Read Part 1 here.
Winter
Snow in a rural setting was new for Rebecca. After the heavy flakes mounted, hours or days would pass before a snowplow cleared the road, unlike the brisk and efficient cleanup of suburbs and cities. Brian relied on the New England staple of four-wheel drive to barrel through the unplowed snow on his way up to campus. This left Rebecca stranded with the less capable car, a feeling she came to relish.
Where the fall had seen the beginning of her domestic impulse, the weeks of winter that trapped her in the house unleashed a need for homemaking that Rebecca never could have anticipated in all the years of her professionally focused education. She made an effort to cook new foods, learned to keep the fire going in the woodstove, and even took up knitting, which she hadn’t touched since childhood.
She had reason to knit: baby sweaters. In late fall, Rebecca had been seized with an impulse to give Jack a sibling. Something about watching him climb and run as a sturdy toddler shocked her with the realization that he was no longer a baby. She was certain that her concern was for Jack and wanting him to have a companion. She couldn’t admit that she wanted a baby for herself, someone to stay small at least for a time, innocent and incapable of wreaking havoc on the house.
Brian seemed surprised but eventually acquiesced. “Are you sure you want another one? You seem worn out as it is. Besides, I’ll miss this,” he said sliding his arms comfortably around her waist, a feat made impossible by the late stages of pregnancy. Rebecca fought the urge to push him away, realizing that lashing out would undermine her ultimate goal of successful conception. Between some scheduled evenings and several bottles of wine, they managed even to enjoy the experience, both seized with a fleeting sense that everything was right with the world.
Rebecca went about her days trying not to think about the possibility of pregnancy, focusing instead on tagging along after Jack. The first indication was when she eagerly downed a bowl of Bolognese and promptly ran to the bathroom to grip the cool porcelain rim while losing the contents of her stomach. Sure enough, when she gave in two days later and took a pregnancy test, a faint positive undeniably appeared. Brian rushed off to his morning classes not noticing the pale, pink-tipped plastic stick on the counter, oblivious to his wife’s triumphant glow.
That was the day of the first snowfall, which started in the late afternoon. After Jack refused to nap, which exasperated Rebecca, she took him out into the woods, hoping the trees would offer some reprieve. There, as on so many days, she saw Gene. He was standing still, gazing into the distance while lost in thought. His smile offered a warmth she hoped was just for her. An aging man with a receding hairline over pale blue eyes, he must have been attractive in his younger years.
Rebecca considered telling Gene about the pregnancy test, but something stopped her, perhaps his Yankee reserve. A bitter wind whipped through the trees, causing Rebecca to wrap her arms around herself. Gene was telling a story of when he and Beverly spent a semester in Italy when Jack fell, a sickening thud resounding as his head hit one of the logs. Rebecca hesitated, reluctant to leave the amusing story about Beverly requesting an aria from a musical troupe in a café, but she ran to Jack, scooping him up as he squalled.
That ended the afternoon. The snowflakes began to whirl in the air. There was an unspoken understanding at that moment that they wouldn’t see each other for a while. Rebecca knew that Beverly and Gene went to her sister’s house in Florida for several weeks between terms. After that, it would be too cold to meet in the woods like this, this private sanctuary for lonely people. “You take care now!” Gene had called with an air of finality. Rebecca carried Jack, writhing and heavy, back to the house, vaguely aware that she should try to comfort him but too preoccupied with her own emotions.
During the winter months, Rebecca felt the thrill of new life within her. The fact of her pregnancy seemed to add import to all her action and justify her time and energy. Now the afternoon nap she often fell into on the days Jack still slept here a well-earned reward for carrying a baby instead of source of guilt.
Despite the regal quality of gestating, Rebecca did feel another kind of guilt. No matter how much she threw herself into the cleaning and caring for the home, it still looked dirty and neglected, Jack’s toys and house miscellany perpetually on every surface. The mess clearly irritated Brian, though he knew better than to bring it up. The fact that he so tactfully avoided it irritated Rebecca.
The closest Brian came to commenting on the state of the house was when he stepped on a wooden rabbit pull toy. The pain sent Brian into a rage, bellowing, “Jack, pick this up right now or I will throw it the trash!”
After weeks of feeling self-conscious, Rebecca reacted with hysteria, screaming at Brian about the “heirloom quality” of the “vintage wooden toys” that she had collected from thrift stores and second-hand shops. “If you throw them out, I’m moving back to Philadelphia without you!”
“If that’s what you want to do, be my guest. It’s not like you ever have time for me here.”
Rebecca scoffed, “I don’t have time for you? You’re the one who works every minute of the day and never helps with Jack at all. I am utterly on my own! I honestly can’t imagine it’s much different being a single mother. You know, my friends’ husbands come home to do bath time and put kids to bed? They help every single night!”
“If I don’t help it’s because you make it impossible! You have to do everything with Jack your way. Everything I do is so offensive to you I’ve just given up. As for working? Why don’t you get a job, Becky? You haven’t made it easy dropping out of all professional employment, throwing away your degree. What do you expect me to do?”
Brian’s words stung more than Rebecca wanted to admit. In the minutia of caring for a toddler, she hadn’t considered the financial realities of a growing family on the salary of an untenured professor early in his career. Feeling a challenge that Brian had not meant, Rebecca acted as though she wanted to finish her dissertation. She insisted that Brian come home early two nights a week to put Jack to bed so that she could go to campus to write.
Once again, Brian acquiesced, too weary to fight her whims or question her motives. Those evenings, hours after the sun set in the late afternoon, were a reprieve from the constant nagging presence of Jack. But they were anything but professionally productive. Brian had offered Rebecca his office to work in, which was across the hall from Lillian Anderson. Stephanie, the model turned star academic was a frequent visitor of Lillian’s and the two became an obsession for Rebecca. Flipping disinterestedly through volumes ordered from other university libraries, Rebecca listened intently to any snippet of conversation or words exchanged in the hall.
She could not resist analyzing every maternal moment she could spy from her perch behind Brian’s pretentiously arranged desk. One evening, Lillian bustled into the office at 8:30 carrying her daughter. Clearly desperate to send a frantic email, Lillian ignored Aurora as she fussed and squirmed in her thick winter coat, a fleece hat sliding over her eye. “Oh, come on baby, mommy just needs to send one email and then we can go home. I have a deadline, you know!” In response, little Aurora merely squirmed harder and cried more shrilly.
Rebecca gloated smugly at the spectacle, shocked that a two-year-old would be out at that time of night, ignored in favor of the harsh glow of a computer and some deadline. As she turned back to her laptop, the cursor blinked menacingly as if accusing her of negligence, a total lack of progress. The feeling of superiority evaporated, and a wave of weariness washed over her. She knew she wouldn’t finish the dissertation, and everyone else knew, too.
She had emailed her director with the news that she would take up writing again, but added that she was expecting her second child, essentially broadcasting that she was fundamentally not serious. Her dissertation director, a severe woman who favored black ensembles and had forgone marriage and children for academic excellence, responded curtly and dismissively, confirming for Rebecca how foolish she looked. She knew Brian thought the same, but, too tired to fight her, he went along with the charade, dutifully spending time with Jack every other night, ignoring him while he thumbed through novels he was teaching and trying to get him to bed as soon as possible.
Rebecca sighed, snapped her laptop shut, and headed for the staircase. Before she made it safely out of the stairwell, Stephanie bounded past her, throwing her a cheerful wave and smile. Rebecca withered inside. Even in a bulky winter coat, Stephanie looked lithe and spritely, her hair gleaming, nails manicured. Rebecca thought ruefully about how well-groomed motherless women were as she ventured back to her house, undoubtedly still in shambles.
Along with the child growing in her, a seed of interest was germinating that winter. It was a fascination cultivated not by becoming acquainted but by absence. Rebecca collected the mail from the post office for the Harrises. She wondered about the contents of all their correspondence and thumbed nosily through their magazines. On days the weather was mild enough to go walking with Jack, she gazed up at the empty house through the trees wondering about Gene. She found herself storing up commentary and thoughts on books to share with him before remembering that she wouldn’t see him for several more weeks.
After a trip to see family in Connecticut for Christmas, Rebecca met the midwives at the hospital 45-minutes away who would be delivering her baby. “Your husband must be a professor at the college,” the matronly nurse with thick red hair said surveying Rebecca and Jack, identifying a type. Jack’s birth had been a crucible of drugs and epidural, sleepless nights and threatened cesarean. Rebecca longed for the quiet intimacy of giving birth at home, but Brian forbade her, something he did not often do. The drive to the midwives was picturesque, and they had a good reputation. Rebecca hoped for an experience that would awaken her to herself, a profound and beautiful birth.
As the first hints of spring started to play at the landscape, the chilling warmths teasing at the horizon, Rebecca felt more at home. Her focus was on the new baby and caring for Jack in their daily rhythm of life. Outings to the miniscule public library and playdates with Aurora and her au pair provided diversions. Rebecca had quietly given up on writing her dissertation. Brian asked no questions and continued with his relentless campaign to ascend the heights of small liberal arts college literature. Into this momentary calm, the Harris’s car drove down the dirt road, tires sliding between chunks of ice on the muddy road.
To be continued
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