Jack had been home from work for only a little while. It had been a long day and he was slumped in his old recliner staring at, but not really watching, Brian Williams read the day’s news. Jack had pulled the delivery menu for
Jack was roused from his ennui by the doorbell being buzzed over and over again. Frowning…he neither expected nor wanted visitors…Jack rose from the recliner and padded over to the door. He opened the door and, before he could say anything, Rosemary surged into his arms sobbing and babbling incoherently.
Rosemary was Jack’s girlfriend. They had been dating for almost 14 months. Rosemary was a short, wispy girl…her head came up to the middle of Jack’s chest…with long chestnut hair and deep brown, vaguely haunted eyes; she was kind of plain and kind of pretty at the same time…plain and pretty, the way librarians and meter maids and best friends of leading female characters always were in old movies.
Jack artfully guided Rosemary into the apartment and closed the door. Rosemary continued to sob and babble while Jack held her close and stared off waiting for her to take a breath. Jack was able to make out snatches of coherence out of Rosemary’s stream of words. “My father’s going to kill me” stuck out particularly clearly.
Rosemary’s father was the only person in the world that Jack was really afraid of. Her father was a brooding, ruddy hulk with bulbous cheeks and hooded black eyes; Jack always wondered how such an enormous man could have co-created a girl as petite and delicate as Rosemary. Rosemary’s father always regarded Jack with bored contempt and Jack quickly learned not to try to get to know the man better (Rosemary’s mother, on the other hand, was pleasant enough woman who treated Jack with kindness; Jack could tell that she had once been as willowy as her daughter. Rosemary’s mother had vaguely haunted eyes as well…though they were two or three shades lighter than Rosemary’s eyes…and she always smelled of rosewater and red wine.)
“What’s the matter, Rosemary?” Jack said when she finally took a breath.
Rosemary took a step back and looked up at Jack with her liquid, deep brown, vaguely haunted eyes. She took a deep breath and said, “I’m pregnant”. And then she buried her head in his chest and started sobbing again.
Jack put his arm around her and stared off profoundly puzzled. “I’m pregnant”…Jack let the words cascade about his synapses as he tried to make sense of them.
“What are we going to do?” Rosemary gasped out between sobs.
Jack weighed the implications of that question as well. “We?” he thought. “Hmph, that is the question, isn’t it?” In the 14 months that Jack and Rosemary had been dating he had never once seen her naked below the waist…they had kissed passionately on many occasions and he had stolen longing squeezes of her breasts through her sweaters and her cotton bras; Rosemary had on rarer occasions allowed fleeting egress to her bra and she had even once let Jack fondle her breast with his left hand while he masturbated with his right.
But she had never allowed his hand to venture down below her pert bellybutton. She was a good girl she explained…just like her father raised to her to be…and she would go to her wedding bed a virgin. Jack had found that to be enormously frustrating but eventually he decided that he could live with it (it was easier than finding another girlfriend, he reasoned, and one day she would change her mind or they would get married.)
And now she was pregnant.
Jack found his voice again. “Rosemary,” he said softly, “why are you telling me this?” He was, given the circumstances, keenly interested in her answer.
Rosemary stopped sobbing and looked up at him her eyes ablaze with withering indignation. “Because you’re my boyfriend,” she said as if Jack's question was the most idiotic thing she'd ever heard. And then she leaned against him and started sobbing again.
Strangely enough, Jack couldn’t think of a credible argument to her statement at that moment.
At some point, Rosemary stopped sobbing and went into the bathroom to wash her face. Jack called the
Four days later, Rosemary told her father that she was pregnant. Rosemary’s father came to Jack’s apartment and slammed him against a wall and, reeking of bourbon and cigar smoke and disappointment, told Jack to make it right.
Seven days later, Jack and Rosemary were married by a disinterested civil servant in front of four witnesses: Rosemary’s parents (he scowling, she smiling opaquely), Rosemary’s sullen best friend Lily, and Jack’s incredulous best friend Art. That night, in a motel near Disneyland, Jack finally got to venture below Rosemary’s pert bellybutton (making love with Rosemary wasn’t quite as magical as Jack had always imagined it would be…but it was okay enough and Jack slept contentedly that night.)
Jack and Rosemary moved into a two-bedroom apartment a few blocks away from Jack’s old apartment.
Rosemary never told Jack who the father of the baby…a bright-eyed girl she named Roberta…was. And, to be fair, Jack never asked. Jack would decide that it was probably the guy that Rosemary left with on a cool autumn day some 6 months after Roberta was born.
It was the most logical assumption to be made from the letter Rosemary left for him with Roberta’s babysitter. Jack read the letter three times, parsing every word, and then he paid the babysitter, collected Roberta, and went home to his apartment. Rosemary’s things were all gone but she had left the apartment in pristine condition.
Jack fixed a bottle for Roberta and called Chicken Delight and ordered the 3-piece meal. He sat in his recliner feeding the baby and waiting for his dinner to arrive.
Jack and Roberta moved into a small house in the suburbs. Art and Rosemary’s mother were the most frequent visitors and the housekeeper/nanny was a matronly widow, named Mrs. Agnes Stephenson, with smiling eyes that lived a few blocks down the road.
Jack met a quiet-spoken girl named Amy at the bookstore she worked at (Jack decided that Amy sort of looked like Drew Barrymore only a bit taller and a lot less worldly-wise) and they hit it off (they had magical sex at the end of their third date.)
Amy and Roberta took to each other almost immediately (which Jack found to be a good sign...and very cool to boot.)
Amy moved into the little house a little over five weeks after she had met Jack (Mrs. Stephenson was fine with that and she continued on as housekeeper/nanny…Lily, Rosemary’s sullen best friend, who occasionally accompanied Rosemary’s mother on visits to see Roberta, was not pleased but Jack saw no reason to give her displeasure any foothold in his life...Rosemary's mother, smelling of rosewater and red wine, said she was glad that Roberta would have a woman in her life after all.)
Rosemary sent Roberta plump greeting cards…always from a different part of the country…every year on her birthday and on Valentine’s Day and at Christmastime; Jack never opened them…he put them away in a cedar box for Roberta to have, if she wanted them, when she was older.
Jack and Rosemary never got officially divorced.
Jack and Amy never got officially married but 14 months after they met they had a son…Blue…which pleased them and Roberta to no end.
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