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By Root 612 0

knew she had been shirking her responsibilities lately, avoiding the Bates’ dinner-invitations even though Clara had been wanting to see her. The pregnancy had gone first one week, then two weeks longer than it was supposed to, and Clara had sounded over the phone as though she herself was being dragged slowly down into the gigantic pumpkin-like growth that was enveloping her body. “I can hardly stand up,” she had groaned. But Marian had not been able to face another evening of contemplating Clara’s belly and speculating with her on the mysterious behaviour of its contents. She had responded the last time only with cheerful but notably uncheering remarks intended to lighten the atmosphere, such as “Maybe it’s got three heads,” and “Maybe it isn’t a baby at all but a kind of parasitic growth, like galls on trees, or elephantiasis of the navel, or a huge bunion.…” After that evening she had rationalized that she would do Clara more harm by going to see her than by staying away. In a spurt of solicitude catalysed by guilt, though, she had made Joe promise as she was leaving to let her know as soon as anything happened, even offering heroically to babysit for the others if absolutely necessary; and now his voice was saying, “Well thank god it’s all over. It’s another girl, ten pounds seven ounces, and she only went into the hospital at two last night. We were afraid she was going to have it in the taxi.”

“Well that’s marvellous,” Marian exclaimed, and added various inquiries and congratulations. She got the visiting hours and the room number from Joe and wrote them down on her telephonemessages pad. “Tell her I’ll come down and see her tomorrow,” she said. She was thinking that now Clara was deflating toward her normal size again she would be able to talk with her more freely: she would no longer feel as though she was addressing a swollen mass of flesh with a tiny pinhead, a shape that had made her think of a queen ant, bulging with the burden of an entire society, a semi-person – or sometimes, she thought, several people, a cluster of hidden personalities that she didn’t know at all. She decided on impulse to buy her some roses: a welcoming-back gift for the real Clara, once more in uncontended possession of her own frail body.

She settled the phone in its black cradle and leaned back in her chair. The second-hand on the clock was sweeping around, accompanied by the ticking of typewriters and the click-clack of high-heeled shoes on the hard floor. She could feel time eddying and curling almost visibly around her feet, rising around her, lifting her body in the office chair and bearing her, slowly and circuitously but with the inevitability of water moving downhill, towards the distant, not-so-distant-any-more day they had agreed on – in late March? – that would end this phase and begin another. Somewhere else, arrangements were being gradually made; the relatives were beginning to organize their forces and energies, it was all being taken care of, there was nothing for her to do. She was floating, letting the current hold her up, trusting to it to take her where she was going. Now there was this day to get through: a landmark to be passed on the shore, a tree not much different from any of the others that could be distinguished from the rest only by being here rather than further back or further on, with no other purpose than to measure the distance travelled. She wanted to get it behind her. To help the propelling second hand she typed out the rest of the dog-food questionnaire.

Towards the end of the afternoon Mrs. Bogue sauntered out of her cubicle. The upwardly arranged lines on her brow expressed consternation, but her eyes were level as ever.

“Oh dear,” she said to the office at large – it was part of her human-relations policy to let them in on minor managerial crises – “What a day. Not only that disturbance in the West, but there’s been some trouble with that horrible Underwear Man again.”

“Not that filthy man!” Lucy said, wrinkling her opalescently powdered nose in disgust.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bogue, “it’s so upsetting.