Marrying Up - Part VI
“Marrying Up” is a fictional story set in 1950s Manhattan revolving around Frances Riley, a difficult and ruthlessly ambitious young woman who moved from one social class to another—Irish immigrant off the boat to high WASP— when she married into the aristocratic Woolsey family.
THIS IS PART 6 of a FOURTEEN-PART STORY
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14
Image: Nathan Dumlao
Eighteen months later she had a third baby, a girl whom she named Caroline and who took two full days clawing her way into the world (in the end Frances had to have a C-section). By now Frances was nearly thirty. Her mother had passed away. Jack was traveling a good deal. Her father still had his liquor business and the house in Prospect Park. For years he’d had a lady friend, a widow whom he never introduced to his daughters, but most of his spare time was spent with Frances in her splendid apartment. With Jack away so much, it soothed Frances to have Kip around and the two were closer than ever. The other daughter, Peg, strange and abrupt-natured, unable to hang onto even the simplest job, lived in Queens with a roommate. She, too, frequently visited Frances, rough housing with the boys, trying to get them out to the park to play ball. Frances herself hardly ever played with the children. She rarely did the most basic things — bathe them, comb their hair, sit with them when they were sick. Caroline was handed straight over to the baby nurse. It's doubtful that Frances ever even burped her, though when visitors came her smile would rise like a yeasty cake in the oven and she'd gush and coo over the baby. But in the depths of her shining blue eyes was a vacancy that her father pretended wasn't there, and that Jack tried to dispel by giving in to her whims: redecorating the apartment for the third time in two years, allowing her a trio — and then a quartet and then a quintet — of yappy Yorkshire terriers that peed and left turds all over the carpets, hiring a manservant to walk the little things and carry packages for Frances and open the door to the silly ladies and faggy gents who came to her frequent lunches.
Nine months after Caroline's birth, Frances wanted to be pregnant again. She'd avoided Jack, but now she began to bother him for sex.
He knew the drill; it had been the same with each of the children, a coolness and lack of interest that went on for months followed by heavy heat, sweetness, tender touches that invariably had him drooling and swooning over her on the nights she was most fertile.
Her diaphragm would remain in its case in the bathroom drawer. Two weeks later she'd miss her period and a certain smell would make her queasy. The vacant look that had hung around since the last postpartum would be replaced by a dreamy, hopeful expression. She'd feel alive again.
"We can't have another baby, Frances," Jack said this time, pulling away as she rubbed up against him under the sheets.
"Why not?"
"Because you're not interested in the babies we have."
She moaned and reached for the drawstring to his pajamas. "Come on, Jack. Fuck me. That's all I want."
That's all he wanted, too. But this time he was wise to her. He steeled himself and fished a condom out of his bedside drawer. "Only if I wear this."
When she saw what he held in his hand, her face went as white as if he was holding a dead rat. "No! That would be wrong!"
"Why? Don't say religion. You're only religious when it suits you."
"I just can't, that's all. I hate those things."
"Then put on your diaphragm."
"My diaphragm hurts."
"Then forget about it."
"Please, Jack." She slid her hand into his pajamas.
He shoved the hand away. "I said forget about it."
She began to cry. He rose from the bed as quickly as if it were filled with scorpions and fled to his son Harry's room to sleep. A few days later, while he was on a business trip in Houston, he had a vasectomy. He didn't tell Frances and from then on made love to her during her fertile periods as if the condom scene had never happened, as if he'd had a change of heart and was as eager as she was to have more babies.
But of course her womb remained empty and the flatness returned to her eyes, always there beneath the surface like dead weeds at the bottom of a bright blue lake. Several years passed before she got up the nerve to consult a doctor, who told her she'd developed fibroids and would probably never conceive again. She was now in her mid-thirties, still vital-looking with her strong bones and straight posture. Her life was extremely busy and active, but deep down she saw herself as a failure and potential lunatic, and it was only Kip's constant reassurances that she was nothing like Noreen that saved her from chronic fits of despair. She never knew the real reason her womb had quit on her originated with Jack.
Cover Image: Magoi (Pexels)