Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1942)

Another time I got to thinking of a vase someone had given us for a wedding present. It was stuck away up in the attic storage room, and Eric had to look for two hours before he found it. "How on earth did we get so much junk?" he demanded. "We've only been married eight months. I hate to think what the attic will be like after ten years." I liked the attention. But more than that I liked the thought of having a baby. What fun it would be to have a baby to care for! I made many plans: It would be a boy. I'd name him — oh, I didn't know. Sometimes I liked Robert, sometimes I thought Eric, sometimes it was Stephan. But he'd grow up to have dark, reddish brown hair like his father's, and the same clear brown eyes. He'd grow up quickly, too quickly, 1 knew. He'd be a young man before I'd had my fill of him as a boy, but I wouldn't try to hold him back. I'd work with him and encourage him; try to make him a happy boy and a good man. I'd always try to see his side ot it even when he was wrong, and I'd never, never lose my temper with him. When he began to go around with girls I'd encourage him to bring them home for scrambled eggs at night. Just as I had brought Eric home — What was I thinking? In all my plans Eric had not appeared once. Oh, he was a dim figure in the background, but shouldn't he be more than that? Shouldn't he have a hand .»©»o«<=>»o»o««»«»e>< in the plans I was making? I told him "That's all right," he said, smiling. "That's natural. You're all wrapped up in the baby. But after he's born you'll begin to look at me again." "I'm glad you understand, dear." "Of course I do." I stretched lazily on the couch. Eric came over and sat beside me. "You're more beautiful than you ever were, baby," he said. "Your eyes are about twice as big as they used to be and there's more behind them somehow." "You imagine it." Still, I liked to be told so. The days wore on into months. 1 was exceptionally well, the doctor said. I tried hard enough. I took calcium and everything else he prescribed, walked miles and miles every day. Elsie frankly revealed her envy. "I wish I could have one," she said. "But I don't dare let the store go with no one but Jim to watch it. He'd drink us into bankruptcy." "Maybe it would make a man of him," I said. "Why don't you try it? It would either make him or break him, and he's no good to anyone the way he is now. Least of all himself." Motherhood must be like marriage. Everyone who is in it wants to get everyone else in it. "Gosh, if I only dared," Elsie 54 breathed. She shook her head. "It would never work." LATE the next winter I knew the time was near. The weather had been mild for Connecticut and the ground was bare of snow. But one night a fierce blizzard blew up. Our house was an island, cut off from everything, it seemed. The wind howled on after Eric and I had gone to bed. The snow came in hard pellets that rattled on the window panes like shot. I lay awake until two o'clock. Then I knew. I nudged Eric. He was wide awake in an instant. "Now?" It was all he said. "Yes, I think so." All the way to the hospital I kept thinking about the storm raging outside the car. Eric had gone out first and run the engine a while to warm it up inside, so I was comfortable enough, and certainly safe. But for some crazy reason I associated the storm with the war that had come so close after Pearl Harbor. Until that minute I hadn't thought much about it. I had been so engrossed in myself that none of the catastrophic world events had come through. <O«O«O«O4Q4O«OtO4OtO«O4O4QtO»O«O«O»O»O«OeO«O4O0O0O»O4 dream of pain — light, heavy, sharp, ' dull pain. Pain that gnawed and bit, dug and twisted, ached and throbbed. Gradually it receded. They laid me in bed, the storm died. I was free of the dream and the pain. Eric was there. "Easy now, Maggie," he said. "You've had a tough time." There were deep rings under his eyes and his voice was anxious. I tried to smile at him but my mouth was still stiff from the pain. "Tell them to bring in the baby," I said. "Is it a boy?" "Not now," he said. "Wait a few hours. The doctor doesn't want you to see her now. It's a girl." He laid his hand on my forehead. Suddenly I knew! Was it the compassion in his hand, was it the sorrow on his face, the deep-bitten look of regret? I don't know how, but I knew my baby was dead. "She's dead," I said quietly. He nodded dumbly — too crushed to deny it further. My baby was dead! I had gone through the mountains and valleys of pain for her — to bring her into the world, and she had been born still as death. No crying, no movement, just death and stillness and &CUU TTetxo lO' quiet. NADINE CONNER — who shares singing honors with Nelson Eddy on the latter's program every Wednesday over CBS. This isn't the first time Nadine and Nelson have sung together on the air. They were teamed back in 1937, before Nadine's beautiful soprano voice had brought her stardom with the Metropolitan Opera Company; and you've heard her frequently on other programs. Redhaired and beautiful, Nadine was born at San Juan Capistrano, California, in a house that her great-grandfather built in 1850. Her parents, both musical, trained her to be a pianist, and she first took up singing only for her health, but the sideline became a life-work, and a most successful one, you'll agree if you listen. 404O4C40404O4O4O404O4O4O404040404O4O4O4O4O4Q4O4040( But now I began to think of other women in the war. They had borne children while the bombs crashed down. They had borne children under the bombardment of guns. They had borne them in the fields, in snow and rain and burning sun. Because they had no place to go. They had borne them alone and in crowds, with enemies and with friends. I was afraid, and I didn't know of what. Eric sat beside me. He would keep me from harm. At the clean hospital with the antiseptic smell, the doctor would take me in charge. He knew just what to do. I had seen the bright room they would put me in after the delivery. They would bring my baby to me there. I knew it was warm in there, and safe. I was secure. And yet I was afraid. Two hours later it began. A long period of darkness and light alternating, of heavy cruelty, and then relief. Through the whole time the sound of the storm slid in and out like a great ghost, now close, now distant. And the steep slide into pain was like a skier on the mountains, descending deeply, sharply, into an abyss of torture, then soaring up over the heights into the clear air, then back again into the depths that were choked with hard snow and hard pain. It was a | WAS in the *■ hospital for three weeks. When I came home I still looked like an invalid. A heavy apathy held me. I couldn't seem to think or feel or notice anything. Eric came and went like a ghost. I had lived so long with the thought of the baby uppermost in my mind that now I was unable to accept the importance of anything else. What did I care what became of me, or Eric, or anyone else? There was nothing to live for. Elsie came around to see me several times before I was out and around, and even her ready wit failed to draw me out of myself. Finally, I was on my feet again, but the terrible listlessness still held me firm. "What can I do for you, darling?" Eric kept saying. "Would you like to go away for a while, or would you rather stay here? Is there anything I can get you?" I must have answered him vaguely. There was nothing I wanted — nothing. Except to be left alone. All the time I saw dimly that Eric was thinking very hard about something. I didn't know what. And several times I realized he mentioned the war and Pearl Harbor with great feeling. Still I refused to let it sink in, although I was still alive enough to know vaguely, in that deep part of me that I never brought out in the open any more, that something was impending. Eric came home one night and made me sit down beside him. "Maggie," he said, "I know you're not well, not yourself, and for that reason I Continued on page 56 RADIO AND TELEVISION MIRROR