“I just wanted to go to sleep. I didn’t care what you did if you put me to sleep. I love you for taking care of me. For saving us. I really love you. I really do.”

“I have to go and make my rounds. I’ll stop back in tomorrow. Be sure and wash the ointment off.”

“I will. I do.” He left the room and left me there. The sun came in the windows onto baskets of flowers. Everyone had sent me flowers. And I had given birth to a boy. An heir. A grandson for my father. I sank back into the pillows. The only thing wrong was the way Malcolm was acting. He only came to the hospital late in the afternoon after he got through working. He was working for my father on a road job and he would go home and bathe and dress and not get to the hospital until almost seven o’clock. Then he would only stay a little while and he wouldn’t touch the baby. “He sure is little, isn’t he?” he kept saying. “He sure is small.”

“He’s beautiful,” I would answer. “He’s perfect. He’s the prettiest baby I’ve ever seen in my life.”

And every night after he kissed me gingerly on the cheek and left the room and went away I would turn over into the pillow and cry for a long time. My stomach hurt at night and I was still fat and my husband didn’t even want to kiss me.

Chapter

22

The day after I got home from the hospital we had a real fight. I was set up in my mother’s bedroom with the baby crib beside me and a nurse at my beck and call. My parents had moved into the guest room until I was “on my feet.” It was a Saturday morning and Malcolm was standing at the foot of my bed buttoning his shirt. Charles William and Irise had just called from Arizona where they were spending a second summer at Taliesin. Charles William had told me a joke on the phone and I was repeating it to Malcolm. “Poontang,” I said, laughing uproariously at the punch line.

“Don’t say that,” Malcolm said. “Don’t talk like that.”

“What’s wrong? You didn’t think it’s funny?”

“I don’t think it’s very attractive for a woman to say words like that. Especially when you have a baby.” He finished buttoning his shirt and began to adjust his belt. His body was perfect. His body looked like a Greek god. He wasn’t lying in a bed with his stomach hurting all night every night and fat all over the sides of his waist.

“Where are you going?” I asked. “Why are you getting so dressed up?”

“I’m going to play golf with Dudley. I’m not dressed up. These are the only clothes I have.”