Hope Street (27 page)

No. She’d been an idiot. She’d gotten pregnant, like some careless, dim-witted slut. Bobby DiFranco was too good-hearted, too decent, to be stuck cleaning up her messes. “Bobby, I—”

“To tell you the truth, having a wife and baby waiting for me back home would help me. It would, you know—keep my spirits up.”

That brought her up short. Maybe he wasn’t offering to marry her strictly out of charity. He saw something in it for him, too. A wife waiting at home for him. A wife who would write to him, who would send him home-baked cookies and dry socks and reminders of all the good things he’d be returning to once he finished his service. She’d be at home, praying every day for his safety. That might be enough to get him through his year in ’Nam.

“I’d have something to come back to,” he explained. “I need that, Jo.”

“What about Margie?” she asked. “Aren’t you going to come back to her?”

He snorted. “There’s nothing there,” he said. “We’re just…You want to know the truth? We’re both just waiting for me to leave so we can break up without going through the fights and the hurt feelings. She thinks she’s doing her patriotic duty, going out with me until I leave for basic.”

“I’m sure she loves you,” Joelle argued, even though she had no basis for that assertion.

He shook his head. “We’re already history. Just waiting for Uncle Sam to make it official.” He gazed at Joelle’s hands, folded tensely atop her purse and then at her face. “I could give your baby a name, Jo,” he said quietly. “And then, if I got home and we decided this wasn’t what we wanted, we could get a divorce. But your baby would have a name.”

Without thinking, she moved her hands to her stomach and pressed. So flat, so smooth. A baby she couldn’t even feel was in there, and Bobby was willing to give it his name. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. “Wouldn’t it bother you, knowing that the baby…”

“Was Foster’s?” He turned back to stare at the gravestone again. “If we do this, the baby is mine. Your baby would be a DiFranco. Could you live with that?”

She opened her mouth, then shut it. Tears beaded along her lashes and blurred her vision. She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve him. But as stupid as she’d been two months ago, in the backseat of Drew’s father’s Cadillac, she wasn’t stupid enough to reject what Bobby was offering her.

Had she thought a radio was the best gift she’d ever received? No.
This
was. Bobby’s help. His friendship. His hand and his name.

“I would consider it an honor if my baby was a DiFranco,” she said.

F
IVE DAYS LATER
,
SHE STOOD
in her cramped bedroom at the back of the first-floor flat on Third Street one final time. She felt a little queasy, but that was from the pregnancy, not from panic or doubt about what she was doing.

She was running away with Bobby, her best friend, the most trustworthy guy she’d ever known. She was sad, she was grieving over the fact that her life wasn’t turning out the way she’d planned—but she had no regrets. For as long as she lived, she would do whatever she could to make sure Bobby never had any regrets, either.

Yesterday morning, she’d mustered her courage and visited the local branch bank. She’d told the teller she was planning to move her account to a bank closer to campus, an explanation the teller had accepted without question. She’d let Joelle empty her account, then cashed Drew’s check and counted fifty twenty-dollar bills into Joelle’s palm. Joelle had stuffed the money into an envelope, which was now zipped inside an inner pocket of her suitcase.

She’d packed most of her clothing, even though she understood that within a month or two it would no longer fit her. After the baby was born, she hoped she’d get her figure back quickly. If not, maybe she could sell the clothes. The money would come in handy.

She left her prom dress behind, even though she loved it. She left her radio behind because it reminded her of Drew.

One stupid time. She’d given herself to him one stupid, stupid
time, and he’d told her it would seal their love. Had he always been such a liar? Had she been dumb enough to love him?

That’s the past,
she reminded herself. If she looked backward, she’d trip and fall. She had to look forward, to the future, to her baby. Her baby and Bobby DiFranco.

Since she didn’t have any classes at the college that day, her mother had taken the car to work. Wanda’s absence simplified Joelle’s departure. If Wanda hadn’t had a shift at the diner, Joelle and Bobby would have had to wait until nighttime to leave, and Joelle would have had to climb out her window—not that difficult, but walking out the front door was a heck of a lot easier.

Still, she lifted her suitcase over the sill and behind the yews that grew beneath her window and then hoisted out the carton of stuff she was sure she couldn’t live without—her hairbrush and rollers, her makeup, the polished marble egg Bobby had given her for Christmas, her sewing-pattern books, the teddy bear she’d had as a baby, her flashlight, her jewelry box, which had a built-in music box that played “Edelweiss” when the lid was raised and her college textbooks, which had cost a fortune and might prove handy if she could find a school to attend near wherever she and Bobby wound up.

Passing her belongings through the window was prudent. She didn’t want Mrs. Proski to put down her sherry long enough to peer out her living-room window and catch Joelle marching through the front door with a suitcase and a carton.

Bobby arrived at around ten in the morning. While he carried her things down the alley to his truck, she circled her bedroom one last time. It wasn’t as if she’d never come back. Of course she would. Her mother would want to see her and the baby. But when she returned to Holmdell, it would be as
Joelle DiFranco. Maybe married, maybe divorced—Bobby had seemed pleased by that escape hatch, and if he wanted to leave her, she’d never do anything to stop him—but one way or another, she’d be home again. This wasn’t goodbye forever.

She reread the note she’d written to her mother:

It was funny to think of Bobby as a man. Almost as funny as thinking of him as her husband. Thinking of herself as a wife—a pregnant one—was so funny she started sobbing.

She wiped her eyes, blew her nose and left her bedroom. After propping the note against the salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen table where her mother wouldn’t miss it, she left the apartment, locking the door behind her.

Neither she nor Bobby spoke until they’d crossed the town line. The morning was cloudless, the sky an intense Day-Glo blue. Ahead of them lay acres of pale brown fields, occasionally interrupted by clusters of dried yellow cornstalks left over from the September harvest. Bobby switched on the radio, got static and turned it off.

“You know how to drive a stick, right?” he asked.

“I’ll figure it out.”
You can teach me,
she thought, although she doubted he’d have enough time to show her how to drive his truck before he reported for basic training.

“I was going to leave the truck behind for Eddie,” he said, “but
he’s got another year before he can get his license. You’ll use it for the year, and then when I get back, we’ll see.”

We’ll see.
They would see if they still wanted to be married—if they could even stand to be together in the same room. They’d see if Bobby truly wanted to be a father to someone else’s baby. In another year, God alone knew who they’d be, what they’d want, how they’d feel. The fate of Bobby’s truck was the least of it.

They stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s east of Columbus. Joelle’s hamburger tasted funny, but pretty much everything had tasted funny ever since the nurse at the college clinic had told her her urine test had been positive. Bobby apparently had no trouble wolfing down two burgers and a sack of fries. He paid for lunch, as if the two of them were on a date.

All summer long, she’d had no trouble talking to Bobby while they’d nibbled on fries at the A&W. But now she didn’t know what to say, what they were to each other. Seated across from him on a bench at a redwood table with a big plastic umbrella over their heads, she struggled to force down at least half her burger while she stared at him. His thick, dark hair would soon be gone—the very thought of some army barber shearing him like a sheep was enough to make her want to weep. They’d train him to kill and dress him in khaki and then ship him halfway around the world.
We’ll see,
she thought, realizing for the first time that the next twelve months might change him a lot more than they changed her.

What if he was shipped home maimed? What if he came back deranged? The news was full of stories about soldiers coming back to the states crazed or strung out on drugs. What if the Bobby DiFranco who returned to her after a year in Vietnam was someone she couldn’t love?

She would love him anyway. That was her vow to him. She hadn’t spoken the promise, but she’d stitched it into her heart. Bobby had offered her this chance to be a mother, to keep her baby and give it a home. Whatever he wanted—if she could do it for him, she would.

A group of teenagers drove into the parking lot in a rumbling Camaro. The windows were open and music blasted out of them, Led Zeppelin whining, “Way, way down inside…”

The song made her scowl. The singer whined about giving some woman a whole lotta love, but the loud, thumping music wasn’t what love was about—at least, not in her mind.

She peered at Bobby and told herself love was about
him,
his dark, brooding eyes and his hard jaw and his broad shoulders. She told herself that giving his name to another man’s baby was a whole lotta love.

He ate without speaking. She wondered if he was having second thoughts, regretting the whole thing, resenting her. He could have stayed home a few more days, spent a few more nights with Margie…

Unless he’d agreed to marry Joelle to get away from Margie. And his dad.

“Did you tell your father what we’re doing?” she asked.

The sound of her voice seemed to startle him. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and lifted his cola. He took a long drink, then shook his head. “I told him I got a call from the draft board asking me to show up earlier for basic.”

“I left a note for my mother. She’ll be phoning your father soon enough.”

Bobby emptied the final fry from the paper wrapper and popped it into his mouth. “My father’ll be relieved that he didn’t have to dress up in a monkey suit and spend a morning in church
watching me get hitched. Your mother’ll yell at him until he hangs up on her.”

“My mother’s going to blow a fuse.” She would, too. She’d be devastated that Joelle wasn’t marrying Drew. If only Joelle had played things more shrewdly, she could have had a big wedding in the Episcopal church—no matter that Joelle and her mother were Catholic—and a reception at Green Gates Country Club, and then Wanda’s little girl would be set for life, free of Tubtown and poverty forever.

“What’s up?” Bobby asked as he gathered their trash. “You look worried.”

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing? Or are we just two dumb-ass kids?”

He swung his long legs over the bench to head to the waste bin with their trash, and his eyes darkened. “Who the hell knows?”

T
HEY DROVE STRAIGHT THROUGH
Pennsylvania, pausing only to buy gas, use the bathroom and eat a quick supper at a rest stop along I-80. By ten at night they’d reached the outskirts of Trenton. Bobby pulled in to the parking lot of a motel with a vacancy sign glaring in pink neon in the office window. He parked and shut off the engine.

They’d hardly spoken all day and now they were faced with spending the night together. Bobby cleared his throat. “It’s not like we’re legal or anything yet,” he said, addressing the windshield more than her. “I mean, Joelle, I—”

“Call me JoJo,” she said. She longed to have her friend back, not this quiet, brooding boy.

He glanced at her. “This marriage…once we do it, it’s for real.”

She nodded. “That’s how I see things, too.”

“You’ll be my wife. It’s not going to be like it used to be with us.”

She suffered a pang in her soul. She had treasured Bobby’s friendship for so many years. She had no desire for their relationship to change. But it would. Once she was his wife, maybe they wouldn’t be friends anymore.

“I think—” he gazed past her “—I think we should wait until we’re married, if you know what I mean.”

Oh.
She noticed the flush reddening his face—they were too far away from the vacancy sign for her to think its glow had caused him to blush. Once they were married, they’d share a bed. They would sleep together. Have sex together.

Sex with Bobby. God, she’d always loved him; he was her best friend—but sex?

Grow up, Joelle,
she scolded herself. If he wanted sex, of course they would have sex. That was what marriage was all about, right? Sharing a bed.

“I think we should wait, too,” she agreed, hoping he didn’t hear apprehension in her voice, hoping that once they shared a bed he wouldn’t hate her, or hate himself for having married her.

T
HEY HAD PLENTY TO TALK
about during the next couple of days, but mostly it involved logistics: blood tests performed at a clinic in Trenton, papers filed at city hall, a futile search for an apartment for Joelle. Bobby mentioned that there might be base housing at Fort Dix, but she couldn’t imagine anything more depressing than living on an army base, especially once Bobby had shipped out. “Don’t worry, I’ll find something,” she said, sounding more positive than she felt.