The Man from Tuscany

“Good point. We’ll go to that small hotel on Bridge Street. I’ll phone her, and if she’s home, get her to meet us there.”

We left Cliff Walk at Narragansett Avenue and went into the town proper, entering the hotel lobby to call Genevieve. She arrived a short while later in the family’s chauffeur-driven Packard. Flinging her arms around me in a tight hug, she said, “I stopped by to tell your parents we decided to meet for dinner and not to expect you home until later.”

We were shown to a quiet table in the corner of the dimly lit dining room. A blessing, because seeing each other had us both in tears, and Brian’s hands were full coping with us. He ordered a meal only he tackled with any appetite. Genevieve picked at her chicken breast, and I barely touched my poached fish.

“You have to eat, Anna,” she scolded, when I pushed aside my plate. “You’ll make yourself ill if you don’t, and Marco would never want that.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“That’s what you said at lunch, the other day. Remember?”

How could I forget, when I’d been sick to my stomach for days? But I’d tried hard to deny the reason for my nausea in the hope that, if my suspicions were correct, Marco and I would deal with it together. I knew now that that would never happen.

My despair must have shown on my face because Genevieve leaned across the table and pinned me with a probing gaze. “There’s something else, isn’t there? What is it?”

I couldn’t carry the burden alone a moment longer. “I think I’m pregnant,” I blurted out, finally giving words to the misgivings that had haunted me for weeks.

Brian sat as if he’d been turned to stone. But Genevieve closed her eyes and let out a sigh. “I was afraid that was it. Oh, Anna, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Whatever you decide, you can count on us.” She fixed a fierce hazel glare on Brian. “Can’t she?”

“Every step of the way.” Slowly he rubbed his jaw, a habit that meant his mind was sorting through the facts and establishing priorities. “Had you told Marco?”

I shook my head, enough to send yet more tears splashing down my face. “I wanted to be sure before I said anything. He was already dealing with so much….”

“Don’t cry, sweetie.” Drawing her chair closer to mine, Genevieve gripped my hand. “There are things we can do. A girl at school—”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and start assuming the worst,” Brian interrupted. “You’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, Anna. What you think are symptoms of a baby on the way might be nothing more than stress. Have you seen a doctor?”

“No,” I wailed.

“Then that’s the logical next step.”

“I can’t go to Dr. Grant. He’s known me all my life.” I gulped, the enormity of my plight hitting home with a vengeance. “I’m still a minor. He’d have to tell my parents.”

Their treasured only child pregnant out of wedlock? It would kill them!

“We’ll find another doctor,” Genevieve said, doing her best to shore up my spirits. “We’ll go to another town where no one will recognize us.”

But the news from Italy, coupled with my certainty that I hadn’t mistaken my symptoms, left me past all hope. “Where?” I whimpered.

“Wakefield,” Brian announced. “It’s just a few miles down the road from Kingston. We have a Visitors’ Day at the college on Tuesday, and I was going to ask if the two of you wanted to come.”

Genevieve frowned. “But won’t your mother and father be there?”

“No. This is mostly for younger people—a chance for us to show off what we’re up to and for future students to have a look around and see what the place has to offer. The instructors make themselves available in the morning, and we’re expected to direct visitors to the lecture halls, but there’s a football game in the afternoon. No one’s going to miss me if I don’t show up for that.”

“And a doctor?”

“There’s bound to be one in Wakefield. Let me set up an appointment and you concentrate on getting there. You shouldn’t have any problem, now that regular bus service runs from Newport. Tell me when you’ll be getting in and I’ll meet you.”

Genevieve eyed me apprehensively. “Three more days. Think you can hold on that long, Anna?”

What she meant was, could I go through the motions and continue fooling my parents into believing all was well with me when, in fact, my heart was breaking and my future loomed blacker than night.

“I have to,” I said. “They don’t deserve this.”

But if the doctor confirmed what I instinctively knew to be the case, I was merely postponing the inevitable. Eventually, either I’d have to tell them the truth or my body would do it for me.

T OO IMMERSED in grief and worry to care about practicalities, I followed blindly as Genevieve and Brian steered me through the ordeal of the medical appointment on Tuesday afternoon. A borrowed wedding ring and a bogus husband was all it took.

“Wexley,” Brian stated firmly when the nurse at the desk asked our name. “Mr. and Mrs. Brian Wexley. My wife has a three-o’clock appointment with Dr. Reese.”

I cringed at yet another lie designed to shield me from the consequences of my rash behavior. Genevieve had “borrowed” her late grandmother’s plain gold ring from her mother’s jewelry case, and it hung around the third finger of my left hand like a lead weight. My cousin’s last words, before Brian and I entered the small clinic, had been, “Stop looking so furtive. They’ll think you’re Rhode Island’s answer to Bonnie and Clyde!”

But that infamous pair had been killed in 1934. A vastly preferable state, I thought morosely, to the one in which I now found myself. A kind of numbness had carried me through the last couple of days, but it was wearing thin as the moment of truth approached.

Within minutes, the nurse beckoned to me. “Dr. Reese will see you first, Mrs. Wexley. Your husband may join you later.”

The indignity of what came next—me stripped naked and covered by a white sheet, my feet nesting in cold metal stirrups, my legs spread wide, and a man I’d never seen before probing at my body—mortified me, but what couldn’t be avoided had to be endured, and all too soon the verdict was in.

“About nine weeks along, I’d say,” the doctor informed me, restoring my modesty by pulling the sheet over me before turning to the door. “Get dressed, my dear, then we’ll pass the good news to your husband and discuss the regimen I’d like you to follow over the next several months.”

An hour later, as I sat in a tearoom, flanked by my friends, it struck me how seriously they’d compromised their own reputations in order to preserve mine. Brian, especially, had taken a huge risk. “You gave them your real name,” I gasped, horrified.

The hint of a smile touched his mouth. “I felt ‘Smith’ didn’t possess quite enough cachet.”

“But they’ll assume you’re the baby’s father!”

“Yes.”

“What about you?” Genevieve asked me. “How do you feel, now that the pregnancy’s confirmed, I mean?”

“Torn. Overwhelmed.” I dreaded what lay ahead. I could no longer put off the inevitable. My parents would have to be told. If they didn’t disown me, they’d send me away to give birth in secret, then insist I have the baby adopted. But this was all I had left of Marco. How could I ever part with this child?

“You don’t have to go through with the pregnancy, you know,” Genevieve said in a low voice. “There are certain…clinics in New York or Boston where people in your situation can be helped. It’s a matter of finding the right name—”

“No,” Brian interrupted flatly. “They’re illegal and unsafe. Women die in those places.”

She rounded on him, concern for me making her shrill. “You have a better idea, do you?”

“Yes. Anna and I will get married.”