The Appetites of Girls (19 page)

Before returning to my room, I lay without sleeping, blinking in the dark at the sheen of the posters taped to Gavin’s ceiling. Fully dressed once more and wrapped in two blankets, still I could not stop shivering. Visions of Mama and Poppy, Sarah and Valerie, of Temple Beth Immanuel, of Hebrew school lessons, of family gatherings for Thanksgiving and Purim and Rosh Hashanah flashed before me. An avalanche of memories, all that my life had been until this evening.
This
was something that changed people—I knew that from magazines and books, from the rumors in the dorm. A tense pulsing choked my throat, but no tears reached my eyes. I pressed a hand to my mouth and listened to the hiss of Gavin’s breathing.

Sixteen days later, what Mama referred to as “my pesty friend” and Aunt Bernice called “a lady’s curse” had not yet arrived. I made continual,
worried trips to the bathroom but, still, nothing. I knew what I needed to do. Winnie had once confided her fears to Setsu and me, and we had accompanied her to the very back aisle of McGee’s Pharmacy, where all unmentionable products were kept—ointments for rashes, powders for hygiene, and the small blue and white boxes marked
Home Tests
. One line meant you were lucky; two lines meant you were not. In the farthest stall of the dormitory bathroom, I grasped the wand in one trembling hand and studied the dragging tick-tick of my watch while I waited.
Oh, God. Oh, dear, dear God. Could it be a mistake?
So I took a second test and then a third, but each time, two fuchsia lines glared through the window in the wand’s plastic tip.

For the next few days, I dressed and ate and attended classes—those I remembered to attend—in a panicked haze. Whom could I talk to? Who could tell me what to do? Finding her before she left for the library one night, I swore Setsu to secrecy.

“Oh, no! Oh, Ruth! What does Gavin say?” Setsu closed the door to her room, fiddling with the dial of her radio until music played loudly so that we would not be overheard.

“I haven’t told him.”

“But you need to. Don’t you think waiting will only make things more complicated? Gavin will be understanding, won’t he?”

“Oh, I’m sure.” But the truth was I could not begin to guess how Gavin would respond. For all the hours we had spent together, still Gavin and I had hardly spoken. And this I could not admit; it seemed, somehow, more humiliating than the situation itself.

Setsu took my hand in her soft fairy fingers. How I envied her as she gazed at me. I wanted to be the one with eyes tearing only with empathy, only for troubles not my own. Wanted to be able to smile sweetly because the dimpled creases between my brows were for aches I did not hold.

“Do you have real feelings for him, Ruth? Do you think you want this to last?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t even had a chance to think. Maybe.” I
understood what Setsu meant: a romance that developed into a marriage, a family, a lifetime together. But it was absurd to consider these things with someone I’d just met. And even if
I
were willing . . . But,
sometimes
, love grew with the passage of time, didn’t it? And as I sat with Setsu, I allowed myself this brief dream: Gavin holding me to him after hearing the news, his voice tremulous with emotion as he bent his forehead to mine and whispered that he felt this was a blessing.

“I’m no expert, but in relationships, I’ve found, it’s always best to talk things through.” Setsu squeezed my hand with the smooth pads of her fingers. “I really believe Gavin will want, more than anything, to put your happiness first. The two of you will work this out.” She pronounced these last words with such tranquillity, almost as if she were concluding a prayer, filling me with reassurance.

But later that evening, I opened my bedroom window to release the stuffy heat pumping relentlessly through my radiator and glimpsed Gavin. Was it? Oh! He was crossing the quad below, his arm around the waist of a giggling wisp of a blonde, his hand resting just below the tiny curve of her hip. And sinking to my bed, I understood the truth.

•   •   •

I
was never certain if Setsu’s revelation to Francesca and Opal was as unintended as she claimed. Perhaps she felt she needed them, or I needed them. But only a day after I had confided to her what I’d seen from my window, I found my suitemates on the sofa and two armchairs of our common room, seated still and straight as the fences enclosing our campus, awaiting my return from a late-morning class. I had never seen them so sober. What they wanted me to know, they said, making room for me among them, was that they were here for me. All of them. Whatever I chose, they would support me.

“He’s a dog!” Francesca’s neck was red with emotion. “You know that, don’t you? This is
not
your fault.”

“Francesca, please!” Setsu lifted her hand, requesting silence. “You are not helping.”

Opal ran her fingers along the groove between the couch cushions. She was frowning at the wheat-colored material as if there was something about it she had just noticed and disliked. “If it’s of any comfort, I had two girlfriends from Los Angeles who went through this. They chose not to continue things—” She was speaking slowly, and I was aware of how carefully she selected each word. “But they both had the best of care. And in the end, they were fine. Really fine.” She pulled her legs up, crossing her ankles, and twisted the leather knot in the cowry-shell anklet she always wore. I could see she was about to go on, then decided against it. I wondered if she’d had some other friend, known some other girl for whom things had not gone so well. “If it’s what you decide, I know of a clinic downtown. I pass it on my way to the women’s shelter where I volunteer. I can get more information—”

“Okay,” I nodded but said nothing further. My thoughts the last days had been like a mess of loose strings, disconnected, coming to nothing. I could not even allow myself to imagine what Mama would say if she knew. How could I begin to make a decision until my mind stopped floating like a shred of cloud.

“Opal, you’re pushing her,” Setsu said.

“I’m not pushing, I’m only sharing information!”

“She’s right, Setsu.” Francesca was calmer now, her arms propped on the back of her chair. “The more information she has, the better.”

“I just don’t want her to make a choice she could later regret.” Setsu smiled despite some sadness in her voice, in her dark eyes.

“She won’t make a mistake. She’ll do what’s right for her.” Francesca rapped her box of Parliaments matter-of-factly against the edge of the coffee table. She drew out a cigarette, balancing it between her middle and forefinger, but seemed to forget to light it.

On and on my suitemates talked, words meant to strengthen me, to give me solace. My ears ached as if my head had swelled with heat—from
shame, from worry, but also from a perverse sort of pride at being the focus of their intense attentions.

•   •   •

I
t was a reading assignment for my second-semester Shakespeare class—my course work now the only thing that served to distract me—that filled me with a new ambition. The assignment was a supplement to
Romeo and Juliet
, the first four acts of which our professor, Dean Draper, had already given us to read.
It is crucial to keep in mind
, the supplement advised,
how very young these lovers are—Juliet a mere thirteen, Romeo not much older
. I checked and double-checked the sentence to make certain I had not misread it. Juliet, so full of passion and strength, had, by the beginning of the third act, already defiantly wed her true love. Could she really have been a full five years younger than I? Pushing my chair from my desk, I stood with my fingers folded over my abdomen. My hands still, I imagined I could feel the pulsing of the mysterious, growing life inside me. What marvelous work my body was doing. Not the work of a mixed-up girl but the work of a woman. With the help of
no one
, I thought, gazing down at my swollen breasts, I was doing something truly significant. Something more than Opal, more than Francesca. Perhaps this was not a ruinous mistake. Perhaps this was the most important thing I’d ever attempted. So why couldn’t this continue to be?

•   •   •

I
began to eat the very healthiest of diets—grain cereals, meat trimmed of fat, fruits and low-fat yogurts from the market blocks from campus. According to a magazine I had found on a stand in the university’s bookstore, these were the foods recommended for those “in the family way.”
Give yourself and your little one the benefit of all the best nutrients
, the article advised. On line in the dining hall, I scrutinized my choices carefully
before making selections. Then when I sat to eat my unsugared oatmeal, grapefruit, sliced apple, I pictured each nourishing, vitamin-filled bite slipping from my throat to the place in my stomach I imagined was beginning to bulge. The numbers crept slightly higher on the bathroom scale but now for a right reason. And when Mama’s next package of treats arrived—she still convinced these were the only decent foods I would consume while away—I was able to resist because she was
wrong
: these were
exactly
the things I was supposed to avoid. So I found willing recipients among the other freshmen in Jameson. And when the last cheese scone or nut muffin had been handed out, pride rippled through me over my newly discovered self-control.

At the end of the month, I was to return home for a few days for the celebration of Passover. Mama and Poppy had sent me my train ticket in an envelope sealed with clear tape. It had been two weeks since I had taken the home test, and still I had not broken the news to my family. This weekend, I knew, would be the right time to do it. Yet the thought of pronouncing the actual words before them made the center of me seem to fall away, and I could not help wondering if waiting just a bit longer would be so terrible.

Setsu and Fran had accompanied me to the downtown train station, insisting on carrying my bags. They hadn’t asked, but they must have guessed this was the weekend I would tell what I’d been hiding. “Call if you need anything while you’re gone.” At the gate to the train platform, Setsu’s thin arms encircled my neck, her cheek to mine. “Even if you just want to talk. We will be around.”

“Remember, Ruth—” Francesca’s voice was low, but her jaw pivoted from side to side for a moment as if she were thinking hard. “It’s
your
life. You have nothing to apologize for to
anyone
.”

I wished I could bring Setsu and Fran home with me, and Opal, too. With them, somehow, it seemed it wouldn’t be so difficult. But there to
meet me at the New York station was my entire family, and at the sight of them, any fortitude I had felt on my ride down abandoned me. At a single glance, I was certain, they would detect some change in me. But they seemed to notice nothing. “There she is! Our Ivy League girl!” Mama and Poppy kissed me on both cheeks, and I climbed into the backseat of our wagon—my homecoming and the heaviness of my bags enough, I supposed, to merit fetching the car from the lot rather than taking the bus. I sat between Sarah and Valerie, just as we used to do as girls, my knees bumping theirs with every pothole or dip in the street.

In three days, for Passover Seder, Mama was expecting Aunt Helena and Uncle Martin, Aunt Bernice and Uncle Mickey, Uncle Leonid, Aunt Nadia, and my cousins, as well as the Kleins from 5C. She had been baking and roasting and stewing, I knew, for the better part of a week, and as soon as Poppy unlocked the door to our apartment and I stepped inside, I breathed what seemed a hundred familiar scents—fried potato and sweet onions, chicken broth for soup, cloves and cinnamon and wine for haroset.

“Smells like home, hmm, Ruthie?” Mama smiled, pulling my coat from my shoulders. But though the fragrances were the same, I noticed quickly that other things had changed: Mama’s hair, for instance, was shorter than I’d ever seen it and layered in a current style, a fact she had failed to mention during any of our recent phone calls. Also, the heavy gold living room drapes had been replaced, since my visit home in December, with airier lace ones. Then there was the new material on the dining chairs, a leafy print I never could have imagined to be Mama or Poppy’s taste. These were things my family took so for granted now, I realized with a twinge of irritation, that it did not occur to them I was seeing them for the first time.