6th Aprm

Groceries and a tape measure I had to have. So, next morning, right after the fiasco, I made myself go to the village. Chin up and stomach sucked in I marched determinedly down Main Street-sand almost the first thing I saw was a girl who never could have sucked in her stomach. She dodged a station-wagon with cumbersome agility and went on her way with amazing nonchalance. “Quite a turkey in the oven!” I heard a matronly voice observe in the condescending tone of an expert approving the first attempt of a new apprentice.

With my ears aflame I ducked into the drugstore for a coke, but something had got into Al and he insisted on serving me a double banana split. I don’t remember seeing him in the bar last night!

Pushing on to the dry goods store, I had to circle a church-social that was in session on the sidewalk. The ladies stopped talking to let me pass, and if ever I saw a bevy of significant glances that’s what they shot at me. Then they all started gabbling like mad. Just to confound them, I ran the quarter-block to the store for my tape measure. When I got back to the gas station I found the car nicely backed out and waiting. Joe even tipped his hat.

It was darned good to get out of town and back on the seven miles of road home. Only yesterday, with the gas shortage “looming” I had been cursing this remoteness, but now our house seemed wonderful-so far away from everybody else’s! It’s built near the road, but on the other side it hangs over the Saugatuck and everything is beautifully private. The eels come up to the river bank at night and we feed them with pieces of Pat’s leftover breakfast toast. The house is really just two old barns pushed together, but inside we have hand-hewn beams, field-stone fireplaces and a living room twenty-seven feet high. We only rent the place but we love it like a son.

Automatically I started to haul the bags of groceries out of the car, but a voice seemed to whisper, “Don’t lift heavy weights!” I shoved the parcels back in.

“Lucretia,” I screamed, “come and take the groceries.”

Lucretia waddled out of the door, amazement plastered all over her Aunt Jemimah face. “What’d you say?”

I explained the project.

“You wants me to take the groceries in!” Her voice rose an octave. “Why for?”

“Er, I’m tired,” I said lamely. “I’ve been all over town and I’m going down to the river to cool off.”

Grumbling to herself, Lucretia shuffled out to the car, her felt house slippers flapping with every step. Those slippers! But you should taste her peach dumplings, or her pancakes and honey butter. “I was jes’ plannin’ on doin’ a little fishin’. Got my worms dug-”

I ducked around the corner of the house and went down to the swimming-hole. Alone at last! (The bathers don’t arrive until around four and this is not the Constable’s day-he soaps himself once a week just below the bridge and the suds float past our door and circle lazily on the deep water where we swim when there are no suds.) Not a human in sight and not a voice to be heard. Only the babbling of the water against the stones. This is the perfect place for anyone with a past to review it, so I reviewed mine…

If only I weren’t so good at arithmetic! But yesterday I made the final calculations and decided that they meant what they said. No more asking Pat what the date is and how long is it since the day he played those thirty-six holes and I got so mad waiting that I drew pictures of him on the car windows on the way home and the people in the back seat thought they were cute? No, the shadow of things to come has caught up with me. In the middle of the war, too! (Pat has filed his application for a commission and I had just about decided I wanted to see the world with the W AAC-and then my higher calculus reveals this.) 1 can start sewing on little garments any day now,

I’m still not used to the idea, but I’ve decided one thing. Nobody, but nobody, is to know except us. No maternity-klatsches, no clucking and fussing for me, thank you! I won’t tell a soul until I have to. Or until I don’t have to.

I wonder if there’s something wrong with me that I don’t feel more maternal. Oughtn’t I to be having thrills instead of worrying about not seeing Africa in uniform? Anyway, I knew I could count on Patrick to come all over maternal, so last night I decided to put on a good show for him.
If I had only had some lavender-and-lace, or even a fluffy negligee-but I did the best I could with my tailored red pajamas. There I was, the little mother, all starry-eyed with hope, curled up in the biggest chair I could find, the blue-satin comforter from the guest-room tucked around me to give a little glamour to the pajamas. The firelight was flashing on my knitting needles. (It was only the sweater I started six months ago, but it’s white and Pat would never know the difference.)

At 7 P.M. I was still sitting, still clicking, but the starry-eyed look was beginning to wear thin.

At 8 P.M. there was a great thumping on the door. Michael, with his Irish terrier bounce, made it in two jumps, but I stayed where I was. My clicking went into high. I lifted my head wanly, smiled my sweetest martyr smile –

“For crying out loud, what’s wrong with you?”

In stalked Pat at the head of a small army. “Here’s Ed and Bob and Lee-we’re going to do some work tonight, so I brought them home to dinner. D’ya mind?” He scowled at the comforter. “What’s that for? You weren’t going to bed-I’m not that late.”

I leaped to my feet, stumbled over the comforter, shouted a welcoming hello to the army, and galloped out to the kitchen to rustle a bigger salad.

“Look, Lucretia,” I coaxed, “you’ll have to give your chop to Mr. Sotheby-after all, I’m giving mine to Mr. Henderson. You can give my husband’s second to Mr. Donovan.”

Lucretia sighed gustily, “Okay, I’ll starve if I got to.” She shuffled over to the stove and I whisked the can-opener out of the drawer, rolled up the sleeves of the lavender-and-lace and began opening cans.

After dinner, Ed decided too much work and no play tended to make Ed a dull boy and how about a quickie at the town’s sole and hence populous bar.

“Now,” I decided, “when we get rid of the mob, I can faint in peace and quiet. Just as we’re getting into the car ought to be about right. That’ll get him! Maybe it’s even better than the fireside scene,” So I drank a couple of my favorite quickies, shouted greetings to the populace, and waited for Pat’s pals to depart for their own homes and their own undoubtedly irate wives. Meanwhile I was busy gloating over the great moment to come. Mentally I rehearsed the scene. Smiling a brave smile as I lay in a limp heap on the car seat, I would whisper my secret to an alarmed and awe-stricken Patrick. I could just picture him, speechless with astonishment, tears of tenderness and joy welling to his honest eyes.

At two or three or so we all departed, with practically the whole of Westport filing out to the line of parked cars. I was carefully picking my way toward the . curtain of Act I when my heel caught in a pothole. Down I came with an awful crash and sprawled on the gravel.

Pat doubled up with laughter.

And I - what did I do? I threw my dramatic scene and my shy little secret to the four winds of night. “You dope,” I yelled, “I’ve fainted! You’re going to have a baby!”…

The river, caring nothing about my communion with the past, meandered on. I was getting fed up with it, too, so I climbed the bank back up to the house. I had just got as far as the library when Lucretia shuffled in. “Here’s your tape measure.

What you fixin’ on sewin’?”

I could have kissed her-one of the few remaining people in Westport who hadn’t learned my secret. And she mustn’t learn it, either; Lucretia must be kept in the dark, or we’ll lose her.

I snatched the tape measure. “Oh, I’m just measuring something,” I said airily, and ran upstairs. There, behind locked doors, I went to work.

First I took a huge sheet of paper. In big black letters at the top I wrote: W.P.B. (The Government and I are just like that.) I ruled off nine spaces, and across the top I marked out nine months. Down the left side I printed neatly:

Waist:
Stomach:
Hips:
Bust:

Then I found one of Pat’s red pencils and added in big red capitals:

Weight:

I stripped, and began taking measurements, With quite a sense of pride I filled in:

Waist: 25 inches

Stomach: 27 inches

Because my hips begin there and not because my stomach sticks out.

Hips: 35 ¾ inches

Bust: 32 inches

When I had them all down, I pasted the chart on the back of the closet door. I didn’t bother with thigh and calf measurements. I’m not so proud of those, and any spreading there will be all right with me. The weight had to be left blank. I had meant to get weighed in town, but the only scale was in the drugstore and I can’t go back there.