Blessings (13 page)

It happened.

What can I do? I’m about to be married and my life is organized; it has direction. Why must this happen now? Why must it happen at all? Please. Oh, God, please don’t let this happen… .

Then she put her face in her hands and sobbed aloud.

After a while she got up, pulled on a pair of slacks and a jacket, and went out onto the street. The wind was blowing icy cold from the East River, or maybe all the way across from the Hudson. She drew the jacket closer and began to walk, then to run. She had no idea where she was going, but she had to move. When you’re exhausted, Jennie, you may go home.

The streets were quiet. Occasionally a car went by with a swish of tires and a flare of light, two menacing lights approaching and two sparks of red glare receding as it sped away. Lights were few in the apartment houses, dark fortresses in which sleepers lay stacked thirty stories high. It was long past the middle of the night.

Only the great hospital, dark bulk under the moving, cloudy sky, was awake. From a distance of two blocks, as she ran, the sight of lighted windows scattered up and down the building’s height and breadth distracted her from her terror. Always, coming home at night, should she pass that way, she would feel a sharp awareness of what might be happening behind any one of those windows.

Now, approaching the emergency entrance, she was halted in her run. Police cars, ambulances, and a cluster of onlookers—from where assembled at this hour?— blocked the sidewalk. A few feet from where she stood, a stretcher was lifted; there was a small commotion of white coats; there were the lights of another ambulance whining to a stop; then another stretcher, and she had a glimpse of long black hair and a frightful, bloody mask where a face ought to be.

Jennie’s breath went hot in her throat, and the salty taste of blood was in her mouth as she looked away, and then, against her will, looked back.

“Move on,” a policeman ordered, dispersing the group on the walk.

Among them, a woman wept with her hand over her eyes. A man walked away, damning the legal system.

“He was out on parole. Ten days out, broke into the house and slit their throats. Raped her first. The husband’s dead, they said—”

Wanting to hear no more, Jennie resumed her run. The bloody face … She sped out into the middle of the street, away from doorways and alleys, running as if she were being pursued.

When she had raced up the stairs and locked her door, she was exhausted. But the terror at the hospital had put things back into proportion. The macabre night scene, the cries, the bloody face … This other trouble, this phone call, was nothing in comparison.

Reason reasserted itself. Victoria Jill Miller had lived nineteen years without her and could surely go on living without her. She would be better off not knowing Jennie. She might think she wanted to see her natural mother, but that would only lead to an emotional crisis in the end. These adoption committees were a lot of busybodies. What could a committee understand about that long-ago agony and despair? It was no business of theirs, any-106

way. What right had they to come now, to encourage this intrusion?

I have so much to do, Jennie thought, tense with the pressure. This case is so terribly important. Jay feels responsible for me, he’s told them all how competent I am, and now I have to prove myself. It won’t be easy. The builders are a big outfit, Jay says. They’ll fight hard. I have to prepare so thoroughly, I can’t waste a minute. I have to get started tomorrow morning. Call experts, water engineers, make traffic studies, roads, access, assessments. Get moving. Can’t let anything else clog my mind. Can’t.

Her thoughts were on a seesaw: Now that I’ve refused to see the girl, she’ll think better of it and let it drop. They’ll probably not call again. And if they should, I’ll just repeat my position until they get discouraged. But surely they won’t call again.

Will they?

T
wo weeks later Jennie went back upstairs for the meeting of the planning board. Although she felt sufficiently prepared by now, having put all other business aside, she clung to Jay.

“I wish you could go. Are you sure you can’t?”

“Sure. I’ve got to be in court all week. But you’ll do fine without me. Dad’s got the group together for supper before the meeting, so you can be introduced to everybody and have time to talk over any new angles. You’ll charm them, Jennie girl.”

“Charm isn’t exactly what they need. They’re looking for results.”

“Do as well as you did in the Long Island case and you’ll give them results. Come on! You’ll knock them dead.”

The New York Times reported temperatures of five to ten degrees above zero upstate. Her warmest coat was two years old but still good-looking, although the edges of the cuffs were slightly worn. She stood at the closet door, holding a sleeve, arguing with herself, and then, abruptly thrusting the coat away, went out to buy a new one. She was feeling something she seldom felt: a need for indulgence. So she set off toward Fifth Avenue, where it took very little time to find an extravagantly beautiful russet woolen coat lined with fur, and a skirt to match. With them went a cream-colored cashmere sweater and, for a change, a cream-colored blouse of heavy silk. On the way home she made a long detour to an ice-cream shop, one of the fern-hung copies of a turn-of-the-century ice-cream parlor that were so popular again, and bought her second extravagance, an enormous tower of chocolate and whipped cream, a sweet, sweet comfort.

If anybody ever needed comfort, she told herself, I’m the one. For two weeks she had been walking around with her thoughts still on a seesaw. Will they phone again? Won’t they? And she called to mind those terror-filled minutes before examination papers are handed out: Will I make it? Won’t I? She finished the chocolate sundae and went home to pack.

Shirley, watching, gave approval. “That’s a stunning outfit. Now put on the pearls.”

“Pearls? I’m going to a business meeting in a country town.”

“So take them off for the meeting. But they look perfect with both the blouse and the sweater. Don’t you think it would be nice to show your mother-in-law—”

“She’s not my mother-in-law.”

“Don’t quibble. She will be in another couple of months, and it would be nice to show her how much you appreciate her present.”

“Okay, maybe I will.”

Yet Jennie knew she wouldn’t. Why not? Because something was there, the knowledge of being under false pretenses, and a sense of not being deserving of the pearls. That was why.

Jay’s father met her at the railroad station and drove her the rest of the way. A glossy, white film spread over the fields and laid long, drooping fingers on the hilltops.

“Snow’s early this year,” the old man remarked. “Quite a sudden change from when you were here.” And glancing down at Jennie, “You look very lovely today.”

“Thank you.” Demurely she accepted the compliment. It hadn’t been conventional flattery; there had been approval in it.

False pretenses. I am not what I appear to be. An outsider is what I am. It was the same in Georgia nineteen years ago.

For nineteen years she had wiped away all memories of Peter, expunged them as with an ink eradicator. Only once, when a stranger had left open on a library table a directory of American scholars, driven by a momentary curiosity, not caring at all, not giving a damn as she had put it to herself, she had looked under M, and there she had found him, Peter Algernon Mendes, with a list of his degrees and writings. He had made a name in archaeology as he had wanted to do and was now—or had been, three or four years ago—teaching in Chicago. So each of us, she had reflected then, and did again now, each of us has gotten what we set out to get, with nothing kept of that year’s starry infatuation—or had it perhaps and truly been love? If we could have stayed together then, might we still be together now? And then this girl, this Victoria Jill—queer name—would be living with us instead of searching all over the country.

“Enid’s got a good crowd coming,” Arthur Wolfe was saying. “The committee’s grown so, it’s surprised even me—how this thing has gotten people all fired up. There’s been so much publicity since you were last here, it’s amazing. Both sides have plastered the town with posters. Of course, the newspapers are in the fight too. There’s a chain that has half a dozen papers throughout the county, and it’s liberal, all for keeping the land in wilderness, but the local paper wants the development. There’s a lot of nastiness coming into it all, I’m sorry to say. It seems it’s all people talk about—more than Russia and disarmament, or the election.”

Evening had fallen when they arrived. Cars were lined up in the driveway and parked far down the road. Light streamed out of every window of the house, so that it stood snug and bright among the dark, tossing trees.

Safe haven, a house like this—if you belonged here, Jennie thought.

The pleasant buzz of conversation was audible even before Enid opened the door, crying out in welcome, “Why, here you are, Jennie! Everybody’s dying to meet you. Come in.”

Forty or fifty people moved through the rooms. Probably, Jennie thought, they were the cream of the town: two doctors, the consolidated school’s principal, some teachers, the owner of the variety store, a nurseryman, a Christmas-tree farmer, and some dairy farmers. Altogether, an assortment of people who were decently united on one thing: the importance of preserving some part of the natural earth for the future.

Jennie was given hot buttered rum, led around and introduced, and taken to the dining room, where a fire snapped and a long buffet table had been set.

“No lawyers, you noticed,” Jay’s father remarked as they filled their plates with turkey, corn pudding, and salad. “As I told you, they’re steering clear of our side. No money in it.”

Jennie smiled. “So you’ve had to come far afield, all the way to New York, to get me.”

“Yes, and we’re glad we did. Jay says you’ve been working overtime on this, rounding up expert witnesses.”

“It wasn’t too difficult. Fortunately the same engineers who did the studies on my Long Island case have been prompt and cooperative. They’ll be here tonight.”

The old man’s admiration was plain in his face. “I’m going to compliment my son. He always did know how to judge people. Come, I’d like you to spend a few minutes with our best friend on the town council. I introduced you when you came in, remember? George Cromwell, over there with the woman in the plaid skirt? He’s a dentist. He’s got the energy I used to have.”

Cromwell was dressed, like everyone else, in country fashion—woolens, sweaters, and heavy shoes. His thick white hair contrasted with a plump, unlined face, young for his age.

“I think you two ought to get together and talk strategy,” said Arthur Wolfe. “Why don’t you take your plates out to the sun parlor? I’ll see that you’re not interrupted.”

“May I call you Jennie? I’m George to you,” Cromwell began.

“Of course.”

“I understand congratulations are in order. They tell me it’s not official, not till you get your ring, but I’m an old friend, so they’ve let me in on the secret. You know, they’re wonderful people, the Wolfes. They don’t seem like summer people. Not that we have many summer people up here—we’re too far away to attract them. They fitted right into the town, have been so generous to the police and the volunteer fire department. Why, Arthur was a volunteer himself when he was younger.”

Jennie glanced at her watch, and George caught her glance.

“Well, down to business,” he said. “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

“Just about some of the people I might need to persuade especially.”

“Well, there’s the mayor, of course. We’d certainly like to have him on our side. He controls most of the rest of them.”

Jennie nodded. “Because he controls the goodies, appoints the police chief, et cetera.”

“So you’re familiar with all that. But you ought to know that our mayor—well, I’m not very fond of him, I can tell you. I never liked him. Chuck Anderson’s his name, owns a couple of gas stations here and over at the lake. Looks like his name. I don’t know why the name Chuck always suggests somebody beefy and tough. But I could be all wrong. Gosh, your name suggests a little brown wren, and you are definitely no wren, young lady.”

Jennie controlled her impatience. “Tell me who’s on the planning board.”

“You’ve met them all here tonight. The planning board is a mix—some of them top-notch and some of them Chuck’s people. He never bothered too much about the planning board, though, because they serve without pay. Let’s see, there’s a librarian, Albert Buzard; then there’s Jack Fuller, who owns the biggest dairy farm, five miles north of town. They’ll be on our side.”

“What about the rest of them?”

“Well, frankly, it depends on whether you can sway them, fire them up. I understand you’ve done that before. They’ll be surprised to see a woman, though. We’ve never had a woman lawyer in town.”

Oh, my, Jennie thought, stifling amusement.

“The council can override the planning board, you know. So even if you win out tonight, you’ll still have the council to reckon with. They’ll all be there tonight too.”

Arthur Wolfe opened the door and peered in. “Time to start. There’s an overflow crowd, I hear, so they’ve had to move the meeting to the school auditorium.”

“Wow!” George shook his head. “It’s a pretty big school building, too, a consolidated school. You’ve got your work cut out for you, Jennie.”

The parking lot was almost filled, and a large crowd in boots and woolen caps was already streaming up the steps of a typical redbrick, white-trimmed, small-town American school.

Arthur Wolfe chuckled. “Will you look at that!” Just in front, a battered old car splashed with muddy snow was plastered with signs: I DON’T
GIVE
A
DAMN
ABOUT
DUCKS;
VOTE
FOR
PEOPLE
, TO
HELL
WITH
RACCOONS;
KISS
MY AX.

Enid was worried. “It’s getting so nasty. I was told that the developers have brought people to this meeting who don’t even live in the township.”