In Trouble (10 page)

a week, and a couple of times a week he’d be rejected. He barely talked at dinner, and he hasn’t listened much. Mom has tried to get him going. She’ll be sarcastic, or make a joke, or play devil’s advocate about something he used to care about, but he doesn’t seem to want to be reached. It’s getting to her. I’m not sure Stevie’s noticed, but Uncle Maury has. He thinks Mom should leave Dad alone.

“Rachel, you’ve got to give him space,” he said when he was drying dishes one night. “It’s a helluvan adjustment.

He’ll come around.”

Mom wasn’t buying it. “You don’t get it, Maury. You can’t get a job if you walk in like a defeated sad sack. A dog-catcher applicant has to convey more interest.” Sad-sack not-even-dogcatcher, my very smart dad.

We haven’t talked alone since Paul was here. I thought that had changed something, but he’s pulled back from me along with everyone else. But there is one thing that’s changed. I’ve stopped seeing bull’s-eye targets on a prison back. And barbed wire has turned into doors.

Yet even with all the attention on Dad, I bet I’m the only one who’s noticed that he goes around opening them when they’re closed. Sometimes Stevie or Grandma or even Mom makes him re-shut the door. Not me. I let it stay open.

The one plus is Dad’s state of mind is center stage, so nobody has paid much attention to me. Except for Grandma. She’ll make a big deal of putting an extra-large slice of cake in front of me. Sometimes she’ll look at me and her 107

eyebrows will go up and down as if trying to send signals into my brain. I’ve never been able to lie to Grandma, so I’ve been coming home too late for tea and cookies.

But you can hold things in only so long. One day when I got home earlier than usual, Uncle Maury was there.

We’d had one of those sex-education classes in school, which was hard to watch. But I could talk to Uncle Maury about a lot of different things. Besides, like I said, you can hold things in only so long.

“So you don’t think it’s wrong?”

“Premarital sex? No. Why?” Uncle Maury answered in a measured voice. “Your friend?”

“In hygiene class,” I said, “they showed us a movie about giving birth. The girl next to me looked like she was going to faint.”

Uncle Maury nodded. “It’s messy,” he said, “and I can understand where it could be hard to look at.”

“Afterwards, they gave us a questionnaire, mostly about all the stuff in the film and on eating right so the baby would be healthy and what to feed it after. That kind of thing. But then there was this question about premari-tal sex and did we think it was okay.”

“What did you write?”

“I said, ‘Yes, if it’s someone you love.’”

“Good answer,” Uncle Maury said.

But you’ll learn to like it . . .

I thought I’d be sick. I ran for the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face.

108

“You okay?” Uncle Maury called from the living room.

“Fine. Be right there.” I heard the front door open.

Must be Mom, or maybe Stevie. Mom had left a note saying Uncle Maury was coming for dinner and one of us should pick up a coffee cake at Baumgarten’s Bakery. I hoped Stevie had.

I rinsed my mouth and went back into the living room.

Mom was talking to Uncle Maury. She hadn’t taken her coat off, but it was already a serious conversation.

“Are you worried about your friend?” she asked me.

Uncle Maury looked up. “I told your mother a little of what we were talking about.”

“Yeah, I am. I called her a couple of times this week, and the last time she started to cry. She said they took her to Catholic Services and made her sign some papers.” I sat down on the couch. “They’re saying she has to give up the baby.”

Mom bit her lip. “What a terrible choice.”

“The only terrible thing,” Uncle Maury said, “is when someone brings an unwanted child into the world.”

“But she wants it,” I said.

Mom looked confused.

“Her parents, they don’t care. The only thing they care about is that she has to have it,” I said.

Uncle Maury shook his head. “Whoa, wait a minute.

You just said she wants it. And her parents say she has to have it—what’s the problem?”

109

I felt my face getting hot. “You don’t understand!” I said, half-yelling. “She wants to
keep
it, not give it away.”

“But she’s only sixteen,” Mom said.

“Seventeen.” I started to cry.

Mom sat down next to me on the couch. “Sweetheart.” That was all, but it uncorked me.
ME
I wanted to shout, but I could talk only about Elaine.

“None of you get it! She really loves her boyfriend—

and now he won’t talk to her—and she wants to marry him—and he won’t answer her calls—and she wants his baby—and her parents say no—and she was going to go to college—and we were going to go together—and she doesn’t even care about that anymore—and what’s going to happen to her—and the guy won’t even talk to her, the bastard—and she doesn’t want to talk to me and . . .” I hiccupped violently and it slipped out . . . “What’s going to happen to me?”

Dad stood in the doorway. Stevie was behind him with the bakery box. I stared at Dad and yelled. “And you, you don’t think about anybody but yourself. You’re here but you disappear. Why did you even come home?” I slumped back against Mom. “And now my friend’s going to disappear.”

Dad sat down in the big chair. Stevie stood frozen, holding the coffee cake.

Mom held me. She was crying. Grandma watched all of us from the foyer.

“Why aren’t
you
crying,” I yelled at Dad.

110

Mom wiped her eyes. I didn’t move. Dad sighed.

“What a mess!” Grandma said. And she was right.

“A regular Niagara Falls!” She went into the kitchen and brought out a pot of soup.

“Soup and coffee cake. What could be bad?” Uncle Maury said.

I wasn’t hungry and went to my room. I had a pile of homework I didn’t want to look at.
What’s going to happen
to me?
A good thing nobody picked up on that, because I’m not ready for the really big lie. I will never tell anyone, ever, about . . . I can’t even say his name.

A hundred years ago in the cafeteria Carol said no way she could give birth and give it up. Elaine says she wants to keep it. She says I don’t understand. Maybe she’s right.

I felt dizzy. What’s right for her? For me? For anybody?

How do you know?

“May I come in?”

I looked up. Dad stood in the doorway.

“I guess.”

I stayed at my desk. Dad sat on the bed.

“What—”

“I—”

We started and ended at the same moment. Dad looked serious.

“Jamie,” he said. “What did you mean by ‘What’s going to happen to me?’”

He’d heard.

“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything. Really.” 111

“Whenever anyone says ‘Really’ with a capital R, I wonder.”

I can’t make Dad out. Maybe he
is
here more than he seems. “I was thinking about me after graduation,” a weak lie, “and I really am sorry for what I said about your coming home.” That was the truth.

He made an it-doesn’t-matter gesture with his hands.

“I mean it. I really am glad you’re home.” And the next thing I knew I was sitting next to him, crying on his shoulder.

“Hey, kiddo, what’s this? You’re so glad I’m home you burst into tears?”

I reached over to the Kleenex box on the little stool next to my bed. I blew hard. “Yeah, that’s it.” I grabbed another. “Mr. Kleenex must be a pretty rich guy by now.” Dad put his hands around my face. “You can’t make your friend’s decisions for her, you know. Nothing she does will be easy. It may not be the choice you or I would make. We can’t help that.”

But what happens when someone takes the choice away from you? I didn’t want what happened to me. I had said no. Elaine wanted to be with Neil. And he seems to be saying no.

“The thing is,” I said, “she hasn’t told her parents she wants to keep the baby. They’re deciding everything, and they’re not interested in anything she wants. It’s me she’s told, and she screamed at me when I said, ‘Why don’t you tell them?’ She said she couldn’t. They told her she’s 112

ruined
their
life. I said, ‘What about yours?’ and she hung up on me.”

Dad sat for another moment, then stood up. “Come, let’s have soup. Comfort food.”

I could use some of that.

113

20.

I heaved the chemistry book into my locker. Georgina and Carol were at the other end of the hall. Some secrets you don’t share. “Not mine, not Elaine’s.” The kid at a nearby locker looked at me. “You say something?”

I shook my head. I must look like a nut, talking to myself.

Now that the yearbook work was over, I’d been bring-ing lunch and eating in the newspaper office. No cafeteria.

A special assignment for the
Record
, I’d told them. “Pretty lame,” I said sharply. This time the kid at the next locker really freaked out. “Sorry,” I said.

It was seventh period, and I headed for the
Record
office to check the schedule. Paul was packing up files when I came in. He looked up and smiled. Would he smile if he knew? Do I look different?

114

Kay says Herbie says the boys know who the easy girls are, but he won’t say who.

I’m not “easy.” Elaine’s not. Would Paul think we were if he knew? I feel like Hester Prynne in that book we read in English,
The Scarlet Letter
. Hester loved the man she made love with, but the town said she committed adultery. Me? Absolutely no love. They forced Hester Prynne to wear an embroidered scarlet letter
A
. And me?

Jamie M. Prynne walks a narrow path between a crowd of thousands. She does not wear a Scarlet Letter. Hers is a banner, “SHE WENT ALL THE

WAY!”

Jamie MP shouts, “I didn’t want to” but no sounds come out of her mouth. The crowd on the left murmurs, “SHE ASKED FOR IT,” those on the right growl, “SHE WAS AN OCCASION OF SIN!” Suddenly I didn’t want to know what Paul thought. I mumbled something and started to leave.

“Hey, Jamie, wait up!”

Please, please don’t ask me anything.

But all he wanted to know was when I planned to turn in my story. I would have probably gone on mull-ing my own awkwardness, but Paul broke the silence.

“And I wanted to ask you . . .” he paused and swallowed.

“I wanted to ask you if . . . if you want to go to the movies Saturday night?”

115

He tossed a pencil from hand to hand. Paul, nervous!

He’s thinking A Real Date, not like the other times we’ve gone to the movies. I made myself look at him, which was easy because he wasn’t looking at me. He’s not Him, I told myself. He’s Paul, and a friend. And there won’t be any wine or dripping brie and neither of us is eighteen. He knows me.

I looked over at the board. “PRELAPSARIAN” was Paul’s word of the day. I actually knew it. An innocent, unspoiled time.

I stared at my hands and concentrated as if they held a precious jewel I couldn’t let out of my sight: Who I Was Before.

“What’s playing?” I said so softly I wasn’t sure he’d heard.

“I’ll make a list.”

Without looking, I knew he was bathed in relief.

At the door I turned back. “Do you know anything about those homes where they send pregnant girls?” It popped out before I had a chance to think.

He blinked in surprise. “Actually, yeah. There’s a kid in my building who’s adopted, and a couple of weeks ago I got the whole story. Or at least as much as he knows. I didn’t get home until late,” he pointed to the
Record
files,

“and he was hanging out on the stoop, pounding his fist into a baseball mitt. You know me and baseball. He’s a Giants fan, so I asked if he was mad that Pee Wee Reese scored off that wide throw by Don Mueller.

“It was as if he hadn’t heard me. He said he’d just found out that his mother was alive and that she’d given him up.

116

He’d always thought she’d died when he was born, and he didn’t know which made him feel worse.”

“His real mother had been in one of those homes?”

“That’s what they told him.”

This is going to be Elaine’s story
, I thought. “Maybe they made her give him up.”

“Don’t know. But when he told his parents he wanted to find his real mother, they said he couldn’t because the files were sealed. Even they don’t know who she is, because in those homes they make you change your name.

And the adoption papers, which he saw for the first time, have the made-up name.”

There’s a reason they say your mouth “fell open.” Mine did. “What is it with these people? It’s not enough they take your baby, but also your name!” He looked at me quizzically. “Why do you want to know?”

I put it on Lois. “My cousin was telling me about someone she knew.”

That seemed to satisfy him. I wanted to go home and climb into bed, my head under the covers.

My last class was study hall. No thinking, nobody calling on you, just waiting for the day to be over. I went into the girls’ room, second stall from the left. Scratched on the side wall: DARLENE DOES IT.

Did Darlene love someone? Did she think she was getting married? Maybe she had a bad date and bad wine.

They don’t tell you those things on a bathroom wall.

117

21.

I told Paul I’d meet him on my stoop. I said I had an errand to run and wouldn’t be in the apartment. It was easier. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone in the family talking to him. Actually Mom wasn’t too bad about that kind of thing, and Grandma would sit and smile. She likes Paul.

Dad, well. They’d probably start talking about the Senate vote that condemned Senator McCarthy and then prisons and then who knows what else.

But Stevie, he is the dangerous one. He’s in the kissing-girls-is-weird stage, and he’d be home.