Story

The Visitor

No one ever suggested that it could happen. No one talked about it. The idea hadn’t even been mentioned until the morning they found a bloodstain the size of a small sand dollar on the bedsheet.

They’d awakened to the sound of the street outside being torn up; the rhythmic pounding of jackhammers and pile drivers shook their apartment as they lay there naively waiting for it to stop. And then, after they’d made love, she bled.

He reached for the book on the bedside shelf. He’d read about bleeding — he knew. Wait, he said. I remember. I read it last week. He flipped through the pages as she lay beside him, silent. Where was it? Page fifty-one. Here, no, fifteen. Bleeding: it says that a little bleeding is nothing to worry about. And she didn’t say anything. She let him hope, even permitted herself to. But she’d read too — the part he must have missed — plus, she felt.

It had been exactly six weeks, though it seemed longer, since they found out she was pregnant. When she was told at the clinic, she wasn’t surprised but the look of shock on her face made the nurse uneasy. I’m never sure, the nurse had said, whether I’m handing out good news or bad. She assured the nurse that the news was good, only that it was hard to comprehend — being pregnant. Even the word itself seemed to drape over her now like the old winter overcoat she’d borrowed from her mother.

She went out into the lobby and told him, then went back in to pay the receptionist. He’d been trying to read Gogol‘s “The Nose” — the same paragraph over and over. He closed the book and began cataloging everything around him: the soft light of the standing lamps, the young blond woman sitting across from him nervously snapping her chewing gum, the walls covered with flyers, announcements, and a safety poster about wearing seatbelts. He looked at the cover of his book, felt as though he were about to cry, and was surprised by this feeling — a deep sexual stirring, a feeling of wanting her that he couldn’t explain. He took his pulse rate, counting until she returned.

Standing in front of the elevator, they held each other and kissed. Outside on the sidewalk, he pulled her towards him and they kissed again. He held her arm, till it hurt, as they walked across Van Ness Avenue, and then on the other side they stopped again. When they got in the car they looked at each other then screamed in unison.

On the morning she bled he stood in the hallway, naked, watching her as she sat on the toilet. His arms, folded across his chest, trapped the book. She laughed when he opened the book again and began flipping through the pages without even reading, then finally closed it and held it to his mouth — only the worried expression in his eyes staring at her.

Is there blood?

A little.

We shouldn’t worry?

Not yet.

He asked her to call the nurse. When she did the nurse only said that she should rest — nothing else. Only that she should lie down and rest. She didn’t want to. She couldn’t just lie there waiting while outside the pounding in the street continued. She had things she wanted to do, intended to go to her studio and paint. There was only this little bit of blood. She didn’t feel ill. But he coaxed her, made her a cup of tea and insisted that she rest — at least until he got back from walking Sam their dog.

Six weeks before, they’d driven straight home from the clinic and couldn’t decide who to call first. She suggested that he call his mother and tell her. He said, no, that she’d be at work and the news, happy as it would make her, would be too much. They told Sam, then she called their friend David. While she talked, he filled a jug with water and began tending the houseplants, whispering nonsense as he trimmed and sprinkled them.

David‘s thrilled, she said. He’s crying. He says he can’t wait to be an aunt.

Aunt? — he said to the fichus — Aunt David?

Water was overflowing from one of the pots onto the floor. He went into the kitchen for a towel, knocked a skillet off the counter and smashed Sam’s water dish. He called his mother. He made sure she was sitting before he told her. There was a long silence; he imagined her arthritic fingers wiping tears from her eyes. At sixty-eight, she said, it’s about time I’m a grandmother.

Her mother, first thing, had asked: Is it going to be legal? What do you mean, legal? Ma, we’ve been together eight years, already. What difference does it make? Legal or not, before they can stop it, a wedding is planned. They will fly back to New Jersey during the winter break.

Her father, when he spoke to him, had asked: How does it feel?

What?

Are you happy about it?

Yes, he said. Of course. We wanted it this way.

Fine. You’re happy. I’m happy too. His voice cracked just a little. And when he said goodbye he called him Son.

Afterwards she went to her painting studio then left an hour later with a friend to shop for books on childbirth and parenting. He went out and bought a New York Times and put it, unread, in his desk drawer with the intention of reading it nine months later in the waiting room.

When they first decided to have a baby they told their friends. Some were ecstatic about the idea — arguing over who would be the first to hold it. Others were decidedly against it. Coffee klatches were arranged for her: Listen Girl, we need to talk. Don’t go, he told her. But she went anyway. She had nothing to hide. They said: How could you do this to yourself? Right at the beginning of your career? Just stop and think about it. How can you afford it? Listen, we’re only saying this because we love you, but you’re making a big mistake. She defended herself. She fought, but afterwards cried because they were so unfair, so unsupportive. Of course they couldn’t afford it. But how could these others know what it was like? This feeling that had grown between the two of them the past few years. They didn’t turn their heads and stare at mothers with infants, didn’t sidle over and peer into the soft round faces and feel a wanting so deep it was like cannibalism, they didn’t sit for hours trading names back and forth: Ben? No. Judy? No! Annie? Yes! Yes? Yes.

To the friends who did understand, they were drawn even closer; from those who didn’t, they became estranged. And on the morning she bled, as he walked in the park, thinking the worst, not even watching where Sam had run off to, this feeling of estrangement turned to anger. He would never forgive them — these supposed friends who hadn’t supported their decision. He would blame them, had to blame somebody if it happened. Their expecting had created a feeling of the world pulling together as if a thin membrane had grown and enshrouded everything. They were surprised how quickly and irrevocably the news seemed to unite them to their families, how easily they accepted that this baby would not only be a part of each of them but of their parents, grandparents, relatives dead and alive. She only hoped it wouldn’t look like her maternal aunt. He would be satisfied as long as it had what little he could remember of his father’s temperament. Now, when her parents called (at least once a day), instead of asking for her right away, they would talk to him. Her father confided in him, complained candidly about his job and his in-laws. Her mother, shy at first, persisted, talked to him about literature, art, anything, holding on even through the awkward silences.

I liked it.

What’s that?

The book.

Yes. . .?

The one you suggested. You have good taste.

During those six weeks both of them sensed their everyday neuroses, their insecurities and self-doubts disappearing. She projected a new sense of self-assuredness, felt for the first time in years a strength that persisted, that seemed unassailable. She spoke with more frankness — even argued with the landlord over the rent and the condition of their apartment. They would withhold their rent, she said, if their leaky refrigerator wasn’t fixed and if the cracked window in their bedroom wasn’t replaced. He stopped worrying about his health and his studies and concentrated instead on thoughts of fatherhood: Once he held their child, would he ever let go? What would he read to him or her as he lay on the bed, his lips whispering into the soft hairs of the baby’s head? Whitman? Thoreau? Dickinson?

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

She, who would always work in her studio till five, now came home at three and made phone calls, wrote letters, danced naked on the bed.

He started lecturing her on her diet, made sure to leave her all the tuna fish in the refrigerator untouched, and called her every day at lunchtime. Without hesitating he told everyone, took candies to work and handed them out.

She told her therapist, saving it for the end of the session, and was surprised when she got a smile and a hug of congratulations. She even thought about giving up her visits for the time being. What could there be to discuss now? Now that her problems seemed so puny, so trivial.

But the more they told, the more she began to worry. She would tell and share in the excitement, but struggled with the fear of having to go back to each person, starting with her mother and father, and contradict.

She was on the bed when he got back from the park. The pounding from the street could still be heard in their apartment. He thought of calling the city and complaining.

Are you still bleeding? He asked.

Sam jumped up and sat by her side.

She said, Yes, a little heavier. Not much.

Should we call the nurse again?

No.

Why not?

There’s nothing she can do.

What did she say when you called? Did she say anything?

She’d already told him what the nurse had said. But he needed to hear it again; maybe they could come up with a new interpretation, find something in her answer that would be more conclusive, more optimistic.

The nurse just said that I should stay down. She said there’s no way to tell yet. Sometimes women have their periods even when they’re pregnant.

But she definitely felt something, a heaviness, something different. She kept this from him; she didn’t want him to lose hope. She told him that the nurse had said that there would be clotting and that so far there wasn’t any clotting, just a little blood.

He took her cup from the bedside stand, asked her if she wanted more tea. She said, yes, and that afterwards she’d go to her studio.

Maybe you shouldn’t, he said. Maybe you should wait a little while longer.

We’ll see, she said.

He went into the kitchen to fix her tea.

She got up, felt woozy, but went to the bathroom again to check.

In the kitchen he let her tea steep as he got the milk out of the refrigerator. He thought of how she’d always hated milk, the way it felt in her mouth, the cloying aftertaste. But the nurse had said that she should drink it. He poured the milk, stirring it in her cup till the tea turned the color of pale flesh.

When she checked there wasn’t any blood on the pad. This gave her hope. Maybe it was just a little tear, nothing to worry about. But when she peed it flowed out of her — dark, clotted blood.

In the kitchen he was thinking of how she’d developed a taste for it — the milk — how she appreciated the way it made everything taste sweeter.

She was back on the bed when he returned with her tea. Now he saw that her face was pale and that her eyes looked bruised. He set her tea down on the stand, then sat on the edge of the bed, facing the window. He stared at the bottom of the curtain where rain had come through, leaving the jagged line of a water mark. From beyond the curtain he heard some kids yelling in the alleyway. He felt that something was slipping away, that this thin layer of life that had grown in so short a time was beginning to dissolve. He said to her that it was as if they’d had a visitor, someone who’d been with them all this time and now was leaving. Then he turned to her and she rocked towards him holding her arms out to be held. She said she knew — that she felt it all along.

In the days that followed she continued to go to her studio. She found a welcome distraction in the work and in being around others. He would wake up mornings feeling his skin tingling as if during the night his body had been rubbed raw. He would try to work, but instead, paced the apartment wrapped in a wool sweater. Invariably he wound up at the window staring out onto the wet streets outside their building.

Now he worried obsessively about her, that she’d have an accident in the car, or begin hemorrhaging somewhere alone where no one could help her. At three-thirty he would draw a chair up to the window and watch the construction crews tearing up the street. He’d wait there until he either saw their car or the tractors come, and with heavy chains, lower sheets of steel over the holes in the street.

THE END