again." she said with determination. "As long as
you're all right. Grace. As long as you get well." I bit my lower lip.
How could I tell her now what I had been
hiding? She would surely blame herself for this, too.
and I feared she would blame me for something
unspeakable. I was too ashamed and felt far too guilty.
Dr. Anderson had been struggling to get me to open
that final secret door, but I had resisted even though I
blew he had some deep suspicions and would not stop
until he had succeeded.
I hadn't just had sex with Kirby, my mother's
husband.
Although I wasn't showing yet. I knew I was
pregnant..
I couldn't be more positive about it and more
terrified of revealing anything, especially to Mommy. .
How many times over the next two months did
I try to convince myself it wasn't my fault? How many
times was it on the tip of my tongue to tell her
everything? Every time I thought I could do it I heard
myself questioning myself. Was it your fault? Were
you flirting- with him as he had once said? Did you
have to spend all that time doing- things with him?
Did you have a crush on him? Why didn't you scream
more, fight more when he kissed you like a lover
kisses a -woman that first time? And if you were
raped, why did you wait so long to reveal it? Why
did you let your mother sleep with the man who had
done this to you? Why didn't you have the decency,
the loyalty, to protect her? How do you look at
yourself in the mirror every day?
Fortunately Kirby was really gone from our
lives, mostly. Mommy thought, out of fear of being
chased down by some of the more unsavory characters he was indebted to. He put up no resistance to the legal proceedings to separate him from Mommy. Our financial advisors and lawyers did the best they could creating- barriers to his raiding what was left of our fortune. Once she had loved him passionately, with a young woman's excitement, and now there was no one she hated more.. And I was to tell her this person had done one more terrible thing to
us?
My throat closed every time I thought I could
do it. and I was too frightened and knew no one to go
to who could help me find a secret way out of my
dilemma. I was still barely showing. But I knew it was
going to be very hard to keep my secret much longer. While all this was going on our financial
advisor had located a couple who were very interested
in renting Joya del Mar. the Eatons. They had no
problem about our living in the beach house and were
even willing to keep on all our servants. Preparations
were begun for our taking over the rear apartment in
the beach house, the biggest one at least. and Mommy
began to sell off whatever she could from the house to
build up our bank accounts again and at least give us a
sense of some security.
Mommy behaved as if someone had died the day we moved out of the main house. She would break out in quiet sobbing on and off and then suck in her breath to give the servants another order. The maids packed all our clothing and brought it to the apartment, which had no closet space in comparison. One of the bedrooms in the apartment had to be utilized for storage. and Mommy wailed about all her wonderful dresses and gowns, her pants suits and
shoes that would be ruined.
Another fact of life would be the use of the
servants themselves. After this day they no longer
worked for us. They worked for these new people. the
Eatons.
"It's been so long since I've cooked anything,"
Mommy complained. "We'll starve."
Her sighs were so deep and came so often I
thought she would eventually crack in two. Out of the
garage came our two automobiles, now to be parked
on a section of the driveway.
"We'll have to sell one of the cars anyway," she
concluded. I didn't really care. I had no interest in
driving, going anywhere.
Just like someone who had lost her lover or her
dearest friend. Mommy sat on the small loggia at the
rear of the beach house. She didn't want to watch the movers bringing the Eatons' belongings. She had met the couple at our attorney's office only a few weeks ago to finalize the lease agreement, and she told me they were silly people made even more
inconsequential by their apparent wealth,
"The woman giggles a lot. She insists she be
called Bunny, and her husband. Asher, looks like he's
never had to do anything more than lift a toilet seat his
whole life."
She shook herself as if to shake off a bad chill.
"Winston must be spinning in his grave. I've let him
down as well as ourselves. I don't care if I never set
foot off this property. I shudder to think of myself
running into the Carriage sisters or any of the people I
know. I swear. Grace. I'll just burst into tears the
moment they say hello because I'll know just what's
behind those artificial smiles. They think I deserve
this. They'll all be so smug."
I didn't say anything. I listened just the way Dr.
Anderson listened to me when I spoke to him in his
office. my face empty of any expression that could be
interpreted as some sort of judgment, while inside
myself I was screaming. "It's time to tell her! It's time
to tell her!"
I tried to choose the best possible moment. One night, nearly a week after we had been moved into the beach house. Mommy seemed to have come to a point where she was accepting our new status. She had successfully made one of the veal dishes Daddy used to love, and that put her in a good mood. Most of our dinner conversation was about him, or rather. I should say, most of her conversation was about him. I just sat there listening. One of her remembrances gave me the
opening I needed.
She was telling me how she had revealed to
him she was pregnant, "We had been trying, of
course, and shortly before. I had gone for an
examination and test he had been shipped off for a
training exercise that kept him away nearly a month. I
could have written to him. but I said to myself. 'Jackie
Lee, this is not the sort of thing you reveal in a letter.
It's too important, and the emotion of the moment is
something you want to share and remember for the
rest of both your lives.'
"So I kept it a secret. The day of his arrival I
went to the airport at the Navy base. They would let
me, as well as other wives, go there to greet our
husbands. One day a week earlier I had found this
adorable baby-size Navy uniform. There was even a
small cap to go with it. I bought it and put it in a gift box. There I was standing with the other women when he came down the gangway. He rushed to me and kissed me, and then I said I had brought him a present and handed him the box. I had bought him a few flamboyant shirts when we were on holiday less than a year before, and he was always teasing me about
that.
"Not another shirt made out of someone's
underwear. I hope,' he said.
"'I don't think so.' I told him, and full of
curiosity, he tore off the gift wrapping and opened the
box. When he lifted out the tiny uniform his face went
from surprise and confusion to utterjoy."
"We've got it!' he cried as if we had won a
prize.
"'Yes,' I said. 'I'm pregnant.' and do you know
what he did. Grace, what that big, strapping.
handsome U.S. naval officer did right then and there'" I shook my head,
"He cried." she said. "He just let his tears come,
and then he wrapped his arms around me and held me
as tightly as he could until he thought he was doing
something that would hurt me and you and let go. "'I'm pregnant.' I told your father. 'but I'm not
made of breakable thin china.'
"What a wonderful night that was." she said,
remembering, her eyes drifting around the resurrected
images.
I bit down on my lower lip and finally let my
tears come unflinchingly, too. For a few moments she
didn't notice, and then she blinked and looked at me. "Oh, honey." she said. "I'm sorry I know how
much it hurts when I bring up your daddy."
I shook my head. "No," I said. "That's not it." She held her gaze and then sat back slowly,
suspicion darkening her eyes and narrowing them as
well as she perused my face with a mother's intuitive
observation.
"What is it, Grace? Why are you crying?" I tried to speak, but for a moment my throat
was so tight I couldn't utter a sound.
"What is it, Grace?" she asked, more
demanding. "I'm... I'm pregnant. Mommy," I said. It was as if a clap of thunder had just occurred
right above us. That was how my bones vibrated. She
didn't move a muscle; she didn't even blink fast. Her
lips trembled finally until she drew the strength to
speak.
"Pregnant? How can you be pregnant. Grace?
You never went anywhere, dated anyone all year." I could feel the tears streaming down my
cheeks and dripping from my chin, but I didn't wipe
them off or try to stop them from coming. He came to
me one night when I was in a daze. Mommy, groggy
from the sleeping pills."
Her eyes widened with the shock of her
realization of just what I was telling her.
"I barely remember it, but I know he did it more
than once." I said.
She was shaking her head as if to throw the
words out of her ears before they could reach her
brain. "No," she said. "no."
"I'm sorry. Mommy. I'm sorry."
She pushed herself up and looked down at me,
her mouth twisting with the pain and the agony
moving like a corkscrew through her brain and into
her heart.
"No. Grace, you must have imagined it. You
can't be pregnant. He's been gone for nearly five
months now."
"I'm starting to show, Mommy. That's why I'm
wearing these loose dresses all the time."
She stared, the reality settling in with the
weight and the chill of fresh cement.
'You've known and kept it secret all this time?" "I'm sorry, Mommy."
"Stand up," she ordered. and I did so. She came
to me and ran her hands over my hips and my stomach
to make the dress tighter. My bulge was clearly
evident. "Oh. my God." she said, stepping back as if I
was contagious. "You are pregnant, aren't you? He did
this. He did this!".
She pressed her hands to her temples and
grimaced with the pain, pushing so hard her face was
red, her eyes bulged. Then she tore at her own hair for
a moment, tugging it before releasing herself and
reaching for a dish on the table. She heaved it across
the small kitchen, and it smashed and splattered
against the wall.
"Are you telling me that you're more than seven
months pregnant?"
I barely had the strength to nod. but I did. "Why didn't you tell me months and months
ago? How could you keep this a secret. Grace? Don't
you realize what you have done? Can you imagine the
gossip, the disgrace? We'll be the laughingstock of the
whole strip. They'll never stop talking about us now." "I'm sorry, Mommy."
"Why didn't you tell me?" she screamed. "I was afraid. I was afraid you would blame
me," I wailed.
"Blame you? But..." She looked at me in a
different way. "Those times, those many, many times
you were alone with him, out on the sailboat, out
there, or those trips you two would take, all of that,
did he do anything then? Did you let him. Grace?" she
asked.
I shook my head. "I don't think so. Mommy." "You don't think so? You don't think you let
him? What does that mean?"
"He said I always flirted with him, but I didn't. I
didn't mean to." I moaned.
She pulled her head back and looked at me
again, her eyes revealing a mixture of doubt and
belief,
"He would say that" she concluded. "He will
say that. Of course. He'll tell everyone you seduced
him and not vice versa, if we let this be known." She sank into her chair. thinking. "We can't get
anyone to give you an abortion this late without
chancing an even bigger scandal. What can we do?
What can we do?"
I sat across from her again, and she looked at
me for the longest time without speaking. I wiped
away my tears and waited,
"Who else knows about this, Grace? Have you
told Dr. Anderson, for example? Not that it should
matter. He isn't supposed to reveal what his clients tell
him."
"No, Mommy, I don't think I have."
"You don't think you have? What kind of talk is
this? Don't you know if you have or haven't?" He gets me to say things, and sometimes I think
I say things I don't mean to say."
"Who else?" she asked, sitting back. "No one.
"That's true. None of the servants, right, none of
those maids who like you and whom you like to speak
with. right?"
"No."
"Good. Okay. We can't let him do anything else
to us," she decided. She smiled suddenly, a cold,
almost evil smile. "We can, however, make him look
even worse."
She pressed her palms down on the table and
leaned toward me, her eyes fixed hard on mine.
"You're not pregnant, Grace. Do you hear me? Do you
understand?"
"No. Mommy. I am pregnant."
"No, you're not, you see. I'm the one who is pregnant. I'm the one he has left in the lurch here. Seven months is fine. I didn't show with you until the seventh month. I will start showing, and I will give out the news. In fact," she added with a wider smile. "I'll call Thelma Carriage and let it slip. That will take
care of it."
"But what about me?"
"You'll stay as you do. You won't be going to
your therapy for the next two months or so. I'll fix
myself so I begin to show, and in a month, parading
about here with a swollen stomach. I'll convince
people I'm the one.
"Fortunately I haven't been out and about much,
so people will accept it. I know I can depend on Dr.
Cook to go along with this. When your time comes
he'll deliver the baby here. We'll just say there was no
time to g
et to the hospital. Women usually give birth
easier the second time than they do the first, so people
will believe it all.
"That's it, Grace. That will be our solution. Do
you understand? When you start to really show, I
don't want you to be visible. You'll confine yourself to
indoors until I give you an all-clear, and then you can
take short walks behind the beach house but never
toward the main house. All we have to do is permit those silly Eaton people to realize what's what, and
they'll make it the evening's headlines.
"Everyone will accept your behavior because
you're practically a hermit as it is."
She paused and twisted her lips as she looked at
me. "I suppose in an ironic way I should be happy
about that." she said. It makes all this subterfuge
possible. Besides. I'm sure you're not the first young
woman to give birth secretly in this town."
She stood up again. "Clear off the table, clean
up the broken dish, and load the dishwasher," she
ordered. "I'm going to look over my wardrobe and
decide what I have that will work over the next two
months." She smiled coldly. "What I'll do is go out
and buy maternity outfits as well. That will lock up
the gossip Thelma Carriage will undertake." "I'm sorry that I've made all this trouble for
you. Mommy," I said.
"I am. too, Grace. It seems that fate will not let
go of us. For some reason we're a prime target for it,
but we'll stand up to it as we always do." she vowed.
"We really have no choice. It's either this or leaving
with our tails between our legs."
She headed for her bedroom and the spare
bedroom to sift through her wardrobe.
Finally the reality I had kept so well hidden
began to rise to the surface of my thoughts.
And, actually for the first time. I thought about
the baby inside me.
With both of us regretting my pregnancy and
hating the man who had done this to me, what kind of
a child would he or she be, and into what sort of a
world would he or she be brought?
19
One Last Salute
.
When my mother was determined to do
something, she devoted every last ounce of her energy toward accomplishing it. Establishing her surrogate pregnancy was no exception. She took great care in creating her physical appearance and did something I knew was abhorrent to her: She deliberately set out to gain weight, and as quickly as possible. Some days she gorged herself so much on fattening foods, especially ice cream, cakes. and cookies. that she ended up in the bathroom regurgitating for nearly half an hour. She would emerge pale and sickly, but like a stubborn and defiant prisoner of her own making she would return to the kitchen and make a milkshake. She would conquer her body, and that was that.