uth.
"I'm sorry," I repeated, turning back to Agnes quickly.
"Yes. Is everything all right now?"
"Oh yes, yes," I said, now thinking of myself. "Everything is . . . perfect."
And it was as far as I was concerned. Gradually, in the weeks that passed between Thanksgiving and the Christmas holiday, my morning sickness lessened and lessened until it came to an end entirely. In fact, I began to feel unusually well and found myself more energetic than ever. When I gazed at myself in the mirror, I thought I'd never looked more radiant. My eyes sparkled with a brightness they had never before possessed. Other people noticed these changes in me, too; especially Madame Steichen.
"Now you are playing with a passion," she told me one afternoon. "Your fingers don't just roll over the notes; you have become one with the piano and the piano," she said, pulling her head back proudly to indicate she was responsible, "is playing you."
I was riding a soft, marshmallow cloud. I floated through the corridors. Young men who had given me only a passing glance or hello were now smiling widely and looking for excuses to stop me in the hallway for a chat. I had at least a half dozen invitations from a half dozen different boys to go on dates. Of course, I had to turn them all down. I was afraid they would all think me stuck up, so I took great pains to come up with reasonable excuses and be kind and friendly to them.
I wondered if Michael noticed these changes in me because he didn't mention them. Except for his occasionally asking how I felt, the subject of my pregnancy never came up. If anything, Michael acted more like my teacher and less like my lover since that cold, rainy day when I had gone to his apartment. His work on the plans for the Broadway show had kept him very busy every weekend since and one weekend, he had to go with the producers to Washington, D.C., to meet with some investors. I missed him and told him so. He promised that he would spend every available free moment with me as soon as he could, but it had been so long since he'd had any free time, I was beginning to worry.
"Is everything all right?" I asked him one afternoon as soon as Richard Taylor had left us.
"Oh yes, sure," he said quickly. "Why?"
"You seem so distant these days. I was just afraid you had thought things over and were sorry."
"Oh no, no. We have so little time now to accomplish what I had hoped we would, and I want to be sure you will be ready for bigger things. I'm sorry if I've been too hard on you in class," he said.
"You haven't been too hard on me. Besides, I like working hard on my music. Am I getting better?"
"Considerably better. We won't wait a day longer than necessary to have you audition after you've given birth. For now, though," he emphasized, "it's work, work, work, and for both of us. I'm off immediately to meet with the show preproduction staff right now. But please, don't think I'm neglecting you. Not a moment goes by when I don't think about you and how wonderful things will be for us."
"Oh Michael," I said, "it's the same for me." I was about to throw my arms around him when he reminded me we were still in school and anyone could walk into the music suite. We parted as we usually did with a quick kiss and then me leaving before he did.
I even enjoyed the cold days on my walks home.
The colder it was, the more alive I felt as I strolled up the sidewalk, my little puffs of breath looking like puffs of smoke.
Trisha was true to her word: she hadn't uttered a syllable about my pregnancy to anyone, but she was fascinated with the physical changes occurring in me. Almost every night, she and I took out the tape to measure my waist. When it reached three inches over what it had been, I bought a girdle to keep my stomach in. In the meantime Trisha went to the public library and took out a book on pregnancy and we sat up nights reading it together and discussing the baby inside me—what stage of development it was in, what would happen next. Inevitably, we arrived at a discussion of names.
"If it's a boy, I think Andrew; it means strong and manly."
"And if it's a girl?" Trisha asked.
"That's easy, Sally, after Momma Longchamp," I said.
"I can't have babies until I'm at least forty," Trisha declared. "I can't risk anything interfering with my ability to dance. By forty, a dancer's career is on the downside anyway."
"You will have to marry a very understanding man then," I told her.
"If he's not understanding, he's not worth marrying," she replied. "Besides, it's not impossible. You found someone like that, didn't you?"
"Yes," I said. "I did."
She insisted I tell her more and more about Allan. I continued to fabricate, often forgetting one detail or another. Trisha, on the other hand, forgot nothing, and always reminded me of my contradictions. I knew she was growing more and more suspicious. A number of times I was tempted to tell her the truth. She was doing so well keeping my secrets as it was, why couldn't I trust her with the truth? I thought. But I was afraid, afraid of anything that might happen and ruin things for Michael and me; and I had, after all, promised Michael I wouldn't tell her.
Trisha and I were both amused by the next stage in my pregnancy: my dietary cravings. Some afternoons, I couldn't wait to get home to prepare myself a banana smeared with peanut butter. I would sneak into the kitchen whenever Mrs. Liddy was out doing an errand or off someplace else in the house, and get my strange snacks.
One afternoon, however, I opened the refrigerator and saw Mrs. Liddy had prepared Jell-O for our dinner dessert. Suddenly, I was filled with a desire for Jell-O on corn flakes. I filled a bowl as quickly as I could and scooped some Jell-O on it. I couldn't wait to smuggle it up to my room and began eating immediately when Mrs. Liddy walked in on me.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Mrs. Liddy," I said quickly and tried to hide the bowl from her eyes. "I didn't mean to mess up your Jell-O mold before dinner, but I just had this urge for some."
She continued to stare at me, now with very interested gimlet eyes. Her gaze moved from me to the counter where I had left the box of corn flakes and then back to me, scrutinizing.