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DAPHNE:Pregnancy in the Sixties was more fun. You could smoke and drink still.
RUTH:So you were happy there?
DAPHNE:I should have been, because I was finally rich and had a glamorous life. But I hated being pregnant again. This time, I felt so heavy, so pinned down by the world, like a breed sow. It didn’t help that the bigger I got, the more Geoffrey stepped out on me. The cancer diagnosis had made him party even harder, as if he could drink and screw his fear away. I have learned over and over in my life to never expect loyalty from a man. If you want loyalty, buy a dog. If you want something that won’t hump every leg in town, buy a plant.
RUTH:That’s shitty, to be stepping out on your pregnant wife. Were you mad about the cheating?
DAPHNE:Touched a nerve, huh? Well, I was mad about being left alone. And he barely tolerated my son. He only seemed to like James if he was completely silent in another room. But that’s old money for you! They love their dogs and hate their kids! I wouldn’t have cared except he still hadn’t adopted my son. He kept saying he’d get around to it, but he wasn’t budging. It was a concern. I’d married Geoffrey and gotten pregnant so my son could have a better life, and now I was starting to worry that the price had been too high. ..
Chapter Seventeen
I went into labor on a steamy July evening in New York. I had wanted to rent a summer house in the countryside, a place where James could swim and canoe, and where I could sleep under a cool breeze from the lake. But Geoffrey had insisted that the best doctors were in the city and that I didn’t want to give birth in some hick doctor’s office in the Catskills. Of course, I knew that the real reason was that New York had the highest rate of whores per square mile, and you can’t fuck a pretty view.
I had been feeling particularly achy that day, unable to eat anything, and all I wanted to do was lie in bed and watch my soaps. But my son had wanted to play so I took him out, spending the last hour spread out like a picnic on the grass, staring vacantly at the white-hot sky.
We were crossing a busy street when the first wave of pain came rumbling up from my ankles, rolling over me like a tidal wave and making the street dissolve around me. I sent James off to a friend who lived in the building and prayed that I would see him again. I could feel the boundary between life and death starting to thin. It’s not like now; back then when you went into labor, you felt death hovering in the doorway, waiting to slip inside. If it has to be one of us, I prayed, take the baby. Geoffrey was totally unreliable. If I died, he would stick my son in an orphanage long before his own end came. But I didn’t even know who I was praying to. I didn’t believe in God, and even if He did exist, He’d never taken my feedback before.
If Geoffrey had rushed into the hospital at that moment, when I was so scared and alone, he would have won my loyalty forever. Or at least for another year or two, long enough for him to kick the bucket. I had left a message with the doorman, but I doubted Geoffrey would return home in time to collect it. I promised myself that if I survived the night, I would fix my life. I didn’t want things to go back to the way they were before, when I was working long hours and never seeing James. I wanted the life Geoffrey owed me; I just didn’t want him in it.
I lay in a hospital bed, unsure if hours had passed or only minutes. Sometimes there were other people in the room, doctors and nurses, flickering like shadows across the wall, but in my memories, I am always alone. I was dimly aware that I could see the red flare of a sunset on the horizon. My mind pitched back to the stadium-sized sunsets I’d watched on the Saskatchewan prairie, when I was pausing to wipe the sweat off my face or hurrying to the outhouse as the frozen winds howled across snow as dry as sand. I felt scared again, like a trapped animal all white-eyed and skittering, and it reminded me of being back on that farm, living in fear of the weather and my father. And then, mercifully, another contraction blotted out the memories, and I was staring out at apartment buildings lit up like birthday cakes.
“It’s time to push,” they said. But I already knew. There are things that the world teaches a woman, and there are things you are born knowing. Something was coming away inside, separating from me. Pain seared through my lower half, leaving my arms scrabbling and clutching the bed. I screamed and pushed and then suddenly, something fell out of me, all crumped and slimy, like an uncooked chicken. I heard a high-pitched squeal and collapsed back on the bed, knowing that the baby was here.
“It’s a girl,” the doctor announced. I smiled tiredly. There went Geoffrey’s plans for Geoffrey Junior. Some part of me was glad that he wouldn’t get to name my creation, sloppily stamping his identity all over my baby like the drunken kisses he planted on my face. Somewhere in the city, that asshole was hitting on someone else’s daughter, not even knowing that he’d just become a father.
The drama of the moment was draining out of me. Childbirth is indescribable. It’s a moment of danger, of insanity, of so many feelings that never get names. Feelings that women look back on periodically in their lives, trying to use their small, ineffectual words to describe things that could never be grasped.
And then another wave of pain gripped me, and I screamed, shocked by my body’s betrayal. I had pushed the baby out. What more did it want?
The doctor and the nurse felt my stomach carefully, murmuring medical terms to each other. I lay there, barely aware of the little girl that a nurse had taken away to clean.
“It’s twins. We need to deliver that second baby.”
I fell back on the bed, writhing in pain and clutching my stomach. That was the moment I knew I was dying. I was already so exhausted that I was starting to hear voices. I had put everything into the first birth, had torn myself up from the roots, leaving me scraped out and exposed on the bed. I could feel my pathetic life, the dirt, the desperation, the things men did to me, beginning to fade away. My vision was darkening and blurring, and I saw a figure hovering in the corner. Was it Ted? Waiting to finally drag me to hell? Was it my father? Come to take me back home? In that case, I’d take Ted.
I shut my eyes, ready for it all to be over. I had struggled for long enough. But then something occurred to me. Yes, there had been so much ugliness. Years and years of it. But I had survived it all. I could have died in so many different ways if I hadn’t saved myself. I could have stayed in Lucan and ended up pregnant at sixteen, hemorrhaging to death in my shack as I tried to birth a child born of incest. I could have hanged myself in the barn to avoid another rape by the preacher because I knew no one would believe me. It could have been me at the bottom of Ted’s stairs, a crumpled heap of broken bones and pitiful little dreams.
I had already outlived Ted. I was going to outlive my father, the preacher, Geoffrey, the whole fucking world. I was going to do things they’d never dreamed of. I just needed to save myself.
So, I pushed as hard as I could, the pain blotting out everything, filling my world with white. I pushed and pushed, alone in the noise.
“Twin girls and look how sweet they are!” the nurse said with a smile, placing the wrapped bundles in my arms, like loaves from the bakery. They didn’t inspire the same rush of love I’d felt for James. Maybe it was because they reminded me of Geoffrey, or maybe I couldn’t quite forgive them for being twins. But even as I lay in that hospital bed, exhausted and bitter, I didn’t forget the promise I had made to myself. Things were going to change.
DAPHNE:From Day One I found taking care of two more babies hard. On a bad day, I’d feel trapped beneath their sleeping bodies, like I was being buried alive. And I knew all these kids made me less attractive to men. They must have thought I was the kind of gal who got pregnant every time she stood downwind of a man! It was the Sixties; everyone wanted to be Jackie Kennedy, not Ethel.
RUTH:Did you love your daughters? When they were babies?
DAPHNE:Look, it’s complicated. It was easy to love James; even just watching him was a pleasure. He was the proof that I wasn’t a bad person. Diane and Rose were harder to love. They were adorable of course, but they were made for each other, not me.
RUTH:That must be tough to admit, especially as they might listen to this?
DAPHNE:Well, I’ve already confessed to murder, so I might as well bare all. But mothers don’t talk about things like this, especially not back then. It’s insane. You have this thing happen that damages your body, threatens your life, and then destroys your freedom, and you can’t even say it isn’t like waltzing through a candy cane forest every fucking day. But I tried my best for my daughters because I knew what it was like to grow up feeling unwanted.
RUTH:And you grew to love them?
DAPHNE:I did. And it was fun to shop for the girls. I loved going into Bergdorf Goodman to buy expensive toys and outfits from my old co-workers, loved seeing them go green with envy. To be honest, I probably was spending a little too much back then. And just like men, I always fell out of love with my purchases once I brought them home. But after the twins were born, shopping was my only escape, well, that and dieting.
RUTH:Dieting?