all of them, I think. I don't remember much anymore. It was like being in a trance and I don't know what's memory and what's dream … but I was five months pregnant when my parents brought me back. I had a baby thirteen months ago.” She knew now that she would remember the date for the rest of her life. She could have told Bill how many days past thirteen months. Five to be exact. “And my parents made me give him up. It was a boy, but I never saw him. It was the worst thing I ever went through.” There was no way to describe to him what she had been through. “And giving him up was the worst mistake I ever made in my life. I'll never forgive myself. Every day, I ask myself where he is, if he's all right.”
“It would have ruined your life, sweetheart.” Gently, with one hand he stroked her face, so desperately sorry for her and the pain she had been through. She was so different from Gail. She had seen so much of life. Too much, at her age.
“That's what my parents said,” she sighed. “I don't think they were right.”
“What would you do with a baby now?”
“Take care of him … just like his other mother does….” Her eyes filled with tears and he held her close. “I should never have given him up.” He wanted to tell her he'd give her another baby one day, but it seemed an outrageous thing to say, and then they heard Gail's key in the lock. Bill moved quietly away from her, with a last look, a last touch, an ache of desire, as he pulled his robe close, and they both smiled for Gail.
And for the next two months, Anne met him whenever she could, just to talk to him, to go for walks, to share her thoughts with him. Gail knew nothing of it, and Anne hoped she never would. It was forbidden fruit for both of them, and yet they couldn't stop. They needed each other too much now. He confided in her too. The relationship was chaste, but they couldn't hold out for much longer, and when Gail's grandmother invited her for the Christmas holidays, they made a plan. Anne would tell her parents that she was going to stay with them. And from Christmas Day until Gail returned, Anne would stay with him. It was thought out ahead of time and planned. Almost like a honeymoon.
CHAPTER 31
Louise had long since figured out what was going on between her roommate and the man on the second floor. She didn't disapprove, although she thought he was too old for Van. Twenty-four was already a man. And she was sorry she didn't see more of Vanessa now, but she had her own friends too, and Barnard kept them more than busy enough with assignments and projects and homework and exams. The months flew by and it was hard to believe that Christmas vacation had already rolled around. The weather was cold and crisp, and just after Thanksgiving, they had had their first snow.
Vanessa was enchanted with it and she and Jason had thrown snowballs at each other in Riverside Park. There was always so much for them to do, the Cloisters, the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, the opera, the ballet, concerts at Carnegie Hall, and always the lure of Off Broadway for him. Jason led a full cultural life, and now he always took Vanessa along. She hadn't seen a movie with him since she'd arrived, except some old ones at a festival at the Museum of Modern Art. He continued to disapprove of all that, and he worked on his thesis while she studied for exams. Somehow she loved his seriousness, and his purism about his philosophies. To her, it made him not rigid, but more lovable.
'I'm going to miss you a lot over the holidays.” She was lying on his couch with a book on her lap, as she looked at him. He looked terribly serious with his glasses on, and he peered over them with a smile.
“It'll probably be a relief to get back to Plastic Land,” which was what he called L.A., “you can go to the movies with your friends every day, and eat tacos and french fries,” he had a horror of those things too, “before you have to come back here again.” She laughed at his visions of Los