March, 1958
...continued
Bill’s
eyes crinkled as his face split into a huge grin, but he lowered his voice.
“You bet I do. I’m going to be a daddy and I want to tell the whole world”
He
picked up his chair and sat back down. With shaking hands, he picked up the undone
cigarette, stuffed it all back together and rolled it up nice and neat. A tear rolled down his
cheek. After wiping it away, he let out a shaky sigh, licked the gummed edge of
the paper and stuck it between his lips. Laughing, he reached across the table and
took her hand.
“This is just swell,” he
said, talking around the cigarette. “You just made me the happiest guy in the
world for the second time and I want to shout it out from the rooftops.”
Lois smiled. “I know. I’m
happy too, but I think we should keep it to ourselves. Just for now.”
Raising his eyebrows, he
said, “Even if we don’t tell anybody, they’ll
figure it out.”
“I
know, but…” Lois sighed. “I just don’t want to give the gossips something to talk
about. Besides, if we get married in mid-April most people won’t do the math. They’ll
just assume the baby is a little early.”
Bill lit his cigarette,
puffed out a few clouds and settled back in his chair. The chair creaked softly
and the river gurgled. Birds whistled and chirped. Mosquitoes flung themselves
at the screen, tiny vampires hungry for warm blood. He looked over at his soon
to be wife and mother of his soon to be child. “Well,
I don’t think we should worry about it. We’re both adults, you’re twenty-three and
I’ll be thirty-four when this baby is born.”
Tapping the ash end of the cigarette into the ashtray on the table, he lifted
his eyes to hers. “I don’t think we need to explain ourselves to anybody at our
ages.”
to be continued...
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