Concord, Chapter 11
Breakfast at the Walden Cafe
He was late to his breakfast date with Jean at the Walden Cafe. She sat at a booth with a bundle of colored folders in front her, student files spilling, photos of their flickering uncertain smiles threatened by rivulets of spilled ersatz and melted margarine. She waved him to his seat. “The usual?”
“Thanks.”
The folders were cover, adequate even to the gaze of the Headmaster, who passed outside on his morning jog, raising his cheerful ham of a hand to salute them where they sat in the window. Brittle voices and clattering plates. Jean waved goodbye to her husband’s back, smiled at Saul.
“Do you think he knows?”
“Frank knows what he wants to know,” Jean drawled. “No more and no less.”
“Maybe you should tell him.”
She spread margarine on her toast. “What do you suppose that would accomplish?”
“Clear the air.”
“And after it’s clear, what then. You going to marry me?”
“Sure.” She laughed, a loud clipped honk that snapped a few pairs of eyes in their direction. Saul relaxed a little. “Thanks a lot.”
“I’m not laughing at you, it’s just not exactly romantic, you know what I mean? I mean, buy me dinner first.”
“I’m buying you breakfast.”
Jean put down her knife and fork and looked him in the face. “Do you really want to marry me?”
“Sure,” he said again. “Why not?”
She bit her toast. “I’m nobody’s goddamn princess, you know. I don’t want rescuing.” She folded her arms and shook her head. “No way.”
“We all need rescuing sometimes.” He picked up the margarine-smeared knife and caught the sunlight on its blade, sending spangles across the ceiling. “I just think it might be better to have a plan.”
She looked at him more seriously. “I thought it was over between us.”
“Nothing’s over.” He leaned toward her. “If you get pregnant—”
“Then it will be a miracle. Last I heard, miracles weren’t your department.”
“And you think he’ll be happy for you?”
“Of course I do. He’ll be happy for himself.”
“It’s too dangerous,” said Saul. “You can never tell what a man who thinks he’s been betrayed might do.”
“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”
He said nothing. The color had returned to her face. She forked some eggs.
“If I do this,” he said to her, “if we do this, I want you to tell him the truth.”
“Uh-uh. No way.”
“Then I’ll tell him.”
She snorted. “I like you, Saul. Really, I do. I like being with you. But it’s my body, my baby. That makes it my decision.”
“I wish it still worked that way.”
“Whose fault is that?” She sat back in the booth, two white points shining in her pink cheeks. “You could have asked any woman, any woman at all, about the consequences of turning babies into currency. Into fucking shares. You could have asked Suzanne, for instance.”
He shuddered to hear the name spoken, there in the open at the café. It took an effort of will for him not to turn around in the booth and scan the other tables, to see who might have heard. What if Lila were in the next booth, listening? No. No, he’d have seen her, felt her presence. He wondered if she would be in class today, and what he would say to her.
He said, “Suzanne isn’t here.”
“Lucky her.”
“Things weren’t much better before,” he reminded her. “On the mainland.”
Jean threw back her head and laughed, soundlessly and without mirth.
“I don’t know how it was on the mainland,” she said. “Or if I did know once I’ve forgotten. But I know that here, now, on Concord, a woman without a child is just marking time at the dead end of things. I’ll spend the rest of my life teaching calculus to other people’s kids. I’ll wither away.”
He looked out the window. The facades had been shifted overnight to give the village the look of a resort town in Colorado or Wyoming. Fewer bricks, more logs. Founders’ Arch, usually granite or marble, now bristled with the antlers of a hundred elk. Even the streets seemed wider. “It hasn’t turned out the way we hoped, has it?”
“You and Marco made this place exactly what it is, Saul. Lie to me all you want, but don’t lie to yourself.” She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “Is everyone looking at me?”
“No,” he said, though of course it wasn’t true. Concord was a small town. Everyone watched everyone.
She shook her head and got up. For a moment he thought she was going to walk right out of the restaurant and out of his life. Except, of course, she couldn’t. However irregular its circumference, any island is fundamentally circular. Everything comes round again. “Ask Denise for a warm-up for me.”
No sooner had Jean left then Denise, the waitress popped into view, smiling widely to convey an impression of cheerful obliviousness.
“You all right over here, Mr. Klein?”
“Fine, Denise.”
She cleared plates, chattering.
“Looks like a beautiful day out there. Don’t you love the day after a storm? It’s like it cleans everything out—the air, the buildings, even the people. It’s like the world is new.”
Denise was nineteen and had been his student at the Lyceum the year before, trying to decide between an indenture and motherhood. Now he could see that the choice had been made, for underneath her white apron her belly had a comfortable swell.
“When are you due, Denise?”
“Middle of March.” She favored him with every one of her bright white teeth. “A boy, Dr. Jee says.”
“Mazel tov.”
“Huh?”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
Jean appeared. She tapped Denise on the shoulder and the younger woman squealed in delight. “Mrs. Rodefer, how are you?”
“Congratulations, dear.” They hugged. “How does it feel?”
“It feels wonderful,” Denise said, glowing from every pore. “Like my life is finally beginning.”
A crease appeared between Jean’s eyes, but she smoothed it immediately. “I’m glad.” She turned to Saul. “We had better get on with our day. These young people aren’t going to teach themselves.”
“Apparently,” he said, watching Denise saunter off.
Jean was watching too. “The beautiful little idiot,” she said. “I wish I was her.”
“Maybe you will be. I forgot you wanted more coffee.”
“Don’t worry about it, Saul. Don’t worry about a thing.”
As they were walking out the door, he said into her ear, “I’ll catch you between periods, all right?”
She looked at him doubtfully. “I thought you said you weren’t ready to be a father.”
He looked out at the little Western town and its antlered archway. “I’m Second Founder, aren’t I?” he said. “Maybe I already am.”
