Blessings (10 page)

On Monday, back at school waiting for Peter’s return, she had reassuring thoughts. When we’re married, even though the baby will be arriving early, it will be different. Mom and Pop will be happy for me. What parents wouldn’t be pleased to see their daughter married to someone like Peter? It will be fine, then, when we’re properly married.

He was not there for Monday’s classes, nor for Tuesday’s. Was that a good sign or a bad one? A good sign. Naturally there would be arrangements to make.

Late Wednesday afternoon the telephone rang at the end of the hall, and Jennie was summoned.

“I’m back,” Peter said.

Her heart sprang high. “And what happened?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you.” His voice was flat, without answering joy.

Her heart sank. It was an organ that might as well have gone floating around her body for all the stability it had; sometimes it even went down into her feet.

“I’ve rented a car. I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

“Rented a car! Where are we going?”

“Just to have a place to talk. There’s never any private place around here where some jerk won’t interrupt.”

“That’s silly—” she began.

“Ten minutes.” He hung up.

A drenching rain blew in the wind. She got her raincoat and was waiting at the door when Peter drove up. She got into the car and saw his solemn face. When he moved to kiss her, she turned her lips so that his met her cheek.

She knew, she knew.

“Give me the bad news,” she said.

“It isn’t necessarily bad news. Why do you say that?”

“Because I can tell. Don’t play with me, Peter. Give me the whole story straight out.”

He started the car. “Let me find a quiet street to park on, and we can talk.”

On a side street, in front of a row of quiet homes, he stopped the car. In the now torrential rain, the street was deserted. When the motor was shut off, there was no sound except the rain clattering on the car roof, spattering the windows. It was a desolate sound.

“Well, Peter?”

“They don’t want us to get married now.” He looked not at her but straight ahead through the windshield.

Her mouth went dry. “No? What do they want, then?”

“They think, they say, we’re too young.”

“That’s true. We are.” She spoke steadily. “But what about … shall we call it our little complication? Or isn’t that important?”

He turned to her now. In the gray half-light she could see a pleading expression. “Jennie, don’t be sarcastic. Please, I’ve had a hell of a time.”

She was instantly tender, responding to his need. “I’m sorry. But what about it? What are we to do?”

“They think you should … get rid of it. I explained how you feel about that, but you know—you know, it does make sense, Jennie. I’ve thought it over. They convinced me. It really does make sense.”

“They convinced you,” she repeated. “They think it makes sense. While I am the one at the center of it all. What do they, or you, have to do with my body, with me?”

“Jennie, darling, listen. You can’t imagine what it was like. Such anger. It took me two days to get us all to stop ranting and to talk. My mother was in tears. I never saw her like that except when her own mother died.” And he repeated, “You can’t imagine.”

“Oh, yes, I can imagine, but what difference does it make? They’re telling me what to do with my own body.” She began to cry. “Peter, I told you I can’t bring myself to do that. I don’t want a baby, I don’t love it, but I told you—and I’m telling you again—I can’t kill it.”

“But think! In a few years we’ll be married and have as many babies as you like. You want to finish college and go to law school, don’t you? Where’s the money to come from if we get married now?”

“You said they were rich and they’d help. You said so.”

“Well, I thought so. But I can’t squeeze something out of them that they won’t give, can I?” For a second he put his head down on the rim of the steering wheel. “Oh, Christ!” he groaned. He turned back to her. “My father’s willing to give whatever you need to take care of it. And more. Anything you want, he said. Take a trip to Europe. Rome. Paris. Buy things. Rest yourself and get over it. As much as you want, he’ll give you.”

Then Jennie was shaken by a rage such as she had never known. It was a killing rage; she could have killed. And she pounded the dashboard.

“What does he think I am? A slut to be paid off? Europe? Do you know what you’re saying? He offers me a vacation … what do I want with a vacation when I’m asking for love, for help, to be accepted—”

“Jennie! You have love! I love you, you know I do. How can you talk like this?”

“How can you, unless they’ve convinced you too? Am I a slut to you too?”

“Don’t use that word. It’s nasty. It stinks.”

“Don’t tell me what words to use! I’ll use whatever words I want. I’ll tell you right now what happened there. I can hear it and I can see it as clearly as if I’d been hiding behind the door. Your mother, that icicle … You think I don’t know what she wants? A girl like that snippy kid—what was her name? Annie Ruth or Ruth Annie or something? ‘We’ve been friends for generations, you know. And isn’t it just lovely that the young people are engaged? A secret romance—we never guessed.’ Yes, it would be a different story if I were Miss Old Family instead of Miss Nobody. There’d be no talk of abortion, just a quick wedding under the trees in your garden. No, pardon me, in Miss Old Family’s garden. I’m sure they’d have one. And the baby would be a seven-month, such a darling—” Her voice had risen in outrage.

“God, Jennie, don’t! It’s not like that at all!”

“Of course it is! Any idiot can see it. I knew it the moment I walked in the door. And you—you let yourself be brainwashed. You, the big, brave man who was going to take care of me. ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’ll take care of everything.”

Peter turned the ignition key, and the windshield wipers began to clack.

“There’s no sense going on like this if you’re only going to scream at me, Jennie. We have a problem, and screaming won’t help.”

Her nerves snapped. “Shut those damn wipers off, will you? I can’t hear myself think.”

When he obeyed, she sat for a moment, bringing herself under control. Then she remembered something.

“Did you by any chance see your Aunt Lee?”

“Yes, I went to her.”

“Ah! And she said?”

“I’ll tell you. She said we should get married. She liked you. She said she’d lend us some money.”

“She did?” Jennie’s eyes filled. “Why, that’s absolutely wonderful of her!”

“Well, she’s like that. Romantic under the crust. Funny for a Lesbian, when you think about it.”

“That’s a cruel thing to say.”

“I didn’t mean it to be cruel. It’s just the way it strikes me.”

“Will she lend us enough to get by?”

“Jennie … I can’t take anything from her, no matter how little or how much. My parents would be furious. They were furious when I told them.”

“Why? If they don’t want to help, I should think they’d be glad to have somebody else do it for them.”

“It’s a long story. She has a tendency to interfere. I shouldn’t even have said anything about it.”

“To them or to me?”

He sighed. “To either, I guess.”

But he had told her, had been honest enough to tell her, and she softened.

“Oh, Peter, what are we going to do?”

The windshield wipers echoed, To do, to do, to do. He turned the key again and the wipers stopped.

“What are we going to do?” she repeated.

“I don’t know.” He was staring out at the rain.

Gloom seeped into the car. Her swift, furious outburst had left her tired. If I could just go to sleep, she thought, just sleep and wake up with all of this gone away. And she, too, stared out onto the black, wet street. The walls of the houses that faced one another on either side made a tunnel out of the street, a long, dark tunnel with no light at the end.

Peter spoke into the silence. “If you would have the abortion, it would solve everything.”

She had that picture again, the red picture, the color of blood, the sharp, steely flash, the destruction. She gasped.

“Is it that you’re afraid?” he asked, gently now.

“Afraid of pain? You know it’s not that.”

A few years ago she’d had a compound fracture of the arm and had borne the pain bravely, they told her. She knew she had. Besides, giving birth was hardly painless.

“What, then? Can you really tell me?”

“I have told you as best I can.”

“It’s done all the time. Quite safely. Even though it’s illegal. There are safe places. Competent doctors.”

Wearily she repeated, “Maybe it’s the way I was brought up. I can’t do it. My parents are Orthodox—”

Now Peter interrupted. It was his turn to be angry. “Your parents! You can’t even talk to them about it! You’re afraid to talk to them. At least I was able to talk to mine.”

“I’ve told you that too.”

Mom in the kitchen, scooping the ice cream: “Everything we taught you, all thrown out like garbage.”

Jennie’s anger rose again. “You don’t want to understand. I can’t talk about it to my parents. Why don’t we get married, Peter? We could manage somehow. Your father would have to help. He couldn’t let us starve. My parents would do something, too, some little something—”

“My father would tell me to quit college and go to work.”

“He wouldn’t!”

“Wouldn’t he? You don’t know. He has principles.”

“Principles! How can they possibly justify themselves?”

“I’ll tell you. They’ll say that if a man is old enough to father a child, he’s old enough to support it.”

“That’s what they did say, isn’t it? And you believed them.”

“You have to admit it makes sense.”

“Sense, yes, but no heart. There’s no heart. Cold, cold moneybags,” she said, clenching her teeth. “Yes, if my father didn’t own a delicatessen … You think I didn’t see your mother’s face when I told her? A face like a shark.”

“Jennie, that’s far enough. Leave my mother out, please.”

Loyalty, after all this. Loyalty to his mother. She felt choked.

“How can I leave her out when she’s in control of my life?”

“No, we were in control of our own lives, Jennie.”

“How can you talk like that? What have they done, how did they brainwash you? Well, maybe they’ve managed to make you feel like dirt, but I don’t feel like dirt, I can tell you. I don’t, I won’t, and they can’t make me. Neither can you.”

“This is a stupid conversation.” He started the engine. “You’re all wrought up, and we’re getting no place fast.”

“Stupid is right. Take me back to the dorm.”

She wanted to hit him. Was this Peter? Where were the strength and the smiling confidence? She had relied on him, but the soft, appealing opal eyes with which she had fallen in love were, perhaps, too soft. “Too obliging,” the old lady had said. He was only a scared boy… . And she was lost.

Neither spoke until they drew up before the dorm. Then he laid his hand on her shoulder.

“Jennie, take it easy. We’re both beside ourselves. That’s why we’re quarreling. I’m going to phone my father tonight and talk to him again.”

She pulled away and opened the door. “Good luck,” she said bitterly.

“Don’t be bitter. We’ll work out something. Please. Believe in me.”

She mustered a small smile. “Okay, I’ll try.”

“I’ll call you after I’ve talked to him tonight, okay?”

“No, wait till the morning. I’m exhausted. I want to sleep and not have to think about anything for a few hours.”

“All right. First thing tomorrow, then. And, Jennie, remember that we love each other.”

Maybe I’m being unfair, after all, she thought as she trudged upstairs. It’s awful for him too. She was so tired, just so tired.

All the next week she cried silently at night and woke heavy-headed, forcing herself to go to class and study. It was like waiting for a train or a plane so long delayed that one begins to think it may not be coming at all. Peter was in the same condition. Every day he consulted his father, who needed to consult with others.

“His lawyer, probably,” Peter said. “He never moves a step without lawyers.”

Every day he met Jennie briefly, always in a public place where they were never able to touch each other. Neither of them was in the mood for it, anyway. But the mute appeal in each one’s face was reflected in the other’s.

“Are you feeling all right?” he kept inquiring.

She was perfectly well. There was no hint of any change in her body. She would probably go close to the end of term without showing.

By the second week Peter had news. His father had arranged for a place in Nebraska, a respectable, church-run home for unwed mothers. It sounded like something out of the nineteenth century; Jennie hadn’t known that such places still existed. But apparently they did, and a girl would be anonymous there, cared for until she gave birth, at which time, if she wished, the baby would be given up for adoption.

“How does that sound?” Peter asked.

They were in a car again, parked this time outside of the zoo. A woman, passing by, was trying to comfort a squalling baby in a carriage while a toddler pulled at her skirt. This image fled across Jennie’s eyes and printed itself in her head after the woman had turned the corner and gone from sight. The image was soft and blurred, all curves in the flicker of light under new leaves. The mother, her long hair drooping like a loosened scarf, bent over the infant; the child’s round, strong head butted against the mother’s red skirt; it was an image of unity.

And she knew that this was one of the rare random pictures that she would keep, as she had kept the face of the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, while riding on a streetcar at least five years before. Or the morning when, through the silence of a street thick-muffled in snow, there had come the sudden clamor of church bells, and she had stood until the last vibration ceased.

Peter asked again, “How does that sound?”

She could barely open her lips, so great was the tiredness that lay on her.

“I’m thinking.”

The same thoughts ran over the same track. The little flat could be furnished so cheaply; the bedroom things could even be brought from her room at home; they’d need, then, only a table and two chairs for meals; a desk and lamps for studying; the baby furniture; and some yellow paint, a sunshine color for the corner where the baby would sleep; it would take so little… .