The Dreeson Incident(195)

He started to walk out.



"That doesn't change a thing!" Veda Mae screeched at the top of her lungs. "Miss Oh-So-Prissy Lenore Jenkins of the Oh-So-Prissy Jenkins family was not a virgin when she got married and she wouldn't even tell Bryant who it had been when he asked. And after that, everyone makes such a fuss about her."



Gary turned around. "What about your friend Velma?" he asked.



"Velma wasn't my friend."



"Somehow," he said, "I'm not surprised."



Veda Mae sniffed. Then she looked at Pam Hardesty who was also sitting at the table with her. "I expect you'll be walking out in a snit, too."



"Actually, Mrs. Haggerty," Pam said, "I know my mother pretty well. It's not easy to be friends with her. I'm sure you tried your very best."



She hoped Don Francisco would be proud of her.





"Oh, God, Mary Ellen," Lenore said. "I'm so sorry. First Dad and Clara's marriage. Now this. I wouldn't be surprised if First Methodist would be ahead of the game if you and Simon just struck the Jenkins family off the membership rolls and had done with it."



Out in the yard, a German girl Clara had found was chasing around after Weshelle.



"Do you want to tell me about it?"



Lenore shook her head. "Not really. I think Dad would have been okay with it, but I know that it would have been a problem for Mom. Not that she would have acted up, but she would have been miserable and very brave about trying not to show that she was miserable. So that's the way it was."



"Why?"



"Jay was from India. Sanjay was his full first name. We were both fairly traditional products of our own cultures. Even telling each other's parents about us would have been a major step."



Lenore stopped.



"I met him when I was taking classes at Fairmont State, of course."



Mary Ellen nodded.



"It's funny. Dad actually saw us together once. He was walking through the student union     with a batch of other parks and recreation officials who were there for a conference. We were at a table with our study group. One of the girls said, 'Hey, Lenore, there's some old fart staring at you,' and when I looked over there, it was Dad. He just smiled and waved and went on."



"Do you think he connected the two of you?"



"There wasn't really anything to connect, back then. We were friends for a couple of years before anything else. On Friday nights, if I didn't have to work at the store, we'd eat take-out while he finished up at the department and then go to something. There was always something free to do on campus on Friday evening, if you looked hard enough. Once we went to a lecture on control and eradication of multiflora rose."



She blinked.



"Then it got to the point that we realized that there would be something else. Something more. One night, we were about to leave the lab. There were sirens outside, police cars and a fire truck in the parking lot. We'd already switched the lights off. We were standing there, looking out the window, wondering what was going on. Jay put one of his hands on the back of my neck. I took his other hand and put it against my collar bone. Nothing flashy. But we knew.



"I did all the sensible things. Went to the clinic, got the pill. A couple of months later, there was a terrible storm. I called home from his lab and left a message on the answering machine that I would stay overnight with a friend rather than try to drive from Fairmont to Grantville with a risk of flash flooding and mud slides. And I did stay with a friend."



Lenore swallowed hard.



"When I got home the next evening, Mom was very unhappy. She had called the dial-back number and got the telephone tree for the chemistry department, so she didn't really know where I was the night before if she had needed to reach me, she said. And, and . . . Dad told her that she should at least be glad that it wasn't some honky-tonk bar. He was teasing, but she didn't see that he was being the least bit funny."



Mary Ellen wasn't quite sure what to say. Lena had never really been known for having a sense of humor.



"Good God, Mary Ellen. We were both twenty-five! What do people expect?"



"I think, maybe, it's that you were always such a perfect lady, Lenore." And, she thought to herself, also that every guy in Grantville knows perfectly well that it wasn't him, which adds some intrigue to the speculation.



"When the Ring of Fire came, we'd gotten to the point that we were thinking and talking about that when he finished his MS at Fairmont, if his application to WVU for the Ph.D. program was successful, I might stop living at home and working and taking classes part time. That I might move to Morgantown, go to college there, and we would live together. And I wish that I had been in Fairmont with Jay that Sunday afternoon. He wanted me to come."