A Woman's Place: A Novel (28 page)

"Mom had a thing for security. She never wanted us to feel helpless like she had. I took the message in a general sense and grew to be self-sufficient. Rona took it in a specific sense and married the richest guy she could find. That marriage failed, so she married again, and that marriage failed. She has money now, trust funds and all, and she doesn't understand why Mom isn't thrilled."

"Why isn't Mom thrilled?"

"Because Rona doesn't have any ties--no children, no reliable friends. She isn't trained to do anything and doesn't want to be anything, just Page 145

Barbara Delinsky - A Woman's Place

flits around. Mom thinks she's shallow."

"Do you?"

"No. I think--" I tried to decide. "I think she's stalled. She's spent so long trying to please Mom that she doesn't know what she wants, so she can't move in any direction. I also think she's terrified. Since she can't do things right for Mom, she feels she can't do things right, period."

"Poor girl sounds demoralized. She must think Mom doesn't love her. Does Mom worry about that?"

"I'm sure she does." I frowned. "I guess. That generation was never good at expressing some things."

"That generation is my generation. I express what I want to express."

"Well, my mother doesn't, or can't, or won't."

"Which is it?"

"I don't know. But I know she loves me. She may not be big on saying the words or holding my hand or hugging me, but I know she loves me. It's right there in her face."

"Is that where Johnny and Kikit see it?"

"They do, but they don't need to. I also say the words, and I use my body. I hold them a lot. I've never wanted them to doubt what I felt. I'm very different from my mother that way, if that's what you're getting at. My children know I love them. Ask them. They'll tell you." Had I been too vehement? No. It was impossible to be too vehement about something like that.

"So. Your mother worked long hours. Did you resent that?"

"I understood the need. I knew she had no choice."

"But did you resent it?"

I didn't want to resent it. Connie had tried so hard to make a life for us that criticizing her seemed ungrateful. Still, there were times when I was frightened by something I had experienced--girlfriend squabbles, money worries, menstruation--and had wanted to curl up in a ball against her, only she hadn't been around. "Sometimes. I was lonely."

"Don't you worry that your children feel the same?"

"No. The situation is different. For one thing, my mother was the only parent I had. When she was at work, my sister and I were alone. For another, we didn't have things to keep us busy after school. For a third, we couldn't call her."

"Couldn't?"

"Her boss didn't like her getting calls. My kids call me all the time. I encourage them to. They love coming to work with me during school vacations."

"Don't they get in the way?"

"No."

Page 146

Barbara Delinsky - A Woman's Place

He looked skeptical. With a slight, almost teasing smile, he asked,

"There weren't ever times, even when they were little, when you wanted to give them back?"

"Give them back?"

His smile lingered. "A figure of speech. You know what I mean. Had it up to the eyebrows with spills and squabbles."

"Of course there were, but--"

"Patience. How would you rate yourself?" "With regard to my children?

Nine-point-five."

"Amazing you never thought of teaching, with a patience level like that."

I returned his teasing smile. "Just because I'm patient with my own kids doesn't mean I'm patient with other people's kids."

"Did you always know you wanted only two?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Two seemed right. Few enough for individual attention. For individual love. Besides, children cost money. We had no idea back then that we would have what we have now."

"Is that why you put it off?" When I frowned, he said, "You weren't young, having your first."

"I was thirty-one. That isn't old."

"But you were married at twenty-five. You told me you resigned your job at that point and freelanced. Plenty of flexibility there, so why the hold on kids?"

I didn't know what he was driving at, but it didn't feel right. Cautiously, I said, "I felt we needed time alone, Dennis and I."

"Did he agree?"

"He certainly didn't argue. He was busy trying to build his own business."

"If he was busy doing that, you couldn't have gotten the time alone that you wanted."

"We had what we needed. Is there a point to this, Dr. Jenovitz? I don't see what it has to do with how I mother my kids."

"It has to do with your attitude toward being a mother."

"In what way?" I asked.

"Some women want children, but resent their presence."

"I'm not one of those women." "Then explain the abortion." Abortion, I echoed silently. What abortion? I wanted to ask. Page 147

Barbara Delinsky - A Woman's Place

But I knew what abortion he meant. It might have been buried away under the layers of family we had built subsequent to it, but a woman never forgot an abortion. She might try to pretend it hadn't happened, might keep it a secret from her mother, her sister, even her closest friends, but it was always there.

I understood that. What I didn't understand was why, after years of silence, my husband had mentioned it now. twelve.

My silence had nothing to do with defiance. I was initially too startled to speak, then, when my thoughts started darting every which way, too confused.

Finally, Dean Jenovitz asked, "Did I hit a sore spot?"

"Sore spot? Whew. I guess you'd call it that. Who told you about it?"

"About the abortion?" He seemed to stress the word, though I might have imagined it. A sore spot, indeed--the word, the memory. "It doesn't matter," he said. "I want you to tell me about it."

"How did you find out?" I asked again.

"It doesn't matter," he repeated and sat back, waiting for me to explain.

But I wasn't doing any explaining until he did some himself, because emerging from the confusion were anger and suspicion. "That abortion happened a long time ago. Dennis knows how painful it was for me. We haven't talked about it, haven't mentioned it in years. By unspoken agreement. I'm stunned that he chose to raise it now."

"He didn't raise it. It was right there in the file I received when I got this case." "Then the judge knew?" Not likely. Had Selwey known I'd had an abortion, he would have delighted in bringing it up.

"I don't know what the judge knew," Jenovitz said. "That isn't my business. All I know is that these medical records came with the file." Medical records. "Medical records?"

"They do exist, you know," Jenovitz said.

"Actually, I didn't. I mean, I assumed there would have been a record of it in some old file, but wouldn't confidentiality laws prevent its release? I wasn't aware that anyone had gone looking for it, much less made copies and given them to the judge or to you."

"I take it you'd rather they hadn't?"

I laughed at the absurdity of the question. "Of course, I'd rather they hadn't. I didn't enjoy that abortion. I didn't enjoy it physically or mentally. It wasn't something I would have chosen to do--"

"Excuse me, Mrs. Raphael, but you did choose to do it." He put a hand on the file. "According to this, the abortion wasn't a medical necessity. You simply decided to terminate your pregnancy."

""Simply'?" My voice rose. I let it. "There was no 'simply' about it. It was an agonizing decision."

"Which you made nonetheless."

Page 148

Barbara Delinsky - A Woman's Place

"Which my husband and I made nonetheless."

"That isn't what he says."

"Excuse me?"

"He says that he wanted the baby, but that you were vehement about postponing parenthood."

I was dumbfounded, hurt, livid. Sitting erect, I said, "Let's set something straight. It wasn't that I didn't want the baby. That's rarely the issue when a woman has an abortion. She wants the baby, but the circumstances of her life are such that having a baby will be a hardship." "What was the hardship in your case? Your husband was earning a decent living."

"It wasn't the money. We were having personal differences. I wasn't sure the marriage would last. I envisioned having to raise the child alone."

"And that would have been the hardship?"

"Emotionally, yes. I was desperate to have my children raised differently from me."

"In a two-parent family."

"In a secure setting."

"Your marriage was that shaky?"

"It seemed to be at the time. We hadn't been married very long, and there were problems. My energies were going into saving the relationship. It wasn't the right time for us to have a child. Dennis agreed with me on that."

"Then the abortion was your idea?"

"Actually, it was Dennis's idea."

"That isn't what he said."

"No, it wouldn't be, would it. He would have dug up those records to show what a lousy mother I am. He would have painted himself as an innocent, but that wasn't how it happened. Dennis is no innocent. The problems we were having stemmed from something very wrong that he did. Did he tell you about that?"

"No."

I hesitated for only a second longer. Dennis had raised the abortion, I could raise this. Fair was fair. I wanted my kids.

"Several years before we were married, Dennis had an affair with a married woman. She was the wife of his boss. When it ended, she blackmailed him with threats of telling what they'd done and having him booted out of the firm and blackballed in the field if he didn't pay up. So he sent her a monthly check. We were married a year when I found out about it. It mightn't have been so bad if he'd been up-front about it, but even when I had the canceled checks in my hand, he gave me a story or two before the truth. Adultery and blackmail. It was hard for me to accept."

Page 149

Barbara Delinsky - A Woman's Place

Jenovitz regarded me patiently.

"Up until then, I had thought he was just about perfect." Jenovitz nodded.

"So, suddenly, I was disillusioned. I kept thinking there were other things I didn't know about him. Dennis denied it, but I had learned the hard way that he could put on a good show when he wanted to." Jenovitz shrugged with an eyebrow.

"So things were tense between us. I was seeing a side of him that I hadn't known existed. We were arguing a lot--and that included the night he came home from work and I told him I was pregnant." Now that the door had been opened, I recalled the scene well. "The first thing he did was to blame me for getting pregnant, like I'd done it alone. The next thing he did was to say that there wasn't anything wrong with our relationship, other than problems I'd seen fit to magnify. Then, he suggested that if I didn't want the baby, I should get an abortion. So if you want to be technical, he was the one who said it first, not me."

"But you made the arrangements."

"Yes. After a month's anguish, nights and nights of debating it, and finally agreeing that it was the sensible thing to do. I made the arrangements, because I was the one with the ob-gyn man, but Dennis came with me when I had the procedure." I was fast organizing my thoughts.

"So if you think that an abortion thirteen-plus years ago says something about the kind of mother I am today, I have to point out that Dennis was as much a party to it as I was. If having an abortion says something about me, it says the same thing about Dennis. More. After Kikit was born, he had a vasectomy. What does that say about a desire to parent?"

"A vasectomy and an abortion are two very different things. A vasectomy prevents conception, an abortion kills what has already been conceived." I was sorry I'd mentioned it, and held up a hand. "Don't let's argue that. The issue here is parenting. Neither thing--abortion or vasectomy--has any bearing on what kind of parents Dennis and I are."

"Then why did you mention the vasectomy?"

"Because you mentioned the abortion! And" I added, "because it was something Dennis did all on his own. I found out about it two days before he had it done, after he'd seen the doctor, made the appointment, committed himself to it emotionally. What does that say about Dennis?

And what about that affair he had? If it was so serious as to warrant blackmail, it must have really been something. What does that say about Dennis?"

"Good grief, you're belligerent."

"You people have made me belligerent. I wouldn't have mentioned that affair on my own. It was over and done years ago, just like the abortion. I wouldn't have thought that abortion had any relevance to what's happening today, but you apparently do, since you raised it. So am I supposed to sit here without speaking? There are two sides to every story. Am I supposed to hold mine in? Am I supposed to say nothing while you draw conclusions that aren't true? Am I supposed to do nothing when my husband comes in here and lies? I didn't ask for this. I didn't ask for any of it. Belligerent? Hell, yes. I'm fighting for my kids, Dr. Jenovitz. How else should I be?" It took me three tries before I reached Page 150

Barbara Delinsky - A Woman's Place

Dennis, and then he wasn't at the house or the office, but in his car. I was too angry to bother with a hello, but launched straight into, "I just came from meeting with Jenovitz. What possessed you to dig up those medical records?"

"What medical records?" Dennis asked, but his question was barely out when Kikit was yelling toward the phone from the back seat.

"Mommy? Is that you? Hi, Mommy. Guess what? I'm singing a solo at the Thanksgiving assembly. You're coming, aren't you? It's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, or maybe the Monday, I don't know, but you have to be there."

I heard a click, then Dennis's voice more clearly as he took the phone in his hand. "What medical records?"

"The ones that had to do with the abortion--"

"Sit still, Clara Kate," Dennis said away from the phone. "You'll talk with her when I'm done."

"I had that abortion years ago," I said. I was in my car, still in the parking lot by Jenovitz's building. "It has nothing to do with what kind of mother I am today, or what kind of father you are. That abortion was a joint decision. Okay, you didn't want it at first, but neither did I."