Two Rivers (26 page)

W
e got married at the Unitarian Universalist Church the day after graduation. I didn’t invite my father, but I told Betsy she should ask her own to come. She just shook her head and sighed. “I hate that whole daddy giving away his daughter thing,” she said.
“Please
.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, because I could see she didn’t believe it even as she said it.

“Yeah, no need for all that mushy crap.”

“What about Hanna and Paul?”

“Let’s keep it small,” she said.

Here is Betsy on our wedding day: pale dress, black hair, lilacs. We held hands throughout the ten-minute ceremony. She looked me directly in the eyes, barely blinking, during both the sermon and the vows. It was as if she wanted me to know that she was certain of this. And that she had no regrets. I was grateful for her clear-eyed tenacity. For the scent of lilacs.

I had told my father about the baby after the guests at my mother’s makeshift memorial had all left, and we were cleaning up the dirty plates from the living room. Betsy was resting in my parents’ room. I had barely spoken to my father since I’d smashed his root beer against the refrigerator. I wasn’t ready to apologize.

“Betsy’s pregnant,” I said.

My father was clutching a balled up napkin, staring at a serving tray of sandwich meats. I studied his face, looking for something that might reveal his disappointment or anger or joy. And just as the waiting became almost intolerable, he asked, his voice cracking a bit, “A baby?”

I nodded.

My father opened his mouth, as if he were going to say something, and then closed it again. Changed his mind. “Betsy’s a good egg,” he said finally. Then he thrust out his hand, and it took me a moment to realize that he was trying to shake it. My father and I had never shaken hands. “She’s a lot like your mother,” he said.

I was still angry with him, though when I accepted the handshake, my anger quickly gave way to pity. I was embarrassed by the lack of strength in his grip. In that terrible moment, I felt his passivity, his weakness. And I realized that it would take so very little to crush him, to shatter the small bones of his hands. In an instant, I became aware that my father’s life meant nothing now that my mother was gone. It made me pity him, and it made me despise him. I didn’t want to wind up like him.

Betsy padded down the stairs, still rubbing her eyes. “Did you tell him?” she asked.

I proposed in the car on the way home, after we stopped to get some gas.

“Betsy?” I said. She was unwrapping a candy bar. Her nausea had abated in the last couple of weeks and had been replaced with an insatiable sweet tooth. The glove box was filled with candy bars.

“Uh-huh?” she asked, tearing at the wrapper with her teeth.

“I should have done this earlier…I know, but I didn’t know how…and now, with everything with Mom…I’m sorry…” Heart pounding in my chest, I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the ring. There was some pocket lint clinging to the solitary diamond. I felt embarrassed as I held it out to her.

She looked at the ring and then up at me, chewing slowly on her Three Musketeers. And I waited.

“You have to ask me,” she whispered.

“Oh.” I nodded. “Right. Betsy, will you marry me?”

She took the ring and blew on it, the little piece of lint disappearing with her breath, and then she put the ring on her finger. “Yes,” she said.

Yes
. The only word that mattered in the world anymore.

When she kissed me, she tasted like chocolate.

We picked lilacs from the bushes behind the church before the ceremony. Betsy wound them through her hair, the pale purple in striking contrast to her dark tresses. Though she didn’t come to the ceremony, Hanna had made the dress. The skinny straps were a little too long, and the chest a bit roomy, but it had ample room for the belly that was starting to swell underneath even the loosest clothes.

“Ready?” she’d asked as we walked into the church, squeezing my hand.

I wanted to tell her I’d been ready for this moment my whole life. Instead I said, “Why not?”

Miss Katy prepared finger sandwiches, cake and ice tea, and my friends from school and some of the girls Betsy had gotten to know from the girls’ dorm joined us on the back lawn of Battell.

“Look at you, Montgomery, all grown up,” Freddy said, rubbing his hand across the top of my head in a way reserved for playground bullies and older brothers.

“When do you take off?” I asked.

Freddy’s father had arranged for Freddy to spend a couple of days in New York with his family before he shipped off to Vietnam.

“Tomorrow I’m going to New York. Maybe catch a show. See the city.” He flailed his arms out dramatically. “Then I’m off to exotic Saigon. I hear the weather is quite nice this time of year.”

“Are you worried?” I asked.

“Hell, not as worried as you should be. Vietnam ain’t got nothin’ on fatherhood.”

As we were leaving, Freddy kissed Betsy’s hand, bowing to her. She played along, batting her eyelashes and blushing. Then, her eyes filled with tears, and she threw her arms around him, pressing her face into his chest. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the possibility that we might never see Freddy again.

“Be safe,” I said, and firmly shook his hand.

We spent the night at the Middlebury Inn in town. After four years of sneaking around campus, having sex anywhere we could, something about clean white sheets and pillows felt illicit.

Navigating Betsy’s new body proved both challenging and scary. I was so afraid of hurting her, of hurting the baby, I found myself hesitant where I’d always been sort of reckless. The new swell of her breasts was both provocative and intimidating. I was drawn to them but too afraid to touch them. It was a terrible paralysis. More than once, Betsy picked up my hands and placed them where both of us wanted them. It was like having a free trip around the world and being too afraid to get on the plane.

We stayed awake that night, neither of us able to sleep. I suspect Betsy was uncomfortable; she was a stomach sleeper, and with her growing belly, this position was now impossible. I, on the other hand, was stricken with a bout of insomnia. I was torn up inside, elated and forlorn all at once. Everything I’d ever wanted was right here, but I couldn’t help feeling the same way I felt the one time I cheated on a test. Like this was stolen somehow. Like I didn’t really deserve it. And in the morning, when dawn finally came and the bright spring sunlight fell across our bodies, something about the lilacs that found their way from her hair onto those clean white sheets made me feel sad. Wilted already, and curling in on themselves. The heady scent of lilacs faded, replaced with a sort of small sorrow.

And two days after our wedding, before we had even returned to Two Rivers, Betsy’s father passed away.

We rented a little two-bedroom bungalow near the river that summer. Hanna made polka-dot curtains for the kitchen windows. Betsy planted flowers, and I painted the nursery a pale yellow. I framed Betsy’s best photos (many of them of the empty cottages on Gormlaith) and hung them in every room. The house was small; the garage sale furniture we collected barely fit into the awkward tiny spaces. The plumbing was cranky and the hot water never quite got hot enough, but at night, as we slept with the windows wide open, trying to stay cool, we could hear the river. Behind the house was a rambling backyard. It tumbled a good hundred yards away from the house before it met the river. We put a couple of lawn chairs back there, a plastic kiddy pool, and a picnic table. I hung a tire swing from the oak tree. It didn’t matter that the house was cramped, that the roof leaked, because there was
this
.

Betsy put the Parkers’ house up for sale. She wanted to start fresh, she said. Start over. She also accepted Knight Rogers’s offer to buy the barbershop. Knight had worked for Betsy’s father since he opened the shop twenty-five years before. Selling the barbershop was hard for Betsy. But though she never once complained about taking care of the shop (or of her father for that matter), now that these burdens were lifted from her shoulders, there was a new sort of calm about her. There was a certain stillness about everything that summer. We didn’t talk about the future, about what we would do after the baby was born. It was too soon, I think. We were on the edge of something huge, but for now, everything was easy. Every day felt like one, long breezy sigh.

I took the job at the freight office not long after the wedding. The station was close enough to our house to walk, which, at twenty-two seemed like a pretty good reason to take a job. Besides, I knew it wouldn’t be forever. What I hadn’t told Betsy was that I’d been applying for jobs in Portland. I’d also gotten applications to the University of Southern Maine for her, found scholarships she was eligible for. I wanted to surprise her. Now that her father was gone, and nothing was keeping her here except for me, I wanted to give her everything she’d wanted. She never said so, but I knew she still felt trapped in Two Rivers. And I also knew that my getting a job somewhere else would be the key to unlock the cage.

Each morning, I left before Betsy awoke, kissing her on her forehead and then her stomach as she lay sleeping, and then I walked along the tracks to the station. When I got home at night, she was usually in the backyard sitting with her feet soaking in the swimming pool, a pitcher of lemonade and a pile of books on the table next to her. We’d sit out there, listening to the river, chatting about our respective days until the sun went down. I’d grill hamburgers on the barbeque, make a salad from some of the things growing in our little raised-bed garden. Betsy had taught herself both how to garden and bake bread, and almost every night, she’d bring some delicious smelling steamy loaf to our outdoor table.

Sometimes Ray and Rosemary would come with their baby, and we’d play cards outside as J.P. toddled about the yard. I watched Betsy watching the baby, watched as she cradled her own belly with one hand. She’d started wearing loose skirts, Indian print dresses, when nothing else would fit. When I remember Betsy those last few months before Shelly was born, I recollect the softness of cotton. The colors of India. The little bells that jingled on the bottom of her skirts when she walked. I remember the sway of her new round hips beneath the fabric as she and Rosemary walked alongside J.P. near the water.

Brooder visited sometimes too, usually arriving just as we were about to eat. After Brooder’s accident, Betsy’s heart opened up to let him in. On those nights, she always ushered him through the house to the backyard, where she would set an extra plate for him. Pour him a glass of something cold. Sometimes, he’d come by before I got home, and I’d find them in the backyard looking at the garden or just talking. Their new friendship mystified me.

“What do you two talk about?” I asked Betsy one day.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you must talk about something.”

“We talk about books sometimes.” She shrugged. “Brooder likes mysteries.”

“Brooder can read?” I asked, smirking.

She rolled her eyes and then continued, “He brings his guitar. He’s been writing songs lately. They’re just beautiful. He’s a real poet.”

I laughed despite myself. Brooder had never struck me as much of a wordsmith.

She nodded and said, “I’ve asked him to play at the protest next month.”

The annual county fair was coming up, and Betsy had organized a peaceful protest in front of the Army recruiting tent. I was worried about it; the recruiting exhibit was usually right next to the beer tent. Military guys and drunks and antiwar activists seemed like a potentially dangerous combination to me. What I wanted to say was that I was worried about the protest. She didn’t know Brooder like I did; she didn’t know that he sometimes would take things too far. That for Brooder the term
peaceful protest
was an oxymoron. What I did say was, “I think he’s got a crush on you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

“I’m just saying you shouldn’t encourage him. He’s not right in the head. Not since he got back,” I said.

“You’d be messed up too if you’d seen
half
of what he’s seen.”

My shoulders tensed.

She threw up her hands in defeat. “Listen, he just needs a friend, and so do I,” she said. “I enjoy his company.”

“Fine,” I said. “Have fun with your
friend
.”

I went inside to sulk, leaving her alone in the backyard. The kitchen smelled of rye bread. I sat down at the table and started thumbing through the mail that was sitting in a heap. Betsy never bothered with the mail, leaving it for me to sift through. Near the bottom of the pile was a postcard. It looked like it had weathered some pretty serious storms to reach us. The photo was scratched, and the ink was blurred. Below the picture it said, “Lighthouse at Peggy’s Cove, Halifax County, Nova Scotia.” And on the back, in messy handwriting it said simply, “
Docendo Discimus
. By teaching, we learn.”

Freddy
. I forgot all about the argument with Betsy. I flew out into the backyard, where she was kneeling in the dirt. She was barefoot, and the pink soles of her feet were dirty. When she wiped her forehead, she left the faintest trail of soil on her cheek.