Jerry became my liaison with the Shiefendorfers. He and they planned our future: neither Bert nor I was consulted. I was too stunned to care; no doubt Bert was too. I suspected that except for Jerry, who was enjoying his centrality, his sense of power, everybody was as numb as I was. The thing was a shock, a sudden dramatic end to everybody’s plans and hopes, like being told you have a terminal disease.
Bert didn’t call or ask to see me. I didn’t really care. Most of the time I lay on the daybed in Delia’s sewing room and stared at the ceiling. I knew it was my own fault, my own doing, but still I blamed my sisters. Why didn’t they warn me? Why didn’t Susan or Merry or Tina—or Delia or my mother—why didn’t they sit me down and have a long talk and say,
This one thing you must not do or you will ruin your life forever, you will lose everything you have,
which was little enough as it was! Why had nobody impressed this on me? Yet I had to admit I knew it anyway, knew it somehow without being told. Every girl knew it: it was universal knowledge. Still, at least ten girls in my, high school class had been pregnant at graduation. But they didn’t have as much to lose, I thought: who else had a full scholarship to college? To a wonderful college? You’d think a person smart enough to win such a scholarship would be smart enough not to wreck her life, and for what? What Bert and I had done on the beach hadn’t even felt good. Well, it felt nice at first, the kissing and the touching, but then, when he put his thing on me, on my leg with just a little tiny bit of it in me, that had not felt good; it felt like nothing at all, and it got me all wet and sticky. For that I had ruined my life?
The hardest thing I had to do was write the Millington High School teachers. I kept picturing them sitting together in the coffee room reading my letter, shaking their heads, their hopes in me smashed. “These girls,” they’d sigh, and lay the letter aside, their disappointment palpable in the room. It took years before I could think about that without feeling a pang, sharp as a heart attack.
It was almost as hard to quit school formally: I wrote the dean that I was getting married. Everyone knew what that meant; I was glad I could do it by mail, so no one would see my face. But I had to go back for my things. Jerry drove me up on a weekend, when, I hoped, few people would be around. I didn’t want to meet anyone I knew, to have them look at me, to have to explain anything. I dreaded bursting into tears, humiliating myself utterly. Amazingly, I didn’t bump into anyone, not even Irmgard, who must have been away for the weekend. I packed my clothes, my precious books, my portable typewriter, and sneaked out of there feeling déclassé, a little shopgirl who’d slipped in like a stowaway but was found out before she had done any real damage.
Jerry and I barely spoke on the drive to South Hadley. He kept the radio on to pop music until we reached the hills and got only static. Then we drove in silence until Jerry cleared his throat, and I knew, I knew exactly what he was about to say.
“You think at all about what I said to you, kid?”
“Umm, well, I don’t know, Jer.”
“It don’t have to be this way, you know.”
I couldn’t think how to tell him what I felt, that I was appalled my own brother would urge me to do something illegal, something I could go to jail for, if I didn’t die of it first! I knew there were people who’d had abortions, but it was a terrible thing, it was against the law; no decent girl, no respectable girl, would even think about it! I knew Jerry loved me and wanted the best for me, but I couldn’t understand how he could imagine that I would do such a terrible thing…
My eyes overflowed. “I just can’t, Jer,” I wept.
He reached over and patted my hand. “Okay, kid, okay. Don’t cry. Listen, it was only an idea. Forget it, I’m just an oaf. I been hangin’ out with the guys at the bakery too long, you know…”
I took his hand and smiled at him. I did love my brother. I’d adored him when I was little; I used to follow him around the way a baby duck follows its mother, Momma used to say. At the thought of my mother, a fresh batch of tears poured out of me. Thank god she wasn’t alive to see this, to be shamed by me…
“Come on, kid. It’ll be all right, wait and see. You’ll have the kid and you’ll love it and you’ll forget this stuff—in a couple of years it’ll be just as if you were madly in love with this guy. You know, love doesn’t last, anyway.” He stopped suddenly.
This was an alarming new idea.
“Don’t you love Delia anymore, Jerry?”
Jerry had a tannish complexion, but he blushed right through his tan skin. Still, I didn’t stop. I had to know.
“Don’t you, Jer?”
“Sure, sure I do, of course! Just maybe in a different way than I did before, you know? You don’t know a lotta stuff about people when you marry them, you know?”
“But Delia’s so sweet and good and nice,” I whined. I couldn’t bear hearing that two people I loved so much were less than happy, and I knew that if Jerry was unhappy, so must Delia be.
“Yeah, yeah. She is. I know that. But you know, she’s so Catholic.”
“I thought you converted. Aren’t you Catholic too?”
“Sure, I had to; she wouldn’t have married me otherwise. But you know I don’t care about religion; we weren’t religious in our family.”
“No. But why do you care if Delia is?”
“Well, the Catholics have all these rules about birth control and stuff, and Delia doesn’t want to have a family until we’ve saved up enough to buy a house, and she won’t use birth control, so…there’s very few days in the month that are safe…” He hit the steering wheel with the palm of his left hand. “Listen to me, will you? Running off at the mouth. Just pay no attention, okay, kid? Delia’s a sweetheart. She is. Just sometimes we don’t agree. That’s inevitable, right? Happens to everybody.”
I was still holding Jerry’s other hand, and I squeezed it. I wanted to tell him that whatever he did or felt, I loved him, but that I wanted him to stop talking. I wanted him to stop talking
now!
Once I realized they had one, I didn’t want to know their problem, Delia’s and his.
But Jerry’s problem with Delia became mine before too long.
We were in Goodman’s, a local department store. Delia had insisted I buy a wedding dress. I said I didn’t want a wedding dress—we weren’t going to have a formal wedding. But she looked over my clothes and pronounced them unsuitable for any kind of wedding.
“We won’t spend much,” she argued, “seein’ as how it won’t fit you in another month or two and probably not afterwards, either.”
She found a beige rayon shirtwaist dress with a wide belt. “If you do lose weight later, this is a dress you can get some wear out of,” she urged, always practical. I didn’t care. I bought it, and a wide-brimmed beige felt hat, and low-heeled shoes to match. Delia was pleased and offered to treat me to coffee and cake in the store restaurant. I loved the store restaurant: the white tablecloths and the neat waitresses in black with little white lace-trimmed aprons and caps. I was happy to be there, and Delia was happy with my outfit. She saw me smiling and that made her even happier, and she rested her hand on mine and said, “I’m glad you have that navy suit you’re wearing. It looks great on you; it isn’t too tight yet. You ought to wear it when you meet Father O’Neill. I want you to look nice for him.”
“Father O’Neill?”
“Yes. I’ve made an appointment for you, for tomorrow evening. Jerry’ll drive you; I already asked him. You’ll have to take religious instruction with Father before he’ll marry you.” She was still smiling.
“Why would I do that? I’m not Catholic.”
“No, but Bert is. You’ll have to convert.”
“How do you know he is?”
“I had Jerry ask them. You have a right to know, after all.”
I digested this for a while.
“I’m not converting, Delia,” I said. I wasn’t smiling, and now she wasn’t, either.
“You have to!”
“Who says?”
Her voice rose. “Your brother converted to marry me.”
“My brother loved you.”
“You can’t marry a Catholic without converting. It’s wrong. It’s a sin!”
“It seems to me that’s up to Bert and me, and he hasn’t said a word about my converting.” Of course, he hadn’t said a word about anything.
“Don’t you want to be the same religion as me?” She was near tears now.
“Delia, I love you, but I don’t even believe in a god, much less in a religion. I’m not going to do it, and there’s nothing you can say that will persuade me, so please don’t let us fight about this. I have the right to be whatever religion I want, or none at all.”
Delia turned white. “You mean you’re an…
atheist?”
“Of course. We all are in my family,” I said blithely, then I saw her face.
“Jerry isn’t. He’s Catholic.”
“Yeah. Except Jerry,” I amended quickly.
“You’re an atheist,” she repeated, looking at me as if I’d grown horns.
“Oh, Dell…” I put my hand on her arm, but she pulled away.
“No wonder you got pregnant,” she said harshly. She pulled her bag open, removed her compact and lipstick, and redid her lips. Then she opened her wallet and laid a dollar on the table. “Ready?” she asked coldly.
Delia never forgave me. I had tried her too hard, pushed her morality further than her affection for me could bear. And it seemed her morality was more important to her than her affection. Maybe that’s true for all of us. I don’t know, because I have a bad character.
Delia was good and she went on being good, despite the worst I could do. She said she and Jerry would give me a wedding reception—champagne and cake in their apartment. Jerry could get a case of New York State champagne real cheap—a friend of his owned a liquor store—and the guys in his plant would make a wedding cake for me for free, she said. Delia borrowed glasses and dishes from her mother and wrote invitations to my sisters and Bert’s parents and brothers and sister. Of course, she would have to do all the work. And she spoke to me—she didn’t stop speaking to me—but she was cool and made an effort not to spend time with me alone. She stopped going to the movies with me. I knew this had to hurt her as much as it hurt me: she didn’t have any friends, just her family, who rarely went to movies. So she lost one of her few pleasures. I kept believing she’d get over it, just as Susan had kept believing Mother would someday forgive her. But just like my mother, she never did. Good people were strange that way.
G
EORGE AND I COMMUTED
between Louisville and New York to stay with each other on long weekends or short vacations. On my visits to his house in Louisville, I redecorated it. The color schemes in particular took detailed planning: for his living room, I used a deep velvety brown accented with muted rose and blue; in another version, I used shades of the palest blues and greens.
George would come up to New York for three-or four-day weekends, and I would get tickets for the theater or a concert. I’d take him to the best restaurants in town. I had a suspicion he didn’t care for really good food, but if that was the case, he’d have to improve his palate, because I couldn’t live on a steady diet of the sort of food served in that coffee shop near Columbia where I met him for lunch.
No. Toss that scenario. Let’s say he got a permanent job at
Newsday
and moved to New York. At that point, I could choose one of the many lifestyles I’d already invented. Wherever we lived, he’d come to my apartment for dinner one night a week, and we’d cook together. Another night, we’d go to the theater or a film, a concert or a reading, and have late-night supper at the Algonquin or the Brasserie or some other ancient sentimental spot that would make him nostalgic or give him a kick. Weekends, we’d have a lazy brunch, often entertaining. Ko Chao would come and help serve and do the cleaning up. We’d serve scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, caviar omelets, fettuccine Alfredo (which everyone would groan about and then devour), or a mushroom risotto, hot popovers and biscuits, a huge fruit salad filled with melon and berries that I would have prepared the day before, and a tray of sweet breads and pastries. I pictured my friends meeting him, heard their conversations, saw them charmed by him.
We’d take long walks in the park and spend holidays out at Sag Harbor. We’d invite all our children—whenever his daughter and my four kids could manage to get to New York at the same time. The whole family would cook. We’d make vitello tonnato, or stuffed veal breast, or roast loin of pork with crackling skin, or some other delicious politically incorrect food. We’d have luscious pastas, rich soups, simple desserts. I spent hours planning the pastas and soups, making them in my mind, revising old recipes and trying out new ones. I invented a wonderful mushroom soup thickened with the stems instead of cream.
In the summer, we’d drive out to Sag Harbor every weekend and throw ourselves into the water, then lie naked on mattresses on the dock, just our fingertips touching. We’d lie close together at night, making love only when desire overwhelmed us. But the rest of the time we’d be warm together, cuddling, soft, tender, filling that hurt empty spot that never goes away, that has been hurting since you were born, it seems. It would be wonderful. Paradise. I’d be happy for the rest of my life.
Friday morning, Lou called me in Sag Harbor with what she said were a ton of messages. Utterly beyond my control and contrary to my will, my heart began to beat jaggedly. But as she droned on and on, reciting them, the magic word did not appear. Crash and burn.
I was having lunch with Ilona Markovich that day. I gave up my resolve not to discuss George. The situation was clearly beyond my control. I had to talk to someone. Only it seemed that no matter how many people I talked to, I didn’t feel better.
Ilona can meet her friends only at lunchtime, because Guy Kislik, the man she lives with, is jealous of her evening hours. At night, she goes only to professional meetings, events mandatory or at least important to her job as a professor of biology at Stony Brook. Guy is also a professor—of political science, I think; I know so little about him. He doesn’t want Ilona to go out at night, and he himself almost never does, rarely accompanying her even to parties of concerts. I’ve met him only once or twice in all the years I’ve known Ilona, and she never talks about him at all. It’s almost as if he doesn’t exist. Except every year, she’ll show me photographs of the two of them on their most recent trip—mounted on camels or elephants, mountain climbing in Nepal, standing near a giant turtle on the Galapagos, snorkling in the Great Barrier Reef. It’s very strange to see her with a thin, bearded man with his arm around her as if he knew her. He seemed a puppet who came alive when they went abroad but whom she kept in a box the rest of the year.