Brenda’s glad it’s only Friday night, that she’ll have more than a full day alone before her father comes over. She’s near the end of her pregnancy, at the point where even thinking about seeing him makes her nauseous, but he found her the apartment and pays the rent so she lets him stop by on Sunday evenings after his literary club. Her mother stays home doing crossword puzzles and knitting, dusting doilies, vacuuming up fuzz from the cat. “She doesn’t want to come,” her father says. “She says forget all this free love business. It’s too painful to see you pregnant without a husband.” Brenda shrugs.
Her father pays her living expenses, too. He gives her spending money that she uses for nail polish or a baby toy, or for the tuna sandwich and chocolate malt she buys when she wants to talk to Connie, the counter girl at the Sanders down the street. Sometimes he brings Brenda magazines, and bagels and lox. Or stretch sleepers with A-B-C blocks on them, tiny white undershirts, rattles, chubby books with slick cardboard pages. Guilt gifts, Brenda tells Connie. For keeping her trapped in such a small place.
“So what,” Connie says. “At least the baby will have nice things. If Kurt had stuck around, you’d have been lucky to get a diaper pail and pins.”
The name Kurt had popped into Brenda’s head when Connie asked about the baby’s father. Brenda had invented a long-term relationship with him, too, and told Connie that when...
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