Before My Life Began (32 page)

“Sorry?”

“When you get quiet this way, whenever that dark look comes across your face—when those bruised clouds pass over you—I get scared. Nothing makes sense to me then, and I begin to feel, not that you don't love me, but just that you're sorry somehow that I
exist.”

“I get scared too,” I said. “But I'm not sorry. The truth is that I never really thought much about what my life might be like before it happened,” I said. “I never had dreams the way you do. I never imagined what it would be like to meet someone like you. I never imagined what it would be like to feel what you make me feel.”

I put my arm around her. Time passed. We slept. The train slowed down and we heard the conductor's voice, from the other end of the car, announcing that we were approaching Chester, Pennsylvania.
Was I sorry?
Could I tell her the truth—if I even knew the truth? Or was the truth something that had never occurred to me before: that perhaps there were times when you did lie to the person you loved, and that there was nothing wrong with lying. I looked out the window, through the film of brown dust, and saw that about fifty yards from the station two boys were coming out of the woods with a dead animal trussed upside down, hanging from a pole by the legs. They carried the pole across their shoulders.

“Is it a deer?” Gail asked.

“No. It's too small for a deer. It's just a dog.”

Gail leaned across me, trying to see, but the train had started and the boys grew smaller and smaller, walking away from us.

“The poor thing. Was it dead?”

“I guess.”

“When we were camping in New Hampshire the summer before last, we lost our way and my father turned off onto this country road and just as he stopped to turn the car back around I saw a deer and her fawn staring out of the woods at us. You couldn't see them at first—they were all dappled and camouflaged by the bark and shadows and it was almost as if, I've thought since, I saw them because they'd been staring at
me
so hard.”

I couldn't see the two boys anymore. I smiled, imagining Tony's face when Gail and I returned with our news.

“I keep wondering if life is like that,” Gail said. “If sometimes when you least expect it, beautiful things happen.”

“Was Ellen there?”

“Was Ellen where?”

“In the car with you when you saw the deer?”

“Sure. Why do you ask?”

“I was thinking about how she couldn't see what you saw. I was wondering what things are like for her, without eyes.”

“She has eyes—very beautiful gray eyes, as a matter of fact. They just don't work.”

Little hairs fanned out in the middle of Gail's left eyebrow, going the wrong way, and I reached across and smoothed them down. The train stopped, brakes hissing, releasing steam. A black man pushed a flat of mailsacks along the platform. I tried to imagine Beau Jack in his World War I uniform, traveling across France in an old train. Our train was moving again, the conductor calling out that the next stop would be Wilmington, Delaware. Gail lifted my hand and put it on her stomach, and I was surprised at how warm she was. I thought of bread, rising under a towel, and of the way my mother would let me peek underneath when I was a boy, of how I would watch for as long as I could, waiting to see the dough expand.

“How are you feeling?” I asked. “I'm sorry I didn't ask before. I mean, how are you
feeling?”

“I'm a little tired, that's all. Otherwise I'm okay. So is junior.”

“The red plague didn't come?”

“No. Don't you think I would have called you so if it had?”

“I suppose. I'm sorry I asked.”

“But you were hoping it would come.”

“Sure. Weren't you?”

She looked away. “I don't know. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.” She held my wrist. “I mean, it's ours, David. It's you and me growing inside me, creating new life from our lives, from our love.”

“Terrific.”

“In medieval times,” she said coldly, “children born out of wedlock—bastards—were believed to be exceptionally vital and dynamic beings, begotten, as they were, in the intensity of passion rather than between the dull, obligatory sheets of marriage. To bear the child of the man you loved was, according to the tenets of courtly love, the truest way of bringing the love to its consummation.”

“We don't live in medieval times.”

“I didn't want to take the pills, David.” Her voice was harsh, insistent. “If I took the pills and they didn't work I would have had to have myself scraped out. You go get yourself scraped out first and see how you like it. Then—”

“I never said you should take pills. That was your idea. I said this was okay, didn't I? I'm here, aren't I?”

She picked at the skin around her thumbnail. “Even if you didn't agree to marry me—if you didn't propose—I would have had the child. I decided that before I came to you and told you. I've seen what happens to the girls in the dorm who try to take care of it themselves. There was one girl before Christmas we found passed out in the bathroom, blood glopped all over the shower and the toilet. They use crochet hooks and knitting needles and wire hangers and take quinine tablets and scorching hot baths and ice-cold showers. And then—if they're successful—they can call the hospital to finish the job. Then—”

“Shut up!” I grabbed her arm. “I said to shut up. Did you
hear
me?”

She tried to pry my hand from her arm. “You're hurting me, David. Christ.
Stop!”

“Then you just shut up. I never asked you to do anything like that and I don't like it when you accuse me of wanting to—”

“Of wanting to what?”

“Forget it.” I let go of her arm.

“No. Of wanting to what? Tell me.”

“Of wanting to hurt you, okay?” I looked away, so that she wouldn't see my eyes.

“I know you didn't want to hurt me. It's just that—”

“But first you wanted me to hear how I
might
have hurt you. Sure. You wanted to slip all that in first—to stick the pictures into my head.”

“Not at all, David. Not at all. Oh shit. Hey, are you all right?”

The train was moving again, clattering and rocking. I kept my eyes fixed on the platform.

“I'm all right.”

She wiped my tears with a fingertip. “I love you,” she said.

I nodded. I wanted to tell her it was okay, that I loved her too, but I didn't dare try. Was love enough? Love is sweet, my father used to say, but tastes best with bread. I took a deep breath.

“You're not angry with me then, are you,” she stated, as if talking to herself.

“Why should I be angry?”

“Because it was my fault. Because I didn't count right.” She put her finger to my lips. “It's what I've been frightened of most—that you'd feel I'd tricked you. We Freudians believe there are never any real accidents.”

“I never didn't believe you,” I said. I let her take my hand, move it in slow circles on her stomach. “Until you brought it up it never occurred to me not to believe you. Why wouldn't I believe you?”

“Can I show you all the things I've brought? Can we talk about the quotidian for a while? First of all I brought lunch.” She opened the smaller suitcase, began taking things out, explaining why she had brought each item. There were peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches, bags of peanuts, Hershey bars, boxes of Cracker Jacks; a small bottle of sweet Malaga wine for the ceremony and a large bottle of French champagne and a can of smoked oysters and a box of crackers for the hotel afterwards; there was toothpaste, two toothbrushes, dental floss, shaving cream, a razor, talcum, perfume, shampoo.

I laughed, and she asked me not to make fun of her, but I could tell from her smile that she was pleased. Was that what mattered most of all to me—to be able to please the woman I loved in ordinary ways, to somehow become the father I never had? She showed me the shirt and tie she'd bought for me, the new cream-colored nightgown she'd bought for herself, the rose sachet that gave a lovely scent to everything. There were a few advantages to being a Jewish American Princess with a sizable savings account, she said. Hoping to keep her at Smith so that they could keep us apart, her parents had been excessively generous during the past year. Wasn't I pleased to know she came with a dowry?

I imagined Little Benny slapping me on the back, calling me the Prince, asking me when I was going to take over the kingdom. When there were no more armies, I'd say, and he'd laugh at me, tell me I had my father's sense of humor. Gail showed me a small package in fancy white paper that contained a wedding gift for me, a plain brown Wool-worth's bag with rings in it—a gold band for each of us, a fake diamond engagement ring for her. There was lots of clothing—a bathrobe, slippers, a new plaid sportshirt for me, a change of clothes for her. She'd bought new underwear and socks for me, and one of her brother's old sweaters in case the evenings were cool. She'd brought along some books in case we became bored with one another, and she had also packed her clock-radio, wrapped in a towel the way the champagne was, so that we could listen to music, and her old Brownie camera so we could take pictures. It was the camera she had received from Ellen for her Bat Mitzvah, and she wondered what I made of that, of Ellen giving her a machine for the seeing.

She took a manila envelope from the bottom of the second suitcase, showed me her birth certificate, the results of the blood test, the list of necessary addresses: justice of the peace, hotel, town hall. I gave her my birth certificate, the paper with the result of my blood test, and she assured me again that she'd been over the whole thing with one of the older girls at Smith, a girl who had transferred from Goucher. Everyone knew about Elkton. It was the Reno of the Eastern Seaboard. What postage stamps were to the Republic of San Marino, early weddings were to Elkton, Maryland.

In a corner of the larger suitcase, carefully wrapped and stuffed with newspapers, was a plain drinking glass. When the ceremony was over, she said, she would wrap the glass in a handkerchief, set it on the floor, and I was to stamp on it. Her eyes were radiant now, imagining the look we would get from the justice of the peace and his wife. She explained the purpose of the glass to me, its symbolism in Jewish wedding ceremonies as a reminder of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, of the seriousness and sadness—the history—that were present at all times in our lives, that would mingle always with our happiness. She knew I hadn't been brought up to believe in such stuff, but we were both Jewish, after all, and she wondered if, after we returned and announced the great event to our families, I would mind having a second ceremony performed by a rabbi. She wanted my blessing most of all, but just to be safe—because she wasn't sure if she believed or disbelieved—could we get God's blessing too?

Was there anything she'd forgotten? She took a small brown stuffed animal from the suitcase—brown doggie, she called him—and told me not to be jealous, and she placed brown doggie on my lap with the bag of sandwiches. I wondered what my father would have thought. Would he have liked Gail? For the first time in a while I saw his face clearly. He stood to one side, by himself, shading his good eye, while a rabbi married us. Tears ran down both his cheeks. Was it possible? Could his bad eye weep? When the ceremony was over and I'd kissed Gail and crushed the glass, he took my face between his hands and kissed me on the lips and told me I made him happy and that he was sorry he had given away the gas mask. He should have told them it was lost. He should have paid the penalty and given it to me. Could I forgive him?

“When I was younger,” Gail was saying, “I'd stay home some days just so I could watch ‘Bride and Groom.' My mother couldn't figure it out because I seemed so—unorthodox is the word, I suppose—in other ways. They worried about me because of the way I didn't want to be like the other girls at school. But I always liked dolls and stuffed animals and I always loved weddings. Why? When I sat on the living room rug and watched the couples get married on TV, I even used to cry. Can you believe it?” She laughed. “I used to fantasize about being on the show, about the gown I'd wear, the veil, the long flowing train behind me, about Ellen being my maid of honor, about the music I wanted, about how clear and smooth and fair my skin would be.” She lifted brown doggie and kissed its nose, offered it to me. She shrugged. “Well. Maybe in my next life I'll get to do it that way.”

The last thing we talked about before Gail fell asleep was Jackie Robinson, and it seemed crazy to me, but in a wonderful way, that in the middle of our wedding night I'd sat on the edge of the bed in our hotel room, and stroked her forehead, and told her the story of Jackie Robinson's life. And when I gave her the news I'd been saving—that Jackie's third child, born the week before, was a boy, and that Jackie and Rachel had named the boy David—she filled our glasses with more champagne, and we toasted the new David and wished him long life and happiness.

She lay there listening to me, her eyes closed, and said that Ellen was probably right—that I did have the gentlest voice of any man she had ever known.
Probably?
I asked. She smiled, said that she thought a lot about my voice when we were apart.
Gentilesse
. That was the name she had given me. Did I mind? The word was used in tales of courtly love, in Chaucer's work, and described men—knights usually—who possessed in rare combinations the qualities of gentleness, courtesy and good breeding. Gentilesse David, she said, trailing her fingers lightly down the planes of my face. Nor should I think that being gentle meant that I was weak. Gentleness could be allied with power, with strength….

Now she was fast asleep. I watched her, wondered if it were possible that we were there alone, just the two of us, far from everything and everyone we had ever known. I was seventeen years old. I was happy in a way I'd never believed possible. But how could one feel so full of peace and love and not, at the same time, be afraid that such feelings would, in the next instant, be taken away?