She'd had three calls today, the first one good news, the second indifferent, the third bad. She wished they'd come in reverse order. Outside the rain had begun to fall, darkening the marina's pier again. She decided she'd go out and walk and to hell with the impending rain. The fresh air, the summer damp, might make her feel better. She might even stop somewhere and have a glass of beer. Happiness in a bottle. Equilibrium, anyway.
The first call had been from Debbie Smith, in Somersworth. Fran was more than welcome, Debbie said warmly. In fact, she was needed. One of the three girls who had been sharing the apartment had moved out in May, had gotten a job in a warehousing firm as a secretary. She and Rhoda couldn't swing the rent much longer without a third. "And we both come from big families," Debbie said. "Crying babies don't bother us."
Fran said she'd be ready to move in by the first of July, and when she hung up she found warm tears coursing down her cheeks. Relief tears. If she could get away from this town where she had grown up, she thought she would be all right. Away from her mother, away from her father, even. The fact of the baby and her singleness would then assume some sort of sane proportion in her life. A large factor, surely, but not the only one. There was some sort of animal, a bug or a frog, she thought, that swelled up to twice its normal size when it felt threatened. The predator, in theory at least, saw this, got scared, and slunk off. She felt a little like that bug, and it was this whole town, the total environment (gestalt was maybe an even better word), that made her feel that way. She knew that nobody was going to make her wear a scarlet letter, but she also knew that for her mind to finish convincing her nerves of that fact, a break with Ogunquit was necessary. When she went out on the street she could feel people, not looking at her, but getting ready to look at her. The year-round residents, of course, not the summer people. The year-round residents always had to have someone to look at - a tosspot, a welfare slacker, The Kid from a Good Family who had been picked up shoplifting in Portland or Old Orchard Beach... or the girl with the levitating belly.
The second call, the so-so one, had been from Jess Rider. He had called from Portland and he had tried the house first. Luckily, he had gotten Peter, who gave him Fran's telephone number at the Harborside with no editorial comment.
Still, almost the first thing he'd said was: "You got a lot of static at home, huh?"
"Well, I got some," she said cautiously, not wanting to go into it. That would make them conspirators of a kind.
"Your mother?"
"Why do you say that?"
"She looks like the type that might freak out. It's something in the eyes, Frannie. It says if you shoot my sacred cows, I'll shoot yours."
She was silent.
"I'm sorry. I don't want to offend you."
"You didn't," she said. His description was actually quite apt - surface-apt anyway - but she was still trying to get over the surprise of that verb, offend. It was a strange word to hear from him. Maybe there's a postulate here, she thought. When your lover begins to talk about "offending" you, he's not your lover anymore.
"Frannie, the offer still stands. If you say yes, I can get a couple of rings and be there this afternoon."
On your bike, she thought, and almost giggled. A giggle would be a horrible, unnecessary thing to do to him, and she covered the phone for a second just to be sure it wasn't going to escape. She had done more weeping and giggling in the last six days than she had done since she was fifteen and starting to date.
"No, Jess," she said, and her voice was quite calm.
"I mean it!" he said with startling vehemence, as if he had seen her struggling with laughter.
"I know you do," she said. "But I'm not ready to get married. I know that about me, Jess. It has nothing to do with you."
"What about the baby?"
"I'm going to have it."
"And give it up?"
"I haven't decided."
For a moment he was silent and she could hear other voices in other rooms. They had their own problems, she supposed. Baby, the world is a daytime drama. We love our lives, and so we look for the guiding light as we search for tomorrow.
"I wonder about that baby," Jesse said finally. She really doubted if he did, but it was maybe the only thing he could have said that would cut her. It did.
"Jess - "
"So where are you going?" he asked briskly. "You can't stay at the Harborside all summer. If you need a place, I can look around in Portland."
"I've got a place."
"Where, or am I not supposed to ask?"
"You're not supposed to," she said, and bit her tongue for not finding a more diplomatic way of saying it.
"Oh," he said. His voice was queerly flat. Finally he said cautiously, "Can I ask you something and not piss you off, Frannie? Because I really want to know. It's not a rhetorical question or anything."
"You can ask," she agreed warily. Mentally she did gird herself not to be pissed off, because when Jess prefaced something like that, it was usually just before he came out with some hideous and totally unaware piece of chauvinism.