The Misfortunes of Others

By the same author:

FRIENDS TILL THE END

GOING OUT IN STYLE

AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD

THE PHONE rang at seven o’clock in the morning. Maya put down her pencil and took off her reading glasses.

“Hello?”

“Collect call for Maya Woodruff from Jean Jacques Rousseau,” said the operator, her voice made tinny from the distance.

“I accept the charges.”

“Thank you. Go ahead.”

“Maya.”

“Snooky, you beast.”

“Did you know that Rousseau was born in Switzerland? Here I always thought he was French.”

“Did you call me at this hour to tell me that?”

“This hour? What time is it there?”

“It’s early in the morning.”

“Well, it’s early in the morning here too.”

“Where are you? What part of the planet?”

“I’m in St. Martin,” her younger brother said. He sounded cheerful. Of course, Snooky always did sound cheerful. “French Antilles. It’s beautiful here, Maya. You would love it. Sun, sand and surf. I’m visiting friends.”

“Well, of course you are. When’s the last time you ever paid for a hotel room?”

“You sound grumpy, Maya. It’s not like you. Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything is fine.”

“Where’s Bernard?”

“Snooky, I can’t believe I’m paying for this conversation. Think for a moment. It’s seven o’clock in the morning. Bernard is asleep.”

“Oh.”

There was silence, broken only by the crackle of the telephone line.

“You don’t sound like yourself, Maya. You sound extremely grumpy. Usually you’re delighted when I call, no matter what time of day. I had a psychic intuition I should call you, so I did. Something is wrong, isn’t it? Is it you and Bernard? Are you getting divorced? I always thought you were such a solid couple.”

“Bernard and I are not getting divorced.”

“Are you ill? Is one of you sick? Should I come immediately?”

“Neither of us is sick.”

There was a brief silence.

“You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

“Snooky, you are amazing. You can tell whether or not I’m pregnant over a telephone line long-distance from the Caribbean?”

“You are pregnant.”

“Yes.”

There was a pause. “I’ll be there later today. Don’t bother to pick me up. I’ll rent a car in New York.”

“Snooky—”

Maya was left talking to a vacuum. The telephone crackled
and hummed ethereally, the sound of the electronic muses. She sighed and placed it back on its hook.

“Snooky diagnosed my pregnancy in a two-minute telephone call from St. Martin,” Maya told her husband later that day.

Bernard, a large man with dark hair and a bristling beard, took a sip of coffee from the oversized coffee cup which he favored. He looked grumpy. “I assume we paid for that call?”

“He knew right away, Bernard. Don’t you think that’s … well … unusual?”

“Everything about Snooky is unusual. Unusual, you understand, in the sense of not quite normal.”

“He really is psychic. Mother always said he was.”

Bernard folded his newspaper. “How are you feeling today?”

“Really awful.”

“I’m sorry. Can I get anything for you? How about some decaf?”

“I don’t want to look at coffee.” Maya scribbled irritably on a large legal pad she was holding on her lap. “I don’t want to look at tea. I don’t want to look at anything except maybe some celery. And in about two minutes I’m going back to bed for the rest of the day.”

“I think we’re running out of celery.” Bernard cocked a worried eye toward the kitchen.

“Go get some more.”

“I never knew celery was a miracle drug for pregnant women.”

“It’s not a miracle drug. It happens to be the only thing that settles my stomach and keeps away that awful fainty feeling.
That blackout low-blood-sugar thing. Now leave me alone for a little while, Bernard. I’m struggling to get this article done, and it’s not easy.” Maya worked for a small magazine called
The Animal World
. “I don’t see how I can possibly write anything decent while I’m feeling like this. I’d like to see you work under these conditions.”

“I haven’t gotten anything done for the last two months either, you know, sweetheart.”

“Well, at least you don’t feel like this.” Maya leaned her head wearily against her hand. “I have no joy of living. I’ve lost my esprit. I have no good cheer. I am no longer a happy camper.”

“You’re in your first trimester. You’re not supposed to be a happy camper.”

“I don’t see how something that’s only a few thousand cells big can make a person feel this way.”

“Can I do anything? Can I give you a back rub? Can I bring you some herbal tea?” Bernard hovered lovingly over her.

“You can call all my so-called friends and tell them that when they told me the first few months weren’t so bad, they were wrong. Oh, by the way.” Maya lifted her head. “Snooky is coming. He’ll be here later on today. He didn’t say when.”

“He never does say when. He just crawls up to the front door, like a cockroach.”

“We’ll need stuff for dinner. I can’t think about it. Do you mind doing the shopping?”

“No. I’ll make up a list.”

“Get celery. And salad stuff. Oh, and Bernard—?”

“Yes?”

“Get about a million shrimp. I think I could go for some shrimp tonight.”

Bernard was standing in the kitchen later that afternoon, watching the shrimp, cleaned, shelled and deveined, doing a macabre and ghostly dance in the pot of boiling water, when there was a hollow banging sound from the vicinity of the front door. He glanced at his watch, which read 5:00
P.M
., and made his way slowly down the hall to the foyer. There were more loud banging sounds. Bernard did not hurry. When they had bought the old blue-and-white Victorian in a state of ill repair, worn down by the centuries and by the casual abuse of previous owners, there had been an elderly doorbell which chimed loudly when a button was pushed. Bernard had disconnected it shortly after he and Maya moved in. He loathed doorbells—agents of the devil, he called them. He hated jumping every time the bell sounded, he hated those particular chimes and he hated the artificial cheeriness of it. To Bernard, someone at the front door was not a cause for celebration. For a long time he had left the button there untouched, and many visitors and deliverymen had spent hours pushing it before going away unanswered, but finally Maya had persuaded him to put up a brass lion’s-head knocker of impressive weight and stature, which leered into a visitor’s face and (Bernard felt) made them think twice before knocking. It produced a very satisfactory brass clanging sound which, unlike the doorbell, he could ignore with equanimity. He had spent many happy hours ignoring it, closeted away in his study upstairs.

Now as he came into the foyer, it became apparent that the banging sound was not coming from the lion’s-head knocker, but from an area several inches above the floor. Bernard grimaced and slowly unlocked the door. It opened to reveal a giant brown teddy bear.

Bernard contemplated the teddy bear for a moment.

“Snooky.”

His brother-in-law’s head appeared next to the bear’s, an unlikely Medusa. “Bernard. So good to see you.”

“Did you have to kick the door?”

“I couldn’t reach that very impressive brass knocker you have there with my feet. I’m sure you understand.”

“Come on in.”

“Thanks so much.”

Snooky put the bear down carefully on an antique hat stand with a wooden seat in a corner of the foyer, placed his suitcase on the floor, and turned to embrace Bernard in a tearful hug.

“Bernard, I … I can’t express how I feel.”

Bernard stood woodenly, in pained amazement.

“I’m so happy for the two of you, I could cry.”

“Please take your hands off me.”

Snooky wiped his eyes and stood back. “I brought you a bear.”

“So I see.” The bear was hard to miss, lolling drunkenly on the hat stand.

“I know I’ve been an uncle before”—Snooky and Maya’s older brother, William, a corporate lawyer who lived in California, had two small children—“but as I guess you know, I can’t stand Anna and Buster. They drive me crazy. I’m hoping to have a better relationship with your child. I know I could be a good uncle if I tried. I’m starting now. I don’t want Maya to do anything. I’m going to take over running the house. She’ll sit for nine months with her feet up. You’ll see, I’m going to do everything.”

Bernard stared at him gloomily. “Seven months.”