurse and Dr. Townsend talking, obviously about me.
“I’m sure you know best, Doctor, but I don’t see the point in her returning to her own room when she’s only going to have to come back here in two days,” the nurse is saying.
“The procedure will go better if she’s had a few days to recover from the birth in a room where she feels comfortable. It’s not as if it’s difficult to bring her back down.” The doctor starts to walk away.
I clamp a hand over my mouth and back away from the doorway, my stitches pulling and stinging. I turn to the wall so that Dr. Townsend won’t see me if he comes in my direction, but the doctor’s footsteps lead him to the door out of the hospital ward. It is only after the outer door clicks shut and he is gone that I let out the stifled gasp.
There is only one reason to bring me back to the hospital ward. They are going to cut into me, change what is inside so that I can never have any more children.
Dr. Townsend hasn’t been able to fix me. He hasn’t been able to rinse the colors from my head. He knows the colors also appeared to a great-aunt on my mother’s side of the family. Or maybe he already knew this flaw of mine can be passed on to babies just like it was passed on to me.
Tomorrow’s escape has to happen. Has to.
14
Before . . .
NOVEMBER 1938 TO FEBRUARY 1939
When I awakened in my bed, head pounding, I believed for a handful of hazy seconds that what happened the previous night with Truman had all been a ridiculous dream—the wine, the dancing, the confiding, the kissing, the touching, the unspeakable act on the rug—all of it a dream. It had seemed like one in those first moments of sleepy consciousness. I would never have sex with a married man, my employer’s husband no less, and someone old enough to be my father—drunk or not. I would never do that. The memory of having done so was a creation of my imagination.
But as I became more alert and the throbbing in my head did not clear, I knew I had imagined none of it.
Waves of regret and shame rushed through me. God Almighty, how could I have done such a thing?
Yet it hadn’t entirely been my fault. Truman had given me too much to drink. He’d kissed me and I’d wanted him to stop.
But then I kissed him back.
I had liked his kisses. I’d wanted them. And then I hadn’t found a way to stop him from doing the rest. I should have tried harder to push him away. I should have insisted. I shouldn’t have let him tug at my underwear or push my legs apart or . . .
I felt the contents of my stomach roil and I dashed out of my bed to heave over and over into the toilet. I sat back on my knees when my stomach was empty, trembling with the realization that even with the retching, I would not be able to rid myself of what I had done and what I had failed to do. Minutes passed before I rose to my feet. I dressed in my uniform and made my way gingerly into the kitchen. Everything ached—my head, my stomach, the private place inside that had been invaded, my inner being.
I laid out Truman’s breakfast before I heard him moving about the house and retreated into the kitchen when I heard him coming down the hall. I listened as he sat down at the table, opened the newspaper that I’d placed at his chair, lowered his coffee cup onto its saucer. I heard the faint scraping of fork tines against his plate.
It was usual for me to refill the Calverts’ coffee cups as they ate breakfast without them having to ask, and though I wished I could just stay in the kitchen until he was finished eating, Truman called for me. He wanted more coffee, please.
Seconds passed before I reached for the coffeepot and pushed open the kitchen door, which was usually latched open unless there were guests. I had unhooked it that morning so that it would swing shut.
Truman was wearing a starched white shirt and twill pants, and his hair was plastered neatly into place with pomade. Even so, he looked disheveled. Tired. Out of sorts. I walked over to where he sat and began to pour. My hand shook, and coffee spilled off the rim of his cup and onto the saucer.
“Rosie.”
I stopped pouring and slowly raised my head to look at him.
“Why is the kitchen door closed?” His voice was both gentle and earnest.
“I . . . I was . . . ,” I stammered. “I don’t know.”
“We need to go back to the way our lives were before. Exactly the way they were before. It’s important.” His tone was quietly insistent, his gaze intense. “What happened last night needs to be forgotten. Like it didn’t happen. We had too much to drink. Things got out of hand. I shouldn’t have kissed you. We shouldn’t have . . .” His voice dropped away.
I nodded, unable to speak a word.
“The kitchen door should be open this morning, right?”
He waited until I answered.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He reached out to touch my arm, but it was not like last night. It did not make my insides ache to be held. It was the touch of someone in quiet distress. “Can you do what we both must do? I need to know.”
In his voice I heard the unhappy man who told me he wished he could go back to when he had been my age. When he’d had options.
“Yes,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure I could.
He removed his hand and exhaled. “How about you try again with the coffee?”
This time when I poured, my hand stayed steady. He thanked me. I went back to the kitchen and relatched the door open on its hook.
This, then, was how we were to go back to the way things had been before. We were to pretend, as if it had only been a dream, just like my waking thoughts had suggested. I could pretend having sex with Truman Calvert had been merely a dream, but I knew I’d never be able to pretend I didn’t remember it. That was impossible. No one could do that.
By the time Celine arrived home a bit before noon, I was scrubbing toilets and Truman was in the tasting room with a restaurateur from Sebastopol.
Over the next few days, I saw little of Truman. He either skipped breakfast or took it down in the tasting room. He made himself lunch when I was busy doing other chores, and he came to the dinner table after I had laid out Alphonse’s dishes. I was glad one minute and irritated the next that he kept his distance. I found myself reluctantly reliving the feeling of having been in his arms, of being kissed, of being touched. Nothing had taken the sharp, deep edge off my losses like being with Truman—in that way—had. Nothing had come close. Not walking among the vines, not the colors. I was not in love with him, and I knew he was not in love with me, but what I’d felt when I’d been with him was the closest thing to love I had felt in months.
But even so, Truman should have stopped when I asked him to. I should’ve stopped him. I should’ve been stronger, should’ve drunk less wine.
If only he had stopped. If only I had made him stop.
* * *
• • •
The next weekend arrived, and I was expected in the tasting room to assist Truman with a group of East Coast tourists. I reported for duty half an hour before the group was to arrive to polish the stemware and prepare little plates of aged cheddar and dark chocolate. It was only the second time Truman and I had been alone since the night in his study. As we readied the room, Truman uncorked a zinfandel to let it breathe.
“Everything all right?” he said, but he did not look at me.
“Everything is fine,” I said, not looking at him, either.
We said nothing else to each other. The awkward silence between us lifted as soon as the guests arrived. The group was relaxed, cheerful, and easy to please. They enjoyed the wines and one another’s company, even when their conversation drifted to the news of the day—the chaos in Europe. I had seen the latest headlines in the Calverts’ morning newspaper. Over a period of two days, raiding parties of National Socialists, angered by the murder of a German diplomat in Paris by a Jew, had vandalized thousands of Jewish homes, schools, and businesses—in Munich, Berlin, Leipzig, everywhere. The Nazis—as they were being called—had littered thousands of streets with broken glass from smashed windows and had burned hundreds of synagogues. Dozens of people were dead and thousands of Jewish men had been arrested.
When one of the guests mentioned trouble in Vienna as well, Truman looked up from the bottle he was uncorking. “What’s this about Vienna?”
The man, who’d been speaking to his friends, turned, surprised that Truman had put himself into their conversation. The group of guests had moved from the oak bar where Truman had introduced the wines to a little table of their own.
“Sorry. I don’t mean to intrude, but my sister lives in Vienna,” Truman said.
“Ah, well. Not the safest place at the moment. The violence and vandalism happened there, too. And it seems the archbishop of Vienna is now under house arrest. His residence was also smashed up during all that hullabaloo.”
“But,” Truman said, “the archbishop is Catholic.”
“He apparently spoke out against how the Jews are being treated,” the man said. “He continues to speak out. He’s in hot water now, you could say.”
“It’s just terrible what is happening over there to the Jewish people,” said the woman next to him.
“If I were Jewish, I wouldn’t stay another minute in Germany. Or Austria,” said another man in the party.
“Nor would I,” said the woman. “But where would you go? Who would take you? You couldn’t come to America, you know. Not unless you had family here already, and even then you could only come under the quota.”
“All those poor mothers and their children,” said another woman, shaking her head. “How will they keep their little ones safe from such brutality? And look what happens to you if you speak out against it.”
The people around the table nodded and sipped. No one had any answers. I glanced at Truman; his brow was furrowed in thought. He turned and handed me the next vintage for the tasters to try. I could not read his face.
I walked over to the little table and began to pour.
* * *
• • •
Wilson didn’t come home at Thanksgiving—he’d met a new girl and was visiting with her family over the four-day break—so the Calverts accepted an invitation from friends to have the Thanksgiving meal with them. Celine told me I could join them if I wanted to, but I had no desire to tag along and Celine seemed relieved that I didn’t.
As the month eased into December and the many boxes of Christmas decorations came out, Celine asked me to help make every room look festive, but I hung the garlands and trim with a growing sense of emptiness. Pretending around Celine was exhausting, and the approach of Christmas made me miss my family with an intensity that surprised me. It was as if they had all died just yesterday. Worse, I felt as though I deserved to have lost them all. My mother and father would be horrified by what I’d done.
And yet I also battled thoughts that my parents had abandoned me to this fate, and now I was stuck in a house that felt like a prison, reminded every day when I made Truman’s breakfast or washed his clothes or cleaned his bathroom sink or made his bed that he’d not stopped when I asked him to.
The hope I had begun to nurture on my birthday in October was starting to fade, and I wasn’t the only one in a restless state. The merry decorations couldn’t relieve the uneasiness that seemed to seep from the very walls of the Calverts’ house. I saw it in the way Celine would watch Truman when he didn’t seem to know he was being watched. She surely suspected he was troubled about something, but I could also tell, to my relief, that she had no idea what it was. Truman’s unexplained moodiness irritated Celine; that was also obvious.
A week before Christmas, a deliveryman came to the door with a flowering plant, beautiful and exotic, with trumpetlike blooms of crimson flounced by a loose wrapping of translucent gold paper. I could see that the sender’s address on the accompanying note was in Vienna. This was surely a Christmas gift to the family from Helen Calvert, a world away in Austria.
I brought it in to the Calverts as they finished a late breakfast.
“What in the world is that?” Celine said.
“I think it might be from Mr. Calvert’s sister.” I extended the plant to her.
“Is that so?” Truman said, looking up from his newspaper.
“Is it for the house, then?” Celine looked at the plant suspiciously, as if it might contain a family of aphids under its green, waxy leaves.
“I’m sure it’s meant to be enjoyed inside the house, Celine. It’s very pretty. And it was very thoughtful of her to have it sent.”
“Yes, I suppose. I’m just not a fan of plants in the house, Truman. You know it, and I thought she knew it.”
Truman folded the newspaper and set it down by his empty plate. “I imagine the last time Helen was here, you and she did not talk at length about having plants in the house.”
Celine retrieved the note attached to the plant, opened it, and then clucked her tongue. “This plant isn’t for us at all,” she said to Truman. Then she turned to face me. “Helen sent this for you, Rosie.”
“What?” I said, though I’d heard her perfectly.
“She did?” Truman said.
Celine handed the little teletyped note to me. I felt her and Truman’s gazes on me as I read it.
Dearest Rosie: It’s been a few years since I’ve written you, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten you. I am especially mindful now of the loss of your sweet family and that this will be your first holiday season without them. I hope this bit of Christmas cheer will bring you comfort. See my letter to Truman and the family for how to care for the amaryllis.
With love, Helen Calvert
I read the note twice, stunned at her kindness. I didn’t know how to pronounce the name of the plant, and yet I loved how the letters looked on paper.
