Chapter 21
Russ and I had been seeing each other for only four months when he took me to a seafood restaurant with a view of the water, a wine list, and a roving accordion player who’d just started to play “Embraceable You” when Russ reached across the table for my hand and asked me to marry him.
I told him no as gently as I could, wishing I hadn’t just ordered the crab and asparagus pappardelle.
Not cheap. But Russ didn’t get upset. What he did was shoo away the accordion player and list the reasons I should reconsider.
For one, he said, he’d wanted to marry me since ninth grade.
Apparently, he’d made up his mind about this while I dissected a frog as he watched and squirmed, or while I labeled a diagram for him to copy.
At first, he said, he just thought I was so little and cute, but he’d come to admire my personality, like how serious I seemed with my schoolwork, and how I was a nice girl but not a snob, and friendly to everyone.
He said he’d also long appreciated that I, unlike other girls he’d dated, didn’t curse or dress like a slut. Even his mother liked me, he said.
When that set of declarations didn’t change my mind, he moved on to an economic argument.
The sale was going through, he said, and his mother was giving him a good percentage of it to put into his flooring business.
He already knew how he would invest the money.
He could assure me that any wife of his was going to be more than comfortable.
When this failed to persuade me as well, he moved to his final argument, which was that he’d heard I’d gone away to have a baby, and everyone knew it, though nobody could guess who the father was. And yet he still wanted to marry me. He was that crazy about me.
I glanced at the accordion player, now two tables away. “If you don’t start speaking more quietly,” I said. “I’ll leave.”
I wasn’t bluffing. I would have gotten up and started walking, though it was already dark out, and I would have nowhere to go but home, where even Janet was preoccupied with the ever-increasing charms of Shirley.
St. Pete still didn’t have a television station, but that was no problem for my family, as every evening they gathered in the front room to watch Shirley on her blanket, delighting in her new ability to gum both her hands and feet.
The night before, she rolled over for the first time, and though my bedroom door was closed, I heard the applause, loud and clear.
So I was relieved when Russ lowered his voice.
“Not trying to be mean,” he said. “You know what I’m saying. Most men would only see you as an easy mark. Not wife material.”
He said this with regret, as if he were sorry to be the one to break the news.
I told him that he wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know.
But I’m sure he could see I was reeling.
All that money spent on New Jersey, all that lying, and apparently, the only person who believed I’d been in Arkansas was Janet.
“I’ll probably leave town,” I said. “I can leave anytime. I’m eighteen. I can go anywhere.”
I was talking more to myself than to Russ, considering the possibility.
I’d almost paid Mae and my father back. And there was no need to stick around for Roberta’s wedding.
In August, she’d called to let me know her mother had decided to cut back on the number of bridesmaids, meaning from me and Irene to just Irene.
She said she hoped I would still come as a guest. I wasn’t sure that was true.
Russ leaned forward, Bambi eyes merry. “I notice you haven’t left yet.”
“I don’t want to live far from my family,” I said. It was true. Even with the isn’t-Shirley-so-cute party always going on at home, I didn’t want to go so far away that I’d hardly ever see them. For me, that seemed even more lonely than staying.
“I understand,” he said. “I think that’s sweet, that you want to stay close to home. I don’t want to leave town either.”
“Sounds like I might have to,” I snapped. “Given what you and everyone knows.” I could do it, I thought. I could go just far away enough where no one would know about New Jersey. Atlanta, maybe. I could go make a new life, new friends, and move forward, just as Miss Berry said.
The accordion player drew close, smiling at us. Russ rolled his eyes and made a “go away” motion with his hand.
“Honey.” He sighed, looking at me with what appeared real sympathy. “Even if you leave town, even if you go somewhere where nobody knows, you won’t be able to hide what’s happened from a husband.” He lowered his gaze. “You understand what I’m saying? A man can tell.”
I felt I would be sick. My only comfort was that Russ wasn’t speaking from experience, at least not experience with me.
All this time, I’d refused his more ardent advances, trying to portray myself as virginal, a wait-until-marriage girl, stalling for time.
Stupid. He’d probably known about the baby from the beginning, when he first asked me for a date.
“You marry somebody else,” he continued, “someone who doesn’t already know, and you’ll have to take your chances.
You could try lying, but you’re no good at that.
Even if you just say nothing, if you wait until after the wedding, he’ll know on the wedding night that you weren’t truthful.
Damaged goods.” He shrugged. “With me, I already know. And I still love you. So you wouldn’t have to worry. ”
I told him he sure knew how to sweep a girl off her feet. But I did feel unsteady, even sitting down. When I tried to take a sip of water, the ice rattled in my glass.
“I tried romance.” He gestured at our surroundings, the waiters in tuxedoes, the candlelit tables. But the accordion player, no longer his friend, had moved on to a bouncy polka.
“For your information,” I said, “I don’t care if I’m wife material. I don’t want to be a wife.”
He pulled his head back. From the look on his face, I might have told him I planned to move to Russia. I might have told him I was from Mars.
“Don’t you want kids?”
I shook my head. Just her. I wanted no more after her.
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.” I didn’t owe him more than that, crab pappardelle or not.
If he wanted to cancel the order or eat it for himself, fine.
I could give him the phone number for Shaded Acres, and he could call up Mrs. Kilgore or Miss Berry and they could all talk about how crazy I was, thinking one little baby couldn’t be replaced like a pair of shoes.
“You’d be such a good mom,” he said. “Seems like it to me.”
I shook my head. Obviously not. I didn’t even know my daughter’s name. I didn’t know if she was dead or alive. Or suffering. I had no idea.
“Okay,” he said. “But you still need someone to care for you. And someone you can care for.” He shrugged. “I don’t really like kids anyway.”
I didn’t say anything to this, but I made note of it. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to live my whole life alone. Aside from Janet, Russ was the only person who seemed to still want to be around me at all. I put my hand back on top of the table, and he reached around the candle to take it.
“Tell me who it was.” He ran his thumb, rough with a callus, over the skin of my knuckles. “You should at least tell me that.”
I tried to pull away my hand, but he held tight. I told him it didn’t matter.
“It does to me. I’d like to have a talk with him.”
“He’s not around,” I said.
Russ squeezed my hand once, then twice. “The only guy I ever saw you with was Leonard Lifton, and he was off in the army by the time in question. You can’t give me a name?”
I shook my head. “I won’t.”
He kept at me about it until our food came.
But I was never tempted. At the pool, I’d been relieved that Jerry Pinter got the message to keep his mouth shut well before Russ got out of the water.
And it seemed likely that Leonard would eventually come back to St. Pete, if only to visit his parents.
I didn’t want anyone seriously hurt, not even Leonard. At least I usually felt that way.
—
The Wednesday before that Christmas, which was Christmas of 1951, I dressed for work then went out to the kitchen, where I found Mae still in her bathrobe, blowing on a plate of mashed carrots while Shirley shouted babababa from her high chair and pounded her spoon on her tray.
Her two top front teeth had just come in, and she grinned at me as if wanting to show them off. Mae didn’t seem as happy.
“I shouldn’t have made these.” She glared at me, then at the carrots.
“I can’t give them to her until they cool, and”—she cupped a hand around her mouth and lowered her voice—“she takes forever to eat them.” She put her hand down, her voice returning to regular volume.
“I’m supposed to drop off the muffins by ten, and I haven’t had a minute to soap myself down. ”
I checked my watch. The muffins were for Janet’s classroom, and Mae had made them the night before.
It seemed to me Janet could have just taken them with her on the school bus.
But she’d insisted her mother should bring them at the appointed time as all the mothers of her classmates had done.
Janet had specifically asked Mae to comb her hair and put on a clean dress so as not to embarrass her in front of her teacher.
“Just give Shirley something else,” I said. “Why’s she having carrots for breakfast anyway?”
“Because I’m her fool.” Mae opened her robe and sniffed one of her armpits. “You know she loves carrots. I switch it up now, she won’t eat at all, and she’ll be fussy when we get there.”
“Can’t she just eat a muffin with the kids?”
Mae gave me a haunted look. “I made exactly the right number.” Her voice was low, simmering. “What the teacher asked for. And anyway, she wants the carrots. You look nice, by the way. You look all ready for work.”