My Name Is Lucy Barton

21

The night in the hospital when I felt I had been unkind to my mother by saying that I did not think she ever cared what it was like to be famous, I couldn’t fall asleep. I was agitated; I wanted to cry. When my own children cried I fell to pieces, I would kiss them and see what was wrong. Maybe I did it too much. And when I had had an argument with William, I sometimes cried, and I learned early that he was not a man who hated to hear a woman cry, as many men are, but that it would break whatever coldness was in him, and he would almost always hold me if I cried very hard and say, “It’s okay, Button, we’ll work it out.” But with my mother I didn’t dare cry. Both my parents loathed the act of crying, and it’s difficult for a child who is crying to have to stop, knowing if she doesn’t stop everything will be made worse. This is not an easy position for any child. And my mother — that night in the hospital room — was the mother I had had all my life, no matter how different she seemed with her urgent quiet voice, her softer face. What I mean is, I tried not to cry. In the dark I felt she was awake.

Then I felt her squeeze my foot through the sheet.

“Mommy,” I said, bolting upright. “Mommy, please don’t go!”

“I’m not going anywhere, Wizzle,” she said. “I’m right here. You’re going to be all right. You’ll have a lot of stuff to face in your life, but people do. I’ve seen some of it in your case, I mean I’ve had some visions, but with you—”

I squeezed my eyes shut—Don’t you fucking cry you little idiot—and I squeezed my leg so hard I almost could not believe how much it hurt. Then it was over. I turned onto my side. “With me what?” I said. I could say it calmly now.

“With you, I’m never sure how accurate these things are. They used to be accurate with you.”

“Like when you knew I had Chrissie,” I said.

“Yes. But I didn’t—”

“Know her name.” We spoke this together, and in the dark it felt to me that we smiled together too. My mother said, “Sleep, Wizzle, you need your sleep. And if you can’t sleep, just rest.”

In the morning the doctor came and swooshed the curtain about me, and when he saw the red bruise on my thigh he didn’t touch it, but he stared at it, then he looked at me. He raised his eyebrows, and to my horror, tears slipped from the sides of my eyes. He nodded kindly, though it took him just a moment. He put his hand on my forehead, as though checking for a fever, and he left it there while the tears kept slipping from my eyes. He moved his thumb once, as though to brush away a tear. My God, he was kind. He was a kind, kind man. I gave a tiny smile to say thank you, a tiny grimace-smile to say that I was sorry.

He nodded and said, “You’ll see those kids soon. We’ll get you home with your husband. You’re not going to die on my watch, I promise you.” And then he made a fist and kissed it, and held it out toward me.