The resentful mother would not have much money, and not much time to devote to the baby. And babies need the devotion of time. If I have one, I should do it properly. I can’t do it properly now.
CHAPTER FIVE
O n Monday morning, the deadly gloom of the weekend weather has been replaced by crisp New York sunshine. The decisions I have to make don’t seem so terrible any longer. On the brief walk to Columbia for my lectures, I think, I will just do it right now. I will just get it over with . I fish the business card of the clinic out of my bag and dial the number, standing on Broadway outside the big Rite Aid. A woman answers. I explain my situation. It is the situation they must hear all day every day. There are no appointments for two weeks.
“Two weeks!” I say, in the tone universally adopted to indicate that this isn’t very good service at all, regardless of the fact that two weeks gives me breathing and thinking space. Then she says that a cancellation for Wednesday has just come up.
“A cancellation?” I echo.
“Yes, ma’am,” says the voice. “For Wednesday, November fifth, at eleven A.M .”
“Does a cancellation mean—someone changed her mind?”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” I say. Phone conversations are especially difficult in America. If you don’t say what they expect, you may as well be jabbering at them in Esperanto. I think about that cancellation. What if the cancellation becomes a Mozart, a Shakespeare, a savior?
“Miss Garland, do you want the appointment?”
I look at the bright blue sky and the yellow cabs and the dove-gray plane trees and the energy of all the people, and I think what I am denying to the child inside me, and I swallow and for a moment I can’t speak.
“Miss Garland?”
“Yes, I do. I feel terrible about it, but—”
“Wednesday at eleven A.M ., for Esme Garland,” says the voice, and hangs up.
WHEN I GET home, there is music thumping from Stella’s apartment across the hall. At last, she is back. I ring her doorbell. When she answers, she throws her arms around me and pulls me into her apartment, which is strewn with bags and open suitcases.
“I have so much to tell you,” she says. “Let me make some coffee first. It was so great. L.A. is amazing. I want to move there. But not yet.”
“Like St. Augustine,” I say.
“Yeah, I don’t know, I want to split myself in two—be in New York, be in L.A. I have made so many connections, there are so many possibilities right now. You know that feeling? I met a guy, Jake, Jake DuPlessy—I love his work—who wants me to direct a short, and another who wants me to be in a short, and Adele introduced me to all sorts of influential people, and oh my god, I milked the opportunity.”
“I bet you did,” I say.
“I did, I’m totally psyched. And when I wasn’t schmoozing the Patrik Ervell guys in Beverly Hills, I was in a hot tub with Adele and Michaela, drinking frozen raspberry daiquiris. I know how to make them. It’s so cool—you don’t use ice, you just freeze the raspberries. We’ll make them.”
“That sounds great!” I say. I say it with an exclamation mark, and she immediately stops heaping piles of clothes from one spotof the room to another. Perhaps I am not normally so enthusiastic about cocktails. She is looking intently at me.
“What’s the matter?” she says.
“I won’t be able to drink them,” I say. And then, because I have annoyed myself with that arch observation, I say quickly, “I’m pregnant.”
“Sweet holy Christ,” she says. She casts around rapidly and grabs her camera. This, I am used to. Stella is studying film, but she isn’t really, she is studying humans. She wants to catch the mind in the face.
“Tell me,” she says, from behind the SLR. “Look straight into the lens.”
“You could be hugging me and telling me that it will be okay,” I say.
“Yeah, because that’s what girls do. Come on, Esme, it’s important. Tell me.” She holds
CHAPTER FIVE
O n Monday morning, the deadly gloom of the weekend weather has been replaced by crisp New York sunshine. The decisions I have to make don’t seem so terrible any longer. On the brief walk to Columbia for my lectures, I think, I will just do it right now. I will just get it over with . I fish the business card of the clinic out of my bag and dial the number, standing on Broadway outside the big Rite Aid. A woman answers. I explain my situation. It is the situation they must hear all day every day. There are no appointments for two weeks.
“Two weeks!” I say, in the tone universally adopted to indicate that this isn’t very good service at all, regardless of the fact that two weeks gives me breathing and thinking space. Then she says that a cancellation for Wednesday has just come up.
“A cancellation?” I echo.
“Yes, ma’am,” says the voice. “For Wednesday, November fifth, at eleven A.M .”
“Does a cancellation mean—someone changed her mind?”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing,” I say. Phone conversations are especially difficult in America. If you don’t say what they expect, you may as well be jabbering at them in Esperanto. I think about that cancellation. What if the cancellation becomes a Mozart, a Shakespeare, a savior?
“Miss Garland, do you want the appointment?”
I look at the bright blue sky and the yellow cabs and the dove-gray plane trees and the energy of all the people, and I think what I am denying to the child inside me, and I swallow and for a moment I can’t speak.
“Miss Garland?”
“Yes, I do. I feel terrible about it, but—”
“Wednesday at eleven A.M ., for Esme Garland,” says the voice, and hangs up.
WHEN I GET home, there is music thumping from Stella’s apartment across the hall. At last, she is back. I ring her doorbell. When she answers, she throws her arms around me and pulls me into her apartment, which is strewn with bags and open suitcases.
“I have so much to tell you,” she says. “Let me make some coffee first. It was so great. L.A. is amazing. I want to move there. But not yet.”
“Like St. Augustine,” I say.
“Yeah, I don’t know, I want to split myself in two—be in New York, be in L.A. I have made so many connections, there are so many possibilities right now. You know that feeling? I met a guy, Jake, Jake DuPlessy—I love his work—who wants me to direct a short, and another who wants me to be in a short, and Adele introduced me to all sorts of influential people, and oh my god, I milked the opportunity.”
“I bet you did,” I say.
“I did, I’m totally psyched. And when I wasn’t schmoozing the Patrik Ervell guys in Beverly Hills, I was in a hot tub with Adele and Michaela, drinking frozen raspberry daiquiris. I know how to make them. It’s so cool—you don’t use ice, you just freeze the raspberries. We’ll make them.”
“That sounds great!” I say. I say it with an exclamation mark, and she immediately stops heaping piles of clothes from one spotof the room to another. Perhaps I am not normally so enthusiastic about cocktails. She is looking intently at me.
“What’s the matter?” she says.
“I won’t be able to drink them,” I say. And then, because I have annoyed myself with that arch observation, I say quickly, “I’m pregnant.”
“Sweet holy Christ,” she says. She casts around rapidly and grabs her camera. This, I am used to. Stella is studying film, but she isn’t really, she is studying humans. She wants to catch the mind in the face.
“Tell me,” she says, from behind the SLR. “Look straight into the lens.”
“You could be hugging me and telling me that it will be okay,” I say.
“Yeah, because that’s what girls do. Come on, Esme, it’s important. Tell me.” She holds
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