The Irresistible Henry House Part 3

"He cursed at me first," Betty admitted, wrapping her hands around her teacup as if clasping them in prayer. "He actually used a swearword. Then he said thank G.o.d my mother was dead, or this would kill her. Then he asked me where the father was, and when I told him I didn't know, he said thank G.o.d I didn't know, or he would kill him." him."

"And then?" Martha asked.

"Then he asked if there was any chance Fred would believe the baby was his, and I said no. And then he sent me to the Home."

Martha sighed. Of course. That was what girls did if they were pregnant and unmarried or in disgrace. They went to stay in maternity homes-in one door secretly, pregnantly; then out the other, welcomed back to resume their lives as if nothing but time had been lost. It was from exactly these homes that orphanages like Irena's-and in turn programs like Martha's-were able to get their babies, and to pa.s.s them on, if all went well, to real families who would want them.

ON THE FIRST MONDAY after Betty's revelation, President Gardner made another unannounced visit to the practice house. This time, Martha felt quite sure that she knew why he had come.

"You've come to see your grandson again?" she asked him softly after Beatrice had taken Henry down the hall.

"We will never call him that," Dr. Gardner snapped.

The president strode into the living room and took his seat by the fireplace.

"I apologize," Martha said quickly. "I didn't realize."

"I obviously cannot change the fact that Bettina chose to tell you her entire wretched story," he began without preface. "But I will say that if you repeat to a single soul even a word of this very personal business, you will be out of a job on the very same day that I hear about it. I will not have the name of this college being dragged through the mud," he said. "Do you understand?"

"Of course," Martha said. "I would never say anything."

The president looked around, presumably for somewhere to put his frustration.

"Don't you ever light a fire in here?" he finally asked.

"Well, we do worry a bit with the baby so close to walking," Martha said, getting to her feet.

"When Bettina was a baby and we still lived in Vermont, we had a potbellied stove, and all our neighbors with children kept their stoves surrounded by wrought-iron gates. Every day, Bettina's mother warned her not to go near ours, and one day she did, and she burned her hand, and she never went near it again."

Martha paused for a moment, considering how to respond to this pearl of wisdom.

"I don't think I'd get a lot of babies from the orphanage if I sent them back with burnt hands," she finally said.

"You will go on getting babies from the orphanage as long as I tell the orphanage that we need babies," Dr. Gardner said.

Martha, expertly wielding the fireplace tongs as if the logs were lumps of sugar, allowed this to sink in. "Irena Stahl knows about Henry, then?" she asked as she arranged pieces of kindling into a perfectly balanced tower.

"Absolutely not," Dr. Gardner said.

"Then how did he come to be here?" Martha asked. It was Irena, after all, who had insisted that Martha take Henry, despite his having been only three months old. It couldn't have been a coincidence.

"It's perfectly obvious," the president said. "I told Irena I had heard about a baby who needed to be placed. Until we knew what had happened to Fred, Bettina simply refused to give the baby up. Do you see?"

"Yes," Martha said.

"I know I should have insisted, right from the start, that he be sent far away. I've already regretted that. But Bettina seemed so fragile."

"Yes," Martha said again.

Then Dr. Gardner brushed a crumb from the lapel of his jacket, as if he were shaking off the moment. "Imagine," he said. "Thousands upon thousands of girls give these babies up all all the time, and get on with their lives. Not Bettina. She even wanted to keep him with us at my residence. Can you imagine?" the time, and get on with their lives. Not Bettina. She even wanted to keep him with us at my residence. Can you imagine?"

"No," Martha said, but she could.

The president let out a kind of laugh. "I told her if we did that, it wouldn't be my residence for long."

That was true, of course. A college was a place where people expected-and, Martha felt, deserved-to find propriety. Martha took two logs and carefully laid them across the andirons.

"And now? Will Betty keep him?" Martha asked, as gently as possible.

"Keep him! A b.a.s.t.a.r.d?" Dr. Gardner intoned. "A b.a.s.t.a.r.d?" b.a.s.t.a.r.d?" His eyes flashed at Martha. "Bettina's place is with her husband. She His eyes flashed at Martha. "Bettina's place is with her husband. She will will be going to Australia, and I can promise you she will not be showing up there with some other man's child." From the nursery, the sound of Henry's laughter emerged, like an unexpected song. Somewhat more gently, the president added: "And in time, she and Fred can have children of their own." be going to Australia, and I can promise you she will not be showing up there with some other man's child." From the nursery, the sound of Henry's laughter emerged, like an unexpected song. Somewhat more gently, the president added: "And in time, she and Fred can have children of their own."

BUT BETTY DIDN'T LEAVE right away. Over the months that followed, she twirled the practice house into a constantly moving, ever-more-powerful, Betty-centered vortex. She was nearly always the subject of conversation, even though she had told no one but Martha that she was Henry's mother. Instead, all the girls-and most of the campus-knew only that Fred had deserted the Army. They believed the reason Betty was always in tears had to do with the shame of being married to a deserter, and the sadness of having to leave her home and her family in order to be with him.

The girls-Connie and Grace particularly, who were closest in upbringing if not experience-complained about Betty's frequent pop-in visits, which they attributed to her position not only as daughter of the president but also as resident diva.

"Why doesn't she just go, already?" Connie asked.

"I suppose she's not sure she wants to live in Australia as the wife of some guy who could be court-martialed any minute," Grace answered.

"So she'd rather leave her husband when he needs her most," Connie said.

"And stay with Daddy? Why not?"

And Martha, though tempted, offered no answer to that question.

OVER TIME, HOWEVER, it became abundantly clear to Martha that, despite the agonized (and frequently confided) vacillations of Betty's heart, there was no way that she would or could stay at Wilton. Staying would mean ending her marriage, outraging her father, bringing scandal to the college, and, apparently, raising a child without any financial support. In 1947, what was unusual about Betty's situation was not that she would give up the baby but that she had managed to stay in his proximity for so long.

By March, Betty began to make plans to join Fred in Australia, and by May, she had begun showing up less and less often at the practice house.

SHE LEFT FOR AUSTRALIA three days after Henry's first birthday. She was thin and pale and sick and cried-out. Henry, too, seemed not himself that day-or perhaps that was simply Martha's imagination, or a new phase of his development. It was typical, Martha felt, for one-year-olds to be withdrawn. At least that had been her experience. Certainly Henry could have no sense of what he was losing. No one around him did.

What Martha would remember most about the day was what Henry did when Betty walked out the door. Though he had just started standing up, he crawled onto the living room rug and into a trapezoid of sunlight, toppled over onto his side, and-despite the bandage that was supposed to deter him-put his thumb in his mouth. For a long while, Henry stayed there, like a puppy in the sun, the trapezoid perfectly framing him, as if he were trapped in a weird, warped viewfinder.

Then Ruby ran back inside and told Martha that Betty needed to tell her one more thing, and Martha walked out to the front yard. Amid the lushness of the new green summer, Betty looked down at the ground, where two bees chased each other past a fallen rose. She whispered, "Take care of him for me."

Martha nodded firmly, deciding at that moment not to ask Betty for how long. for how long. If she didn't ask, she could always believe that Betty had meant forever. If she didn't ask, she could always believe that Betty had meant forever.

6.

You Know More Than You Think You Do

With Betty gone, the practice mother rotation would need to be shifted, at least until September, when there would be new students hoping to join the program for the second year. The night Betty left, Martha sat at her desk and weighed the pros and cons of subst.i.tuting herself for Betty in the coming weeks. On the one hand, it would be setting a new and possibly unwieldy precedent; on the other, it would relieve the girls, who had already scheduled their summer trips home and would otherwise have to revise their plans. Martha imagined strolling with Henry in the summer evenings, or letting him splash in the kiddie pool when the days got long and sultry.

But just a few days after Betty's departure, an official envelope appeared in the practice house mailbox, a letter from Dean Swift suggesting that Martha attend the Matson College Conference on Child Care in July.

There was no mistaking the underlying message in this suggestion, which was that Martha, despite a basically peaceful, patient year, was still being doubted, still somehow in need of further training. Throughout the afternoon's errands, Martha tried to find a way around what she knew was tantamount to an order. Buying the week's groceries. Taking her old tan pumps to be resoled. At Hamilton's, she stopped to look again at the new Hoover. "For every woman who is proud of her home," the poster beside it said, and Martha was was proud of her home, as half hers and half real as it might be. She had gone to these sorts of conferences before and had enjoyed rubbing shoulders with her counterparts from other programs. But this was not the right moment to leave the practice house. Perhaps, she thought, she could explain to Dean Swift the effect that Betty's departure was bound to have on the schedule. Perhaps, she thought with even less hope, she could appeal directly to Dr. Gardner. proud of her home, as half hers and half real as it might be. She had gone to these sorts of conferences before and had enjoyed rubbing shoulders with her counterparts from other programs. But this was not the right moment to leave the practice house. Perhaps, she thought, she could explain to Dean Swift the effect that Betty's departure was bound to have on the schedule. Perhaps, she thought with even less hope, she could appeal directly to Dr. Gardner.

Martha walked through the pale, warm afternoon, besieged by the sounds of summer: music coming from open doorways; the jangly car horns, which seemed louder than usual; the shouts of liberated children; and the gentle metallic grating of their roller skates on the pavement. It suddenly seemed to Martha, in fact, that children were everywhere: their Mercurochromed knees and unkempt hair and untied hair bows and their bicycles with the limp red, white, and blue streamers dangling from the grimy beige handgrips.

How could she leave Henry now, so soon after Betty's departure?

How could she ever leave Henry?

EVEN BEFORE MARTHA CALLED MATSON to register for the conference, she knew the main topic was bound to be Dr. Spock, whose book-length ode to permissiveness had become only more ubiquitous since Connie had first brought her copy into the practice house. Late that night, Martha forced herself to read, for the first time, what everyone had been talking about. Spock's first section was t.i.tled "Trust Yourself," and his first sentence was just as ridiculous: "You know more than you think you do." In Martha's experience, most people in most endeavors invariably knew considerably less than they thought they did. And what was true in most endeavors was doubly true in the raising of children.

She could hear Henry fussing downstairs now, as he often did when he was with Connie, who remained the most indulgent and least effective of his mothers. It was heartbreaking to overhear them sometimes, especially his crying, which was the simple result of Connie's having given in to his crying before. If a child knew that crying would get him attention, the child cried. If a child knew that crying didn't work, the child stopped crying. She supposed Dr. Spock would say the crying meant meant he should be picked up. But Martha's teaching depended on believing that a child was something to manage, not to be managed by. She read: he should be picked up. But Martha's teaching depended on believing that a child was something to manage, not to be managed by. She read: Every time you pick your baby up, even if you do it a little awkwardly at first, every time you change him, bathe him, feed him, smile at him, he's getting a feeling that he belongs to you and that you belong to him.

Belonging, Martha thought. Since when did belonging belonging matter? matter?

THE MEETING ROOM AT MATSON was warm and wood-paneled, glittery with old silver and good crystal. Everything was perfect, the tea cakes laid out symmetrically, the doilies fresh, the tablecloths not overly starched. It was exactly what one would expect at a convocation of domestic experts, and the undergraduates who were serving were eager and polite. The mood was festive. Like other areas of American life, academia had found new energy since the end of the war, and in her welcoming speech, the president of the National a.s.sociation of Child Experts virtually exulted at the convention's unprecedented number of partic.i.p.ants.

Over the next two days, Martha took part in seminars on toys, influenza, and finger painting. She attended lectures on speech development, toilet training, and genetics. Sitting in a darkened lecture hall, enveloped by the slightly burnt smell of the Kodaslide projector and the wheezes and clicks of the dropped slides, she looked on, utterly engrossed. She felt, at once and all over again, that these subjects and systems mattered. The use of schedules. The maintenance of charts. The parsing of children's needs and impulses. She glanced down the row of rapt women, whose gold Omicron Nu pins gleamed identically from their necklaces and lapels. The home economics society had never meant more to her, and amid the comfort of note taking, she had to admit to herself that she had allowed Henry to blur her focus. What was the practice house, after all, if it wasn't a testament to the belief that women could replace the mysteries of child rearing with mastery?

For a moment, Henry became not the child she had always wanted, or even the one she was trying so hard not to love, but rather the tenth of ten children whom she had started on their way. She conjured a mental picture of the baby journals on her shelves, and the children they represented, raised according to time-tested methods. Methods that women had trusted, long before they'd been set loose by Benjamin Spock to trust themselves.

RUMORS AND UPDATES of Dr. Spock's whereabouts preceded his movements around the Matson campus. Wilton had had its share of famous visitors too, but Martha could not remember any who'd been received with such giddy enthusiasm. She did not get to see Spock's face until late the last afternoon, when, along with the approximately forty heads of child-care programs, she attended the most selective seminar of the weekend.

Sitting at an enormous conference table just a half dozen seats from the famous doctor, she found it hard to look at him. There was an intense kind of solicitousness about him, as if he was so used to listening to people's symptoms that he viewed all statements made to him as clues to something else. Martha didn't want to be a.n.a.lyzed. She didn't want to be diagnosed.

"Has that been your experience?" he kept asking when people made their opinions known. There was nothing even slightly nasty in the way he asked the question, but somehow it still seemed to be an accusation.

Spock was disarmingly modest. He appeared to be almost shyly surprised by the success of his book, whose very "Trust Yourself" message seemed so self-effacing. He was the anti-expert: Some Midwest common sense, some reasonable rules, some sensible behavior, and children would be just fine.

"So what do you say to Holt and Watson about baby's schedule of feedings and eliminations?" one woman asked.

"Well, different things may work for different types of children," the doctor answered congenially. "In my experience, it causes more harm than good to try to keep children to strict schedules."

"Is there anything, then, that you disapprove of in an infant?" another woman asked.

Spock smiled benignly. "Well, let me ask you this," he said. "What infant behaviors do you you find objectionable?" find objectionable?"

"Thumb sucking," Martha said. She hadn't realized she was going to speak until the words were out of her mouth. The women at the table all turned in her direction, like the members of a choir looking for their cue.

"It's a dreadful habit," Martha continued, "and apart from the fact that it's unsightly and unsanitary, it can do permanent damage to the teeth and the jawline."

"Is it safe to a.s.sume, then, that you subscribe to traditional methods to deter this?" Dr. Spock asked.

"Yes," Martha said.

"And may I ask which of them you have found to be most effective?"

"Well, it varies from child to child," Martha said, aware that several of the women were now looking at her exactly as they would if she had just stepped onto a train track at the commuter hour. Her hand moved nervously to adjust her scarf and necklace, but she overcame the impulse. "Sometimes," she continued, "I've found it effective to be vigilant about offering a toy as a distraction. Sometimes I'll combine that with bandaging the thumb, or putting on a scratchy mitten. In the most extreme cases, I've employed a celluloid cuff."

She watched some of the partic.i.p.ants look down, as if in pity.

"And please don't all of you pretend you haven't done the same," Martha said. "This has been the accepted practice among educated child-care providers for the last forty years. Surely you'll acknowledge that, Dr. Spock," Martha said.

"Of course," he answered quickly, with a twinkly, avuncular smile that made Martha cringe. "But in my experience, restraining a baby physically only frustrates him."

"Of course it frustrates him," Martha said sharply. "How can any habit be broken without it causing some frustration?"

Spock nodded his agreement and then, as if offering a perfectly made, neatly trimmed tea sandwich, laid out his belief: that thumb sucking, like so much else in infant behavior, was the reflection not of habit or will but rather of simple need.

"A baby sucks because it needs to suck," Dr. Spock said.

"I wasn't suggesting, Dr. Spock," Martha said archly, "that a baby sucks because it is one of Satan's minions."

That brought a much-needed laugh from around the table.

"I don't have much patience for people who soften at the slightest sign of resistance," Martha continued. "Of course it's disturbing to upset an infant, but I always tell my students that if they think about the long-term benefits, they'll be able to withstand the feelings of the moment."

"And do you have children of your own?" Dr. Spock asked.

"That's not the point," Martha answered, perhaps a bit too sharply.

"I wasn't trying to make a point," the doctor said. "I was just curious."

"I have helped raise ten babies over twenty years in the home economics program at Wilton College," Martha said, finally adjusting the scarf around her neck, fingering the Omicron Nu pin beneath it.

"I just wondered whether you yourself had ever experienced these kinds of emotions," Spock said.

"What emotions are those?"

"The emotions of being a mother."

"Have you?" Martha said. And apart from whatever facts and figures they took away from the conference, the impertinence of this moment was what most of the partic.i.p.ants would long remember, and what Martha, in her fervor, would think about with pride.

But the liberation inherent in Spock's message, which in essence was love over law, was for Martha as inescapable as it was secretly welcome.

7.

The Center of the World

All the way back from Matson on the bus, Martha savored her moment. Martha Gaines and Benjamin Spock. She had told him what she thought. She had stood up for the program she was going back to reclaim. The summer world slipped by, alive with flowering bushes and flowered hats, children playing on swing sets and running through the rainbow spray of sprinklers. There was something cool and comforting in the act of pa.s.sing these lives by: not at all unlike the role she had played for all those practice house children. They existed, in her memories, as if on a series of front lawns, waving at Martha as she rode by. There had been many. There would be more.

But the clear, impartial, professional path became instantly muddied, and nearly obscured, as soon as Martha walked back into the practice house that afternoon. Ethel was lying, fully p.r.o.ne, on the living room rug, a camera in her hands as usual. Henry, wearing only a diaper, was standing against the couch: beautiful, hopeful, and irresistible. He was looking at Ethel, wobbling a bit, and seemingly unsure about what to do.