French Braid(43)

“What’d you have a conversation about?”

“Oh…” Morris said.

“Roofs,” Lily said.

Morris said, “Huh?”

“You had a conversation about whether our house should have a slate roof.”

“Oh, that was later,” Morris said. He told Robby, “First I told your pop-pop how very, very serious I was about your mom. I told him how the first time I laid eyes on her, she showed up for work with this letter box, this official-looking black-and-white speckled letter box, and she set it on her desk and unlatched it and took out a little jar of hand cream, and a teeny cactus plant in a clay pot, and a framed photo of her cat, who happened to have died, by the way; it was a photo of her dead cat—”

“Heavens, Morris,” Lily said, at the same time that Robby said, “What’d he die of?”

“It was a she,” Lily said, “and she died of old age.”

“Was she dead in the picture?”

“No, she wasn’t dead in the picture. Good grief,” Lily said.

“So after your pop-pop heard that,” Morris told Robby, “he said, ‘Okay, then! Okay!’?” And here Morris turned his palms up in a gesture of defeat. “?‘Go ahead, then!’ he said.”

“Ha!” Robby said. “You won, Daddy!”

“I certainly did,” Morris said, and then he and Lily smiled across the table at each other.

There was a lot he’d left out of that story. For instance, his months-long, starry-eyed worship of her after that first sighting, which made him a joke to the whole office and which she herself shrugged off. And the random conversations they started having by and by in the lunchroom. And her gradual realization that this was a very likable man, in fact; very kind and sympathetic. Though not her type, of course. Until he was, all of a sudden.

She’d been terrified, once she suspected she was pregnant. All her years of risky behavior, she saw, had been based upon the assumption that she could have a do-over any time she liked, but that turned out not to be so. This was irreversible; it was real. An actual, real pregnancy, in the days before legal abortion. A very-much-married man—unbreakably married, she had sensed, as longtime childless couples often were. Which was why she had told him the news as a statement, not a question: “I’m pregnant but I don’t expect a thing from you; I’m dealing with this on my own.”

This was after she had been fired (a little issue with chronic lateness), and she couldn’t imagine what she was going to do for money. But she just kept putting off the problem. Something would come along.

Then one night she was awakened by her doorbell, and she stumbled to the foyer and squinted through the peephole and saw Morris’s white, set face, his glasses looming owlishly. When she opened the door he said, “I have to be here. I can’t not be,” and he walked in and set down an absurdly small vinyl suitcase. “Please don’t send me away,” he told her.

It was the “please” that touched her heart. Not that it had crossed her mind to send him away, in any event.

She knew her family made fun of him. Or found him amusing, at least. She knew he came across as stuffy and too earnest, prone to telling the entire plots of movies and to making a low, place-holding humming noise any time he paused to search for words; and he was going to have one of those tacked-on-looking bellies if he didn’t cut back on those biscuits. What a contrast to the men in her past! her family must be thinking—those dashing, handsome, edgy men she had always favored. (B.J. in his motorcycle jacket, so debonair and courtly until they married and he all at once started viewing her as his ball and chain.) But she was no longer remotely tempted by such men. She was sobered—she was shattered—by her three months of terror, and she vowed that she would never be that vulnerable again.

Now Morris gave a sudden nod to himself, as if he’d come to some private conclusion. “You know,” he told her, “maybe Greta was just as nervous yesterday as I was that time with your dad. Maybe she’s the kind who acts sort of cold when she’s unsure of herself, and we’ll like her better when she gets to know us better and starts to feeling accepted.”

Lily said, “Oh, honey, you are such a dear.”

And she reached across the table and laid her hand on top of his, for a moment.

“Well,” Robby said finally, “I would approve Greta.”

“Would you, buddy?” Morris said.

“And then Emily could be my friend.”

“Oh. Emily.” Morris chuckled. “Well, Emily could be your friend even if they don’t get married, in fact.”

“She could?”

“Absolutely,” Morris said, and Robby said, “Oh, good,” and dug his spoon into his potatoes again.



* * *



—

Except they did get married.

It was Alice who broke the news. She telephoned that Friday evening, when Lily was watching The Incredible Hulk with Morris and Robby. Lily said, “Hello?” and Alice said, “Well, they’re married.”

“What?”

“David and Greta. They’re married.”

“Oh, my heavens,” Lily said, and Morris sent her a questioning look. “Let me change phones,” she told Alice. She handed Morris the receiver and went out to the kitchen to lift the extension. “Got it,” she said, and then, as soon as she heard Morris hang up, “Tell me from the beginning.”