Page 52 of Our Last Vineyard Summer

She pressed a fist to her mouth, biting down hard on the fleshy part of her curved finger. Not only would he deny that he was involved, but he would also pretend that she’d meant nothing to him. The possibility garbled her voice, and her words oozed out of her like thick, muddy tar.

“There were no others. Not for years. It has only ever been you.”

The mouthpiece was muffled suddenly, and she heard him say, “Just one more minute, Milly.” Betsy put in two more dimes, realizing she didn’t have many left now. He needed to get back on the line. Andy returned with his voice crystalline. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any information to help. For what you need, at least. I just arrived here, and I don’t have a student by that name.”

She continued to talk right over him. “I’m not calling you for any money if that’s what you think. But I’m considering having this child, and it’s yours, and I would like you to be a part of its life. This child cannot be alone in this world…”

The trill of a dial tone roared into her ear. “I thought we might have this baby together.”

The last part she’d whispered as the line went dead, a piece of Betsy’s heart felt like it had been lobbed off. Is that really what she wanted? To have this baby, all by herself. Perhaps it was. The realization made her dizzy, and for a moment she felt like she might pass out cold. She gripped the aluminum shelf of the booth and steadied her breathing. What had she eaten that morning? An egg, a cup of black coffee. Having a baby would give her purpose. She would be someone’s mother, and just like every woman before her, she’d be forced to figure out the complicated balance of raising a tiny human while caring for yourself.

But then there was graduate school. Classes. She couldn’t exactly waddle her way around campus.

A stranger knocked on the folding door, and Betsy jumped. A middle-aged man in a suit pointed to a sign posted on the wall outside: CALLSLIMITED TO 5MINUTES, PLEASE.Betsy placed the black plastic earpiece back on the receiver and opened the telephone booth, pushing past the grumpy bearded man and running out of the Town Hall and into the pouring rain. She’d forgotten her umbrella, and she stepped in puddle after puddle as she made her way home. At the house, she rushed inside the front door, kicking it shut and ducking out of the rain. Betsy flicked on the living room light and tossed her workbag onto the coffee table. “Mom,” she yelled. “Aggie?”

There was no answer. She checked the driveway, but the car wasn’t there either.Go figure, she thought. She’d been waiting for one second alone in the living room all this week, and here it was at the very moment that she didn’t want to be alone.

Betsy grabbed a jar of peanut butter and a spoon and slumped across the cool cotton sheet her mother had draped over the couch so her granddaughter didn’t stain it with her sticky hands. She stared up at the medallion light fixture and the myriad jagged cracks in the ceiling. They would need to paint before they sold the house. Perhaps she should add it to her to-do list, which includedfinding a goddamned place to live that doesn’t involve staying with your mother the rest of your life.

She curled into the chair, sobbing so hard while spooning peanut butter in her mouth that she didn’t even notice, until it was too late, that Louisa had come in the house lugging a suitcase. Nor did Betsy notice straightaway that Louisa had been crying too; that her eyes had large red rings around them and she looked so exhausted that she might just collapse into a million little pieces right there on the living room rug.

Louisa raced up to the bedroom and slammed the door, while Betsy hurried into the upstairs bathroom. She plugged the bathtub drain and ran herself a warm bath, lowering herself into the bubblesand hot water while listening to the wind whip at the tree branches outside. She let herself cup her hand over her stomach.

It will be me and you, she told the baby. We won’t need anyone else at all, because I will take care of you and never make you choose between your parents.

There was satisfaction in her decision, but an ocean of shame too. There was no good reason to have this baby other than the fact that she couldn’t bring herself to go to a clinic, and still, the idea of a baby in her arms, looking up at her with those giant eyes and smiling, made Betsy’s heart do a little flutter. It would be her secret until she was ready to share it with Louisa, Aggie, or her mother. The idea lifted a compressed feeling in her chest, but it returned immediately, the sight of her rounding belly popping into her head. Betsy could only hide a pregnancy for so long.

Lifting herself out of the warm water, Betsy wrapped herself in a fluffy brown towel and sat on the toilet seat. After dressing and brushing out her long straight hair, she discovered her sister was in their mother’s study, rain pattering the windows and a single standing lamp illuminating the room. Louisa sat cross-legged on the floor with a series of folders around her.

“Are you okay, Louisa?” She stood in the doorway waiting for her sister to look at her, but Louisa kept her gaze trained on the files.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” The second hand on her mother’s desk clock ticked five seconds, then twenty.

Betsy was about to leave the room when her sister turned, her face puffy and red, and said, “I’m in for the book club though. Mom and I think we should readThe Awakeningby Kate Chopin first.”

There was no point in disagreeing. “Fine with me,” Betsy said, handing her sister a box of Kleenex off their mother’s desk.

Back in her bedroom, Betsy pulled her psychology book into her lap. She turned the pages, the theories slipping in and out of her jumbled thinking, and she remained there, hopeless and brooding and worrying about her sister, until night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONEVirgie

1965

This lip color would look grand on you.” Virgie reached for her favorite Chanel lipstick in her handbag and handed it to Pamela. She’d already pulled the woman’s hair out of her elastic and curled her wispy tendrils with the hot iron in the bathroom upstairs. “Try it.”

Pamela leaned into the sunny hall mirror, puckering her pale lips while glancing at Virgie self-consciously with a half smile. “I can’t think of the last time I put on makeup like this. It’s typically a little blush, maybe one coat of mascara.”

Virgie admired her handiwork. There wasn’t much she could do about the woman’s pineapple shift dress—the cut was all wrong for Pamela’s slight frame—and still, she seemed to be standing a little straighter. “This may sound silly,” Virgie said. She saw a pair of women walking up the back steps, motioning for Pamela to get to her post in the backyard. “But sometimes just getting dressed for the day gives you a sense of purpose.”

“No one cares what I wear at the elementary school as long as I get their kids their forgotten lunches.” Pamela carried a vase of daisies outside.

“Yes, well, this is different, and it’s not about playing dress-up as much as it’s about feeling you belong. We need to hear women’s voicesfrom across all spectrums, so I hope you’ll speak up at today’s meeting. Don’t eat your salad like you have nothing to say. You have plenty of worthwhile thoughts, and I would like to hear them.”

Pamela took her position behind the check-in table, a row of snow queen hydrangeas waving in the breeze behind her. “I don’t deserve your kindness,” she said, and to that, Virgie set a coconut square in her hand.

“You’re as deserving of kindness as I am.”

Pamela took a small bite, then grinned. “I used to make these for James. I need to start baking again.” Virgie greeted the first few guests with overdramatic hugs, while Pamela cheerily raised her clipboard. “Welcome. Can I have your names?”

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