Blessings (11 page)

But he didn’t want to. I suppose I could force him, she thought. It’s been done often enough, God knows. Yet to live like that, begrudged … To bring up a child like that … Surely the child would come to feel it.

“Have you thought?” He took her hand. “Your hand’s so cold. Poor Jennie. Oh, poor Jennie.”

She began to cry. All this time she had been able to keep her tears for the privacy of her bed, but now suddenly they came in a gush, an explosion of tears.

He put her head on his shoulder. “Darling, darling,” he whispered, kissing her hair. “I’m so sorry. What a stupid bastard I am to put you through all this. Jennie, we’ll have babies, I keep telling you. You’ll be a lawyer and we’ll have a home. We’ll have everything we want. It’ll be better for the baby, darling, don’t you see that? To be in a wonderful family—so many couples can’t have children and want them so much, older couples, ready to take proper care of a child. We just aren’t ready yet, don’t you see that?”

He held her close, repeating himself as if to reinforce what he had already told her a dozen times or more.

A wonderful family, she thought. Ready to take proper care. That’s not like killing, is it? That’s life. Giving life. It seemed now that she could feel the life moving in the pit of her body, although that was, of course, absurd, since it would be months before she would feel anything. Yet it was there.

After a long while her weeping subsided with a long, deep, final sigh.

“I suppose it will have to do. Yes. Adoption,” she murmured.

“We’ll handle it this way,” Peter said at once. “You’re due around the first of November, you say. You can go out there whenever you think best. I don’t know what excuse you’ll make at home or how to explain that you won’t be coming back here for the start of the semester, but you’ll think of something.”

“Yes, I’ll think of something,” she said wanly.

“Maybe you could say you’re taking a special course out there or have some sort of scholarship in French or something. I don’t know. I don’t suppose—I mean, would your parents know about special courses or anything like that?”

“You know they wouldn’t.”

“Then you could get away with it?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“And, Jennie—you’ll be back here for the second half of the year. We’ll be together again.”

So they spoke. And so, out of necessity, there was a mending. Amid the rush of final examinations, at brief intervals they clung to each other, reassuring themselves that all was as it had been, all was well. Then came separation: Peter home to Georgia and Jennie home to Baltimore. He was to come back before the start of the new semester to see her off to Nebraska.

By late summer when Jennie’s time for departure came, she had gained a little weight, which pleased her mother.

“See how beautiful you look with a little weight on? Now don’t start to diet again, will you?” And she said, “I hope you’re doing the right thing, making this transfer. I don’t know anything about college credits, but I do know about men. I mean, when you’ve got a boyfriend like Peter, it does seem crazy to leave him. I know it’s only for a few months, but still,” she said, while pressing Jennie’s miniskirt, which was already too tight at the waist.

Pop looked up from the newspaper. “Jennie will have ten boyfriends in love with her before she’s married, don’t worry.”

In Pop’s eyes she was a miracle of beauty and brains. She was perfection.

And she said gently, “Yes, Pop, Mom, don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

Her mother looked up. Hairline creases bunched on her forehead between her eyebrows.

“I worry. Who can help worrying about a child? You’ll find out when you have one.” She looked old. “I love you, Daughter.”

There was such a sore, hard lump in Jennie’s throat that she had to turn away and bend over the suitcase.

“I love you, too, Mom. I love you both.”

Peter and Jennie met in Philadelphia the day before the plane was to leave. He rented another car, and they drove out in late afternoon beyond City Line Avenue, onto the highway, and to the motel where they had first made love. In a dismal fast-food restaurant across the road, they ate a rather silent supper. He held a hamburger between shaking hands, then put it down half-eaten, as if he were unable to swallow.

“You all right, Jennie?”

“I’m fine. Just fine.”

“Maybe I’d better give you the tickets and all the papers now, before I drop them or something. Here, put them in your bag. Everything’s there, the bankbook and the cash. There should be plenty. The place—the home —has been all paid for, so you don’t need to lay out a thing. This is just for you.”

She glanced at the bankbook. Five thousand dollars had been deposited.

“This is ridiculous,” she said. “It’s much more than I’ll need. I want a couple of maternity skirts and that’s it. I can wear my own blouses without fastening the bottom button.”

He was staring at the wall behind her. She had embarrassed him. Maternity clothes were too intimate for him, who knew every part of her body.

How awfully young he is! she thought, feeling tall and taut, mature and proud.

“There’s more if you need it,” he said, ignoring her objection. “That’s one thing about my father. He’s generous, and always has been.”

Generous. Without a visit, a letter, even a telephone call in acknowledgment of the situation, or of her very existence as a human being.

“You have the address at home, of course. You’re to get in touch if you need anything. Anything at all.”

“I told you, I won’t need anything.”

“You never know. I wish you would take more, but you said it was insulting.”

“And so it would be.” She sat up straighter. “Will you get me another glass of milk? I haven’t had my quota today.”

He flushed. “Of course.”

So the prenatal diet was an embarrassment to him too. Strange. Well, not strange when you think about it, she realized as her hand clasped the tumbler. She, after all, was the one who had to feed this—this person. Just then the person moved within her, rippling, stretching its arms or legs, making itself more comfortable. She smiled.

He caught the smile. “What is it?”

“It moved.”

“Oh. I didn’t know.”

“Yes, they move. It’s what’s called ‘feeling life.”

He bent his head, feeling miserable.

“You don’t show anything yet,” he observed after a minute.

“I’m carrying small, the doctor said.”

“Is that good?”

“Yes, it’s good.”

“I’m glad.”

“I need some dessert.”

“Of course.”

“Just fruit. A baked apple, if they have one.”

He sat there watching her eat the apple. She was thinking that she would remember this moment, this hour, the way the chill seeped into the room with the sound of thunder and approaching storm, the way the light speckled the dirt on the windows as the daylight faded. … A man stood up and got a bun from under a glass dome on the counter. Philadelphia sticky buns, they were called. He put his feet up on the heavy salesman’s case next to his chair. She heard his sigh. He looked a little like Pop.

“It’s going to storm in a minute,” Peter said. “We’d better make a run for the room before lightning strikes.”

There stood the bed, wide enough for three, with a hideous pea-green spread on it. The television faced the bed. Its huge blank eye stared into the dingy room. It hadn’t seemed dingy like this the first time. Yet it must have been.

But all we saw then, all we felt, Jennie thought, was the burning and the haste. It didn’t matter where we were. He unbuttoned my dress, my red wool, bought new for the occasion. He took off my shoes and unhooked my bra in that order. I remember everything, how the clothes fell and how I stood there feeling proud because of the look on his face. I remember everything.

“Shall I turn on the TV? Anything you want to see?” he asked now.

“Not especially. Just if you want to.”

“Well, it’s too early to go to sleep.”

“I’ll take a hot shower. I’m suddenly freezing.”

“Summer’s just about over, I guess.”

It was strange that such simple, declarative sentences were all it seemed either of them could summon to express the feeling that should have been boiling in them.

They’d lost what they had. At least she’d lost it. Where had it gone, the love? Frozen. Did that mean it would thaw again?

Huddled on the bed in her bathrobe, Jenny watched a play on public television. It was one of those fine English productions with marvelous actors and exquisite scenery, all lanes, fields, old stone houses with portraits, fires under great carved mantels, and big black retrievers stretched out in front of the fires. Secure and solid. Did people ever feel lost and lonely in such places?

Half of her mind watched it, and half of it watched Peter. The bright light of the television screen gleamed in the darkened room and glinted on his face. She thought again, He’s so young. Too young to have faced his family down. I’m older inside than he is. Why? Is a woman always the older one? So many questions without answers! What difference does it make? It is the way it is. We are what we are. He’s under his family’s thumb. But then, so am I, although for other reasons. It’s 1969, and people like us are doing things that were scarcely heard of ten years ago. Maybe those people who do whatever they want to do without fear, without shame, all come from what they call “liberal” families who’ve trained them that way. I don’t know. At any rate, there are more like us than like them. They’re only the ones who get written about.

The play was over.

“Beautiful,” Peter said. “The English know how to do it, don’t they?” And he said, “Someday we’ll go to England. You’ll love it all, the Cotswolds, the Lake District, the moors.”

In bed, he put his arms around her, and she knew he was waiting for a response. She laid her head against his chest. A few cold tears ran down over her temples and stopped. Not only grief, but also desire, had ended within her, and only a numbness remained. Stress did that. Pregnant women, she had read, felt desire as much as ever. In normal circumstances they would. Looking forward together, being together, staying together.

She was shivering again. He stroked her hair. “Jennie, Jennie, it will be fine. You’ll come back and everything will be the same.”

He had already said that so many times! And she had believed, had wanted to believe. Now, suddenly, she knew it would never be the same. She couldn’t have said how she knew that everything was all over and finished. Did he really believe they would see England or anything else together? She supposed that he did because he wanted to believe it.

But when something is dying, one shouldn’t prolong the pain. Fear wounded what we had. Now let it die in peace.

He held her. They held each other. And after a while they fell asleep.

In the morning he took her to the plane. Going down the ramp after the final embrace, she turned to look. His lips moved to say:
‘
/ write. His hand went up with a little wave, meant to encourage and cheer.

She knew she would never see him again.

The house, once a rich man’s fine Georgian home, was spacious, with spreading wings. Jennie’s room was one of the best, a single room overlooking a sea of autumn trees, oaks and maples, red and gold. One window faced a side driveway so that she was able to watch the arrival and departure of the girls—and some of them were really girls, no older than fourteen—who like herself had come here to hide. She noted the Lincolns, Cadillacs, and Mercedeses, the well-dressed parents, the expensive luggage. This place must cost a fortune. But then, Peter’s parents were generous, weren’t they?

On the first night she was so overcome with loneliness that she had to pull her hand back from the telephone. She had begun to dial the number at home. In her mind’s ear she heard herself crying, “Mom! Pop! Help me, I want to tell you the truth.” And thought then of Pop’s blood pressure, his kidneys, money, the rent at the store, how they would manage if he became too sick to work… . And thought, I must get through this alone.

But strong resolve did not suffice. She woke that first day to find herself encompassed by a thick, gray, muffling cloud that muted the sunlight. She wanted only to stay in bed with the covers pulled over her head, and had to force herself to get up. Where was the courage that, up until now, had stiffened her? She was cold with nonspecific, nameless fears. The future was void. After the child was born, who would Jennie be? What kind of a person, with what purpose?

The chilly web of gloom still clinging, she went through the expected motions. It was a good place and people were kind. No one asked questions. Some of the young women, waiting, wanted to chat with her about themselves, while others kept their silence. As she looked around in the dining room Jennie thought, Everyone here has essentially the same story, and still it is different each time. Variations on a theme.

Peter wrote to her. The letters were filled with assurances and admonitions to take care of herself,- they were marked with Xs; they might as well have said nothing.

She answered with banalities: “The place is nice, the food is good, I am well.” And these words also added up to nothing. When the fourth or fifth letter came, it seemed too much of an effort to answer it.

During the second week she was sent to a counselor. Mrs. Hurt was a purposeful young woman with an array of diplomas behind her desk. After the first visit, which was taken up with practical concerns—the doctor, the birth, and the proposed adoption—Jennie ventured to confess.

“Is it terrible of me not to answer his letters? It seems so useless.” And she said, “I don’t understand what’s happened. Where has love gone? I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. I would have died for him. And now …” She put her face in her hands.

“It’s all right to cry,” said Mrs. Burt.

But Jennie’s eyes were dry. “I don’t cry anymore. I’ve done all that. This is worse. I feel as if nothing matters at all. I’ve even stopped thinking about the baby, and I’d been so careful to eat well and make it healthy. Now I don’t feel hungry, and I don’t even try to eat.”