Italy with you.”
Take this child from Peter? Erika thought. He’d pursue me from Milan to every small hillside village in Umbria or Tuscany, hunt me down like a kidnapper.
Her vocal training continued to be focused and productive. In the mornings she headed to Magdalena’s house for a formal lesson, and then she returned home to practice. As long as she fed herself bits of apples and cheese and oranges to keep her energy level, she could pitch away far into the afternoon. She’d end in exhaustion. A deadline loomed before her: only five more months remained, and soon it would be four, then just three. . . . What would happen to her life, her voice, her aspirations of Italy, after the little creature came? Surely it would be eons before such perfect stretches of solitude were hers again.
Books about Italy, unpacked from their trunks, lay in piles around the house. These days she could not bear to look at them. If she had not gotten pregnant, where would she be at this moment? Trying to secure a fine vocal coach in Florence? Auditioning? She pictured herself having found splendid rooms overlooking the Arno, where two long shuttered windows could be flung open.
Instead, she found herself climbing Beacon Hill. In her fourth month, before any stranger might have noticed a suspicious curve to her middle, she headed upward toward Louisburg Square, passing the stately brick homes, following the narrow streets she knew so well. She had always been a hearty walker, but now as she headed uphill, the muscles of her belly tightened, resisting every step. Each stride was cut to a third of its normal length, and such a faltering pace depressed her. The baby she carried could hardly have been larger than her own thumb. . . . So why must she mince along, as helpless as an invalid? It made her want to sob.
For twenty-eight years, her body had been her own domain, but no longer.
The sky darkened as she descended into Charles Street. The stores had closed; she passed storefronts with blackened interiors. Before a locked photographer’s shop she paused to inspect a portrait displayed in the window. An electric light illuminated the face of a blond boy dressed in a sailor suit. He must have been about two years old, and the sight of him made tears seep into her eyes. Whose face would she see in two years—the features of a little boy or a little girl? Reflected in the glass storefront window, she noticed her brow clenched in distress. Who was this person who stole her oxygen and reduced her crisp steps to an old lady’s creeping gait? How humbling, to bow before the needs of a being she had never seen.
Together Erika and her cousin Phoebe strolled through the Public Garden, wheeling a carriage that held Phoebe’s fourth daughter, who had entered the world at the staggering birth weight of eleven pounds.
“Twenty-eight years I’ve been alive,” Erika said musingly, “and my body has never made a baby before. It’s never grown all the parts for a little boy, if I have a son. I watch all the changes and wonder: how does it know?”
“Yes.” Phoebe gave a soft laugh. “How does the body know?”
They wheeled Baby Judith to an area shaded by rose trellises. Under an arbor they sat down on a wooden bench. In the distance children rode swan boats propelled by paddle wheels, their cries as faint as fingerprints on glass. In the carriage’s nest of pastel blankets, Baby Judith kicked her bent legs and twitched her tiny hands.
“Since the birth,” Phoebe blurted suddenly, “something dreadful has happened.” Her husband had insisted that she leave their New Hampshire home and come down to stay with Boston relatives “for a rest.”
Everything had been fine, Phoebe confessed—until the labor. “I am going to tell you things I haven’t told anybody else.”
With her daughter three weeks overdue, Phoebe said, nature had done nothing. Nature might have let the baby fatten inside her forever—if her doctor had not
Take this child from Peter? Erika thought. He’d pursue me from Milan to every small hillside village in Umbria or Tuscany, hunt me down like a kidnapper.
Her vocal training continued to be focused and productive. In the mornings she headed to Magdalena’s house for a formal lesson, and then she returned home to practice. As long as she fed herself bits of apples and cheese and oranges to keep her energy level, she could pitch away far into the afternoon. She’d end in exhaustion. A deadline loomed before her: only five more months remained, and soon it would be four, then just three. . . . What would happen to her life, her voice, her aspirations of Italy, after the little creature came? Surely it would be eons before such perfect stretches of solitude were hers again.
Books about Italy, unpacked from their trunks, lay in piles around the house. These days she could not bear to look at them. If she had not gotten pregnant, where would she be at this moment? Trying to secure a fine vocal coach in Florence? Auditioning? She pictured herself having found splendid rooms overlooking the Arno, where two long shuttered windows could be flung open.
Instead, she found herself climbing Beacon Hill. In her fourth month, before any stranger might have noticed a suspicious curve to her middle, she headed upward toward Louisburg Square, passing the stately brick homes, following the narrow streets she knew so well. She had always been a hearty walker, but now as she headed uphill, the muscles of her belly tightened, resisting every step. Each stride was cut to a third of its normal length, and such a faltering pace depressed her. The baby she carried could hardly have been larger than her own thumb. . . . So why must she mince along, as helpless as an invalid? It made her want to sob.
For twenty-eight years, her body had been her own domain, but no longer.
The sky darkened as she descended into Charles Street. The stores had closed; she passed storefronts with blackened interiors. Before a locked photographer’s shop she paused to inspect a portrait displayed in the window. An electric light illuminated the face of a blond boy dressed in a sailor suit. He must have been about two years old, and the sight of him made tears seep into her eyes. Whose face would she see in two years—the features of a little boy or a little girl? Reflected in the glass storefront window, she noticed her brow clenched in distress. Who was this person who stole her oxygen and reduced her crisp steps to an old lady’s creeping gait? How humbling, to bow before the needs of a being she had never seen.
Together Erika and her cousin Phoebe strolled through the Public Garden, wheeling a carriage that held Phoebe’s fourth daughter, who had entered the world at the staggering birth weight of eleven pounds.
“Twenty-eight years I’ve been alive,” Erika said musingly, “and my body has never made a baby before. It’s never grown all the parts for a little boy, if I have a son. I watch all the changes and wonder: how does it know?”
“Yes.” Phoebe gave a soft laugh. “How does the body know?”
They wheeled Baby Judith to an area shaded by rose trellises. Under an arbor they sat down on a wooden bench. In the distance children rode swan boats propelled by paddle wheels, their cries as faint as fingerprints on glass. In the carriage’s nest of pastel blankets, Baby Judith kicked her bent legs and twitched her tiny hands.
“Since the birth,” Phoebe blurted suddenly, “something dreadful has happened.” Her husband had insisted that she leave their New Hampshire home and come down to stay with Boston relatives “for a rest.”
Everything had been fine, Phoebe confessed—until the labor. “I am going to tell you things I haven’t told anybody else.”
With her daughter three weeks overdue, Phoebe said, nature had done nothing. Nature might have let the baby fatten inside her forever—if her doctor had not
Similar Books
