Chapter 14

“Tomorrow is our anniversary,” Rob said. He sat across from her in a booth. “Two months since we saw each other in the auditorium. Do you want to do something special?”

It was Sunday; Rob had showed up at work just as she got her lunch break. “What I’d love to do is get up really early, maybe five o’clock, even before the sun is up, when everyone is still asleep, and go for a long walk. And while we’re walking, we’ll eat an entire loaf of hot Italian bread from the all-night bakery.”

“We’ll do it,” he said. “You know what I want to do that’s special? I want to call you at your house and talk to you. I want to come visit you and hear your parents say, ‘Oh, hello, Rob, Jenny’s waiting for you.’”

Doodling on a place mat, Jenny drew two little stick figures looking at each other. She began to feel tense. He’d brought this up before, but she couldn’t just spring him on her parents.

“I don’t like this feeling that we’re sneaking around. My mother knows about us now—”

“That was totally accidental, and we are not sneaking around.” They stared at each other for a moment.

“All I mean is, if you don’t tell your parents about me, one of these days someone else will. You know who turns out to be in my bio class? A cousin of your brother’s girl friend.”

“Mimi? How do you know that?”

“His name is Holtzer, same as her name, isn’t it?” Jenny nodded. “Well, I heard him talking about his cousin Mimi one day. So I just figured—And he knows me, and probably knows your name. And we’re always together in school.”

“I see what you mean.” She wrote “Rob” under one stick figure, “Jenny” under the other, and linked their hands.

“Maybe I could meet your folks with a paper bag over my head. Just to get them used to the idea that there’s a guy in your life. I’ll be the mystery guest.”

“They won’t have to see you or hear you. They’ll love that.”

He took the ballpoint from her. On the place mat over “Rob’s” head he drew a balloon and inside wrote “Wilt Thou Marry Me?”

“Yes, I Wilt,” Jenny wrote back in a balloon over the Jenny figure, “Someday.”

Then Rob drew a fourposter bed with two little stick figures lying next to each other, their feet turned out. They were still holding hands. Along the bottom of the bed, he wrote, “Just Married.”

“They look chilly.” Jenny drew a quilt over them. “Their room looks a little bare, too.” She added a tipsy-looking chair and a lopsided bureau. Rob put a frame on the wall in which he lettered HOME SWEET HOME. Then he crossed out the second HOME and wrote JENNY.

“I want to kiss you,” he said. “Do you think your boss would mind?”

“Don’t know about Awful, but I’d mind.”

“Because of where we are?” She nodded. “Then I’ll think a kiss,” he said. “You, too. Look at me, and I’ll look at you, and we’ll imagine we’re kissing. How is it?”

“Wonderful,” Jenny said. “Probably the best kiss you ever gave me.”

After a moment he said, “My mother asked about you. She liked you.”

“I hardly said two words.”

“Those two words impressed her. She’s been talking about you ever since.”

“Rob, she hasn’t.”

“Yes, she has. She thinks you’re fabulous-looking, like something out of the Arabian nights. And that you’re smart; wise, she says.”

“This is embarrassing.” Was Rob trying to build up a lot of good feeling between her and his mother? He didn’t have to work so hard at it. The fact was, she had liked his mother, and under other circumstances …

“She wants you to come over for supper sometime.”

Jenny crumpled her napkin. One thing for her to meet his mother, but this! “You can’t force things, Rob. I’m not going to your house for supper.”

“I’m not trying to force anything, Jenny. I’m trying to make things better for us. Which is why I want to meet your people.”

“I told you I have to talk to them first.”

“When are you going to do it?” She frowned. “You don’t want to, do you?” he said.

“That’s the kind of question where you think you already know the answer, so why ask?”

He looked grim, stood up. “I’m going to get a drink.”

“Why don’t you make that vodka or gin?”

He stared at her, walked off. She spread a wet spot on the table with her finger. Didn’t he know that she wanted everything out in the open, too? But he didn’t seem to recognize the depth of her parents’ feelings about what had happened. Why was he acting so thick? Did he really think he could whistle and smile and charm his way into their hearts as if he were anyone’s son?

He came back and sat down next to her.

“Why are we fighting?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Rob. I don’t want to! I’m sorry about what I said …”

He nodded. “Let’s forget it. Want some?” He offered her his strawberry shake.

She shook her head, turned the links on her watch strap. “You know, if things were different, I’d really be glad to visit your mother. It’s just—I can’t be at ease with her. And my parents—that’s a whole other problem.”

“I understand,” he said quickly. Did he? To begin with, there was a difference in the way she felt and the way he felt about what had happened to Gail. The point being, it was her sister. Then, though she knew he thought it was tragic, he also thought it was something people had to learn to live with, all of them: her parents, his mother, her.

Like her mother, she tended to brood, to chew over things. Rob was good for her precisely because he didn’t. His personality was basically optimistic. He was always convinced there was a way, no matter what stood in front of you. That’s why he kept harping on her parents.

He was like those Israelites who believed they could bring down the walls of—what was the name of that town?—by blowing on their horns. Sure, guys, we can do it. She could see him saying it and tooting away, while she’d be standing by, shaking her head at the sheer craziness of shattering a wall with a tinny horn.

Joshua fit the battle of Jericho … that was it. Jericho. They used to sing that in music class in junior high. And then the last line popped into her mind: And the walls came tumbling down.