Excerpt: Charles and Pat

1936

At the end of February, Pat felt sure that she was pregnant, but wanted to keep the news from Charles until she had missed two periods. Charles, however, was hard to fool. “Something has changed about you, chérie,” he said. “You look a little pale and tired. Do you have anemia?”

Pat shook her head. “What I have isn’t anemia. Do you remember all the nights we were in England? It must have happened in Bradford —"

“You’re going to have a baby?”

Pat nodded.

Charles gasped in delight. “Pat!” He lifted her up and twirled her around. “Let me send telegrams to your family and to Maman.”

“No, not yet, not till the end of March or the beginning of April. Just don’t send it on April 1 — they’ll think it an April Fools’ joke.”

However, less than a week later, Pat was awakened by a terrible stomach cramp. She got up, turned on the light, and saw a pool of blood on the bottom sheet of the king-sized bed. She screamed. Charles, roused from sleep, said, “Let me call Dr. Madison. I’ll have Mrs. Benson fix you some chicken soup.”

While Pat was sitting in the bedroom’s chaise longue, still consuming the chicken soup that the cook had prepared for her at a moment’s notice, the gynecologist came in. He examined Pat and went to Charles, who was waiting in the guest room next door. Then Dr. Madison returned.

“What did you tell my husband?”

“Mrs. Boyer, you’re going to be fine,” Dr. Madison said in a too-mellifluous voice. “This should not prevent you from carrying a child to term. And since the embryo was expelled during your miscarriage, you won’t need a D & C to remove the retained tissue.”

“Miscarriage?” Pat was dumbfounded. “You couldn’t save the baby? How far along was it?”

“As far as I could tell, about eight weeks. I suggest that you and Mr. Boyer wait at least two or three months before trying to conceive again.”

“Thank you, doctor.” Pat heard her voice as if from far away. After Dr. Madison left, Charles came in. Pat began to weep on his shoulder. “This is my fault, I know it!” she said.

“How could it be?” Charles told her. “You are young and healthy. In terms of athletics, you beat me without any trouble. How could you be at fault?”

Pat began to cry even harder. “You have to know this. Please forgive me —"

“For what?”

“I was very young and foolish then —" And Pat hesitantly began to tell the story of how she ran away with Andy Fairfax, of the missed period, of the patent medicine, of the horrible bleeding afterwards…

“Pat, Pat, Pat…” Charles tried to console her. “You do not know for sure whether it was a baby, do you?”

Pat shook her head. “How could I know for sure? I’d have had to find a cheap wedding ring to go to a doctor’s office, but that wouldn’t have fooled anybody, considering how young I was.”

Charles sighed. “I have not always been on my best behavior myself. If I had been a woman and the mistresses that I had before I was married had been men, I would have been a mother several times over, with no child having the same father.”

Pat had to smile at that particular stretch of the imagination.

“Look, Pat, you are smiling —"

“Do you forgive me?”

“There is nothing to forgive. Forgive yourself, chérie.”