6th Aprm

August 11

The book may be right, after all, though it could be just the power of suggestion. Anyway, twice every night and untold times every day I have been trekking to the l.g.r. Maybe it’s only the orange juice but it’s a nuisance, especially at night.

Once during our two years in this two-hundred-ear-old house I was tete-a-tete with a mouse. That was the time I inadvertently tore two handfuls of hair right out of my head, and the memory lingers. So every night at two, and again about five, I turn on the light between the beds, shake Pat into a semblance of wakefulness, and then creep cautiously, with Mike as advance guard and Pat sleepily cheering me on across the creaking floor. I scoot back to bed unconvoyed, however, for by that time Mike and Pat are sound asleep again. That’s the kind of protection womanhood gets in our house. And here I am going down into the valley of the shadow to another man into the world!

August 12

It’s strange how the news spread out from that one yelp in the parking lot. Telephone calls come morning and night from wives all over town, dying to tell me how they suffered and what I should do and what doctor I should see. I just dangle the receiver beside Michael’s ear and let him listen while I murmur appropriate How dreadfuls. It’s going to be a lesson for Michael, all right. No pups for him, if he remembers in the Spring what he heard in the Fall.

Visits are more difficult, with the merry wives of Westport telling me about Susie who “had lapses of memory and had to carry her name and address on a card so she could shove it at a passing taxi to be sure of getting home.” And then there was Mary, who “simply forgot how to write-she just didn’t know what to do with a pencil, but it all came back as soon as the baby was born.” And Allie, who was “in labor for sixteen hours, but I always say that doctor just doesn’t-” How often did I listen to the deep heaved sigh and the longdrawn “We-el!” that preceded the familiar, “What ! went through - ”

The difficulty is to make my guests keep their confidences down to a whisper. With the servant problem what it is, and my cooking ability what it is, I’m taking no chances.
I only hope that yelp of mine or its attendant rumors don’t reach my family in Chicago. If I could just dodge them for nine whole months, think of all the clucking and fussing and free advice I could avoid. But I fear they’ll begin to wonder if they don’t see me, as usual, in the Fall.

August 13

That can’t be right! Maybe I ought to invest ten dollars in a rabbit test after all. Yet my Scottish ancestry reminds me that time will tell more accurately and less expensively. So never mind the form charts.

I even went swimming. Not in our no doubt germ-ridden river, which might be perilous, but in Fritz Reiner’s swimming pool that’s big enough to put his Pittsburgh Symphony in, which, of course, I don’t recommend. And what a house! I’d almost give ours back to the British soldiers for a chance to live there. When I was in the middle of a dive, Maestro Reiner suggested just that-that we live at Rambleside for the winter!
Could he mean it?

Later

There were no ill effects even from the swimming. This can’t be right! Everything is still Jake. Tremendous changes are taking place inside of me. A great factory is beginning its work, and there ought to be something to show for it. Of course, there’s the heart-warming example of Peggy, down the road, who is now going into her third month and hasn’t had a pain or an ache. But she does have a bulge. I guess this whole business has been over-publicized. It looks like duck soup to me.