Mum's the Word Read Free Page B

Court. He may have thrown things in private, but he never tried to throw Ben or me out a window.
    â€œWhy couldn’t the Mangés have sent their spies on a Tuesday? Nothing, if I do say it myself, compares with my escallop of escargot—the sauce gentle, almost shy …”
    Once, believe it or not, I had found the way Ben talked about food one of his most sensuous qualities. Now I resortedto an antacid tablet. He smoothed out the letter, kissed it, and returned it to his pocket.
    â€œDarling,” I said, remembering it would soon be time for me to take my nap and I hadn’t yet got up, “where will your meeting with the Mangés take place?”
    He tightened his dressing gown belt, eyes fixed on my face. “Ellie, the society’s headquarters are in the States. Where else would we meet?”
    â€œI …”
    â€œEllie, it’s not the
moon
. Jonas and Dorcas thoroughly enjoyed their stay in Chicago.”
    â€œSo they did.” I sank back against my pillow. The thought of his being gone from home was a bit of a shock. A sigh escaped me. How desperately I would miss him. What wife of less than a year would not repine? But surely he wouldn’t be gone more than a week or a fortnight at most? Unbidden came a rush of euphoria. Scant weeks ago my definition of bliss was being in bed with Ben. Now I must strive not to betray—by sparkling eyes—that I might adjust to being alone. Especially at night.
    What ecstasy not to have the bed plunge and plummet every time my beloved turned over in sleep or roused up on an elbow to inquire how I was faring. Oh, that I might in the early hours of morning crawl into the bathroom and drape myself over the blessed chill of porcelain without that dear male voice explaining through a crack in the doorway that we were moving hour by hour ever closer to the end of this disagreeable, but stock, manifestation.
    Euphoria ebbed. Guilt flowed in. I do guilt awfully well. Wasn’t I the woman who only two years ago at the declining age of twenty-seven would have bartered thirty years of life for thirty minutes with a man? Wasn’t I the one who had put in an official request for a baby? I had taken up the rosary, given to me by my mother-in-law, ostensibly as a souvenir from Rome, and I had prayed for the rabbit to die, the test tube to stop fizzing, the word Yes! to appear on the litmus paper.
    My fertile hero! After having to be persuaded by all the wiles and negligees in my repertoire that fatherhood was for him, he had committed himself to the parenting project with zeal. From day one he had insisted that we eat right, exercise,and think Lamaze. He had set aside quality time to be spent with the embryo. My darling knew to the second when we would be talking fetus. He was heavily into such involvement as reading to our child—
now
. Thus ensuring genius level or above. Daddy Dearest believed in singing to the baby. He had no conception of the horror I endured, having my abdomen serenaded, while my insides heaved like a tempest and the bathroom was a thousand-mile trek across burning desert sands. He had no idea because I hadn’t told him.
    I didn’t want to hurt him. I was ashamed of the botch I was making of this joyous experience. Women today are giving birth on their lunch breaks or while standing at the Xerox machine; the race is on to see whether the copies of Mr. Brown’s memo or the baby will be delivered first. Every photo of an
enceinte
female shows her garbed in moonbeam white, holding a rose to her parted lips, while waves froth over her polished toenails. What happened to me? Less than three months along and I already felt as though the timekeeper’s watch had stopped. I didn’t have the energy to look dewy and radiant. Most mornings I didn’t have the energy to get up and start counting the minutes until my nap. I lived in constant fear that my mother-in-law would arrive unexpectedly and