I’m not sick just as the Doctor Promised
November 1
Free, at last, from the deceits of the roaring shower water. I can be sick in peace. Eliza even looks sympathetic.
I rushed down to meet Morn on the early train from New York and waited for four trains, but no mother. I wired: WHERE ARE YOU. At noon the answer carne: AT HOME SURPRISE WHERES THAT TICKET YOU WERE SENDING.
Pat was still asleep when I got home, but his rest carne to an abrupt end. He swore it had all been arranged, said he’d get affidavits to prove it. He put in a few calls to New York and let me listen to someone’s profuse apologies. I guess he wasn’t just being a son-in-law. Anyway, it’s all fixed now and she’ll be along on Monday. .
November 2
What is this? Today, the day before my Morn’s arrival with no one to say me nay, I could have been as ill as I pleased, and lo, - I’m not ill at all.
Yesterday I’m hearty and frequent and now I’m not sick, just as the doctor promised. What won’t they think up next?
November 3
Instead of six meals yesterday I had ten and the charm is still working. I woke up healthy. Oh, the joy of it! The amazing, stupendous, colossal joy of it! I may have run a month over schedule but what does it matter? I’m cured. I even considered taking a pill-but decided there was no point in pushing my luck too far.
I dressed carefully with my old stretched girdle under my slacks, and I swear when I hold my stomach in (a little something in the way of an effort) and let my jacket cover the gaping zipper fastening, you’d never know. So with a song on my lips and a tight rein on my stomach I headed for the station.
When I ran pell mell down the platform to meet her, I could see the words “Don’t run!” trembling on my mother’s lips but with a tremendous effort she controlled herself and said, “Hi ya!”
She had another struggle with herself when I hoisted her biggest case into the back of the car. I didn’t blame her but I was determined to be not a whit different from usual. Chatting briskly about nothing, I whisked us off to the joint.
It was marvelous to see her eyes pop when we entered the grounds, and when I stopped in front of the house she was quite speechless, which is something for my Mom. Bland as a button, I ushered her in, showed her the living-room, the dining-room with the world’s record table, the pink-and-burgundy bath, the quilted headboards, the gleaming, purring kitchen, the drunken rabbit and Uncle Joe. I could hardly wait for her to see the terrace with the sweep of sparkling swimming pool beyond but I saved it for the very last. Then, throwing wide the doors, I cried, “And this is the pay-off!”
It was! The cemetery benches, the wheeled chaises-even the water-had been put away for the winter. Only a gaping blue hole in the ground was left. “November I,” I had told the plumbers, “drain it,” and they had been true to their charge.
Later: Mom is really behaving beautifully. Not a bit of clucking, no advice, no cracks. And she seems to have no doubts about it being three months, instead of really four.
Again not sick, Allah be praised! I ate a specially big breakfast just to prove that “morning sickness” and I had separated. Took Muz and Peggy into New York, with the idea of lunching somewhere nice and ritzy. (I’ve got my second rent check!)
I wore my black “maternity” dress, but I put the coat on over it before I modeled the outfit for Mom, In the dressing process I got around to my neglected W.P.B. chart and entered the sad figures (Stomach, 36), then carefully hid the chart.
We cabbed all over town. First El Morocco, then the Versailles, but they were both closed for lunch. We ended up at the Algonquin with not a celebrity in sight. Mom enjoyed the matinee -but Peggy and I just sat and worried about our lost youth. She says she’s beginning to hate any one who has even a hint of slimness, and to see all those young things on the stage …
Met Pat afterwards for the ride home. I was so hungry I wanted to scream. Mother, seeing me mow down Eliza’s biscuits, merely said it was nice that I have an appetite instead of just picking at my food as of old.