Sins of Innocence (2 page)

“Charles,” she said. “We need to talk about this.” He
had flopped on the bed, a lighted cigarette in hand. He had quit smoking two years ago, when he began his “over-forty” health kick. Obviously he’d kept a pack hidden.

“What’s to talk about?” he seethed. “She’s sixteen years old. She’ll get an abortion.”

Jess smoothed the down comforter and sat on the edge of the bed. She really must get the matching draperies finished. There was never enough time to do the things
she
wanted, the things that
she
enjoyed. “She won’t have an abortion.”

Charles coughed and stubbed out his cigarette on the Waterford ring holder. “Says who?” he barked. “Says you?”

Jess struggled to take a deep breath. “
Maura
says she won’t have an abortion,” she hissed.

“She’ll do as I say.”

Jess twisted her ring again and looked squarely into her husband’s eyes. “No,” she said.

Charles raised his eyebrows. His eyes grew larger; the black pupils bored into her. “I say she’ll have an abortion.”

Jess stood up and walked to her bureau. She looked once again at the picture of her with her son. Then she thought about
her
. Her baby, now a grown woman of nearly twenty-five. She touched the silver frame. “You can’t force her,” she said.

“I can do whatever I want. I’m her father.”

Jess scanned the photos. Her family. So together, so happy, so
normal
-looking. Pictures, she thought, can lie.

“Speaking of fathers,” Charles said, “I suppose it’s his. That grease monkey’s.”

“Michael is a nice boy, Charles.”

Charles spewed forth a disgusted laugh. “Nice? Jesus H. Christ, Jess, he knocked up our daughter! You call that nice?”

Jess didn’t reply. She knew Charles had never felt Michael was “good enough” for Maura—the same way Father had felt about Richard. Richard, she thought with an ache that had never quite gone away. Her first love.

“This is your fault, you know.”

“Because she didn’t use birth control?”

“No. Because ‘The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.’ ”

Jess picked up the wedding photo and heaved it at Charles. It missed him and crashed into the brass bedpost. The sound of the glass cracking startled, then satisfied, her.

“You son of a bitch!” she shouted. “You rotten son of a bitch!”

“What do you expect me to say?” Charles gloated. “
Think
about it.”

She crossed back to the bed, with a kind of courage she didn’t know she had. She pointed a trembling finger close to his face. “I expected you to be upset.
And
I expect you to support
our
daughter.
I
did not tell her to get pregnant, and
I
am not going to tell her she has to have an abortion. And neither are you.”

Charles sat up and tightened the damp towel around his middle.

“So what’s it to be? Do we look up that home for unwed mothers you went to? When was that, anyway—1968?” He rolled onto his side, his back to Jess. Then he laughed. “God knows we won’t need references.”

She wanted to claw out his eyes. She got up and went around to the other side of the bed, the damp satin robe clinging to her small, quivering body. She stood and looked down at her husband. “Maura will stay here with us.”

The shock on his face calmed her. Suddenly Jess felt in control. Finally. After twenty years of marriage. “Maura will have her baby. And”—Jess paused to be assured of the greatest impact of her next words. She leaned close to him—“she is going to keep the baby.”

Charles was perfectly still. For a moment they glared into one another’s eyes. Then he pushed Jess away and got up off the bed.

“Over my dead body,” he said. He grabbed his robe from the valet stand, threw it on, ripped open the bedroom door, and stormed down the hall in the direction of Maura’s room.

Jess steadied herself, her heart pounding. Then she raced after him, just in time to see him punch open the door to Maura’s room.

“You little whore!” His scream split the air. “How dare you!”

Jess flew toward the room. Charles stood, his hands on his hips, an incongruous masculine intrusion in the cotton-candy colors of Maura’s world. Maura sat in the middle of her bed, cushioned by a fluffy pink comforter, surrounded by her teddy bears.

“Daddy,” she sobbed. “Daddy. I’m sorry.”

Jess stepped inside and grabbed Charles by the arm. “Get out of here,” she commanded. “Get out, and leave her alone.”

He shook off her grasp. “Like hell. This is my house.”

Jess winced.
No, it’s not
, she wanted to shout.
It’s my house
. She put a hand to her chest. Her breath came in short gasps.

“And this is my daughter,” he went on, pointing to Maura as though she were a statue, a possession. “And she will do as I say.”

Maura looked to Jess with huge blue eyes, coated with tears. “Mommy?” she whispered.

“You are having an abortion,” Charles said. “And I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

Jess brushed past his bulk and sat on the bed. She pulled Maura close to her, stroking her daughter’s fine golden hair.

“Mommy, he can’t make me. Don’t let him make me,” she whimpered.

“Think about it!” Charles raved. “If you think for one minute I’ve worked hard all these years to have my daughter held up for ridicule in front of my friends, you’re wrong.”

Jess felt as though someone had turned up the heat in the room. “Your friends, Charles? Is that what this is all about?”

“They’re your friends, too.”

“They’re not
my
friends. They’re
your
business acquaintances.
I really think we should talk about this privately.”

“
Privately?
Why? So your darling daughter doesn’t have to hear what her father thinks about her? How she’s about to destroy his life?”

“She’s
our
daughter, Charles.”

He threw up his hands. “None of this would have happened if you’d let them go to private school. But oh, no. Little Miss Goody Two-shoes Jessica wanted her children to have a ‘normal’ life.”

Jess swallowed hard.

“Maybe this is ‘normal’ for you, honey, but it isn’t the way I was brought up!”

Please, dear God
, she prayed.
Don’t let him say anything about my baby
. Jess had never told the children about her. She had never told them about Larchwood Hall. Charles wouldn’t let her.

“Charles …” She tried to speak, but the words stuck in her throat, like an aspirin taken without water.

He balled his hands into fists. The veins at his temples bulged. “I expect you to make the arrangements tomorrow,” he said icily, so much like Jess’s father. The same coldness. Would Father have been so cold if Mother had been alive to protect Jess? Would things have been different? Jess clung to her daughter.

“I want this taken care of, and I want it taken care of fast. And I don’t want to hear another word about it until it is over. Is that clear?”

He turned on his heels and headed for the door.

“No,” Jess said.

He spun around.

Jess kept stroking Maura’s hair, holding on to her daughter for strength.

“She’s keeping the baby,” she said. “It’s what Maura wants.”

He stormed out of the room.

Damn you
, Jess wanted to shout.
Damn you for doing this to our daughter. Damn you for being like Father
. She closed
her eyes and slowly rocked her daughter. “It will be okay, honey. You’ll see. Everything’s going to be fine.”

“Oh, Mommy,” she sobbed, “Maybe Daddy’s right. His friends … his business …”

“Sssh,” Jess whispered. “The last thing we’re going to worry about is what other people think. It’s you who’s important. And your baby.”

“Mommy, I’m so sorry.”

Jess took Maura’s shoulders and held her. “Honey, do you really want this baby? Have you thought about it? Really thought about it?”

“Yes, Mom. I told you. Michael and I want to raise the baby. Together. Then we thought when we’re older, we’ll get married.…”

Jess pulled her daughter close. It was just as it had been with Richard. She and Richard were to have run away. They were going to be married. They were going to be a family, with their baby.

But Father had thought differently.

“It’s not like I expect he’ll give us a real wedding at the club or anything.…” Maura was saying.

A wedding. Jess remembered the one Father had given her and Charles. The reception hadn’t been at the club; it had been at the Plaza. It was a fairy-tale wedding, and had been given fourteen inches in
The New York Times
. Well, why not? No one had known about the twenty-year-old bride’s scandalous past. No one except Father, who refused, as always, to acknowledge it. No one except Richard, and his parents, who were gone to God only knows where. No one except Charles, who had acquiesced to marry her anyway, as long as he never had to hear about it again.

No one except Miss Taylor. And the girls of Larchwood Hall.

She stroked Maura’s hair once again. No. No one was going to put her daughter through what she had gone through. No one was going to take her daughter’s baby away.

There was a soft knock on the doorway. Chuck and
Travis stood in rumpled pajamas. “Mom?” Chuck asked. “What’s going on? We heard Dad screaming.”

Jess looked at her two sons: Chuck, seventeen; Travis thirteen. Chuck was so like his father, fair and tall and so serious. But it was Travis who kept the family together with his humor, his red curls and freckles, and a smile that lit up any room he entered. But now Travis wasn’t smiling. His face was as grim as Chuck’s.

“It’s okay, boys. Go back to bed. Daddy is angry with Maura, that’s all.”

“What’d she do?” Travis asked.

“We’ll talk about it later,” Jess said. “There’s nothing to worry about. Now go back to bed.”

“But what’d she do?” Travis persisted.

“Shut up,” Chuck said, and cuffed the red curls. “You heard Mom. Let’s go back to bed.”

The boys disappeared, and Jess was overcome with weariness. This had been, she feared, the first of many angry nights to come.

“We might as well tell them,” Maura said. “They’ll know soon enough.”

Jess slowly shook her head. “Not now, honey,” she said. “Not when everyone’s so upset.”

Maura kissed her mother on the cheek. “Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

“I love you too, honey. Now why don’t you try and get some sleep.”

She kissed her daughter back and got up from the bed.

“Mom?”

“What, honey?”

“Are you going to talk to Daddy some more?”

Jess sighed. She hoped Charles had decided not to speak to her. She hated the thought of facing him again tonight.

“I think tomorrow might be better.”

“Good night, Mom.”

“Good night, honey.” She snapped off the light and went into the hall, then walked with hesitant steps toward the master bedroom.

* * *

He stood in front of the bathroom vanity, blow-drying his hair. He was dressed.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Jess asked.

“To the club.” He snapped off the switch and dropped the dryer onto the counter.

“At eleven-thirty on a Wednesday night?”

“The bar stays open until two.”

He stomped out without looking at her.

“Charles …”

But he was gone.

Jess stood by the edge of the bed. She listened to the sound of Charles’s BMW as it backed out of the garage, heard him jam it into first gear, then saw the headlights splash onto the flocked-silk wallpaper as he turned the car and squealed down the long circular driveway. In all the years they had been together, Charles had never left her. Not that they hadn’t had their disagreements. But, Jess realized now, Charles had always won. Jess had always let him. It had been easier than arguing.

But this time, she promised herself, he wasn’t going to win. She was going to win, and so was Maura. There would be no father ruining his daughter’s life the way hers once had. She had been forced to give up her baby. Father had forced her. Society had forced her.

She changed out of her damp robe and slipped into a warm fleece lounger that hung thickly on her slight frame.

When had the world changed? When had it become “acceptable” for an unwed girl to raise her baby?

She turned and walked toward the one place Jess always sought refuge—her sewing room. As she stood inside the tiny space, her nerves calmed, her exhaustion diminished. This was her place, her haven. It was comfortable. It was safe.

She looked around, feeling the silence. It was in this room where Jess created one-of-a-kind fashions, slipcovers, and draperies—all from elegant fabrics that Charles said cost so much, she’d save a lot of money if she bought the items ready-made. “Your little hobby costs us a fortune,”
he’d said on more than one occasion. But it was not a “little hobby” to Jess: It was a way to express herself, a way to feel productive. But lately, more often than not, she’d found herself coming in here not to sew, but to think. To try to sort out her life, to try to figure out what had happened to her marriage.

She closed the door behind her now. The room smelled faintly of tailor’s chalk and elastic. Jess sat in the lounge chair and began to weep. She could not get Maura out of her mind, any more than time had erased the questions of her own baby—her first.

Jess rose from the lounge and walked toward the closet, knowing what she needed to do. She opened the door and slowly began taking things out: carefully folded stacks of fabric—sleek black wool for Maura’s riding habit; crinkly green cotton from Travis’s junior high school play; peach-colored faille from the cocktail dress she’d made for their trip to Madrid last spring. From beneath the fabrics she pulled out the neatly labeled boxes of threads, zippers, and fancy trims. Jess had a passion for being well organized, so she knew what she was looking for would be there, tucked way in the back, out of sight from snooping eyes.

It was there: a small brown shoe box, its lid sealed. She crouched down and pulled the box toward her. She sat on the floor and placed it on her lap. Then Jess did not move.