Blessings (36 page)

“But I wanted to win that case. My heart was in it.”

“There’ll be other cases. Other people too,” Peter added after a pause.

“I don’t know.”

“But you’ve had others all these years.”

“Other cases or other people?”

“Other people, I meant. Men.”

“Yes, but this time it was different.”

“Don’t people always think that?”

She smiled slightly. “But sometimes when they think so, it really is. One person dies or—or goes away, and the other one is changed forever.”

Peter gave her a serious look, which she returned; their eyes touched. And he said slowly, “Yes, I believe you’re one woman who can be like that if anybody can.” And he sighed.

She sensed things waiting to be spoken. Perhaps he had really hoped that he and she might come full circle; hadn’t Jill said it would be so “tidy”? That she had a “feeling”?

And at that moment he said, “I might as well tell you I’ve been having some unexpected thoughts these past few days. I should have known they were unrealistic. May I tell you what they were?”

“Of course.”

“Well, then. Naturally I didn’t expect an immediate miracle, but I did think that maybe there was some sort of fate, something that would in time, plenty of time, bring us together again. I’m not superstitious, you must know that, but I really did think I saw some sort of pattern in the way things have turned out with Jill, and the way you and I have come together without anger. But you don’t want it.” His sigh was wistful.

“Peter … I’m sort of dead inside, don’t you see?”

“No, you’re not. You’re alive and in very much pain. And you don’t deserve it.”

She didn’t answer. For a moment he waited, then asked quite softly, almost in a whisper, “Won’t you talk about him?”

“No. I’ve had my message. What’s finished is finished.”

“It just struck me … how odd that both times in your life it was Jill who caused the breakup! First with me and now with him.”

“In very different ways, Peter.”

“True. But you ought to be married,” he said abruptly. “It’s time.”

She smiled at his vehemence. “You think so? What about yourself?”

“I have been married. Three times.” He turned away,

as if he was making an effort to conquer embarrassment. “That startles you, doesn’t it?”

“A little.”

“It doesn’t make for an impressive resume. Not anything to be proud of or easy to talk about.”

“Don’t talk about it, then,” she said, pitying him for his confession.

“I never do. But for some reason I want you to know.” He drew a deep breath. “The first one was my sister’s friend, the one who was visiting that weekend.”

The brat who sat on the bed while I tried on that ridiculous dress, she remembered.

“We married the day after my college commencement. She was seventeen and a half. We never had anything to talk about. I bored her when I went on to graduate school.”

“Why on earth did you marry her?”

“She grew up to be a beauty. And the families … I don’t know. We were always thrown together.”

“I see.” The hovering families—nudges, winks, hints, little suppers, and picnics artfully arranged. “I see.”

“We lasted not quite two years.”

“No children?”

“Good God, no. The next was a studious girl from Alabama, a country girl with a scholarship at Emory. She and my mother didn’t get along. She hated my family and didn’t try to hide it. And my mother wasn’t exactly pleased with her, I admit.”

I can imagine, Jennie thought. A chill came over her, as though again she were sitting in that vast room under the regal portraits on the wall.

“So it made things tough all around.”

She could imagine that too: Peter caught between wife and mother, when all he wanted, generous boy that he had been, was peace.

“It couldn’t last. I still have a strong sense of loyalty to my family, you know, even when I don’t always agree with them.”

Jennie knew. Why take a stand about Vietnam? Go along and pretend to agree. It’s orderly, it’s pleasant that way.

“She wouldn’t live in Atlanta after her graduation, and I wanted to. So that ended it. The funny thing is, I left for Chicago a few months afterward, anyway. Well, that was number two.” Peter stopped. “Are you shocked? Disgusted?”

“Neither.”

She was moved by this tale of defeat, as well as by his candor. He still had his frank naivete. In contrast and in a flickering instant, it brought to her mind Jay’s reflective manner and, no matter how intent his feelings, his habit of prudence.

“What happened with number three?”

As a sudden wind shuts with one blow a door that had been wide open, Peter’s face closed. She had to wait a few moments for his answer.

“Alice,” he said. “She died.” And then, as if the door had blown open again, he almost cried out. “She was wonderful, Jennie, really wonderful. She had a little boy. We had fun together, the three of us. Her parents took him after—after she was gone. I miss him, miss her— Well, you get over things, don’t you? Or try to, anyway.”

She could say only, “I’m so sorry, Peter.”

He gave her a quizzical look, a strange look, sad, hurt, yet with the faintest touch of humor.

“I’ll tell you something. She was very much like you. Full of ideals and energy. She even looked a little bit like you.”

Again Jennie found few words, just, “Thank you, Peter.”

She was immensely moved by his tribute and saddened by his story. Would not Alice probably have been the one who lasted? On the other hand, after two failures, and if he was still his mother’s boy, she might not have been. They were so complicated, the ways in which people connected with one another; one needed more knowledge than Jennie possessed to puzzle it all out. She knew only two things surely now: that Peter was a good man and that he was not for her, in spite of what Jill or he himself might think.

“You look sorrowful,” he said anxiously. “I shouldn’t have dumped my troubles on you.”

“Please!” she protested. “After all that’s been dumped on you this week? I’m thinking, I’m hoping that something very good will happen to you.”

“Oh, plenty of good things already have! You mustn’t think I’m mourning over my life. I like where I live, I’ve had plenty of friends, and I’m doing the work I always wanted to do. Besides, although I guess it sounds too boastful, I have to admit that I’ve made a rather big name for myself.”

“I know. Jill told me you’re pretty famous. Her father’s an amateur archaeologist, and he’s been looking you up ever since she told him about you.”

“They sound like very decent people.”

“They are. You have only to look at Jill to know that they must be.”

Peter laughed. “Don’t you and I get any credit for her? Let’s not be so modest.”

“Yes, yes, of course we do.”

Jennie was suddenly exhausted. This incredible day, which had begun with bitter disappointment, continued with shocking violence, and ended with a confusion of dreams had overwhelmed her.

She stood up. “It’s late. This time you’ll take the bed and I’ll sleep here. The sofa fits me.”

“Afraid to try me again, are you? Don’t trust me?”

“It’s not that. I just think it’s better this way.” She kissed his cheek. “Good night.”

In the morning she woke up late to find him gone and the big bed made. He had left a note: “Be careful at the office from now on. Check the door at home too. I’ll call you before I go back to Chicago.”

After a while, bestirring herself, she went ahead with the morning’s routine, cleaned the kitchen, and washed her hair. Then came files to study, a whole day’s worth of them.

Toward noon Shirley called through the door.

“Hey! You in there?”

In her new coat, with flamboyant, multistriped hoops in her ears, Shirley was dressed for a day of leisure, Jennie saw. She also caught Shirley’s quick investigative glance around the apartment.

“You feeling up to lunch and an afternoon movie? I’m meeting some of the girls.”

“Thanks, but I can’t. I’ve that whole pile of work to make up.”

Shirley, perched on the edge of a chair, complained, “You’ve been behaving so mysteriously. Frankly I’ve been worried about you.”

“I haven’t meant to be mysterious.” Jennie, shuffling papers, wished Shirley would just go away.

“Good Lord, what happened to your face?”

The bruise on her cheek was turning livid.

“I had to get up last night, and I bumped into the bathroom door.”

The other raised skeptical eyebrows, then waited a few moments, as if deciding whether or not to plunge.

“Jennie—what’s happened between you and Jay? I suppose I’m prying, but after all, we’ve known each other for more than a few years, and I can’t help but care. I am prying. I see I am.”

For into Jennie’s eyes, in spite of the determination that had been restraining her, the tears had sprung. She bent her head over the papers without answering.

“Oh,” Shirley said. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Just don’t be kind. And don’t feel sorry for me. It makes it worse.”

At once Shirley stood up. “I know. I won’t. But please just remember that whenever you want to talk about it, if you ever do, I’m here.”

“I’ll tell you sometime. But I have to learn to live with it first.”

For long minutes after the door closed, Jennie sat with her head down on the desk. How do you cope with such pain? You clamp down on it, that’s what you do. So with clenched teeth and clenched fists, she conquered it, at least for the moment, and returned to her papers. Steadily, one by one, she dealt with them, compiling notes; breaking off briefly to make a supper of toast and eggs, she went back to them and was still at work when, shortly after nine o’clock, the telephone rang.

“How are you?” Jill asked.

The faintest thrill of pleasure passed through Jennie. “Fine. And you? What are you doing phoning me on a Sunday night? You’re supposed to be out having fun.”

“My boyfriend’s father was taken to the hospital this afternoon. So I’m here in the dorm.” Jill lowered her voice. “Peter called and told me what happened to you yesterday. So savage, so horrible! They ought to kill men like that.”

“Unfortunately it’s not the way the law works. But I wasn’t hurt. I was lucky.”

“Do you feel well enough to talk about something?”

“Oh, sure. What is it?”

“Well, I got tomorrow’s paper ahead of time, and there’s an article in it about an environment case, a tract upstate called the Green Marsh. That’s your case, isn’t it? I thought I recognized it.”

There was no longer a reason for elaborate secrecy; Jennie answered directly, “It was, you mean. I’ve been fired.”

“Peter told me. That must hurt awfully, when you’ve done so much work on it.”

“What hurts most awfully is that I’m afraid the builders will get their way.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?”

“Nothing. I’m not a resident, and I don’t pay taxes in that town.”

“I don’t agree. You’re an American citizen, aren’t you? This kind of protest is going on all over the country. You can go anywhere you want and talk up. There’s no reason why you can’t go to that meeting and speak your mind.”

Jill was talking in her most emphatic manner, so that Jennie could visualize the wide gesture with which she tossed her hair back from her cheek, could imagine the two vertical lines of frowning concentration and her vivid glance. All this contrasted to her own weariness.

“I’ve lost my energy,” she said.

“Are you afraid because of yesterday? But you’d be safe in a public meeting.”

The implication of fear offended Jennie’s pride, or her false pride, she thought, and she answered promptly, “That’s not the reason. I just don’t have the heart for it.”

“You have to have the heart,” Jill insisted. “You’ve come this far. Do you want to lose now?”

“It’s not my fight anymore.”

“It is your fight, I told you! It’s everybody’s. My parents travel all over the Southwest, they go to every meeting, write to their senators, never give up.”

Jennie remembered Martha Cromwell’s words: “You’re a spellbinder, Jennie.”

Her appeal, the one that as an attorney she had already outlined, would have been striking. It would have gone straight to the heart and conscience of anyone who possessed a heart and a conscience.

“I’ll go with you if you’ll do it,” Jill was saying.

It took a moment or two for this astonishing offer to register.

“You’ll go with me?”

“I’d surely like to. I can afford to cut a couple of classes.”

You ‘re a spellbinder, Jennie.

It was a wild idea. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t so wild. As a private citizen, she could be even more outspoken than counsel could be. She began to feel the stirring of excitement. There was dramatic intrigue in the undertaking.

“Jennie? Are you thinking about it?”

She conceded slowly, “It might be interesting.”

“I should say it would be! Then you will?”

There came another pleasurable thought: This would be a chance to display her talents to her daughter. For the first time the word came unselfconsciously and naturally: daughter.

“Well, it’s worth considering. Let’s see, I could rent a car. We’d have to leave by three at the latest. Can you do that?”

“Earlier, if you want.”

“Three will be okay.”

Suddenly Jennie was charged with a spirit of adventure. Part of her mind, observing the rest of it as was her habit, told her that she needed something like this. It would propel her forward, to the land of the living.

Then defiance flashed a little spurt of fire: Listen, there was life before Jay and there’ll be life after him. There has to be. To hell with him.

“Yes. Okay. I’ll pick you up at the main gate on Broadway.”

O
n Sunday she polished and refined her brief remarks. As a mere private citizen, no longer the legal adviser, she would have to talk fast before someone cut her off. She would have to make her points clearly without sacrificing eloquence. She was working away when Peter called to say good-bye.

“I was glad to hear about your expedition with Jill.” “It was her idea. She encouraged me.” “I guess you two are going to be pretty solid together now.”