say anything, and the few times Elizabeth Davenport saw me, she looked away quickly. It was as if she couldn’t stand the sight of me, especially toward the end of my sixth month, when I began to show more and had started to wear the maternity clothes Samantha had bought and hung in my closet.
I told Samantha about Elizabeth Davenport’s reactions to me.
“She doesn’t approve of what we’re doing and especially your being so much a part of our lives,” she said, her eyes always big when she referred to her. “My mother-in-law is very intense about her privacy and how much access strangers have to Wyndemere. After all this time, she still hasn’t fully accepted Mrs. Marlene as a trusted member of this household. You couldn’t find a more loyal person. Pay no attention to her. Don’t let her upset you. Okay?”
“I’m fine. Her feelings are not my business,” I said.
She smiled. “Exactly.”
It also was at the end of my second trimester when Dr. Bliskin had either been asked or knew to make house calls weekly. Going to his office was no longer possible. The unstated reason was obvious. At this point, Samantha didn’t want anyone but the few trusted servants to know someone other than she was pregnant at Wyndemere. I had practically disappeared inside the house by then, anyway. In fact, I had a nightmare that it absorbed me into its walls. When I told Samantha, she looked it up and revealed that strange dreams were common to pregnant women. She swore she read it in a medical book, but Mrs. Cohen didn’t put too much validity in that.
After the first trimester, when the potential for a miscarriage had lessened significantly, Samantha had begun telling their friends she was pregnant. She deliberately ate more fattening and richer foods to gain weight and went to a tailor to design a belt of cushioning to give her the “baby bump.” Perhaps after considering Samantha’s feelings, Dr. Davenport never celebrated the successful transfer with a special dinner out as he had once suggested. The path was clear for Samantha to claim it all. I never saw Dr. Davenport tell anyone, of course, but I had the sense that he was leaving that entirely up to her. Whenever they returned from an event or a dinner with one or more of his associates, she hurried up to my room, first to see how I was and second to describe the reactions to her announcement.
“Imagine,” she said. “We’ve been married barely two years, and everyone’s comment was something like ‘It’s about time.’ I get the feeling that some of them thought Harrison had to marry me and they were disappointed it wasn’t true.”
Then she declared, “Well, now it is.”
I had the eerie feeling she was standing there in front of me, waiting for me to congratulate her as well. The look on my face brought her back to earth.
“As far as they know, of course,” she added.
Later, when I had a moment alone sitting outside and gazing at Lake Wyndemere, its calm surface glittering in the twilight like strings of diamonds, I smiled to myself, thinking how the world of make-believe never really leaves us. When adults pretend, we have all sorts of ways to react, ranging from accusing them of rationalizing and being unable to face reality to declaring that they are mentally ill. My father was certainly the opposite in the extreme. I couldn’t even imagine him as a little boy playing with toy soldiers.
Little girls, on the other hand, easily develop imaginary relationships with their dolls and imitate their mothers. In a very real sense, Samantha was doing that now. However, her excitement, the way I could see she was blossoming, enjoying herself and her marriage, was lovely. I had no problem with that and didn’t want to do or say anything to darken the glow of joy that had come into both her and Dr. Davenport’s eyes.
In fact, before long, I was doing whatever I could to enhance her pretending. I eagerly shared every aspect of my pregnancy with her, helped her to empathize until I found myself occasionally feeling as if she was truly the pregnant one. Nothing brought a bright smile to her face more than my suggesting that. Sometimes it felt like we were conjoined. If I was nauseous for one reason or another, she was. When I was tired and needed to rest, she did. And when I was hungry, she ate, no matter