have eaten, or, indeed, even cooked, the liver she’d made for supper. She had forced herself to eat a few bites—she decided while she cooked the liver (which Andrew had brought home) that she would tell him the next day, and then, perhaps, they would adopt a blander and more agreeable diet.
She went into the kitchen to fetch a piece of bread, and suddenly vomited into the slop bucket beside the table. Then she felt so tired, much more tired than she had ever felt in her life, that she staggered back into the front room and fell into a sleep, or into a stupor, right there in her chair, with the electric light on. In the morning, Andrew told her that he had come in very late and attempted to awaken her, but with no success—so little success that he was alarmed and took her pulse, but her pulse was strong and not quickened, so he turned out the electric light and went to bed.
When she awoke in the chair, stiff from her night’s rest, the sun was shining and she felt much better after a few stretches—rested and not at all sick. She tested herself by eating some bites of bread and drinking some tea—both went down well. Andrew came out of the bedroom, and a few minutes later, he and she were laughing at his consternation at finding her “practically comatose,” and afterward, when they ate lunch—sardines—she still felt perfectly fine. As soon as he went out, though, as soon as she sat down again to read, she found that she could not keep her eyes open, and she slept away the afternoon. Before she managed to awaken, Andrew had returned and found her, then gone next door to Mrs. Lear and elicited the whole story from her, including the probable “foaling date” and her bouts with morning sickness. When she awoke to make supper, she found that supper was made—a boiled chicken with slivers of carrot and parsnip and some baked beans, which were pleasantly sweet and easy to partake of. All of this Andrew had persuaded Mrs. Lear to provide—but, indeed, she was a kindly woman and needed no persuasion. They had a lovely evening, with Andrew staying at home and reading aloud the first chapter of Belinda in a sonorous, faintly Irish accent, and smiling, but pointedly refusing to allude to anything outside of the room—nothing in the past, nothing in the future, nothing in the world or the solar system or the universe. For that one night, it seemed, Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early allowed himself the luxury of a few hours of superstitious silence, where plans were not overconfidently expressed and hopes were left to mellow unsaid.
But such momentary measures did not work. By supper the next evening, it was clear that the little face she could not help conjuring was not the face of this child. Andrew, too, was disappointed, and stayed with her for the next two nights, but, truly, it was a small thing, Mrs. Lear told them, common as dirt, though sad enough, of course. Her own mother had miscarried at least three times, in addition to the nine children, and it was possible that Mrs. Lear herself had miscarried between Dorsett and Hubert, when she was down with something for three days late one spring. And as for her sisters, well, she had despaired of her sister Edith’s ever having a child. She said, “I’m sure it’s better not to know, but now you do.” And she did. By the end of that week, that episode was finished—she looked at the children all around her in yet a different way, as a population of beings that she was cut off from, as if by a thin screen. And then that, too, passed.
• • •
AS nosy as she had been, looking for Andrew’s letters, checking the labels of his suits and shoes, peering into his books for clues to his life and his character, the next packet of letters was not one she found but one that fell into her possession, quite literally, as she was setting mouse traps in the linen wardrobe. She was brushing away dirt and what all, and bumped her head sharply against the upper shelf. As she then backed out of the wardrobe, it began to teeter, and when she pushed it back against the wall with both hands, one of the files that had been stored there, willy-nilly, fell out onto the floor