Second Glance Read online

  “Ma poule.” The voice is higher than Hedda’s, with a ribbon of lisp. My heart begins to pound on the roof of my mouth, and the baby kicks to be free.

  “Simone?” Ruby’s word is just barely that, the quiet puff of shock. I recognize, now, where I have heard that cadence before—it is Ruby’s own French Canadian, which creeps out when she is not careful or is tired or both.

  “Cherie, you tell your friend, there’s nothing to be scared of, no. We are all here waiting on her.”

  “That’s my sister,” Ruby says wildly. “Simone. She’s the only one who ever called me that—ma poule. My little hen.”

  The one who died from diphtheria. But her message, it’s lost in the translation. Waiting could signify so many things. Are they attending to my mother? Or are they expecting me?

  Suddenly the baby goes limp inside me. My arms fall to my sides; my worries dissolve on my tongue. This must be how people feel the moment before their automobile crashes into a tree. This is the white light we hear talk of; this is the quiet coming.

  This is something my own mother felt.

  There are so many questions I have—Will I ever see my son, or is that asking too much? Will he remember me? Will it hurt? Will I know when it’s going to happen? But right now, it is enough to have confirmation, to know that my instincts have been right.

  Madame Hedda is coming out of her trance. A line of drool curls down the left side of her mouth like a comma. I place a ten-dollar bill on the table, one I will tell Spencer that I lost. “Come back,” she says, and I realize that she means from the other side.

  A comprehensive eugenics survey needs to locate, first, the inadequate in the state; second, to find out, if possible, why they exist.

  —Excerpt from a letter dated October 8, 1925, from H. H. Laughlin, Director of the Eugenics Record Office, to Harriet Abbott

  Dr. Craigh’s office is on Park Avenue, and as I finish buttoning my blouse I stare out the window at this street trying to be something it is not. Those trees, they are not fooling anyone; it is still the heart of a city, a place where pavement has triumphed over grass. The obstetrician himself dries his hands on a towel, just as unwilling to make eye contact with me after the exam as I am with him. “Mrs. Pike,” he says gruffly, “why don’t you join us in the office when you’re finished?”

  When I returned to the museum, where Spencer was still riding high on the praise of his colleagues, I did not tell him where Ruby and I had been. I didn’t even put up a fuss when he told me he’d made an appointment with this physician, the best in the Northeast for high-risk pregnancies. It is as simple as this: the decision has been taken out of my hands. I know what is going to happen, so there’s no reason to fight it.

  My father once invited the state medical examiner to dinner when I was a child. I remember him cutting blithely into the breast of a chicken to illustrate the nature of drowning. The horror, he said, pointing between the ribs with a knife, comes the moment you feel that your lungs will burst. But then you gasp and go under and inhale water. After that, all you feel is peace.

  I have gone under for the third time. I will lie on my back on the sandy bottom, and watch the sunset through a mile of sea.

  “Mrs. Pike,” the nurse says, poking her head through the doorway. “They’re waiting.”

  “Of course.” When I turn, I am wearing the smile I’ve pulled from my sleeve.

  She leads me down the hall. “You have that glow.”

  Maybe the radiance in pregnancy does not come from the joy of motherhood. Maybe we all think we are going to die.

  Dr. Craigh’s office is dark, paneled, male; a timeless cabin you might find on a clipper ship, clouded with the smoke of cigars. “Gomez pitched a shut-out last night,” Craigh is saying. “Between Lefty and Ruth and Gehrig, it’s a lock this year.”

  Spencer, who does not like baseball, surprises me. “The Athletics are looking pretty good again, if you ask me.”

  “Gehrig finished last season with 184 RBIs. You can’t seriously believe—oh, Mrs. Pike. Sit down right over there.” He gestures to the chair beside my husband.

  Spencer takes my hand and we both turn expectantly, like children called before the principal. “Good news,” Craigh announces. “Your pregnancy is as healthy as any I’ve ever seen.”

  Beside me, Spencer relaxes. “You see, Cissy?”

  “I completely understand your concerns, given your mother’s experience in childbirth. But based on her medical records, which your husband took the liberty of mailing to me, the complications of her pregnancy were related to her slight frame and the size of the baby. You may be carrying small, Mrs. Pike—but your hips are rather built for childbearing. Luckily, you must take after your father.”

  I think of my father’s tall, lean, narrow body; nothing like my own. But I smile back at him.

  “Not only are you going to deliver this baby safely and without incident,” Dr. Craigh continues, “but I will expect you to bring him back here to meet me.”

  I wonder how much Spencer has paid him, in advance, to lie to me.

  We stand and begin the round-robin of shaking hands. Spencer helps me down the three flights of stairs. “Craigh’s considered an expert,” he says. “Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows his name. You say the word baby, and someone mentions Craigh. So, really, I’d be quite comforted by his diagnosis.”

  He stamps a quick kiss on me. His arm slides around the thick of my waist; his other hand opens the door so that we can be swallowed by the city again. The sun is too bright; I can’t see a thing. I have to bring my hand up to shield my eyes; I have to let Spencer take me where I’m going.

  We know what feeblemindedness is, and we have come to suspect all persons who are incapable of adapting themselves to their environment and living up to the conventions of society or acting sensibly of being feebleminded.

  —Henry Goddard, Feeblemindedness: Its Causes and Consequences, 1914

  In the end, I want to do it somewhere familiar. I think about it during the long train ride home. I am nearly giddy with what is to come. “I knew it,” Spencer says to my father in our private train car. “I knew this trip would be good for her.”

  By the time we arrive at home, it is nearly midnight. Peepers sing to us as we get out of the Packard, and the yellow eyes of a runaway cat watch me from the porch of the icehouse. When Spencer opens the door to our home, it sounds like a seal being broken.

  “Ruby, you can unpack in the morning,” Spencer orders, as we climb the stairs to the second floor. “Sweetheart, you too. You ought to be in bed.”

  “I need a bath,” I tell him. “A few minutes to relax alone.”

  At that, Ruby turns slowly. Her mouth is round with a question I do not let her ask. “You heard the professor,” I say, clipped. After weeks of camaraderie, these cold, sharp words are a weapon to drive her away. She hurries up the steps to the servants’ quarters, ducking her head and trying to understand what has gone wrong between us.

  In our room I gather a crisply folded nightgown and wrapper from my armoire. I wait outside the bathroom door until Spencer emerges. “I drew the bath,” he says, and smiles ruefully at my belly. “Are you sure if you get in, you’ll be able to get out?”

  I am committing to memory the keel of his smile, the landscape of his shoulders. All of the reasons I fell in love with Spencer swell at the base of my throat, so that I cannot say anything at all for a moment. “Don’t worry about me,” I answer finally, and I mean this for forever.

  A house settles like a fat man falling asleep: first there are light twitches in the walls and floorboard, the ceiling sighs, finally there is a great rolling heave of the atmosphere, and then everything goes still. The bathroom is heavy with steam; I peel off my clothing and let the mist settle over me. My heart beats so fast I am sure that I can see it beneath the skin—but when I look, the mirror has fogged. Instead of swiping it clear, I press my hands to the glass, leaving a mark. With one finger, I scrawl a single word: H . .