Vanished

She wanted to be with people who loved her now, and she longed for her happy days with Charles before their baby. Sometimes she just lay on her bed and cried, and on more than one occasion, Malcolm was shocked when he found her.

“You're just sensitive right now. Try not to take it all so much to heart,” he tried to tell her. But after talking to Miss Griffin, he did think she was being a little foolish. She seemed to cry all the time. She even got upset when she came to the office and saw Brigitte. Marielle felt so fat and ugly in comparison to her that for three days she refused to go anywhere with Malcolm. But he was always patient with her, and tried to be understanding. But it was obvious even to him that Marielle was desperately overwrought at the end of her pregnancy. It was as though she was terrified, and barely able to cope, but he did all he could to help her. Miss Griffin explained that some women are so afraid of delivery that they go crazy in anticipation of the pain. It seemed to support her general theory that Marielle was weak, and worse yet, a coward.

She wanted to have the baby at home, she had insisted on it early on, but Malcolm was equally insistent that the baby be born at Doctors' Hospital, with every possible modern development near at hand in case there was a problem. Marielle felt it would be more peaceful to have the baby at home, and she was worried about kidnapping, as she confessed to Malcolm. Bruno Richard Hauptmann had been arrested in September for kidnapping the Lindbergh child and she became obsessed with the Lindbergh kidnapping again, but Malcolm decided she was just unduly nervous because she was six and a half months pregnant. It was a difficult time for her, in ways no one else knew. Only her doctor realized what she was going through, and whenever she saw him, he tried to soothe her and reassure her that this time everything would be different.

They were at home the night the baby came, she was reading in her room, and Malcolm was working on some papers in his bedroom when the first pains came. She waited for a while, and then she went to tell him, and he rushed to her side the moment he saw her. Patrick drove them to the hospital and Malcolm stayed with her as long as the doctor would let him, and then they wheeled her away to have their baby. She was groggy from the medication they'd given her by then, and she was telling Malcolm something about how different it had been in Paris. The doctor smiled at him, and the two men exchanged looks of understanding, she was in a dream world.

“It should go easily for her,” the doctor said softly as the nurses took her away. “I'll come back to you very quickly.” He smiled and Malcolm settled into a chair to wait in the huge private suite of rooms they'd reserved for her. It was midnight by then, and Theodore Whitman Patterson was born at four twenty-three that morning.

Marielle saw him first through a kind of haze, and the doctor held him out to her swaddled in a blanket. He had a round pink face and a shock of blondish hair, and he looked at her with surprise as though he'd been expecting someone else, and then he gave a long loud wail, and everyone in the delivery room smiled while tears coursed down Marielle's cheeks. She had thought he was gone …she remembered him so well …the same round cheeks, those surprised eyes …but his hair had been black, like Charles's …shiny black hair like a raven …this wasn't him and yet it looked so like him. She nuzzled her cheek next to his, feeling a primeval ache in her soul, and at the same time a rush of joy and tenderness and completion. They took him away to clean him up and introduce him to his father, while Marielle dozed, and the doctors did some minor repair work.

It was morning when they brought her back to her room again, and Malcolm was dozing peacefully there, waiting for her return, and there was champagne cooling in a silver bucket near her bedside. He woke as soon as the gurney entered the room, and she was more awake than she had been the last time she saw him. Awake, and sore, and happier than she'd been in years …and proud …she had finally fulfilled Malcolm's dreams, and their agreement.

“Did you see him?” she asked as Malcolm bent and kissed her cheek, her eyes tired but content as he watched her.

“I did.” There were tears in Malcolm's eyes now too. This was all he had ever wanted. “He's so beautiful, and he looks just like you.'

“No, he doesn't.” She shook her head, wanting to say the forbidden words … he looks like Andre…. “He's so sweet …where is he?” She looked at the nurse, suddenly terrified …what if he was gone? … if something happened to him … if someone took him….

“He'll be back in a little while. He's sleeping in the nursery.”

“I want him here, in my room.” Marielle looked nervously at Malcolm and he took her hand in his own.

“He'll be all right.”