The Forgotten Room(105)
Olive smiled and slid under the covers, on her side, facing the two of them. At first, she had been repelled by her husband’s giant size, by the heat of his body as they lay together in their marriage bed. On her wedding night, she had felt crushed under his heaving body, and when he had fallen into snoring unconsciousness afterward, one enormous arm thrown across her middle, she had wept so hard and so silently, the tears had rolled down her temples and wet her hair.
But she had grown used to him. They hadn’t had a honeymoon, instead plunging right into their busy life above the new bakery in Brooklyn—this tremendous opportunity that could not be delayed—and he was so delighted with his good fortune in marrying her, so kind and attentive, so unexpectedly good-humored (sometimes he brought her to tears with his jokes), that eventually she hadn’t minded his heavy, exuberant lovemaking, and his sleeping body had become like a steady and reassuring rock by her side, when she thought she might die inside her abyss of loss. When she told him she was pregnant, he had actually cried with joy.
And now here they were, a little family, nestled in their warm bed this frigid January morning. This was Olive’s life, this was reality, and she would make the best of it. Lucy was making little cooing sounds now, looking up into her father’s worshipful face in delight, and Olive reached over to tickle her tummy, and that was when it happened: Lucy’s little baby lips curved into her very first smile.
“She smiles!” Hans exclaimed.
“She’s smiling at you,” said Olive, and in that moment, because he had made her daughter smile for the first time, Olive loved her husband.
Hans lifted Lucy up in the air, laughing, and Lucy’s newborn smile grew even wider. Her lips parted, and for a fragile instant Olive thought she might laugh, too.
“Now, enough of that,” Olive said. “She’ll never go back to sleep.”
“Ah, I am sorry.” He lowered Lucy to his lap, clucking and soothing, and Olive thought she heard a familiar voice next to her ear: He is a good father.
“Yes, he is,” she whispered.
“What’s that?” asked Hans, turning to her.
Her husband looked better by lamplight than daylight, even though his face was creased with sleep. The haggard pieces of his face smoothed out, and his pale blue eyes somehow took on a winsome shape. Olive leaned down and kissed his cheek. “Nothing,” she said. “Just that you’re a wonderful father.”
“I am a lucky one. And God willing, we have many more, meine Frau. You give me a fine son next, eh? To take the bakery when we are old.”
Olive’s cheeks warmed. She reached for Lucy and drew the baby back into her arms. “Well, I’ll do my best, I suppose. Come now, little angel. Time for sleep.”
By the time Lucy was settled in the wooden cradle next to the bed, Hans was back asleep, snoring softly, and the only one left awake was Olive. And she was awake now; she was wide-awake, alert to an almost painful sharpness, as restless as a field mouse. She sank into the chair before her dressing table and stared at her harried reflection in the plain wooden mirror, framed by the unadorned white plaster wall behind her. She hadn’t had time to think about decorating. Their furniture was brown and simple and secondhand, the draperies hastily sewn and made over from her mother’s old things. What a difference from her sumptuous surroundings a year ago, when she had lain with her lover beneath a beautiful wrought-iron skylight, and the rooms beneath her had been full of priceless furniture and exquisite art. When she had been immersed in rich and sinful love.
Where are you now, Harry?
Are you in some other woman’s bed? Keeping warm, as I am?
She closed her eyes and pictured this: pictured Harry in bed with another girl, naked and entwined, his body moving, lavishing the same pleasure on this nameless rival that he had once lavished on Olive. The frenetic climax, the tranquil aftermath. And somehow it didn’t hurt, this imagined scene, the way it once had. She was almost glad to think that Harry might have found some measure of fleeting joy; that he might, in fact, be finding joy at this exact instant. Harry was made for love; he was made for human happiness.
Olive glanced at the cradle, where Lucy lay fast asleep, her head turned to one side and her mouth slack. Already she was getting so big; she had looked lost in that same cradle a month ago, and now she filled it. Before long she would move into the small room next to theirs, the one Olive was readying as a nursery. One of Hans’s sisters had given them a bassinet the other day, and Hans had spent last Sunday afternoon carefully sanding and repainting an ancient chest of drawers he had found at a shop nearby. In the wake of the financial panic last spring, people were losing their jobs and moving on. You could get a good bargain, if you knew where to look.
Olive leaned down and tucked Lucy’s swaddling blanket a little more snugly around her. As she bent over, the ruby necklace came free from beneath her nightgown and swung, glittering, into the faint glow of the lamplight.
Olive sat back up and turned to the mirror. She hadn’t taken the ruby necklace off, not ever, not even on her wedding day. Not even on her wedding night. She had felt it burn against her skin as she consummated her marriage with her new husband, and she had grasped the stone in her hand when, blinded by the pain of labor, she needed comfort. Now, she hardly noticed it was there. It had become a part of her, taken for granted the way she took her ears for granted.
But now a year had passed since Harry had first fastened the chain around her neck. A year had passed, and Olive was a different person, leading a wholly different life above a bakery in Brooklyn. There was no place for rubies above a shop, was there? There was no last, reckless hope that Harry would walk through the door one day and sweep her away, no hope that she would let him sweep her away in any case. She couldn’t leave her husband now, because of Lucy.