“About four months,” Webster replied, exaggerating a bit.
“What does she do?” his mother asked.
“Right now, she’s working as a waitress, but she’s looking for a better job.”
“Where does she work?” his mother continued.
Webster wished he could name a better place. “Keezer’s. But that’s just temporary. For now.”
“I see,” his mother said, more curious than concerned. “Tell me what she looks like.”
“She’s tall and slim. Beautiful brown hair. Blue eyes. Pretty.”
“And where did you meet?” his father asked.
“I met her in the diner,” Webster lied, knowing that the truth would steer their thoughts in an unfortunate direction.
Webster knew that his father had picked up on something. He was staring at Webster, as if searching for a tell. When had Webster ever told his parents he was seeing someone?
“You should bring her to dinner,” his mother offered, probably already thinking about a menu.
“Thanks. I will. But there’s one other thing.” Webster bent forward and held the nearly full Rolling Rock between his knees. “Sheila’s pregnant.”
Both parents froze, their arms in midair. In other circumstances, it would have been comical.
Webster had to remind himself to breathe. The house sounded the way it did when he was alone in it. Silent except for the clock and the fridge and the heating system.
His mother lowered her drink. His father finished off his and set the bottle down hard.
“It’s mine,” Webster said, short-stopping the inevitable.
His father rolled his head back in disbelief. “How can you be sure?”
His father asking the question the son had stopped himself from asking the girlfriend.
“I’m sure,” Webster said.
“Peter,” his mother moaned. “You’re only twenty-one!”
“Almost twenty-two,” Webster said.
“How far along is she?” his father, persistent, asked. His mother looked as though she might cry.
“Three months,” Webster said.
It was simple math.
His father looked away. Webster thought his dad would get up from the wing chair and leave the room and then the house and maybe not come back for a couple of hours.
“You’re only twenty-one,” his mother repeated, seemingly unable to move beyond that thought.
His father wasn’t leaving, though. “Is she going…” He seemed unable to finish the sentence. Webster did it for him.
“To keep it? Yes.”
“Do you love her?” his mother asked.
Finally, an easy question. “I do,” he said. “Very much.” But even as he said it, and as sure as he was that he did, he wondered if he really knew what love, in these circumstances, meant.
His father left the room and returned with three more Rolling Rocks. Medicinal, not celebratory.
“You going to marry this girl?” his father asked, his voice gruff. Man to man.
“She has a name,” Webster said.
“But we don’t know her!” his mother wailed before his father could tell him not to be fresh.
“How the hell…?” His father pressed his lips together hard and gave a short shake of the head.
“I think we’ll probably get married,” Webster said.
“You think?” his father asked.
“We’re taking it slow,” he said.
“I should say not!” his mother protested. “Slow? I should say not!”
“You’re an EMT, for Christ’s sakes,” his father said, referring, Webster guessed, to the failed contraception.
Webster set his jaw. He’d expected the conversation to take an ugly turn, but it was still hard to live through it.
“This whole thing has been rolling along, and we don’t even know her?” his mother asked. “This isn’t what we envisioned for you.”
Webster was silent. He didn’t want this initial talk to end in more acrimony than it had to. In five minutes—no, less, maybe three—his mother had gone from delighted to curious to shocked to angry and now was quickly moving to disappointed. His father remained disgusted.
“You know we love you,” his mother said. “We want only the best for you.”
Webster wished he’d told his father first.
“I’m a grown man, Mom. I know how to save people’s lives. I’m working hard. I sometimes volunteer for twenty-four-hour shifts.”
“You’ve never even seen the world!” his father said, gesturing with his arm to take in all the places his son might never see.
“Did you?” Webster asked.
His father narrowed his eyes.
“Look,” Webster said. “I’m going to start studying to be a paramedic, the next step after EMT. Once I’m a medic, I’m pretty sure I can make enough money to support us.”
His father drank the rest of his Rolling Rock in one go. Webster waited for the belch.
“What’s she like?” Webster’s mother asked.
Webster thought. “She’s strong. Strong-willed. She’s funny. Very pretty. I said that.” He paused. “She likes to travel to other parts of Vermont to see them, so we sometimes take long drives.”
“Wanderlust,” his father said, with all that that implied. Webster remembered Sheila’s quick retort in the cruiser.
“She’s got a Boston accent. I think you’ll like her.” Though he didn’t think so. Not one tiny bit. “Obviously, we’ll have to get our own place. A small apartment. I was thinking of renting something in town. Closer to Rescue.”
“Can you afford that?” his father asked.
“Just.”
“Well,” said his mother, sitting up straight and smoothing her legs as if she had an apron on. “When would you like us to have her over for dinner?”
Ever the peacekeeping, let’s-move-on mother. For which Webster was grateful.
“I’m theoretically home next weekend,” he said. “We could do it Saturday night.”
“Settled,” his mother said, and she might as well have had a gavel.
* * *
“Did you do it? How did it go?”
Sheila had her arms crossed over her chest.
Webster moved into the kitchen and looked around. He was hungry. A meal at home hadn’t been possible. “Peachy,” he said.
Sheila closed the door. “Well, it’s done.”
“I’m hungry,” Webster said. “Have you got anything here I could eat?” He snuck a look at her stomach. How could she not be showing yet? Or was there stress on the belt? Yes, he thought maybe there was.
“Go sit in there,” she said, gesturing to the jalousie porch.
Webster, though he’d slept from nine to four thirty, felt exhausted. Bone-weary, mind-weary. He could hear Sheila moving around in the kitchen. He could have used three more beers in quick succession, but he wouldn’t get them at Sheila’s. He hoped he wouldn’t, anyway.
He supposed the announcement had gone as well as it could have. His father hadn’t stomped out. His mother hadn’t actually wept. There would be yet another chapter to the new saga. He laid his head against the back of the wall and dozed until Sheila came in with a tray. She set the food down.
“You think you can make it to the table?” she asked.
He smiled. “Spaghetti and meatballs,” he said. “Perfect.”
After he was seated, he glanced up and saw Sheila for the first time that evening. Did he imagine that her face was fuller? “How are you?” he asked, a question he should have asked the minute he’d walked in the door.
“OK,” she said. “Still can’t stand the smell of coffee, which is a real problem at work. When I get outside and breathe in the air, it’s like a happy drug.”
“No morning sickness?” he asked.
“Not morning. Sometimes in the afternoon I get a headache and I feel nauseous. But I hate throwing up so much, I’m willing my body not to do it.”
“You look be
autiful,” Webster said.
“Jesus, you really were hungry.”
He slowed down. “You have any bread?”
“Sure.”
“With butter?”
“It was that bad.”
“It was that bad.”
They sat at the edge of her bed, Webster not sure if they would make love or not. “We’re invited to dinner next Saturday,” he said.
“Won’t that be a disaster?”
“It has to happen,” Webster said. “There’s no avoiding it.”
“Can’t we just have a secret baby and stay in a secret place?” She had her fingers in his hair. He hoped that she was kidding.
“And another thing,” Webster said. “We have to start looking for a place to live.”
“Our own apartment?” she asked, drawing back so that she could see his face.
“Of course.”
“We don’t have to live with your parents, and we don’t have to live here?”
“Sheila, did you really think we could possibly do that?”
She ruffled his hair and drew her hand away. “I didn’t know what your finances were. Mine aren’t too great.”
“Combined, I think we can just make it. It has to be small, and it has to be something close to town.”
“Close to town? Where there are shops and people, and I could walk to work?” she asked, wide-eyed. The couple from whom Sheila rented the jalousie porch had given her the use of their ancient Buick, insisting they never drove it. Sheila was planning on buying it when she’d saved enough money. She had needed a car to get back and forth to work, and Webster guessed the old folks were more than happy to aid their tenant in that endeavor. Sheila didn’t make as much fun of them as she used to. “This living in the sticks is driving me nuts.”
The northern border of Hartstone could hardly be called the sticks. Unless you thought the entire state of Vermont the sticks.
She wrapped her arms around his neck. “This is so cool.”
Webster smiled. “Yeah, I suppose it is.” The idea of their future being cool hadn’t really occurred to him.
He undid her belt buckle and smoothed her belly. “You’re showing,” he said.
“I am not.”
“Go look at yourself in the mirror.”
“I don’t have a mirror,” she reminded him, and he thought about the small circle high over the bathroom sink.
“Well, I think we’ll have to go somewhere that has a full-length mirror.”
Webster thought. It had to be a place that was still open. A bar? A full-length mirror in the ladies’ room? A bad idea. And then he had it. “The Giant Mart,” he said. “They’re bound to have a ladies’ room with a big mirror that goes down to the sinks. If you wear your boots, you’d be high enough to see.”
“This is so weird,” she said and kissed him on the cheek.
“After we find a place, and I think we should start tomorrow, even though it’s a Sunday, the first piece of furniture we’re going to put in there is a full-length mirror.”
She cocked her head and gave a little shake.
“So you can see how beautiful you are. And will be when you’re eight months pregnant.”
“I’ll be fat.”
“You’ll be gorgeous.”
She frowned, and it occurred to Webster that he’d never known Sheila to be even slightly vain.
She’d undone his shirtsleeve and was rolling it up his arm. “What kind of a place will we be able to get?” she asked.
He looked down at his arm. “I’ve done a little hunting,” he said. “When I was thinking about getting out of my parents’ house. Not that I don’t love them and appreciate the meals. I do. But it’s past time. I’ve seen a few places. A one-bedroom at best.”
Sheila stroked the inside of his arm. “We have to have someplace to put the baby,” she said.
“Well, two bedrooms if we get extra lucky.” The only two-bedroom Webster had seen during his short quest had smelled of dead animal. Tomorrow he’d walk over to Carroll & Carroll and see if there was anything new in the window. And he’d buy the Sunday paper, look at the ads. The problem was that the apartment had to be in Hartstone. Rescue had a bunk room and a living room with a TV for use during tours. All the furniture was from grateful patients. The kitchen had three spoons. Webster didn’t understand why the medics didn’t just go out and buy a dozen spoons. He’d thought of doing it himself, but couldn’t presume until he’d earned a little more seniority.
The search for an apartment might be hard.
“OK,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Sheila, drawing her fingers away from his arm, seemed confused.
“The Giant Mart,” he said.
They took the first apartment they could afford: a one-bedroom the size of Webster’s parents’ living room situated over an ice-cream shop. That the apartment had a washer and dryer sealed the deal. If they’d been willing to look further, they might have been able to find a better place, but this one was available, and Webster was impatient. Now that the decision had been made, he wanted to make it a reality as soon as possible. They could move in any time, the owner of the ice-cream shop had said.
They transferred Sheila’s belongings the following Saturday morning. Webster wouldn’t start moving in until the next day, after they’d had the dinner with his parents. He didn’t want to appear too eager, even though he’d move no matter what they said.
Once Webster had paid the security deposit and the first month’s rent, he and Sheila walked into their new home together. The kitchenette allowed only one person inside it at a time, but the round table Webster would bring from home could seat three in a pinch. The appliances looked tired, but they worked, which was all Webster cared about. They studied the small living room, noting water damage on the ceiling. They didn’t much like the blue wall-to-wall either. Someday they’d own their own place, Sheila said, and Webster wondered if that would ever be true.
They walked into a single bedroom with a slanted ceiling and one window. They debated where to put the bed, a short debate, there being only one section of wall without a door or a window. They drove to the Giant Mart to buy a broom, a wastebasket, kitchen and bath supplies, and enough food to get by for a couple of days. When the parental dinner was behind them, Webster would go to his father’s hardware store and purchase a full-length mirror for Sheila. The only place he could put it would be inside the only closet in the apartment, the one in the bedroom. The owner had put hooks, in lieu of a coat closet, by the front door.
Sheila had asked the nurse if she could borrow the mattress from the porch for two nights until Webster moved his own bed in the next day. The nurse had been annoyed at the abrupt notice but had said yes to the mattress. Webster hauled it up the outside stairs. “Let me sweep first,” Sheila said.
Together they settled the mattress on the floor of the bedroom. After it was in place, Webster asked where the sheets were.
“I don’t have any,” Sheila said.
“You didn’t bring them?”
“They weren’t mine.”
“But…” Webster shook his head. “A towel?”
“Nope.”
“We’ll just have to be careful, then,” Webster said.
“Careful with what?” Sheila asked.
“We have to christen the place,” he said with a grin.
“Your father’s going to recognize me,” Sheila said from the passenger seat of the cruiser.
The hardware store.
“You didn’t go wild in there, did you?” Webster asked.
“No, I just bought a lot of cigarettes.”
“Well, I wouldn’t light up during dinner.”
“Jesus, Webster, give me some credit.”
He was inclined to give her a lot of credit. When she’d emerged from the bedroom, she was wearing a loose light gray dress. Not a maternity dress, but one that could become one. She had put her hair up, which showed off her long white neck and the pearls at he
r ears. She had on stockings and a pair of white flat shoes. He whistled and made her turn around and told her she looked beautiful, which she did, though he hardly recognized her, and that threw him a little. It was as if she had on a costume for a theater production.
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” she said in the cruiser.
“I can’t tell them no at this point. Besides, you’re pregnant with their first grandchild. We have to do this.”
“Doesn’t it seem like everything is happening too fast?”
It did. The pregnancy had put the normal timetable into overdrive. Then he wondered if there would have been a normal timetable at all. If Sheila hadn’t gotten pregnant, what would they be doing now? Taking drives? Still visiting B and Bs? All of that seemed another lifetime ago.
He’d barely absorbed the news of the pregnancy himself. Now he had to help his parents comprehend what their son had done.
Pregnant. Hell of a word.
Webster and Sheila arrived at his parents’ house at exactly 6:30. “Stay in the car,” Webster said. “I’m coming around to get you.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
When he opened her door, and she stepped out, Webster was proud of the way she looked. “I don’t want to sound like an asshole,” he said quietly, “but you might want to get rid of the gum. My mother hates girls who chew gum.”
“You are an asshole,” Sheila said as she wrapped the gum in a tissue from her purse. “How long is this dinner going to last, anyway?”
Webster sighed. “Can you hang in there for two hours?”
“And I’m not a girl,” she said.
Webster’s mother, who’d had her hair done for the occasion, declared straightaway that she was happy to meet Sheila. Sheila said, “Me, too,” while his mother’s eyes slipped to Sheila’s waist, not really visible beneath the gray dress.
Webster’s father was cool. “I know you,” he said, not a trace of a smile on his face. “Toasted bagel, butter instead of cream cheese, a carton of Virginia Slims, coffee black. You used to stand outside the store, juggling the bagel, the coffee, the cigarette, and the carton. I wondered how you could do that.”
“Held the carton between my knees,” she said, leaving the unfortunate image hanging in the air.