Sticking my tongue out at her, I flipped the book facedown on the sofa and stood, stretching out the crick in my back from sitting for so long, then shuffled down the hall to the bathroom.
When I wiped, a streak of blood came away on the toilet paper.
I put my head in my hands, my elbows on my legs, near tears in relief.
Before I went to get a sanitary pad, I returned to the living room. Ada looked up anxiously as I approached—the first sign I had seen that she was actually worried. I shook my head, smiling widely. “We’re in the clear.”
Ada sank back against the couch cushions, closing her eyes. “Thank goodness for small favors,” she said. Then she looked at me. “Do you feel better?”
“Much.”
“Good,” she said, rising. “But you’re out of the business now.”
“What?”
“You broke the rules. And I don’t tolerate that. Don’t worry. There are plenty of other ways I’ll put you to work. But you’re out.”
She strode past me to the kitchen, humming softly, and I stared after her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
When Ada’s clients returned on Tuesday, I was banished from the living room. “I can at least show them in,” I argued.
“You can stay out of sight is what you can do,” Ada replied. “I don’t care if that means upstairs or out of the house entirely, but I meant what I said: you’re out.”
I skulked upstairs and sat at my dressing table-turned-writing-desk, huffing loudly and staring out the window. There was no way to return to what I had been writing. I couldn’t quite throw it away though either. Instead, I shoved the pages onto the shelf at the back of the closet and put a new sheet of paper in the typewriter.
But I could feel the old story behind me. Almost like it was calling my name.
It was too close to real life—I could see that now.
Sighing, I leaned my head in my hand, elbow on the table, thinking with disgust how readily Freddy would have thrown that poor girl off if he could live off my family’s money instead of his family’s. He might have been able to doom that child to the stigma of growing up fatherless, but I couldn’t do that. And the assumption that I would marry him because of this, with no consideration of my repeatedly saying I didn’t want to get married. And that my parents would support us—he had never even met them. Did he expect my father to support his child with another woman too? Literally everything was about what he wanted. His choices. His decisions. Where was I? Did I matter at all? Or was I just a means to an end? Would he have even come to talk to me that afternoon if my family didn’t have money?
And Shirley’s delight in the idea of me also being pregnant by her brother was nauseating as well. I would never understand how anyone could enjoy the misfortune of others. Even if she wouldn’t be a constant reminder of my mistake, that wasn’t the kind of person I wanted in my life.
But who was I to write anything when I was such a poor judge of character?
I pushed back my seat, opting to go for a walk to clear my head.
I would have preferred the beach. Freddy was unlikely to still be working—he had a new life to build as a soon-to-be father and husband. But the chance of running into him was too much. And if he repeated his entreaty in any way, I just might vomit on him.
Instead, I went north toward the jetty. It was wide, jutting out between Townsends Inlet and the sea, dotted with a handful of sport fishers and crabbers.
For a long moment, I stood at the entrance, looking down at the families in the cove, who opted for the waveless beach of the inlet, then down the beach toward Stone Harbor, the pier reaching an arm into the ocean at the center of town. The fourth lifeguard chair down was Freddy’s.
I made a face and, grabbing a rock, hoisted myself up onto the jetty. There were signs warning about tides and fishing seasons, but I ignored them all, picking my way along the rocks until I reached the end. I slipped off my shoes and sat, legs dangling over the water as the waves crashed and the spray reached up to tickle my legs, my hair blowing wildly in the breeze. Except for two tiny boats on the horizon, I could have been the only person in the world.
A pelican flew past me, diving for a fish it spotted, snagging it, and lifting up to soar again. I watched as it disappeared into the distance. It had never occurred to me to be jealous of a bird, but that pelican—minus the diet—had the freedom I wanted. It knew where it belonged, which I no longer did. It knew what it was supposed to do—eat, fly, and swim. And there was no one chastising it for not living the way they wanted it to.
Ada lived like that bird. But I wondered if she was lonely. I supposed I would meet Lillian in a few weeks’ time. Was she really a substitute for a family though? And if not, why did Ada seem happier than most women I knew?
A fin popped up ten feet away, and I quickly pulled my feet up, away from the water. But I laughed at my silliness and allowed them back down when I saw several more curved fins bobbing. It was a pod of dolphins.
Behind me, a child shouted. I turned to see a little boy pointing, his mother close behind. I smiled reflexively, observing the boy from behind my sunglasses, the way his mother picked him up so he could see better, planting a kiss on his cheek while he watched.
A pang of—something—hit me. I wasn’t ready to write that life off and be Ada. But I didn’t want it now either. And what I really needed was someone who understood and appreciated that.
That wasn’t Freddy. He never asked what I wanted to be or do because in his world, wife and mother was the be-all, end-all answer to that question for women. It never occurred to him that I might have a different answer.
Ada had said that social class was sometimes negotiable in making matches, but often not. And I finally understood she didn’t mean money. She meant values. Core beliefs. The way we treated others. You could be rich as Croesus and still not have class. And while Freddy and I fell into the same category financially, the divide between how we viewed the world was as wide as the ocean in front of me. Shirley as well. Neither of them grew in a vacuum. And she couldn’t care less whom Freddy married or how many children he fathered, as long as she got a front-row seat to any resulting dramatics.
I had dodged a bullet, I realized, turning my face toward the sun. And that was something to be happy about.
But it got me no closer to knowing what to write about. And when I eventually stood, dusting off the seat of my trousers, I realized that finding the answer was going to be the best thing I could do for myself. Ada pulled no punches. If she thought my writing had merit, it did. Now I just needed to find the right story to tell. And perhaps a touch of disappointment wasn’t such a bad thing to be able to write from experience.
I started to walk back along the road, then stopped. I had nothing to fear from Freddy. And I wasn’t going to alter my life over him. So I turned left, going up the dune path at the end of the beach, my shoes in my hand, and walked down to the waterline, where I continued until 18th Street.
Approaching that chair, I snuck a peek from the corner of my eye. Freddy was still sitting there, looking tired. But he didn’t turn in my direction, and I continued home. “Goodbye, Freddy,” I whispered. I hoped he found some kind of happiness in his new life, but I doubted he would. When I pictured him in a duplex with a wife and a screaming baby, I imagined him sneaking away to spend his time at some gin joint, sitting next to a girl who looked like a poor imitation of me.