"You called me, though. You said you were afraid of something, and
prayed that--"

"You know how big a sissy I can be sometimes, Andy. Remember the time
the wasp got in the bathroom while I was taking a shower, and how we
got tangled up in the shower curtain where I was trying to hide from him
and you were trying to catch him? And remember what happened right after
that? Right there in the bathroom?" She laughed lightly.

To hear her laugh again! Andy smiled to himself, remembering. She had
been so soft and cool and pretty, snarled in the shower curtain, her
hair damp and curly, her cheeks flushed, uttering little squeals and
yelps and giggles that were exciting music, and suddenly he wasn't
chasing the wasp any more and she wasn't giggling because the wasp was
tickling her. She had pulled his head under the shower, and he had got
soaked anyway, so he climbed into the tub and she helped pull off his
clothes and they soaped each other into a lather and they rinsed and
they climbed out together, but they never got dried off and they never
got out of the bathroom--at least not for a long time. And oh, how her
laugh had tinkled then, and how he loved her when she laughed.

He thought of her laughing now, and a pain shot through his head. He
tried to visualize her now, as she laughed--the swollen, hurt-looking
belly, the heavy breasts dragging her frail shoulders forward, the
drawn, pinched look he knew must be between her eyes as it was always
when she felt unwell. He could visualize her this way, but not laughing.
Then he heard her, and she wasn't laughing any more, and her moans were
needles and her screams were knives.

It lasted longer this time. It lasted so long he could taste the blood
where his teeth had ground through his lip, although he couldn't
remember the pain of doing it. She came back to him at last, groaning
weakly, and they talked, he cheerfully for her sake, she bravely for
his. They remembered things they had done together, good times, happy
times. They talked of what they would do when he came home, and what
would they call the baby? Andy Junior if a boy? Elsie if a girl? Or
Karen, or Mary, or Kirsten, or maybe Hermione? They laughed at that, and
they laughed again at the thought of twins. But the laughs turned into
gasps and cries of pain. And Elsie lay thrashing in the labor room of a
hospital in New Jersey, and Andy lay rigidly under a rigidity not of
his own making in a jungle far away.