overflow drain is just about to start sipping hot water and foam from the tub.
Chapter 17
SUNDAY IS THE LONELIEST DAY I have yet spent in the South. I try to be honest with myself. Am I hankering after the owner of a certain lakeside cabin, or do I feel sick at heart because this afternoon Freddy and Marga, Bernie and Elvira, Avi Young, little Rabbi Ostrovicz and all their friends will gather at their shul for Kol Nidre? There are few things that make one feel more of a social failure than sitting home alone on a holiday. This is the first Yom Kippur eve on which I don’t at least have dinner with friends or go to my parents’ house, but before I jump into the mire of self-pity—while the men at Beth David are immersing themselves in the waters of the mikveh to wash off their sins—I call myself to order.
In the spirit of the day I do what I should have done days ago, I walk over to the main house to visit Karen. My news of her is almost ten days old, and apart from the fact that she is at home again—which I know because I saw her feeding the chickens—I know nothing. And it’s none of my business, of course. I would never do this in New York with a neighbor I know as little as I know Karen Walsh. But we are not in New York, and after all I was present when she announced the pregnancy.
These German-Scotch-Irish are a hard-to-read bunch, though. I don’t think I am welcome at the kitchen door yet, so I walk around to the front. Literally one second after I ring the bell, the door is yanked open by a twin dressed in a frilly gown—they are all fixin’ to go to church. Trust the silly Jewish Yankee to come visiting at ten on a Sunday morning. Pop Walsh seems to consider his reaction for a few moments while everyone is staring at me, then he nods his head into the direction of the kitchen.
“’Morning, ma’am. Karen will be at the back, if you’ll go through.”
No idea whether I’m welcome or whether he’s merely too polite to slam the door in his tenant’s face.
Karen, at any rate, is glad to see me, but she looks drawn and anxious. She sits me down with a mug of coffee—she has herbal tea herself—and I make no bones about the fact that I saw them drive off the other night and that Jules told me about the two miscarriages. She seems taken aback by my straightforwardness, but if I’m going to visit the complicatedly pregnant, I’m not going to make small-talk. And as before, my blunt approach works and she pours out the story of her failed pregnancies. Apparently this time the problem is a blood clot in her uterus that may be leaking blood needed to nourish the fetus. It is inoperable, and the blood thinners that could be prescribed have the downside of bleeding out not only the blood clot but possibly also the fetus, so they are not an option until a later stage of the pregnancy.
“So I can only pray and take things easy.” She smiles wanly. “Neither comes naturally to me, I must confess.”
Maybe that is why Karen and I understand each other. Once she has opened up, she doesn’t stop talking, and I listen.
I am, in a tiny way, atoning for my cowardice. I would lack the courage to do what Karen is doing, endure pregnancy after pregnancy (there was a miscarriage before the twins as well as the two after), complication after complication, weeks and months of fear. I encourage her to talk, but neither of us mentions the monster at the horizon: what if the baby dies?
When I stroll back to the cottage, Jules is sitting on my porch. She has her feet propped up against the table and her hands hitched up inside the sleeves of her sweater with only the tips of her fingers peeping out, and she is texting. This is not the first time I…well, do I say caught her? It is not a word that her behavior suggests. She sits on the steps of my porch, sometimes on the porch, sometimes on the big sawn-off tree trunk at the back, and when I look out the window and see her or when I come home and she is hanging out in what I consider my backyard, she