I couldn’t see the two boys anymore. I smiled, imagining Tony’s face when Gail and I returned with our news.
“I keep wondering if life is like that,” Gail said. “If sometimes when you least expect it, beautiful things happen.”
“Was Ellen there?”
“Was Ellen where?”
“In the car with you when you saw the deer?”
“Sure. Why do you ask?”
“I was thinking about how she couldn’t see what you saw. I was wondering what things are like for her, without eyes.”
“She has eyes—very beautiful gray eyes, as a matter of fact. They just don’t work.”
Little hairs fanned out in the middle of Gail’s left eyebrow, going the wrong way, and I reached across and smoothed them down. The train stopped, brakes hissing, releasing steam. A black man pushed a flat of mailsacks along the platform. I tried to imagine Beau Jack in his World War I uniform, traveling across France in an old train. Our train was moving again, the conductor calling out that the next stop would be Wilmington, Delaware. Gail lifted my hand and put it on her stomach, and I was surprised at how warm she was. I thought of bread, rising under a towel, and of the way my mother would let me peek underneath when I was a boy, of how I would watch for as long as I could, waiting to see the dough expand.
“How are you feeling?” I asked. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask before. I mean, how are you feeling?”
“I’m a little tired, that’s all. Otherwise I’m okay. So is junior.”
“The red plague didn’t come?”
“No. Don’t you think I would have called you so if it had?”
“I suppose. I’m sorry I asked.”
“But you were hoping it would come.”
“Sure. Weren’t you?”
She looked away. “I don’t know. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.” She held my wrist. “I mean, it’s ours, David. It’s you and me growing inside me, creating new life from our lives, from our love.”
“Terrific.”
“In medieval times,” she said coldly, “children born out of wedlock—bastards—were believed to be exceptionally vital and dynamic beings, begotten, as they were, in the intensity of passion rather than between the dull, obligatory sheets of marriage. To bear the child of the man you loved was, according to the tenets of courtly love, the truest way of bringing the love to its consummation.”
“We don’t live in medieval times.”
“I didn’t want to take the pills, David.” Her voice was harsh, insistent. “If I took the pills and they didn’t work I would have had to have myself scraped out. You go get yourself scraped out first and see how you like it. Then—”
“I never said you should take pills. That was your idea. I said this was okay, didn’t I? I’m here, aren’t I?”
She picked at the skin around her thumbnail. “Even if you didn’t agree to marry me—if you didn’t propose—I would have had the child. I decided that before I came to you and told you. I’ve seen what happens to the girls in the dorm who try to take care of it themselves. There was one girl before Christmas we found passed out in the bathroom, blood glopped all over the shower and the toilet. They use crochet hooks and knitting needles and wire hangers and take quinine tablets and scorching hot baths and ice-cold showers. And then—if they’re successful—they can call the hospital to finish the job. Then—”
“Shut up!” I grabbed her arm. “I said to shut up. Did you hear me?”
She tried to pry my hand from her arm. “You’re hurting me, David. Christ. Stop!”
“Then you just shut up. I never asked you to do anything like that and I don’t like it when you accuse me of wanting to—”
“Of wanting to what?”
“Forget it.” I let go of her arm.
“No. Of wanting to what? Tell me.”
“Of wanting to hurt you, okay?” I looked away, so that she wouldn’t see my eyes.
“I know you didn’t want to hurt me. It’s just that—”
“But first you wanted me to hear how I might have hurt you. Sure. You wanted to slip all that in first—to stick the pictures into my head.”
“Not at all, David. Not at all. Oh shit. Hey, are you all right?”
The train was moving again, clattering and rocking. I kept my eyes fixed on the platform.
“I’m all right.”
She wiped my tears with a fingertip. “I love you,” she said.
I nodded. I wanted to tell her it was okay, that I loved her too, but I didn’t dare try. Was love enough? Love is sweet, my father used to say, but tastes best with bread. I took a deep breath.
“You’re not angry with me then, are you,” she stated, as if talking to herself.
“Why should I be angry?”
“Because it was my fault. Because I didn’t count right.” She put her finger to my lips. “It’s what I’ve been frightened of most—that you’d feel I’d tricked you. We Freudians believe there are never any real accidents.”
“I never didn’t believe you,” I said. I let her take my hand, move it in slow circles on her stomach. “Until you brought it up it never occurred to me not to believe you. Why wouldn’t I believe you?”
“Can I show you all the things I’ve brought? Can we talk about the quotidian for a while? First of all I brought lunch.” She opened the smaller suitcase, began taking things out, explaining why she had brought each item. There were peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches, bags of peanuts, Hershey bars, boxes of Cracker Jacks; a small bottle of sweet Malaga wine for the ceremony and a large bottle of French champagne and a can of smoked oysters and a box of crackers for the hotel afterwards; there was toothpaste, two toothbrushes, dental floss, shaving cream, a razor, talcum, perfume, shampoo.
I laughed, and she asked me not to make fun of her, but I could tell from her smile that she was pleased. Was that what mattered most of all to me—to be able to please the woman I loved in ordinary ways, to somehow become the father I never had? She showed me the shirt and tie she’d bought for me, the new cream-colored nightgown she’d bought for herself, the rose sachet that gave a lovely scent to everything. There were a few advantages to being a Jewish American Princess with a sizable savings account, she said. Hoping to keep her at Smith so that they could keep us apart, her parents had been excessively generous during the past year. Wasn’t I pleased to know she came with a dowry?
I imagined Little Benny slapping me on the back, calling me the Prince, asking me when I was going to take over the kingdom. When there were no more armies, I’d say, and he’d laugh at me, tell me I had my father’s sense of humor. Gail showed me a small package in fancy white paper that contained a wedding gift for me, a plain brown Wool-worth’s bag with rings in it—a gold band for each of us, a fake diamond engagement ring for her. There was lots of clothing—a bathrobe, slippers, a new plaid sportshirt for me, a change of clothes for her. She’d bought new underwear and socks for me, and one of her brother’s old sweaters in case the evenings were cool. She’d brought along some books in case we became bored with one another, and she had also packed her clock-radio, wrapped in a towel the way the champagne was, so that we could listen to music, and her old Brownie camera so we could take pictures. It was the camera she had received from Ellen for her Bat Mitzvah, and she wondered what I made of that, of Ellen giving her a machine for the seeing.
She took a manila envelope from the bottom of the second suitcase, showed me her birth certificate, the results of the blood test, the list of necessary addresses: justice of the peace, hotel, town hall. I gave her my birth certificate, the paper with the result of my blood test, and she assured me again that she’d been over the whole thing with one of the older girls at Smith, a girl who had transferred from Goucher. Everyone knew about Elkton. It was the Reno of the Eastern Seaboard. What postage stamps were to the Republic of San Marino, early weddings were to Elkton, Maryland.
In a corner of the larger suitcase, carefully wrapped and stuffed with newspapers, was a p
lain drinking glass. When the ceremony was over, she said, she would wrap the glass in a handkerchief, set it on the floor, and I was to stamp on it. Her eyes were radiant now, imagining the look we would get from the justice of the peace and his wife. She explained the purpose of the glass to me, its symbolism in Jewish wedding ceremonies as a reminder of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, of the seriousness and sadness—the history—that were present at all times in our lives, that would mingle always with our happiness. She knew I hadn’t been brought up to believe in such stuff, but we were both Jewish, after all, and she wondered if, after we returned and announced the great event to our families, I would mind having a second ceremony performed by a rabbi. She wanted my blessing most of all, but just to be safe—because she wasn’t sure if she believed or disbelieved—could we get God’s blessing too?
Was there anything she’d forgotten? She took a small brown stuffed animal from the suitcase—brown doggie, she called him—and told me not to be jealous, and she placed brown doggie on my lap with the bag of sandwiches. I wondered what my father would have thought. Would he have liked Gail? For the first time in a while I saw his face clearly. He stood to one side, by himself, shading his good eye, while a rabbi married us. Tears ran down both his cheeks. Was it possible? Could his bad eye weep? When the ceremony was over and I’d kissed Gail and crushed the glass, he took my face between his hands and kissed me on the lips and told me I made him happy and that he was sorry he had given away the gas mask. He should have told them it was lost. He should have paid the penalty and given it to me. Could I forgive him?
“When I was younger,” Gail was saying, “I’d stay home some days just so I could watch ‘Bride and Groom.’ My mother couldn’t figure it out because I seemed so—unorthodox is the word, I suppose—in other ways. They worried about me because of the way I didn’t want to be like the other girls at school. But I always liked dolls and stuffed animals and I always loved weddings. Why? When I sat on the living room rug and watched the couples get married on TV, I even used to cry. Can you believe it?” She laughed. “I used to fantasize about being on the show, about the gown I’d wear, the veil, the long flowing train behind me, about Ellen being my maid of honor, about the music I wanted, about how clear and smooth and fair my skin would be.” She lifted brown doggie and kissed its nose, offered it to me. She shrugged. “Well. Maybe in my next life I’ll get to do it that way.”
The last thing we talked about before Gail fell asleep was Jackie Robinson, and it seemed crazy to me, but in a wonderful way, that in the middle of our wedding night I’d sat on the edge of the bed in our hotel room, and stroked her forehead, and told her the story of Jackie Robinson’s life. And when I gave her the news I’d been saving—that Jackie’s third child, born the week before, was a boy, and that Jackie and Rachel had named the boy David—she filled our glasses with more champagne, and we toasted the new David and wished him long life and happiness.
She lay there listening to me, her eyes closed, and said that Ellen was probably right—that I did have the gentlest voice of any man she had ever known. Probably? I asked. She smiled, said that she thought a lot about my voice when we were apart. Gentilesse. That was the name she had given me. Did I mind? The word was used in tales of courtly love, in Chaucer’s work, and described men—knights usually—who possessed in rare combinations the qualities of gentleness, courtesy and good breeding. Gentilesse David, she said, trailing her fingers lightly down the planes of my face. Nor should I think that being gentle meant that I was weak. Gentleness could be allied with power, with strength….
Now she was fast asleep. I watched her, wondered if it were possible that we were there alone, just the two of us, far from everything and everyone we had ever known. I was seventeen years old. I was happy in a way I’d never believed possible. But how could one feel so full of peace and love and not, at the same time, be afraid that such feelings would, in the next instant, be taken away?
I felt as if I were adrift on a clear, still lake—without cares or worries, without either a past or a future. I had no idea of time, or how long I’d been sitting there in the chair, staring at her, studying her face, drawing her picture. I’d taken the gift wrapping from the present she’d given me—her own copy of The Diary of Anne Frank, her favorite passages marked lightly in the margins, in pencil—and turned the paper over and used that. When she was twelve she had read The Diary of Anne Frank for the first time. Since then she had read it once a year, and she had asked me if we could read it to one another once a year for the rest of our lives. Long before she’d worked up the courage to approach me, she said, she’d thought of me as Peter, of herself as Anne.
I set my drawing on the bed, opened the book to the passage she’d asked me to read aloud to her. I think a lot, but I don’t say much. I am happy if I see him and if the sun shines when I’m with him. I was very excited yesterday; while I was washing my hair, I knew that he was sitting in the room next to ours. I couldn’t do anything about it; the more quiet and serious I feel inside, the more noisy I became outwardly.
Which parts of Anne Frank were like me? Which like her? If Anne Frank had survived, Gail wondered, what then? Had she lived, would we read her book in the same way? Why had she perished only a few days before Auschwitz was liberated?
Gail’s dark curls were spread out against the pillow, brown doggie peeking out next to her bare shoulder. How was it possible, I wondered, that she was so still now and had been so wildly passionate only a few hours before? The back of her wrist was across her eyes, her hand toward me, cupped slightly, slack. Did I dare to lift it so that I could see her eyes better, so that I could finish drawing them? I set The Diary of Anne Frank on the bed, next to the drawing. I wanted to run my tongue along her forearm, her wrist, the shadow of her palm.
I went to the window. I thought of Anne Frank in her family’s secret apartment, looking out at the roofs of Amsterdam, at the horizon that was so pale there seemed to be no dividing line between earth and sky. As long as that world existed, she wrote—the city, the sunshine, the cloudless skies, the heavens—and as long as she was alive to see it, she believed that she could not be unhappy. I reached behind the lace curtain, pulled the shade sideways and looked into the street. We were on the third floor. It was just beginning to be light out. A Borden’s milk truck was parked across the street in front of the Elkton Fancy Diner. The milkman came out of the diner dressed in white, looking as if he were an orderly in a hospital. Behind the diner was an open field, tall grass mostly, with several large climbing rocks and, near the far end, a flatter section. Boards and tires were set up for a backstop, a large area cleared of grass and stones for an infield, and beyond the backstop a high wall of slate-colored rock and scrubby trees. A single four-storey apartment house sat on top of the small rise, and the television antennas crowded together on the rooftop, like bright silver framing for box kites, caught the morning light and shimmered.
“David?”
I turned.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Just staring.”
“No. I mean what are you doing here, with this?”
She sat up, pulling the sheet with her. She held the piece of paper in the air.
“Oh that.”
“It’s me.”
“I was just sketching a little, to pass the time. I couldn’t sleep.”
“You were just sketching a little to pass the time. You mean you drew this while I was sleeping? I’m not dreaming?”
“I didn’t mean for you to see it yet.”
“You didn’t mean for me to see it yet. Are you serious?” She came to me. “You did something like this for me and you weren’t going to let me see it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe when I was done.”
She pulled the shade up halfway so that the daylight could shine on the paper without hurting her eyes. I’d drawn her in profile, just a few curving lines near the bottom to capture the way her head rested in the pillow. I loved the
shape of her head, the hard, perfect oval of her skull. I was pleased that I’d been able to suggest that shape—its weight—with just a few strokes.
“Oh, I do like it, David. I do. Only—”
“Only what?”
“Only somehow you seem to have left out all my imperfections. The moonlike craters in my cheeks. Here.” She touched the paper. Her nipples grazed my forearm. “You shaded in the space around my eyes and under my lip, but you left my cheeks white and smooth—embossed in egg-shell white, I’ll grant—but smooth. Did you do it to flatter me? Were you afraid of hurting my feelings?”
“I was drawing you in profile. Haven’t you ever seen the way—?”
She cut me off by kissing me. She began pushing me backwards, toward the bed, but without taking her lips from mine. She reached down, slid her hand inside my underpants. I felt her falling, stumbling—our teeth clicked—and I realized that, our eyes closed, we’d forgotten about the chair I’d been sitting on. We laughed. I pushed her onto the bed, pinned her wrists, spread her legs apart. I was breathing hard, and all I wanted was to be inside her again, to feel the wonderful moist tongues there gripping me. Her eyes opened and closed, almost as if she were in pain. She whimpered slightly. Could she, when she started to go wild this way, even remember having done it before with me? I sometimes found myself hesitating for an instant when she was like this, wondering if it mattered that it was me on top of her, or if any body would have served. She was lifting my shirt, moving her hands across my stomach, straining toward me. I knew what she wanted and I kissed her breasts, her throat, her mouth. Her hands moved along my sides, over my breasts, up into my armpits. She grabbed me there, thumbs pressing in, tongue going wild around mine.
Before My Life Began Page 25
