Tonight, however, none of it was penetrating. Nancy sat curled up on the sofa, her mind faraway. “You watching this?” Gerry asked, motioning toward the television.
She shook her head. “Turn it off if you want to.”
The silence was almost a third presence in the room. From the corner of her eye, Nancy noticed the stack of books on Gerry’s lap had grown larger. There’d been a strain between them these past few months, a strain that seemed to grow stronger with each day that passed. They both wanted the same things—a happy family, security—but they sharply differed on how to achieve those goals. Gerry was itching to stretch his wings and fly. Nancy had made up her mind to walk well-charted roads. It was as simple, and as dangerous, as that.
“I think there’s a way I can make this work,” Gerry said, putting a new brochure on drive-in movies in her hand.
She refused to thumb through its glossy seductive pages. “Really?” she asked in her best bored matron’s voice. “Is Mr. Rockefeller going to adopt you?”
It wasn’t hard to see her sharp words had found their mark in the soft underbelly of Gerry’s male ego. She was sorry she’d said them—and in that tone, no less—but she knew they couldn’t be retracted. The words were out there; their resonance would remain even if she apologized.
Gerry, eyes blazing with an anger that was still under control, cleared his throat. “I think I can come up with a few backers.”
“Investors?’ ‘
“A limited partnership with me at the top.”
“Oh, sure,” she said with a frustrated shake of her head. “Work all day and then work all night. When do you intend to see your children?” Don’t leave me behind, Gerry. All of these plans are scaring me to death.
“I’d be working only one job, Nance.” He hefted the remaining books and brochures. “This one.”
She felt faint. “You’d quit Wilson?”
“That’s what this is all about.”
“Good Lord, Gerry! Have you lost your mind? What about the pension fund? What about the medical insurance? What about—”
The books and brochures crashed to the ground like bricks falling off a dump truck. She resisted the housewifely urge to bend down and neatly stack them in size order.
“What about me, Nance? Or doesn’t it matter?”
“Of course it does,” she said, her own panic leaping to life and grabbing her by the throat. “But it seems to me you have everything you could possibly want at Wilson.” Liar! You know how he feels. You know how badly he needs to strike out on his own—you want it yourself. “Why on earth would you risk rocking the boat with the girls so young and—”
He grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to meet his eyes. He didn’t try to hide the anger or the desperation in them. “Because the time is now, Nancy. Because the opportunity may never come again. The Island is growing every day.” He let her go as if her clothing were on fire and dragged a hand through his hair. “Geez, Nance, look around you. More houses. More people. More cars. Kids everywhere you look. Families who can’t afford sitters. Teenagers with no place to go. Land there for the asking. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
He’s right. You know he’s right. How on earth do I convince him he’s wrong? “It’s risky,” she said, picking her way through the mine field of reasons it was anything but. “You could lose your shirt.”
“Then I’ll start all over.”
“It isn’t just you, Gerry. You have responsibilities.”
“And you don’t?”
She stared at him.
“You’re supposed to be on my side, Nance, not fighting me every step of the way.”
“I’m not fighting you. I’m trying to show you where you’re wrong.”
“What’s happened to you, Nance? You never used be afraid to be different.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said, feeling the sting of truth. The old Nancy had thumbed her nose at convention and married a boy she knew only through his letters.
“Look at you,” he said, pointing to her stylish pedal pushers, her sleeveless top, the perfectly tousled pixie-cut hair. “Hell, look at this place. It’s like something out of a women’s magazine.”
Her backbone stiffened. “Thank you very much,” she said, her tone icy. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It isn’t.”
Tears burned behind her eyelids, but she’d rather face a firing squad than cry.
“Where are you, Nance?” he asked, dropping to his knee in front of her. “I know you’re in there someplace, but I swear to God I can’t find you anymore. You’re not the girl I fell in love with. The girl I married. You’re like everyone else in this neighborhood.”
“You still don’t understand what’s important, do you?” she countered, avoiding his statement.
He rose to his feet and for an instant she saw the boy who’d come home from war, that boy with a duffel bag filled with hopes and dreams for the future, but the image was gone before she could collect it and draw it into her heart.
“I’m going to bed,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “Lock the back door before you turn in.”
She nodded but didn’t speak, afraid that she’d run to him and tell him to go ahead and take a chance, see if that scheme of his would make him happy. Make her happy in the bargain. She struggled to banish that last thought from her mind. She was happy with her life, damn it. She didn’t want to change a thing. It wasn’t her fault that she and Gerry wanted different things, needed different things, saw the world through different eyes.
But do you, really? Aren’t his words bouncing around inside your head, forcing all of those old plans and schemes out from hibernation? Wouldn’t you, just once, love to do what no one on earth expects of you, the way you used to not that long ago?
The sound of his footsteps retreating down the hallway struck her as the loneliest sound in the world. She got up and turned on the television set to drown out the sound of regret. “And now,” said the announcer, “we’re proud to bring you This Is Your Life!”
“Right,” she said, gazing at her clothes, the room, everywhere but inside her own heart. The models on the pages of McCall’s taught her how a young mother should dress. Woman’s Day taught her how to cook for a family. Ladies Home Journal taught her how to clean house and still have time to look pretty when hubby came home from work. And of course Better Homes and Gardens was ready and waiting to help her plant her rosebushes and choose the perfect sofa for the living room.
Why, you didn’t have to have an original thought in your head. Life was as perfectly mapped out for a young American wife as if Rand McNally had charted the course from puberty to menopause and provided rest stops along the way. Madison Avenue decreed that redheads were passé? Nancy rushed out to the hairdresser and had her carrot-top made a darker auburn. Blond wood and sleek Scandinavian furniture was all the rage? Nancy’s cozy colonial sofa and chairs disappeared out the back door to the delight of the men from the Salvation Army.
And someone, somewhere, had decreed that the greatest joy in a man’s life was the day he received his gold watch for fifty years of meritorious service to the company. What company? It didn’t matter. The point was, the “company” mattered; the man himself did not.
Was it any wonder Gerry was tugging at the chains?
It hadn’t always been like this....
The sailor had stopped in front of the Bellamy house. That wonderful beloved face she knew from photographs lit up with a smile so joyous she would remember it for the rest of her life. He tossed the duffel bag to the ground, and Nancy ran down the steps to meet her future.
The sailor stared at her as she flew across the pavement, red hair streaming behind like a triumphant banner. Bobby pins clattered to the ground as she ran, but she didn’t once slackened her pace. He opened his arms to her. “Nance!”
Tears choked back her words as she catapulted herself into his embrace with all the grace of a football player. He stumbled back a step
under the assault and her cheeks blazed with embarrassment. Now she’d done it! All those years of writing to each other, of sending pictures, and she galloped up to him like a runaway horse!
But he didn’t seem to mind. Her heart soared. He kissed her cheek, her forehead, her lips, murmuring words of love she never thought any man would ever say to her. Plain Nancy Wilson with the freckles and the big mouth, there in the arms of an adorable sailor with big green eyes and a smile wider than the Kansas plains where he’d grown up.
Everyone had said she was crazy, nuts, plain out of her mind to fall in love with a total stranger, a boy she knew only through his letters, but Nancy’s heart had told her otherwise. “You don’t know anything about him,” her mother had said, her brow furrowed in concern. “Why, honey, he could just be spinning a pretty tale for you in his letters.”
But weeks and months and years of pretty tales had wrapped themselves around her heart and brought her to this moment, this wonderful moment, the one she’d dreamed about from the start.
“Say something,” Gerry said, memorizing her face with his eyes. “All this time I’ve been wondering how you’d sound.”
“I love you!” The words sprung to life full-blown from the deepest part of her heart. “I love you so much, Gerry.” She’d said it! Really said it!
To her eternal surprise he didn’t laugh or snicker or tell her he’d made promises he couldn’t keep. What he did was kiss her words into silence, then replace the school ring on her hand with a tiny diamond, which meant more to her than anything on earth.
And so they promised to love and honor, to respect and cherish, to be there for each other in sickness and in health, but never once did anyone mention suburbia....
She hugged her knees and stared past the television, past the room, past the barriers they’d built around their lives. The future was out there somewhere. Dim. Indistinct. Shrouded in fear and uncertainty, but it was there and if she only had the courage she would open her arms wide and embrace it. She’d had that kind of courage once, years ago, when she’d moved away from her parents’ home to spread her wings—when she’d handed her life over to a boy she knew only through his letters.
But the seconds turned into minutes, and the minutes turned into hours, and in the bedroom her husband slept alone.
* * *
The next few weeks passed slowly for Jane. Fenelli and the paper kept her busy, which was a good thing because it seemed as if much of her daily routine had dropped by the wayside. Nancy came by less and less often, and when they bumped into each other at the grocery or the dry cleaner, Nancy looked uncomfortable and their conversation was awkward.
Pat recovered from her back spasms, and the bridge club went on without Jane. “Well, I do hope you’ll consider me next time you have an opening,” Jane said, meaning it, but the embarrassed silence that followed her statement spoke volumes.
“It’s such a disappointment,” said Jane to Edna at Sunday dinner in early October. “I had so hoped I was making friends.”
Edna cast a glance at her son, but Mac’s face was impassive. “Just you wait until the baby’s born,” said her mother-in-law, patting Jane on the arm. “Once the little one is here, everything will fall into place. You’ll be part of the crowd before you know it.”
Jane merely smiled and concentrated on her roast beef. The problem cut much more deeply than Edna could possibly imagine. It had taken a while, but Jane had finally figured out where it had all gone wrong.
The day of the bridge party at her place.
The moment Ginger Higgins strolled into the house, curiosity in full bloom, the climate had changed—and not for the better. Jane played and replayed that afternoon in her mind, trying to make sense of things, but each time she did, she came back to the same thing: Nigel’s book. Comical eccentric Uncle Nigel with the socialist brain and the hedonist heart was as harmless as they came, no more a threat to anyone’s security than Nancy’s dog Bingo.
Somehow, thanks to Ginger, Jane had been dragged into America’s political problems before she even had an idea of exactly what those problems were. Through no fault of her own, she was being painted with the same brush as the Hollywood Ten, and that brush was tinted red.
She’d tried to bring it up with Mac the other day, but he’d seemed preoccupied and distant. “Don’t worry about it,” he’d said, kissing her on the forehead. “It’ll blow over, Janie.”
It’ll blow over.
Wasn’t that basically what Dr. Burns had said last week when she went to see him about the ache in her belly that was always there, lingering at the edges of her consciousness? “I’m concerned but not alarmed, Mrs. Weaver. Get plenty of rest, watch your diet, and I’m certain it will go away before long.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, between the main course and the dessert. “I don’t know why, but I’m feeling a trifle under the weather.”
Mac’s parents couldn’t have been more understanding. “You get her home pronto,” Les ordered his son. “Girl in her condition needs to be resting, not yapping with her in-laws.”
“How’re you doing?” Mac asked as they made their way back toward Levittown. “You were quiet tonight.”
Jane tried to smile but didn’t quite manage it. “I... I’m having some pain, Mac.”
Mac felt a cold lump of fear lodge itself in his gut. “Where?” A headache... sore shoulder... wisdom tooth....
“M-my back.” Her hand fluttered, then came to rest against her belly. “And here.”
He gripped the wheel until his fingers turned white. “We’ll get you home,” he said, battling a sense of dread more real than the sound of his own voice. “You need to put your feet up.” The doctor, he thought. Soon as we get in the door, I’m calling him.
She dozed the last few miles, her hand moving in restless circles over her distended abdomen. A couple of more minutes, Janie. We’re almost home.
And then he saw it. He was stopped for a traffic light on Newbridge Road. A shaft of lamplight pierced the interior of the car and he turned to look down at Janie when a flash of crimson next to her caught his eye. A scarf? He reached over—
Wet. Sticky.
Blood.
Chapter Fifteen
They said that there would be more babies, that sometimes God knew best, but it seemed to Jane as if the sun had fallen from the sky.
When she awoke in that sterile hospital room, she had only to look at Mac’s face to know the awful truth: her dreams for the future had been shattered.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, her hands seeking the comforting roundness of her belly. “Oh, God, no...”
Her flesh was soft, tender, already drawing in upon itself as if it had never happened, but there was nothing on earth that could erase the yawning emptiness inside her heart.
She had failed in the single most important venture of her life, failed to do the one thing every other woman on the planet did with ease. Her blood and Mac’s had mingled in that child, forming sinew and bone and a conduit between her dreams and his that would span the generations. That child had been her anchor in the world of family, the embodiment of those who had come before and those who were yet to be. Her father had lived in that child and her brother and Mac’s as well. The baby would have tied Jane to the Weavers with a knot of love so tight and strong nothing could have ever unraveled it.
And now it was over. In the blink of an eye Fate had once again touched Jane with its unforgiving hand. There was nobody left for her anymore. No reason to dream. Her dreams of a home and family seemed so foolish to her now, the dreams of a woman who should have known better than to think these dreams could come true. Hadn’t she learned the truth during the war when first her brother and then her father were taken from her? How arrogant she had been to believe the gods would smile upon her.
For a little while she had embraced fife with both arms, only to discover she held nothing but air. She felt as brittle as the late autumn leaves on the ground beyond her hospital window, dry
and dead inside, ready to blow away on the wind.
She looked at her husband, napping in the chair beside her bed. His hair was overgrown, brushing against his collar and over the tops of his ears. A shock of it fell across his forehead and she wished she had the right to brush it back for him, to feel the silky strands beneath her fingertips....
You’ve lost that right. You lost it with the baby you wanted more than life itself.
It occurred to her that Mac had lost everything, too. He’d lost the future just as she had, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he hated her for her failure. She’d told him she would be the perfect wife, that he would never regret their impulsive wedding, that together they would build a family as strong and loving as the feelings she held deep in her heart, and she had failed. Just as she had failed to keep her mother and father and brother out of harm’s way.
“You deserve better,” she whispered to Mac. “You deserve so much better than I can ever give.”
There had to be a way to make it up to him, but at the moment she couldn’t imagine what it could possibly be.
* * *
What scared Mac the most was that Jane didn’t cry. Not once. Not when he drove her to the hospital. Not when the pains racked her slender frame, doubling her over with their force. Not even when she awoke in the recovery room and the awful truth rose up between them. He waited for the catharsis of tears, for the explosion of grief everyone predicted was right around the corner, but it never came.
Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2) Page 21
