Hope Street: Hope StreetThe Marriage Bed Read online

FIVE DAYS LATER, SHE STOOD in her cramped bedroom at the back of the first-floor flat on Third Street one final time. She felt a little queasy, but that was from the pregnancy, not from panic or doubt about what she was doing.

  She was running away with Bobby, her best friend, the most trustworthy guy she’d ever known. She was sad, she was grieving over the fact that her life wasn’t turning out the way she’d planned—but she had no regrets. For as long as she lived, she would do whatever she could to make sure Bobby never had any regrets, either.

  Yesterday morning, she’d mustered her courage and visited the local branch bank. She’d told the teller she was planning to move her account to a bank closer to campus, an explanation the teller had accepted without question. She’d let Joelle empty her account, then cashed Drew’s check and counted fifty twenty-dollar bills into Joelle’s palm. Joelle had stuffed the money into an envelope, which was now zipped inside an inner pocket of her suitcase.

  She’d packed most of her clothing, even though she understood that within a month or two it would no longer fit her. After the baby was born, she hoped she’d get her figure back quickly. If not, maybe she could sell the clothes. The money would come in handy.

  She left her prom dress behind, even though she loved it. She left her radio behind because it reminded her of Drew.

  One stupid time. She’d given herself to him one stupid, stupid time, and he’d told her it would seal their love. Had he always been such a liar? Had she been dumb enough to love him?

  That’s the past, she reminded herself. If she looked backward, she’d trip and fall. She had to look forward, to the future, to her baby. Her baby and Bobby DiFranco.

  Since she didn’t have any classes at the college that day, her mother had taken the car to work. Wanda’s absence simplified Joelle’s departure. If Wanda hadn’t had a shift at the diner, Joelle and Bobby would have had to wait until nighttime to leave, and Joelle would have had to climb out her window—not that difficult, but walking out the front door was a heck of a lot easier.

  Still, she lifted her suitcase over the sill and behind the yews that grew beneath her window and then hoisted out the carton of stuff she was sure she couldn’t live without—her hairbrush and rollers, her makeup, the polished marble egg Bobby had given her for Christmas, her sewing-pattern books, the teddy bear she’d had as a baby, her flashlight, her jewelry box, which had a built-in music box that played “Edelweiss” when the lid was raised and her college textbooks, which had cost a fortune and might prove handy if she could find a school to attend near wherever she and Bobby wound up.

  Passing her belongings through the window was prudent. She didn’t want Mrs. Proski to put down her sherry long enough to peer out her living-room window and catch Joelle marching through the front door with a suitcase and a carton.

  Bobby arrived at around ten in the morning. While he carried her things down the alley to his truck, she circled her bedroom one last time. It wasn’t as if she’d never come back. Of course she would. Her mother would want to see her and the baby. But when she returned to Holmdell, it would be as Joelle DiFranco. Maybe married, maybe divorced—Bobby had seemed pleased by that escape hatch, and if he wanted to leave her, she’d never do anything to stop him—but one way or another, she’d be home again. This wasn’t goodbye forever.

  She reread the note she’d written to her mother:

  Dear Mom,

  I’m aware that isn’t what you hoped for me, but Bobby DiFranco and I have gone to get married. We wanted to do this before he left for Vietnam. I tried to love Drew, but Bobby is the finest man I have ever known. Please be happy for us. I’ll call you once we’re settled in. Love, Joelle

  It was funny to think of Bobby as a man. Almost as funny as thinking of him as her husband. Thinking of herself as a wife—a pregnant one—was so funny she started sobbing.

  She wiped her eyes, blew her nose and left her bedroom. After propping the note against the salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen table where her mother wouldn’t miss it, she left the apartment, locking the door behind her.

  Neither she nor Bobby spoke until they’d crossed the town line. The morning was cloudless, the sky an intense Day-Glo blue. Ahead of them lay acres of pale brown fields, occasionally interrupted by clusters of dried yellow cornstalks left over from the September harvest. Bobby switched on the radio, got static and turned it off.

  “You know how to drive a stick, right?” he asked.

  “I’ll figure it out.” You can teach me, she thought, although she doubted he’d have enough time to show her how to drive his truck before he reported for basic training.

  “I was going to leave the truck behind for Eddie,” he said, “but he’s got another year before he can get his license. You’ll use it for the year, and then when I get back, we’ll see.”

  We’ll see. They would see if they still wanted to be married—if they could even stand to be together in the same room. They’d see if Bobby truly wanted to be a father to someone else’s baby. In another year, God alone knew who they’d be, what they’d want, how they’d feel. The fate of Bobby’s truck was the least of it.

  They stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s east of Columbus. Joelle’s hamburger tasted funny, but pretty much everything had tasted funny ever since the nurse at the college clinic had told her her urine test had been positive. Bobby apparently had no trouble wolfing down two burgers and a sack of fries. He paid for lunch, as if the two of them were on a date.

  All summer long, she’d had no trouble talking to Bobby while they’d nibbled on fries at the A&W. But now she didn’t know what to say, what they were to each other. Seated across from him on a bench at a redwood table with a big plastic umbrella over their heads, she struggled to force down at least half her burger while she stared at him. His thick, dark hair would soon be gone—the very thought of some army barber shearing him like a sheep was enough to make her want to weep. They’d train him to kill and dress him in khaki and then ship him halfway around the world. We’ll see, she thought, realizing for the first time that the next twelve months might change him a lot more than they changed her.

  What if he was shipped home maimed? What if he came back deranged? The news was full of stories about soldiers coming back to the states crazed or strung out on drugs. What if the Bobby DiFranco who returned to her after a year in Vietnam was someone she couldn’t love?

  She would love him anyway. That was her vow to him. She hadn’t spoken the promise, but she’d stitched it into her heart. Bobby had offered her this chance to be a mother, to keep her baby and give it a home. Whatever he wanted—if she could do it for him, she would.

  A group of teenagers drove into the parking lot in a rumbling Camaro. The windows were open and music blasted out of them, Led Zeppelin whining, “Way, way down inside…”

  The song made her scowl. The singer whined about giving some woman a whole lotta love, but the loud, thumping music wasn’t what love was about—at least, not in her mind.

  She peered at Bobby and told herself love was about him, his dark, brooding eyes and his hard jaw and his broad shoulders. She told herself that giving his name to another man’s baby was a whole lotta love.

  He ate without speaking. She wondered if he was having second thoughts, regretting the whole thing, resenting her. He could have stayed home a few more days, spent a few more nights with Margie…

  Unless he’d agreed to marry Joelle to get away from Margie. And his dad.

  “Did you tell your father what we’re doing?” she asked.

  The sound of her voice seemed to startle him. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and lifted his cola. He took a long drink, then shook his head. “I told him I got a call from the draft board asking me to show up earlier for basic.”

  “I left a note for my mother. She’ll be phoning your father soon enough.”

  Bobby emptied the final fry from the paper wrapper and popped it into his mouth. “My father’ll be relieved that he didn’t have to dress up in a m
onkey suit and spend a morning in church watching me get hitched. Your mother’ll yell at him until he hangs up on her.”

  “My mother’s going to blow a fuse.” She would, too. She’d be devastated that Joelle wasn’t marrying Drew. If only Joelle had played things more shrewdly, she could have had a big wedding in the Episcopal church—no matter that Joelle and her mother were Catholic—and a reception at Green Gates Country Club, and then Wanda’s little girl would be set for life, free of Tubtown and poverty forever.

  “What’s up?” Bobby asked as he gathered their trash. “You look worried.”

  “Do you think we’re doing the right thing? Or are we just two dumb-ass kids?”

  He swung his long legs over the bench to head to the waste bin with their trash, and his eyes darkened. “Who the hell knows?”

  THEY DROVE STRAIGHT THROUGH Pennsylvania, pausing only to buy gas, use the bathroom and eat a quick supper at a rest stop along I-80. By ten at night they’d reached the outskirts of Trenton. Bobby pulled in to the parking lot of a motel with a vacancy sign glaring in pink neon in the office window. He parked and shut off the engine.

  They’d hardly spoken all day and now they were faced with spending the night together. Bobby cleared his throat. “It’s not like we’re legal or anything yet,” he said, addressing the windshield more than her. “I mean, Joelle, I—”

  “Call me JoJo,” she said. She longed to have her friend back, not this quiet, brooding boy.

  He glanced at her. “This marriage…once we do it, it’s for real.”

  She nodded. “That’s how I see things, too.”

  “You’ll be my wife. It’s not going to be like it used to be with us.”

  She suffered a pang in her soul. She had treasured Bobby’s friendship for so many years. She had no desire for their relationship to change. But it would. Once she was his wife, maybe they wouldn’t be friends anymore.

  “I think—” he gazed past her “—I think we should wait until we’re married, if you know what I mean.”

  Oh. She noticed the flush reddening his face—they were too far away from the vacancy sign for her to think its glow had caused him to blush. Once they were married, they’d share a bed. They would sleep together. Have sex together.

  Sex with Bobby. God, she’d always loved him; he was her best friend—but sex?

  Grow up, Joelle, she scolded herself. If he wanted sex, of course they would have sex. That was what marriage was all about, right? Sharing a bed.

  “I think we should wait, too,” she agreed, hoping he didn’t hear apprehension in her voice, hoping that once they shared a bed he wouldn’t hate her, or hate himself for having married her.

  THEY HAD PLENTY TO TALK about during the next couple of days, but mostly it involved logistics: blood tests performed at a clinic in Trenton, papers filed at city hall, a futile search for an apartment for Joelle. Bobby mentioned that there might be base housing at Fort Dix, but she couldn’t imagine anything more depressing than living on an army base, especially once Bobby had shipped out. “Don’t worry, I’ll find something,” she said, sounding more positive than she felt.

  They bought rings, the cheapest they could find. The store wouldn’t engrave them—their skimpy width offered no surface to engrave on—but they were genuine fourteen-karat gold and they came in pretty plastic boxes lined with velvet. Finally, the day before Bobby had to report to Fort Dix, all the paperwork was done, the blood test results were normal and she and Bobby returned to city hall to get married. She would have liked to buy a new dress for the occasion, but she couldn’t fritter away her money on a dress that wouldn’t fit her by December. So she wore a ribbed white turtleneck and a short gray skirt.

  Bobby wore his cleanest jeans, a button-front shirt, an ugly striped tie and a brown corduroy blazer. “I stole the jacket from my father’s closet,” he confessed. “He never wears it, anyway.”

  Over Joelle’s protests, he’d insisted on buying her flowers. Nothing big, nothing like what a real bride would carry, but a small bouquet of daisies and carnations. She broke the stem of one of the carnations and tucked the flower through the buttonhole in his stolen jacket’s lapel. Then they entered city hall. When they emerged an hour later, it was as Mr. and Mrs. Robert DiFranco.

  They ate dinner at an Italian restaurant a few blocks from city hall, a small place with red-and-white checkerboard tablecloths and mandolin music piped through ceiling speakers. Bobby assured her they could afford a restaurant meal, and she wouldn’t deny him a hearty dinner when, starting tomorrow, he’d be stuck eating army food for the next year.

  He seemed cheerful. Joelle wasn’t cheerful at all. When she gazed across the table at Bobby, with his long, shaggy hair and his drooping boutonniere, she felt…dread. She was married now. To Bobby. Oh, God, what had she done? Was this an even bigger mistake than giving in to Drew in the backseat of his father’s Cadillac two months ago?

  “Eat,” Bobby ordered her. “You’ re supposed to be eating for two.”

  She occupied herself coiling long, marinara-soaked strands of spaghetti around her fork. “I wish you didn’t have to leave tomorrow,” she said.

  “Don’t worry.” He smiled gently, then tore a hunk of Italian bread from the straw basket and smeared butter onto it. “I’ll be back soon enough.”

  “I don’t know, Bobby, I just—”

  “JoJo.” He set down his bread and reached across the table, covering her right hand with his left. She stared at the gold band circling his finger. The ring looked so delicate in contrast to his labor-roughened hand. “Yeah, this whole thing is crazy. But we can make it work. I’ll go, I’ll come back, I’ll get a job. We’ll be a family.”

  Moisture gathered along her lashes—pregnancy made her much too weepy—but she batted her eyes to keep the tears from falling. They were tears of gratitude, not joy. Wasn’t a woman supposed to feel joy on her wedding day? What was wrong with her? Why did she feel as if she’d lost something terribly precious today?

  During the rest of their dinner, he reviewed everything she had to do once he was gone: find a place to live, find a doctor to monitor her pregnancy, find a job. “I think there are some colleges in the area, if you’d like to take some classes,” he said.

  “I can’t afford college.”

  “Well, it was just a thought. Remember—the gas gauge in the truck isn’t always accurate. The minute that needle points to three-quarters empty, fill the tank. Otherwise you might wind up getting stranded somewhere.”

  “Okay.”

  “And the clutch pedal is tight. You have to press real hard on it.”

  “Okay.”

  He continued talking about the damn clutch pedal the whole drive back to their motel. Honestly. He would be leaving tomorrow, shipping off to Vietnam in a matter of weeks, and they’d just gotten married, and all he could do was babble about his stupid clutch pedal. She wanted to scream at him to shut up.

  He parked the truck in front of their door near the rear of the motel and she swung out, inexplicably furious. She fumed while he unlocked the door and shoved it open—and then he surprised her by hoisting her into his arms.

  She let out a gasp.

  “Isn’t this how it goes?” he asked, one arm securely under her knees and the other under her back, leaving her no choice but to wrap her arms around his neck. “I carry you over the threshold, right?”

  “I guess.” That was when she realized she wasn’t furious at all. She was petrified.

  The truth settled deep into her bones. This was their wedding night. Bobby DiFranco, her buddy, her confidant, her dearest friend, was carrying her over the threshold and into her new life as his wife. Their room had two beds in it, but tonight they would be using only one of them.

  She steadied her breath. She could handle this. It would just be one night, and then he’d leave. She could figure out how she felt after he was gone.

  Besides, sex with Bobby couldn’t possibly be as awful as sex with Drew Foster had been. An
d it was too late for her to worry about getting pregnant. And this was the deal they’d made: once they were married, the marriage would be real.

  He kicked the door shut behind them, carried her across the small, stale-smelling room and lowered her to her feet next to one of the beds. His smile melted away as he gazed down at her. “You okay?” he asked, evidently struggling to read her expression.

  She nodded and bit her lip. You can do this, she lectured herself.

  “A little nervous, huh,” he guessed.

  “A little.”

  “Me, too.” He smiled then, and brushed her lips with his. “Relax, Jo. I’m not going to hurt you. I would never hurt you. You know that, don’t you?”

  Yes, she knew that. Hearing him say the words convinced her, not in her brain but somewhere else, some part of her where knowing was a visceral thing. When Bobby kissed her again, a little less gently, she closed her eyes, parted her lips and let him in.

  She had never been kissed like this before. She hadn’t kissed all that many boys, but none of them had kissed like Bobby. His mouth was so strong, so sure. His tongue was so aggressive. She felt his kiss through her entire body, which felt as if it was unfolding inside, opening like a flower’s petals to the sun, warming and softening and wanting.

  He undressed her first, and then himself. His body was different from Drew’s—bigger, more massive…older, somehow. He had hair on his chest; not much, but it made him seem like a man. So did the thickness of his shoulders, the swells of muscle in his arms and legs, the contours of his torso.

  When he urged her onto the bed and then lay down beside her, he didn’t go straight for her crotch. Instead, he kissed her neck, her shoulders, her breasts. He ran his hands all over her, every now and then murmuring her name. He caressed her feet, her knees, her belly, and when he finally touched her between her thighs, she was embarrassed by how wet she was there.

  He didn’t seem embarrassed at all. He only murmured her name again and then climbed onto her and pressed her hand to his erection. She stroked him the way she used to stroke Drew, until he covered her hand with his and slowed her down, showing her how he liked it.