The Bird House A Novel

July 1, 1967

shallow bath



THE BABY HAS BEEN SITTING up for weeks, but he didn’t smile properly until today when I got back from the doctor, after Betsy put him down for his nap. He was in his crib, kicking that excited, jerky baby kick that looks like it hurts to do, and when I leaned over to pick him up, he smiled from ear to ear.

“What are you smiling for?” I asked with a sigh. “Huh? What are you so happy about? This is not a happy day, silly.”

My breast had been hurting more than usual, so Dr. Ferrell’s office fit me in right away. The nurse said it was probably a clogged milk duct, and I nodded my agreement as she handed me a gown. Of course that was what it was, what else could it be?

Dr. Ferrell’s hands seemed colder than usual as he fingered each breast, his eyes focused on a painting of a seascape over my head. I told him it was on the left side and when his fingers pressed there, I winced.

“Hmmm,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, Ann, there’s an irregularity here. Could be nothing, but we’ll have to be sure.”

“And if it’s not nothing?”

“It could be a benign growth. Or… it could be a cancerous growth.”

“My mother had breast cancer,” I said quietly.

“Yes, sometimes there’s a correlation, but not always. Let’s not be hasty.”

I nodded, and he told me he needed to do a biopsy, but as he called in the nurse and laid out the tools on the tray, he neglected to tell me that it would hurt like hell. That it would feel like I was being excavated, drilled for oil. Drilled for cancer.

When I’d called Theo to tell him, the first question he’d asked was, “Which one.” Which one! As if he had a favorite breast; as if he was rooting for one over the other, army vs. navy. Imagine uttering that after hearing the word “biopsy.” I suppose he was so distracted with his damned new shopping mall he didn’t remember all the times I’d complained about the right one being sore. He forgot, the same way I forget which client he’s meeting with, who is building the shopping court as opposed to the corporate plaza.

When he is in the office, he doesn’t think about the mess at home, just as I don’t think about the war and all the bodies in Vietnam unless I turn on the television.

Really, Theo, I’d replied, what does it matter which one? And he said he wondered if it was the same one that had been sore, or the other one. Well. At least there was a reasonable explanation. At least he’d remembered something. But as always, I wanted more. I wanted him to feel bad that he hadn’t come to the appointment with me. I wanted him to read my mind. I wanted him to come home. I told him the test would be back in a week, and he asked what the prognosis was, and I told him it was either cancer or it wasn’t. In a week, I said, I’ll either have one breast or two. And he swallowed hard—I could hear it through the phone—and said we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. Yes, I said. I don’t want you to worry until you need to worry, he said.

The baby cooed, as if sensing my mind had wandered away, and I smiled back, out of some kind of automatic, electric obligation, and we stood there together, all gums and teeth, pink and white and gleaming. And for a moment, the same moment, all the world would have believed we were both happy. Is that all good mothering is? Synchronicity?

I carried him over to the window to look out at the sun peeking over Luddington Park. Just a few months before, we’d petitioned to save it, Betsy and I and the other mothers in the neighborhood. We fought the rezoning for office space, and we won when it turned out the mayor’s wife had always loved it, had played leapfrog there as a child. There was talk of naming it after her: Elinor Park. Betsy and I laughed at this idea, threatened to carve our own names in the sign. General Luddington was a decorated war hero; Elinor Parker was a college dropout who married a civil servant.

I pointed out the window and the baby’s face turned serious again, studious, as if he felt our struggle over the land. His face looked as if I were his teacher, not his mother, and the moment was gone. Sun turned to cloud. He grabbed a lock of my hair and I held his bouncing fist, trying to keep it away from the bandage and the stitches underneath.

I suppose the baby’s lack of smiling is my fault for not cajoling him more, not tickling him enough or sweet-talking him like a pet. I always think I don’t have the time, but the truth is, I haven’t the energy. Haven’t felt up to cooing over anyone or anything, not since he was born. I was like this with Emma, too, I remember. Just do what needs to be done. Just get through the day and try to get some sleep. I’ve never had those warm feelings running through me like syrup, the way other women do; I have to conjure them up.

And Theo—he’s like a third child waiting patiently until I’m done with the others, waiting to ask me for what he needs. Could I look at his new drawings? Could he invite the Lehmans over for fondue? Could I recommend a hairdresser for his new client’s wife, the one with the Jackie Kennedy bob who just moved here from Memphis? And the way he looked at his dinner plate last night—staring at the cheese-and-asparagus omelet as if it had landed from a flying saucer.

“It’s your favorite omelet.” I said it so brightly the syllables bounced like springs.

“Yes, it is, how novel.”

“It’s hardly novel, Theo, when you’ve eaten it for years.”

“How novel to have it for dinner, I mean.”

He smiled at me, but I didn’t smile back. The baby will learn eventually: it doesn’t always work.

I ate my eggs in large bites, the same way Theo had eaten skirt steak the night before, and lamb chops the night before that. I wanted to scream that even Julia Child said it wasn’t easy to make a perfect omelet, that he was lucky he had warm food—Betsy had made liverwurst and pickle sandwiches for her family last week! He ate a few bites, politely, then pushed away from the table. When he stood up, the scoot of his antique chair sounded like kindling snapping.

I sat there trying to remember the last time someone had rejected something I had made with my own two hands, and the only person I could name was Emma, and she was a child. Even the misshapen cupcakes and slightly burned cookies I’d made in high school for the Langley bake sale had been greedily gobbled up by Peter and his friends.

Theo had always been particular; it was a trait architects were prone to, if you listened to the other wives at his firm. When we first started dating, I found it charming: he’d always arrive in a freshly washed car, and when we walked into a restaurant, he’d never settle for an ill-placed table. One time he came to my mother’s carriage house with steel wool and a tin of green stain, and repainted her peeling wooden mailbox for her. I thought this was a sign that he’d be good around the house, that he’d do what needed to be done.

The true surprise of the last few years is how different he is as a parent than a husband. He may do what’s asked, but doesn’t think of anything on his own, like an unmotivated employee. Surely he could not have always been that way. Betsy once said his eyes were so beautiful, his gaze was like a gift. Did Theo know this, too? That if push came to shove, he could just look at someone instead of doing or saying the right thing? Was that how he enchanted his clients, by warming them with the fire of his eyes?

It seemed the closer Theo moved toward opening that shopping mall, the later he worked, the more he focused on his own needs, the light in his eyes seemed further and further away. I wonder if, instead of being a couple who grows closer, knowing each other more intimately, we are going in reverse, on our way back to being strangers again.