Page 69 of Thursdays at Orange Blossom House
‘Not easily. But I’m trying to doze.’ She certainly needs to sleep. The pain has kept her awake the last couple of nights. ‘I’m sorry that I’m so boring.’
He turns his head a little to smile at her. ‘You never bore me.’
‘Really? I bore myself.’ Her eyes close even without her wanting them to.
‘Ah, but you don’t see you the way I see you. You know how you say I’m so handsome and strong?’
Her eyes open. ‘You are!’
He laughs. ‘I love that you think so, but I do not see myself that way. I think I am a little bit tubby and a little bit ugly.’
‘Don’t talk that way about my husband, please,’ Dorothy says primly.
‘This is what I mean. You see me as someone else.’
‘I see you as you are.’
‘And I seeyouas you are. So when I tell you that you cannot bore me, please believe it.’ He’s silent for a few moments, then adds, ‘Every day with you is an adventure. It has been from the start.’
Dorothy thinks about her life, which doesn’t seem that daring or interesting. She wakes up, she goes to work, she tries her best, she goes home, she tries her best there too. There are no adventures.
‘I’m trying to work out what you mean,’ she says. ‘I don’t think I can.’
He laughs. The sound is kind, reassuring. ‘You embrace every day, my Dorothy. As if it is a chance to start over. Even when you are sad, you try to find the good in the day. You are …einzigartig.’
Unique; her German vocabulary is still good enough to remember that.
‘That is what I mean,’ Frederick goes on, ‘when I say every day is an adventure: however it starts, there is no telling where it will end. You are not afraid of that. I think you even like it.’
‘Hm.’ Dorothy thinks about it some more, although she still doesn’t really understand what he means. It’s enough that he believes it, though.
‘I saw your yoga books in the suitcase,’ Frederick says. ‘You are really interested in it, aren’t you?’
‘Yes – I’ve learnt a lot about my body. I know I’ve told you that, and how the breathing helps when I’m feeling stressed. But it’s so strange … It just makes sense. Do you know what I mean? So I want to know more. Sandrine says yoga is thousands of years old. Maybe that’s why it makes sense – because so many people have done it. It almost feels like I know it. Like I’ve always known it. It’s helping me.’
She smiles, thinking of Sandrine’s playful admonishment of her the other day for something she was doing completely wrong. Sandrine never makes any of them feel foolish. Instead, she encourages them to want to have the best experience they can.
‘I can tell,’ Frederick says. ‘You do not get as down about things any more. Even with this problem,’ he nods over his left shoulder, ‘you are not letting it make you think you are doing something wrong. You always used to think it was your fault.’ He pauses. ‘It was never your fault, Dorothy. It was just something that happened. Those babies weren’t meant to be.’
She knows he’s right, but his words still register as a pain in her heart. They were her babies – their babies – and she has trouble thinking of them as beings who could never exist. They are still real for her. She dreams about them sometimes. They don’t have faces, but she hears the names she chose for them and wakes up in tears. Then she feels guilty that she is so upset about little people who never were, when some people never have the chance to have children, or even get married. Dorothy has no right to wail over miscarriages when the rest of her life has worked out just fine.
But Frederick didn’t intend his words to hurt her, so she doesn’t tell him any of that.
‘I guess not,’ she says.
‘I still don’t like that you have to go through this,’ Frederick says softly.
‘Hm?’ She turns her head so she can see him.
‘It’s … barbaric.’ His breath catches in his chest. ‘You are in so much pain. And there are all those needles. It just doesn’t seem right that you have to go through all of this. And I …’ Another catch. ‘My part is over in five minutes.’ He laughs, but there’s no mirth in it. ‘It’s not fair. To you.’
‘But it will be worth it,’ Dorothy says passionately. ‘Once we have a baby, we’ll forget that we ever had to do this.’
He’s silent for a minute or so, then murmurs, ‘What if there is no baby?’
‘There will be,’ Dorothy says confidently. She believes in this baby, now more than ever, and with that belief comes the pounding of something louder and more certain: her blood, her strength, her determination.
‘But if there’s not— ’
