Chapter 42
I eventually pulled myself off the floor and fell asleep on the sofa.
For a blissful second, I didn’t remember why I was on the sofa, and then I heard the front door shut.
Its opening must have woken me. Betty, I thought, sitting bolt upright.
I threw off my grandmother’s afghan and dashed toward the door, colliding headfirst with my mother.
“Betty?” I asked desperately. “Is she—?” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“She’s okay,” my mother said. She looked so diminished in the faint morning light. So much older than the night before, with her makeup washed away by tears. “She’s going to be okay.”
We collapsed against each other. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt comfort from my mother. In recent years, everything had been about finding me a husband. But we held each other up in our shared relief, letting the fear of almost losing Betty evaporate off us together.
“Edna?” My father asked from the top of the stairs. We both turned to see him in his robe, unshaven, looking haggard.
“She’s stable,” my mother said. “She needed transfusions—a few of them—but she finally leveled off. She even got to hold the baby.” My mother released me, smiling ruefully. “Then she told me to go home. Said I was fraying her nerves too much.”
I let out an involuntary bark of a laugh. Betty was okay if she had said that. They both turned to look at me. “Did she name the baby?” I asked, trying to compose myself.
My mother nodded. “Brenda Jeanine. For my mother and Reuben’s grandmother.” That had been neither of their names, but I was sure the Hebrew would line up.
I glanced at my watch. It was early, but the kids would be up soon. I patted my mother’s shoulder. “You go get some rest. I’ll start breakfast.”
She shook her head. “Who could sleep? But I’ll freshen up.” She went upstairs, where she and my father embraced, while I went to the kitchen and started on a batch of pancakes.
My mother provided a lot more detail than I wanted about Betty’s condition over breakfast, describing the birth and blood loss to my grandmother in full gory detail before the kids joined us.
I pushed my own food to the side, horrified.
Having children sounded awful, even with modern medicine. And she wanted that for me?
Now that the danger had passed, however, both my mother and grandmother were thrilled that not only did they have a new baby to dote on, but this wasn’t anything to prevent Betty from having more babies.
I didn’t know how many more they expected my sister to produce—especially after this ordeal that could have killed her.
The phone rang, and I took that as an opportunity to exit the conversation. “Hello?” I asked.
“How’s your sister?”
I held the receiver away slightly, looking at it with surprise. It was Jack. I had forgotten I gave him my number for emergencies. “She’s okay,” I said. “She’s going to be okay.”
I heard him exhale in relief through the phone. “Are you okay?” I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me and said I was. “Thank you. For last night.”
“Listen,” he said. “I think you were right. We should draft something based on what we have. You have too much going on and—”
“Like hell,” I said. Silverware clattered to the table as my mother and grandmother turned to stare at me.
“Aunt Judy said a bad word,” Sandy said, eyes wide.
“Sorry,” I said through gritted teeth. Then I took the receiver as far as the cord would stretch into the dining room.
It was futile though. My mother and grandmother would be straining to hear every word.
And while my grandmother pretended her hearing wasn’t as sharp as it used to be, when she wanted to hear something, that woman didn’t miss a word.
“That was when I thought Betty—” I couldn’t quite say out loud that I had thought she was going to die.
“We’re too close to give up now,” I whispered.
“Judy—”
“Please,” I said quietly. “We have to see this through. It’s the only way I have any hope of getting out of the typing pool.”
There was a long pause during which I could practically hear him shaking his head. “I’ll see you Monday, then.” There was a click, and the line went dead. I knew I shouldn’t care that he hadn’t said goodbye. But I did.
Neither my mother nor grandmother had resumed eating and were both watching me as I replaced the receiver.
“So,” my grandmother said. “What exactly was ‘like hell’?”
“Bubbe said a bad word now,” Sandy said.
“Bubbe is old and can say whatever she likes,” she said to the little girl. “Your aunt Judy on the other hand . . .”
I rolled my eyes. “Jack thought maybe I had too much going on to make time for him right now. Is that what either of you wants?”
“No,” my mother said immediately. “Oh no, absolutely not. But don’t use that kind of language. Men don’t like that.”
She had clearly never set foot in a newsroom before. My grandmother, however, was eyeing me shrewdly, believing none of it. But I cleaned up the breakfast dishes, my back to them, giving nothing away.
Shortly after breakfast, the two of them left me with Sandy and Gary to go to the hospital.
I took the kids to the playground down the street and fixed them sandwiches for lunch.
My mother and grandmother returned mid-afternoon, promising my niece and nephew that they would be allowed to go meet their little sister soon.
And I found myself with an afternoon to stew. All I wanted was to call Jack, even if it did mean walking down to the pay phone at the gas station for some privacy. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t mad at me. To thank him again for the night before. To ask why he had stayed. What it meant.
But I was also scared of the answers. If I put becoming a journalist over him, would I lose him?
If I put him over what I had wanted for so long, would I lose me?
I had never been one to lament the accident of being born a woman—heaven knew I liked dressing up and looking pretty, even if the clothes were typically stolen from my sister.
But it wasn’t fair that he would get to live out his dreams and have a family, and I had to choose one or the other.
If I ever actually made it to being a reporter, that was.
I called up to my mother that I was going for a walk, wandering the neighborhood aimlessly in the oppressive heat of summer in the DC area, not realizing where I was going until I found myself standing outside the gas station, location of the nearest pay phone.
I hadn’t brought a purse. This was foolish. It wasn’t like I could call him anyway.
The merciless sun glinted off something in the small patch of grass between the station and the road, and I bent down to see a lone dime. I didn’t particularly believe in signs from above, but—
I plucked the dime from the ground and gripped it tightly in my palm, then walked over to the pay phone, inserted it, and dialed the number I had committed to memory in case I needed it.
It rang three times, and I was about to hang up, when Jack’s voice answered. “Hello?” There was a clacking sound in the background that I immediately recognized as typewriter keys.
I swallowed. “It’s me. Judy.”
“What happened?” he asked, instantly, the typing stopping.
I shouldn’t have called him. “Nothing,” I said quickly. “I just—I didn’t like how we ended things when you called this morning.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry. I just—this is all new to me.”
“What is?”
“All of it. I cover politics mostly. Not—whatever this is. If I cowrite with someone, it’s someone with more experience.
I’m the junior White House correspondent after all.
I’ve never covered a dangerous story before.
Especially not with . . .” He trailed off, and I held my breath.
Not with someone with no experience? Not with someone he cared about?
“Not with . . . ?”
“You,” he said after a long pause. “From a journalism standpoint, I know you’re right.
We’re onto something. And pushing Alejandra a bit is the next logical step.
But I still feel responsible because I got you into that room the other night.
And if anything happens to you . . .” He stopped himself again.
“It’ll be my own stupid fault,” I said firmly.
Did I hope he had been planning to finish that statement by saying how devastated he would be?
Yes. But the implications brought me back to my earlier pondering about what my life would look like if I chose him over a career.
And the reality was—“I told you to get me into that room. You tried to stop me.”
“I have the feeling not many people have been able to stop you when you decide you’re going to do something.”
I finally smiled. “Now whatever gave you that idea?”
“Lady, you going to be long?” a man asked from behind me, causing me to jump.
I scowled at him. “I should go,” I told Jack. “But this plan is going to work.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Because if I’m not letting you stop me, I’m certainly not letting—” I glanced over my shoulder to see if the man who wanted the phone was listening. He was. “Her stop me.”
There was a long pause. “Okay,” Jack said. “I still don’t like it. But . . . if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
I grinned. “I’ll see you Monday.”
“Monday it is.”