Laughter overtook them both, drawing looks of disapproval from the checkout girl. Julia covered her mouth, then turned away. A sob rose in her chest and she swallowed it down. Enough. For healing and for sanity, all that would have to end. She wiped her eyes, took a breath, and turned back, resolute. Gwen’s giggles petered out, uncertain.
Julia took Gwen’s hand between her own. She raised it to her lips and kissed her daughter’s dry knuckles, above the mulberry-colored hearts and black stars that Gwen had idly inked upon the back of each finger.
“My darling, what do you really want? What does your gut tell you?”
Gwen looked down at her mother and blinked, steadily. She said, no longer confrontational, but as calmly as she knew how, “I have to keep my baby,” and her all-powerful condemning possessive made possible no other answer. Julia put her arms around her hunched, gangling little girl.
part three
32.
Iris swept Gwen and Katy upstairs into her bedroom, where the beveled-glass doors of the empty, lilac-papered wardrobes gaped open and the windows were now uncurtained. Bonfire heaps of clothing lay on the bed, on the floor, on the armchair, and on one bedside table stood a tower of small white boxes ominously printed in red with the words MOTH KILLER. Each pile had been labeled with torn sheets of lined paper on which Iris had written queries and imperatives such as “Charity?” “Keep!” “Do Not Throw!” “Maybe for summer?” “Gwendolen?” in her tense, listing copperplate.
“You may take anything except from that chair; those I still wear. And if you would like anything from that heap by the wall, then please show me first; there are a few pieces for your mother; the trousers would be far too short for you in any case. I can’t wait to see the back of it all. I feel freer and freer as this exercise advances, I ought to have moved years ago.” She swept her arms out wide, a conductor acknowledging her orchestra. “Anything you don’t want just pop into that empty box over there to take to Norwood, with a few sachets of the moth murderer. I’m scrupulous but it would be mortifying to infect the charity shop.”
Gwen looked over at the cartons uncertainly. On each was printed a red bull’s-eye and a rigid insect, various legs radiating in odd directions as it suffered electrocution or rigor mortis. “I don’t think I should touch moth-murdering stuff, Granny, it might be toxic.”
“As you wish,” said Iris, tightly. She turned to Katy. “The world seems filled with gestational hazards these days. When I was pregnant with Gwen’s father I was desperate to go to Vietnam and everyone was terribly difficult about it, worrying about stress and helicopters and gas, and nonsense like that. I’d never actually been a foreign correspondent; in truth I don’t really know what came over me but I was suddenly longing to go and it was still early days but it was clear that that was where the action was, especially after the Gulf of Tonkin. Of course the paper wouldn’t have it. I told them, my husband is my obstetrician and he says there’s no reason why not, women have babies in Vietnam, one’s brain still functions after all, but then they gave me my column and that suited me far better in any case. And Philip Alden was awfully good about my wanting to go but of course men are always happier to have one stay at home, whatever they say.”
Katy tucked her hair behind her ears, smiling in admiration and with an evident fear that she might be required to respond intelligently about Vietnam, or pregnancy, or men. “Yes,” she said, dark eyes blinking. “Gosh. You were so brave.”
“Women must be brave, Katy darling, if we are to achieve anything at all. Cowardice and skinlessness are the enemies of female success. If one cares at all what others think, one’s done for. In any case, there will be crumpets in the bread bin when you pause. Assuming,” this to Gwen, “that your mother hasn’t done another wonderfully officious sweep around my kitchen and packed the bread bin. When you have a cache call me up.”
Alone in the bedroom, the girls exchanged incredulous glances. Iris had always had exquisite taste, even in the days in which she and Philip had been supporting his parents as well as managing their own mortgage, and she had kept almost everything. Already Gwen could see two BIBA dresses, one in burgundy, the other lilac jersey, and, from a still earlier era, a yellow poplin blouse with an oversized Peter Pan collar. A vision of her future self arose—she could become stylish and eclectic and enviable, and could sashay to school next year in lace and silks. By then she would have an unimaginable new life, and a new, more sophisticated wardrobe seemed only fitting.
They began clearing the bed. Ruthlessly they discarded cotton shirts and office slacks. Then Gwen unearthed a boxy sweater in pale peach mohair and moments later Katy held up a slippery fuchsia blouse which Gwen, who did not wear pink, said she should keep.
“So how long will you be able to wear normal clothes?” Katy asked, folding the blouse with care. Gwen had confided in her only a week ago, swearing her to secrecy, and they had talked exclusively and exhaustively of the pregnancy ever since.
“Dunno, forever probably, because I’m so insanely tall. I don’t want to tell anyone at school till the end of term. My mum will tell the teachers then, and start planning next year and stuff.”
“Is there anything at all yet? Like, a minibump?”
Gwen lifted up her sweater and Katy peered speculatively.
“Nothing, you’re still superskinny. It’s just so crazy. I think it will feel more real once you look pregnant. Is Nathan getting excited?”
“It’s a bit early for all that,” said Gwen, suddenly vexed. She pulled down her sweater and returned her attention to the bed. This was a provocation from Katy, she felt, who was well aware that excitement had been thin on the ground in the Alden-Fuller household. In any case, how could anyone be expected to get excited about something more than half a year away? She dropped a belt into a pile of rejects.