She said, “I was afraid, Priss.”
“Of course.”
“I guess that must have been what I was afraid of.”
“I think so, yes.”
“Am I-?”
“Don’t look for labels.”
“But I screw every boy in the world and nothing happens, and now-”
“You’ll come with boys, too. It’s a matter of knowing how. Now you know how, and everything’ll work out.”
“Even if it doesn’t, at least I know something about myself.”
“Yes.”
“Will I see you again?”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Probably not.”
I told her some other things, and stroked her hair, and she put her arms around me and kissed my mouth and told me she loved me, which I guess she did. And I told her I loved her, and I guess I did, too.
The boys were waiting in the car. I dropped them all at a place where they could conveniently hitch a ride. Then I drove home again. I never did stop at a supermarket, but no one seemed to notice.
That was the only time, the only straying from the straight and narrow primrose path. One might say that it was sufficient. But it was the only time.
I would have liked not to have mentioned it. Months have passed, and I have lived perfectly adequately without mentioning it, and would gladly leave it forever unmentioned. I have not seen any of them again, Glory or the four boys. I do not want to see them again. I have no idea what has become of any of them, and while I wish only the best for Glory, it would suit me perfectly well never to hear anything of or from her for the rest of my life.
So why bring this up?
Because.
Oh, shit, let us blurt this out and be done with it. Once upon a fine summer day, a very fine and very summery day, I stood mixing martinis when Rhoda appeared wearing a tentative smile upon her face.
“I have something to tell you,” she said, “and I don’t know how to begin.”
“Just plunge right in,” I said. “Here, have a drink.”
“I think I need one. Yes, indeed I do. All right, all I can do is jump right in and say it.”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m pregnant.”
I looked at her. She looked at me, and away, and at me again.
“Harry’s,” she said.
“Of course.”
“There was no one else.”
“Of course not.”
“I know the two of you wanted to have children and couldn’t, and I don’t know how you’ll feel about this, and I haven’t said anything to Harry about it, and if you want I suppose I could get rid of this baby, if you hate the whole idea of it, I mean I could understand that, Priss, believe me I could-”
I poured myself another drink.
“-but I almost died last time I had an abortion, although of course I would find a better doctor this time around, but I probably never will get a chance to have a kid again, and I was always convinced I didn’t want one but now I think I would, in fact I know I would, and I don’t know what to say or what to do.”
“How long have you known?”
“A week. I’m about two months along. I had a rabbit test and killed the rabbit. There’s no question about it. All the signs, sore breasts, nausea in the mornings, the whole pregnancy trip. I’m enceinte, all right.”
“I thought you were taking pills.”
“I thought there was no need. Harry said-”
“He was convinced he was sterile in spite of the tests because he knew I got knocked up before we met.”
“I’m a damned fool.”
“It’s all right.”
“Priss? How do you feel about it?”
How did I feel about it? An inevitable question. Also an impossible question, for more reasons, Rhoda, than you knew at the time.
And for one more reason than you knew after I answered your question.
“I feel strange,” I said.
“Do you want me to have the abortion?”
“No.”
“If you wanted, I would let you and Harry adopt the child. You could bring it up as your own and I would go away. Or I would leave now and have the baby away from here, and Harry would never have to know about it. Or-”
“You couldn’t leave the baby with us.”
“Not if you don’t want it, but-”
“It’s not that.”
She looked at me. I felt lightheaded and thought I might faint at any moment.
“I couldn’t possibly take care of two of them,” I said.
She stared at me. And I at her.
“You don’t mean-”
“I do mean.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Yes, literally. But I’m telling the truth.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“Quite.”
“How far?”
“About the same as you.”
“God in Heaven.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Harry won’t believe this.”
“Probably not.”
Oh God, Harry, what can I say? I should have gone out without a word and had an abortion. I know that. But something wouldn’t let me, because I couldn’t really be absolutely sure that the cake in my oven was not baked by you. The odds are very strong the other way, certainly. All those years of fruitless effort, and then a tasteless gangbang with four faceless young men, and suddenly Guess Who’s Preggers?
Of course everybody knows couples who tried and tried and nothing happened, and then they adopted a baby and immediately the wife got pregnant. I mean, a change in the emotional climate can have that effect. And God knows that the emotional climate around here has been changing right and left.
But.
Yeah, but. I don’t know what to say. But you thought it was great, Harry, that your wife and your mistress-in-residence were both infanticipating simultaneously, and how could I tell you that, while your mistress was having your child, your beloved faithful wife was having someone else’s?
I should never have written this chapter, and now having written it I should tear it up.
But I won’t.
HARRY
Either the last chapter was a far more brilliant joke than I ever thought you capable of, Priscilla, or it was the truth.
Which?
PRISS
Both.
An unintentional joke, and a joke on all of us. Not a brilliant one, I don’t think.
Also the truth.
RHODA
Priss, honey, when you make a mistake, it’s a beaut.
Properly speaking, it’s not my turn to write a chapter. It’s Harry’s turn, and one of these days he’s going to write one, as soon as he bestirs himself. But in the meantime I want to write a few lines if only because it seems as though this is the only way we are presently able to communicate. No one is speaking to any appreciable extent. We pass each other in the halls and nod and grunt and stare vacantly past one another, and we seem to be using the typewriter for conversational purposes, which may be better than not communicating at all, but I’m not absolutely sure of that.
Nothing to be done about it. The moving finger wrote, and having writ, etc.
I’m not entirely certain, Priss, that it was wholly wise of you to go into your mea culpa number. (If Mia Farrow married Robert Culp, it wouldn’t be my fault.) Not that I entirely blame you, either. For doing it, or for telling, or even for telling in such a novel way.
But I’m sorry, all things considered, that we had to get involved in writing this stupid book in the first place. I had the idea and sold the two of you on it, and we all found out more than we wanted to learn and disclosed more than we wanted to give out, and I’m not happy about it and neither is anybody else. I think one problem here is the universal delusion that people are better off knowing unpleasant truths, however unpleasant they may be. I think this derives from the same frame of mind which believes that medicine must taste bad to accomplish anything.
And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.
Bullshit.
The truth will make you split up, that’s what the truth will do.