Hope Street: Hope StreetThe Marriage Bed Page 27

  “Talk to me, Bobby,” she pleaded.

  “And say what?”

  Say you’re hurting. Say you’re afraid. Say you want to make love to me again, gently this time. Love, not sex. Not anger. But he hated to discuss his feelings, to probe and analyze and bare his soul. For thirty-seven years, she’d been trying to get him to talk, and he never did. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  He lay quietly for a stretch, his rib cage rising and falling beneath his skin, his eyes shielded from her. After a while he moved his arm away from his face, but only to stare at the ceiling. “When you build a stone wall,” he said, “you’ve got to pick each stone out and put it in exactly the right place. If you want the wall to be stable, you have to do it right. The size of the stones. The shape.”

  She wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but at least he was talking. She waited for him to continue.

  “We didn’t lay the foundation down right,” he murmured. “We’re standing on that wall and it’s shaking beneath our feet. It’s going to collapse. And we’re going to fall.”

  “We’ll get through this, Bobby. I know we will.”

  He shook his head. “We’re falling, Jo. An dit’s along way down.”

  Lying in a bed now cold, with her husband beside her yet a thousand miles away and that awful silence once again settling into the space between them, Joelle wondered how long the fall was and how broken they would be when they landed.

  FOUR

  October 1970

  BOBBY PREFERRED THE part of the cemetery farthest from his mother’s grave. When he worked over in her section, near Bailey Road, he found himself lingering at her site, paying too much attention to each weed that dared to poke through the grass, dusting smudges of dirt from her headstone. Reading the stone: Claudia Ricci DiFranco, February 27, 1930–May 6, 1964. Beloved wife and mother. She is with the angels now. As if he didn’t have the damn thing memorized. As if there was any question in his mind where she was.

  Where she wasn’t was with him and his brother, Eddie, who were certainly no angels. And she wasn’t with their father, who had as much angel in him as the headstone had diamonds.

  It was better when he was mowing the lawn on the Jackson Street side of the cemetery. He didn’t have to think about angels and his mother as he tidied up the landscape around the older graves, some of them dating back to the late 1800s. Old families in Holmdell had designed little family parks within the cemetery, with the graves all clustered and marble benches where visitors could rest. People rarely left flowers on the old grave sites, although the town always planted a little American flag by each veteran’s grave on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Veteran’s Day. Bobby had had to clear away all the American flags twice this season, but he would be gone by the time Veteran’s Day rolled around, on his way to becoming a veteran himself.

  Autumn was late arriving in southern Ohio this year. The midafternoon air was hot and heavy, but he wasn’t allowed to remove his shirt while he worked. A bare chest was disrespectful to the dead, his boss had scolded him when he’d yanked off his T-shirt and looped it around his belt one scorching afternoon a couple of months ago. He’d learned to bring an extra bandanna with him—one to use as a headband and the other to mop the sweat off his face.

  Only two more hours and he could punch out for the day, he thought as the mower’s engine made a stuttering noise and spewed some black smoke out the exhaust pipe. Only ten days and he’d be done with this job and on his way to Fort Dix in New Jersey.

  He paused under an oak dense with summer-green leaves and pretended the shade was cooler than it actually was. Staring down the hill toward the more recent graves, he saw a few people ambling along the paths. Thursday afternoon wasn’t a busy time at the cemetery. Funerals were usually held before noon so that afterward the mourners could eat heartily or drink heavily, depending on how they felt about the dearly departed. Bobby was sometimes assigned to fill in a grave after a funeral service, although that was supposed to be a union job, not a task for the kid who mowed the lawn and pruned the shrubs. But when his boss was shorthanded, or if it was raining and the interment had to be done before the hole filled with muddy water, he wound up shoveling.

  He spotted a visitor heading up the hill toward him, walking in long, purposeful strides. Sun-streaked blond hair swung below her shoulders and her white peasant blouse and denim bell-bottoms hung wilted on her slender frame. He knew that walk, that hair. He knew those beautiful blue eyes.

  He shut off the lawn mower. If Joelle had come to see him—and she didn’t have any loved ones buried in the cemetery, so Bobby figured he was the reason she was here—he could take a break.

  He leaned against the tree and pulled a crushed pack of Marlboros from the breast pocket of his faded blue work shirt. By the time he’d shaken out a cigarette she was within shouting distance. Her face was pale and her smile was one of those brave, quivery things women wore when they were about to burst into tears.

  He slid a book of matches from where he’d wedged it inside the cellophane wrapper of the cigarette pack. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Have you got a minute?”

  “Five minutes at least,” he said, gesturing toward a memorial bench near the tree. She sat on it and propped her purse in her lap. It was a patchwork fabric sack with velvet drawstrings, and she’d told him some time ago that she’d designed and sewn it herself. Bobby was in awe of her talent.

  He wondered if she’d traveled here straight from school. She was enrolled in classes at the community college, trying to make something of herself. She had so much going for her—brains, school, a rich boyfriend at Dartmouth and all that gorgeous blond hair—while Bobby cut grass and counted the days until he got shipped overseas. He would have thought that by now she’d have become friendly with her college classmates. She had no reason to hang out with him anymore.

  Yet she did. No matter that she was on the path to bigger and better things; she clearly valued their friendship. Just one more reason he loved her.

  He lit the cigarette while he waited for her to speak. “I need a favor,” she finally said, gazing at the ornately carved headstone of Abigail Charney, who’d died in 1914 and was spending eternity in a grave a few feet from the bench.

  “Sure.”

  She glanced at him, then turned back to stare at the gravestone. “Can you drive me to Cincinnati?”

  He almost laughed—that was such a small thing to ask. He’d been expecting something a lot more demanding, given her obvious distress. “You can’t borrow your mother’s car?”

  “No.” She shook her head, just in case he hadn’t understood her answer. “I could take the bus, but I—” Her voice broke.

  Hell. Just as he’d predicted, she started to cry. He pulled the blue bandanna from the hip pocket of his jeans and handed it to her, glad that it wasn’t too sweaty. “Screw the bus,” he said. “I’ll drive you down. When do you have to go?”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks. She dabbed at them with his bandanna. “It has to be a weekday. I’m sorry. That probably messes up your work schedule.”

  “Big deal. I’ll call in sick.” For Joelle, he’d call in dead.

  “It’s just that…” She swallowed hard. “I have to see a doctor.”

  Despite the afternoon’s heat, fear rippled like ice down his back. Holmdell had doctors. She must be seriously ill if she had to travel all the way to Cincinnati to meet with one. A specialist, maybe. At one of the big hospitals.

  He eased closer to her on the bench and bent so he could peer into her downturned face. “What’s wrong, Jo?”

  She lifted her chin and gazed at him, her eyes puffy and her cheeks streaked with tears. “I’m pregnant.”

  SHE COULDN’T BELIEVE THIS had happened to her.

  Of course, she could believe it. This sort of thing happened to girls all the time. And in her case, it was clear Drew hadn’t known what he was doing with that damn condom. She remembered the humiliation of having him pr
y it out of her with his fingers, how nauseating the entire experience had been.

  Little had she known then how much worse it would become.

  Fresh tears spilled out of her eyes and she squeezed them shut. When the nurse at the college clinic had told her the results of her pregnancy test, she’d managed to hold back her tears until she was outside the building. Then she’d collapsed onto a bench and wept, and thought: I have to talk to Bobby. Not her mother, who would immediately view this ghastly mistake as a way to capture Drew. Not even Drew.

  Bobby was her friend. They were honest with each other. They trusted each other. In a crisis, he was the one she wanted by her side.

  Once she’d calmed down, though, she’d realized she had to tell Drew first. She’d phoned him at his dormitory and forced out the words: “I’m pregnant, Drew. I’m sorry. I’m pregnant.”

  “Okay. Don’t panic, Joelle. I can’t talk now,” he’d said, though he hadn’t explained exactly why he couldn’t, what pressing matter he had to deal with that was more important than his girlfriend’s pregnancy. “I’ll get back to you soon, though. Don’t worry, okay? We’ll deal with this.”

  He’d gotten back to her, all right. The creep.

  Now, belatedly, she’d approached Bobby. She prayed that he would live up to her trust and help her do what had to be done. She could get through this disaster alone if she had to—at least, she hoped she could. But if Bobby could help, if he could hold her hand through the ordeal and offer her a shoulder to lean on…Maybe it wouldn’t be quite so bad.

  Seated next to her on the bench, he leaned back and dragged on his cigarette. Gray smoke streamed between his lips as he sighed. “What kind of doctor are we talking about?”

  “You know what kind,” she said, her voice hoarse from her tears.

  “Shit, Jo. You don’t want to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s against the law.”

  “Don’t lay that on me.” She heard the anger in her voice and immediately felt contrite. Bobby didn’t deserve her anger. He was only saying what she’d been thinking about nonstop ever since she’d received Drew’s letter. “I have the name of a doctor who does this. He’s supposed to be safe.”

  Bobby scrutinized her, squinting as if he thought that would bring her into clearer focus. Please, she begged silently, please don’t judge me. Please don’t hate me for doing what I have to do. “Who gave you the doctor’s name?” he asked, and she understood his disapproval then. It was aimed at Drew, not her.

  He’d obviously guessed, but she answered his question anyway. “I called Drew,” she said. “I reached him at his dormitory and told him. He said he’d get back to me, and he did.” Her breath hitched from all her crying and she fidgeted with the ties of her purse. “I got a letter from him today. He sent me the name of a doctor and some money. Enough to pay for everything. The doctor and transportation, too.”

  “I’m not going charge you car fare,” Bobby muttered. He rubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his boot. “How much did he send?”

  “A thousand dollars.”

  Bobby flinched. “A thousand dollars? What—is he buying you off?”

  She had to admit that possibility had crossed her mind, too. “I have no idea what these kinds of doctors charge. Drew sent me a check. I can’t cash it in town. Everyone would know. I guess there would be a bank branch in Cincinnati, or somewhere along the way…”

  Bobby shook his head and cursed again. “Do you want to do this? Is this your choice, or are you just doing it to make Foster happy?”

  “What else can I do?” Her voice began to wobble again. “I can’t spend nine months pregnant and then give my baby away. I just couldn’t do that. And I can’t raise the baby myself. I know what that’s like, Bobby. It’s the story of my life.”

  She’d told Bobby years ago about the father who’d briefly, mysteriously drifted through her life. Dale Webber had been a cross-country trucker who used to detour off the highway to avoid weigh stations. He’d met Joelle’s mother during one of those detours and they’d gotten involved, enough that every time he was passing through Ohio he’d stop in Holmdell to spend time with Wanda, the cute waitress at the Bank Street Diner. During one of those stops, he’d knocked her up.

  Joelle had vague memories of Dale’s visiting and bringing her a coloring book and a shabby little doll when she was a toddler. But after a while the visits ended, and when Joelle was about five, her mother had received a letter from a woman who claimed to be Dale’s sister in California. The woman reported that Dale had been killed in a highway accident, and she’d enclosed some money from an insurance settlement and they’d never seen Dale again.

  Joelle’s mother had used the money to buy a car. A Rambler. “It seems appropriate,” Wanda had said. “Your dad was a rambling man.”

  Whether her dad had married her mother, Joelle couldn’t say for sure. But one day in fourth grade, Tommy Travers had called her a bastard child. She hadn’t even known what that meant, but she’d denied it. She’d stood up to that sniveling bully and told him she wasn’t a bastard child, because she understood innately that a bastard child was not a good thing to be.

  “I don’t want a life like my mother’s,” she told Bobby now. “And I don’t want my child to grow up the way I did.”

  “So Foster mails you a check and tells you to deal with the problem? He can’t even come back and get you through it?”

  “He’s in college,” she pointed out. It was no excuse, but she’d rather defend Drew than admit that he’d given her money with the hope that she’d deal with her problem and disappear from his life.

  Bobby pulled another cigarette from his pocket and a book of matches. She watched him bend a match inside its cardboard folder with his thumb and scrape its tip against the flint. It flared into flame and he lit the cigarette, inhaling deeply. “What about adoption?” he asked.

  “I can’t do that,” she said. “Like I said, I can’t spend nine months with this baby inside me and then give it away. I just couldn’t do that.”

  He smoked in silence, staring at the sunlight-dappled gravestone in front of them, though his eyes seemed focused somewhere else. He said nothing until his cigarette was gone and he’d stubbed it out. Then he turned to her. “I’ll marry you.”

  She gaped at him, too shocked to speak.

  “I’ll be your baby’s father,” he elaborated.

  Was he nuts? He would take responsibility for her and a baby that wasn’t even his? When she’d screwed up so royally, when she’d pretty much ruined her life with her own stupidity? When she’d told him all summer long that she dreamed of marrying Drew? Bobby was her best friend in the world, but what he was offering went way beyond what anyone should do for a friend. It was crazy.

  She couldn’t insult him by saying so. Instead she said, “You’re about to leave for basic training.”

  “That’s what’ll make it work, Jo. It’s not like we’d have to live with each other or anything. I’d be away, you’d be my wife, you’d have your baby and then when I got home, we could figure out where we stood.”

  “Bobby.” He couldn’t be that generous. Not to her. She didn’t deserve such kindness, such a sacrifice on his part.

  “If something happens to me in Vietnam,” he continued, sounding calm and logical, “there are widow’s benefits. You could use those to support yourself and the kid.”

  No. She’d been an idiot. She’d gotten pregnant, like some careless, dim-witted slut. Bobby DiFranco was too good-hearted, too decent, to be stuck cleaning up her messes. “Bobby, I—”

  “To tell you the truth, having a wife and baby waiting for me back home would help me. It would, you know—keep my spirits up.”

  That brought her up short. Maybe he wasn’t offering to marry her strictly out of charity. He saw something in it for him, too. A wife waiting at home for him. A wife who would write to him, who would send him home-baked cookies and dry socks and reminders of all the good th
ings he’d be returning to once he finished his service. She’d be at home, praying every day for his safety. That might be enough to get him through his year in ’Nam.

  “I’d have something to come back to,” he explained. “I need that, Jo.”

  “What about Margie?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to come back to her?”

  He snorted. “There’s nothing there,” he said. “We’re just…You want to know the truth? We’re both just waiting for me to leave so we can break up without going through the fights and the hurt feelings. She thinks she’s doing her patriotic duty, going out with me until I leave for basic.”

  “I’m sure she loves you,” Joelle argued, even though she had no basis for that assertion.

  He shook his head. “We’re already history. Just waiting for Uncle Sam to make it official.” He gazed at Joelle’s hands, folded tensely atop her purse and then at her face. “I could give your baby a name, Jo,” he said quietly. “And then, if I got home and we decided this wasn’t what we wanted, we could get a divorce. But your baby would have a name.”

  Without thinking, she moved her hands to her stomach and pressed. So flat, so smooth. A baby she couldn’t even feel was in there, and Bobby was willing to give it his name. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. “Wouldn’t it bother you, knowing that the baby…”

  “Was Foster’s?” He turned back to stare at the gravestone again. “If we do this, the baby is mine. Your baby would be a DiFranco. Could you live with that?”

  She opened her mouth, then shut it. Tears beaded along her lashes and blurred her vision. She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve him. But as stupid as she’d been two months ago, in the backseat of Drew’s father’s Cadillac, she wasn’t stupid enough to reject what Bobby was offering her.

  Had she thought a radio was the best gift she’d ever received? No. This was. Bobby’s help. His friendship. His hand and his name.

  “I would consider it an honor if my baby was a DiFranco,” she said.