Well, thanks for the reviews as always. Love y'all.
I had some trouble uploading it so hopefully it was worth it and you guys like it. It's shorter than the last three, but good things can come in small packages, so I'm hoping that's the case with this one. :D
Chapter Sixteen
Manhattan Walk-In Clinic
"It's not me I'm worried about here. It's you."
"Wh-what?" Rose sputtered, completely confused by Jack's words. She knew that he cared about her and would never want to see anyone hurt her, especially not herself, but the way he'd reacted wasn't anywhere close to typical of someone who was just worried. He'd sounded offended, upset... even downright angry. "What do you mean, you're worried about me? That's not what it sounded like in there! It sounded to me like you were-"
"Shh, Rose," Jack said, his voice ten times more soft than it had been only minutes ago. "Calm down; we're in public. I have to talk to you, Rose, okay? Come on, let's go somewhere."
Completely confused by Jack's words, Rose just followed him as he stepped up to the curb and hailed a cab. Evidently she had messed up somewhere along the line, and he was concerned. Hadn't she told him weeks ago that she didn't need him to save her? Did she look like she didn't know what she was doing or something? As much as Rose knew Jack loved her and would only ever have her best intentions at heart, she didn't need to be taken care of and she especially didn't need people to do it by yelling at her in public. With her arms crossed over her chest and looking very much like the small, precocious child she had been ten years ago, she slid into the cab next to Jack.
"Eighth and Broadway, please," Jack said to the driver, which puzzled Rose even further. It also excited her, though, because in all of her seventeen years, she'd never once been to Greenwich Village. Her mother hated it because it was full of 'hippies and homosexuals and the like,' so she'd never allowed her daughter to go there. Although Rose reminded her many times that Astor Place was in the Village, so it couldn't be all that bad, Ruth never listened. Still, she was now as confused and angry with Jack as ever, and she wasn't about to let something like that slip.
"The Village?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "Why are we going to the Village?"
"Calm down, Rose," Jack said, taking her hand in his again as though to reassure her that he wasn't angry. "I'll explain when we get there, alright?"
Rose considered rolling her eyes and muttering 'Whatever,' but decided against it. She had to admit- as upset as she was, now she really wanted to know what was so special about the Village and why Jack wanted to wait until they were there to talk. It reminded her of the times when she was very small and her father would take her to Central Park every time he had something important to tell her. She would sit in preoccupied silence during the entire walk, just bursting to know the secret that was about to be shared with her. Her mother had tried to pull that trick on her when her father died, but Rose was far too old to fall for it, and it was obvious anyway. What need could their possibly be to tell someone something so urgent that you had to leave the hospital and go all the way to Central Park on the other side of town? Rose had been preparing herself the whole way, so she hadn't cried when her mother told her, or for three days after that. In fact, she cried after the funeral and that was that, because she had to 'keep face and not show weakness in the face of adversity.' That was what Ruth had said, anyway, but what we she know? After all, there is no such thing as an emotional blow when you have no emotions in the first place.
The cab ride felt like it took hours, but when it finally pulled up at the corner of Eighth and Broadway, Jack appeared to be in no hurry to get to wherever they were going.
"You ever been to the Village before, Rose?" he asked, wrapping his fingers through hers. They began to walk down the sidewalk at a leisurely pace, much to Rose's dismay.
She shook her head. "Never. Can you please tell me what's going on now, Jack?" she pressed, eager to get this over with. Jack, however, continued to walk ahead, evidently headed to a specific place.
Rose was starting to grow anxious now, because whatever it was that she had that was so self-demeaning, surely it didn't warrant all this pomp and circumstance. Evidently Jack wanted to have a serious discussion, but she didn't understand why. So she might have jumped the fence a little bit without taking a test first, but what was the big deal? How could that hurt her in any way?
"I know this one cafe I want to take you to," Jack explained. "We can talk there, okay?"
Rolling her eyes, Rose said, "I can't drink coffee anymore Jack. It's not good for the baby and it makes me sick."
"Then you can have water," he replied simply. "They have food, too." It appeared as though nothing was going to get in the way of his plans, so Rose kept her mouth shut the rest of the way. After they'd been walking for nearly ten minutes, Jack stopped in front of a small red brick building nestled between two much larger ones, with a sign that read 'Elio's Cafe.' He opened the door for Rose and she smiled at him, unable to be angry with him for too long. He was far too good to her.
They took a seat across from each other in a booth by a window. Outside, the sidewalks were lined with people talk and laughing amongst each other. Rose decided that if there was any part of New York City that could be described as quaint, it was probably here. As they waited for a waitress to take their order, Jack reached across the table and took Rose's hand.
"Look, Rose," he said quietly. Finally, an explanation! "I'm sorry about the way I acted in there, but I really was just worried about you. Did you ever stop to think about what you would have done if you weren't pregnant after all?"
There were a thousand hidden meanings behind Jack's words, none of which needed explaining. Rose understood what he was implying- that she could never go home now, that she had no money, and that she was probably going to live with Jack for the rest of the foreseeable future. While he had a point, Rose felt a little bit insulted by the way that he presumed she didn't know what was best for her. She was seventeen, after all. She was fully capable of looking out for herself.
"Jack, I knew I was pregnant, okay?" she said, sounding harsher than she'd intended to. "Just because I didn't take a stupid test, it doesn't mean I didn't know! Besides, do you think I didn't think about running away before I did it?" In truth, she hadn't thought about it at all. She'd sat in her room, angry as hell, for an hour and a half, then up and left, but Jack didn't have to know that.
Laughing, Jack replied, "Rose, I know you didn't think about it. You never think about things, but that's what I love about you. Look," he whispered, leaning over a bit to look Rose directly in the eye, "I love having you live with me. If I had my way we'd stay just the way we are forever, but that's not what matter right now. You have a future, Rose. You're brilliant, and you could go to university or travel the world or do whatever you want, but I don't have the means to support you while you're doing it. What if you'd run away from your mom for nothing? What if you weren't really pregnant? Then you would have thrown that all away for nothing! I couldn't bear to watch you do that."
Rose had no words with which to respond to that. Everything he said was true, and in fact she'd lain awake many nights over the last week mulling the same things over in her head again and again. Unless she won the lottery, there was no way she was going to go to university next year, which was a huge disappointment because it had always been her goal in life to study art at the University of Southern California. She understood that caring for this baby was more important than her dreams now, but she couldn't pretend that Jack didn't have a real, solid point. What if she'd thrown it all away for nothing? God, she was so stupid!
She couldn't bear to look at Jack any longer- reflected in his eyes was his pure love and concern for her- more than she had ever felt in her life- and she had betrayed that love by making a decision that could have ruined her life. Drawing her eyes down to her lap, she whispered, "I'm sorry."
Though she kept her eyes facing downwards, Rose felt Jack's hand on her cheek as he said, "It's okay. It doesn't matter now, anyways, because we're parents. How cool is that?"
No matter what he did, Jack couldn't go ten minutes without making her smile. Begrudgingly, she lifted her eyes up to his beautiful face.
"Pretty cool."
Not a moment later, a peppy blonde waitress approached their table to take their order. Rose ordered a glass of water and, because she had decided to eat as healthily as possible during her pregnancy, a blueberry muffin. Jack decided right then and there that he would make every single lifestyle change that Rose did, so that she would be more comfortable, and ordered the same thing. He even passed up on the coffee, remembering that the smell of it made Rose sick. As they ate, the couple drew up a plan for the rest of their day.
"You know, Rose," Jack said, smiling coyly, "I know we've been together over the last two weeks, but we've always been on a schedule, doing things when your mom it out and Cal's away. I've been thinking, and I realized that we haven't been on a single real date yet."
As surprising as it was, Jack was right. Today was their first day together without having to worry about getting caught. The more Rose thought about it, the more she felt like a thirteen-year-old who'd just gotten her first kiss. There was something magical about being truly free to be with Jack.
Raising an eyebrow and smiling back at him, she said, "Then I guess we'd better make it count, right?"
They finished eating quickly and, after leaving the waitress a good tip, strolled out into the street. It was now late morning, and the sun was streaming down over the street of New York City. Everywhere Rose looked, the city was alive with people- children, families and couples making the most of a Sunday morning together. Musicians with their guitar cases open next to them dotted the streets, and every once in a while they'd encounter a stray hotdog or ice cream stand.
Rose had never exactly been satisfied with the hand she'd been dealt, but she'd always thought of herself a pretty happy person. How wrong she had been. She had never known true happiness until this morning. The feeling of Jack's fingers laced between hers, the sun warming the sidewalk under their feet and the melodic sound of Jack's voice lingering in her ears far after he'd stopped talking had to be the best sensation in the entire world. She felt as though she could lift herself off the ground and fly away at any moment. She hadn't even known before this morning that such pure elation and joy could exist.
"You know what I was thinking, Jack?" she asked, smiling as she spoke.
"What's that, Rose?"
She felt a level of intimacy and secrecy that she'd never known before as she shared her ideas with Jack. "In a little while, I mean a long while, I guess, after this baby gets born I get a job and we save up some money, we could move to Santa Monica. We get a beach house there or something, and just spend the rest of our lives together. We'd be so happy there, Jack."
Jack was quiet for a moment, but the smile on his face never left. They walked through a line of red, orange and yellow trees and passed the Cherry Lane Theatre, which Rose had heard of but never been to. She thought that someday she and Jack would take their child there, when they got a little bit older.
Finally, Jack said with a laugh, "This is crazy."
"I know!" Rose exclaimed, unable to contain her ecstasy. "It doesn't make any sense. That's why I trust it."
Jack stopped in his tracks and gazed at Rose, as though he was seeing a new and exotic species for the first time in his life. "What?" he asked incredulously.
Rose yanked gently on his hand to tell him to keep walking. She didn't want to stand still on a day like today. There was just so much beauty in the world and even though she couldn't see it all in one day, she wanted to see as much of it as she possibly could.
"All my life, I've just done what made sense and what was orderly and proper," she explained, "and I don't know a single person in my old world who I can really trust. Now, everything's so crazy and random and beautiful and it doesn't make sense at all. That's how I know I can trust it."
"God, Rose," Jack said, staring at her again. Every time he did that, she got completely entranced in his deep, beautiful blue eyes, trying to unwind every mystery that was buried deep within them. In fact, Rose was so captured by the stories his eyes told that she didn't notice he was leaning in to kiss her until their lips met. Just like that night on Tommy's boat, she felt a level of passion deep in her soul that could only come from being with the person you love.
As they separated, she whispered, "God, you're amazing, Jack."
"So are you, Rose," he said, taking her hand in his again. "Come on, you haven't even seen half the Village yet!"
Jack and Rose spent the next three hours touring Greenwich Village, which Rose decided had to be the greatest place in America. They saw the Jefferson Market Library, Washington Square Park and the apartment complex where Anna Wintour lived. They also spent a good deal of time in Astor Place, which really wasn't all it was cracked up to be. In Rose's opinion it was beautiful, just like the rest of the area, but she didn't think her mother would have liked it much.
It was the middle of October now, and all the leaves on the trees were dressed in their fall hues of burgundy, saffron and lemon yellow. It the Upper East Side where Rose had spent her entire life, the air was too polluted to appreciate the fully beauty of trees' changing colours, but here it was different. Maybe, if she and Jack never made it to Santa Monica, they could live here.
Astor Place Pharmaceuticals stood on the outskirts of its namesake, and seeing it reminded Rose of the list of prenatal vitamins that was tucked in her back pocket. She figured she should probably start taking them tonight, so she asked Jack if they could pop in for a few minutes.
Inside the drug store, Rose pulled out the list and began strolling up and down the aisles.
"It says to take a multivitamin with 400 milligrams of magnesium, 10 milligrams of vitamin E, 600 ug of folic acid, whatever the hell ug means, and a whole bunch of other stuff, plus an extra iron supplement," she explained to Jack. "What does that even mean?"
Jack shrugged sheepishly. "Your guess is as good as mine," he said, perusing the shelves behind them.
Rose bent over and eyed every package carefully, making sure the ingredients matched up with the list Evelyn had given them perfectly. She found an iron supplement almost right away, but was beginning to lose hope of finding a multivitamin when Jack's voice made her spin around.
"I think I found something," he explained, handing the tiny package to Rose. It claimed to offer complete prenatal care, and upon further inspection Rose found that everything in it was exactly what she was supposed to be taking. As she ticked off a list of vitamins in her head, she was reminded of going grocery shopping with Ruth when she was very small. All of a sudden Rose felt very much like a mother. Her free hand drifted unconsciously to her stomach as she read. This was for real.
"I think we're good now," she said to Jack, making her way to the checkout counter. Before she got there, though, she noticed something that made her stop dead in her tracks.
Isn't it funny how one thing can ruin your entire day? Just one crappy test or misplaced wallet was enough to send a person's mood plummeting. Rose had always been the type of person to try to look on the bright side, but the thing that was threatening to ruin her happiness was not a test or a wallet. It was her mother, standing just a few feet away from them.
Rose was shocked. Her mother would have never set foot in the village during the seventeen years Rose had known her, and now here she was. Her best guess was that this was where Ruth had expected to find a person like Jack living, but that didn't really explain why she would be in the pharmacy. None of that mattered at the moment, though. All that mattered was making sure Ruth didn't see them.
"Jack," she whispered, grabbing him by the arm, "we've got to get out of here before she sees us." It was too late for that, though, because Rose was already making her way across the aisle to where her daughter stood. Rose could only imagine what was going to happen to her and Jack now, and when she would get to see him again. She had fled from this situation only last night- she didn't want to go through it again. It wasn't a question of being with Jack, because that would happen no matter what. The only thing that mattered was the time they'd have to spend apart.
"Rose," Ruth declared, without even a hint of emotion, which made it impossible to tell if she was angry or thrilled. "What in God's name are you doing here?"
Alright, she was definitely angry.
"I... We... Well, we were buying prenatal vitamins," she said. What was better than the truth?
Ruth looked completely dumbfounded at this announcement, and for a moment it seemed as though she didn't know what to say. "Well what in the world are you doing that for?" she asked incredulously.
What kind of question was that? "Well, we're pregnant, Mother. I'm sure Cal told you that much," Rose explained, unable to hide the sharp edge in her voice.
Ruth threw her head back in laughter, thoroughly embarrassing her daughter. Did she not even realize that they were in public? True, stranger things had been known to happen in the Big Apple, but that didn't mean Rose had to live with it.
"Nonsense, Rose," she said, regaining her composure. "You're coming home with me and we're going to take care of that right away."
Deep inside of her, perhaps in a place she didn't even know existed, Rose felt something swirl up inside of her that she'd never felt before. It was like hatred and anger and hurt all together, only more. Ten times more. No, one thousand times more. She was done with this. With her mother and Cal and all of the bullshit she thought she'd put a stop to. She was just done.
"No."
For a long moment, there was silence. Ruth obviously couldn't believe her daughter had just said that to her, and while Jack believed in Rose's spirit and strength with all his heart, he was still constantly surprised by the way that fire popped up at the most unexpected of times. Rose was a little surprised at herself, too. All her life, she'd wanted nothing more than to look her mother in the eyes and tell her no. She wanted to tell her that this was her life, not her mother's. And now she had done it.
The was a look on Ruth's face – one of such indescribable shock and anger – that made Rose feel almost disgustingly pleased with herself. She really and truly did not want to hurt her mother, but if that was what it took to stop her mother from hurting her, then so be it. This was the twenty-first century, after all, and her mother was being absolutely ridiculous. She loved Jack and she wanted to be with him, not Cal. What was so hard to accept about that? She understood that her mother wanted the money and security that Cal and his inheritance provided, but there were other ways to make money. She could work! It wasn't like just because you were a woman you were automatically rendered incapable of manual labour.
Still looking shocked and almost as though even breathing was hard for her, Ruth said slowly, "What did you just say, Rose?"
"I said no," she spat out quickly, knowing that this courage might not last very long. "I love Jack, and Jack loves me, and we're staying together. That's just the way it is, Mother. Please, we're in public. If you want to talk about it, can we take it somewhere else? Please?"
Ruth sighed and tried to seem very poised and pompous, but Rose saw the same look of fear she'd seen her mother's eyes that morning after Cal had thrown all her stuff at her.
"There's no need," she explained, straightening her back and pursing her lips. "It's clear we'll never see eye to eye on this, Rose. But if that's that way it must be, then so be it."
Ruth turned on her heels and began to leave. Rose was surprised to feel a sinking, almost sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. As many times as she'd said it, did she really hate her mother all that much? The honest answer was no. As different as they were, they were related after all. The shared the same blood. Didn't that count for something? It broke Rose's heart to imagine her mother living all alone with no money and having to throw away to only life she'd ever known. She'd probably have to contend with Cal, as well, because while Ruth gained money from the marriage, he gained a link to their name, which in his mind was just as important. Rose couldn't stand to think of her mother suffering like that.
Before she even realized she'd opened her mouth, she said, "Mother… you… you could stay with me and Jack, if you wanted to."
Ruth stopped and turned around, a scrutinizing look pasted on her face. Rose thought for a moment that she must have been considering her offer, but it soon became clear that that was not the case at all.
"Rose, I have never heard a more ridiculous thing in my life. I could never live like that… that gutter rat!"
Her mother's words cut Rose to the core, and for a moment it felt as though she couldn't breathe. It was enough that she had insulted her- that had been known to happen very often – but what she'd said about Jack could not be excused. She didn't even know him! She probably wouldn't have ever guessed that he had a job, or any friends, or that he was a role model for a six-year-old girl, or that he was an amazing boyfriend and she already knew he was going to be a great dad. If she had known that and still chosen to pass judgement on him because of a stupid thing like money, then so be it. But she didn't. She didn't know a thing about him. Ruth thought that money was the only thing in this goddamn world that mattered. She was so ignorant!
"Well then," Rose said curtly, sounding every inch the lady Ruth had always wanted her to be, "goodbye, Mother."
Ruth was already walking away again. Jack had laced his fingers through Rose's, knowing, like he always did, exactly when she needed support, but her eyes were still trailing her mother. All of a sudden, and out of absolutely nowhere, words came out of her mouth that she'd never even thought before. She wasn't really thinking them at all by that point, but they came out none-the-less.
"I love you."
For a fraction of a second, Rose thought she saw her mother pause in her stride, but even if she wasn't imagining it, it only lasted half a second. Ruth kept right on walking, and before long she was out of the store, with her daughter's gaze still fixated on the spot where she'd been standing moments ago.
She felt Jack's warm arms wrap around her waist and, trying very hard not to cry in public, she buried her head in his chest and breathed heavily. She was so happy with Jack and she would never choose anyone, particular not her mother, over him, but still… Ruth was her mother, after all, and knowing that she was gone forever left a gaping hole somewhere in her heart that she didn't know existed before that moment. As ignorant and disgusting and resentful as they could be, a mother was a mother, and mother was a synonym for so many things; caregiver, protector, security blanket, shield… When she was taken away, it revealed a sort of pain that you couldn't even comprehend.
Quietly, as though he was trying not to violate a shrine to the gods of pain and heartbreak, Jack whispered, "You are so brave Rose. You're so amazing and strong and wonderful. I wish I was as brave as you, Rose."
Raising her head from Jack's chest and looking him deep in the eye, she said the only thing that she'd been thinking over the whole ordeal, and the only thing that really mattered.
"I'm not going anywhere, Jack. Not without you, anyway."
