That made him laugh. “Not at all,” he said. “And what of it? If I can’t get my daughter some special favors, what good is being the president of the bank?”
“Still, she’s right, Harrington. You shouldn’t go out of your way to give her privileges other employees don’t enjoy.”
“I think I know how to run the bank, Rosemary. No worries there,” he said sternly.
“Well, I was the one who suggested she take a day of rest.”
“So noted,” my father said. “And a good, sensible business suggestion it is. If an employee is not up to his or her usual standards, I always suggest something similar. Take the day off,” he told me. “That’s an order from your official boss.”
“Thank you,” I said. I looked at my mother. “Thank you, Mommy.”
She looked quite satisfied. It wasn’t often that I called her Mommy. There was always so wide a gap of formality between us, but right now, my fear had turned me into a little girl again. I waited for nearly an hour after my father left, dressed in my cycling outfit, and told my mother I needed some fresh air and a little exercise. Before she could protest, I left the house.
I set off quickly.
I knew exactly where I was going.
I knew exactly where I would find Nurse Grace Rose.
After I described my concerns, Nurse Rose’s words, although spoken softly, were thunderous.
“A woman can lose her virginity and at the same time have one of her eggs fertilized. Losing your virginity has nothing to do with the natural process.”
I guess I wore a stunned expression, looking like I either didn’t understand or refused to.
“You can get pregnant, yes, Corrine,” she emphasized, more like pounded.
“But the first time ever?”
“Nature doesn’t know that or care. I explained to you why and when you had to be most careful, when you would be most susceptible. Why didn’t you listen? You seemed like a very intelligent young lady. I told you more than I tell most girls when they are your age. I even described methods to ensure you avoided all this. Most women would have simply said, ‘Don’t have sex until you’re married.’ I’ve lived long enough and seen enough to know that’s unrealistic.”
I sat back, hoping I was in a dream. I’d wake up soon. She wasn’t telling me what I had hoped to hear.
We were on the screened front porch of her small Queen Anne home. I had been lucky to catch her there. She was on a night schedule for an elderly lady, Mrs. Louella Woodhouse, whose son was a church deacon. She looked at me with a mixed expression of pity and anger and disappointment.
“It wasn’t something I intended to happen,” I said dryly, like someone who had just been struck in the face by a gust of heavy, wet wind. “I didn’t forget most of what you told me. It wasn’t because of remembering all that this morning that I came over here.”
Her eyes widened. She was wearing a light-green cotton bathrobe. She had just finished washing her hair and was still wiping it dry when I had cycled up to her house and knocked on the door. She had paused, surprised to see me, and after taking a closer look at my face, had suggested we both sit. Maybe because she was a nurse, she could feel the way my very bones were vibrating.
“Are you saying you were raped?”
“I don’t know if I’d put it that way,” I replied. “I was offered too much of a unique lemon alcohol drink made in Italy, and I didn’t realize how it would affect me. I drank too much of it.”
“So someone took advantage of you when you were inebriated?”
Now that this had happened, was I prepared to cast all the dark, black sheet of blame over Garland Foxworth?
“Maybe,” I said.
“I don’t understand. How can that be maybe? There are no maybes or almosts when it comes to this.”
I looked away. The tears felt like they were freezing over my eyes and I was looking at the world through snow. Garland’s smile faded in and out. Somewhere on the street, little girls were laughing, and for a moment, I longed to be a child again, free to do anything that didn’t make me or my clothes dirty as long as I was where my mother knew I’d be. But I was never an angel, I thought, even then.
“I’m not entirely without fault,” I said in a voice barely above a whisper. “I went to Charlottesville deliberately to see him and used visiting a great-aunt as an excuse. When I was there, I willingly went to his home without any chaperone or anyone knowing. My great-aunt and her servant are too old to realize anything. The gentleman didn’t force me to drink. I did willingly take it.”
“More than one?”
“Yes, and then everything just seemed to happen so fast. I didn’t offer any real resistance.”
Nurse Rose sat back, the right corner of her mouth tucked in as she thought about what I had just said. “Willingly didn’t offer any? Are you saying you led this young man into believing this was all right, that you wanted it to happen?”
“No. Certainly not,” I protested. “Not this.”
She nodded but didn’t look like she completely believed me. “All right, Corrine. How much fault will your young man admit to?” she asked.
I shook my head. Could he blame it all on me? Would he?
“Does he know yet?”
“No.”
“And your parents? They know nothing of this yet?”
“Nothing.”
“I think that is where you have to begin, Corrine. Have you been nauseated in the morning, unusually tired?”
“Not nauseated, but I have been tired. I was too tired to go to work today. My father has me working in his bank.”
“I heard,” she said, smiling, and then, as if she realized how insignificant all that was now, her smile flew off her face like a frightened hummingbird. “How much longer you will do that depends on how your body reacts. Some women are lucky; some suffer most of the symptoms early.”
“I have often overheard my mother tell her friends how difficult it was for her to have me.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean it will be the same for you.”
“What else happens? I mean, right now.”
“You might soon find yourself going to the bathroom more often, urinating.”
I nodded.
“That’s begun?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll gain weight, of course. Some women don’t show for quite a while, even into the seventh month. From what you have told me, you’re most surely into your second month.”
Visions of pregnant women marched by, with me making up the end of the parade, my beautiful figure almost beyond memory. I never imagined myself envying any pregnant women, even though most I had met were happy to be with child. Years and years of overhearing how miserable my mother was should have made me more careful. I was thinking that when I married, I would never get pregnant, even if my husband thought it was the most important thing in the world. I’d do everything possible to prevent it until he finally gave up.
And then I thought, what kind of a marriage would that be without a family? It all twirled in my head. I was still in that state of confusion I expected every young woman experiences as she moves from childhood fantasies to adult reality. But then again, I always wanted the pleasure and satisfaction without having to suffer any effort or pain to get it. Right now, though, it was still difficult for me to believe this was actually happening to me. Perhaps my mother was the same way at my age and that was how I came about. Maybe we were more alike than I or even she cared to admit. But what good would that do me now, even if she confessed it? She loved saying, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“You can tell your mother I’ll be available to help you in any way she or you wish,” Grace Rose said, sitting forward to take my hand. “But as I said, your first responsibility now is to talk to your parents. You must make decisions as a family. Of course, I will keep your confidence.” She sat back again.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Unfortunately, you won’t be the
first to whom I made such a promise.”
That didn’t make me feel any better. I rose, started to turn, and stopped.
“I heard that sometimes babies just fall out way too soon and no one even knows the woman was pregnant. Can that happen to me?”
Her eyelids narrowed. “Don’t keep this a secret from your parents and then do something foolish to yourself, Corrine. Women can bleed to death. I’ve seen enough of that, too. If too much time goes by and it’s clear to me that you haven’t told your parents . . .”
“I will. I promise,” I said.
“Good.”
I took a deep breath, nodded, thanked her, and walked to my bike. She remained sitting on the porch until I was on my way. Just before I made the turn, I looked back. She was still sitting there, looking like she was in deep thought, her hair still wet, the towel dangling from her hand as if she no longer knew what to do with it.
How much of what was happening to me had happened to her? She was yet unmarried and now living alone since both her parents had passed away. Again, I wondered why she didn’t marry. Could she have had a baby secretly, a baby someone quickly adopted? Suddenly, every woman’s story was important to me, but especially those who did get pregnant too soon while still having wonderful romances. This was one time when I didn’t want to be the center of attention. I wanted to listen to others describe how they avoided becoming me.
I pedaled on, my heart pounding all the way home. My mother was busy in the kitchen and didn’t hear me return. I went quietly upstairs to my room, feeling like someone drowning in a dream. It hadn’t surprised me to hear Nurse Rose ask if I had told my parents and not specifically ask if I had told my mother. Most girls probably would run to their mothers first; it was a woman’s crisis. Their fathers would be the ones raging, and their mothers would be embracing them and crying for them. Nurse Rose realized what my mother was like from the very fact that my mother had hired her to do a mother’s first important mother-daughter talk.
No, I thought, this was something I had to tell my father first. I dreaded it, dreaded how his face would shatter. All he had planned for me, all that had made him so proud of me, would drop out of his eyes and to his feet like tears formed out of stone. He would never look at me the same way again. I knew how he would take it. I had betrayed him, betrayed his dreams for me and therefore his dreams for himself.
The man I loved and respected, the man who walked with such self-confidence, shoulders back, stride firm, the man who won the admiration of any man who knew him, would suddenly stoop and lower his eyes like a flag dropped to half-mast to mark the death of someone very important. The parasites would come out of the woodwork with their mean and ugly gossip to gnaw at him and our family. Who knew? Maybe he would lose his position at the bank or certainly not be elected chairman of the board. And all this would come raining down on him just when he was so happy about building us a new home, making his star brighten.
I closed my eyes and lay back on my bed. The fatigue Nurse Rose had suggested I might continue to experience appeared to be rushing into my body faster from every angle, up my arms to my neck, up my legs to my stomach and my back. Sleep was like someone on Arthur Raymond’s football field calling “Time out.” I was grateful. For a while, at least, I would not think about any of this.
When I opened my eyes again, my father was standing there looking down at me. He wore a deeply worried and concerned expression. My first fearful thought was that Nurse Rose, after giving it all more thought and deciding not to have any responsibility, had sent a message to him at the bank and he had come rushing home. But when I glanced at the clock, I saw I had slept away the remainder of the afternoon and he was home when he usually returned.
“How are you, Corrine? Your mother didn’t know you had returned from your cycling. When I came into the house, she thought you were still out somewhere. I told her I saw your bike lying by the shed. Why didn’t you put it back? Are you all right? Why are you sleeping so much? Does anything hurt?”
I sat up slowly and quickly brought my hands to my face, like someone trying to be sure she was awake or like someone reassuring herself she was still in her body. My father’s eyes darkened. It was never easy to tell my father a lie or try to hide my feelings from him. I always believed in my heart that he knew when I was pretending or being overly dramatic to get my way. Sometimes, with things far less important, it amused him. I had to believe that came from a very deep love.
“Corrine?” he said, stepping closer. I was looking out my window at a passing cloud that had ripples of dark gray across its belly. A tree swallow right outside my window was gossiping with other swallows nearby. For a moment, the sounds were hypnotic. I wished I could rise off my bed and fly out the window.
“Corrine,” my father said in a more demanding tone. “What is going on with you?”
“I lied to you,” I said. He stared silently, anticipating I would continue, but I felt like I had spent my ability to speak for the rest of my life with just those four words.
“What lie?” he asked. “Well?”
“I did go to Foxworth Hall that night.”
He nodded. “I can’t tell you I wasn’t suspicious, Corrine. I knew how taken with Garland Foxworth you were, and from the way you described your great-aunt Nettie’s home and what was happening, the temptation to do something more interesting and exciting was surely there.”
“It was more than just that, Daddy.”
He nodded again. “Anyway, I’m glad you decided to tell me the truth. I don’t want there ever to be gaps of distrust between us. Lies between people who love each other are like cancer.”
I could see how eager he was to end with this, to wrap up this uncomfortable moment with only that simple confession. How I wished I could, how I wished I deserved this father who was so forgiving and who loved me too much ever to despise me.
“I was impressed with Garland Foxworth from the moment I met him at the Wexlers’. I can’t say I’m not still. He’s very good-looking and has traveled so much and . . .”
“And?” His eyes narrowed as he realized I was not finished with my confession. “So you went to his home and . . .”
“He showed me some of Foxworth Hall, and we ended up in a room upstairs, where he had a drink he had discovered during his travels in Italy.”
“What drink?”
“He called it limoncello and was so taken with it he wrote down a recipe someone in Italy gave him and had it made here. We talked, and I drank, and—”
My father’s eyes darkened. His body stiffened. “You got sick from it?”
“Yes, but—”
“You were alone in this room the entire time?”
“Yes.”
He turned like he was going to run out but just stared down at the floor. “How far did it go, Corrine?”
I took the deepest breath of my life first. “Earlier today, I cycled to Nurse Grace Rose’s home to ask her some questions about myself.”
He looked up quickly, his face sizzling with growing fear and rage.
I was afraid to look at him and looked down at my hands in my lap instead.
“Why?” he asked.
“I thought . . . I was worried that I was pregnant.”
He was silent. I could hear his deepening breaths.
The bird outside, as though it had eavesdropped on our conversation, flew away. I heard no other. The whole world seemed to be holding its breath.
“And what did Nurse Rose tell you?”
“She said I was . . . was pregnant.”
His legs seemed to go out on him. He sat on the edge of my bed quickly.
“It was the first time I had ever . . . but that doesn’t matter,” I said. Right now, I felt like I had to keep talking, or I would start screaming and crying. “I thought we were just going to be a little romantic. He was so impressed with me and I with him, right from the first time we met at the Wexler gala.”
He folded his hands into fists. They had never
looked so big. They were more like mallets. I had never seen my father violent, but from the way his neck tightened, I thought he was on the verge of being just that.
“Who else knows about this?” he asked in a very deliberately controlled voice, punching out each word as if it was a sentence unto itself.
“Just Nurse Rose knows. I haven’t told Mother. She doesn’t know I went there, went to Foxworth Hall, either, of course.”
He shook his head and smacked his lips. His upper body rocked a bit. “I warned you. I told you that you had so many young woman’s years yet. I was telling you to be careful. I thought you were smarter than this, wiser for your age.”
“I know, Daddy. I’m so sorry and so ashamed,” I said, the tears now trickling faster and faster down my cheeks. I flicked them off and sucked in my breath.
He froze and now was simply staring at me. I wondered if he was seeing his little girl again or if he was now seeing someone he didn’t recognize or want to acknowledge. Maybe he would send me out of the house, have me taken somewhere so I’d be out of sight and out of mind. I couldn’t blame him.
“You’re only sixteen,” he said. “Garland Foxworth is a man of the world, a man in his twenties. It must have been like fishing in a bathtub for him,” he said bitterly.
“It wasn’t entirely his fault,” I said.
He looked at me askance. “What? You are still fond of this man, a man who had his way with you and seemingly discarded you as so much used goods?”
“If I hadn’t drunk so much, maybe—”
“Maybe that was exactly why he brought you to his home.”
“I thought . . . he was so charming, and he cared for me.”
“Oh, he cared. I’ll grant him that.”
My father’s face hardened in a way I had never seen. His eyes looked like they had frozen, his teeth clenched and the bones of his jaw pressed so hard against his skin that I thought it might tear.
“I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“I’ll destroy him,” he said through his still-clenched teeth. “Every business he has, every investor who had joined any of his enterprises . . .”
Beneath the Attic Page 15
