“Bert. Don’t you think we ought to talk? I don’t understand what happened.”
“What do you mean, you don’t understand what happened?”
“Just what I said. We were friends. And we had a nice time at the beach. Then you suddenly turn cold on me. Why?”
“I didn’t turn cold; you did!” he yelled. “We always go to the show on Mondays and all a sudden you say no!”
“I said no because you weren’t looking at me!”
“That’s crazy! That’s crazy! Of course I looked at you!”
“You didn’t! You averted your gaze! You wouldn’t meet my eyes! You still won’t! Look at me! See, you can’t!”
“I averted my gaze?” he mocked. “What kind of fancy talk is that?”
I stared at him. I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know what he was feeling, what he was saying, or why. I turned and walked out of the storeroom. The hell with him.
7
IN THE FEW WEEKS remaining before school resumed, I took one more jaunt to the public beach with the girls from the restaurant, went to the movies with Delia, and shopped for clothes with her. Though I bought only what I absolutely needed, at cheap stores, it took all but ten dollars of what I’d saved of my summer wages.
Jerry drove me back to school, and this time, Delia came along. She’d never seen the college, and she was impressed by the beautiful campus. She kept remarking: “Oh! how lovely! How beautiful!” Delia had never been out of Bridgeport except for a trip to Washington, D.C., with her eighth grade class and one to Manhattan when she was fifteen, to see Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall. Her enthusiasm made me aware that I felt different about the college now: I was eager to get back to where (I now knew) I belonged, to people of my own sort (even if they hadn’t seemed so when I was there). That year I would drop my snobbish act, begin to socialize, make some friends. So what if I didn’t have the right clothes. Some people would like me anyway. I would make these people my people, even if they weren’t. I was pleased with myself for my new resolution: I felt I was growing up.
But I had been at school only two weeks when I realized my period was very late.
I waited. I took hot baths.
After two more weeks, I confided in Irmgard. “Take a rabbit test,” she said.
In those days, colleges like Mount Holyoke expelled girls for marrying or for pregnancy; abortion was illegal and dangerous and expensive, and many people had never even heard of it. Also, boys, as a rule, when told that the results of the rabbit test were positive, felt guilty and responsible—unlike young men of today, who feel noble if they put themselves out to accompany their lovers to the abortion clinic—and actually married the girl. I do not hold this up as a model; far from it: marriages that began as a match between a desperate girl and a boy who was reluctantly doing her a favor out of fear of her family or societal disapproval did not generally become the “happily ever after” sort we all wanted.
I got the Shiefendorfer number from information and called Bert.
“Pregnant! How could you be pregnant?”
“We must have a poor connection,” I said.
“How do you know it was me?”
“You had to notice I was a virgin. And that is the only time I ever…did that.”
Long silence.
“What are we going to do?” I asked finally.
“We? Do?”
I had an inspiration. “I can’t keep it from my family forever. My brother will find out…”
“Brother?”
“You know. My brother in Bridgeport. The one I was staying with.”
Another long silence. Then: “I have to think.” I assumed he meant he had to consult his mother. “I’ll get back to you.”
“Okay. Call me before Friday. I’m nervous.”
I myself had no notion of what to do. Irmgard told me about a friend who had gone to a woman in a filthy apartment on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, paid $150, and been freed of her burden. It was a horrible experience, but she was rid of the thing. Irmgard’s friend was at Smith. She could call her. She could get the name.
This terrified me. I’d heard my mother whisper to Susan about a woman we knew who had died after an abortion. She was an older woman, married, she was Italian and already had ten children, and she did something with a coat hanger. I wasn’t ready to die. On the other hand, I wasn’t ready to get married, especially to Bert. But I was dying either way: I was going to lose everything—my scholarship, my dreams. My apartment in New York!
I had to talk to somebody. I called my sisters. When Susan answered, I burst into tears. She immediately knew.
“Don’t tell me,” she said.
“Yes.” I sniffled.
“Shit. You blew it. You blew your life. You stupid little fool. You were the only one of us who had a chance, and you blew it.”
Sobbing now, I could hear her talking to the others. She was holding her hand over the mouthpiece, so I couldn’t hear her words, just a rumble of voices. Susan came back.
“Who’s the father?”
“Bert Shiefendorfer. A waiter at the restaurant I worked at this summer.”
“In Bridgeport? Not some snotty Harvard kid?”
“Yes. No.”
Susan sighed. “Well, that’s a little better. All right. You’ll have to marry him. If there’s a problem, Jerry will deal with it. You hear?”
“Yes.”
“Does he know? Have you told Jerry?”
“No.”
“What about the boy? The father.”
“I told him.”
“And?”
“I don’t know.”
“How far along are you?”
“I…I missed one period. Three weeks ago. I had a rabbit test.”
“Okay. Go to Bridgeport this weekend. Take the bus. Tell Jerry what time you’re coming; he’ll meet you at the bus station. I’ll call him. I’ll deal with him. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Bert didn’t call by Friday. I was a sniveling mess, led by my runny nose. Throwing a change of underwear and some books into a bag, I left the campus Friday after Advanced French. I took a bus to Springfield and caught the late-afternoon bus for Bridgeport. It was dark when I got there. I’d cried myself to sleep on the bus, and my face was hot and swollen when I arrived. I dreaded seeing Jerry; I was sure he’d feel contempt for me, just like Susan but more so, since he already thought that my sisters and I, especially me, had had things so much easier than he had. But I knew I just had to take whatever they handed me: I needed their help.
My crying on the telephone had been like a rifle shot or a bomb blast triggering a military campaign. Susan mustered the entire family into action, and everybody fell into line as if we’d been practicing for this all our lives. Jerry was standing there when I got off the bus, and he walked over and put his arm around me and led me to the car. The minute he touched me, I began to cry. He didn’t say a word, just opened the car door for me and got in himself and started off.
I managed to calm down after a while, and we drove in silence, but when we got to his house, he turned off the motor and sat there for a minute. I looked at him. He turned a little in the seat.
“Listen, kid. Delia’s shocked. I mean…just ignore her, okay? Don’t pay any attention to her; don’t let her hurt your feelings. She’ll get over it. She’s very…proper, you know? It’s how she was brought up. They’re very Catholic, the Urtnowskis. Well, you know; you’ve seen their house.”
I hadn’t noticed any signs of their religion in their house.
“She really likes you, and she’ll get over it, okay?”
I nodded. My stomach was numb with dread: Delia was angry with me.
“And one other thing. I’m not gonna mention this upstairs, I’m not gonna mention it to the sisters, either, see. But there are things you can do. I can help you out. I know some names; I got cash. You don’t have to have this baby if you don’t want to. Okay?”
Again I nodde
d mutely, but his words hardly penetrated. I could only think about Delia, angry with me.
We went upstairs. Delia was sitting in front of the television set, but she jumped up when we came in. She turned it off and swung around to me. Her face was white.
“Elsa! How could you!” She looked furious.
I burst into tears again. Jerry put his arm around me. “Come on, Del. Give her a break,” he said, rubbing my arm. “How about making us some tea, kid,” he pleaded. She turned, tightlipped, and went into the kitchen. Jerry sat me down in the easy chair and plopped himself on the ottoman, legs spread around it, leaning toward me.
“Now I wanna hear how this happened.”
“Wait!” Delia cried from the kitchen. “Wait for me!”
Jerry took my hands and stroked them. He had strong hands from years of kneading dough for our mother. Delia came in carrying a tray with a teapot, cups, and several different cakes. They got them all free, of course. Suddenly ravenous, I ate half a butter cake all by myself Delia was sitting on the couch across from me, gazing at me coldly. Every time I looked at her, I felt like crying, so I stopped looking at her. When I finished eating, I told them how it had happened. I told them a faltering story because I didn’t understand it myself, really. I couldn’t remember, couldn’t bring back or describe the way I’d felt that day at the beach. So I couldn’t explain why I had done what I did. Obviously, Delia didn’t understand, either. But oddly, Jerry seemed to.
“So you’re all warm and mushy, and he gets you drunk,” he said in a low, bitter voice.
“Drunk!” Delia gasped.
“I only had two beers,” I responded indignantly.
“You ever have a beer before that?” Jerry asked.
“No.”
“Drunk,” he repeated.
“Drunk!” Delia echoed.
I began to cry again. I wasn’t sure which was worse, getting pregnant or getting drunk.
Jerry patted my hand. “Don’t cry, kid. It wasn’t your fault. That guy took advantage of you; you’re just an innocent kid.”
Delia burst out sobbing. “He took advantage of a poor innocent girl,” she cried, and ran over to my chair and hugged me. “Poor baby! Poor little Elsa!”
I was so happy that Delia was forgiving me that I didn’t argue, but this line of reasoning made me very uncomfortable. I didn’t like feeling like a dupe, especially the dupe of a dope like Bert. I had, after all, known what I was doing, sort of, and I did want to do it at the time—heaven knows why. And I didn’t have the sense that Bert knew a whole lot more about this business than I did. But clearly this was the approach my family had decided to take with regard to the matter, and whatever my reservations, I felt it was better than Susan’s damning me for a fool or Delia’s damning me as immoral. So I sat silently, complicit in their indictment of Albert Shiefendorfer, corrupter of innocence.
As I sat on the dock at my Sag Harbor house, remembering my sad past, I had to stop occasionally, look around, and draw a deep breath. Those days were over, and although they would in some sense always live in my consciousness, I was out of that trap now. I looked down at my body, still firm and fit despite my years, and wondered at it and at myself. That I had made it from there to here was miraculous. What was even more amazing was that I had somehow managed to cease my constant self-castigation and learned to be happy over the years. I wasn’t sure how I had done that, moved from there to here. But I let myself feel a little pride that I’d done it, no matter how.
I thought again, as I often had before, that I had created my life, created myself, Hermione Beldame. And so had most of my family and friends. And we could do that only because we lived in the period we lived in; we couldn’t have done what we’d done a generation earlier. Something had happened in the world, something that lifted people like us up and let us breathe freely, let us move around in the world, let us choose our own lives. That was the difference between then and now. It wasn’t anything I’d done; it was something the world had done. It was a blessing. I could only wish it had happened twenty years earlier, in time to save my mother from the miserable trap that caught her.
I had determined to live like a hermit this summer, figuring that was the only way I could avoid talking about the subject that was driving me crazy, but after only a few days, I was starving for company. So I was delighted when Tess called and asked me to have dinner with her on Wednesday.
Tess runs a boutique here in Sag Harbor. Summer and fall, she sells figurines, paintings, dishes, small sculptures, and other things she finds during the winters, which she spends in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and other Central American countries. Her lover, Ellen, is a secretary in a UN department that handles Central American affairs, which is how they met. Ellen works in the city during the week and comes out only over weekends and for her month of summer vacation.
Tess is striking, tall and full-bodied, olive-skinned and black-haired, with a white stripe down her part. She always wears long gowns and capes made of gorgeous Central American fabrics, with huge earrings and lots of bracelets. During our Wednesday dinner, she often seemed distracted. I was a bit annoyed watching her run her eyes over the other patrons of the American Hotel, where we were dining. She was surveying the women.
I tried to get her attention. “So, Tess…”
“Umm.” She leaned her head on her hand and stared at me with huge gray eyes. “What, sweetie?”
“Do you believe in True Love? I mean, do you think there’s one person out there for everyone, the perfect mate, who, if you could just meet her, would make you happy for the rest of your life?”
“But of course! What do you think I’ve been searching for all my life!”
“And you have never found it?”
“I keep thinking I have, but then…I don’t know.”
“What about Ellen?”
“Ellen’s sweet. But…”
“But…?”
“Oh, I don’t know. What about you?”
“Well, I’ve just gotten that feeling…I’ve met this guy…”
“Really!” She put down her fork. For the first time during our meal, she kept her eyes on my face and did not look around the room. She listened with wide, intense eyes.
“And…”
“Well, he keeps sending out contradictory signals.”
“Umm. Ellen says I do that.”
“Really! And do you feel you do?”
“No. Not consciously.”
“Is it unconscious? But you love Ellen, don’t you?”
“Of course!”
“So…”
“Well, she’s a little dull, you know. Her mind isn’t…really of the first rank.”
“She’s so beautiful!” I argued.
“Yes. I know. It’s true, she is beautiful. But…she’s a secretary, my dear.”
I was shocked into silence. After a moment, I found my voice. “So are the two of you breaking up?”
“Oh, no!” she cried. “She comes out every weekend. We have a sweet time. It just isn’t enough, you know. There’s just a little something missing. A je ne sais quoi, you know.” She shrugged. “We get along fine; it’s not that. I suppose I’m quickly bored. But that’s just entre nous, my dear. Of course.”
“Ummm.” I was gazing hard at her.
“But you, you have to think about your feelings. I mean, the question isn’t how he feels about you but how you feel about him!”
“I’m crazy about him,” I admitted miserably. “I’m obsessed, really. I wish I weren’t…”
“You can’t worry about how other people feel or act. You know what you’re feeling: you’re sure of that. You have to trust that, darling. Trust that.” She laid her hand on her heart. “It’s all you have. All you can depend on. And you’re madly in love. I must say I envy you, sweetie.”
“Envy me?”
“Certainly! Isn’t that what we’re all looking for? All the time? All our fucking lives? To be madly in love with someone we know will make us h
appy for the rest of our lives?”
“Is that what we all want?”
“Certainly! All women, and all men too, although they rarely admit it!”
“So do you have anyone in mind?” I asked slyly.
Tess dropped her voice, leaned her head forward. “Don’t turn around. But do you see that woman over there in the corner, sitting with the man with the bushy beard? The woman with the gray-blond streaked hair? Isn’t she handsome? Isn’t she distinguished? Isn’t she someone famous?”
“How can I see her if I don’t turn around?”
“Well, don’t turn around while I’m talking about her.”
I laughed. “So talk about something else.”
Tess pointed to the little sconces that lined the walls. “You see those sconces over there? I found them for the restaurant—well, for Nicky, the owner. I found the first one in Mexico and had the rest made to order, copied. You like them?”
I turned then.
“That’s Emily Shoemaker,” I said, turning back. “She lives in East Hampton. She’s a millionaire art collector. She supports all the arts.”
Tess’s eyes gaped. “Really? Do you know her? Can you introduce me to her? Do you think she might be gay?”
Thursdays, Liz Margolis comes to clean my house. She’s young, just thirty, the daughter of my good friend Betty Margolis, a painter who lives in Sag Harbor. Liz is also an artist, a sculptor, but she has to earn money to live, and has found she can earn most, with the least investment of time and energy, by cleaning houses. Jobs that pay more require expensive clothes or commutation, or leave you no spare time. Cleaning houses locally doesn’t take that long and pays fifteen dollars an hour. So Liz cleans six houses a week in three ten-hour days and spends one six-hour day at my house, cleaning and doing the laundry and ironing. This enables her to survive out here if she lives frugally, She rents a little cottage behind Betty’s house for a minimal rent. She wears nothing but jeans and T-shirts, or, in cold weather, sweatshirts and men’s woolen shirts, and she eats mainly vegetables and brown rice. Most of her earnings go to buy her materials, which are terribly expensive—she works in wood, beautiful varieties, or steel, or sometimes in marble. She’s a lovely artist, and I’ve bought several of her smaller pieces, but most of her work is so huge it won’t fit into a house. She’s uncompromising, Liz: museums or nothing.
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