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"That's what you say now, but just wait," she moaned, as if it were she who was having the baby. "It takes months, years to get your figure back; most women never do," she warned.
"I'm not worried about that, Mother. I had no trouble getting my figure back after Christie was born, did I?"
"You say that now because you are young and naive, but oh, how you will change your mind. Believe me. What are you going to do," she snapped, "have a half dozen babies?"
"Mother, you had three children, didn't you?" I pointed out.
"Don't remind me," she said, and then she gave out a deep sigh. "I suppose everyone in the community will be talking about it soon," she added, once again speaking as if my becoming pregnant was a scandal.
"I think they will have more interesting subjects to amuse them, Mother. If they don't, their lives must be terribly boring."
"You don't realize who we are in this community," she lectured. "Everything we do, everything that relates to us is news here. Why—why, we are their royalty, their celebrities. Like it or not," she said, "we live in a fishbowl."
"You didn't always think that way, Mother," I said. "You certainly didn't worry about being under glass," I reminded her. It came out a great deal sharper than I had intended, but Mother was making me angry. I didn't ask to be put on display and have my every little action and decision put under a microscope.
"I was young and foolish and very unhappy then," she retorted. "I thought you understood that," she added, with tears in her voice. "Oh, do what you want. You never listen to anything I
say anyway," she complained. "I'm always wrong in your eyes, no matter what I say or try to do."
"I listen, Mother. I just don't agree," I said.
"Why must our conversations always degenerate into arguments?" she asked, her voice dreamy, wistful, as if she were asking someone else in the room with her. "Anyway," she said, jumping to another topic, "Bronson and I have decided to go on a cruise in the fall . . . Italy, the Greek Islands. Bronson suggested I ask you if you and Jimmy wanted to go along, but I suppose now, with your new motherhood on the horizon . . ."
"Thank Bronson for thinking of us, Mother," I said. "I'm tired now. I have to go lie down."
"That's just what I mean," she snapped. "You're in the middle of your high season, and you go and get yourself pregnant. You don't even have the strength and energy to talk to me on the telephone. Honestly, I don't think any of my children has a brain."
"It must be so hard for you, Mother, to have all this wisdom now and not have anyone listen," I said, but she didn't understand my sarcasm.
"Exactly. That's it exactly," she agreed. By the time I cradled the receiver I was laughing.
I suppose I had really anticipated what Mother's reaction to my being pregnant again would be, but I had no way of knowing how Philip would react. When I told him, he stood staring at me for a moment, his eyes far off. Then he blinked and smiled, and his eyes gleamed. He rushed forward to hug and kiss me and offer his congratulations, but everything he said sounded odd. It was as if I were having his baby and not Jimmy's.
"We're going to have to adjust some of the work around here and make sure you're not stressed. We can't have our little mother made tired. No more standing for hours in the dining room doorway at dinner to greet the guests, and no more parading around to see how their food is. Let me handle all that. And just buzz me in the office if someone calls you to go all over the hotel to check something," he pleaded. "Our new baby's got to have the best care and protection."
"Thank you, Philip," I said. I shook my head in astonishment after he kissed me on the cheek again and rushed out to check on a room assignment problem I was about to solve. Was there something about this hotel that forced people to dwell in illusions? First Randolph, and certainly Mother, and now Philip? I hoped it would never happen to me.
With Jimmy hovering around me all day to be sure I wasn't doing too much, and now with Philip popping in and out to check on my condition, I began to feel like the specimen under glass Mother suggested I was. Both Philip and Jimmy had the staff spying on me and reporting to them if I went traipsing up and down stairs or into the basement to see about something. Every time I went outside and walked over the grounds I saw bellhops and chambermaids gawking out of windows or around corners. Moments later either Jimmy or Philip would be at my side to see what it was I had intended to do. If I so much as lifted something that weighed more than a pound, someone would drop whatever he or she was doing and fly over to assist. Carrying Christie up or down the stairs was enough to set off an air-raid siren. Sissy did her best to intercept and finally confessed that both Philip and Jimmy had ordered her to prevent me from doing anything that could in the least way be thought of as work.
At first it was amusing, but after weeks and weeks of it I began to get annoyed, and I let both Jimmy and Philip know in no uncertain terms one evening when they both showed up to escort me to dinner. First Jimmy arrived at my office, and then Philip popped in behind him.
"I just came by to see if there's anything I can do," Philip said.
"What can you do, Philip?" I cried, rising up and out of my seat behind the desk like a fountain of anger, gushing. "Can you carry me to the dining room? Can you eat my food for me? And you," I said, spinning on Jimmy, "why did you forbid Sissy from letting me carry Christie anywhere and tell her not to let me lift her out of her playpen or her crib?"
"I just thought"—he held his hands out—"Dr. Lester said—"
"He said, 'Don't do anything you wouldn't ordinarily do.' That's what he said. He didn't say turn me into an invalid!" I screamed.
Unlike my last pregnancy, this one was making me somewhat irritable and blue. I had stopped having nausea, but my temperament had undergone a change. Was it just the pregnancy? I wondered. Or did it have something to do with the work, the hotel, making decisions, becoming the administrator Grandmother Cutler once was?
"Okay," Jimmy said, holding up his hands like a man surrendering. "Okay, I'm sorry."
"We're just trying to look after you," Philip insisted.
"Well, don't," I snapped.
Both wore the same shocked expression.
