In One Person

unmistakable. (When I knew about Elaine being pregnant, I would remember a line from one of the middle stanzas of that song: “Journeys end in lovers meeting.”)
    There’s no question that Elaine and Kittredge did their “meeting” in her fifth-floor bedroom. The Hadleys were still in the habit of going to the movies in Ezra Falls with Richard and my mom. I remember there were a few foreign films with subtitles that did
not
qualify as sex films. There was a Jacques Tati film showing in Vermont that year—
Mon Oncle
, was it, or maybe the earlier one, Mr.
Hulot’s Holiday
?—and I went to Ezra Falls with my mom and Richard, and with Mr. and Mrs. Hadley.
    Elaine didn’t want to come; she stayed home. “It’s not a sex film, Elaine,” my mother had assured her. “It’s French, but it’s a comedy—it’s very
light
.”
    “I don’t feel like
light
—I don’t feel like a
comedy
,” Elaine had said. She was already throwing up at
Twelfth Night
rehearsals, but no one had figured out that she had morning sickness.
    Maybe that’s when Elaine told Kittredge that he’d knocked her up—when her family and mine were watching a Jacques Tati film, with subtitles, in Ezra Falls.
    When Elaine knew she was pregnant, she eventually told her mother; either Martha Hadley or Mr. Hadley must have told Richard and my mom. I was in bed—naturally, I was wearing Elaine’s bra—when my mother burst into my bedroom. “Don’t, Jewel—try to take it easy,” I heard Richard saying, but my mom had already snapped on my light.
    I sat up in bed, holding Elaine’s bra as if I were hiding my nonexistent breasts.
    “Just look at you!” my mother cried. “Elaine is
pregnant
!”
    “It wasn’t me,” I told her; she slapped me.
    “Of course it wasn’t you—I
know
it wasn’t you, Billy!” my mom said. “But why
wasn’t
it you—why
wasn’t
it?” she cried. She went out of my room, sobbing, and Richard came in.
    “It must have been Kittredge,” I said to Richard.
    “Well, Bill—of course it’s Kittredge,” Richard said. He sat on the side of my bed, trying his hardest not to notice the bra. “You’ll have to forgive your mom—she’s upset,” he said.
    I didn’t reply. I was thinking about what Mrs. Hadley had said to me—that bit about “certain sexual matters” upsetting my mother. (“Billy, I know there are things she’s kept from you,” Martha Hadley had told me.)
    “I think Elaine will have to go away for a while,” Richard Abbott was saying.
    “Away
where
?” I asked him, but Richard either didn’t know or didn’t want to tell me; he just shook his head.
    “I’m really sorry, Bill—I’m sorry about everything,” Richard said. I had just recently turned eighteen.
    It was then I realized that I didn’t have a crush on Richard anymore—not even a slight one. I knew I loved Richard Abbott—I still
do
love him—but that night I’d found something I disliked about him. In a way, he was weak—he let my mother push him around. Whatever my mom had kept from me, I knew then that Richard was keeping it from me, too.
    I T HAPPENS TO MANY teenagers—that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly. It happens to some teenagers when they’re younger than I was, but I was a brand-new eighteen when I simply tuned out my mother and Richard. I trusted Grandpa Harry more, and I still loved Uncle Bob. But Richard Abbott and my mom had drifted into that discredited area occupied by Aunt Muriel and Nana Victoria—in their case, an area of carping, undermining commentary to be ignored or avoided. In the case of Richard and my mother, it was their secrecy I shunned.
    As for the Hadleys, they sent Elaine “away” in stages. I can only guess what passed between Mrs. Kittredge and the Hadleys—the deals adults make aren’t often explained to kids—but Mr. and Mrs. Hadley agreed to let Kittredge’s mother take Elaine to Europe. I have no doubt that Elaine wanted the abortion. Martha Hadley and Mr. Hadley must have agreed it was best. It was definitely what Mrs. Kittredge had wanted. I’m guessing that, being French, she knew where to go in Europe; being Kittredge’s mom, she may have had some previous experience with an unwanted pregnancy.
    At the time, I imagined that a boy like Kittredge had gotten girls pregnant before—he easily could have. But I was also thinking that Mrs. Kittredge might have needed to get herself out of a