Full Circle Read Free Page B

Jean shook her head. It was too hot to go for a walk, even at eleven o'clock at night. And suddenly Jean was even hotter than she'd been all day.
    “I think I'll have something cold to drink.” She fixed herself a glass of the lemonade she kept in a pitcher in the icebox, and it tasted good going down, but it came back up almost as quickly. She rushed to the bathroom, where she threw up and retched repeatedly, and then emerged wanly a little while later.
    “You should lie down.” Meekly, she agreed. She was more uncomfortable when she did. It was easier to sit up than lie down, so she tried the comfortable old green chair again, but after a few minutes she found that she couldn't do that either. She had gnawing pains in her lower back and an unsettled feeling in her stomach, and Helen Weissman left her alone again at midnight, but only after insisting that Jean come and get her during the night if she had a problem. But Jean was sure she wouldn't have to. She turned off the lights, and sat alone in the silent apartment, thinking of her husband … Andy … of the big green eyes and straight blond hair … track star … football hero … her first and only love … the boy she had fallen head over heels in love with the first time she saw him, and as she thought of him, she felt a shaft of pain slice through her from her belly to her back, and then again, and again, and yet again, so that she couldn't catch her breath at all now. She stood up unsteadily, nausea overwhelming her, but determined to get to the bathroom, where she clung miserably to the toilet for almost an hour, the pains pounding her body, the retching tearing at her soul, until weakly at last, barely conscious, she began calling for Andy. It was there that Helen Weissman found her at one thirty in the morning. She had decided to check on her once more before going to bed. It was too hot for anyone to sleep that night, so she was awake unusually late. And she thanked God that she was, when she found her. She went back to her own apartment just long enough to call Jean's doctor and the police, who promised to send an ambulance at once. She climbed into a cotton housedress, grabbed her purse, kept the same sandals on her feet, and hurried back to Jean, to drape a bathrobe around her shoulders, and ten minutes later, they heard the sirens. Helen did, but Jean seemed to hear nothing at all as she retched and cried, and Helen Weissman tried to soothe her. She was writhing with pain and calling Andy's name by the time they reached New York Hospital, and the baby didn't take long to come after that. The nurses whisked Jean away on a gurney, and they didn't have time to give her anything at all, before the wiry five-pound four-ounce little girl emerged with jet black hair, and tightly clenched fists, wailing loudly. Helen Weiss-man saw them both barely an hour later. Jean mercifully drugged at last, the baby dozing comfortably.
    And she went back to the apartment house that night, thinking of the lonely years Jean Roberts had ahead, bringing up her baby girl alone, a widow at twenty-two. Helen brushed the tears from her cheek as the elevated train roared by at four thirty that morning. The older woman knew what kind of devotion it would take to bring the child up alone, a kind of religious zeal, a solitary passion to do all for this baby that would never know her father.
    Jean gazed at her baby the next morning when they brought her to nurse for the first time: she looked down at the tiny face, the dark silky hair that the nurses said would fall out eventually, and she knew instinctively what she would have to do for her. It didn't frighten Jean at all. This was what she had wanted. Andy's baby. This was his last gift to her, and she would guard her with her life, do all she could, give her only the best. She would live and breathe and work and do, and give her very soul to this baby.
    The tiny rosebud mouth worked as she nursed and Jean smiled at the unfamiliar