Blessings by Belva Plain Read Free Book Online

it.
    “They say, ‘My mother the earth, my father the sky.’ Have you ever heard that?”
    “No. It’s a beautiful idea,” she acknowledged, but what she was seeing was the head of thick russet hair, the eyes like opals: gray shot through with lavender light.
    “So that’s what got me started. Now what about you?”
    “I want to go to law school if I can afford to. I’m on a partial scholarship here, so I have to keep my grades up.”
    Their talk bounded then from topic to topic. Music. Disco. Tennis. He was a seeded player. They had a tennis court in their yard, he said, so he’d always had lots of practice time. She had never known anyone who owned his own tennis court.
    Had she ever ridden out to the Amish country? he asked. No, she hadn’t, although she’d read about them. So had he; he hadn’t spent much time in the North until now, and one of the places he’d wanted to see was the Amish country. Would she like to go there with him some Sunday? They could rent a car and take turns driving, if she liked to drive.
    “I haven’t got a license. I’m only seventeen,” she told him.
    “I’m eighteen. You’re young to be here.”
    “I skipped a year in junior high.”
    “I’m impressed.”
    She flirted now, looking downward, then sideways, then upward, in a movement she had practiced before the mirror years ago. It revealed her thick black lashes and a curve of black curl across her temple. She thought of it as her piquant look.
    “You needn’t be. I’m really not all that smart. I just work hard, for the reasons I told you.”
    “You have amazing eyelashes,” he said.
    “Really? I never noticed.”
    “Well, they are. Gee, I’m glad I saw you this afternoon. I’d been thinking, this place is so big, maybe I wouldn’t ever see you again—or not for months, anyway.”
    “I’m glad you did too.”
    “I thought at first you didn’t like me.”
    “I was only being careful.”
    “So how about what I was saying, renting a car next Sunday?”
    “I’d love to.”
    They walked back across the campus, gone dark and almost vacant in the chill of early fall. Peter left her at the door.
    “It’s been great, Jennie. Let’s start early Sunday and have the whole day. Good night.”
    “Good night.”
    He didn’t even make an attempt to kiss her. Ordinarily she would have felt this to be an insult, a rejection, even by someone whose kiss she didn’t want. Now she felt only that there was something serious in the quiet “Good night.” Odd, she thought, and hard to explain, even to herself.
    They took their ride to Lancaster County, the first of many rides together. At an inn they ate seven sweets and seven sours, shoofly pie, and cider. They drove and walked past rich, rolling farms, fields of winter rye, and herds of dairy cattle in thick winter coats.
    “No electricity, no machines,” Peter said. “They milk by hand.”
    “You mean you can milk cows by machine?”
    “Of course. That’s how it’s done these days.”
    “How do you know so much about farms and animals?”
    “Oh, we have a place in the country. I spend a lot of time there.”
    “I thought you lived in the city.”
    “We do, but we have this other place too.”
    As fall turned to winter they began to see each other every day in their free time. They went to the zoo, the airport, and the waterfront. They sat on a bench in Rit-tenhouse Square and talked for hours. They took the train to New York and saw a French movie in Greenwich Village, where he bought her a silver bracelet.
    “It’s too expensive,” she protested. “You spend too much, Peter.”
    He laughed. “You know what? Let’s go back to the store.”
    “What for?”
    “To get the necklace that matches. Don’t look so shocked. It’s okay, I said.”
    She looked up into his face while he fastened the silver chain around her neck. Happiness showed in his smile, in the fit of his fine lips, curved and upturned at the ends.
    She loved his cheerfulness. It was