6th Aprm

September 28

The fruits of my telephoning poured in all afternoon and with pretty nonchalance and a “nothing at all, really”, showed them to the shower rooms (on the ground floor of the studio wing), and waved them into the swimming pool. We even, after a good deal of experimenting with the lineup of gimmicks and gadgets in the cellar, got the pool fountain turned on. Then we lounged on the terrace and smirked at our frolicking friends. It was nice to give the hoi polloi a break but of course we had to put up with the comments: “What, no butler!”

“What gives-the ladders aren’t even gold?” … “What this place needs is a few rubber animals- You ain’t got the Hollywood touch!”

September 29

Today’s doings must come under the heading of “vacation”, I guess. I haven’t seen any sign of the real one! Pat got home at 4 P.M. and we took inventory of our twenty-seven acres. Pat, Mike and me, we catalogued the nine flower beds, one large vegetable garden (full of cabbage, which we don’t eat), two waterfalls, one rushing river, and the world’s most perfect skating pond. I’d be happier if I had never known about that.

I may worry about cigarette ashes on the rug, Pat may stew about the scalloped dining room table that’s too low for his knees, Lucretia may grumble about the size of the place, but Mickey with twenty-seven acres of trees is content beyond his wildest dreams. This is his idea of the perfect way to spend seventy thousand dollars.
Golly, I wish my mother could see this place!

What a tale would go back to the aunts and uncles, the cousins first, second, and third, and the sorority Sisters.

I wish I could have her come, and just say nothing about being “in the family way” as our nearest neighbor calls it; but my mother is inclined to be intelligent. I fear even Lucretia is about to graduate to the “stomach look”. Some days Pat cajoles Lucretia into bringing my breakfast up, but the sight of her sullen and suspicious face is even more nauseating than breakfast, so it doesn’t do any good. Some days I shanghai my spouse. “Pat, look! You insist it’s all mental. All right, get going. Talk about the weather, talk about the war, talk about anything. So I’m feeling fine! Just dandy!”

From his bathroom Pat keeps up a running commentary at the top of his lungs. He’d make a ducky announcer for those damn breakfast programs and their grisly cheer. But it doesn’t, work. Mother would certainly wonder what’s corne over Pat, who, as a rule, before his breakfast coffee- Oh, well, who am I to talk!
September 30 Sick, in my little pink and wine bathroom.

But it doesn’t matter-this is the end of that “careful period” the doctor mentioned, and praise be, everything is Jake. Can’t say I’ve been especially careful, either. I have avoided lifting things, but I would not care to have the doctor see the way I throw that garage door up and down. And I have dissuaded Michael from jumping up and butting me square in the stomach. Otherwise I’ve gone my merry way. I must admit it tires me. I never took an afternoon nap in my whole life, but corne 4 P.M. these days I can’t resist.

It hasn’t escaped Lucretia. I can tell. She bangs more dishes with more noise, and sings louder but dolefuller.

Worst of all, even if she doesn’t give a less subtle notice, the time has definitely come for us to do something about her. For she’s developed into that one “hate” the books say I am allowed-nay, required-to enjoy. All day long I flit from room to room trying to avoid her and those penetrating whiffs of “Cleopatra’s Love Dream”. Even Chane! NO.5 wouldn’t sit well with me these days, but as for “Cleopatra’s Love Dream”- Pat will have to give up those pancakes, that fried chicken, and those peach dumplings. Soup is all I want.

September 24

The house is rented. From now until March first but at only half our regular rent. Still, they have the house for such a short period and through its most uncomfortable months. And, anyway, it’s that much clear profit to me.

All I have to do now is learn how to build an igloo, for that February-March stretch.

September 25

Moved!

Only meant to take a few things of the utmost importance like silver, a few clothes, the records we like, my W.P.B. chart, and the last few volumes of Casanova. We ended up with six carloads of stuff. Lucretia was the first. She observed the swimming pool and terrace, the house that would look at home in a platinum setting, and the kitchen right out of “House Beautiful”, and summed it all up. “Well, anyway, I don’t gotta fix no hot-water furnace.”

When, come nightfall, I fell exhausted into bed -beautiful, great, huge, luscious, pink-painted double beds-it was only to discover that the mattresses (Pat’s too) have dips in the middle like a fresh-dug quarry. Always a worm in the apple, but not every worm eats as deep as this.

September 26 Maybe it’s the excitement, or maybe it’s the effect of this pale pink and wine-red bathroom, but I was dam sick this A.M. I certainly am making a liar out of “Prenatal Care”, which insists that all this ends at twelve weeks.

What I ought to do, of course, is eat. Six meals a day, the book says. But I’m not hungry, like the book says I ought to be, except late at night, when the book says I ought not to be. Wonder if it really knows. We can’t both be right, and it’s me that’s having the baby.

There’s one advantage of no appetite, though, that neither the book nor the doctor mentions. I can still look a full length mirror in its full length.

In the other house, when I wanted to see if my slip showed, I had to climb on the dressing table stool, but this place is lousy with mirrors and bathroom scales. When I get up in the morning, when I climb out of my little pink tub there am I facing myself full length. Anywhere I go I can gloat over my beautiful “no bulge”. The scales show only a fraction over 113. The W.P.B. chart shows the measurements are just the same, except the bust, which is now 33 inches and that pleases me mightily. If my appetite were what the book says it ought to be, I’d probably have another tale to tell.

Later

Spent the day discovering how millionaires live.

The quantity of light switches in this house would baffle Edison himself. There’s a coast-to-coast network of servants’ buzzers-I can imagine Lucretia answering any of ‘em! And, there’s a telephone extension system that will certainly inflate our hitherto modest bills out of all recognition. Well, something has to bulge.

The living room is a story and a half high. It has a pale gold oriental rug, gold drapes at the casement windows, and hoary old Italian antiques all covered with patinas.

I just hope to the lord Harry that among usPat and me and Mickey and Lucretia-we don’t break any of the fragile lamps or scratch the silver grey floors and silver grey woodwork. And personally I hope I don’t get too weary of the mural over the fireplace~a scene out of a child’s fairy tale with a prancing horse, a racing Irish setter, a softeyed doe, grinning elves popping out from behind trees, and a drunken rabbit who glares at me every time I come in the room. I hope too that no one drops a cigarette on that enormous grand piano. In many ways I’m going to welcome the Spring.

And the dining room! On my left, as I dine in solitary splendor (on a bowl of tomato soup and crackers), two miles of French doors that open out on the terrace and swimming pool. On my right, two miles of plain but costly wall. In front, a mile and a half of polished table, at one end of which is me. Uncle Joe is way, way down at the other end.
Uncle Joe is the handsome ole boy in the frame.

He wears eighteenth century toggery and has a knowing look in his big blue eyes. I’ve definitely adopted him for the duration.

F or tea I chose the one thing I wanted-more tomato soup. And to fool Lucretia I prepared it myself. But, just as I was ready to sneak off with it, out popped Lucretia. “Why for you wants more soup?”

Hanging my head in shame, I took my stolen sweet and headed for the terrace, twelve steps above the blue-bottomed swimming pool. Sat me down on a cemetery bench of whitewashed wrought iron and gulped soup the while I gazed smugly over my estate. It looked pretty nice.

And then the brilliant idea struck me and I rushed to the ‘phone and called everyone we ever knew, sprinkled slightly with everyone I ever hated.

September 19

It’s sort of fun meeting all the “Just wait” women in town. They never look you in the eye. They’ve all developed that “stomach” look-a glance that starts at your feet and slides up to the middle of your anatomy, begins again at your head, slides down to the same spot and hangs there like a leech. I wish I had a belt buckle that would suddenly pop open and wave a flag and yell “Bingo!” I’m rather enjoying being such an important person. I don’t doubt that I’m pointed out along with the spot where the British landed, for after all I’m the first of the “there’s-not-much-to-do-in-the-winter-anyway” crop of expectant mothers.

September 2 1

All in all, life is good. The Ruppcls came out this weekend. I wore my slacks, went swimming in the river, walked as many miles as they did, stayed up just as late, and laughed off without a blush their usual razzing about what year was it that I was going to have that long-heralded-child.

Took them down to the Reiner estate, andafter watching their complete eye-popping admiration-told the Reiners yes, we’d love to live in their house!

We move next week.

Right away quick I called all the real estate people in town about the chances of renting our house while we live the life of Reiner at Rambleside. They all assure me that that will be “duck soup”provided we are willing to rent until March I. There’s the fly in the soup. The Reiners want to come back in February, so between some time in February and the first of March, we’ll have to choose between a hollow stump and a Bridgeport hotel. By that time maybe I won’t be able to get into a hollow stump. I won’t admire being a free floor show for the lobby sitters in the hotel either.

Oh well, who am I to fight with fate?

I have just completed a little deal with Patrick.

We must, of course, continue to pay rent on our house even though we don’t live in it. “Now,” said I, in a rubbing-my-hands-together voice, “I’m going to do all the work of renting the house, so can I have anythmg I can rent it for for myself? After all, the budget’s all worked out with that much rent deducted each month. You don’t want to upset all that bookkeeping you did SO beautifully, dear? Let’s just continue to figure that rent money as out, and anything I can make I keep.”

He fell for it. Maybe he was just showing off his generosity to the guests, but he fell for it. All I have to do now is rent the place and collect the money.

September 22

Started my business career. I’ve been showing people through our house all day long. Haven’t approved of any of them as yet, and can’t say I’ve done too well convincing them that the two and a half story living-room really heats beautifully all winter long, or that the separate coal-burning hotwater heater is just no trouble at all and never goes out. (After two years of struggle with the eternal flame Pat’s best record is eleven days without relighting.)

September 15

Out to dinner and Pat away on business, but my hostess said to corne anyway. I sure should have eaten before I left horne. Dinner was scheduled for 7:30. Came 8:30 and still no dinner, and by that time I had eaten so many hors-d’ oeuvres that the maid (a pal of Lucretia’s, too) began to look at me just like Lucretia does. Askance, I think it’s called. Hope they don’t compare notes!

September 17

Back to the doctor’s at last, this time to his White Plains office instead of all the way into New York. I was supposed to go the first day I was up bur, just as I told him, I’ve been busy. Now I begin to see some of the things I’m paying for. He sure is efficient. Keeps all the latest magazines in his office-current issues of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle. Bur it’s bad promotion. Even I, to say nothing of the bulging women around me, could have nothing but hatred in my heart for a man who flaunts pictures of heavenly clothes I can’t possibly wear.

There was utter desolation in the face of one little girl who was peering at a Vogue number in sequins. She had about as much shape as a slightly warmish jelly mould. This state of limp shapelessness is one of the most terrifying aspects of pregnancy. Even your best friends won’t jell.

Of course, I’m a good deal better off than those poor souls sitting around in smock-dresses, coyly holding their share of the magazine supply over their fronts and trying desperately to be nonchalant in the face of such as I. Sucking in my stomach (still no job at all) I paraded in front of them, sat down and crossed my legs with telling effect and, from my superior position, surveyed them. There was another flat-tummied girl, in a very smart Fall suit-last year’s though-and she and I exchanged meaning looks over the heads of our farther “gone” sisters. A guilty looking crew, if ever I saw one.

It was a sad spectacle to see the women haul themselves to their feet when the call came from the inner room, and then, after the check-up, go scurrying out into the world as fast as their rolling sailor’s gait would allow.

The prettiest, trimmest, slimmest, little nurse came out for the next patient. That doctor certainly needs a promotion manager. If Pat were doing the job he’d have a fat, ugly, dowdy misshapen nurse so that the more misshapen wretches in the waiting room wouldn’t be reminded of their plight. But it doesn’t bother me; my stomach’s flat.
Finally ushered into the presence, but no excitement at all about my threatened miscarriage. How that man can keep calm! His questions didn’t seem very interesting and he scarcely waited for my answers.

“How is elimination? Good. How do you sleep?

Good. How do you eat? Force yourself to eat often, not a lot but often, and take the pills as soon as you feel you are able to. Very necessary, you know. And take special care those usual five days and don’t do unusual things. After the next period you may be more active. Then the danger of a miscarriage will be negligible.”

He waved me into the examining room, but this time it was all pretty cursory, blood pressure and a few coldly professional pokes at my stomach.

“Flat, isn’t it?” I said. “Just wait,” he said.

“How about me going to Chicago?”

And I was really delighted when he gave an emphatic “no” until after the first of next month, anyway. That postpones that little problem.

Still, that “just wait” of his gives me to ponder.

I don’t think I could fool my Mom if there’s a bulge, no matter how slight.

September 11

I think the doctor is getting sorrier and sorrier that I ever happened into his office. This morning my still restless conscience urged the necessity of another laxative, so I took some of myoid standby -a nice tasting, sparkling, morning one. Got an awful pain in the middle of my stomach and in terror called the doctor. It seems that when he said mineral oil he meant mineral oil.

It isn’t that I mean to do all the wrong things.

After all I started out with the idea that this baby was to be the most scientific, the most accordingto-the-law child that was ever born. And here I haven’t taken but two or three pills in all this time, I’ve never gotten down to the dentist’s like I so firmly meant to. I washed instead of twaddled, I took the wrong dope, and I don’t even think pleasant thoughts.

Poor Jake seems to be taking it on the chin.

September 12

Unsick! Matter of note.

Matter of greater note: Pat swears we’re going to take a vacation before he goes to war. I’ll believe it when I see it.

September 13

Went out for the evening in formal finery. I know I was overdressed, even for a long-dress dinner, but I might as well pour it on while I can.

Felt marvelous and had me a whiskey and soda despite Patrick’s scowls (haven’t been able to convince him that the doctor really said an occasional drink or two was perfectly legitimate). A big night! We gathered around the dining room table for poker at a penny a chip just like Monte Carlo. I was going great guns. It was terrific. Well, I was seventy-eight cents ahead at 12: 30, and I was darned if I was going to quit with a winning streak sitting on me-but there came a great and gnawing hunger.

I wanted food. Even a cracker would have helped, but what I really needed was a big gory steak-I hope they don’t ration that along with the gas. Along with the hunger came the old familiar ache in my empty stomach. But I wouldn’t quit and I wouldn’t ask for food in front of all those people. It wasn’t until about I: 30 that I began to lose, so right away quick I said, “Oh, so weary,” and we left-practically booted out by knowing looks from all the women.

I rushed Pop home at a great pace and dived for the kitchen-where I quietly settled down to a pint of milk, four sandwiches of left-over chicken, and the last two peach dumplings. Pat said he felt a little pregnant himself and joined me in the feast, which put him in such good humor I broached the subject of vacation again. Not possible just now, it seems, but in a couple of weeks…

September 4

There is a bright side, after all-two bright sides in fact.

1. Maybe it’s just lying here quiet that does it, but I haven’t been ill at all. The books say “morning sickness” lingers for twelve weeks, but my strong-as-a-horse stomach is gaining. 
2. The effect on Paw Pat is wonderful to behold. The original clucking hen, he’s been reading up and has decided that I oughta have a burning desire for pickles, or something; so, anything to oblige, I’ve been hankering like mad. Each eve I greet him with a brand-new crave.

Now it happens that he has been trying to get back his football figger for the glory of the Army, and that means losing some twenty pounds, so our diet these past months has been minus proteins and sweets. The doctor (to my unending awe at the analytical wonders of science) informed me that my system is lacking in carbohydrates and sugars, and that I must therefore eat lots of candy. All I have to do now is hanker and Patrick brings home a candy bar or a chocolate sundae.

At heart I’m a little disappointed. I wouldn’t mind a real craving-anything for a concrete sign of this pregnancy I’m beginning to doubt all over again. There’s Blanche, who had an insatiable desire for “chow-chow”. And Gladdie, who consumed bananas by the stalk. Even Peggy, who, except for an ever-enlarging stomach, has no symptoms at all, admits there was a week or two when she wanted spaghetti for breakfast. Why can’t I even want a pickle?

I can’t work up a good “hate” either-that’s another of those pregnancy signboards that is supposed to face every woman who is two months “gone”.

If only something would happen. I almost wish I’d be sick again in the mornings. The only difficulty these days is an occasional good old-fashioned ache in my stomach, and a feeling that a good oldfashioned bar-room burp would make me very, very happy. But I can’t find any book that says that means you’re pregnant!

September 8

I finally got sick of winning every game of solitaire, so I asked Lucretia to bring up some light reading from the bookshelf downstairs. She dragged up all eleven volumes of “The Life and Loves of Casanova” . (You never can tell about people, even when you live in the same house-but Lucretia!)

September 9

I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be going down to breakfast. I heard Lucretia mutter, “About time, if anybody should ask me.” Well, it’s the old routine again-breakfast, a dash upstairs, roaring shower water, and down again for more breakfast.

No doubt about it now. This is what they put in the books.

September 10

Just when I’m pleased at being sick in the morning, I wake up healthy. I wouldn’t have been sick at all today if it wasn’t for that busybody conscience of mine. It insisted and insisted that I take a dose of the prescribed mineral oil.

September 1

Labor Day, so they tell me, but my “morning sickness” seems to have vanished and I woke full of vim, vigor, and vitamins. Pat had to work and, I decided, so did 1. So I called Gladdie, down the road, and borrowed the use of her washing machine. She gave me the usual business about not “overdoing”, but I felt so strong and healthy I’d have none of it. And, anyway, with a child in the offing and the Army around the corner, I’ve got to begin saving money, so why not start with the laundry bill? I swore Gladdie to secrecy and tore down to her house with two mattress pads and a beach robe.

I did the washing with great aplomb, yanked out the washing machine, brushed away Gladdie’s aid, and wrung out and hung up the pads and then sat back to watch my handiwork dry in the sun. By the time I got home I felt rather weary and decided to rest a mite before picking up Patrick at Jones’ Corners, where one of the men in his car pool drops him.
At 6 P.M. I got up to powder my nose and lo-a danger signal!

Lordy, thought I, I am a fool. I just miscalculated and I’m not going to have a baby at all. Even the doctor said he couldn’t be sure. That’s why 1 haven’t been sick in the morning and why my stomach looks just the same. Pat’s right! Being sick was all mental and now the whole damn town will roar with laughter!

I grabbed “Prenatal Care” and discovered that if, on the other hand, it was the sign of a threatened miscarriage I ought to go to bed fast.

But there was Pat waiting at a roadside five miles from home, so I backed the car gingerly out of the garage and drove at a snail’s pace for the meeting place. I greeted him in a flood of tears. “It’s not true! Jake’s only mental. I mean he ain’t, and he was such a cute redhead!”

Pat, who takes to an emergency like Michael to a bone, rushed me home and tucked me in bed. Despite his urging and warning and cajoling, however, I wouldn’t call the doctor that night. I didn’t want him laughing at me.

September 2

This morning there was another flag of warning and Doc growled over the phone, “What have you been doing? Washing! Well, what did you expect?”
“Nothing particular,” I said.

“Get in bed and stay there for at least five days,” he ordered. “You’re probably just off schedule and these are those five days I told you to watch particularly. Now-get to bed!”

September 3

In bed, and if there’s anything to prenatal influence Jake will grow up to be a card shark. From dawn till dark I’ve been cheating myself at solitaire.
But, between hands-what am I going to do about Lucretia? I’ve been feigning a cold, but my rasping coughs up here are duelling with Lucretia’s muttering down in the kitchen. Every now and then, between the shuffling sounds I know so well, I can hear her voice: “Sornethin’ funny goin’ on ’round here …. Somethin’ funny goin’ on.” The noises fascinate me. Shuffle-shuffle, mutter-mutter. “Don’t mind reg’lar family work, but this here traipsin’ up an’ down them stairs …. Nothin’ wrong with her as I can see. . . . In bed, an’ me traipsin’ up them stairs… ”

And what the devil am I going to do about moving? That gorgeous house sitting there and how, I’d like to know, am I going to get moved into it if this is what happens every time I do more than twiddle a finger? And how can I risk a trip back to Chicago if I end up in bed after every little thing? Children certainly do add to one’s difficulties.