My Latest Grievance (24 page)

"I'm not running away and I'm not hiding. Eric loves me. We didn't think we had to worry about getting pregnant—"

"Because?"

"Because I'd never come close before."

"But you could have? In between my dad and Dr. Woodbury?"

"Are you asking about my sexual history?"

I said, "I think I'm asking about your medical history."

"Which you think is your business?"

I said, "Sorry. No. It's not my business. I'm just nosy. I didn't mean to be fresh."

Laura Lee said, "You don't usually apologize."

"We have a serious situation on our hands. I mean, we're still related. Your baby would be my cousin. Except for your mother, we're your closest family."

With the first dreamy smile I'd seen in months, she confided, "I've thought of that. I've pictured the wedding on campus. I've even pictured your father walking me down the aisle. Isn't that silly? But who else would do that? I have no brother, no living uncles, no father figure."

I said carefully, "Laura Lee? Wouldn't Mrs. Woodbury have to pass away before Dr. Woodbury could remarry? And wouldn't he wait a year? For public relations' sake?"

"A baby changes that," she said. "Especially when the wife can't be a wife. Especially if the baby is a boy after three difficult daughters."

"You can't know that yet," I said.

"I sense it. I feel it in my bones. It's as if his Y chromosome is sending a message to my brain."

I said I didn't think it worked that way, physiologically speaking. Besides: Wasn't she setting herself up for great disappointment if the baby turned out to be a girl? I said, "I don't want to burst any bubbles, but maybe you could think of an alternate plan, other than a wedding."

"Do you mean going back to Tibbets Hall?"

"Or Schenectady. I'm sure your mother would help out."

"And separate my baby from his father?"

I'd heard about hormones. Laura Lee thought she and her baby would always be welcome on the first floor of the president's house, in a room off the kitchen, or across the green in Tibbets Hall. Was it my fault? Had my family been too good a model? Have
a kid, raise her in a dorm, treat her like an undergraduate, create a campus darling. I asked, "You definitely, positively, want to go through with this?"

"Frederica! I've wanted a baby my whole life. The only regret I have about my divorce is that the marriage didn't produce a child."

"You told me you weren't equipped to be a mother."

"Did I? That was my youth talking, and my dreams of being a dancer."

"What if Dr. Woodbury hits the ceiling like he did over Marietta's suspension? What if he ships you off to a home for unwed mothers and tricks you into signing papers to put the baby up for adoption?"

"Out of the question," said Laura Lee.

"It happens," I said. "At least one girl from Dewing gets sent away every year by her parents."

"I'm not a Dewing girl," said Laura Lee. "Eric loves me, and I love him. And in any case, I have a fallback."

Before I could ask,
Fallback job? Fallback housing? Fallback paternity suit?
Laura Lee asked nonchalantly, "You remember Father Ralph, don't you?"

V
OICES WOKE ME
: my father's, and one that wasn't my mother's. I checked the time on my alarm clock—1:55
A.M.
—threw my afghan around my shoulders, and set off to investigate.

Laura Lee was sitting on the couch under the founder's portrait, my father next to her, a bathrobe over the pajamas he'd taken to wearing since my mother was transferred.

"Go back to bed," Laura Lee snapped.

My father said, "Laura Lee felt she had nowhere else to turn."

I didn't have to ask why: Her red eyes and clenched hanky told me that President Woodbury had learned of his love child.

"Eric guessed!" she cried.

"He noticed the iron pills and the prenatal vitamins," said my father.

"Is he furious?"

"He wants her to terminate the pregnancy," said my father gravely.

Laura Lee nearly shrieked, "What
don't
you tell her? Is there nothing, ever, that you'd consider to be over her head?"

I let my father answer, as I knew he would, about
Roe v. Wade,
about the term paper I'd written on the subject for extra credit, about how he and Aviva felt perfectly comfortable—

"Oh, shut
up,
" she cried. "You're a worse bag of wind than you ever were."

I said, "That's rude, especially when you came to us for help."

"You're distraught, Lee-Lee," my father said. "Let's all take a deep breath and stop calling each other names. Do you want a cup of herbal tea?"

Laura Lee said she did. "Do you have anything to put on a sandwich?" she asked.

"Peanut butter and jelly."

"What flavor?"

I crossed the five strides to our diminutive refrigerator, moved a few things around, unscrewed a few lids to see what didn't have mold growing on it, and called, "Orange marmalade or elderberry preserves."

"The latter, please. I'm ravenous."

"It's white dining hall bread," I warned.

"Fine," she said.

As I made the sandwich, my father asked her, "Can you tell me, word for word, what Eric said when he found your prescriptions?"

Laura Lee wailed, "He charged into my pathetic little excuse for a bedroom, holding the bottles—like this, like grenades—rattling them, and railing, 'Tell me these aren't yours. Tell me they're not for the purpose I think they're for.' I collapsed in tears. I knew immediately that the timing was disastrous."

"Go on," said my father.

"There was no effort to mask his shock and his anger. No consideration of my condition or my feelings."

"Had he been under the impression that you were using birth control?" asked my father.

She said sarcastically, "He was under the
impression
that I was barren."

"Because you'd never conceived?"

"Correct."

"Had you ever seen a specialist?" my father asked.

"That is irrelevant! My point is that Eric has changed. Ever since I moved into the house he's been distant and distracted—beyond what you'd expect for a man in his situation."

My father asked me how the tea was coming, then turned back to Laura Lee. "Well, let's examine that: 'His situation.' His wife
tried to kill herself over his philandering. She's reverted to a childlike state. He moved his—forgive me—mistress into his house. His daughter was thrown out of high school for smoking marijuana, effectively ruining her college admissions profile, all of which the entire Dewing student body has intimate knowledge of, or thinks it does."

"Which is why I wasn't going to tell him yet! I was waiting for things to settle down."

I brought the sandwich on a plate and the tea in a mug. Instead of a thank-you, Laura Lee said, "Nothing that I discuss with your father, now or ever, is to be repeated. Do I have your word on that?"

"What if I were testifying?" I asked.

"Where do you get these ideas?" asked Laura Lee. "Is that your view of the world—that everyone ends up on trial?"

"I was thinking of a hearing," I murmured. "Some commission somewhere."

"Can't she go back to bed?" asked Laura Lee.

I would have complied if the next moment hadn't presented me with an interruption I considered too good to be true: Through the blinds, behind the security bars, rapping on the outside window, President H. Eric Woodbury had materialized in a suit and tie and camelhair overcoat. I was the only one facing him, so I was the only one who didn't startle. "It's Dr. Woodbury," I said. "I think he wants to come in."

My father didn't gesture—
go around, I'll open the door.
He approached the window, raised the blind, and yelled through the glass, "What do you want?"

Dr. Woodbury might have said, I'm the president of this college, sir, and you're being impertinent, but instead he asked politely, "Is Laura Lee there?"

"She is, but she's not seeing visitors."

Dr. Woodbury said, "I'm going around to the front door."

"It's two
A.M.!
"

"You might as well let him in," said Laura Lee. She stood up. "We'll talk in the first-floor smoker."

"Jesus!" my father exclaimed. "Aren't you two enough of a sideshow without duking it out in a public space?"

"Then you won't mind if I invite him inside," said Laura Lee. She handed my father her mug and plate and hurried out of the apartment.

I took her place and rewrapped myself in my afghan. "She thinks he's here to kiss and make up," I told my father.

"Don't think you're staying up for this," he answered.

I knew Dr. Woodbury wouldn't talk in front of me, but I also knew that my bedroom was ten uninsulated yards away from what would turn out to be the summit. I could already hear their voices outside our door, sending my father outside to shush them. I scrambled into my room. Seconds later, the trio returned. Laura Lee asked if I'd gone to bed. My father said, "Of course."

Laura Lee said, "With her ear pressed up against the door, no doubt."

Dr. Woodbury said, "I need to talk to Laura Lee alone." My father asked Laura Lee if that was all right with her. She said, "I'd prefer if you stayed, as my representative, to take notes."

"That's entirely inappropriate," said Dr. Woodbury. "This is not about employee relations, and you know it."

"If you're going to fire me, I want someone here from the union," said Laura Lee.

My father managed to refrain from discoursing on the composition of the bargaining unit. He said quietly to the president, "I know about your predicament."

Dr. Woodbury asked, "Which one would that be?"

"If you're talking about our child, I resent that!" said Laura Lee.

My father said, "He hasn't had time to digest your news, Laura Lee. An unplanned pregnancy is rarely embraced as cause for celebration, and when you consider the other pressures Eric's facing—"

"I don't need a third party to speak for me," said Dr. Woodbury. "I'm family," said my father.

"I thought a divorce dissolved those bonds," Dr. Woodbury replied.

"We're cousins!" said Laura Lee. "He has a stake in this baby, too."

"Who else have you told?" Dr. Woodbury asked.

"No one. Not a soul. I didn't even tell them. They guessed."

"At this stage? I find that hard to believe—"

"Because they sensed something! They know me. They know my habits and my, my ...
modus operandi.
Even Frederica figured it out—from across the dining hall. What does that say about insight and emotional commitment or lack thereof?"

Even with a closed door between us, I could picture Dr. Woodbury shaking his head, well on his way to hating me for my high obstetrical IQ and—much worse—as the potential megaphone between him and a thousand Mary-Ruths.

"One question," said Dr. Woodbury. "Does Marietta know? Did anyone tell Marietta?"

"Do you want me to ask my daughter?" my dad asked.

"No!" I yelled from my bed. "I haven't told a soul."

"Don't!" the president yelled back fiercely.

"Where are you going?" I heard Laura Lee ask, causing me to snap off my bedside lamp and pull my covers up to my chin.

In his most presidential manner, Dr. Woodbury said, "If you and your family will excuse me, I have to get back to Grace. I can't leave her alone because she doesn't know day from night."

"And you're Florence Nightingale!" yelled Laura Lee.

I thought he'd left, but after a few seconds I heard a barely audible, "Good night, then."

The door slammed. I waited for my father's counsel.

"Now what?" he asked our guest.

I woke up to find Laura Lee asleep on her stomach in the adjacent twin bed. More disturbingly, she was wearing a nightgown from my sleep-in-the-nude mother's rarely used collection. The alarm provoked barely a stir; when I asked how she felt, she groaned.

My father was already up and looking depressed, drinking instant coffee at the kitchen table. He didn't even greet me except to say, "What choice did I have at two
A.M.?
"

"You'd better hope that no one saw her coming in or sees her going."

"She'll leave with you. Besides, is there anyone left on this entire campus with the energy to absorb one more turn of the screw as far as Laura Lee's reputation is concerned?"

"Your current wife," I said.

"I called her. She's not worried."

I asked, "Do you want my opinion?"

He didn't answer.

"She's got to go," I said.

He sighed, closed his eyes, shook his head.

"No?"

"She says she's not running away. She's going to have this baby. She's not ashamed. She's convinced she'll get her Tibbets Hall job back because it's the least he can do.
And
she thinks she'd have a dorm full of babysitters at her disposal."

I said, "Did she mention Father Ralph?"

"Father Ralph?" he repeated.

I said, "I think she might pin this on him."

From the doorway of my room, in my mother's cream satin nightgown, not altogether opaque, her painted toenails peeking out, Laura Lee said, "
Pin it on Joe?
I never said that." She crossed the living room and took a seat at the kitchen table. "I know what she's referring to, but there would be no deception, no pinning anything on anybody. It would be me saying, 'Joe—I'm pregnant. It has a silver lining. You need a roof over your head, and you need a job. In the bargain, you'd get a child, which I know you've always wanted.'"

My father asked, "Someone else's child?"

I couldn't see Laura Lee's face from where I was standing, but I could see my father's reaction to whatever lift of her brow was requesting discretion.

"Want me to leave?" I called from the door.

My father answered, "Not without Laura Lee."

"What do you want me to do with Aviva's nightgown?" she asked.

"Put it in the hamper," I said.

She stood. Smoothed the fabric over one thigh. "I think it's silk. I think you'd want this dry-cleaned."

"Just put it in the hamper," my father said, eyes lowered to the
Boston Globe.