The Mother-in-Law(25)

Tom slides over and I sit beside him in the wingback chair, which is generous enough for two middle-aged bottoms. “Actually . . .” Tom smiles. “It was the making of you.”

1970

Cynthia and I called it the summer of the Falcon, mostly because the rest of our friends were in Europe and we want to make it sound more exciting than it really is. The Falcon XR GT was a car, and it belonged to Cynthia’s boyfriend, Michael. I knew, of course, what happened in the back of the Falcon, what Michael and Cynth had done in the Falcon many times. I wasn’t desperately in love with David, though I liked him well enough. He was tall, and he was studying engineering at university, which seemed to be enough, back then. Height and smarts. What else could a woman want?

As it turned out, when I discovered I was pregnant, David’s smarts came in useful. “There’s a place in Broadmeadows,” he said. “A home for unwed mothers. You go there, you have the baby, and then you come back. You can just tell everyone you went to Europe.”

I was glad he hadn’t suggested the other type of place you went as an unwed mother. An abortion clinic. I may not have been the most maternal of girls, but I’d always been a believer in taking responsibility for your actions. It wasn’t the poor baby’s fault that I’d gotten into the back of the Falcon with David; I didn’t see why it should have to pay the ultimate price for it. My mother agreed that David’s plan was wise and my father tended to agree with my mother when she thought something was wise. The idea that I would have to give my baby away before leaving the home was a thought so far off in the distance that I didn’t even bother to think about it. After all, when you’re drowning and someone offers you a life raft, you don’t check it for punctures before climbing aboard.

“Are you feeling all right?” David asked me the night before I left for Orchard House. He waved a hand vaguely in front of my midsection, indicating he was asking about pregnancy-related symptoms.

“I’m fine.”

It was a warm evening and I was sitting on the brick steps of my parents’ bungalow with a bag of grapes in my lap. (I’d had morning sickness for nearly six months, and grapes were the only thing that staved it off.) I’d put off my secretarial course, and told my friends I was spending a semester in Sicily. No one apart from my parents and David knew the truth. Not even Cynthia. Turned out that Catholic shame fell harder than I’d thought.

I’d only seen David a couple of times since I’d been accepted into Orchard House. While I’d been laying low, David, apparently, had been working around the clock to help my father pay for the home. My father had been impressed with David’s commitment to help. I’d once heard him tell mother that he’d been glad “I was consorting with an honorable sort of boy, at least.” I remember looking through the crack in my bedroom door one evening and seeing my father shaking David’s hand while my mother thanking him profusely. In contrast, my father had barely looked at me in months.

“Maybe I’ll see you again when you get out,” he said.

“Maybe,” I agreed. But we both knew it was a lie.

My mother drove me to Orchard House.

“It won’t be forever,” she said at the door, giving me a brusque kiss and hurrying back to the car. I was startled that this was the extent of her good-bye but I forced myself not to call her back. I was humiliated enough as it was.

After a moment or two, a pinched-looking woman in a navy pinafore came to the door. She opened the security door and surveyed me silently. “You must be Diana,” she said. “Well . . . you’d better come inside.”

Orchard House had the look and feel of a hospital. It was three floors high, with wide halls, linoleum floors and vinyl furniture. Matron took me up the stairs to the second floor, which had a communal area in the center and burgundy doors around the edges, presumably leading to dormitories. Pregnant woman in small clusters looked up when I entered, then quickly down again.

“You’re among the oldest at Orchard House,” Matron told me, leading me around the edge of the room. “The youngest is a girl named Pamela, who you’ll be sharing with. Pamela is just fourteen.” Matron tutted with disapproval. “We only exchange first names at Orchard House, and we don’t talk about the schools we went to, the people we know, or anything that can distinguish us to the outside world. It’s to protect your identities,” she said, but I suspected it was more to protect our parent’s identities. Matron stopped just shy of a door which I assumed lead to my room. “You should know that Pamela is a little troubled. I thought an older, well spoken girl like yourself might be able to help her, teach her how to behave properly.” She gestured inside, where a girl sat on one of the twin bed. She wore a sour expression, and her hair in two greasy plaits.

“Pamela?” Matron said. “This is your new roommate, Diana.”

“Hello,” I said as Pamela looked resolutely at the floor.

“Don’t look so glum,” Matron said to her. “You girls are lucky. Your families have helped you. If you keep your head down until you have your baby, you can return to your old lives and forget this ever happened. Not everyone is as fortunate.”

Matron left us then, telling me to “make myself at home.” As I sat on the narrow twin bed, opposite the strange, reticent girl, I felt the tears stack up in my eyes. But I brushed them away. After all, I was lucky.