Blessings (9 page)

She sprang up. Peter would be in the library this afternoon. At once she felt lighter. The weight of fear shifted within her. What was she thinking of? She wasn’t alone, for heaven’s sake! Peter would know what to do. He’d think of something.

He was at his usual table, with elbows propped and chin in hands, concentrating over a bulky book. She had a glimpse of a diagram embedded in a rectangle of thick text before he looked up in surprise and closed the book.

She smiled. “Hi. You almost through?”

“I can be. What’s wrong?”

“Does something have to be wrong for me to stop by?” She was satisfied that her voice had no tremor.

“You don’t fool me.”

His concern almost broke her resolve. She steadied herself. Be brave and controlled. “Why? Do I look funny or something?” Light. Keep it light. It’s not a disaster.

“It’s your eyes. Something’s happened.” He stood up to gather his books and papers. “Come on outside.”

They went out into a bright late afternoon. Friends stopped them; they stood under the thick trees along the walk, unable to break away. More people came and walked along, talking of unimportant things, and Jennie’s heart began its hammering again. She sensed that Peter was trying to get away from the group, but they were accompanied across the street. Two girls from Jennie’s hall passed; they had taken off their sweaters and tied them around their waists; they were eagerly talking; she had been like them only a little while ago.

When finally they were alone, they circled back and sat down on some steps. He put his hand under her chin and turned her face up to his.

“So? Tell me.”

Fear flooded back, even under his steady gaze. “You can’t guess?”

“I don’t think I can.”

“I went to the doctor a few days ago.” She met his eyes. “Now you can guess.”

“Oh. Oh.”

She sighed. “Yes. Peter, what are we going to do?” This time her brave voice ended in a kind of wail, and tears sprang, blurring the trees, the grass, and the bricks.

He looked down at his hands, turning them palms up. And she, following his gaze, saw what an intimate thing a hand is. She knew his so well: the long fingers, the narrow white rims on the oval nails, the fine reddish hair on the wrist.

And she waited. A breeze abruptly shook the leaves, sending a shiver of cold down her back. He looked up from his hands.

“It may not even be true.”

“It’s true.”

Her own hands had suddenly come together in a piteous gesture and lay twisted in her lap. Peter reached over and separated them, taking one between his own hands.

“Well, then, we’ll just have to do something about it, won’t we, if that’s so?”

And he smiled. The smile went straight to her heart.

“Like what?” she asked.

“Give me time to think.”

Neither of them spoke for a while. The wind came up more strongly, and Jennie clasped her cold arms. She wondered what he might be thinking of. Then he looked at his watch.

“It’s six already. Come on, let’s go to our spaghetti place. We can think better on a full stomach.”

There was no one they knew in the restaurant, and they got a booth in the rear where they would be unseen.

“I’m not hungry,” she said, the familiar menu in hand.

“You have to eat.”

A ridiculous expression came into her head: Eating for two. She felt like gagging. “I can’t, I really can’t.”

“Just some soup. I’ll have the same. I’m not hungry, either.”

For a few minutes they sat again without speaking. Jennie managed a few mouthfuls and laid down the spoon.

“God, Jennie, I’m sorry. I feel like a clumsy, ignorant fool. I thought I was being so careful. I was being careful. Dammit, I don’t understand.”

“Nothing’s a hundred percent.” It hurt her to see him like this. Only yesterday he had been so carefree, had bought a new guitar and some music. “It’s my fault too,” she acknowledged. “I mean, I should have kept track. I was careless; I am careless. It’s pretty far gone already.”

He looked up quickly. “Too far to do anything about it?”

“You mean an abortion?”

“Well, yes. Of course, I would find the best place where it would be safe. My God, I wouldn’t let anything happen to you! You must know that.”

She sighed again. All afternoon such deep sighs had been rising, as if her lungs needed to be filled. “I couldn’t … I don’t want … Regardless of the time, I couldn’t, anyway.”

Very gently he asked, “Why not? Why couldn’t you?”

“I’m not sure.” Pop’s Orthodoxy? Rooted, after all, in her agnostic head and in spite of her indifference to it?

“So if you’re not sure, that means you could. Think about it. It’s done all the time.”

“I know.”

A girl in high school had had an abortion during senior year. Everybody knew it. She’d gone on to graduate with the class, had gone on with her life as if nothing had changed. And yet Jennie shuddered. Involuntarily her hands went to her hard, flat stomach.

She had no feeling for what was growing in her, no vision of its possibilities. It was an interloper, feared and unwelcome, and yet she couldn’t kill it.

Peter saw her gesture. “There’s nothing much there, Jennie. An inch or two—maybe less.”

But it’s life, clinging and fastened. To rip it out and throw it away, a bloody mess … Her thoughts trailed off and she raised her eyes to Peter’s, which were questioning and troubled.

“You have to believe me, Peter. It’s all right for some —I don’t judge anybody else—but I just know I can’t.”

Silence again, while he spooned the soup. Then he raised his head, struck the table lightly with his fist, and made a firm, cheerful mouth.

“What the hell! What’s the fuss about? Then we’ll be married. That’s that!”

A tremendous joy made a huge lump in her throat and almost choked her. A second later it receded in doubt.

“Peter, I wouldn’t want to be married to a man who ‘had to’ marry me and would resent me afterward.” At the same time she knew that she was hoping for and counting on a denial.

“Jennie, darling, how could you even have a thought like that, when we’re the way we are? It’s true this is all the wrong time for it, but we were going to get married eventually, so we’ll have to find a way to manage it now. Come on, don’t be afraid. I’m here with you.” He summoned the waiter. “Bring us dinner, after all. We’re hungrier than we thought we were.”

And while Jennie listened, letting the words pour comfort like a warm shower, he kept on talking. “Forgive me for what I’m going to say. It sounds like crap, I know, but the fact is—oh, hell, you saw, so why be coy about it? My parents are well off, really well off. Money doesn’t mean a thing. I never thought I’d give a damn about that. You know me well enough to know that actually I’ve sort of been in a mild rebellion against their style of life and some of their ideas, but in a pinch like this”—he grinned—”in a pinch like this it comes in handy.”

His confident grin gave wonderful relief. Quickly, calmly, he had accepted her position and adjusted to it. She, who was given not to calmness but to mercurial changes and large gestures, felt the strength in his quiet posture.

“They’ll see us through, no doubt of it. Oh, it won’t be the most pleasant thing to have to explain, but once all the stiff lectures are over, they’ll come through. Listen, we’re not the first guys this has happened to, and we won’t be the last. Buck up, Jennie, and eat the spaghetti.”

A vision took shape in her head, a vision so clear that she could see it in color. There’d be a small apartment, two rooms—maybe even one—off campus; they could go to classes and take turns with the baby. They’d go on to graduate school; she’d pay them back herself once she was a lawyer, pay them back with her own earnings, not Peter’s, because she’d want to show them who she was and earn their respect. Yes, she would earn their respect in spite of it all. And when they saw how happy she made their son, they would come to love her.

“I’ll get a part-time job in the labs or someplace, work nights and weekends so we won’t have to depend on my parents for everything,” Peter said.

Visions, then, were already taking shape in his head too. He added, “You’ll be going home to tell your parents this weekend, while I fly home.” It was partly a statement and partly a question.

Jennie shook her head. “I’ll probably go home, but I’m not sure I can tell them before we’re married.”

How could one hurt them, remembering their past? She had read all the books about children of the Holocaust survivors and heard about the groups that met to advise and learn from one another, although she had never gone to one. It was true, you really did have a different feeling about your parents when you saw pictures of the European terror and knew that the father and mother who sat across the table from you every night talking about household bills and homework had been through all that. They weren’t like other people’s parents. How could you put their strength again to the test, the strength that surely must be so fragile?

“You’re really not going to tell them?” Peter asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Maybe I will. I’m not sure. They’re very loving.” And she said simply, “You would have to know them to understand.”

He asked no more. “Well, I’ll talk to my folks. I know they seemed formidable to you.” He gave a small, rueful laugh. “My mother’s favorite saying is ‘Shape up/ and frankly, it’s an expression that makes me sick, it’s so military. But two things they both respect are frankness and courage. So I’ll be frank and they’ll be fair. I have to hand it to them—they’re absolutely fair, Jennie, they really are.” He reached across the table and kissed her fingers. “There isn’t a thing in the world to worry about.”

He looked so earnest. She hoped they wouldn’t put him through too much at home before they got over their first anger.

“Trust me, Jennie.”

“I trust you. I always will.”

“How’s Peter?” Mom asked.

“He flew home this weekend.”

“So that’s why we have the pleasure of your company?” Mom laughed. “Sit down. I just came in from the store. Have a cup of tea before I start dinner.”

Beyond the kitchen the dining room was visible, with two plates set and the candlesticks in place, ready for the blessing. On Friday night they ate in the dining room, just the two of them, observing the ritual exactly as if they were surrounded by children and relatives, as Jennie knew they longed to be. She sat down across from her mother at the kitchen table.

“I got beautiful geraniums this year, double pink ones, something new. Look,” Mom said.

On the porch railing stood a row of geraniums in pots. A few feet beyond them stood Mrs. Danieli’s pots, but her geraniums were the common red. Mom followed Jennie’s gaze.

“No comparison, is there?” she asked.

“No, Mom.” The question touched her. Almost anything these last few days since the scene in the restaurant with Peter could have brought her to foolish tears: a Dylan Thomas poem read in English class, or an old wife helping her old husband onto the train in Philadelphia. Now it was the geraniums, the meager flowers stretching toward the sun. She felt a swelling in her throat. Foolish. Mom expected conversation. Unlike Pop, she needed to fill every silence. Besides, there was something Jennie wanted to know.

“So how’s everybody on the block? The Danielis? The Dieters?”

“Oh, the Danielis are fine, happy about the baby. Not like the Dieters down the street,” Mom said darkly.

Jennie wanted to talk about the Dieters. Gloria Dieter had “gotten in trouble” last year and was back home with her unwanted baby.

“Are they treating her any better than they did?”

Mom shrugged. “I don’t know. People hardly ever see them. They hide in the house. Gloria puts the carriage on the porch and runs inside.”

With a shaking voice Jennie spoke softly. “It’s not as if she’d robbed a bank or killed somebody.”

And she waited for an answer… .

“True, true. But these are crazy times. I don’t know.” Mom took up the folded newspaper. “Look at the stuff you read! It makes you sick. What has the Vietnam war got to do with the way these kids behave, I ask you? It’s a bad war, but what has free sex got to do with it, I ask you? A disgrace. Look, look at this!” It was an article about a well-known activist who was pregnant. “Look at her! Not married, having a baby, and proud of it! Proud of it, mind you. A college girl with all that education, but when you come down to it, behind all the fancy talk, what is she?”

Jennie was silent.

“Oh, but I pity the parents! You work with all your heart to make a good life for your children, and this is what you get for it?” Mom shook her head, commiserating with the unknown parents. Then, sighing deeply, she allowed her face to brighten. “Thank God your father and I don’t have such worries about you. You’re a good girl, Jennie, and always have been. Do you know, you’ve never given us one minute’s trouble since you were born, God bless you?”

Jennie said, very low, “But things can happen to what you call ‘good girls’ too. What should a mother do—I mean, I’m just being curious—what would you do, for instance, if I came home like that girl and told you I was—” Her own little cracked laugh brought her to a stop.

“My God, I can’t even think of such a thing, so how can I answer? A girl like you, to wreck her own life?”

If I could tell you, put my head on your shoulder and tell you, what a relief it would be—

“You’d throw me out, I guess. Out the door.” And she forced a laugh, a convincing one this time, meaning, Of course, all this is ridiculous.

“Throw you out the door? Who throws a daughter out the door? But I’d rather die myself, I’ll tell you that.” Mom took off her glasses, revealing the soft, remote expression that came upon her plain face whenever she spoke of her murdered parents, of her wedding day, or of the day when Jennie was born. “It would mean that everything we ever taught you went past your ears. Deaf ears, it would mean; wasted words. All the years, the way we live, thrown out like garbage. Oh, come on, what kind of sad, crazy talk is this? Have a dish of ice cream with me. I’ve got a sudden yen for coffee chip.”

So it’s quite clear what I can expect, Jennie thought. The ice cream slid down her throat, giving no pleasure. She had a recollection of herself at the Mendeses’ table eating ice cream; there, too, there had been a feeling of detachment from the others in the room. Here, though, the reason was hardly the same. She could almost feel how it was to stand in Masha-Marlene’s shoes, to be of her generation, with her past and her memories in her head. One had to understand.