“Sure. Think,” he said and she knew he meant, I’ll give you five minutes to make up your mind.
“Jack, why do we have to do it right now? Why can’t we wait? We’ve only been married five months.”
“I can’t wait very long, Mother,” he said. “I’m forty-five. I don’t want to be an old man on crutches when my kid is growing up.”
“Maybe in the spring,” she said. The idea of becoming a mother terrified her. She had visions of herself hurting the baby, doing everything wrong; visions of her old passion coming on her and shaming them all; selfish thoughts of her beautiful, new, leisurely laziness being ruined.
“What would I ever tell any child of mine if it caught me—with a woman?” she said awkwardly.
“Tell it for Chrissake to knock before entering a room,” he said, and something in his voice and manner told her that he had set his heart on this long ago.
“Would you insist on having a baby, Jack?” she asked him defiantly.
He was looking at the ceiling and he expelled a cloud of blue smoke at it and answered softly, “I want you to be happy, Laura. This marriage is for both of us.”
There was a long silence. “I think I would hate myself if I ever got pregnant,” she said, ashamed of her vanity but clinging to it stubbornly. “God, how awful. All those aches and pains and months of looking like hell, and for what? What if the baby weren’t normal? What if I couldn’t be a good mother to it?”
He shrugged and then he said, “All right. We’ll adopt one. That way at least we can be sure of getting a girl.”
Laura wrung her hands together in a nervous frenzy. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt Jack. And yet she could feel the dogged one-mindedness in him, feel his enormous desire.
“A man needs a child,” he said softly. “So does a woman. That’s the whole reason for life. There is no other.” And he glanced up at her and all the Christmas lights reflected on the lenses of his glasses. “We can’t live our lives just for ourselves,” he said. “Or we live them for nothing. We die, monuments to selfishness…I want a child, Laura.”
“Is that why you married me?” she asked with sudden sharpness, feeling as if he had cornered her.
“I married you because I love you,” he said.
“Then why do you keep badgering me about a child?” she demanded.
“This is the first time I’ve mentioned it since we got married,” he reminded her gently.
“You act as if just because you want one it’s all settled,” she said, and surprised herself by bursting into tears. He took her in his arms, abandoning his cigarette, and said, “No, honey, nothing’s settled. But think about it, Laura. Think hard.”
They sat that way, hugging each other and watching the Christmas tree, letting the cigarette slowly burn itself out, and they didn’t mention it again. But from that moment on it was very big between them, unspoken but felt.
Jack did not mention a child to her again for a while. But as the weeks slipped by Laura began to feel a growing dissatisfaction. She didn’t know where it came from or what it meant. At home, in the apartment, it was shapeless. Outside it took the shape of girls. When she went out for groceries or to shop or to have dinner with
Jack, she found herself looking around hopefully, gazing a little too boldly, desiring. Jack saw it too before long, but he said nothing.
Laura felt selfish, and she didn’t like the feeling. She blamed it on Jack. It made her want to get away from him for a bit. And soon the wish crystallized in her mind to a desire for the Village, and began to haunt her.
She knew she ought to tell Jack she wanted to go. He would never stand in her way, as long as she was there at night to cook his meals and be a fond companion to him. As long as she let him in on it and kept it clean.
But she was embarrassed. She didn’t want to tell him and see his disappointment and know she was so much weaker than he. So she kept it secret and let it fester inside her until it had grown, by March, to a great, irritating problem.
Then, one fine, sunny morning in the first week of spring, the phone rang.
It’ll be Ginny Winston, she thought. One of their neighbors. She’ll want to go shopping again. I guess we might as well, it’ll keep me out of trouble. Ginny was thirty-five, a widow, a nice girl but hopelessly man-happy.
Laura grabbed the receiver after the fourth ring. “Hello?” she said.
“Laura? How are you?”
“Fine, thanks. Who’s this?”
“Terry.”
“Terry who?” She gasped suddenly. “Terry! Terry Fleming?”
“Yes.” He chuckled. “Guess how I found you?”
She hung up. She just slammed the phone down in place and stood there shaking. Then she sat down and cried; waiting for the thing to start ringing again. She had no doubt it would.
It did. She picked it up again, and before he could say anything she told him, “I don’t care how you found us. I don’t want you around here. Don’t you come near this place Terry, or I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do. You can’t, you mustn’t. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said, astonished. “What’s the matter?”
“Didn’t you get my letter?” she asked him.
“Sure. You’re married. Congratulations, I always thought It’d happen. You got a great guy there, Laura. I wish I had him.” And he laughed pleasantly.
“Terry, you’re incredible,” she said. “I don’t want you to come near Jack. That’s final.”
“Go on,” he laughed. “I thought I’d come over this afternoon.”
“You can’t!” She felt as she did in nightmares when she tried to talk and no one could hear her. She felt as if all her words fell on deaf ears.
“Sure I can. I thought we’d—”
”Look, Terry, I’m not going to tell him
