Read Online One Heart by Jane Mccafferty - Free Book Online Page B

America the beautiful. But we could feel the lie of that. James and me could feel the evil in the air. After Fat Boy and the other bomb, what the hell did they call it, I forget, but we could feel how the air was different, the world was different. No matter how new the houses were, no matter how many sprung up, no matter how clean.
    So, we could feel some things, but we were out of it. Wanted to be.
    *  *  *
    Then one day when Wendell was twelve I thought I might be pregnant, and I went to the doctor, Doctor Elwin Fry. He looked exactly like a walrus, I’ll never forget that. Doctor Elwin Fry said to me, “You don’t want to gain weight now, Gladys. You want to keep your figure.” I did have a nice Betty Grable–type figure, if you can believe that. I had every eye on my legs when I walked down a street in those days.
    So the walrus says, “When you get the urge to snack, have a cigarette and a highball.” Raelene didn’t believe this. I had to explain. Things were just different back then. The doctors didn’t want the ladies losing their figures. This was the biggest concern. The ladies cannot lose their figures! No figure loss by the ladies allowed! You could hear the doctors saying this throughout the land of plenty.
    I was used to that. My father, to save me from turning to fat, made me run and swim until I wanted to die. But that’s a whole other tale.
    So I was pregnant and happy. It weren’t planned. We’d wanted to wait for a while. But we were so happy. About three months into that pregnancy, James’s father died. We all went to Kentucky for the funeral, and James and I cried together with his mother. This was the mid-fifties. Later that year we moved from New York back to the state of Delaware for a few years. Only we lived in the north, in Wilmington, an hour from where I’d grown up. My father ended up landing James a job down on the docks as a loader. We were happy and Wendell was happy too. He was thirteen now, and he was looking forward to a brother or sister. I missed our old house up in New York State, our old way of living. Ivy missed us and kept saying, “When you coming back?” But James was making decent money at his job. And whenever we got the chance we got out of the city and camped.
    We missed the land. Both James and me loved land. There weren’t so many real land lovers back then like there are now. Or if there were they didn’t talk about it as much and hang so many posters. I’d grown up on a farm, and land was in my blood. I weren’t so big on loving animals, but I loved the land . James had grown up in a town, where he said he felt “shackled.” Part of why he fell for me I think is because I had the land in my blood. The old farm in my heart.
    One night by a river he and I made a pact to avoid boredom. We drank to that promise. We were so young we believed boredom would be the worst possible thing to face in this life.
    Now how do I describe A.?
    Well, not yet. Not yet. It’s not that time yet. I’ll just tell you she was nice. She was a good baby that didn’t keep us up all night too much. I can’t hardly stand thinking of her so I won’t. I’ll talk but I won’t think. Not about this. Yet.
    Now one day A. was three years old, Wendell was a teenager, and James and myself took them on a little trip to a pond. This lake was back in New York State. (We were there for good this time, in another decent little house in the woods.) We had never been to the pond before. Bennet Thane, a man James worked with, recommended it. He had a cabin nearby. He said we could use the cabin and swim in the pond, have us a getaway.
    So there we were, a family by a pond. Sunshine, a little bench of old stones by the edge of the water. Woods all around.
    Wendell was a quick-eyed, handsome boy, with his short black hair and his hawk nose. He looked older than sixteen. He had the usual