Blood Relatives (14 page)

Friday, August 1

I’m sure I’m pregnant.

Today I told him. I told him I hadn’t mentioned it before because I was sure I’d get my period, but now it was almost a week, it was six days to be exact, and I had to tell him. He was very calm about it. He said I shouldn’t worry. He said I’d have to see a doctor, take the rabbit test, make sure I
was
really pregnant, and then we’d see what we had to do.

I said, Andy what
can
we do? If I’m pregnant, what can we do? We’re cousins, Andy. We’re first cousins. Dear God, if you’re listening, let me get my period.

Saturday, August 2

I love him so much, that’s the trouble. But I know it’s wrong. We both know it’s wrong. We shouldn’t have done it, we shouldn’t have started it. He said I have to make an appointment with a doctor, but what doctor should I go to? I’m so embarrassed. Should I tell the doctor the truth? Or should I just pretend Andy is some boy I know, and not my cousin?

Monday, August 4

This morning I asked Heidi if she knew a good gynecologist. I told her I was itching and didn’t know anybody to go to, and was embarrassed to ask my aunt. Heidi is twenty-four years old, she said she’d been going to this one man, a Dr. Henry Keller, since she was eighteen, in fact got her first diaphragm from him. I called him on my lunch hour, and his nurse told me the first appointment she could give me was for the tenth. I said this was an emergency, and she said, What sort of emergency, and I said, I think I’m pregnant. Did you want a rabbit test? she asked. Yes, I said, that’s what I want. She asked me how late I was, and I said it was nine days now, and she said if I didn’t get my period by tomorrow, then on Wednesday I should go directly to a lab for the test. She gave me the name of a lab that did tests, and I thanked her and hung up.

Andy picked me up after work, and I told him I was going to wait another day and then go to a lab. He said okay. We were walking along toward his car. I told him I hoped I wasn’t pregnant. I asked him what we would do if I was pregnant. He said we would see.

Tuesday, August 5

I did not get my period, so I called the lab today and made an appointment for tomorrow during my lunch hour. Andy looks so worried. I’m sure the whole family knows something is going on.

Wednesday, August 6

I’m so happy I could scream! It’s only 7:00 in the morning, but I had to put this down before I start getting dressed for work. Yes, yes,
yes!
Thank you, God! I’m going to knock on Andy’s door, and wake him up and tell him. I don’t care if everybody in the house hears us. Well, I
do
care. But, oh Jesus, I’m so damn happy!

Thursday, August 7

Andy told me today he was ready to marry me if it turned out I was pregnant. He said there was nothing wrong with cousins getting married, and he was in fact thinking of telling his mother that’s what we planned to do. I said I didn’t think that was such a good idea, telling his mother, I meant. He said, Why not, don’t you love me, Mure? I told him I loved him more than life itself. And that’s true, that’s really true. But I didn’t want him to be making any wild promises just because he’d been so scared about my being pregnant. And I also said I was sure there was something wrong with cousins getting married, I was sure there was something in the Bible about it. He asked me where in the Bible? I told him I didn’t know exactly where, but I was sure it was in there someplace.

Saturday, August 9

I went to see Dr. Keller today, but not to find out if I’m pregnant, which thank God I’m not. I went to ask him to prescribe birth control pills for me. I did this because from now on, I want to make sure we’re absolutely safe. Andy still wants to tell his mother that we love each other and want to get married, but I’m sure I’m right about her going through the ceiling, and also I’m sure Uncle Frank will throw me right out of the house if
he
ever finds out.

Dr. Keller was an old man in his sixties, he prescribed the pills without a fuss, but he also gave me a little lecture about not using them as a license for promiscuity. I told him I was engaged to be married, and he said that was nice to hear and he wished me luck. I told him my period had started on the sixth, and he said I should take the first pill on the eleventh, and then keep taking them till all twenty-eight pills were gone. Then I could expect my next period a few days after that, and counting the day I got my period, I should allow five days and then begin taking the pill again the very next day. It sounds very simple.

Thursday, August 14

I didn’t realize Andy could be such a jealous person.

I was waiting for him outside the bank today, he must’ve been about ten minutes late, he explained that he’d got caught in traffic. But I was talking to Mr. Armstrong, who’s head of the bookkeeping department, a very nice person who’s old enough to be my father, I really mean it. Well, he’s at least thirty, anyway, and he’s married and has a small daughter. Anyway, we were just standing there talking, passing the time, when Andy pulled up in his car. I said good-bye to Mr. Armstrong, I don’t even know his first name, and I got in the car, and the first thing Andy wanted to know was who was that I was talking to. I told him it was a man who worked in the bank, Mr. Armstrong from the bookkeeping department. So Andy wanted to know what we were talking about. I told him I’d been waiting there on the sidewalk, and when Mr. Armstrong came out he saw me standing there and we started chatting, that was all. So Andy
still
wanted to know what we were talking about. I said, Why, are you jealous? And he said he would kill me if ever I started up with another man.

I think he meant it.

Saturday, August 16

Today Andy told me his plan.

Everybody was out of the house this afternoon, they all went to the beach—Uncle Frank, and Aunt Lillian, and Patricia. I told them I had shopping to do, that I needed some new clothes for the fall, and Andy lied and said he had a date. So we got to stay home alone. We made love in Andy’s bed for the first time. I really feel great now that I’m taking the pill. Andy says it’s turned me into a wild animal, whatever that means. Maybe he’s right. I just don’t worry about a thing now.

His plan sounds stupid to me.

His plan is not to go to college in the fall. After he’s been accepted and everything. Instead, he says he wants to work full-time at the steak joint, as a waiter no less. He says he can make plenty of money waiting tables, and he says with both our salaries, we could live very well. In short, he wants to marry me as soon as possible, forget about college, take our own apartment, etc. I told him that’s all his mother has to hear. First that he wants to marry his own cousin, and next that he’s dropping out of college to do it. Andy says he doesn’t give a damn about his mother, but I told him I’d have to give this a lot of thought. He said, Why? What’s there to think about? We love each other, don’t we? I said I loved him dearly, but dropping out of college before he even
started
was really kind of stupid. And besides, I was only seventeen, I wouldn’t be eighteen till March, which made me underage. His mother was my guardian and she’d never sign for me to get married. He said the hell with her, we’d elope. I said, Andy, let me think about it, okay? Then we made love again before they got home.

I really
do
feel like a wild animal when we make love.

Monday, August 18

Mr. Armstrong stopped me on the way out to lunch today, and asked me if that was my boyfriend who picked me up all the time. I said, No, it was my cousin. That’s really the truth, but of course the other is the truth, too. Andy
is
my boyfriend. Mr. Armstrong asked me where I was going, and I said out to lunch, and he said, Of course, how stupid of me. Where
else
would you be going at 12:30? He asked if he could walk with me, and I said, Sure, Mr. Armstrong, why not, and he said I should please call him Jack, which is his name. He said he’d taken a lot of ribbing about being named Jack Armstrong, but I didn’t know what he meant, and he explained that there used to be a radio show, oh, back in the thirties he guessed it was, and the hero of it was Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. He said that was before my time. I said that was probably before
his
time, too, wasn’t it, and he said, Oh, yes, I don’t remember it personally, my parents told me about it. He said he was twenty-six years old, which really came as a surprise to me, because honestly he looks much older. Anyway, he dropped me outside the R&R, and I went in for a sandwich, and didn’t see him the rest of the afternoon. He really
does
look a lot older than twenty-six.

I didn’t mention any of this to Andy because I don’t want him to take a fit about nothing.

Sunday, August 24

In church this morning, I prayed to God that Andy would change his mind about going on to college in the fall. Registration is September 8, which is just a little more than two weeks away. Please, dear God, I ask you again. Let him change his mind. We love each other a lot, but telling Aunt Lillian about us now would
be the wrong thing to do, I feel. Besides, I think he’s rushing things. It’s not as if I was pregnant, which I’m not.

Monday, August 25

Jack came over to my desk this morning and asked if I would like to have lunch with him. The first thing I thought was that Andy would get very angry if he ever heard about it, and then I figured there’d be nothing
really
wrong with it, except of course Jack is married. So I said, Well, thanks a lot, Jack, I really appreciate your asking, but you’re a married man and all, I happen to know you’re married and have a four-year-old daughter. (It was Heidi who’d told me this.) So Jack said, What difference does
that
make, all I’m asking is whether you’d like to have lunch with me. I’m not taking you to Singapore for a six-month tour of the Orient. Well, I thought that was pretty comical, and also pretty honest, so I said, Sure, why not, let’s have lunch together.

He’s a very fascinating person.

He’s not what you’d call good-looking, but he has a very interesting face with a lot of character in it. His hair is brown, I guess, but so dark it could almost be black. And his eyes are blue, and I suppose he’s just about six feet tall, give or take a few inches.

He told me that his father used to be a coal miner in a place in Pennsylvania, I forget the actual name of the town, but the people there call it Scooptown. And he said he himself had never worked in the mines, that he’d been fortunate enough to get a football scholarship to college, and to get out of Scooptown when he was just eighteen. He met his wife while he was an undergraduate out in Michigan, and then she’d worked for a while to put him through school while he was going for his master’s. He started at the bank only four years ago, just a little before his daughter was born, but he expected he’d be promoted to assistant manager before long.

He also told me that he absolutely did not want me to get the wrong idea about us having lunch together. He wasn’t on the make, in fact he’d tell his wife all about it, that was how innocent the whole thing was. Besides, he knew I was only seventeen, he certainly wasn’t about to rob the cradle. Though I
was
very pretty, he had to admit that. In fact, if his wife asked him tonight, he guessed he’d have to say I was beautiful. He made me blush, I mean it. I mean, I’m
not
beautiful. I’m just not. But it was nice of him to say so.

I told Andy I’d had lunch with him.

I didn’t tell him Jack had said I was beautiful.

Andy was very quiet when I told him. He didn’t say anything for a long time afterward. Then later, we were watching television, everyone had gone to bed, and we were sitting in the living room watching Johnny Carson, and out of the blue Andy said, You don’t really love me any more, do you, Mure?

I told him he was crazy.

He blew his nose then. I think he was crying.

Of
course
I love him.

I adore him, in fact.

Tuesday, August 26

Today I got an answer to the letter I wrote to United Airlines. I hadn’t told Andy I’d written to them (and also one other airline) and now he wanted to know why I’d done that behind his back. I told him I hadn’t done anything behind his back, and he said that writing to an airline was something behind his back. What did I plan to do? he said. Take a job with an airline? And go flying all over the world? I told him United doesn’t fly outside the United States, and he got angry and grabbed my wrist and said I shouldn’t kid around when he was being serious. He said I knew
exactly
what he meant, whether it was all over the world or all
over the United States didn’t make a damn bit of difference. What he meant was that I’d be taking a job where we’d be separated a lot. I told him I wasn’t
taking
a job, I hadn’t even
applied
for a job, all I’d done was write some letters of inquiry, that was all. Besides, in the material from United, it said I had to be a high-school graduate and at least twenty years old to become a stewardess. I’d dropped
out
of school, and I wasn’t eighteen yet, I wouldn’t be eighteen till March. So it was a long-range thought, even if I
did
decide to maybe become a stewardess one day. He said that an airline stewardess was nothing but a waitress with wings, did I want to become a goddamn waitress? And that’s when I blew up and said to him what did
he
want to become? A waiter in a steak joint?

That’s when he told me he planned to register for college, after all. We were in his car, we were parked on a street about six blocks from the house. I turned to look at him, I said, Andy, that’s wonderful. I’m very happy to hear that, Andy. And he said, Sure, I know why you’re happy. You’re happy because my going to college means we won’t be able to get married for a while, that’s why you’re happy. I told him that getting an education was more important than rushing off to get married, and he said again that I didn’t love him any more, he could tell I didn’t love him any more.

I don’t know what’s the matter with him, I mean it.

Wednesday, August 27