They cut off the corner of Illinois in the morning, passing into Indiana and the towns of Valparaiso and Plymouth, racing through the rich farmlands of the state, passing through Columbia City and Fort Wayne, another state line falling behind them, the barren stretch of the low flat plains from the border to Akron and suddenly the whir of a city and the smell of rubber hovering in the air pungent and vile, and through to Youngstown and the refineries adding their vibrant glow to the sun’s, and then Pennsylvania, across that entire shabby mining state, the houses covered with coal dust and poverty and dignity, over the Alleghenies and down the bank of the Susquehanna, pushing for Philadelphia before evening fell, passing through Harris-burg and then down through Lancaster and the Pennsylvania Dutch country with the hex signs on the barns and the Amish men in the fields. He was exhausted when they reached Philadelphia and checked into their hotel.
They made New York after ninety minutes of traveling the next morning. She always welcomed you, that city. She sat there on the other side of the river wearing a crown in her hair and smiling with a million banked windows reflecting sunlight, beckoning you to cross the bridges, to drop from the aerial highways and enter her arms, hung with clouds and neon. Busy and frantic, she nonetheless welcomed you the way no other city in the United States did, with the possible exception of San Francisco. She welcomed you simply by her existence, she made you feel this was the end of the journey and not a whistle stop, this was New York, you’d had them all once you’d had her. They stopped for lunch in Mamaroneck, and then pushed on to Talmadge.
By the time they reached the house, they were old friends.
Amanda watched them, feeling peculiarly excluded.
She had the oddest notion, all at once, that the birth of her own child would be completely anticlimactic for Matthew. Feeling bloated and unbeautiful and awkward and hot, as May squashed Talmadge flat under a blistering unseasonal thumb, she watched her husband and the child and was slightly annoyed by their mutual delight with each other. Now that Kate was here, now that her voice filled the house, now that her hand was in Matthew’s, her husband seemed to take on all the stereotyped traits of the new father. Everything the child did seemed to amuse him, and even though Amanda was forced to admit her niece had a delightful sense of humor and a marvelous laugh, which set the timbers of the old house ringing whenever she cut loose with it, she did feel that Matthew’s doting attitude was slightly unbecoming — especially when he was about to become a bona fide father in less than two months. Still Kate’s laugh was contagious, the incongruous raucous bellow of a fat woman watching a stage show. And every time it issued from Kate’s lungs and mouth, Matthew would begin laughing with her, and finally even Amanda, who thought these carryings-on were juvenile and nonsensical, was tempted into laughter, which hurt her back and her extended belly. Kate was a mine of misinformation, and Matthew listened to her solemn pronouncements and answered them with a dignity Amanda found foolish and indulgent.
“Do you know what the most dread disease in the world is?” Kate asked once.
“What?” Matthew said.
“Kansas,” she answered, without a trace of a smile.
“That’s true,” Matthew said, “but Biloxi is even worse,” and the child giggled uncontrollably.
He read to her each night. He bought books by the dozen, and Amanda could hear his voice drifting down from the upstairs bedroom. “The terrible, terrible, awful old cat, the cat who went down to the sea in a hat, now that was the cat, oh you know the cat, the cat who had never once captured a rat,” reading any idiotic story with drama and emotion until finally Kate’s inquiring voice would grow fuzzy with sleep, and he would kiss her and turn out the light and tuck the cover under her neck and say, “See you in the morning, Kate,” and she would say, “Don’t forget. Breakfast,” and he would come tiptoeing downstairs with a smile on his face. Amanda, in her last stages of pregnancy, slept late each morning. The two, Matthew and Kate, would cook breakfast and then sit in the kitchen and chatter like jay birds. Kate would tell him all her plans for the day, and he would feel very much like a father, a very real father who listened to the problems of his young daughter and advised her on how to care for a doll’s broken neck, or what to tell that snotty kid Iris next door, or how to tighten her skates with a skate key, or even how to blow her nose like a lady. He enjoyed his role immensely. She would walk him down the path to the garage, and he would back the car out, and then lean out the window, and Kate would kiss him goodbye and shout, “Will you be back soon?” and he would answer, “For dinner,” and she would yell, “Are you going out tonight?” and he would yell back, “No!” and race to the station.
The question was always the same — “Are you going out tonight?” — as if now that she had found a father, she could not bear letting him out of her sight.
And the answer was invariably the same, too — “No!” — because now that Kate had come to live with them, Matthew had no desire at all to socialize. The child’s presence, together with Amanda’s ever-expanding universe, provided a ready excuse for ducking Talmadge’s weekend get-togethers, which Matthew had never liked, anyway. Talmadge parties, to Matthew, were simply an extension of the fantasy land these well-meaning New Yorkers had created. He hated to attend them, and he hated to give them, and so he was grateful to Kate for her arrival because she introduced them to a Talmadge disease known simply as The Sitter Problem.
“We shouldn’t leave her with a sitter,” he said to Amanda. “The house is still strange to her.”
“You just don’t like parties, that’s all,” Amanda said knowingly.
“What gives you that idea?”
“You never dance with any of the women.”
“I dance with you,” Matthew said.
“Oh, and a lot of fun that must be for you right now. Look at me. I’m mountainous.”
He put his hands on her belly. “You’re lovely,” he said.
“Some of the women in Talmadge are very attractive, Matthew.”
“Are they?”
“Yes, and I’m just a pregnant old sow.”
“A pregnant young sow.”
“Young, excuse me,” Amanda said, smiling. “They are attractive, admit it. Very chic, and very—”
“Yes, they’re attractive. But you’re beautiful. And besides, I happen to love you.”
But not as much as she loved him.
She watched his growing attachment to the child, and wondered if she were jealous. She found herself hoping the baby would be a boy. She knew that no red-faced wrinkled little girl could possibly hope to compete with her blond and beautiful niece. Even the word “niece” worried her. She automatically thought of Kate as her sister’s child — but she knew that Matthew had already begun to think of her as his own daughter.
On a day early in June, the picture changed somewhat.
She had been sitting out in the sun, her eyes closed, her hands folded over her belly, when she suddenly realized the yard was very still. She sat up and called, “Kate!” and received no answer. Alarmed, she pushed herself laboriously out of the chair, waddled across the lawn, and went into the house. The house was still. She looked in the kitchen and the dining room and the living room, but Kate was nowhere on the ground floor. She heard the sound of Kate’s voice upstairs then, and she smiled to herself, took hold of the banister, and tiptoed up the steps and down the corridor to where the door of the master bedroom stood ajar.