Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2) (16 page)

God bless Pat for jumping right in
. “Do you play bridge, Jane?”

Jane nodded, turning toward the perky blond. “A bit.”

“I’m dying to sit out a hand. Why don’t you take my place?”

“Thank you, but I only have a moment.” Jane met Nancy’s eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t know my way about the neighborhood yet, and I need directions.”

Nancy loved the elegant way Jane said “directions” with the long
i
. So there, Ginger Higgins, with the Brooklyn accent. “Sure. Where do you want to go?”

“Newbridge Road.”

“Newbridge?” Nancy frowned. “Not much up there but a few shoe stores and the newspaper office.”

“Yes,” said Jane, brightening. “I spoke to the editor of the paper and he told me to bring my story around this afternoon so he could have a look at it.”

“Your story?” Margie piped up. “What story?”

“Jane was a reporter in England,” said Nancy, pleased to be the fountain of information. She started to tell the others how Mac and Jane had met at the coronation a few weeks ago, but decided to keep that juicy bit of news back for another day. “I’m sure she must have lots of old stories they’d be interested in.”

“Actually this isn’t an old story,” said Jane. “It’s a new one.”

“A new one? When did you find time to write a new one?”

Jane’s delicate shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Time is the one thing I seem to have a great deal of,” she said lightly.

“That won’t last long,” said Nancy, winking at her card-playing girlfriends. “Just you wait until the first baby shows up. You won’t have time for anything.”

“I couldn’t find time to brush my hair the first six months after Bobby was born,” said Pat, running her fingers through her short curls. “Finally cut it all off. Figured that was the easiest thing all around.”

Margie and Ginger launched into a spirited discussion of appropriate hairstyles for young mothers with Pat opting steadfastly for a crew cut. Jane’s light blue eyes started to glaze over, and Nancy could only imagine how dull and boring the conversation must sound to a woman as worldly as Jane. Nancy linked her arm through the Englishwoman’s. “Come on,” she said, leading Jane back toward the living room. “Let me give you the directions. Before you know it, it’ll be time to meet the train.”

“Did I—” Jane stopped midsentence.

Nancy looked up from the simple map she was sketching on a piece of loose-leaf paper. “Did you what?”

“Did I say something amiss a moment ago? I wondered if perhaps I was impolite.”

“You couldn’t possibly be impolite,” said Nancy, marking north and south on her map and then handing it to Jane. “They were surprised, that’s all.”

“I don’t understand.”

How did you explain to someone how important it was to fit in with the status quo, to blend with the other neighbors as seamlessly as one lawn flowed into the next? She looked at Jane and sighed. Who was she to say, anyway? Jane didn’t have children yet, after all, and it wasn’t as if she was running a company or anything.

“Forget I said anything,” said Nancy after a moment. “Believe me, once you have your first baby, you’ll forget you ever did anything else but change diapers.” She laughed self-consciously.

“Thank you for the directions,” said Jane, folding the map and tucking it neatly into her purse. “I’m sorry to have interrupted your game.”

Nancy said goodbye, then reentered the kitchen to face the intense scrutiny of her friends.

“Who does she think she is?” Ginger asked, spooning sugar into her iced tea and banging the spoon against the glass as she stirred. She made a face and drew her lips together. “‘He told me to bring my story around...’” She squeezed lemon into her glass and tossed the rind down on the tabletop. “Snob.”

“She’s not a snob,” said Pat. “She’s English.”

“Same thing,” said Ginger. “You know the English think they’re better than everybody else.”

“Don’t be witchy.” Margie reached for another ham sandwich. “It’s not her being English that bothers you. It’s because she’s so pretty.”

“Really?” Ginger sipped her iced tea. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Nancy and the other women laughed out loud at that one. If there was one thing you noticed the moment you met Jane Weaver, it was the fact that she was beautiful. The thought of being friends with such a flat-out gorgeous girl gave Nancy pause. After all, she’d grown up playing second fiddle to her beautiful sister, Cathy. But Jane was so funny and nice and all alone in Levittown that Nancy found she could overlook the fact that the English girl could give Liz Taylor a run for her money.

Ginger was going on about the English and socialized medicine, and when she veered off into likening social programs to communism, Nancy decided it was time to cut her neighbor off.

“What was that?” She inclined her head in the general direction of the backyard. “I think I hear a child crying.”

Ginger and Margie were out the door in a flash. Pat, older and wiser, gave Nancy a round of applause. “Smart girl,” said Pat with a nod of approval. “I was about to stick a diaper in her mouth.”

Nancy laughed and pushed her hair off her forehead. “That was next.”

“Princess Jane is in for some rough sledding.”

“I know,” said Nancy. She only wondered if Jane had any idea what was in store for her there in the heart of suburbia.

For Mac, the morning had been all hail-the-conquering-hero.

People he hadn’t seen in years surrounded his desk, slapping him on the back, congratulating him on his marriage, offering up juicy morsels of gossip on New York City officials whose names he had yet to learn.

He smiled and laughed and joked with his old cronies that morning, then girded his loins for lunch with the big boss. Maybe then he’d find out exactly where he stood in the scheme of things on the paper.

No such luck. They were polishing off slabs of cheesecake—the kind you could only find in New York—and McTiernan had yet to talk about anything more substantive than whether the electric typewriter would ever make it big in the newsroom. “Secretaries hate electricity,” said McTiernan over his cup of coffee. “Tell ’em you gotta plug a machine in and I guarantee trouble.”

Mac was starting to get a real funny feeling that his future wasn’t as rosy as he’d painted it for Jane. He lit a cigarette and listened as McTiernan bemoaned the general lack of modern technology in the newsroom. “Can’t even get ’em to try one of those Xerox machines. How they can stand those damn purple ditto machines is beyond me. Ought to be a law.”

Yeah
, thought Mac, exhaling a plume of smoke.
There ought to be a law against a lot of things
. His mind wandered back through the past few hours. He’d seen a lot of familiar faces, but a lot of even more familiar faces had been missing. “Where’s Boyle?” he’d asked. “Marinaro? Rosinski? Bernstein?” They hadn’t died or retired or moved to the south of France. They were simply invisible.

“So,” he said, lighting up another cigarette as the waiter replenished their coffee, “what’s on the agenda for me? I’ve got a couple of great ideas kicking around. Thought I’d take a look at what’s happening with the trade unions. Maybe—”

The look on McTiernan’s face stopped him dead.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your position,” said McTiernan, eyes averted. “You’ve been working your tail off for a lot of years now, Mac. You might want to keep it light for a while.” McTiernan forced a smile. “Especially being a newlywed and all...”

“You trying to tell me something, Frank?”

“No, no.” The answer was too quick, too cheerful. “Gotta keep things fresh, don’t we?” He leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe. “Thought we’d put you on city hall.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me, Frank. City hall’s dead air. Might as well send me to New Jersey.” If he’d known he was going to get the bum’s rush, he wouldn’t have pushed so hard to come home.

Frank’s watery blue eyes narrowed. “Don’t tempt me, kid. There’s been a lotta talk.”

“You mean—”

Frank raised a beefy hand, “Don’t say it. Don’t even think about saying it. The walls have ears.”

Mac thought about the peace treaty being worked out that very day at Panmunjom. “I was right, you know. We didn’t win.”

“Win, lose. What difference does it make? In case you’ve forgotten, it wasn’t even really a war.”

“Tell it to the kids coming back without arms and legs, Frank.”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Maybe I don’t. Why don’t you spell it out for me?”

Frank tossed his pipe down on the table. His eyes locked with Mac’s. Mac didn’t like what he saw in them. Not one damned bit. “You’re looking a little pink, Weaver. That’s not management’s favorite color these days.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” He cited his World War II coverage, his journalistic awards. He even brought up his war record. None of it seemed to matter. McTiernan was pig-iron stubborn.

Or scared.

“Look, it’s not me saying these things,” said McTiernan. “It’s the higher-ups. Sometimes you’ve just got to step into the shadows for a while. Wait for trouble to die down. Happens to the best of us.”

“It hasn’t happened to Edward R. Murrow. Didn’t he speak out a few months ago? I thought that was the beginning of the end.”

“You haven’t been home very long, Weaver.” McTiernan’s words were carefully chosen and carefully delivered. “Rest. Enjoy yourself. Let ’em forget you. Things’ll blow over.”

It’s what you do best
, Mac thought.
Why fight it?
Better men than he had tried and lost. Mac Weaver was one of the best when it came to sidestepping personal involvement.

“City hall,” he said. “Sounds great.”

* * *

Luke Fenelli, editor of the
Long Island Daily
, was young, funny and very enthusiastic. He took one look at Jane’s story and before she knew what hit her, Jane had a firm commitment for twelve more. “You’ve got yourself a great angle here, Mrs. Weaver. Light, humorous, but with some bite. Just what the ladies like. I want you to do something up for the Fourth of July. Kind of an Englishwoman’s view of the American Revolution.”

Even with her limited understanding of American currency, Jane could see the pay he was offering her was more than fair, and she accepted his offer with enthusiasm.

Fenelli showed her around the office and she marveled at the similarities between Leo Donnelly’s enterprise and this one. She felt an instant affinity with the other reporters, and despite the difference in background and viewpoint, she felt they liked her as much as she liked them.

It was a far cry from the chilly reception she’d received from the ladies in Nancy’s kitchen a few hours ago. To be fair, both Pat and Margie had been rather cordial. It was Ginger Higgins who’d made her uneasy. Ginger hadn’t even tried to mask her displeasure at having Jane in their midst. For a moment Jane had longed to run to Mac, to throw herself into his strong arms and cry on his shoulder. She had wished with all her heart that he was home, not fifty miles away in some office building in Manhattan.

But now as she made her way to the railway station, she was glad he hadn’t been around, after all. Why should her husband have to see her at her very worst, all troubled and fretful because one foolish woman had made her feel as if she didn’t belong? Mac deserved so much better than that. He deserved a wife who was happy and cheerful, a wife who made his homecoming a pleasure, not an obligation.

From that moment on, whatever happened, Jane vowed to share only the good with Mac. If she had difficulties with Ginger she would keep them to herself. If Luke Fenelli turned out to be a miserable boss, she wouldn’t complain to Mac. He’d know only her triumphs; her tragedies would remain hers alone.

* * *

“Wan-tagh! Next stop!” The conductor’s voice shattered the silence of the railroad car. He glanced over at Mac. “You Levittowners get off here.”

Mac nodded his thanks, while across from him, a man in a gray business suit yawned and went back to sleep. How a person could catch any shut-eye in a crowded, noisy, smoke-filled railroad car was beyond Mac. He’d slept in some pretty peculiar and inhospitable places in his day, but few places short of a foxhole were as bad as the Long Island Railroad. He wondered how men did this day after day, year after year, and he was about to feel extremely sorry for the poor suckers until he realized he was now one of them.

The thought of riding this cattle car for the next twenty or thirty years sent a chill up Mac’s spine.
Cheer up,
he thought, shoving some papers into his briefcase. It had been one hell of a day. From the way McTiernan had sounded at lunch, Mac’s days at the paper might very well be numbered. He wondered if Levittown had an unemployment office.

The train creaked into the station and he pushed thoughts of the newspaper office from his mind. He’d rather think of Jane. His wife. He knew people were still buzzing about his impulsive marriage, but as far as he was concerned, marrying Jane was the smartest thing he’d ever done. There were times in the past few weeks where he’d felt he had more in common with her than with people he’d known all his life. Was this the big secret about marriage that nobody ever told you about, this feeling of being two people against the world? To his surprise he missed his old life in Europe more than he’d imagined; Jane understood in a way no one else possibly could.

Mac stood up and peered out the window. The parking lot was knotted with cars. Big black Buicks. Cream-colored station wagons with real wood trim along the side panels. Hot rods with fuzzy dice dangling from the rearview mirror. He strained for a glimpse of a flashy red MG and a beautiful dark-haired driver, but there wasn’t one in sight.

His heartbeat accelerated. What if something had happened to her? Why in hell hadn’t he taken Gerry Sturdevant up on his offer to carpool with him and Nancy this morning? Jane had been so eager to drive him to the station—and Mac had been so reluctant to say goodbye to her a moment before he had to—that he’d declined Gerry’s offer without giving it another thought.

Now he wished he could turn back the clock. She could be lost. She could be hurt. She could be stuck somewhere on the road with a flat tire or a dead battery, alone in a strange town, in a strange country, with no one to turn to. Sweat broke out on his brow. He couldn’t live without her—not now that he’d discovered what it was like to hold paradise in his arms. She was part of him, the best part. With his job so uncertain, she was the only sure thing in his life.

What the hell had he been thinking of, letting her—

He stopped. Was it his imagination or was that really a bright red MG whipping into the lot? The little car zipped along on the wrong side of the road and came to a stop right behind a baby-blue Caddy. The door opened and out stepped a curvy dream with lustrous hair sparkling in the sunlight.

Everything else dropped away from him as he drank in the sight of his wife. McTiernan... his job... the innuendo and veiled warnings... None of it mattered anymore. The moment he stepped off the train he was Janie’s husband.

* * *

“This is terrific,” said Mac, turning the last page of Jane’s article. “No wonder Fenelli signed you up.”

Jane, who had been pacing the length of the rumpus room, turned and faced her husband. “You’re being truthful with me?”

“Damn truthful. You’re good, Janie.
Very
good.”

Mac’s praise warmed her in a way not even Fenelli’s had. “Thank you.”

“If I’d known you were going to be competition, I might have thought twice before marrying you.”

Her expression must have betrayed her shock, because Mac laughed and got up to pull her into his arms.

“I’m only kidding, Janie. You’ll have to get used to my heavy-handed humor.”

“You don’t mind seeing my articles in print?”

He brushed her hair off her face and kissed her. “Why in hell should I mind? Writers write. Case closed.”

Jane, who had never thought of herself as a writer, considered his words. She’d always imagined herself as simply a reporter, a relay between ideas and events and the people who wanted to read about those ideas and events.

“You’ll be a celebrity in town, Janie.’

She ducked her head, biting back her observation that among the women of Robin Hood Lane that might not be a very good thing to be. “I’m looking forward to reading your work, Mac.”

He paused a beat before answering. “Yeah, well, you may have a while to wait.”

She placed her hands flat on his chest and leaned back to meet his eyes. “Is something wrong?”

The flicker of anxiety in his eyes was gone before she could be certain she’d seen it in the first place. “What could be wrong?” he countered. “I’m back on my old stomping grounds. They’ve given me the city hall beat.”

She beamed with pleasure. How important her husband must be to merit what must surely be the most prestigious position in the city. “How wonderful! Such an honor. I’m so proud.”

Jane’s innocent statement hit Mac like a splash of ice water.
Okay, big shot. What do you do now? Tell her it’s a dead-end spot or let her be happy?
No contest. He didn’t want to be the one to extinguish that glow in her eyes.

Sooner or later the world would catch up with them but for now he was happy to keep it at bay a little while longer.

* * *

They settled easily into a weekday routine. Jane actually enjoyed the twice-a-day trips to the railway station, for they gave her more of an opportunity to observe Americans going about their daily routines. It also made her feel more a part of the community, a part of the country itself, and that brought her a great deal of joy.

Nothing, however, brought her as much joy as being Mac’s wife. Surely God had been watching over her all these years, telling her, “Hold on, Jane. Before you know it the dark clouds will disappear,” because now her life was as blissful as it had once been sad. The fact that he seemed to feel the same way was more wondrous than any fairy tale she’d heard as a child.

The one cloud on the horizon was the reaction of her neighbors to her first article in the
Long Island Daily
. Oh, the men seemed to find it amusing enough and they teased her at great length about being a celebrity when they saw her at the railroad station in the evenings. Their wives laughed and said how much they’d enjoyed her story, but Jane could see a flicker of something—distrust? envy?—in their eyes, and that hurt. But she’d made a commitment to Luke Fenelli and she wouldn’t think of breaking it. Besides, what else was there to fill her days? The other women had children to care for and keep them busy. Jane had nothing but the empty house and a dozen empty hours a day.

Each time she went to the newspaper office to deliver an article, she felt as if she belonged, as if she was truly “one of the gang,” as Luke Fenelli put it. Nobody noticed her clothing or her accent; they only noticed her work. And they liked it! Those paychecks she received, small though they were, represented a pat on the back for a job well done. They made her feel as if she were truly part of life in Levittown in a way that nothing else so far had.

But that would soon be changing.

If her suspicions were correct, the time would come very soon when she, too, would have more than enough to occupy her day at home. The other women were all busy with their children. Jane was set adrift when conversations turned to diapers and formulas and the ubiquitous Dr. Spock. Theirs was a secret society, one whose doors would open to her the day she announced she and Mac were going to have a baby.