Mrs. God Read Free

Bill? Why do you need them, anyhow? Flushed, fearful, Jean woke him at night and drilled questions at him until she, not he, broke down into tears of doubt. The next day she adopted an uncharacteristic meekness, barely speaking when he returned to the apartment after school—she was a walking apology.
    When he said that he was taking the appointment for the sake of their shared future, she said, “Don’t pretend that you want to go for my sake.” During the final months of the semester, Jean wavered between a meek deceptive acceptance of his plans and an increasingly violent opposition to them. By June, she wept whenever either of them mentioned the trip. It was impossible for him to leave—especially now. There were other colleges besides Zenith. And even if no other colleges would hire him, weren’t there always high schools? Would that be such a disgrace?
    And what if I lose this baby? Don’t you realize it could happen?
    But she never said, And what if I lose this baby too? And she never blamed him, except perhaps once, for the loss of the THING wrapped in the bloody sheets and flushed away into null-world, oblivion.
    Sometimes during these weeks Standish looked at his obese wife, her hair hanging in loose damp disarray around her red face and wondered who she was, who it was that he had married. He reminded her that she was healthy, that he would be back three weeks before the birth.
    You won’t , she said. I know it. I’ll be all alone in the hospital, and I’ll die .
    If it’s that bad, he finally told her, I’ll write to Esswood and tell them I can’t go because of problems at home.
    You think I’m bullying you, you’re so weak, you don’t understand, you don’t even remember .
    What don’t I understand?
    This baby is real. Real! I am going to have this baby! Do you know for certain there is an Esswood? How can you be so sure you’ll write a book there?
    Especially, she meant, since you’ve never been able to write one here at home.
    Do you remember, do you, do you, do you, do you even remember what you made me do?
    It doesn’t matter, Standish thought, in a week or two I’ll get the flat gray envelope with its single handwritten paragraph.
    He sat with Jean in the evenings. He talked about his classes, they watched television. Jean spoke of very little but food, soap operas, and the movements of the baby in her womb. She seemed two-dimensional, like someone who had died and been imperfectly resurrected. One night he took his Crack, Whack, and Wheel from the shelf and began making notes. Jean did not protest. Oddly, the poems seemed lifeless to him, untalented and childish. They too seemed dead.
    The gray envelope would come any day, he thought, and put an end to this charade. Mail came to the department office between three and three-thirty, and each day after his Freshman class Standish approached the office with a familiar heartsickness. He looked at the slot bearing his name as soon as he came through the door.
    After six working days he found a gray envelope in the slot. It bore the return address of the Esswood Foundation. Standish glanced reflexively toward the littered desk that had been Jeremy Starger’s, and the bearded young eighteenth-century specialist who used it now looked up at him and frowned. “Keep away from me, Standish,” he said. Not bothering to reply, Standish took the envelope from his slot, along with the bundle of publishers’ announcements that was his usual mail. He was surprised to find how disappointed, almost frightened, he was. Standish dropped the textbook announcements into the overflowing departmental wastebasket and carried the gray envelope to his desk. He felt hot. He knew he was blushing. Robert Wall had found him out. Sighing, he ripped open the envelope and pulled out a sheet of hieroglyphic nonsense which after a few seconds resolved itself into a mimeographed map