Shining Through

by Susan Isaacs

  I can’t say I wanted a baby. I didn’t picture myself buying tiny, fluffy sweaters. It was only later that I thought it would have fair hair, like me and John, and wondered whether it would have his deep blue eyes or my brown.

  “Please listen to me carefully,” he said. “This is probably the most important decision you’ll ever make in your life. I hope you’ll make it…” His voice faded away, as if it wasn’t worth the energy to go on.

  “What?” I asked. “Finish what you were going to say.”

  “I hope your decision will be rational.”

  “Do I look like a raving lunatic?”

  “Linda, must you be so argumentative?”

  “If I’m capable of being argumentative,” I said, “then I’m obviously capable of being rational, so you can relax.” He never expected that from me; he stared, almost as if he was waiting for the ventriloquist who’d said that line to pop up behind my chair. “And being so rational, I’d appreciate it if you were a little clearer.” I pulled my chair closer to his desk. “What do you want me to do?”

  “You know what I want.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I would like you to get rid of it. I want you not to use the fact of your getting pregnant as leverage.”

  “Leverage?” I asked, but I knew exactly what he meant.

  “To get me to”—he could hardly bring himself to spit out the words—“marry you.”

  “I don’t expect you to do that.”

  “What am I supposed to do if you decide not to get rid of it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not anything I’ve thought about.” I paused then, and I thought. It didn’t take much time. “You could give me some money so I could have it,” I said.

  “So you don’t want to…you won’t consider even speaking with that doctor?”

  “No. Please, now I’d like you to listen to me. No matter what you think, I’m not some cheap floozy trying to trap you.”

  “I never meant to imply that, Linda.”

  “And I’m not some dope who can’t understand the pickle she’s in…and you’re in. So just hear me out.” I hated this, thinking on my feet or, more accurately, on my behind. But since I hadn’t prepared myself, I had no choice. “I guess I’ll have to get out of here pretty soon, before I start getting noticeable, or it’ll be bad for you. I’ll need some money to live. No more than I’m getting now, twenty-five dollars a week. Well, money for a doctor too.

  “I can’t go away anywhere, because I have to take care of my mother. But since no one you know would ever put even his little toe in Ridgewood, there’s nothing to worry about.” For him. For me, oh, God, it was going to be something going to the grocery with a belly the size of a watermelon. “And I’m not going to do anything to embarrass you after I have it. You don’t have to concern yourself. I’m not going to come in with some little bundle in a blanket and stand weeping by the elevator bank.”

  John went absolutely green around the gills. “You’d keep it?”

  “I don’t know.” I wanted to cry. “It’s a baby.”

  He leaned toward me and rested his arms on his desk. “I could arrange for someone to take care of your mother, so you could get away. And then, later, for a nice, quiet adoption.”

  “As opposed to the usual noisy ones?”

  He closed his eyes, as if he was silently counting up to ten for patience, but he only got to about four when he opened them. “If we can agree to a certain sum,” he said calmly, “a very generous sum, would you be willing to sign a document absolving me of any—”

  “How could you be such a bastard?”

  It wasn’t exactly a knife to his heart. He just went on. “Would you sign such a document?”

  “Only if there was no generous sum involved.”

  “Don’t be foolhardy.”

  “I can be anything I want to be. You’re absolved.” And I stood up and walked out.

  But before I got to the door, he was behind me. He put his hands on my shoulders, turned me around and kissed me. “Linda,” he murmured.

  I put my hands against his chest and pushed him away, hard. “Go find yourself some debutante with a diaphragm,” I said. I clutched the doorknob, pulled, but he slammed the door and then stood against it, holding it shut.

  “I’ll marry you,” he said.

  “No.”

  “I’ll marry you.”

  “No. You don’t love me. I don’t even know if you like me. If I disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow, you’d only notice when it came time to take off your pants. And that wouldn’t be any big deal. You know that. All you’d have to do is smile at somebody, and in five minutes you’d be having your needs taken care of.” Slowly I lifted my head and looked into his eyes. “But there’s no one who can take care of you like I can.”

  That night, for the first time, John asked me to sleep over at his apartment. Around midnight, when he went to the bathroom, I got up and smoothed out the sheet we had rumpled, then fluffed the pillows, shook out the quilted cotton comforter and turned it over, making sure Nan’s [NLB] monogram was facing down. A few seconds later, when he returned smelling from tooth-powder, I was under the comforter, my eyes closed.

  “Linda,” he said. I breathed deeply. “Come on. You didn’t have time to fall asleep.” I opened my eyes. He slid under the cover and came up beside me. “Listen to me. There is really no alternative, since you insist on…having it. We’ll get married.”

  “We have nothing in common,” I answered. “Except sex, and we can’t do that if we’re invited out on one of the partners’ boats for an afternoon.” He stared at me. I think it hadn’t occurred to him until that instant that if I was going to be his wife, he might, occasionally, have to trot me out of the bedroom. “Look, let’s be honest with each other for once, because now we have to be. I know how thrilled you are every time I open my mouth to try and make conversation. How do you think your friends will feel? I would be an embarrassment to you.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  “I don’t know. But you believe it.”

  “You don’t know what I believe.”

  “So tell me.”

  Instead, he stared up at the ceiling. So I told him my mother was a sick drunk, and I had to take care of her. He didn’t seem either surprised or interested. But he said, “I’ll give you money for her, if that’s what you want.”

  “Look, a few hours ago you were ready to dump me—”

  “That’s not true. I was ready to be responsible—”

  “Responsibility’s one thing. Marriage is another. Am I what you want to come home to every night for the rest of your life?”

  Instead of answering, he said, “Shhh,” turned, and pried apart my legs with his knee. We did it again.

  At three in the morning, after we’d slept for a couple of hours as far apart as the double bed would allow, we accidentally knocked together and woke up, startled to find each other. Quickly, we turned and pretended to go back to sleep, but it didn’t work. I could hear his shallow, nervous breathing, his swallows that were almost gulps. I sat up and touched the silky hair on the back of his head. “Tell me why…why you’re willing. Is it to get back at Nan, to show her how she destroyed your life, that you buried your troubles in your secretary—and knocked her up?”

  “Stop it.”

  “Is it to give her a slap in the face, to show her that what it really takes to satisfy you is a hot little item from Queens?”

  “This conversation is completely inappropriate, so let’s end it.” It was hard to hear, because he wasn’t facing me; his words were muffled in the pillow.

  “Is it that it’s so good with me you can’t give it up, even if you have to marry me and let me have your child?”

  “Go back to sleep. You’re upset. Worn out.” He sounded weary, not tired.

  I tried to act lighthearted, the way classy people are supposed to in nasty situations. “Think about your practice. Do you think marrying me is going to do
wonders for your reputation for sound judgment? What are your foreign clients going to think, when they meet your pregnant dumpling with the berlinerisch accent?”

  “Stop it!” he snapped. He took a minute to compose himself. “Linda, I’m responsible for this situation. I got you pregnant. And I want to do what’s honorable.”

  “Why? Because that’s what gentlemen are supposed to do?”

  “Yes.”

  “But there is no love.”

  “You love me.” He was so kind and so cold. “Do you want to leave me, Linda? Or do you want me to marry you?”

  Maybe when he feels it kicking, I thought. He’ll put his hand on my stomach and he’ll look at me and all of a sudden…“I want you to marry me.”

  “All right, then.”

  I put my arms around him and rested my head on his shoulder. He grabbed me tight, climbed on top of me, and so we did it again.

  11

  The high-ceilinged room in City Hall smelled of cigarettes ground out on the already dirty brown and tan tile floor. Couples pressed against a wood railing, waiting their turn to enter into matrimony. Not holy matrimony; this was the Municipal Building of the City of New York, and in the interest of peace in the Melting Pot—to say nothing of keeping the line moving—the clerks were not supposed to utter You-Know-Who’s name.

  It was only then that I realized how much I wanted to hear it; I imagined a deep, velvety voice intoning, Dearly beloved, We are gathered here in the sight of Gawd…If I’d had to put a face on that voice, I guess it would be the minister who was always burying Johnstons in Brooklyn. I didn’t know his name or his denomination, but he looked like someone born to perform religious rites: white hair, a hawkish nose and ice blue eyes that appeared to look down at whoever was getting buried. But now and then he broke into a kind smile, which showed a couple of teeth missing on the side. The parsonage roof probably leaked too, poor guy.

  Since I’d fallen for John, my daydreams had been detailed, but they’d almost always been about sex, not ceremonies. Still, my secret night dreams must have been traditional: being married by the Reverend Smith/Jones/Williams in a Christmas card church, a simple, pure-white building with a nice steeple. Out of respect to my Grandma Olga’s memory, the reverend would just say “God” whenever he came to His name, and not make a big deal about details like the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

  A little runt of a groom-to-be next to me was puffing like a titan of industry on a giant cigar, and his about-to-be bride was chomping on a wad of spearmint gum. To keep my stomach from flipping over, I turned my head toward John and inhaled the aroma of clean wool from the sleeve of his suit. I realized that I’d not only pictured the minister; I’d even imagined my dress. An old-fashioned shirtwaist style, white, but instead of cotton, it would be handmade lace—a rosebud and rose design. Olga had brought a square of lace like that with her from Berlin: a handkerchief some rich cousin had given Olga’s mother for her trousseau.

  In the wedding dream I hadn’t known I’d been daydreaming, I’d be wearing a strand of pearls from somewhere and carrying a bouquet of white roses and the tiny white dot flowers whose name I didn’t know, all tied up with long white ribbons. I’d have on a white leghorn hat with a white velvet band. I wouldn’t wear a veil because it would be a day wedding.

  And it was a day wedding: no moon. And no June. It was September 16, a Monday, and I was wearing a blue dress that had seen its best days in 1937, when I’d bought it at Ohrbach’s End of Summer Sale, which they held in July. (Some tight-mouthed red-headed lady had tried to grab it from me as I took it off the rack, but I’d held on to it and marched majestically to the fitting room. It had been a little baggy, but the redhead was giving me the eye when I came out, so I’d bought it.) It wasn’t baggy anymore.

  I didn’t look pregnant, but my waist was rapidly vanishing. Each night, in front of the full-length mirror in the small, square dressing alcove just outside John’s bathroom, I saw my curves disappearing—except in the bosom department, where I was getting like Hedy Lamarr: lush.

  So there I was in City Hall in a plain blue dress and black patent-leather heels, my hair pulled up, pinned tight in place. A working girl’s outfit, but who knew that morning when I came to work that I’d be a bride by lunch?

  John called me into his office a little after ten. “I have a ten-thirty conference over at Two Wall Street. I’ll meet you at eleven forty-five at the Municipal Building, second floor, by the elevators. Put some papers in an envelope and say I called and asked you to bring them to me. Also, you have no idea when you’ll be back, because one of the lawyers is from Germany and he may have some memoranda he wants to dictate.” My expression must have confirmed his estimate of my intelligence. “Don’t forget, the Municipal Building,” he said again. “On Centre Street. I’ve arranged to have matters expedited. We can get the license and get married right away, without a waiting period. We can be finished by twelve-thirty.”

  “You have a conference at one?”

  “I thought we could go out to lunch afterwards, to celebrate.”

  He gave me a small smile. I gave him one back, but halfway through it I realized John’s smile was a brave, public one: chin up, noblesse whatever, courage under fire.

  He’d probably offer a gracious toast at lunch.

  The little man with a little toothbrush mustache came up beside John and, tiptoeing, led us past a line of clerks, who sat in cages like monkeys on high stools, and into his little glassed-in cubicle, so we wouldn’t have to wait on line. That’s where we filled out the application for a marriage license.

  “Listen,” I said, “I didn’t know we’d be here today. I don’t have my birth certificate or—”

  “Shhh!” John said.

  “But—”

  “I will see to everything, miss,” the little man said. “Just write down your vital statistics—” His face reddened, his mustache twitched, and he glanced nervously at John, afraid he’d made some blot on my honor. “Parents’ names, date of birth, borough of birth,” he said quickly. “You were born in New York City?” he asked, a little suspiciously, I thought, like maybe I’d snuck in from Minnesota and was trying to pull a fast one.

  “In Queens,” I said.

  He sighed, relieved. Then he turned to John. His manner turned too—embarrassingly eager to please. “Delighted to have been of help, Mr. Berringer,” the man said. “Any friend of Commissioner Tuttle…”

  But whoever Commissioner Tuttle, puller of strings for Wall Street lawyers, was, he cut no ice in the room where you got married. We had to wait our turn along with about fifteen other couples. Only two of them looked really happy. Most of the others seemed like sad stories. There were several young girls—very young—with their slit-eyed parents and miserable-looking grooms-to-be; the grooms ranged in age from about sixteen to sixty-five; all those girls had bellies. A couple of couples looked as if they’d been keeping company since Calvin Coolidge was elected; they seemed tired of everything, especially each other. An elderly lady with a corsage and marcelled hair was less tired, but she was holding the hand of a too-pretty young man of no more than twenty-five.

  But all these couples—the happy and the sad—stared at John. It was so obvious he didn’t belong. It wasn’t just that he was wearing a suit—a few of the other men were—but it was the way the suit fit. And the way the shoulders under the suit were broad. Not broad like one of the men, a construction worker who’d rolled the sleeves of his blue shirt so high you could see his tattooed biceps. John’s muscles didn’t come from work; they came from playing sports in white uniforms.

  His shining hair brightened that room. One of the other guys, an Irishman who had gotten a dark Jewish girl pregnant, had hair as fair as John’s, but it just didn’t gleam.

  So in the end, John wasn’t stared at because of his clothes, or even his looks. He was simply apart from them, as though some fairy of Good Fortune had waved her wand over his baby carriage. Or, if he hadn’t been born different
, maybe he’d been initiated into some Ivy League secret society that transforms boys into privileged men.

  Just as everybody there knew he was different, John knew it too. And he didn’t want to be with…well, with people like me. He wanted out of that gritty, noisy, overlit, everyone-is-equal place in the worst way.

  “Brenninger!” a clerk yelled out.

  We walked through an opening in the railing to a small area where another clerk, a primly dressed man who looked like he sold caskets, checked our papers. He took a long time, so I pulled out my hairpins and shook my hair loose.

  “Ready? John Wilson Berringer, do you take Linda Rose Voss to be your lawful wedded wife?”

  No “to love, honor and cherish”? I wondered.

  “I do,” John said.

  Apparently not.

  “Do you, Linda Rose Voss, take John Wilson Berringer to be your lawful wedded husband?”

  “I do,” I said. My voice sounded so normal.

  “Ring?” the clerk said.

  And just as I was thinking: He forgot, John took out a box. I stared as he opened it. Brown velvet, and inside, on white satin, there was a gold wedding band. Nice. Not insultingly thin.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, as he slipped it on my finger. It fit. Well, maybe just a little loose.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife.” The man waited, then he cleared his throat with a very fake “Ahem!” We kissed so it would be over and the next couple could start their life together.

  Then I looked into John’s eyes. They were filled with tears.

  “Mom.” I shook my mother gently. It was five in the afternoon of my wedding day. The air coming through the open windows had a crisp, almost sharp, bite. It was that short, false New York autumn that comes in September and blows away the heat of the summer for a few days. I was chilly in my blue dress. My mother’s shoulder was cold, which was not surprising, since her blanket had fallen to the floor.

  “Five more minutes,” she mumbled, and curled herself up into a shrimp shape.