The Stand

May, had gotten a job in a warehousing firm as a secretary. She and Rhoda couldn’t swing the rent much longer without a third. “And we both come from big families,” Debbie said. “Crying babies don’t bother us.”

Fran said she’d be ready to move in by the first of July, and when she hung up she found warm tears coursing down her cheeks. Relief tears. If she could get away from this town where she had grown up, she thought she would be all right. Away from her mother, away from her father, even. The fact of the baby and her singleness would then assume some sort of sane proportion in her life. A large factor, surely, but not the only one. There was some sort of animal, a bug or a frog, she thought, that swelled up to twice its normal size when it felt threatened. The predator, in theory at least, saw this, got scared, and slunk off. She felt a little like that bug, and it was this whole town, the total environment (gestalt was maybe an even better word), that made her feel that way. She knew that nobody was going to make her wear a scarlet letter, but she also knew that for her mind to finish convincing her nerves of that fact, a break with Ogunquit was necessary. When she went out on the street she could feel people, not looking at her, but getting ready to look at her. The year-round residents, of course, not the summer people. The year-round residents always had to have someone to look at—a tosspot, a welfare slacker, The Kid from a Good Family who had been picked up shoplifting in Portland or Old Orchard Beach… or the girl with the levitating belly.

The second call, the so-so one, had been from Jess Rider. He had called from Portland and he had tried the house first. Luckily, he had gotten Peter, who gave him Fran’s telephone number at the Harborside with no editorial comment.

Still, almost the first thing he’d said was: “You got a lot of static at home, huh?”

“Well, I got some,” she said cautiously, not wanting to go into it. That would make them conspirators of a kind.

“Your mother?”

“Why do you say that?”

“She looks like the type that might freak out. It’s something in the eyes, Frannie. It says if you shoot my sacred cows, I’ll shoot yours.”

She was silent.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to offend you.”

“You didn’t,” she said. His description was actually quite apt—surface-apt anyway—but she was still trying to get over the surprise of that verb, offend. It was a strange word to hear from him. Maybe there’s a postulate here, she thought. When your lover begins to talk about “offending” you, he’s not your lover anymore.

“Frannie, the offer still stands. If you say yes, I can get a couple of rings and be there this afternoon.”

On your bike, she thought, and almost giggled. A giggle would be a horrible, unnecessary thing to do to him, and she covered the phone for a second just to be sure it wasn’t going to escape. She had done more weeping and giggling in the last six days than she had done since she was fifteen and starting to date.

“No, Jess,” she said, and her voice was quite calm.

“I mean it!” he said with startling vehemence, as if he had seen her struggling with laughter.

“I know you do,” she said. “But I’m not ready to get married. I know that about me, Jess. It has nothing to do with you.”

“What about the baby?”

“I’m going to have it.”

“And give it up?”

“I haven’t decided.”

For a moment he was silent and she could hear other voices in other rooms. They had their own problems, she supposed. Baby, the world is a daytime drama. We love our lives, and so we look for the guiding light as we search for tomorrow.

“I wonder about that baby,” Jesse said finally. She really doubted if he did, but it was maybe the only thing he could have said that would cut her. It did.

“Jess—”

“So where are you going?” he asked briskly. “You can’t stay at the Harborside all summer. If you need a place, I can look around in Portland.”

“I’ve got a place.”

“Where, or am I not supposed to ask?”

“You’re not supposed to,” she said, and bit her tongue for not finding a more diplomatic way of saying it.

“Oh,” he said. His voice was queerly flat. Finally he said cautiously, “Can I ask you something and not piss you off, Frannie? Because I really want to know. It’s not a rhetorical question or anything.”

“You can ask,” she agreed warily. Mentally she did gird herself not to be pissed off, because when Jess prefaced something like that, it was usually just before he came out with some hideous and totally unaware piece of chauvinism.

“Don’t I have any rights in this at all?” Jess asked. “Can’t I share the responsibility and the decision?”

For a moment she was pissed off, and then the feeling was gone. Jess was just being Jess, trying to protect his image of himself to himself, the way all thinking people do so they can get to sleep at night. She had always liked him for his intelligence, but in a situation like this, intelligence could be a bore. People like Jess—and herself, too—had been taught all their lives that the good thing to do was commit and be active. Sometimes you had to hurt yourself—and badly—to find out it could be better to lie back in the tall weeds and procrastinate. His toils were kind, but they were still toils. He didn’t want to let her get away.

“Jesse,” she said, “neither of us wanted this baby. We agreed on the pill so the baby, wouldn’t happen. You don’t have any responsibility.”

“But—”

“No, Jess,” she said, quite firmly.

He sighed.

“Will you get in touch when you get settled?”

“I think so.”

“Are you still planning to go back to school?”

“Eventually. I’m going to take the fall semester off. Maybe with something CED.”

“If you need me, Frannie, you know where I’ll be. I’m not running out.”

“I know that, Jesse.”

“If you need dough—”

“Yes.”

“Get in touch. I won’t press you, but… I’ll want to see you.”

“All right, Jess.”

“Goodbye, Fran.”

“Goodbye.”

When she hung up the goodbyes had seemed too final, the conversation unfinished. It struck her why. They had not added “I love you,” and that was a first. It made her sad and she told herself not to be, but the telling didn’t help.

The last call had come around noon, and it was from her father. They had had lunch the day before yesterday, and he told her he was worried about the effect this was having on Carla. She hadn’t come to bed last night; she had spent it in the parlor, poring over the old genealogical records. He had gone in around eleven-thirty to ask her when she was coming up. Her hair had been down, flowing over her shoulders and the bodice of her nightgown, and Peter said she looked wild and not strictly in touch with things. That heavy book was on her lap and she hadn’t even looked up at him, only continued to turn the pages. She said she wasn’t sleepy. She would be up in a while. She had a cold, Peter told her as they sat in a booth at the Corner Lunch, more looking at hamburgers than eating them. The sniffles. When Peter asked her if she would like a glass of hot milk, she didn’t answer at all. He had found her yesterday morning asleep in the chair, the book on her lap.

When she finally woke up she had seemed better, more herself, but her cold was worse. She dismissed the idea of having Dr. Edmonton in, saying it was just a chest cold. She had put Vicks on her chest, and a flannel square of cloth, and she thought her sinuses were clearing already. But Peter hadn’t cared for the way she looked,