“Janice Brooks is twelve.You’re just ten.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.The book said that a girl can sometimes get it when she’s ten or eleven.”
“Not much.She can be sixteen, too.You may have to wait.”
“Do you get one?”
Marcy thought about it, then nodded.
“So you could have a baby now if you wanted to?”
Again Marcy nodded.
“And it would take nine months to grow.But the book didn’t say anything about five-month babies.John looks disgusted when he calls me one.So what does it mean?”
“You better ask your mama.”
“I don’t think she’ll answer.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.I just don’t think she will.She’ll probably laugh at me.She doesn’t think John’s so awful.SoI’m asking you, Marcy.Come on.You’re my best friend, and youknowabout things.What’s a five-month baby?”
Marcy took another lick of her cone before turning her slender body toward Pam.“A five-month baby is a baby born only five months after the parents get married.”
It didn’t take long for the meaning of that to register on Pam.She was good at math.“Then John is saying,” she began slowly, “that my parents made me before they got married?”
“Could be.”
“That they got married because they were going to have me?”
“Th’ important thing,” Marcy said, “is that they were married when you were born.”
“Did they have to get married because of me?”
“No.”
The conviction behind the word was some reassurance to Pam, but still she had to ask, “How do you know?”
“B’cause they love you.And they love each other.People who love like that get married whether there’s a baby or not.”When Pam continued to look skeptical, she added, “You know they love you.”
“Sometimes I think they don’t love each other.Daddy spends so much time in Maine.”
“That’s on account of the pits.He has to be there.”
“No,” Pam said, but distantly.
“Yes’m.If he didn’t spend so much time in Maine, you wouldn’t have all the nice things you do here.Your daddy is a fine man, about as fine as any that comes along.I’m sure that if he had his way he’d be here all the time with you.And your mama.”
Pam didn’t argue further, though it seemed to her that the last “mama” had been stuck on as an afterthought.She could understand why Marcy would insist that Patricia and Eugene were still deeply in love.Marcy’s own parents had a volatile relationship, if the screaming Pam had heard the one time she’d gone with Marcy to visit was any indication.By comparison, anything was better.
Pam’s point of comparison, though, was different.Increasingly she could look back on her earliest memories, and, even allowing for the innocence of those first years, she could see the change in the way her parents treated each other.The nice times were fewer and farther between.If Patricia and Eugene were in love, it wasn’t as deep a love as it once had been.
Pam was convinced that something was wrong, and nothing in the course of the months that followed suggested otherwise.Eugene was in Maine more often than not, which irritated Patricia so much that she made several trips there herself.
“Do you blame me for wondering?”she asked in a huff one Friday night.She’d taken Pam straight from school and made the three-hour drive without forewarning Eugene.
In the eyes of a twelve-year-old, his welcome was one of unqualified pleasure, everything Pam had hoped for.The three of them went out for dinner at the nicest restaurant within twenty miles of the Cove, and when they returned they sat for a time in the den catching up on what each had been doing since last they’d been together.When the talk turned to business, Pam quietly left.But the conversation easily carried up the stairs to the hall,where she leaned against the wall papered with Queen Anne’s lace and listened.
