Blessings by Belva Plain Page B

smile. “Okay, I’ll try.”
    “I’ll call you after I’ve talked to him tonight, okay?”
    “No, wait till the morning. I’m exhausted. I want to sleep and not have to think about anything for a few hours.”
    “All right. First thing tomorrow, then. And, Jennie, remember that we love each other.”
    Maybe I’m being unfair, after all, she thought as she trudged upstairs. It’s awful for him too. She was so tired, just so tired.
    All the next week she cried silently at night and woke heavy-headed, forcing herself to go to class and study. It was like waiting for a train or a plane so long delayed that one begins to think it may not be coming at all. Peter was in the same condition. Every day he consulted his father, who needed to consult with others.
    “His lawyer, probably,” Peter said. “He never moves a step without lawyers.”
    Every day he met Jennie briefly, always in a public place where they were never able to touch each other. Neither of them was in the mood for it, anyway. But the mute appeal in each one’s face was reflected in the other’s.
    “Are you feeling all right?” he kept inquiring.
    She was perfectly well. There was no hint of any change in her body. She would probably go close to the end of term without showing.
    By the second week Peter had news. His father had arranged for a place in Nebraska, a respectable, church-run home for unwed mothers. It sounded like something out of the nineteenth century; Jennie hadn’t known that such places still existed. But apparently they did, and a girl would be anonymous there, cared for until she gave birth, at which time, if she wished, the baby would be given up for adoption.
    “How does that sound?” Peter asked.
    They were in a car again, parked this time outside of the zoo. A woman, passing by, was trying to comfort a squalling baby in a carriage while a toddler pulled at her skirt. This image fled across Jennie’s eyes and printed itself in her head after the woman had turned the corner and gone from sight. The image was soft and blurred, all curves in the flicker of light under new leaves. The mother, her long hair drooping like a loosened scarf, bent over the infant; the child’s round, strong head butted against the mother’s red skirt; it was an image of unity.
    And she knew that this was one of the rare random pictures that she would keep, as she had kept the face of the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, while riding on a streetcar at least five years before. Or the morning when, through the silence of a street thick-muffled in snow, there had come the sudden clamor of church bells, and she had stood until the last vibration ceased.
    Peter asked again, “How does that sound?”
    She could barely open her lips, so great was the tiredness that lay on her.
    “I’m thinking.”
    The same thoughts ran over the same track. The little flat could be furnished so cheaply; the bedroom things could even be brought from her room at home; they’d need, then, only a table and two chairs for meals; a desk and lamps for studying; the baby furniture; and some yellow paint, a sunshine color for the corner where the baby would sleep; it would take so little… .
    But he didn’t want to. I suppose I could force him, she thought. It’s been done often enough, God knows. Yet to live like that, begrudged … To bring up a child like that … Surely the child would come to feel it.
    “Have you thought?” He took her hand. “Your hand’s so cold. Poor Jennie. Oh, poor Jennie.”
    She began to cry. All this time she had been able to keep her tears for the privacy of her bed, but now suddenly they came in a gush, an explosion of tears.
    He put her head on his shoulder. “Darling, darling,” he whispered, kissing her hair. “I’m so sorry. What a stupid bastard I am to put you through all this. Jennie, we’ll have babies, I keep telling you. You’ll be a lawyer and we’ll have a home. We’ll have everything we want. It’ll be better for