“Claudia said you had a cramp a while ago.”
“I have a pain,” she said. “But it’s going to stop soon; it’s not abnormal.”
Tiger said, “What kind of a pain?”
“A-a pain. A sharp pain, that’s all. It’s because my pelvis is expanding and my joints are a little stiff.”
Elise said, “Rosie, I’ve had that-two times-and all it ever meant was a few days of like a Charley horse, an ache through the whole area.”
“Well, everyone is different,” Rosemary said, lifting salad between two wooden spoons and letting it drop back into the bowl again. “Every pregnancy is different.”
“Not that different,” Joan said. “You look like Miss Concentration Camp of 1966. Are you sure this doctor knows what he’s doing?”
Rosemary began to sob, quietly and defeatedly, holding the spoons in the salad. Tears ran from her cheeks.
“Oh, God,” Joan said, and looked for help to Tiger, who touched Rosemary’s shoulder and said, “Shh, ah, shh, don’t cry, Rosemary. Shh.”
“It’s good,” Elise said. “It’s the best thing. Let her. She’s been wound up all night like-like I-don’t-know- what.”
Rosemary wept, black streaks smearing down her cheeks. Elise put her into a chair; Tiger took the spoons from her hands and moved the salad bowl to the far side of the table.
The door started to open and Joan ran to it and stopped and blocked it. It was Guy. “Hey, let me in,” he said.
“Sorry,” Joan said. “Girls only.”
“Let me speak to Rosemary.”
“Can’t; she’s busy.”
“Look,” he said, “I’ve got to wash glasses.”
“Use the bathroom.” She shouldered the door click-closed and leaned against it.
“Damn it, open the door,” he said outside.
Rosemary went on crying, her head bowed, her shoulders heaving, her hands limp in her lap. Elise, crouching, wiped at her cheeks every few moments with the end of a towel; Tiger smoothed her hair and tried to still her shoulders.
The tears slowed.
“It hurts so much,” she said. She raised her face to them. “And I’m so afraid the baby is going to die.”
“Is he doing anything for you?” Elise asked. “Giving you any medicine, any treatment?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
Tiger said, “When did it start?”
She sobbed.
Elise asked, “When did the pain start, Rosie?”
“Before Thanksgiving,” she said. “November.”
Elise said, “In November?” and Joan at the door said, “What?” Tiger said, “You’ve been in pain since November and he isn’t doing anything for you?”
“He says it’ll stop.”
Joan said, “Has he brought in another doctor to look at you?”
Rosemary shook her head. “He’s a very good doctor,” she said with Elise wiping at her cheeks. “He’s well known. He was on Open End.”
Tiger said, “He sounds like a sadistic nut, Rosemary.”
Elise said, “Pain like that is a warning that something’s not right. I’m sorry to scare you, Rosie, but you go see Dr. Hill. See somebody besides that-“
“That nut,” Tiger said.
Elise said, “He can’t be right, letting you just go on suffering.”
“I won’t have an abortion,” Rosemary said.
Joan leaned forward from the door and whispered, “Nobody’s telling you to have an abortion! Just go see another doctor, that’s all.”
Rosemary took the towel from Elise and pressed it to each eye in turn. “He said this would happen,” she said, looking at mascara on the towel. “That my friends would think their pregnancies were normal and mine wasn’t.”
“What do you mean?” Tiger asked.
Rosemary looked at her. “He told me not to listen to what my friends might say,” she said.
Tiger said, “Well you do listen! What kind of sneaky advice is that for a doctor to give?”
Elise said, “All we’re telling you to do is check with another doctor. I don’t think any reputable doctor would object to that, if it would help his patient’s peace of mind.”
“You do it,” Joan said. “First thing Monday morning.”
“I will,” Rosemary said.
“You promise?” Elise asked.
Rosemary nodded. “I promise.” She smiled at Elise, and at Tiger and Joan. “I feel a lot better,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Well you look a lot worse,” Tiger said, opening her purse. “Fix your eyes. Fix everything.” She put large and small compacts on the table before Rosemary, and two long tubes and a short one.
“Look at my dress,” Rosemary said.
“A damp cloth,” Elise said, taking the towel and going to the sink with it.
“The garlic bread!” Rosemary cried.
“In or out?” Joan asked.
“In.” Rosemary pointed with a mascara brush at two foil-wrapped loaves on top of the refrigerator.
Tiger began tossing the salad and Elise wiped at the lap of Rosemary’s gown. “Next time you’re planning to cry,” she said, “don’t wear velvet.”
Guy came in and looked at them.
Tiger said, “We’re trading beauty secrets. You want some?”
“Are you all right?” he asked Rosemary.
“Yes, fine,” she said with a smile.
“A little spilled salad dressing,” Elise said.
Joan said, “Could the kitchen staff get a round of drinks, do you think?”
The chupe was a success and so was the salad. (Tiger said under her breath to Rosemary, “It’s the tears that give it the extra zing.”)
Renato approved of the wine, opened it with a flourish, and served it solemnly.
Claudia’s brother Scott, in the den with a plate on his knee, said, “His name is Altizer and he’s down in- Atlanta, I think; and what he says is that the death of God is a specific historic event that happened right now, in our time. That God literally died.” The Kapps and Rain Morgan and Bob Goodman sat listening and eating.
Jimmy, at one of the living-room windows, said, “Hey, it’s beginning to snow!”
Stan Keeler told a string of wicked Polish jokes and Rosemary laughed out loud at them. “Careful of the booze,” Guy murmured at her shoulder. She turned and showed him her glass, and said, still laughing, “It’s only ginger ale!”
Joan’s over-fifty date sat on the floor by her chair, talking up to her earnestly and fondling her feet and ankles. Elise talked to Pedro; he nodded, watching Mike and Allan across the room. Claudia began reading palms.
They were low on Scotch but everything else was holding up fine.
She served coffee, emptied ashtrays, and rinsed out glasses. Tiger and Carole Wendell helped her.
Later she sat in a bay with Hugh Dunstan, sipping coffee and watching fat wet snowflakes shear down, an endless army of them, with now and then an outrider striking one of the diamond panes and sliding and melting.
“Year after year I swear I’m going to leave the city,” Hugh Dunstan said; “get away from the crime and the noise and all the rest of it. And every year it snows or the New Yorker has a Bogart Festival and I’m still here.”
