“Seems like they did a pretty good job,” I commented. “Throwing her out of the house and all. That must have been scary for you too.”
“Oh, it was.” She was rubbing her hands over and over in the towel she’d taken out to wipe up a little spot of water left from filling the coffeepot. “They didn’t even tell me what was going on at first.”
“You mean you didn’t know she was pregnant?” I asked, incredulous.
She turned so red I thought blood might actually start oozing through her skin. “I know you won’t understand,” she said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “You led such a different life. You had boyfriends before you got married. I know. Ma—Ma kind of follows your life.
“But when Mike and I were married, I didn’t even know —I didn’t know—I—the nuns never talked about things like that at school. Ma, of course, she couldn’t—couldn’t begin to say anything. If Louisa was missing her—her period—she wouldn’t have said anything to me. She probably didn’t know what it meant, anyway.”
Tears spurted from her eyes against her will. Her shoulders shook as she tried controlling her sobbing. She wound the towel so tightly around her hands that the veins in her arms stood out. I got up from my chair to put a hand on one heaving shoulder. She didn’t move or say anything, but after a few minutes the spasms calmed down and her breathing grew more normal.
“So Louisa got pregnant because she didn’t know what she was doing, or that she might start a baby?”
She nodded mutely, her eyes on the floor.
“Do you know who the father might have been?” I asked gently, keeping my hand on her shoulder.
She shook her head. “Pa—Pa wouldn’t let us date. He said he hadn’t paid all that money to send us to Catholic school to see—see us chasing after boys. Of course lots of boys liked Louisa, but she—she wouldn’t have been going out with any of them.”
“Can you remember any of their names?”
She shook her head again. “Not after all this time. I know the boy at the grocery store used to buy her pop when she’d go in. I think his name was Ralph. Ralph Sow-something. Sower or Sowling or something.”
She turned to the coffeepot. “Vic, the terrible thing is—I was so jealous of her, at first I was glad to see her in trouble.”
“God, Connie, I hope so. If I had a sister who everyone said was prettier than me, and was petted and fussed over while they sent me off to Mass, I’d put an ax through her head instead of waiting for her to get pregnant and be kicked out of the house.”
She turned to look up at me, astonished. “But, Vic! You’re so—so cool. Nothing ever bothered you. Not even when you were fifteen years old. When your mother died Ma said God gave you a stone instead of a heart, you were so cool.” She put her hand over her mouth, mortified, and started to protest.
“Well, I was fucked if I was going to sob in public in front of all those women like your mother, who never had a good word to say about Gabriella,” I said, stung. “But you’d better believe I cried plenty in private. And anyway, Connie, that’s the whole point. My parents loved me. They thought I could succeed at anything I wanted to do. So even though I lose my temper a hundred times a week or so, it’s not like I had to spend my life listening to my folks tell me how my baby sister was wonderful and I was garbage. Loosen up, Connie. Give yourself a break.”
She looked at me doubtfully. “Do you really mean it? After what I said and everything?”
I took her shoulders between my hands and turned her to face me. “I really mean it, Connie. Now how about some coffee?”
After that we talked about Mike and his job at the waste-management plant, and young Mike and his football playing, and her three daughters, and her youngest, who was eight and so bright she really thought they’d have to try to get him to go to college, although Mike was nervous, he thought it gave people ideas that they were better than their parents or their neighborhood. The last comment made me grin to myself—I could hear Ed Djiak warning Connie: You don’t want the kid turning out like Victoria, do you?—but I listened patiently for forty-five minutes before moving my chair back and getting to my feet.
“It was really good to see you again, Vic. I—I’m glad you came by,” she said at the door.
“Thanks, Connie. Take it easy. And say hi to Mike for me.”
I walked slowly back to my car. The heel of my left shoe was rubbing on the back of my foot. I savored the pain the way you do when you’re feeling like crap. A little pain: the gods letting you expiate the damage you caused.