Barnegat Bay - 14. Chapter 14

Of course, that was just the beginning. And there are always surprises, especially when you don’t know what you’re getting into, and you’re feeling your way along. At least, Mary and I were comfortable together, and we had a built-in go-between in Claire.

So we went to Niagara Falls. We did the tests, and got the license, and found a minister, and we slept together as chastely as possible in what seemed like an increasingly narrow bed.

“I’m not used to actually sleeping with anyone,” I said, apologizing for steadily moving towards the center. “And you’ve seen how skinny my cot is.”

“I don’t know why I’m moving towards you, either,” Mary admitted. “At home, I have a normal size bed. But I guess I sleep in the middle.”

“We should’ve gotten twin beds.”

“That makes no sense, since we’re supposedly on our honeymoon.”

“Are, actually.”

She breezed past that. “Though it’s not like anyone’s spying on us and will report.”

“Do you think this place even has twin beds?”

We both laughed at that, and, overall, had a very good week – especially once I stopped worrying about all the patients I was missing.

“My answering service is overworked,” I told Mary at one point, after calling in. “I’ll have to make it up to them.”

“There are other doctors,” she said. “What happens when you get sick?”

“I haven’t been practicing long enough for that to happen.”

At home, in my – our – new apartment, I was planning to sleep on the couch – as soon as we got one. We’d have to get a double bed, to keep up appearances, but Mary would sleep in our bedroom alone.

“What do you want to do about meals?” I asked. “When we’re back in New York.”

“Well, since you’ll be working, I’ll cook. I’m pretty good at that.”

That wasn’t what I meant, and I had to explain.

“It’s not that, really. I almost never eat.”

“No wonder you’re so thin,” she joked.

She knew that from seeing me at the beach, not from anything she learned at Niagara Falls.

“It’s not that,” I went on. “I eat – I probably eat too much. But so much of what I do is house calls – working with children.”

“I know that.”

“So I go to their families’ apartments. And some people can’t pay me, at least not now they say. But they always give me something to nosh on. So I have coffee in the morning – to wake up – and then I eat through the day. I only really sit down for dinner at my parents’ – and sometimes, that’s not till eight o’clock.”

“When do you start?”

“Most days, eight AM – sometimes earlier, if there’s an emergency. Also, sometimes, I’m out much later than eight – if there’s another emergency.”

“Some life.”

“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “I love it.”

“That’s not what I meant. I was thinking of your wife – your family.”

“But there isn’t…” And that’s when I stopped and smiled – in a different kind of way, maybe laughing at myself. “Well, I guess for a year, there’s going to be.”

“If you want to change your mind,” Mary offered quietly.

“I don’t.” I was definite.

“I mean, there’s still time.”

“No, there isn’t. For one thing, we’re already married – and we can’t as quickly undo that. For another, time is something that’s temporarily gone out of our control.”

Mary patted her stomach and laughed. “I’ll say it has.”

We were at a tourist place, looking out over the Falls, and were eating a kind of picnic lunch – sandwiches and Coca-Cola. In contrast to us, time didn’t seem important to the Falls. It may as well have been there forever. Though the guide on the boat, when we took one of the expected tours, said the Falls were constantly changing.

“It won’t even be for a year,” Mary went on. “The baby’s due by mid-April, and I could be back in Toms River by July – maybe even working at my aunt’s store.”

“You don’t think that’ll be too soon?”

“For the baby?”

“For our marriage. I mean, we just took the blood tests, and now we’re planning our divorce.”

Mary laughed.

“That follows our story,” she reminded me. “That having the baby changed too much. It does, sometimes.”

“It already has.”

And we both laughed. At least, it seemed like we were going to have an enjoyable year.

“Still,” I went on, “I thought we were going to tell people that the baby was born in mid-summer. To stop everyone from talking.”

“That’s a long time to hide such good news. And your family will have to know, since they’re right in the city.”

“We certainly don’t have to decide now. We can wait and see what happens.”

“That’s a good idea – we can wait on lots of things. In fact, there some we never have to think about.”

“Like what?” She had me curious.

“Like where we’re going to live. And how many children we’re going to have. And what their names will be. And – well, everything.”

She was right about that. Though for something as simple as where we were going to live, well, I’d never thought about it being anywhere but where I had – the Upper West Side. It’s what I knew. It was also where I worked and where my family and most of our relatives were. Which brought me back to thinking about dinners and my parents. And Mary.

“My mother’s going to want to get to know you,” I warned. “Dad, too, but Mom far more. You’re the newest member of our family – the first since my sister got married. And her husband can at least keep distance ‘cause he’s a guy. But my brother’s girlfriends get it full force. So you may want to talk with them.”

“About what?”

“My mother.”

“Why?” Mary asked, honestly. “I’ve met her. I like her. She’s like my aunt – only from New York and Jewish.”

She said that without thinking, then abruptly stopped.

“Oops.”

I just smiled.

“I didn’t mean that,” she quickly went on. “At least, not the way it sounded.”

“It didn’t sound like anything,” I assured her.

“Good. Because I didn’t mean it to.”

“Then it’s all right. And it would’ve been all right even if it had meant something. I mean, in some ways, people are simply different.”

We both knew that.

“And my mother’s going to be different from your aunt – at least, from what I’ve seen. My mother’s different from a lot of people on Barnegat – that’s why she left. She loves her family. She’s back and forth to Barnegat all the time, especially now that my sister and brother and I are grown, and her parents are getting older. But she wouldn’t move back there for anything. Just as she won’t give up teaching.”

“I wouldn’t expect her to. I wouldn’t give up working for my aunt so soon except…”

“But you were thinking of quitting work once you had a family. You told Claire and me that, when Claire said she hoped to go into her family’s business. My sister was never raised that way, and that’s what my brother’s girlfriends quickly learn. That’s one of the reasons they move on.”

“And the others?”

I grinned. “Mainly that he’s young – he just finished college. And he’s only twenty – he skipped a couple of grades.”

“That’s pretty good.”

“Actually, we all did. School wasn’t hard.”

Mary looked at me like she didn’t completely agree. I just went on.

“In one way, my sister’s already ahead of our mother. She did all four years of college – Hunter – at once. So she’s a librarian. And not just for a public school, working with kids. There’s nothing wrong with that, but she’s more ambitious – Mom raised her that way. So my sister’s a city librarian. She doesn’t have children yet, but even when she does, she’s not thinking about giving up her job.”

“That’s good,” Mary admitted, “for her. But what’s it have to do with me?”

I tried again to explain. “It’s like I said – you’re going to get my mother full force. She doesn’t know we’re pretending to be married. She’s going to think it’s real, and she’ll want to help – which means teaching you. And sharing everything she’s learned – in every way.”

“I’ll be glad for that. But…”

And she stopped.

“What?” I had to ask.

“Then maybe we should tell her.”

“What?” I had to ask again.

“That we’re not really married. Or that we are, but we’re not – that you’re more like a very good friend – doing me this amazing favor.”

I needed to think about that.

“The problem with telling my mother,” I began. “The problem with telling anyone is – where do we stop? I mean, people like to talk. Everyone knows that, and almost no one can keep a secret. I see that all the time when people are sick. And if we tell my mother, my father’ll have to know. And then my sister and brother and their families. They’ll find out anyway, because we talk so openly among ourselves. And since we’re all back at Barnegat all the time, someone there will find out – unintentionally, but still... So even if you never told your family, I’ll bet the news would reach them.”

I hesitated

“Besides, if we told my family – who you don’t even really know – how could we not tell yours?”

At first, Mary only smiled at that. Then she grinned, and then laughed, as the repercussions kept mounting and hitting her.

“You’re right,” she finally admitted. “I can’t hide for a year – and only pretend I’m married to you. We’ve got to make believe it’s real.”

“We do,” I agreed.

And she echoed that

Of course, my parents – who were soon closest to us – seeing us for dinner almost every night – saw through that immediately. Or saw through part of it. I’m not sure which of them guessed first, but they decided my father should talk with me. So he was waiting in my office one night when I stopped to drop off my bag and the day’s paperwork.

“Are you all right?” I asked. I thought maybe something was worrying him that he wanted to keep from Mom.

“I’m fine,” he assured me. “As far as I know. But you’re kind of hiding something, aren’t you?”

Hiding almost anything from my mother was impossible, but I could sometimes duck my dad.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I said, carefully. And I honestly wasn’t. There were too many possibilities.

“You’re not really in love with Mary,” he went on. “You only got married because you got her pregnant.”

My instinct was to immediately say, “I didn’t get her pregnant” – since it was the truth, and I could easily defend myself without making anything up. But since making things up was exactly what Mary and I were going to have to do for the next ten-or-so months, and since one of the things we’d soon have to tell everyone was that Mary was going to have a baby, being honest with my dad would only work against us.

Instead, I dodged. “What makes you think that?” I asked.

My father grinned, thinking he’d won. “That she’s pregnant? Or that you had to get married? The first kind of leads to the second.”

“If they go in that order,” I said, smiling back. “Usually, it’s the reverse.”

“Usually, people say that to be polite.”

“It used to be normal – that no man concerned about his future would want a sterile wife.”

“But we’re not farmers anymore. And I’m not sure how far back you’d have to go to find one in our family – in any branch. It’s probably been years since anyone knew the right way around a cow.”

“Farmers don’t necessarily have cows.”

“And sons don’t usually lead their fathers into cornfields,” he countered. “Now what’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on,” I insisted. “For years, Mom’s been wondering when I was going to get married. You were, too, only not as openly. Well, now I’m married, and you’re suddenly wondering why. Why?”

I’d kind of cornered my father there, and for a moment, he seemed to be trying to figure out how. But it didn’t take him long to straighten his thinking.

“It just doesn’t seem like you’re in love with Mary.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Well, there are ways people act when they’re first in love – and when they first get married.”

“Like what?”

“Like they look at each other a lot. And they touch each other. And they kiss.”

“We do that. We just don’t do it in front of you.”

“That’s the whole point. When people are first in love, they can’t stop themselves. Everything’s out of control. Things just happen.”

“And you’re not seeing that?”

“No.”

I hesitated. “Is this your thinking? Or Mom’s?”

“It’s both of us.”

“But who first? Who suggested what, and who went along?”

Dad laughed. “You know your mother’s brighter than I am – and more perceptive.”

“You were smart enough to marry her.”

“I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Or my hands.”

“I’m glad I didn’t see that,” I joked.

“Of course, I was younger than you are – and probably didn’t have as much discipline. But even so…”

I decided to be honest in a way that I could. So he – so my parents – would believe me. “Look,” I admitted, “the whole thing happened very quickly – for Mary as well as me. All summer, we’ve been part of a group. There were eight or ten of us. The guys always stayed the same, and Mary and her best friend. But the other guys kept seeing different girls, so we were a changing bunch. But when the summer ended – and when I realized I wasn’t going to see Mary any more – not every weekend as I had been – well, I didn’t want that to happen. So kind of suddenly, I asked if she’d ever thought about getting married. And as suddenly, she asked, ‘Is that a proposal?’ So I said, ‘Yes,’ and she said, ‘Yes,’ and maybe we’re still working things out.”

That sounded plausible, and I could see my father was charmed. I’d just have to remember the details to tell Mary – quickly – before dinner. And then hope my mother was as gullible.

“You think this will work?” Mary asked, when I stopped by our apartment to pick her up.

“It’s got to. It’s all I could think of with no time. And it’s simple enough so we can’t forget.”

“But we should start touching each other, I guess. And occasionally kissing.”

“It’s everything we’ve been trying not to do.”

“No – it makes sense.”

“Just don’t start immediately. Or Mom’ll know exactly what we’re trying to prove.”

“I can always tell her I was worried about being too familiar in front of them – that I’d never be that affectionate in front of my parents.”

“You wouldn’t? Even if you were in love?”

“Not in front of my father. He’s always told us,‘There’s a time and a place for everything.’”

“I’ve seen him touch your mother.”

“Well, after twenty-five years…”

“And she touches him.”

“Same thing.”

“Then why would it be different with you? With us?”

“Because you’re not one of his virgin daughters – and in some way, my sisters and I always will be – even if we each had ten babies. Well – a few. It’s just the way he thinks.”

“I suspect – that after twenty-five years – I’d like to be able to touch you in front of your father.”

“Stick around – maybe I’ll let you. If he’s still alive.”

We laughed at that, and then we started out of the apartment.

“Wait a minute,” Mary said. “Maybe we should tell your parents tonight.”

“Tell them what?”

“That I’m pregnant.”

I counted back the months from when we wanted Mary to have the baby. “It’s too soon,” I told her. “By our schedule, even if it happened at Niagara Falls – as I’m sure it sometimes does,” I joked, “it’s only been a month.”

Mary thought about this. “Well, we could tell them I might be pregnant – that we’ve been thinking about starting a family soon because you’re almost thirty.”

“A very old man.”

“Well, most of the boys I grew up with were fathers soon after high school.”

“Most of the boys you know didn’t go to college. And med school. And have to do a residency. And …”

“Even if they had, they might’ve started families.”

“That’s true.”

“And my father’s only forty-three. I know your parents’re older.”

“Almost fifty-five.”

“But by the time our first child is twenty, you’ll be fifty. And you’re your father’s oldest.”

I had to laugh. “Wait! We’re talking about one of those things we’ll never need to think about – things that’ll never happen, remember? There’s only ever going to be one child between us, and – very soon – it’ll just be yours.”

Mary laughed at that, too. “Sorry – I didn’t mean what I was saying. I was looking at it from your parents’ view and forgot to say.”

“So you’re blaming my mother?” I said, grinning.

Mary went along with that. “Yeah, let’s blame your mother – that’s a great idea.” And we left the apartment laughing.

Walking around the corner to my parents’, we worked out a way to give some hints that Mary might be pregnant while still allowing it was too soon to confirm.

“You know they’ll be continuously counting,” I said. “Both of them. And Dad tracks numbers for a living. He won’t miss a day.”

“Then it’ll give them something to think about – instead of counting how many times we hold hands.”

So we walked into their apartment practically giggling, instead of holding hands.

“You’re in good moods,” my mother pointed out.

“I’m giddy from finishing a long day.”

“And I’m just hungry,” Mary said. “I’ve almost started to eat four meals a day – a small dinner at my normal time to last till the four of us eat.”

“You’ll get used to it,” my father advised. “I find myself snacking, too. Though I’d rather delay dinner and spend an hour with you, then not see you both at all.”

“That’s just the way we feel,” I told him and my mom. “Once I’m home, I fall right into bed.”

I’d meant it to mean I was tired, but everyone just laughed. And it was good that my parents were laughing at me, though it wasn’t the first time. Because – as Mary said – it helped keep them distracted.