The Laments Read Online Free

her pause; she simply tapped her watch and continued on her rounds.
    “What about his name?” continued Rose. “Do you need suggestions? I always thought Harold would be a fine . . .”
    Julia shot Howard another desperate glance.
    “We’ve
got
names,” Howard interjected, “just none that we agree on.” Almost immediately he realized his faux pas as Julia closed her eyes in anticipation of Rose’s next charge.
    “Julia”—Rose smiled in reproach—“can’t you
defer
to your husband for a change?”
    “Why?” snapped Julia. “
You
never did.”
    “You’re tired, dear,” Rose said. “You always snap when you’re tired.”
    “I want to go home,” whispered Julia as she rested her head against Howard’s shoulder.
    “Imagine,” Howard said, his face shining at the wonder of his little son. “We’ll go home tomorrow—a family!”
    WALTER BOYD WAS NOT a spontaneous man; he and Mary might have worked at Eldridges for years—he in Accounting, she in Jewelry and Lingerie—before he made a pass. Mary was impulsive and forward, however; she sat on his desk, folded her legs beside his liverwurst sandwich, compelling him to introduce himself if only to retrieve his lunch. The following spring, when she announced that she was pregnant, Walter took a full day to express his surprise.
    “Really?” he said the next morning with a dim smile. “Are you
really
pregnant, Mary?”
    “Bloody hell, Walter,” she replied. “I’ve been
chucking up
every morning for three days!”
    Though Walter was grave and humorless, Mary liked his intellect and earnest nature. He lacked deceit, and he didn’t make her feel stupid, as some men did. With melancholy eyes and a sweet, affectionate nature, he was as stable as a continent. Walter moved an inch a year.
    Only an accidental pregnancy could have provoked Walter to propose marriage, but he did the right thing, as Mary had hoped; he even gave her a ring with a sapphire setting. But then that little cloud appeared, the cloud that seemed to follow Mary everywhere. When Mary miscarried, she wailed; she wanted to beat the walls at the cruelty of life. She needed to be held, to be cradled, but Walter just shook his head and rolled the lint from his pocket linings.
    “Bloody hell, Walter,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t think you love me at all!”
    When he looked back at her with those sorrowful eyes it made her furious. She slapped him. How dare
he
be the suffering one?
    “One two three, one two three,” counted Walter softly, staring at the second hand on his wristwatch.
    “It was
my
baby!” she roared.
    “One two three, one two three,” murmured Walter. “My baby too, one two three, my baby too.” But Mary didn’t hear him. The only way Walter knew to get through his grief was to count. Until, one day, Mary woke up to find him gone, and it appeared that Walter
was
capable of a decisive act.
    WALTER BRUSHED THE BLUE JACARANDA BLOSSOMS from the roof of his black Volvo and climbed in. A gardener was clipping the trunk of a date palm on a nearby lawn. After sitting behind the wheel for a few moments, Walter gave him a brief nod. In this quiet white neighborhood in Lusaka, it might seem odd for a man to be sitting in a hot car counting his fingers.
    Walter added the weeks since they had slept together, then broke them down into days, and hours. Numbers didn’t lie; they might well have produced a baby—though it must have been born prematurely.
    He estimated 420 miles to Salisbury from Lusaka. If he drove without stopping, he could do it in seven hours. All he needed was the resolve.
    MARY’S BREASTS WERE ALWAYS throbbing by the time her little Jack arrived. The minute she heard his cry, her nipples would start dripping with milk, and by the time the little urchin was in her lap, her nightie would be drenched in two big splotches.
    “I can do this by myself,” she said to the nurse who had brought the baby in, eyeing her haughtily as the woman’s shoes