Hannah sat in the yellow chair, closest to Boop. “Yes, I’ve been to the doctor and of course the baby is Clark’s!”
“What do you mean ‘of course’? It happens.”
“It certainly does,” Georgia said.
Hannah gasped. “Well, it didn’t happen to me.”
The worry that Boop had collected inside her dispersed like grains of sand, pouring over her, prickling her limbs, and dissipating. “And you’re sure you want to have the baby? Keep the baby?”
“I’m sure. And so is Clark.” Hannah broke out into a smile. “We heard the heartbeat.”
Boop placed her right hand over her own heart, connecting her somehow to this new heartbeat. “So why didn’t you say yes?”
The girls stayed quiet and still, allowing grandmother and granddaughter privacy within their presence.
Hannah shrugged, looking like the wide-eyed girl who’d been caught so long ago eating blueberries on a farm outing instead of adding them to her basket, her purple tongue, teeth, and fingers betraying her.
Boop cleared her throat. “Can you be happy enough if you marry someone you’re not sure about? Maybe. Is a baby a blessing? Absolutely. But you asked—and my answer is no. Being pregnant is not a good enough reason to get married. Not anymore.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this,” Hannah said.
“I believe it,” Georgia said. “Boop is a thoroughly modern grandmother.”
Boop nodded at Georgia. How times had changed.
“It’s the twenty-first century,” Boop said. “You’re a twenty-six-year-old college graduate with a full-time teaching job. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about doing this on your own.”
“I want the baby to have two parents.”
“Oh, Hannah,” Doris said. “Maybe it will all work out. The baby will have two parents. Even if you’re not married, nontraditional families can work wonderfully if you do it right.” Doris had children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so many steps and halves that Boop couldn’t keep track.
“No one is cutting Clark out of the picture,” Boop said. Or pushing him off a pier. Maybe Clark would be an unlikely provider and protector—those were a blessing as well.
She knew that type of man existed because of Marvin. He’d excelled at the family-man thing most of the time. Fatherhood became him, a relief and joy when Stuart was born. Conversely, Boop’s father, Joe Stern, couldn’t have been bothered. Intrinsic nurturing had skipped a generation in her family. Nannie and Zaide cherished three generations of resort guests and a granddaughter, yet their character traits had whizzed right by Joe. Perhaps that was why he’d been attracted to her mother, the stunning yet non-maternal Tillie Feldman Stern—the two people responsible for her mostly wonderful childhood but only because they’d abandoned her. The summer Boop was four, her parents had dropped her off in South Haven for the weekend—a weekend that lasted until she was eighteen.
Sometimes Boop couldn’t even bring herself to mutter, “May they rest in peace.”
Hannah tipped her head to one side and smiled. Her eyes filled, glassy with emotion and memories. “I just wonder if I’m the marrying type. Because if I was, I have always wanted a marriage like yours and Pop’s.”
Doris stroked the fringe on her blanket and Georgia stared at her hands. Hannah’s statement provided a fork in Boop’s road.
“Things aren’t always what they seem,” she said.
“And sometimes they are,” Hannah said. “You and Pop were such good role models. I just want to do you proud.”
“You’ll make me proud if your marriage doesn’t start like mine and Pop’s,” Boop said.
Besides Boop, there were eight people in the world who knew why Boop would say that. Two of them were sitting on the porch pretending not to hear her, and the other six had died. She’d assumed her untold story would accompany her to the grave, sheltered in a broken corner of her heart.
But like so many times before when her heart was involved, Boop was wrong.
“I don’t need perfect,” Hannah cried. “I just need to know Clark is the one. Like you did with Pop.”
“I didn’t know,” Boop whispered.
“What?”
“I didn’t know that your grandfather was the one. I took a leap of faith—like Georgia said. And luckily it worked out. But I want you to be sure. Times are different.”
“Why would you say that?” Hannah’s voice squeaked.
“Because it’s true,” Georgia said.
Doris nodded.
Boop gathered all the courage that had forsaken her throughout her lifetime, as if it had been waiting right here for her on her forever porch. “I wasn’t in love with Pop when we got married.” Blasphemy! The words had been thick and heavy on her tongue, yet at the same time, they’d been easy to say, as if she’d pushed a boulder to the top of a hill and had finally let it roll down the other side.
Hannah deflated, then roared up with laughter and smacked her knee as if a toddler had told her a knock-knock joke. “Yes, you were totally in love. You got married right here on the patio after Labor Day, months after you graduated from high school. You picked out your dress from a bridal magazine and Nannie went to Chicago to buy it. I’ve heard the story my whole life. I’ve seen the pictures. You were glowing.”
Boop inhaled, tasting the lake, maybe a speckle of sand, surely a droplet of sadness at remembering how her grown-up life had begun.
Antiquated yet still ample in Boop’s mind, Nannie and Zaide’s expectations, fears, and stereotypes popped to the surface and bobbed like a buoy, threatening her current feminist sensibilities. Still, she didn’t want to dispel the myth of her and Marvin’s love story.
“Why would you say you didn’t love Pop?” Hannah asked. “She’s lying, right?”
Georgia shook her head.
“Then why did you get married?”
Boop looked at Doris, then at Georgia, not for permission, but for confirmation. They nodded. Their expressions were neither happy nor sad. Hints of smiles documented their acceptance. As always.
It was time.
Boop was faced with saying things her granddaughter did not want to hear, words she would remember forever. Memories shrouded her resolve, but Boop shooed those thoughts away. She was not Nannie. Hannah was not
