Blessing in Disguise (39 page)

Hannah listened to her rattling on, and, instead of being irritated, as usual, she felt somehow braced. Grace’s chatter was like a current giving Hannah the strength to navigate the ocean of bad feelings always churning between them. She felt buoyed by it, her arms bobbing up as she lifted cans and jars and plastic sacks of dripping radicchio from shopping bags and stowed them on refrigerator and cupboard shelves.

“Looks like you’re planning something really fancy.” She thought of the dinner they’d had here when she’d thrown up all over the bathroom floor, and immediately wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

“You could call it that,” Grace said, standing on tiptoe to find room for a box of orzo on a crowded shelf. “Ritual human sacrifice would be more like it, though. You see, there are some things you never outgrow.” She shot a glance over her shoulder. “Parents are one of them.”

“Yeah, I know.” Hannah managed a tight smile.

Why am I agreeing with her?
Hannah wondered. Everything was getting too complicated. First getting friendly with Chris ... and now
this.

I’m just giving her a hand
—
it’s not exactly universal world peace,
she reminded herself quickly.

Finally, all the groceries put away, Grace scooted onto one of the bar stools facing the counter, fixing Hannah with a look of such curiosity that she felt suddenly self-conscious and ... well,
exposed.
Hannah darted a glance toward the hallway, praying that Chris would get tired of his computer game and come wandering in here and rescue her.

From what?
she asked herself.
From some dumb urge to spill my guts to someone who probably hates me? Or from finding out that Grace might actually have some useful advice?

“Thanks for helping me. But, listen, I don’t want to keep you,” Grace said, giving Hannah the perfect out, “I’ll tell your dad you were looking for him.”

No inquiring politely about school or the Green Earth committee she was chairperson of, no little hints about ail the fun stuff they might do together next summer, trips they might take. Grace, without exactly saying it, was blowing her off.

And it wasn’t just today, Hannah realized. Ever since that week in the country they’d spent walking on eggshells around one another, Grace had been no more than pleasantly civil—no urging her to do anything or not do anything, no asking anything from her ... just
there.
Hannah, thinking about it, felt pleased, and at the same time like it wasn’t quite right.

“Grace?” Hannah sank down on a stool near her, feeling suddenly too weary to leave. Besides, where could she go? “Did you ever ...” She stopped, her voice suddenly dry. “Never mind.”

Hannah waited now for Grace to urge her on. But Grace didn’t. She only sat there, looking at Hannah with those guileless hazel eyes, toying with a long curlicued strip of grocery receipt, winding it around and around her finger.

“You know what really gets me,” she said softly, “is the coffee. There you are in Balducci’s with twenty-five different kinds of coffee to choose from, and you stand there until you start to feel as if the fate of the world rests on your decision. It’s really funny, because I never hesitated about buying this loft, even though it was an absolute wreck at the time. Sometimes it’s easier to get bogged down on dumb little things.”

If Grace had prodded, Hannah knew that she would have withdrawn into her shell. But now she couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“I think I might be pregnant,” she blurted, addressing a teapot by the stove, probably long grown cold, with a dish-towel twisted about its handle.

Grace was silent for so long, Hannah began to think she hadn’t heard—or, worse, was
pretending
not to have heard. Then, finally, she asked, “Have you talked this over with either of your parents?”

Hannah shook her head, feeling her misery rise again. It felt so weird, confiding in Grace—like the first time she’d taken the wheel in Daddy’s car, not sure she wanted to drive ... but not wanting to stop, either.

“I’m not going to ask if someone as well educated and intelligent as you was using any birth control. So I’ll assume that whatever it was may not have worked,” Grace said evenly, not lecturing, just matter-of-fact. “Am I right?”

“Conrad ...”

“No, not your boyfriend. I meant
you.”

“Oh, well, not exactly, I mean, well, no.” It had never occurred to Hannah that a condom wasn’t necessarily enough protection.

“Well, then, it’s simple,” Grace said, suddenly brisk and businesslike as she stood and reached for the phone on the wall. “We’ll just take care of it, and you won’t have this worry every month.”

“But what if I am pregnant?”

“If he used a condom, you’re probably just late ... but if you
are
pregnant, well, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we get to it.” She grabbed a small leather-bound phone book off the counter, and started thumbing through its pages. “Look, I have a terrific gynecologist; she even takes patients on Saturday. I’ll see if she can squeeze you in.”

Perched on her high stool, listening to Grace as she wheedled some receptionist into giving her a last-minute appointment, Hannah felt like she’d given up more than just her secret. She’d handed over the reins of her life, too. Why couldn’t she have handled this as coolly as Grace?

Half an hour later, Hannah lay on her back on an examining table in a room with soft peach walls hung with Cassatt prints of mothers and children, while a young woman in a white coat, her dark hair braided down her back, gently poked and prodded.

Hannah, not sure whether she was more scared or embarrassed, finally was allowed to sit up. Her heart was thudding as she tugged her paper gown down around her knees. She tried to say something, but her tongue seemed swollen somehow, making it difficult for her even to swallow.

The doctor saved her by saying, “I’ll run a urine test—we can do it right here in the office. But I’m ninety-nine-percent sure you’re not pregnant.”

Hannah felt dizzy all of a sudden. If she hadn’t been sitting down already, she probably would have
had
to. But now relief was filling her like some kind of helium, making her light, almost buoyant. She nodded and tried to concentrate as the woman, who looked too young to be a doctor, instructed her on using a diaphragm. Minutes later, when the results of the urine test came back negative, she floated back into the dressing room and somehow managed to stuff her weightless body into her clothes.

Walking out into the waiting room where Grace sat reading a magazine, Hannah felt herself trying to smile. But it was as if her mouth was disconnected from the rest of her, flickering on and off like a faulty light bulb.

Grace stood up. One look seemed to have told her everything she needed to know.

“You want to hear something really funny?” she said, relieving Hannah of the need to speak. “With all that talk about coffee, I just realized I didn’t buy any. That little deli we passed on the corner should have some.”

Hannah hardly spoke until they were in the taxi. “You won’t tell Dad, will you?” she asked in a small voice, a new terror poking its way through her cloud of relieved euphoria. “I mean, there’s no reason for him to know, now that everything’s okay.”

“No reason at all,” Grace agreed pleasantly.

“Promise?”

“Absolutely.”

Hannah felt almost overwhelmed with gratitude. But then a small, mean voice at the back of her mind hissed.
Watch out. Careful. Don’t let yourself get sucked in. She’s got something on you now, and she just might use it.

Monday, Ben left work early to pick up his BMW from the auto repair shop on Tenth and Nineteenth, but by the time he’d waited around for the asshole mechanic to finish up it was after six. He thought about going straight home, but decided on a hamburger at the Empire Diner instead, an early movie at the Tri-plex on Twenty-third. It was something to keep him occupied at least, keep him from thinking too much about Nola—an alarming habit he seemed to have developed recently.

The movie turned out to be one of those tearjerkers about some childless couple trying to adopt an unwed mother’s baby. A real bore. But driving home, Ben found himself mulling over the phone conversation he’d overheard last week between his sister and her friend. Could Hannah really be pregnant? Who would have thought his smart kid sister could have slipped up like that?

He hoped Hannah’s scare would turn out to be nothing. At the same time, Ben couldn’t help wondering if maybe she
deserved
to be in hot water for a change. If Dad knew she was screwing around, he wouldn’t think so highly of his precious little girl. ...

Ben braked to avoid sideswiping a cab that had veered in front of him, his thoughts, as they inevitably did when his father came to mind, turning to work. No thanks to Jack Gold, he’d managed to smooth Roger Young’s ruffled feathers—for the moment, at least. And the Harding book, for which he’d closed at one eighty, already had the Literary Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club eagerly awaiting a finished manuscript. But as far as Nola’s letters were concerned—zip. She wasn’t offering them to him ... and he wasn’t asking.

That wasn’t what was troubling him now, though—the fact that, night after night with Nola, he walked away empty-handed. The big question was why it no longer seemed to matter.

At some point over the past few weeks—he couldn’t put his finger on exactly when—it had stopped being about the letters and had switched to something else—with much higher stakes. Love? Impossible—not him. But he’d never before felt this way about any woman ... and it was scaring him.

As if to prove to himself that he could, at any time, drop her—just as he had the dozens of women before Nola—Ben picked up his car phone and punched a speed-dial button. The phone rang half a dozen times before she picked up.

“Hi,” he said in a voice pitched low with intimacy.

“Hey, what’s up?” She sounded a bit distracted, not all that excited to hear from him.

Ben frowned as he turned off Seventh onto Christopher.

“Nothing much,” he said breezily. “Listen, about tonight ...” He was going to tell her he wasn’t coming over as he’d casually mentioned yesterday. Give her the old excuse about being wiped out from a hectic day of haggling with agents and in-house number crunchers, smoothing the ruffled feathers of authors.

But Nola was already a step ahead of him. “Oh, God, Ben, I totally forgot. Look, I’m really sorry. Dani’s running a temperature, and it looks like Tasha might be coming down with the same thing. I just got them to sleep.”

“No big deal, it’s pretty late anyway.” He spoke nonchalantly, but for some reason he felt annoyed. Who was she to give
him
the brush-off? Then he found himself saying, “Question is, who’s going to tuck
you
in?”

That definitely had not been part of the script, but he nevertheless found himself holding his breath.

Nola laughed her wonderful, full laugh, sending a delicious shiver through him. “You applying for the job, mister?”

“If you’re hiring.”

Now, why had he said that? And why, with a briefcase full of manuscripts and the hot shower he was craving awaiting him at his place only a block away, was he turning onto Hudson, heading back uptown toward Nola’s?

Ben didn’t know. It was as if he were under some kind of weird spell. He wasn’t seeing the avenue, clogged with traffic even at nine-thirty, or the lit-up storefronts flickering past on either side. An image of Nola filled his mind—lounging on her bed, wearing nothing but a come-hither look.

“Have you eaten?” she asked, hanging his coat on the coatrack in the hall and moving toward the kitchen. “I could fix you something, if you’re not too picky.”

“No thanks, I stopped for a burger on my way back from picking up the car,” he told her.

“A snack, then? Florene and the girls made chocolate-chip cookies.”

“I wouldn’t say no to something sweet.”

Getting his gist, she laughed, not resisting as he moved forward to take her in his arms. “Didn’t your mama ever tell you that too much sugar is bad for you?”

“She probably did. But that never stopped me.”

He started to kiss her, but for some reason she was gently pushing him away. “No, wait. Ben, let’s go upstairs and have a nice long talk, like regular people do.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. Anything. Nothing. You’ve hardly told me anything about your work, for one thing. I only know who one or two of your authors are.”

“Okay, I’ll even give you a stack of manuscripts to read if you want,” he joked, but felt oddly off-balance, as he often did with Nola. As if she were the one calling the shots, not he.

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.” She laughed, leading the way up to the living room. “Drink?”

“No thanks. I’m driving home, remember?” He was unable to keep a note of irritation from his voice, remembering how Nola always insisted he be out of here before he could drop off to sleep in her big, warm bed. She couldn’t take the risk, she’d told him time and again, of her girls’ finding them together.

“Right, I forgot.” Seemingly unperturbed, she dropped onto the sofa beside him, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair, as if he were nothing more than a child himself. Ben felt himself growing aroused, and at the same time wanting to put the brakes on, take charge of this run-away train on which he’d somehow become a passenger.

He pulled her to him, abruptly, and felt her push him away with a breathless little laugh that carried a tiny hint of annoyance.

“Hey ... what’s the big hurry?” she wanted to know. “We’ve got plenty of time.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Now, you were saying? About your manuscripts?”

“Most of it’s pretty boring to anyone who’s not in the business,” he told her. “Anyway, why the sudden interest?”

“Why not?” she hedged.

He wondered where this was leading. And then it struck him.

“Is it
my
authors you want to know about ... or Grace?”

She frowned, becoming absorbed in a loose thread on the sofa cushion. “I ... I’ve been doing some thinking.”