The Laments Read online

  “In Africa,” replied the doctor, “the lack of sterile water makes bottle-feeding a baby killer. If bottles, nipples, and formula had arrived two thousand years ago, we’d all be dead of dysentery. No human race left!”

  The ruddy philosopher slid to a halt—his rubber soles scuffing the shiny white linoleum—whereupon he dismissed the students and swept into Julia Lament’s room.

  “NO NAME YET?” he asked as he squeezed the Lament baby’s toes.

  “Sorry.” Julia smiled.

  “My dear Julia, I’ve a favor to ask,” said the doctor, who sensed in her failure to name her baby a healthy resistance to convention that suited his newest objective.

  “Yes?” she said, both flattered and made anxious by his informality.

  “It’s an unusual one, but quite serious,” he added, frowning to make his point.

  “Tell me.”

  “I have a patient who delivered a two-and-a-half-pound premature infant last night. The child is in an incubator. I wondered if you might be willing to let her hold little . . . little . . . Lament here, so that she gets used to touching a baby.”

  “Touching?” repeated Julia with reluctance.

  “The problem is rejection,” explained the doctor, “a sense of distance, a feeling that the baby is not really hers.”

  “Just touch him?” she said with skepticism.

  “Actually,” said the doctor with a fixed smile, “I meant nurse him, too.”

  “Nurse my baby?”

  “Imagine, Julia,” said the doctor, holding an imaginary bundle before her, “you have carried your baby for so many months, and then, for thirty days, you can’t touch him. He’s in an incubator, fighting for his life. Consider the sense of loss. Consider, perhaps, feeling that you don’t have a baby anymore. Consider sitting in a ward like this with lots of other women holding their newborns while you sit alone. Imagine your breasts full of milk with no baby to take them. You may think my request unorthodox, but I assure you it’s quite a common practice.”

  “In Europe, you mean?”

  “No,” said Dr. Underberg. “Among African women.”

  “African women?” she replied uncertainly.

  Prepared for the inevitable reaction, the doctor continued, “Not that thousands of years of experience producing happy and healthy infants should make a difference to you”—he sighed—“but this small act of generosity could help a mother who, I fear, is in danger of losing that precious bond with her child.”

  “Yes,” replied Julia cautiously. “What a shame that would be.”

  “I thought I saw the rebel in you, Julia,” said Dr. Underberg, slapping his knees. “The first day we met, I knew you were different. You’ll show the establishment a little gumption!”

  As the doctor sailed down the hall, Julia’s resolve hung in the balance. It had been five years since Mrs. Urquhart’s assault on Beatrice. Was Julia still a rebel? She looked down at her darling boy. He let out a peep, and his eyes opened briefly. Then, perhaps it was only in her imagination, but he seemed to tip his head with a small, rallying nod.

  A HEAVYSET WOMAN lay in a nearby maternity room with her eyes squeezed shut. There was no baby beside her. She was a mother yet not a mother.

  “Mary?” said a voice.

  It was her imagination calling. Nobody cared about her. Not the nurses. Not the doctors. Not Walter. Not even God.

  “Mary, open your eyes.”

  I will not.

  Perhaps she could just shut out the world this way. Perhaps if she didn’t look, listen, or speak she could vanish of her own accord.

  “I have someone for you to meet.”

  She relaxed her eyes enough to see Dr. Underberg place a small bundle in her lap.

  Mary’s lower lip trembled at the small face beaming at her. Nevertheless, she gritted her uneven teeth.

  “This. Isn’t. My. Baby.”

  “No, but he’s very hungry. Perhaps you could feed him as a favor.”

  Mary shook her head, closing her eyes again. “I don’t have any milk.”

  “Will you try? Please?”

  She loosened her nightie but shook her head. It wouldn’t work. She felt empty of will. Of milk. Of life.

  Suddenly the little thing reached out with two tiny grappling palms, and with a snort and a gasp, it climbed toward her left breast, eyes shut, face weaving left and right until it corked its open mouth with her nipple.

  Stupefied at the urchin’s determination, she watched him begin to suck vigorously from her breast.

  “Bloody hell,” she whispered.

  Dr. Underberg nodded vigorously. “A bit like a homing pigeon, isn’t he?”

  The baby paused, raising his wrinkled head. The two of them stared at each other like strangers at a social, puzzled at being thrown together. The baby went back to work on her breast, but now he was watching her. Mary felt unable to turn away; between the action in her breast and the baby’s hypnotic glance, she was slipping into a pleasantly placid state; then she remembered the doctor standing nearby.

  “Why’s he staring at me?” she asked.

  “Babies do that. He adores you.”

  “Me?” She looked back at the infant. His eyes regarded her with such clarity, such lack of doubt, that she felt herself falling into his power; together, they were merging. His eyelids closed, and Mary’s thoughts drifted, forgetting the empty beds around her, forgetting about the nurses, the doctors, her lost love, and even God’s abandonment—everything except the strange new bond she felt with this contented infant.

  “WHO IS THIS WOMAN?” Howard Lament was pacing the hospital room. “And why does she have our baby?”

  “African women do this all the time, darling,” said Julia matter-of-factly.

  “Julia, African women walk around without a stitch; it wouldn’t justify your doing the same thing. And, besides, you might have asked my opinion!”

  “We’re rebels, darling.” His wife smiled. “I knew you’d understand.”

  This gave Howard pause. Standing in his blazer and white pants, he rather liked the rebel idea. He wasn’t going to be like his father, living in the same house his whole life; no, he and Julia were going to see the world like the other Laments. There was the Lament who sailed with Cook to the South Pacific; and Great-grandfather Frederick Lament, who arrived in South Africa in 1899 and started the first bicycle shop in Grahamstown. Howard’s two older sisters had followed their husbands to Australia; and his cousin Neville always sent postcards from his trips to Patagonia and Nepal. To be a Lament was to travel. Yes, he liked the rebel idea quite a lot.

  “HE’S ALL TWITCHES AND STRUGGLING LIKE,” said Mary to Dr. Underberg. “I call him Jack because he’s always climbing up the hill”—she giggled—“but once he gets to the top, wild horses couldn’t tear him away from that pail of water!”

  Dr. Underberg noted that the baby did seem different with Mary Boyd than with Julia Lament. The infant’s movements were more strident, there was more grabbing and pulling, perhaps because Mary was a larger woman and her physical terrain was a challenge to navigate, or perhaps because this provoked more attention from Mary. The doctor made a note to himself to investigate this issue more fully in a paper. In the meantime, it was clear to him that the exchange had restored Mary’s desire to live.

  “You’ll see your own little one after lunch today,” he said.

  Mary looked up, puzzled.

  “Your baby, Mary. He’s gained four ounces,” the doctor reminded her.

  “Oh”—Mary blinked—“then you think he’ll live?”

  The doctor frowned. “Of course he’ll live! There was never any doubt. Look,” he decided, “after you’re finished we’ll pay him a visit.”

  THIS WAS MARY’S SECOND VIEWING of her son, and she was disheartened. The neonate was dwarfed by his incubator; hair ran up his tiny spine; he resembled a little bush baby with his enormous eyes and minuscule hands. Like the membrane of an onion, his skin was transparent, exposing the d
esperate tangle of blood vessels that kept him alive. To her dispirited eye, he was more hatchling than human.

  “All premature infants look this way,” the doctor assured her. “But in just a few weeks he’ll be a bouncing baby. This fellow, Mary, will look just like little . . . Jack.” He opened one of the circular holes on the side of the incubator. “Go ahead, give him a stroke.”

  “A stroke? Like a dog?”

  Dr. Underberg looked at her in disbelief.

  “He needs your touch, Mary. He needs a reason to live, and your warmth will give him that.”

  Mary patted the tiny creature with her index finger. She noticed its fragile rib cage rise and fall, and winced that her body had produced a mite so ill equipped for life.

  MARY BOYD’S ESTRANGED HUSBAND, Walter Boyd, was listening to the BBC’s shortwave broadcast of cricket. Australia was about to beat England. Walter could recite the test match scores for the past fifteen years. Though he could never remember the players, he found numbers comforting—phone numbers, account numbers, his last six electric bills: he recited them to calm himself. When the phone rang suddenly, he counted five rings before answering.

  “Thought you might want to know that I’ve just had your baby,” said a familiar voice on the other end.

  Startled, Walter dropped the weather statistics from his edition of the Sunday Mail. He buckled forward, clutching the phone—using the stern voice he reserved for strangers.

  “Who is this?”

  “Mary. I’m in Salisbury.”

  “Mary?”

  “Yes. Mary. Your wife.”

  The phone line went dead, but Walter kept it to his ear, expecting somehow to get a full explanation from the telephone company. When none came, he counted the stripes on the cuff of his shirt while the cricket match turned to white noise and the conversation replayed in his brain.

  I’ve just had your baby.

  “HOW LONG ARE YOU STAYING IN THE HOSPITAL?” asked Julia’s mother, Rose D’Usseau, formerly Rose Clare, formerly Rose Frank, formerly Rose Willoughby. It wasn’t that she was hard to live with—she just grew bored with her husbands easily. An elegant, delicate woman with a proud manner, she made a wonderful first impression; men fell for her left and right. Once married, she dressed them, changed their haircuts, reformed their habits, enrolled them in the right clubs, redirected their careers. Her work done, she mentally dusted off her hands and looked for a new challenge.

  “Till the morning,” replied Julia.

  “Thank heaven,” sighed Rose, regarding the drab hospital room with disapproval. If she didn’t renovate men, she might have set her talents to historic buildings.

  “And the poor thing still has no name?” she continued, eyeing the sleeping bundle in Julia’s lap.

  “He’s not a thing, Mother,” replied Julia. “He’s a boy.”

  “He’s a thing until he has the dignity of a name,” said Rose. “And who is this doctor? He needs a new suit, a haircut, and a proper pair of shoes!”

  Julia turned to Howard for support; deflecting her mother’s verbal assaults required more energy than she could muster.

  “Dr. Underberg is the head of obstetrics, Rose,” explained Howard. “He has quite a few things to teach the medical establishment in this country.”

  “Really, Howard? How marvelous.” Rose brightened. Howard always had this effect on her. Julia found her mother’s awe of Howard disquieting—and rather predatory.

  There was a squeak at the doorway as Nurse Pritchard, the matron of the ward, prepared to announce the end of visiting hours. But the striking resemblance between Rose and Julia gave her pause; she simply tapped her watch and continued on her rounds.

  “What about his name?” continued Rose. “Do you need suggestions? I always thought Harold would be a fine . . .”

  Julia shot Howard another desperate glance.

  “We’ve got names,” Howard interjected, “just none that we agree on.” Almost immediately he realized his faux pas as Julia closed her eyes in anticipation of Rose’s next charge.

  “Julia”—Rose smiled in reproach—“can’t you defer to your husband for a change?”

  “Why?” snapped Julia. “You never did.”

  “You’re tired, dear,” Rose said. “You always snap when you’re tired.”

  “I want to go home,” whispered Julia as she rested her head against Howard’s shoulder.

  “Imagine,” Howard said, his face shining at the wonder of his little son. “We’ll go home tomorrow—a family!”

  WALTER BOYD WAS NOT a spontaneous man; he and Mary might have worked at Eldridges for years—he in Accounting, she in Jewelry and Lingerie—before he made a pass. Mary was impulsive and forward, however; she sat on his desk, folded her legs beside his liverwurst sandwich, compelling him to introduce himself if only to retrieve his lunch. The following spring, when she announced that she was pregnant, Walter took a full day to express his surprise.

  “Really?” he said the next morning with a dim smile. “Are you really pregnant, Mary?”

  “Bloody hell, Walter,” she replied. “I’ve been chucking up every morning for three days!”

  Though Walter was grave and humorless, Mary liked his intellect and earnest nature. He lacked deceit, and he didn’t make her feel stupid, as some men did. With melancholy eyes and a sweet, affectionate nature, he was as stable as a continent. Walter moved an inch a year.

  Only an accidental pregnancy could have provoked Walter to propose marriage, but he did the right thing, as Mary had hoped; he even gave her a ring with a sapphire setting. But then that little cloud appeared, the cloud that seemed to follow Mary everywhere. When Mary miscarried, she wailed; she wanted to beat the walls at the cruelty of life. She needed to be held, to be cradled, but Walter just shook his head and rolled the lint from his pocket linings.

  “Bloody hell, Walter,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t think you love me at all!”

  When he looked back at her with those sorrowful eyes it made her furious. She slapped him. How dare he be the suffering one?

  “One two three, one two three,” counted Walter softly, staring at the second hand on his wristwatch.

  “It was my baby!” she roared.

  “One two three, one two three,” murmured Walter. “My baby too, one two three, my baby too.” But Mary didn’t hear him. The only way Walter knew to get through his grief was to count. Until, one day, Mary woke up to find him gone, and it appeared that Walter was capable of a decisive act.

  WALTER BRUSHED THE BLUE JACARANDA BLOSSOMS from the roof of his black Volvo and climbed in. A gardener was clipping the trunk of a date palm on a nearby lawn. After sitting behind the wheel for a few moments, Walter gave him a brief nod. In this quiet white neighborhood in Lusaka, it might seem odd for a man to be sitting in a hot car counting his fingers.

  Walter added the weeks since they had slept together, then broke them down into days, and hours. Numbers didn’t lie; they might well have produced a baby—though it must have been born prematurely.

  He estimated 420 miles to Salisbury from Lusaka. If he drove without stopping, he could do it in seven hours. All he needed was the resolve.

  MARY’S BREASTS WERE ALWAYS throbbing by the time her little Jack arrived. The minute she heard his cry, her nipples would start dripping with milk, and by the time the little urchin was in her lap, her nightie would be drenched in two big splotches.

  “I can do this by myself,” she said to the nurse who had brought the baby in, eyeing her haughtily as the woman’s shoes squeaked away on the linoleum.

  “Oh, Jackie, you little troublemaker. Mother thought you’d never come. Here I am, like two balloons! Mother thought she was going to burst!”

  She had been thinking all day about her baby. It seemed to her that fate had matched her up with this child. Certainly the baby she bore was meant for someone else and little Jackie was for her. Perhaps the mother of little Jackie would be better suited to the creature inside the incubator.
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  “Want to run away with me, Jackie boy?” she whispered. “I think we were made for each other. What do you think?”

  When Dr. Underberg appeared a few minutes later, Mary smiled.

  “Well, look at you!” he declared. “You’re glowing, Mary.”

  “Oh, go on!” Mary giggled.

  “What a change,” said Dr. Underberg.

  “This baby is the best medicine,” she gushed.

  The doctor’s expression changed.

  “Yes . . . fortunately, by the time he leaves tomorrow, you’ll have your very own fellow to nurse.”

  “Tomorrow?” she replied.

  “Yes,” said Dr. Underberg. “His mother’s ready to go home.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Mary broke into an anxious smile. “I’d like to thank her. Do you think I could? I’d so like to thank her,” she repeated.

  “Thank her?” said Dr. Underberg cautiously. “Well, it’s rather unusual, but I see no reason why not.”

  “Which room?” asked Mary. “I’ll just pop in by myself.”

  JULIA WATCHED A DUMPY FIGURE edge along the perimeter of the room, footstep by footstep. She had a disheveled mop of mouse-brown hair, flushed cheeks, and a loopy smile.

  “I just wanted to see the baby’s mother,” Mary said with a nervous laugh.

  “How’s your baby?” asked Julia.

  “Fine,” said Mary with a wilted smile. “But little Jackie’s a wonder. I so love him.”

  Julia stiffened, but nodded politely. Mary covered her mouth like a schoolgirl.

  “It’ll be nice to go home. I’m sure you’ll feel that way, too,” said Julia.

  Mary nodded, and swallowed. “I wonder,” she began, “if perhaps I could nurse him one last time before you go?”

  Julia was about to say no, but she checked herself. “I’ll speak to the doctor,” she said, sensing that the woman might not take her answer well. Mary rose to leave, then reached for Julia’s hand in farewell. Julia noticed the raw fingertips and the woman’s trembling lips.

  “Room 303,” sang Mary softly as she tiptoed out.

  TWO HOURS LATER, the sun was simmering on the horizon; Walter parked his car under a solitary euphorbia tree. A drop of poisonous sap dribbled down the window. He slept as a herd of giraffe crossed the road with stilted poise; their legs merged into the glittering tarmac while their heads ducked gracefully beneath the telegraph wires.