Sins of Innocence

by Jean Stone

  Thankfully the apartment Susan picked was across the river. It looked like Boston, felt like Boston, but the smell was different: A huge confectionery plant behind the building gave off a sickish odor.

  P.J. sighed. It was hard to believe that was only a week ago. Now Susan’s dreams had been jolted. Susan had hardly spoken to P.J. about David’s disappearance. Instead, she seemed to crave the conversation of old friends, people who had known her, people who had known David. Susan had been on the phone most of the week. It reminded P.J. that they all had lives outside Larchwood—lives they would all have to return to, lives that could never be the same. But for P.J., the waiting would be the longest. It was only October 19, and her “around Christmas” due date was the latest of any of the girls. The others would be gone from Larchwood, but P.J. would remain. Alone.

  From inside the house P.J. heard the shrill ring of the telephone. Another call for Susan, she thought. Poor Susan. David is really out of her life now. P.J. thought about the others: Jess, whose hopes for reconciliation with her father were dim; Ginny, who couldn’t quite seem to find herself at all. And then there was herself, wanting now only for the loneliness to end, for the trauma to be over. Had her mother felt this way? Why couldn’t her mother have shared the secret of her child with P.J.? Why—especially now? Why did she insist on keeping up a front for the world to see? Did her mother, in fact, hate P.J. now? Hate her for doing what she had done, and for reminding her mother of her own dark past?

  The front door opened, and Miss Taylor stepped onto the veranda.

  “It’s such a gorgeous morning,” P.J. noted. “Guess we won’t have too many more like this.” But Miss Taylor didn’t respond. P.J. noticed the woman looked pale. “Is anything wrong, Miss Taylor? Are you okay?”

  The woman sat down on the wicker chair beside P.J. P.J. saw that she was trembling.

  “P.J.,” she said. “Oh, dear, I don’t know how to do this.”

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  The woman placed a blue-veined hand on top of P.J.’s. “Oh, dear, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  Bad news? “Is there more about David? Oh, no. Poor Susan.”

  The woman patted P.J.’s hand. “My dear, your mother just phoned.”

  Mother? Something bad had happened to Mother?

  “We thought it might be better if I told you than for you to hear it over the phone.”

  P.J. felt a chill surge through her. “What’s wrong, Miss Taylor?” she snapped.

  Miss Taylor took a visible deep breath. “It’s your father, P.J.”

  “What? What’s wrong with my father?”

  “I’m afraid he’s had a heart attack.”

  P.J. bolted from the chair. “What? My God, no!” She headed for the front door. Daddy, she thought, Daddy, no! “I’ve got to see him,” she shouted. “Can Pop drive me there?”

  “P.J., dear,” Miss Taylor said quietly.

  P.J. looked at the woman. Anger flooded through her. “He’s got to! Pop has to take me to see him! Oh, poor Daddy! What happened? Was he at work?”

  “Yes. But, P.J., I’m afraid you don’t understand.”

  P.J. looked at the woman. The lines around her mouth were quivering; her lips paled under their red cover. A shock of dread stabbed P.J.’s heart. Suddenly she understood.

  “Dead?”

  The woman looked down. “Yes. I’m afraid so.”

  P.J. stood motionless. “Dead?” she asked again.

  Two minutes later P.J. was on the phone. Her brother answered.

  “Junior? It’s me, P.J.”

  “Oh, hi.” His voice sounded distant, older.

  “Junior, is it true?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, God,” she choked. “What happened?”

  “You wanna talk to Mom?”

  “Is she? Can she?”

  “Mom!” Junior screamed away from the phone. “It’s P.J.!”

  P.J. pictured her mother sitting in the kitchen, staring into space. She probably had a notepad in front of her. She was probably trying to make a list of things that needed doing, but she probably hadn’t written down a thing. P.J. longed to be there. She longed for a hug—from whom? Her mother? Had her mother ever hugged her? Oh, Daddy …

  “P.J.?” Her mother finally answered. She, too, sounded a million miles away. Maybe she was.

  “Mom. Are you okay?” P.J. sniffed.

  “Fine. I’m fine.” Her voice was so definite, it startled P.J.

  “Mom, I can’t believe it.”

  “I know.”

  “What happened?”

  Her mother hesitated only a split second. “He was at work. He slumped over his desk. They called the ambulance. It was too late.”

  Her staccato sentences said it all.

  “Oh, Mom,” P.J. wailed. “Not Daddy. Not Daddy.” Grief ripped at her heart. How could this be? Not Daddy. Not her father. It had only been a couple of weeks ago that P.J. had seen him. He didn’t look sick. He’d only looked scared. Afraid of telling P.J. what she needed to know. Afraid of revealing the shameful secret of her mother’s past. “Mom,” P.J. choked, “hadn’t he felt well?”

  “They say stress causes heart attacks. He’s certainly had enough of that lately, thanks to you.”

  P.J. twisted the telephone cord. “When are you having the funeral?”

  “Day after tomorrow. Your father always said he’d never want his death dragged out.”

  P.J. didn’t hesitate. “Pop Hines will drive me up.”

  Silence.

  “Mom?”

  “Under no circumstances are you to come.”

  P.J. was stunned. “What?”

  “You heard me.” Her mother’s voice sizzled through the wire. “Need I remind you that you are seven months’ pregnant?”

  The bitch. The raving bitch. What about you? P.J. wanted to scream. What makes you think you’re so much better than me? I know about you, I know all about you. But P.J. had promised her father she would never tell—now she never could. “Mom …”

  “I will not have people seeing you. I will not have them knowing what you have done. And 1 would think, out of respect to your father, you wouldn’t want that either.”

  P.J. felt the will to fight drain from her.

  “I am going to say you are in Europe, that you had a chance to study over there. I am going to say I didn’t think it fair to notify you until your return.”

  P.J. knew words would be useless.

  “I cannot believe you have done this to me,” her mother finished. “Your father deserved better.”

  All she wanted to do was take a shower. To wash away the grief. To wash away the guilt. P.J. stood in the steamy stall, the hot spray beating into her flesh. She clung to the white plastic curtain as though it would give her the strength to stand, the strength to go on. Daddy, Daddy, she thought over and over. Daddy, was it my fault? Was it my fault? She leaned against the wall and held her huge belly. Oh, God, Daddy, was it my fault? Was my shame too much for you to bear? The ache strained to erupt from her swollen breasts. She wiped her eyes, dark mascara melting to muddy blotches on her hands. She held her palms out and watched the water splash at the blackness, dissolving it into nothing. The mascara was there. Then it was gone. Daddy was gone. P.J. stood naked, alone. The only sounds were her sobs, swept away by the desolate rhythm of the shower’s spray.

  “I think we should all go.” Jess was sitting at P.J.’s desk when P.J. returned from the shower. The other girls were there, sitting on her bed.

  P.J. tossed her damp towel into the corner.

  “P.J., wow, we’re really sorry,” Susan said.

  The others nodded.

  “Yeah, me too,” P.J. replied. Why were they all here? Why weren’t they dead too? Why was her father, the only person in the world who loved her, dead? What right did anyone else have to be alive? “So where are you all going?” she continued, trying to cut the tension.

  The girls looked around at one anoth
er. Jess spoke again. “With you. To the funeral.”

  P.J. let out a quick, hideous laugh. “Well, if you’re going to the funeral, you’ll be going without me.”

  “If you’d rather we didn’t come …”

  “Hell, no, go if you want. But I’m not going. I’ve been banned.”

  Silence.

  “You can’t go?” asked Susan.

  P.J. dropped to the floor and pulled her corduroy caftan around her ankles. “My mother won’t allow it.” She laughed again and pointed to her stomach. “What would the neighbors say?”

  The girls stared at P.J. Without warning, P.J. began to sob once again.

  Susan went to her and put an arm around her shoulder. “But you want to go, don’t you?”

  P.J. pulled her knees to her chest and locked her arms around them. She wiped away her tears, then tried to speak. “It’s not a question of want,” she stammered.

  Ginny got up off the bed. “Fuck it. Your mother can’t force you to stay away.”

  “It would cause trouble, Ginny,” Jess reasoned.

  “So what? What if—” Ginny screwed up her face in concentration until her heavily lined eyes became slits. “What if she doesn’t know you’re there?”

  P.J. laughed. “I’d be a little difficult to miss.”

  “Not if you looked like someone else. Someone older.” She spun around. “Like Miss T.” She paced the floor. “I could make you up.” Her words came quick. “And we could get a dress from Miss T.…”

  “Miss Taylor won’t let me go,” P.J. said. “I’m sure my mother told her I wasn’t welcome.”

  “Bummer,” Susan said.

  “Who says Miss T. has to know?” P.J. had never seen Ginny so animated.

  “What are you talking about?” Jess asked.

  “Simple. I could sneak into her room and … borrow … a dress.”

  Jess stared at Ginny. “You mean steal a dress?”

  Ginny shrugged. “Whatever,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Jess, you can go to Pop and ask if he’ll drive P.J. to Massachusetts.”

  “Oh, Ginny,” Jess whined, “and make him not tell Miss Taylor?”

  “He’ll do anything for you, you know that.”

  “Well, maybe.”

  “Sure he will,” Susan added. “And Ginny can get the dress and make you up, P.J. I’ve got some old-lady shoes I picked up last winter at the army-surplus store. They might be a little big, but we can stuff them with something.”

  “Great,” Ginny responded. “When the time comes, we’ll leave it to Jess to keep Miss T. occupied so we can sneak P.J. out of the house.”

  P.J. looked around the room at the girls. Friends. They really were her friends.

  “Aren’t we going to go with her?” Jess asked.

  “Of course,” Susan said.

  “Wait a minute,” P.J. said. “I really appreciate all you’re trying to do for me, but don’t you think four pregnant females driving up in a station wagon might make it a little obvious?”

  Susan thought a moment. “Yeah. Besides, how would we explain that to Miss Taylor? But I’ll go. Pop and me.”

  “Why Pop at all?” Ginny asked. “He let you take the car to Boston. Wouldn’t he let you take it there?”

  “How did you know I went to Boston?” Susan asked.

  Ginny smiled and said nothing.

  “Anyway,” Susan continued, casting a quizzical look at Ginny, “I’d feel safer if Pop was with us. In case there were any problems.”

  “I agree,” P.J. added.

  Jess burst into P.J.’s room the next day. “Pop’s going to do it!”

  Ginny was experimenting with makeup: P.J.’s red hair was powdered white, her skin had a pasty, wrinkled look. She didn’t look the same age as Miss Taylor; she looked older. Almost elderly.

  “He didn’t want to at first,” Jess rambled. “He said he could get in a lot of trouble if Miss Taylor found out. But I told him how much it would mean to P.J.—to all of us. So he said okay.”

  P.J. closed her eyes. Thank you, God. Damn You for taking my father, but thank You for giving me … friends.

  Ginny studied P.J.’s face. “I knew you could do it, Jess. Now. Hmm. Glasses. You’ll have to use Susan’s glasses.”

  “I’ll fall on my face!” P.J. cried.

  “Look, just slip them on when you go into church. You need to wait until everyone’s inside, anyway. Then sit in the back pew. No one will notice you.”

  P.J. marveled at the girl from the streets, at the way she knew all the angles. “Ginny?” P.J. said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  Ginny shrugged. “No big deal.”

  P.J. lay in bed that night, trying to push away thoughts of her mother. She hugged her pillow, wishing it were her father. She sobbed. She stayed that way all night, not awake, not sleeping, Somewhere in between. Somewhere locked in grief. She had no idea what time it was. There is, P.J. discovered, no delineation of time when someone has died, someone you love.

  When the dawn finally broke, P.J. uncurled herself and forced herself to get up. Today was the funeral, and she was going.

  “Mom, I almost hope you recognize me,” P.J. said aloud. “You’ll see that there was no way you were going to keep me away.”

  At breakfast Miss Taylor commented, “You girls are unusually quiet this morning.” No one answered, but glances between themselves flicked back and forth across the table.

  “Well, I’ve got some studying to do,” Ginny said, and left the dining room. P.J. didn’t miss the surprised look on Miss Taylor’s face.

  The girls had collected everything. Ginny had stolen a dress of Miss Taylor’s, and also a pair of thick support hose. P.J. thought it best not to ask how she did it. Jess offered white gloves and a leather pillbox handbag—“Definitely the kind an old lady would carry,” Ginny scoffed, and Jess looked hurt. But P.J. knew it was perfect.

  When Ginny finished with the makeup, Jess helped P.J. stuff the top of Miss Taylor’s dress to give her a rounded, matronly appearance. P.J.’s pregnant stomach actually helped the effect.

  “Maybe you’d better stuff a lace hankie in the boobs,” Ginny said.

  Just as they finished, Susan came into the room.

  “All set?” she asked.

  Jess, Ginny, and P.J. stared in disbelief. Was this really Susan? P.J. thought. Her long, straight hair was done up in a French twist, she wore conservative makeup, low navy pumps, a plain navy jumper, and a white blouse. She could have passed for a pregnant, oversized Mary Tyler Moore.

  “My God,” P.J. said. “What happened to you?”

  Susan laughed. “I decided the last thing you needed at your father’s funeral was for me to look like some kind of hippie freak. Besides,” she added quietly, “I didn’t think this was the time or place for liberal statements.”

  P.J. went over and touched her shoulder. “Thanks, Susan. And thanks for going with me.” She felt tears begin to form, and she turned to the other girls. “Thanks, all you guys. You’ll never know how much this means to me.”

  “We wish you all the luck in the world.” Jess smiled.

  “Yeah, well, you just better get the hell out of here right now and keep Miss T. out of the way,” Ginny said. “I’ll go outside to Pop. Once Jess has Miss T. cornered in her office, I’ll let you know the coast is clear.”

  Jess and Ginny left, and P.J. and Susan waited a few minutes.

  “She’s amazing,” P.J. said.

  “Ginny?”

  “She connived this as if she pulls a scam every day.”

  Susan nodded. “Street-smart.”

  P.J. looked out the window, down at Pop, who leaned against the car. She wasn’t sure if the numbness she felt was fear of crossing her mother or fear of being caught by Miss Taylor and forbidden to go. Maybe, she thought, as an emptiness washed over her, maybe what I’m feeling is grief.

  Ginny appeared beside Pop and looked up toward P.J.’s window. She gave a thumbs-up sign.r />
  “It’s time,” Susan said.

  They sneaked down the staircase. P.J. clutched the handbag and tried not to stumble in Susan’s too-big shoes. As they passed within earshot of Miss Taylor’s office, P.J. heard low murmurs. She and Susan quickly tiptoed through the kitchen and out the back door. Pop was now behind the wheel, and the engine hummed. Ginny opened the car doors.

  “Good luck, guys,” she whispered.

  At that instant they were stopped by the shrill call of Miss Taylor’s voice.

  “P.J.!” she shouted from the back steps.

  P.J.’s heart sank. She suddenly felt ridiculous dressed like an aged mimic of the housemother. Miss Taylor, handbag and gloves in hand, marched toward the car.

  “If you insist on going, I’m not going to stop you, dear,” the woman said softly. “In fact, I would like to go too. You and Susan, get in the back.”

  P.J. was speechless. They got in the car. As Pop pulled out into the driveway, she saw Jess and Ginny standing on the back porch. Jess smiled and waved. Ginny turned and disappeared inside the house.

  Cars were lined up and down both sides of the street by the white steepled church. P.J. sat silently watching the mourners going inside: Mr. Brown, the man who owned her father’s favorite restaurant; Gladys and George Pryor, longtime neighbors; Tim Davieau, the golf pro at the club; Mavis and Maria Thompson, her mother’s bridge ladies. P.J. didn’t feel nervous, only cold. She couldn’t stop shivering.

  When the last of the people had gone in, Miss Taylor spoke. “Well, it’s time. Are you all right, P.J.?”

  P.J. took in a long breath. “I’m fine, Miss Taylor.” She opened the car door and got out. The others followed. They walked up the steps, Susan lightly holding P.J.’s elbow for support. Pop pulled open the door, and they entered the packed church.

  Immediately Walter Knudson approached them. He had been a family friend as far back as P.J. could remember, and was apparently now acting as usher. P.J. hesitated, afraid he would recognize her.

  But Miss Taylor took charge, motioning to Walter that they would sit in the folding chairs along the back wall. He nodded and turned away. No recognition.

  P.J. sat by the aisle, where she had a clear view of the casket: deep mahogany, covered by a blanket of white roses and pompom mums. She saw the huge heart of white roses behind the casket. A white ribbon was etched in gold glitter, DAD it read. She saw the back of her mother’s veiled head. It was straight and unmoving.