The Hours Count (19 page)

I waited until the following week to go back to Planned Parenthood. For one thing, I tried as hard as I could to talk myself out of it, to make myself believe that this couldn’t possibly be happening to me. And, for another, I needed someone to watch David. With Jake still gone, I asked Ethel and she agreed without hesitation.

“Millie, is everything all right?” she asked as I walked David into her messy apartment. She noticed me staring at all the many toys, and she bent down to pick one up as if she’d just been in the middle of cleaning and I’d caught her midway, though we both knew she hadn’t been.

“Just leave it,” I said, putting my hand on her arm. “The children will make a mess anyway.” Though she had been the one to ask me if I was all right, I noticed that she looked especially tired this morning, her face sagging under the weight of something, I wasn’t sure what. I knew there were some things going on at Julie’s company because I’d overheard Ed talking about them on the telephone. Ethel’s brothers had resigned from Pitt, and seeing how ragged Ethel looked now, I wondered if this had also stirred up
some bad blood in her family. I thought about the way Ruth had seemed angry at Julie when I’d had them over for dinner last winter. Had this escalated in the time since? “Are you sure it’s okay if David spends the morning here?” I was hoping she would still say it was because I had no other option except to bring him with me, which I didn’t want to do.

“Of course,” Ethel said. “Of course it’s okay.” She sat down on the couch, clutching the toy she’d picked up from the floor. Richie sat quietly, playing with his cars, and John ran through them, making Richie cry and David smile. “Boys . . .” Ethel said rather weakly. “Yes,” Ethel waved at me, “go on ahead to your appointment. Go. We’ll be fine.”

“We’ll talk when I get back?” I said, and Ethel shot me a weary smile.

I blew David a kiss, but he was so busy watching John that he barely noticed. And then I left Ethel’s apartment and rode the elevator down. I soon found myself in the busy morning rush of Monroe Street, caught up among all the people going somewhere, all with a purpose—all on their way, I imagined, to somewhere exciting, caught up in a life vastly more wonderful than mine.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD
felt less welcoming than I remembered it—darker, even—and this time neither the receptionist in front nor the nurse who took me back were smiling.

I lay there soundlessly on the cold metal table, trying to breathe, as the nurse examined me. I thought of the last time I was here, of the magical pill the nurse spoke of and how in a world where such a
thing as the atomic bomb existed there should also be such a thing as a magical pill for a woman to prevent a baby.

“Well,” the nurse said. Her name tag read “Nurse Ames.” She was blond and pretty and, I was fairly sure, not Jewish. “There’s no need to bother a poor rabbit, Miss Kauffman.”

“I’m not pregnant?” I said, using their very clinical term for it, my voice riding on a small wave of hope.

“Oh no,” she said, “you most certainly are. I’d guess about eight weeks along.”

Eight weeks. I tried to count back, to do the math in my head, but I knew it was unnecessary. There was only one night this baby could’ve been conceived.

Nurse Ames cleared her throat. “You know, there are some . . . options,” she said.

“Options?” I immediately thought of poor Harriet, pregnant in high school and oh so desperate. I was nothing like her, was I? I was a married woman, married to a man who wanted another child more than anything.

She scribbled something on a piece of paper and slipped it into my palm. I clasped it tightly, squeezing it, and then I gave her a small nod so she knew I understood, though the truth was, I didn’t. I couldn’t quite comprehend the awfulness of it, what I was somehow implicitly accepting, simply by taking her piece of paper. “Why don’t you get dressed and I’ll get you some vitamins to take with you,” she said.

BACK AT ETHEL
’
S
, I found the apartment dark and quiet. She ushered me inside with a whisper. “The boys wore each other out,” she said. “They’re all asleep.”

I’d been gone awhile, and it seemed the world had changed in my absence. The day had turned gray and Knickerbocker Village had appeared menacing from the street, the elevator ride interminably long as my stomach churned, as my hand still clasped the paper Nurse Ames had handed me. Just outside Ethel’s door, I’d stuffed it in my purse and then accepted her invitation to come inside and sit down.

“You look terrible,” Ethel said.

“So do you,” I said, and then she laughed a little and so did I.

“Have a seat. Let me make you some ginger tea,” she said. “It’ll help with the nausea.” I hadn’t breathed a word to Ethel about how I was feeling or where I went this morning, but it seemed she could sense it. And if she could, it would only be a matter of time before everyone else would, too. My mother would, certainly—I’d been avoiding her all week, ever since that morning in Mr. Bergman’s shop.

I thought about refusing the tea, about denying that such a thing was necessary, but I didn’t have it in me to lie to Ethel. And I knew she was right, that the tea would settle my stomach, so I thanked her and sat down on her couch, and, a few minutes later, Ethel handed me the steaming mug. “David will enjoy a sibling,” she said softly.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” I didn’t know how David would manage when there was another child with us all the time, a baby, someone small with needs other than his. I didn’t know how
I
would manage.

“They make it all worth it.” Ethel had a cup of tea in her hand, too, and she blew on it carefully before taking a sip. “The children, I mean. I want them to have everything I never did growing up.” She looked around the room. And I did, too, as I sipped my tea, my eye
catching on the beautiful piano and all the many toys. “How’s David’s therapy going?” she asked.

I suddenly saw Jake, the way he looked that last morning in the cabin, the way his hand felt as it brushed against my shoulder, pulling the afghan tighter. “It’s not,” I said. “We’ve had to stop. After our trip.” Then I added, trying to sound hopeful, “For now. Jake . . . Dr. Gold has had to go out of town for a while.”

“But there has to be someone else you could go to in the meantime,” Ethel said. I shook my head. “Is it the money? Because maybe I can talk to Julie, see if we can help out. Or I can ask Mrs. Phillips if she knows of anyone there who might help him.”

“No, no, it’s not that,” I said, though I was grateful for her kindness, her desire to help. “It’s just . . .” I concentrated very hard on my tea, willing myself not to cry, not to remember that moment in the rowboat on Esopus Creek when the sunlight had turned my son into someone altogether different—glowing, happy, at peace. “I just don’t know,” I finally said. “What about you?” I thought it better to get off the subject of me entirely before I confessed everything to Ethel. I didn’t think she would understand what I had done with Jake. It was a terrible thing. I knew it was. What was worse was that I constantly longed to see Jake again, to be close to him again. “How is your analysis coming with Dr. Miller now that you’re back in the city?” I asked her.

“It’s good, I think . . . We’ve been talking through everything, and, you know, it all comes back to my mother. I was never good enough for her as a child. Nothing I ever did could compete with my brothers. It’s all the same, even now. But I have to move past that so I can be a good mother myself. Do you know what I mean, Millie?”

“David and Bernie have resigned from Pitt?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“Yes.” Ethel sighed.

“Is that causing problems in your family? With your mother?”

“Julie has done so much for my brothers. For my entire family. He paid for my father’s funeral, for goodness’ sakes. And they don’t appreciate any of it. None of them do.” She moved her hand to her forehead as if trying to quell an oncoming ache. “Well, not so much Bernie . . . Gladys is sick. Did you hear?” I shook my head. “Incurable cancer.”

I had never met Gladys or Bernie, though I felt a sudden wave of sadness for this poor woman, Ethel’s sister-in-law. “I’m so sorry, Ethel.”

“Thanks. Me too,” Ethel said. “But Davey is a different story altogether. Davey always wants special treatment. He’s so entitled sometimes, you know. He wants more money. Less hours. And Julie does the best he can.” She sighed. “Of course my mother takes Davey’s side in
everything
, always. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Isn’t that right, Millie?”

“Sure,” I murmured in agreement. But when I thought back on my life, it seemed to be an ever-changing thing. My life as a girl with Susan, spending Sunday afternoons in the butcher shop, even learning how to drive the meat truck, felt nothing at all like my time sewing day after day in the factory, where, looking back now, I’d been so free. Free to catch a picture with Addie whenever the mood suited me, to listen to the radio whenever I liked and as loud as I liked it . . .

“Can you count on your family, Millie?” Ethel asked.

I thought about it for a moment. Bubbe Kasha loved me, purely
and deeply, and so had my father—I was certain. My mother was sometimes bothersome, and she always put Susan first, and Susan had always been so much older, wiser, better than me. But I thought of the kind way Susan had spoken to me in the summer when I was at her home and she had said she wished for me to live closer, how she would want to help me if she could. She and my mother would be excited to learn about another baby, though I wasn’t sure how much I could truly count on them if the truth about what happened in the Catskills ever came out. “Yes,” I finally said, “I suppose I can.”

“You’re very lucky, then,” Ethel said. “I have never been able to count on my family for anything. And I don’t think I ever will.”

“But you have Julie,” I reminded her. I thought of the way Julie had pulled Ethel close in the hallway just before they left for her father’s funeral. Julie, who’d kissed her gently and called her
Eth
in that sweet way he had of naming her his own, someone special. “And the boys,” I added.

“I know. They mean everything to me. I love the children and Julie more than anything.” She smiled and finished off her tea. She set it down on the saucer on the coffee table. “If anything ever were to happen to them, I don’t think I’d survive.”

“God forbid, nothing is going to happen.” I quickly spit three times into my tea as Bubbe Kasha would always do whenever we spoke something out loud we shouldn’t have, something that tempted fate. Ethel did the same into her empty cup. “Please do something for me,” I said. “Don’t tell Julie about any of this.”

“Any of what?”

“That I was here. That you made me this tea. That you watched David for a little while this morning while I . . . I just don’t want Ed
to know about the baby.” Then I added, “Yet.” I wasn’t sure I wanted him to know at all. Or how, or when, I would tell him if I did.

“Oh, Julie won’t talk to Ed.” She said it so succinctly, so matter-of-factly, that I raised my eyebrows in response.

“Well, he might.”

“No, he definitely won’t.”