7
“And what’s this one, Christian?” Lady Helen asked. She held up a piece of the large wooden puzzle that lay on the floor between them. Carved from mahogany, oak, fir, and birch, it was a softly hued map of the United States, a gift to the twins on their fourth birthday sent from America by their aunt Iris, Lady Helen’s oldest sister. The puzzle reflected Lady Iris’ taste more than it said anything about her devotion to her niece and nephew. “Quality and durability, Helen. That’s what one looks for,” she would say stolidly, as if in the expectation that Christian and Perdita would be playing with toys right into their dotage.
Bright colours would have attracted the children more strongly. They certainly would have gone further to hold their attention. But after a few false starts, Lady Helen had managed to turn putting the puzzle together into a game which Christian was playing like a zealot as his sister watched. Perdita sat snugly against Lady Helen’s side, her thin legs splayed out in front of her, her scuffed shoes pointed northeast and northwest.
“Cafilornia!” Christian announced triumphantly, after spending a moment studying the shape his aunt held for him. He beat his feet on the floor and crowed. He was always successful with the oddly shaped states. Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Utah. No problem there. But Wyoming, Colorado, and North Dakota were blatant invitations to a fit of temper.
“Wonderful. And its capital is…?”
“New York!”
Lady Helen laughed. “Sacramento, silly face.”
“Sackermenno!”
“Quite. Now put it in. Do you know where it goes?”
After a futile attempt to pound it into the spot left for Florida, Christian slid it across the board to the opposite coast. “’Nother, Auntie Leen,” he said. “I can do more.”
She selected the smallest piece and held it up. Wisely, Christian squinted down at the map. He plunged his finger into the empty spot to the east of Connecticut.
“Here,” he announced.
“Yes. But can you name it?”
“Here! Here!”
“Are you stalling, darling?”
“Auntie Leen! Here!”
Next to Lady Helen, Perdita stirred. “Rose-ila,” she whispered.
“Roads Island!” Christian shrieked. With a whoop of triumph, he lunged for the state which his aunt still held.
“And the capital?” Lady Helen kept the puzzle piece away from him. “Come along. You knew it yesterday.”
“Lantic Ocean!” he bellowed.
Lady Helen smiled. “Close enough, I suppose.”
Christian tugged the piece from her fingers and smashed it into the puzzle face downward. When it didn’t fit, he tried it upside down. He pushed his sister away when she leaned forward to help him, saying, “I c’n do it, Perdy,” and managing to get it right on a third clumsy, sticky-handed try.
“’Nother,” he demanded.
Before Lady Helen could accommodate him, the front door opened and Harry Rodger entered the house. He glanced into the sitting room, his eyes lingering on the baby who kicked and burbled on a heavy quilt next to Perdita on the floor.
“Hullo, everyone,” he said as he took off his overcoat. “Got a kiss for Dad?”
Squealing, Christian barrelled across the room. He flung himself against his father’s legs. Perdita didn’t move.
Rodger swung his son up, kissed him noisily on the cheek, and set him back on the floor. He pretended to paddle him, demanding, “Have you been bad, Chris? Have you been a bad boy?” Christian shrieked with glee. Lady Helen felt Perdita shrink closer beside her and glanced down to see that she was sucking her thumb, eyes fixed on her sister, fingers kneading her palm.
“We’re doing a puzzle,” Christian told his father. “Auntie Leen ’n me.”
“And what about Perdita? Is she helping you?”
“No. Perdita won’t play. But Auntie Leen and I play. Come see.” Christian dragged on his father’s hand, urging him into the sitting room.
Lady Helen tried to feel neither anger nor aversion as her brother-in-law joined them. He hadn’t come home last night. He hadn’t bothered to phone. And those two facts eradicated whatever sympathy she might have felt upon looking at him and seeing that, whether the illness was of the body or the spirit, he was obviously unwell. His eyes looked yellow. His face was unshaven. His lips were chapped. If he wasn’t sleeping at home, he certainly didn’t look as if he were sleeping anywhere else.
“Cafilornia.” Christian poked at the puzzle. “See, Daddy? Nevada. Puta.”
“Utah,” Harry Rodger said automatically, and to Lady Helen, “How’s everything here, then?”
Lady Helen was acutely aware of the presence of the children, especially of Perdita quivering against her. She was also aware of her own need to rail at her brother-in-law. But she said merely, “Fine, Harry. How lovely to see you.”
He responded with a vague smile. “Right. I’ll leave you to it, then.” Patting Christian on the head, he left the room, escaping in the direction of the kitchen.
Christian began to wail immediately. Lady Helen felt herself growing hot. She said, “It’s all right, Christian. Let me see about your lunch. Will you stay here with Perdita and little sister for a moment? Show Perdita how to put the puzzle together.”
“I want Daddy!” he screamed.
Lady Helen sighed. How well she had come to understand that fact. She turned the puzzle over and dumped it onto the floor, saying, “Look, Chris,” but he began flinging pieces into the fireplace. They splattered into the ashes under the grate and spewed clouds of debris out onto the carpet. His screams grew louder.
Rodger stuck his head back into the room. “For God’s sake, Helen. Can’t you shut him up?”
Lady Helen snapped. She sprang to her feet, stalked across the room, and shoved her brother-in-law back into the kitchen. She closed the door upon Christian’s wailing.
If Rodger was surprised by her sudden vehemence, he did not react to it. He merely went back to the work top where he had been in the process of going through the collection of two days’ post. He held a letter up to the light, squinted at it, discarded it, picked up another.
“What’s going on, Harry?” she demanded.
He looked her way briefly before returning to the post. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you. I’m talking about my sister. She’s upstairs, by the way. You might want to look in on her before you trot back to the college. I take it that you are trotting back, aren’t you? Somehow this visit doesn’t quite have the aura of permanence round it.”
“I’ve a lecture at two.”
“And after that?”
“I’m attending formal dinner tonight. And really, Helen, you are beginning to sound rather drearily like Pen.”
Lady Helen marched to him, ripped the stack of letters from his hand, and threw them on the work top. “How dare you,” she said. “You egocentric little worm. Do you think we’re all of us here for your convenience?”
“How astute you are, Helen.” Penelope spoke from the doorway. “I wouldn’t have thought it.” She halted her way into the room, one hand against the wall and the other folded into the throat of her dressing gown. Two streaks of damp from her swollen breasts discoloured the pink material, turning it fuchsia. Harry’s eyes fell on these before shifting away. “Don’t like the sight?” Penelope asked him. “Too real for you, Harry? Not quite what you wanted?”
Rodger went back to his letters. “Don’t start, Pen.”
She gave a wavering laugh. “I didn’t start this. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were the one. Wasn’t that you? All those days. All those nights. Talking and urging. They’re like a gift, Pen, our gift to the world. But if one of them should die…That was you, wasn’t it?”
“And you won’t let me forget it, will you? For the last six months you’ve been taking your revenge. Well, fine then. Do it. I can’t stop you. But I can decide not to stay for the abuse.”
Penelope laughed again, more weakly this time. She leaned for support against the refrigerator door. One hand climbed to her hair which lay, limp and oily, against her neck. “Harry, how amusing. If you want some abuse, climb into this body. Oh, but you did that, didn’t you? Any number of times.”
“We’re not going to—”
“Talk about it? Why? Because my sister’s here and you don’t want her to know? Because the children are playing in the other room? Because the neighbours might notice if I scream loud enough?”
Harry slapped down his letters. Envelopes slithered across the work top. “Don’t put this on me. You made up your mind.”
“Because you gave me no peace. I didn’t even feel like a woman any longer. You wouldn’t even touch me if I didn’t agree to—”
“No!” Harry shouted. “God damn it, Pen. You could have said no.”
“I was just a sow, wasn’t I? Fodder for the rut.”
“That’s not quite accurate. Sows wallow in the mud, not in self-pity.”
“Stop it!” Lady Helen said.
In the sitting room, Christian shrieked. The thin wail of the baby joined in his cries. Something hit the wall with a tremendous clatter, suggesting the body of the puzzle being hurled in a rage.
“Just look at what you’re doing to them,” Harry Rodger said. “Take a good long look.” He headed for the door.
“And what are you doing?” Penelope shrilled. “Model father, model husband, model lecturer, model saint. Running away as usual? Working up your revenge? She hasn’t let me have it for the last six months so I’ll make her pay now when she’s weak and ill and I can get her a good one? Just the moment when I can best let her know what a nothing she is?”
He whirled to face her. “I’ve had it with you. It’s time you decided what you want instead of constantly digging into me for what you have.” Before she could answer, he was gone. A moment later, the front door slammed. Christian howled. The baby cried. In response, fresh growing wet spots seeped through Penelope’s dressing gown. She began to weep.
“I don’t want this life!”
Lady Helen felt an answering rush of pity. Tears stung her eyes. Never had she felt so at a loss for something to say that might comfort.
For the first time she understood her sister’s long silences, her vigils at the window, and her wordless weeping. But what she could not understand was the initial act that had brought Penelope to this point. It constituted a kind of surrender so foreign to her that she found herself recoiling from its significance.
She went to her sister, took her into her arms.
Penelope stiffened. “No! Don’t touch me. I’m leaking all over. It’s the baby…”
Lady Helen continued to hold her. She tried to frame a question and wondered where to start and what she could ask that would not betray her growing anger. The fact that her rage was multi-directional served to make the act of concealing it only that much more difficult.
She felt it first for Harry and for the needs of ego that would prompt a man to urge for the breeding of another child, as if what was being created were a demonstration of the father’s virility, and not an individual with decided needs of its own. She felt it also for her sister and for the fact that she had given in to that sense of duty inbred in women from the beginning of time, a duty which told them that the possession of a functioning womb necessarily served as a definition of self.
The initial decision to have children—one which no doubt had been made with joy and commitment by both Penelope and her husband—had proved her sister’s undoing. For in leaving behind her career to care for the twins, she had, over time, allowed herself to become a dependent, a woman who believed she had to hold onto her man. So when he had made the request for another child, she had acquiesced. She had done her duty. After all, what better way to keep him than to give him what he wanted?
That none of this had been necessary, that all of it rose from her sister’s inability or unwillingness to challenge the constrictive definition of womanhood to which she had decided to adhere, served to make her current situation even more untenable. For Penelope was wise enough at the heart of the matter to know that she was assenting to living a life in which she did not believe, and that was, undoubtedly, a large part of the wretchedness she was now experiencing. Her husband’s parting words had instructed her to make a decision. But until she learned to redefine herself, circumstances and not Penelope would do the deciding.
Her sister sobbed against her shoulder. Lady Helen held her and tried to murmur comfort.
“I can’t stand it,” Penelope wept. “I’m suffocating. I’m nothing. I don’t have an identity. I’m just a machine.”
You’re a mother, Lady Helen thought, while in the next room, Christian continued to scream.