"Don't I have any rights in this at all?" Jess asked. "Can't I share the responsibility and the decision?"
For a moment she was pissed off, and then the feeling was gone. Jess was just being Jess, trying to protect his image of himself to himself, the way all thinking people do so they can get to sleep at night. She had always liked him for his intelligence, but in a situation like this, intelligence could be a bore. People like Jess - and herself, too - had been taught all their lives that the good thing to do was commit and be active. Sometimes you had to hurt yourself - and badly - to find out it could be better to lie back in the tall weeds and procrastinate. His toils were kind, but they were still toils. He didn't want to let her get away.
"Jesse," she said, "neither of us wanted this baby. We agreed on the pill so the baby, wouldn't happen. You don't have any responsibility."
"But - "
"No, Jess," she said, quite firmly.
He sighed.
"Will you get in touch when you get settled?"
"I think so."
"Are you still planning to go back to school?"
"Eventually. I'm going to take the fall semester off. Maybe with something CED."
"If you need me, Frannie, you know where I'll be. I'm not running out."
"I know that, Jesse."
"If you need dough - "
"Yes."
"Get in touch. I won't press you, but... I'll want to see you."
"All right, Jess."
"Goodbye, Fran."
"Goodbye."
When she hung up the goodbyes had seemed too final, the conversation unfinished. It struck her why. They had not added "I love you," and that was a first. It made her sad and she told herself not to be, but the telling didn't help.
The last call had come around noon, and it was from her father. They had had lunch the day before yesterday, and he told her he was worried about the effect this was having on Carla. She hadn't come to bed last night; she had spent it in the parlor, poring over the old genealogical records. He had gone in around eleven-thirty to ask her when she was coming up. Her hair had been down, flowing over her shoulders and the bodice of her nightgown, and Peter said she looked wild and not strictly in touch with things. That heavy book was on her lap and she hadn't even looked up at him, only continued to turn the pages. She said she wasn't sleepy. She would be up in a while. She had a cold, Peter told her as they sat in a booth at the Corner Lunch, more looking at hamburgers than eating them. The sniffles. When Peter asked her if she would like a glass of hot milk, she didn't answer at all. He had found her yesterday morning asleep in the chair, the book on her lap.
When she finally woke up she had seemed better, more herself, but her cold was worse. She dismissed the idea of having Dr. Edmonton in, saying it was just a chest cold. She had put Vicks on her chest, and a flannel square of cloth, and she thought her sinuses were clearing already. But Peter hadn't cared for the way she looked, he told Frannie. Although she refused to let him take her temperature, he thought she was running a couple of degrees of fever.
He had called Fran today just after the first thunderstorm had begun. The clouds, purple and black, had piled up silently over the harbor, and the rain began, at first gentle and then torrential. As they talked she could look out her window and see the lightning stab down at the water beyond the breakwater, and each time it happened there would be a little scratching noise on the wire, like a phonograph needle digging a record.
"She's in bed today," Peter said. "She finally agreed to let Tom Edmonton take a look at her."
"Has he been yet?"
"He just left. He thinks she's got the flu."
"Oh, Lord," Frannie said, closing her eyes. "That's no joke for a woman her age."
"No, it isn't." He paused. "I told him everything, Frannie. About the baby, about the fight you and Carla had. Tom's taken care of you since you were a baby yourself, and he keeps his lip buttoned. I wanted to know if that could have caused this. He said no. Flu is flu."
"Flu made who," Fran said bleakly.
"Pardon?"
"Never mind," Fran said. Her father was amazingly broadminded, but an AC/DC fan he was not. "Go on."
"Well, there's not much further to go, hon. He said there's a lot of it around. A particularly nasty breed. It seems to have migrated out of the south, and New York is swamped with it."