Blessings (8 page)

“Only this suit, my good dark blue silk that I always wear, and some skirts and shirts. I don’t even want to go. Do we have to? I suppose we do.” Her voice trailed away.

“We’ll ask my mother. She might have something to lend you.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I’ll ask her. Come inside. Come on in now.”

“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Mendes, “you’re sure you haven’t brought a thing?”

Jennie shook her head. As if there were some secret compartment in her suitcase from which, if she looked hard enough, she could turn up a formal gown and slippers!

“I hate to be such a bother,” she said.

“No bother at all. Let me go upstairs and see what Sally June has in her closet. Of course, you’re taller than she is, but still— Oh, dear,” she repeated.

Sally June and her friend were sprawled on the twin beds. Mrs. Mendes opened the closet where hung a long row of clothing and racks of shoes. “We’ll have to borrow one of your dresses, Sally June. Jennie hasn’t brought one.”

“Not the blue eyelet. I’m wearing that.”

“Of course not.”

Mrs. Mendes regarded Jennie with a measuring eye and took a dress from the closet. “This is floor-length on Sally June. It will probably be ankle-length on you. Try it and let’s see.”

She felt naked, with the three others watching her in silence as she got out of her suit and into the dress. It was white cotton, soft as a handkerchief, with a deep ruffle off the shoulders and another one at the hem. The short puffed sleeves were laced with ribbons and bows. It was a little girl’s party dress, just barely passable for a girl of fourteen. On Jennie it was ridiculous. Dismayed, she regarded herself in the full-length mirror.

“A charming dress,” said Mrs. Mendes. “We had it made for Sally June’s birthday. But she’s been gaining weight.” She wagged a finger at her daughter. “It fits you perfectly, though,” she said to Jennie. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

“Very,” Jennie said, and thought, Mom would laugh her head off if she could see me in this.

“Your bra straps show, but you can pin them back. And shoes. What size do you wear?”

“Seven and a half.” What will she bring out, Mary Janes?

“Oh, dear, Sally June wears six.” The shoes, white kid slippers with low curved heels, were acceptable, except that they were a size and a half too small and set up an instantaneous shock of pain.

“Do they hurt?” asked Mrs. Mendes.

“Yes, some. Yes, they do.”

“Well, my feet are even smaller, so I guess you’ll just have to manage.” At the door she remembered something else. “I have a bag I can lend you. Fortunately it’s unseasonably warm, so you won’t need a wrap.”

Jennie, emerging from under the ruffle, caught sight of the girls lying on the twin beds and silently giggling. Sally June’s eyes slid away as soon as she met Jennie’s. Strange that the same beautiful eyes, which were so kind and mild in her brother’s face, could be so cold and mocking in hers!

She put her suit back on and folded the dress over her arm. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry to have bothered you with this.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Sally June told her.

They despise me. I don’t look queer, I have manners as good as theirs, and a hell of a lot more heart, Jennie thought. But they despise me all the same.

The cousin’s home out in the country had ample land around it, fields, and a brook with a bridge, but the house was very like the Mendeses’, even to the portrait of the same ancestor over the mantel.

Mrs. Mendes, standing next to Jennie, whispered, “You recognize the portrait? He’s their great-grandfather, too, but this is a copy. Ours is the original. Somebody allowed them to have a copy made, which I thought a mistake. However …” She shrugged and moved on.

Jennie, barely hobbling on her tortured foot, was on her way to the powder room. They were three hours into the party; if her feet hadn’t pained so much and she hadn’t felt so conspicuous in the foolish dress, she would have enjoyed the spectacle. To her it was just that: a spectacle. The enormous house, the servants, the lanterns on the terrace, the flowers in stone jardinieres, the orchestra, the girls in their beautiful dresses were all theater.

For someone who hated these affairs, Peter was having a surprisingly good time. He had introduced her all around and danced with her so often that she had told him he must pay attention to someone else, certainly to the cousin whose birthday was being celebrated. She had had many partners herself, neat young men with neat faces and neat haircuts, very different from the men she knew at home. Their conversation was different, too, mostly courteous banality. Over their shoulders, as she whirled and turned, she kept glimpsing Peter’s laughter and high spirits. But why not? These were his people, and he hadn’t seen them since Christmas. So she kept whirling and turning until her feet could tolerate no more and she had to excuse herself.

The powder room was really a little sitting room with mirrors, a couch, and two soft chairs. In one of the chairs an elderly woman sat reading a magazine. Jennie took the shoes off and groaned, rubbing her feet.

“Your heel’s blistered,” the woman observed. “It’s bleeding.”

“Oh, God. Blood on Sally June’s shoe. That’s all I need.”

“You seem pretty miserable.”

“I am. To add to it, this pin’s gotten loose and my strap shows.” She wriggled, trying to reach her back.

“Come here, I’ll fix it for you.”

They stood before the mirror. Jennie saw a stocky woman with graying hair cut like a man’s, and a large, egg-shaped face with drooping cheeks. She wore a plain black dress of expensive silk.

“There. The pin’s fixed. What’re you going to do about your feet?”

“Relieve them a little and then suffer through the rest of the night, I guess. There’s nothing else I can do.”

“Are you the girl who’s visiting Peter?”

“Yes, how did you guess?”

“The accent. Everyone else is from around here. Besides, I heard you were coming. And the dress I remembered from Sally June’s party. I thought it was a namby-pamby dress even on her.”

Jennie burst out laughing. The words were so apt, and she liked this woman’s bluntness, the bright, shrewd eyes that redeemed the homely face.

“It was nice of them to lend it to me, though. I really have no right to complain.”

“That’s true, you haven’t. By the way, I’m Aunt Lee Mendes, the one who gave Cindy a colt for her birthday. I suppose you heard about that.” She chuckled.

“Well, yes, it was mentioned.”

“I’m sure it was. They all love me in their way, my family, but they feel I’m an odd one, and I daresay I am. However, the colt’s a beauty. If your feet weren’t killing you and it wasn’t so dark, I’d take you out to the stables now and show him to you. To tell you the truth, at the last minute I hated to part with him. I’m crazy about animals. Are you?”

“I would be if I had any room for them. Where I live, there’s not even decent space for a dog.”

“A fancy apartment in New York, I suppose?”

“No. A row house in Baltimore.” Jennie looked squarely at Aunt Lee. And from her mouth came words that she hadn’t intended to speak, that were perhaps entirely out of place. For some reason, nevertheless, once she had spoken them, she felt good. “My family’s poor.”

The woman nodded. “Then I suppose you’ve never been at a party like this before.”

“Frankly, no.”

“Feel out of place, do you?”

“A little.” She added quickly, “At college we all get together a lot, and I’m really very friendly—” She stopped, wondering why she was spilling out such personal revelations.

“I see you are. And very determined. Peter isn’t, though. You’ve probably noticed.”

They certainly were right about this woman’s oddness. Yet maybe one only thought she was odd because most people covered up all the time, and she simply said what she was thinking. It puzzled Jennie.

“No, Peter isn’t,” Aunt Lee repeated, “but he’s the salt of the earth.”

“That’s what he said about you.”

“I’m pleased he did. We’re very fond of each other. I remember all our summers at the farm, where he’d spend weeks at a time. I taught him things, real things, taught him to ride a horse, to drive a tractor, to plant and harvest and love the earth. Yes, he’s a good boy. Too good for his own good, I sometimes think. Too—obliging. That’s the word. Obliging.”

Jennie had begun to feel restless. She didn’t want to discuss Peter with this strange woman. Wincing, she put on the shoes and said, “I’d better be getting back.”

“Yes, you’d better. I’m staying here a little longer. The din from all those talking heads gives me a headache.”

Peter came over to her. “Where’ve you been?” he asked. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“I had to take off my shoes. I met your famous Aunt Lee.”

“What did you think of her?”

“Well, she’s certainly different. But I liked her, in a way. Do you mind if we don’t dance anymore? I really can’t.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Your poor feet.”

They sat down at a small lace-covered table near the French doors that opened onto the terrace. Music floated in. A waiter brought drinks.

“It’s not such a bad night, after all,” Peter said.

“You said you couldn’t stand formal dances.”

“I can’t. But one has to make adjustments, do what’s expected… . Poor baby, you’re unhappy about the dress,” he said softly.

“I didn’t tell you I was.”

“There are lots of things about you that you don’t have to tell me.”

Immediately she was contrite. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t spoil things. The dress really isn’t that important.”

He took her hand under the table. “You’ve been uncomfortable with my family. They’re not easy to know. They can seem distant. But when you get to know them, you’ll see. You’ll feel easy with them. I’m sure you will.”

He was right. Like a child, she had been fretting inwardly, but nevertheless it had showed.

“We’ll have tomorrow to ourselves,” he said. “They’re all going to a play after dinner, but I told Mother to return our tickets because we already saw the play and it was awful.”

“What play?”

“I don’t know. I never heard of it.”

They laughed, and Jennie’s spirits rose as fast as they had fallen.

It was like an evening in full summer. Birds swooped down across the lawn and up again to the topmost branches, catching gnats in midair, calling and twittering, darting and sailing until the fall of night. At last they were still.

“How beautiful it is,” Jennie murmured. From the dim house a few lamps glimmered in the downstairs rooms, left on until the family should return. Only the maids’ rooms on the third floor were bright. Unlit, the pool lay black as silk, puddled with silver wherever a moonbeam fell. And the two who had been silently gazing into the silver recognized the moment, stood up, and, still without speaking, entered the poolhouse together and closed the door.

She was to look back upon this visit with mixed memories. Love in the poolhouse had been a different experience from love in a motel on a highway with the sound of trucks shifting gears at the intersection. To rise from each other’s arms and walk out into the still, sweet night … But then there was Mrs. Mendes’s farewell to remember.

“So nice to have had you with us,” she had said, but her lips had closed on the words with faint dismissal. Or was that just more of Jennie’s nervous nonsense? Well, whatever it was, it was a learning experience, she told herself, amused at the schoolteacherish phrase. Now they were both back to their own world on the campus, to work and friends and weekend love. She was seventeen, and life was good.

O
ne afternoon while working on her term paper for Sociology 101, she happened to glance up from the desk to the calendar. The date jumped up off the page; something crossed her mind. Afterward she could not have said why it should have done so at just that moment, but it did. She looked again at the date, counted back, frowned, and counted again. Her periods often were irregular, so lateness never worried her. Besides, Peter had been very careful, he said. Nevertheless, her heart made a rapid leap before it subsided into a steady hammering.

I’ll wait a week, she thought. It’s nothing.

She did not mention it to Peter, and she waited more than a week, trying to put it out of her mind. It had always been her way of coping with problems, to admonish herself: Pull yourself together; use your head, not your emotions. Calm, calm. Things have a way of straightening out if you just keep calm.

But one day toward the end of the second week, on her way to buy a pair of sneakers, she passed a doctor’s office and on the spur of the moment walked in.

The doctor was a middle-aged, tired-looking man who, with kind consideration, did not look into her face as she spoke. Nor did he ask any personal questions, for which she was grateful. If he had probed, she would have begun to cry in spite of her determination, and probably he understood that. She left a urine specimen, and he promised to call her with the results of the rabbit test.

She paid the woman at the reception desk; then, out on the street, she suddenly began to shake and tremble as reality, as actual possibilities, swept over her. The businesslike exchange of money and the impersonal mask of the receptionist’s face had somehow made things seem official. Having no heart to go shopping for sneakers, she went back to study, reading words without knowing what they meant. That night she slept fitfully, bothered by dreams, in one of which a pitiable rabbit came to her with tears in its eyes.

A few days later the telephone brought news of the positive result.

“Would you like to make an appointment now to see the doctor? It’s important to start prenatal care at the very beginning, even though you seem to be a healthy young woman.”

“Well, not just now. I’ll call back.”

Carefully she replaced the receiver and sat for a while in a sort of trance. Through the open window came the familiar sounds of life, which was continuing quite without regard to what was happening to Jennie Rakowsky. A voice called, “Bobbee-e-e-e.” Somebody dropped a pile of books with a thunderous slam on the stairs outside the door and swore. From the floor above came the tremolo of a harmonica.