Bad Girl (Delmar)/Chapter 22
It was over now—the months of waiting, the pain, the fear that the baby would die, the two weeks at the sanitarium. It was all over, or practically so. This was Dot's last night away from home.
She had spent most of the day in the nursery receiving instructions from Miss Parsons on how to bathe, diaper, and dress the infant. It was all very simple. You just went ahead and did it, praying to God all the while that the baby wouldn't slip, drop, or cry.
Now she sat in a chair at the window, with the baby in her arms, looking at the house across the yard where tonight there was another party wrell under way.
It was very pleasant sitting there with Edna and Eddie beside her and young Edward lustily partaking of his supper. It was ten o'clock. Soon they must all desert her for the night, but they would leave a cozy contentment behind them. Dot's eyes wandered over Edna's familiar, homely face and on to Eddie. Lastly they rested on the baby. Her heart swelled till it seemed that it must leave her body and soar above the clouds. The two loves of her life, and her friend. Her eyes wandered to the bed where Mrs. Vernon had lain. She regretted the loss of the strange, red-haired woman. She wished that she were here now, even if she were only reading and scowling into her book in the manner that Dot had come to know. Dot had asked for her address, but she had laughed and said, "Dottie, you're a darling, but you're not one to keep a secret. I'll take your address instead." But she had gone without asking for it, and Dot had not pressed it upon her.
"What I'm trying to find out," said Edna, "is what the devil you want for supper tomorrow night."
"Oh, anything," said Dot. "Ham sandwiches will do. I'll be so glad to get home I won't care what I eat."
"In that case, I guess there's no use of me fussing for you. I like a good meal at six o'clock, and Eddie hasn't had anything but sandwiches for two weeks; so I guess the best thing we can do is to leave two hunks of ham and a loaf of bread for you, and Eddie and I'll go to a restaurant to celebrate. How about it?"
Dot laughed. The idea of Edna and Eddie entertaining each other was good.
"No kidding, Dot." Eddie's voice was coaxing. "Edna says she don't mind cooking supper tomorrow night; so as long as she's game, why don't you pick out something you like and have a swell feed?"
Dot looked down at the baby's face and spoke with her eyes fixed hard on his little busy mouth. "What I want would cost about four dollars," she said.
"Well, speak up," Edna said.
"Sure," Eddie added, "Mr. Williams broke his heart and gave me a five-spot."
Dot looked up quickly. "And you'd buy supper things with it?" she asked. "That's for the baby. When people give you money, it's because they don't know what you need for him." She dropped her eyes again and added, "It's not fair to Mr. Williams, Eddie, not to spend the money on something for the kid."
"Is that so?" Eddie demanded, hotly. "You know what Williams told me to do with it? He told me to get some whiskey and get cockeyed drunk and recover from the wait I had downstairs. What do you think of that?"
"I think that's darn mean of Mr. Williams," said Dot. "Me with a new-born baby and you cockeyed drunk."
"Well, what are you mad about? I didn't get drunk, did I? What is it you want for supper tomorrow night?"
"I'd like an extra special steak. A real thick, tender one, you know. And mashed potatoes and corn on the cob and sliced tomatoes with plenty of mayonnaise, and rolls from the Hanscom Bakery, and bananas and cream."
"Order received and noted," said Edna. "Coffee or tea?"
"Coffee."
"Soft or hard rolls?"
"Soft."
"Will you take it at the table or in bed?"
"At the table."
"Fine. What time would you like it served, M'lady?"
Eddie turned to Edna and said, "I wanted to bring her home in the morning, but I can't get off till one o'clock, and it's so hot then that I thought we'd better wait till around five. I hate to drag her out of here when it's so hot. The nurse says she can wait."
"That's the best way," said Edna. "You leave here at five o'clock and come right home and sit down and eat your extra special steak."
"First I'll have to change the baby's diaper," said Dot.
Miss Harris came to get the baby, and Edna and Eddie got up to leave. Dot smiled again. It was funny and kind of sweet to think of them walking down the street together. What would they talk about?
They both kissed her. Edna bent over the baby and kissed his fingers and murmured silly, soft things in his ear.
"Oh, for heaven's sake!" she said suddenly. "Here I am hogging the baby and not giving Eddie a chance to kiss him good night."
The smile froze on Dot's face. Eddie had never kissed the baby. He didn't want to. What would he do now that Edna had practically forced him into it? Just as he and Edna were getting more friendly and he was becoming kina of used to the baby, she had to pull a bone like this. What would he do?
Eddie bent over the baby and kissed his cheek. He had a soft little cheek, and the smell of his healthy, clean young skin filled Eddie with happiness. His kid was like that. Sweet and normal and fresh like a young flower on its stem.
"Come on, Edna," he said. "It's after ten o'clock, and I got to take you home first."
"Why, that's silly, Eddie. I can perfectly well—"
"I'll take you home. Good night, Dot. Sleep well."
Dot heard them descending the stairs. Funny the stairs weren't carpeted. You'd think in a place like this where there were so many sick people that they'd have carpet. . . . Hm, Eddie took that pretty well after all. He'd made a good job of kissing the baby. Kissed him just as though he'd always wanted to kiss him and as though something had held him back before. Nice of him to try so hard to be decent about it. Perhaps if he tried real hard to love the baby he might get so after a while that he wouldn't mind holding the kid in his arms. Gee, imagine what it would be like if Eddie ever got to care about the baby! How wonderful it would be to know he was there suffering with her when the baby was ill, laughing with her at the antics of the child Edward, and rejoicing with her when the child had become a man. No, that could never be. The best she could hope for was a placid toleration of the little fellow. Eddie wasn't the sort to be soft over a kid. Maybe because his own father had been so rough and hard. Dot sighed. No use dreaming about the way things ought to be; it only made what really was, much more awful to bear.
It was Dot's duty now to prepare herself for bed. The days of being waited on were over, too. She was a patient ready to be discharged. Dot wondered if ever in her life again she would be waited upon. Probably not. There would very likely be no serious illness which would send her to the hospital, and she would try not to have any more children. No, never again would a tray be brought to her bedside. Hospitals were the only places where that was done, and she never expected to enter another.
Dot went to the bathroom and washed her face and hands. She brushed her teeth and combed her hair. Tomorrow night she would be doing this in her own bathroom!
The ward was dark when she returned to her bed. Dot lay very still and tried to sleep. The party across the way was rapidly rising to a glorious peak. The husky, deep voice of a dusky woman reached Dot's ears.
Salt is salt,
If I ain't gave you lovin',
It's your own darn fault."
Dot smiled. The woman who sang would be a creamy shade of tan with black bobbed hair and gold circlets in her ears. She would have flashing white teeth, and perhaps she'd wear a red dress. Once a girl like that had come to the Poppyland Dance Hall. It was only by her escort's looks that the manager had been sure she was colored. They had been put out, of course. It had ruined Sue Cudahy's whole evening. Sue had felt sort of contaminated; so they had all gone over to Maude McLaughlin's to forget the unpleasant episode.
Dot fell asleep, but her thoughts continued unbroken. She fancied that the colored girl with the golden circlets was lying in the bed next to her. They talked about childbirth.
It was only by Miss Parsons' voice calling to her that Dot knew that the night was over. She was going home today. She and her baby were going home. It seemed wrong that everything in the ward was the same and that she should eat her breakfast with slow indifference. There should be bustle and rush, excitement. Heavens, she and her baby were going home!
She found her clothes in the closet, the clothes she had worn to the sanitarium, the dress which had enough material in it to make her two dresses now, the cape which she would have to wear to conceal the dress. She had wanted Eddie to bring some other things to her, but he would not know which dress she wanted, no matter how carefully she explained. After all, it didn't matter. There wouldn't be many people to see her. Eddie had seemed less dense on the subject of baby clothes. He had understood that he must bring a dress, two petticoats, a shirtie, a diaper, a bonnet, a sacque, a bellyband, a pair of bootees, two blankets, and stockings. Funny, how bewildered and frightened he would have looked had she asked him to get her pink dress off the hook and bring it along.
Dot got into her clothes. She made up her face very carefully. She wanted to look nice despite the terrible dress which hung so disgracefully upon her.
Miss Parsons came into the ward. She looked at Dot and laughed. "Hurry up," she said. "Get your hat. You're going home at five o'clock, and it's a quarter of ten already."
"Never mind. Don't razz me," said Dot. "Wait till some day you're in a hurry to get home."
Dot picked up a magazine and tried to read, but she couldn't get interested in the stories. A baby cried in the nursery. She went to see if it was young Edward, and it was. Gleefully, Dot lifted him from the bassinet and reached for a dry diaper. She was going to change her baby's diaper. She was going to make him all nice and comfy again.
But Miss Parsons was too fast for her. She came hurrying into the nursery just as Dot had opened the baby's blanket. "Get out of here," she said. "You are a fool if ever one breathed. Here's almost your last chance to get your kid diapered for you, and you want to do it. Many a time, in the months to come, you'll wish you had Parsons to change him."
Dot laughed. "I'll love doing it," she said.
"Yeh, you and the other inmates of the nut house."
Dot went back to her magazine. Despite the friendly tone of Miss Parsons' jeers, it was evident that Dot was not supposed to minister to her baby until she got him home. She wished they'd let her bathe him. The time was dragging so terribly.
Just before luncheon, Sue Cudahy came in. Dot did not expect any more visitors until she got home, but she was glad to see Sue.
Sue had something on her mind. She fairly glittered with the importance of it. The shiny, shellacked wings on her hat and the rhinestones on her slippers seemed to express her excitement as plainly as her gleaming eyes and her torrent of words.
"Oh, I couldn't wait till tonight when you were home to see you," she cried. "Besides, Edna will be there and all. This is a funny thing to tell you just as you're leaving the hospital, but I just went to the doctor's, and he says yes I am, and I just had to come here to tell you. What do you think? I'm going to have a baby!"
Dot's eyes grew large with surprise. She was sitting on the bed, facing the window, and Sue looked well at her for signs of the ordeal through which she had passed. She found no such signs, and with so concrete a reassurance before her, she squeezed Dot's hand and repeated, "I'm going to have a baby, Dot!"
"Are you actually going to have it, Sue?"
"Sure. When a woman intends to give birth she says, 'I'm going to have a baby,' and when she is not going through with it she says, 'I'm pregnant.' That's how you can tell, Dot."
"Not always," said Dot. "See, Sue, I' in getting smart. I never used to be able to argue with you. Now I know a lot more things than I used to know."
"I want to ask you about some of them. Tell me, honest to God, Dot, without trying to save me from being scared or without laying it on like one little louse, whose name I won't mention but who is a mutual friend, would do—tell me, does it pain terrible?"
Dot's gaze locked with Sue's. Sue's eyes were honest seekers after truth. You couldn't turn her question aside with a stall about cramps or with a light reply. A woman had a right to have her questions answered when she took the cheap cynicism which she loved so dearly and traded it in for a straight answer on what concerned her so terribly.
"Sue, listen, if all the women in the world were sitting right where you are and asked me that question I'd tell them this: yes, it pains like bloody hell. Nobody who hasn't been through it can know what it's like. No man doctor can have more than the smallest idea what it feels like. It pains like hell. Maybe a lot of women like Edna Driggs who would hear me say that would laugh at me and say that it was nothing bad at all. And that's the best part of it, Sue. When it's over, you forget. It depends on how good your forgetery is, how fast you get over it. And it's worth it. Oh, Sue, you don't know how well worth it it is to have a baby that's all your own. If you have good care, you're all right. That's what I'd tell all the women in the world if they came and asked me, Sue. It pains like hell, but it's over fast and you forget it."
"Have you forgotten?"
"Almost. If you'd have come tomorrow, I'd have probably told you that it wasn't as bad as a headache."
"How about our mutual friend? She hasn't forgotten."
"I don't know what to think about her, Sue. I'm kind of afraid that she's just a mean woman who feels important when she's scaring people. She's too mean to even say that the pain was worth it, and it is, Sue, it is."
"My mother says it's nothing," Sue offered.
Dot's lips parted in a smile of reminiscence. "Your mother has done a good job of forgetting, Sue. And so will I, and so will you. You have a couple of hours of pain, and then it's all over forever and you have your baby. Why shouldn't it hurt? Gee, Sue, everything that's worth having hurts in some way or other."
"I guess you're right, Dot. It didn't hurt at all to get Pat."
Dot looked at Sue a moment more and then turned away. Why was it that other people were always finished with a serious subject long before she was? Other people were always quick to turn back to wisecracks. Maybe that was why she didn't have many friends. Too serious, perhaps. She'd have to snap out of it. Be more flip. She laughed a little at her thoughts. She'd start to be flip as soon as she had her son raised. A mere matter of eighteen or twenty years.
The luncheon tray came in, and Sue got up from her perch on the window sill. "I'll be going, Dot," she said. "I only dropped in to tell you my news. Should I come up to your house tonight?"
"If you want to. To tell the truth, Sue, I'll be going to bed very early."
"Well, I'll come in for fifteen or twenty minutes."
"All right, Sue." Dot knew that she could depend on Edna to see that Sue didn't make a night of it.
She had no appetite at all for lunch. She wanted to go home. She longed for the sight of her delft-blue living-room and for a cup of coffee such as came only from her own little percolator. She thought of the dinner which Edna would have ready for her and was horrified to find that it awakened not the slightest desire. Well, she'd have to make a bluff at enjoying it if her appetite was not aroused by the cheering sight of her own home.
Bill came and took the tray away. Dot rouged and powdered again. She started another story in the magazine and laid it aside without finishing it. She strolled past the nursery, trying to get a peep at her baby. She failed in her effort. She tried to hold a conversation with the woman whose child had died. This effort also failed. There was absolutely nothing she could do.
"Why don't you lie down and take a nap?" Miss Parsons suggested.
Dot thanked her and curled up on the bed. She lay there for forty minutes and then got up. It was useless. She could not sleep, but anyhow forty minutes had passed.
She was going home, and nobody seemed to realize the importance of it. Miss Parsons advised a nap, and Eddie seemed to think that he was going to keep her cooped up in the sanitarium till five o'clock. Even the baby thought this was the same as other days.
It was a quarter of three when Eddie came in. He had had to go home first and gather up the baby's clothes and get into his new blue suit. He had shaved and had washed his hands with Gre-solvent. Dot untied the very neat bundle which Eddie had made of the baby's things and counted them over carefully. He hadn't forgotten anything. Everything was all right, except that he had brought Mrs. Cudahy's bootees instead of Miss Eiden's.
Miss Parsons gathered up the things and departed with them to the nursery.
"Oh, can I watch you dress him?" asked Dot.
"I'm not going to dress him yet," Miss Parsons said. "You're not going for another two hours."
Dot looked at Eddie pleadingly. "Please, can't we go right away?" she asked.
"It's awfully hot out, Kid."
"But look, Eddie, it'll be a half hour or so by the time the baby's ready, and it'll be another half hour by the time we get home, and I figured that maybe I'd feel better if I could lay down a while home before supper. Can't we tell her to fix the baby right away?"
"All right. It's up to you."
Dot ran to the nursery. "We're leaving right away, Miss Parsons," she cried. "Could you fix the baby now?"
"Sure."
Miss Parsons plucked the baby from his crib. She took off the sanitarium clothes and began to dress him in his own little things. Dot thrilled. The diaper she had hemmed, the petticoat she had embroidered, were at last on the baby. Her eyes filled with tears of excitement when the little dress was buttoned on him. She laughed with delight when she saw the little bonnet on his head and the great white bow tied in a fascinating knot under his chin. He was wearing the sacque that Eddie had brought home. He looked kind of funny. Like a little pink monkey. Dot grabbed him away from Miss Parsons and kissed him again and again.
She waltzed with him into the room where Eddie was waiting so uneasily. He was pretending to read a magazine, but he couldn't concentrate on the words. He was bringing Dot and the kid home today. Home. Dot and the kid. Today.
He looked up at her as she came into the room. "Why don't you take it easy?" he asked. "What's the idea, capering around?"
"Oh, I'm so happy to be going home!"
"Well, take it easy."
He got up and reached for his hat. It was last year's straw. He put it on, and Dot felt a little sorry for it, it looked so wilted and weather-beaten in comparison with the new blue suit.
He walked toward the door, and Dot said, "Say, would you mind holding the kid a minute while I get my hat and cape?"
"Lay him on the bed," said Eddie.
"Maybe he'll roll off. Here, he won't bite you."
Dot put the baby in Eddie's arms and went to get her things. Eddie walked out of the room. He stood in the hall for a minute looking down at the baby. Then he kissed him. Could you squeeze them while they were so young? Well, maybe a little bit. Eddie squeezed him a little bit, and the baby fixed an inquisitive blue gaze upon him.
"That was squeezin', old fellow," Eddie whispered to the baby. "Should we do it again?"
Miss Parsons came out of a room, and Eddie handed her the baby and ran down the stairs. Dot found young Edward dozing in the nurse's arms. A wave of anger broke over Dot. He couldn't even hold the kid for a second. Who the hell did he think he was, that he was too good to hold his own kid? She grabbed the baby from Miss Parsons and started down the stairs.
"Need some help? Aren't you a bit wobbly?"
"No, thanks, Miss Parsons. I can make it. Good-by."
There was no sign of Eddie on the first floor. She sat down and waited. Where had he gone? She straightened the bow on the baby's cap and brushed a smear of powder off his neck. Eddie came into the sanitarium, banging the screen door behind him. "Come on, Dot," he said. "I got a taxi waiting."
Her anger dissolved. That's what he had gone away for. "Oh, Eddie, you shouldn't have done that. I could have gone home on the 'bus."
"Come on." He put his hand under her arm and piloted her down the stone steps to the street. He helped her into the cab and seated himself beside her. "Go slow, Buddie," he said to the driver.
The driver turned around and smiled at the little family. He'd been in Eddie's boots three times.
Eddie held out his hands for the baby. "Want me to take him?"
"Yes, if you don't mind, Eddie." It really was hot, and she did wish that she hadn't been on her feet so much all day. The baby felt like a ton of heat in her arms. It wouldn't hurt Eddie to hold him.
The transfer made, she stretched her legs joyfully and turned to look at St. Nicholas Avenue. The sky bending blue and dependable above the world made her very happy, the sun glowing goldenly, brilliantly, beautiful again now that her travail was over. The world was right. Some day, somehow, Eddie would come to love the little pink monkey who lay so trustingly, so unaware of antagonism, in his daddy's arms.
She turned again to feast her eyes upon the tiny mortal. He was so sweet, so adorable, so— Suddenly the blood in Dot's veins turned to ice water. A sharp prickling sensation ran up her back. The baby was dribbling. On the sleeve of Eddie's new blue suit the baby was dribbling. On the sleeve of Eddie's new blue suit! What would happen now? Would Eddie slap the baby? Would he perhaps make her slap the poor little thing?
He had to be told. Soon he might find out for himself, and then it would be worse.
"Eddie, let me take the baby. He's—he's dribbling on the sleeve of your new blue suit!"
Eddie looked at her with the narrowed gaze that she knew so well. "Dribbling, huh?" he said. "Do you think that's anything? Say, I'm wet clear through, and I ain't kicking, am I? Shut up!"