Blessings (2 page)

“I agree with you all,” Jennie answered. “It’s high time we cleaned things up—the water, the air, the strip mines, everything. Otherwise there’ll be nothing left for people like Emily and Sue and Donny.”

“Jennie’s an outdoor girl,” Jay said. “Last summer in Maine we took a thirty-mile canoe trip with portage a good part of the way, and she held up as well as I did. Better, maybe.”

The old man was interested. “Where’d you grow up, Jennie? You never said.”

“Not where you might think. In the city, the heart of Baltimore. I guess maybe I was a farmer’s daughter in another incarnation.”

Now, as the meal progressed, the conversation was diverted. Donny’s meat had to be cut up for him. Sue had complaints about her piano teacher. Emily spilled milk on her skirt and had to be dried off. Enid Wolfe inquired about tickets for a new play. They were having dessert when Arthur returned to the subject of the Green Marsh, making explanations for Jennie’s benefit.

“It’s almost fourteen hundred acres, including the lake. The town owns it. Was willed to it … oh, it must be close to eighty years ago. Let’s see, we’ve been summering here since our first son, Philip, was born, and he’s going on fifty. At first we rented, and then after I inherited a little money from my grandmother I bought the place for a song. Well, so the town has the land and it’s understood that it would be kept as is. It’s full of wildlife, you know, beaver and fox. And, of course, it’s a sanctuary for birds. Some of the oaks are two hundred years old. Local kids all swim in the lake. Then there’s fishing and nature trails for the schools, everything. It’s a treasure, a common treasure for everybody, and we can’t let it go. We’re not going to.” He balled his napkin and thrust it from him. “Our group—concerned citizens we can call ourselves, I guess—is pooling our money to hire counsel and fight this thing hard.”

“You really expect a hard fight?” Jay asked.

“I told you I do. I hate to be a cynic—good liberals aren’t supposed to be cynical—but money will talk to a lot of folks around here. They won’t care about natural beauty, not even about the water table, poor fools. There’ll be promises of jobs, increased business, the usual shortsighted arguments. So we’d better be prepared.”

“I see.” Jay was thoughtful for a moment. “Hiring counsel, you said. Somebody in town?”

“No. The lawyers around here aren’t on our side. They all hope to get business from the developers.”

“Got anyone in mind, then?” asked Jay.

“Well, your firm’s diversified, isn’t it? Would somebody take it on? Of course, there won’t be much of a fee. It’ll depend on what Horace and I and a handful more can raise among us.” As Jay hesitated, the sharp old eyes twinkled. “Okay, I know your fees. I’m only teasing.”

“That’s not it at all! You know I’d do it myself for nothing if you asked me to. The fact is, I was thinking of Jennie.”

“Me!” she cried.

“Why not? You can do it beautifully.” And Jay said to his parents, “I never told you that the first time we met, Jennie had just won an environment case. I had happened to read an article about it in the Times that morning, and so when somebody at this party pointed her out, I asked to be introduced.”

“How did you come to do that, Jennie?” Arthur Wolfe wanted to know. “It’s not what you generally do, is it?”

“Oh, no, I almost always take women’s cases, family problems. It happened that I defended a woman with four children against a landlord who wanted to evict them. Well, she was very grateful, and later she asked me to help some relatives on Long Island who had a land-use problem. I had never done anything like it before, but it appealed to me—the justice of it, I mean—so I wanted to try it.” She stopped. “That’s it. I don’t want to bore you with the details.”

“You won’t bore us. I want the details.”

“Well.” Suddenly aware that she was using too many wells, she stopped and began again. “It was a working-class neighborhood. Blue-collar, without money or influence. At the end of the street on the cross avenue there was a vacant tract that was zoned for business and bought by some people who wanted to build a small chemical plant. There would have been noxious odors and, quite probably, carcinogenic emissions. It would have blighted the neighborhood. We had a very tough fight because there were political connections—the usual thing.”

“But you won,” Jay said proudly. “And you haven’t mentioned that it was a test case and set a precedent.”

His father was studying Jennie. “Do you think you’d be interested in our case?”

“I’d need to know more about it. What do they want to do with the land?”

“They want to build what they call a recreational subdivision. Vacation homes. Corporate retreats. It would be high-density condominiums one on top of the other. You see, the new highway makes it accessible, there’s skiing only half an hour away, and after they dredge the lake they’ll double its size and—” He stopped.

Enid interjected, “And incidentally, if we should have a wet season, flood all the fields south of town. Oh, it makes me sick! This is one of the most beautiful areas in the state—in the East, for that matter. I see it as a symbol. If this falls victim to greed, then anything can. Do you see what I mean, Jennie?”

“Oh, greed,” Jennie said. “I deal with it every day. It’s the ultimate poison, whether it’s rat-infested tenements or polluted oceans or mangled jungles—” Again she stopped, feeling still the slight unease of being there under observation, and was conscious of her voice, which tended to rise in her enthusiasm, and of her hands, which she had been training herself to keep in her lap. “It will destroy us all in the end,” she finished more quietly.

Jay smiled. He approved of her enthusiasm. “Not while there are people like you to fight.”

“I take it that you accept,” said Arthur Wolfe.

She thought, So I shall be defending the rights of a piece of land to exist! A curious change for an urban person who’d never owned a foot of land. And yet, ever since she had been a child, taken for an occasional Sunday ride in the country, she had felt a pull toward the land, as if the trees had spoken to her. Later, reading Rachel Carson’s book, or the Club of Rome’s, and watching the National Geographic programs on television, she had felt a stronger pull, with greater understanding.

“Yes, I’ll do it,” she said, and felt a warm surge of pleasurable excitement.

“Great! If Jay says you’re good, you’re good.” Arthur got up from the table and stood over Jennie. “We’ve already had the first reading of the proposal before the town council, and the matter’s on the way to the planning board. They’ll be hearing it in two or three weeks, so you’ll be coming back up here pretty soon. Jay can fill you in on the town government. I won’t take up your time now, but it’s the usual thing, nine elected council members, one of whom is the mayor.” He shook Jennie’s hand, pumping it. “Before you leave now, I’ve a mile-high stack of papers for you to take back, reports from engineers and water experts, a survey, the petition to the legislature, and of course the developer’s lousy proposal.” He pumped her hand again. “We’re on the way, I think.”

“It’s a challenge,” Jennie told him. “I’ll do my best.”

Jay looked at his watch. “Time to get started. Let’s get our bags, Jennie, and go.”

Jennie was in the guest room collecting her coat and overnight bag when Mrs. Wolfe knocked.

“May I come in? I wanted one private minute with you.” She was carrying a flat maroon leather box. “I wanted to give you this. Quietly, upstairs here, with just the two of us. Open it, Jennie.”

On a velvet cushion, curved into a double circle, lay a long strand of pearls, large, uniform, and very faintly, shyly, pink. For a second Jennie went blank. She knew really nothing about pearls, having owned only a short string bought at a costume-jewelry counter, so as to seem less strictly tailored in the courtroom. The instant’s blankness was followed by an instant’s confusion.

“They were my mother-in-law’s. I’ve been keeping them for the next bride in the family,” Enid Wolfe said, adding after a second’s hesitation, “I’d already given away my own mother’s necklace.”

Jennie’s eyes went from the pearls to the other woman’s face, which was subdued into a kind of reverence. She understood that the gift had deep meanings.

“Oh … lovely,” she faltered.

“Yes, aren’t they? Here. Try them on.” And as Jennie leaned forward, she dropped the necklace over her head. “Now look at yourself.”

From the mirror above the chest of drawers a round, young face, much younger than its thirty-six years, looked back out of a pair of unusually sharp green eyes. “Cat’s eyes,” Jay teased. At this moment they were rather startled. The cheeks, which were naturally ruddy so that they had never needed to be rouged, were flushed up to the prominent cheekbones.

“Pearls always do something for a woman, don’t they?” Enid said. “Even with just that sweater and skirt.”

“Oh, lovely,” Jennie repeated.

“Yes, you don’t see many like them anymore.”

“I’m … I’m speechless, Mrs. Wolfe. That’s not like me, either.”

“Would you like to call me Enid? Mrs. Wolfe is too formal for someone who’s going to be in the family.” Enid’s austere face brightened suddenly. “Believe me, I don’t say lightly what I’m going to say now. One doesn’t watch one’s son give himself and his precious children over to the care of another woman without thinking very, very carefully about her. But you’ve been so good for Jay. We’ve seen it, and we want you to know …” She laid a hand on Jennie’s shoulder. “I want you to know that Arthur and I are most happy about you. We admire you, Jennie.”

“Sometimes I think I’m in a dream,” Jennie said softly. She stroked the pearls. “Jay and I and the children … and now you. All of you being so wonderful to me.”

“Why shouldn’t we be? And as for Jay, I surely don’t have to tell you how loving he is. You’ll have a good life with him. Oh,” said Enid, smiling with a mother’s indulgence, “he has his faults, of course. He can’t stand to be kept waiting. He likes his hot food burning and his cold food icy. Things like that.” Perched now on the bed, she was confiding, intimate. “But he’s a good man, a good human being. The word good covers so much, doesn’t it? Total honesty, for one thing. Jay says what he means and means what he says. He’s entirely open, easy to read. And I see the same in you. Of course, Jay’s told us so much about you that we felt, before we even met you, that we already knew you.” She stood up. “My goodness, I’m talking my head off. Come, they’re waiting for you. You’ve got a good three-hour drive ahead.”

On the way home Jay remarked, “I haven’t seen my father so worked up about anything since the days when he used to fight in the city for public housing and better schools for the poor.”

They were talking in low voices while the children dozed in the backseat.

“I hope I can handle the case. And I guess I won’t be able to think of anything else until I’ve done it.”

“Are you that nervous about it already? I don’t want you to take it if you’re going to be. I want my bride to be relaxed. No worry lines around the eyes.”

“I have to do it now. I said I would.”

“Come on. Don’t let Dad foist it on you if you feel any hesitance. I’ll get one of the young guys in the office to do it, that’s all.”

She answered with mock indignation, “What? Turn it over to a man, as if a woman couldn’t handle it? No, it’s just that—it’s your father, your family. I so want them to think well of me.”

“For Pete’s sake, they already do. You know that. Do you need more proof than having my grandmother’s pearls in your lap? My mother would as soon part with her teeth as see those in the wrong hands. Seriously, though, for such a feisty lady, you shouldn’t be so unsure of yourself around my family.”

“Am I? Is that the impression I give?”

“A little. Don’t worry about it.” Jay reached over and squeezed her hand. “More seriously, hang on to that box until I can get it insured in the new name tomorrow.”

It was dark when they drew up in front of the apartment house. Two handsome brass coach lamps gleamed at the entrance under the green awning. Down Park Avenue, a double row of parallel streetlights shone on the white limestone and the brick and granite fronts of the fine solid structures that stretched all the way to the low facade of Grand Central Terminal, with the Pan Am Building behind it, at the base of the avenue. It was one of the most famous views in the world, as typical of the city as London’s Trafalgar Square or Paris’s Place de la Concorde. Jennie stood a moment to take it all in while Jay helped the children out of the backseat. Her life seldom brought her to this part of the city; in fact, she had never even been inside a building like this before knowing Jay.

“Is the nanny back yet?” she asked now.

“No, she comes early Monday morning in time to get them ready for school.”

“Then I’ll go up and help you put them to bed.”

“No need to. I can manage. You’ve got a big day tomorrow, you said.”

“You’ve got a big day too. Besides, I want to.”

Upstairs, while Jay undressed his little son and settled him in bed among a mound of assorted teddy bears and pandas, Jennie supervised the girls.

“It’s late and you had a shower this morning, so I think we’ll skip baths tonight,” she said.

Sue clamored, “A story? Do we get a story?”

Jennie looked at the clock on the table between the two ivory-enameled beds. “It’s too late for stories. I’ll read you some poems instead.” Becoming more and more accustomed to and accepted by the children, she felt competent, equipped to mother them. “How about A. A. Milne? Good? All right, into the bathroom with you.”

They brushed their teeth and washed their hands and faces. They dropped their soiled clothes into the hamper and put on their pink cotton nightgowns. Lastly Jennie unwound their braids and brushed their long, straight tan hair. Jay and his family were dark-haired. Probably the girls were like their mother.

Emily touched Jennie’s hair. “I wish I had black curls like yours.”

“And I wish I had hair like yours. Mine gets all frizzy when it rains. It’s a nuisance.”

“No, it’s beautiful,” Sue said. “Daddy thinks so too. I asked him.”