When Pennie turned fifteen, her mother had told her the truth about her own marriage. Eileen and Paul had met and started dating during her senior year at Boston College. Paul was at Harvard Business School then, headed for Wall Street, and eventually wanted to become an entrepreneur. He had big dreams. They both did. Immediately after graduation, Eileen got a job as an editorial assistant at a publishing house in New York, which had always been her dream. She had three roommates in Greenwich Village, and loved her job. Once she had graduated and moved to New York, her relationship with Paul became too complicated with him in Cambridge and her in New York, and it petered out. They’d enjoyed dating, but they weren’t madly in love. Eileen was more excited about starting her career than pursuing the relationship with Paul.
She’d been in her job for a few months when Eileen figured out that she was pregnant. She’d been in denial and misread all the signs. She took the train to Boston one weekend to tell Paul, not sure what to do next. The news hit both of them like a bomb. They told their parents, who were horrified. Hers were devastated, and his were outraged. Paul made his own decision to do what he felt was the right thing. Against his parents’ wishes, he left business school, and he and Eileen got married at City Hall in New York. He got a job at an ad agency in the city and they rented a small, depressing, inexpensive apartment they could afford in Queens. Eileen stayed on at the publishing house until a week before Pennie was born. They were twenty-two and twenty-four when they got married, and Pennie’s arrival changed everything. All their dreams went right out the window. Their families treated them like criminals or outcasts. Eileen’s mother, who had been bitter and disappointed all her life, with a difficult marriage, told Eileen regularly how she had disgraced them. Neither family offered to help them and felt they deserved the hardships they were facing on their own.
Paul and Eileen discovered that childcare was expensive, compared to the low salary Eileen had been making in publishing, and it made more sense financially for her to stay home and take care of Pennie. Her dreams of a career in publishing ended with Pennie’s birth. Instead she became a housewife with a baby. She loved Pennie, but missed her job and friends. Eventually, they moved out of the city. Paul didn’t love his job, but he did well at it. He was a responsible young man, and worked hard to support his wife and daughter. It was never a great love affair, and the responsibilities of marriage made it harder, but they were both determined to make the best of it. Paul had a knack for advertising, whether he liked his job or not, and Eileen took on some freelance editing when she had the chance, but most of the time she was busy keeping house and with the baby. Her mother never let her forget that she had given up her dreams to get married because she was pregnant. She seemed to want Eileen to be as unhappy as she was.
In spite of the challenges they faced, with unsupportive families and a baby to take care of, Paul and Eileen made it work. They never blamed each other overtly for what had happened, but it was clear to Pennie as she grew up that the way their lives had turned out wasn’t what either of them had wanted, and they had paid a high price for their mistake. At fifteen, Pennie fully understood that her birth had severely impacted her parents’ lives and made them shelve their dreams forever.
Another “mistake” when Pennie was six had brought not one more unexpected child into their lives, but twins. When Pennie was ten and her brothers four, in a major step up, the family had moved to the handsome Colonial house in Greenwich where they lived now, with big sunny bedrooms, a front garden, and a backyard. Eileen had never gone back to work, and with the arrival of the twins, she had no time even for the freelance editing she enjoyed. She had three children to take care of, and Paul had a family of five to support. He had managed it for eighteen years now, and done extremely well at the ad agency, but his life had turned out very differently from what he’d hoped. He sometimes thought that if he hadn’t done the honorable thing and married Eileen, he might have been a successful entrepreneur by now. It had been his fondest hope growing up and all through college. That hope had vanished in the mists of adulthood, forced on them by an unwanted pregnancy.
Despite their rocky beginning, and their respective parents’ predictions that the marriage wouldn’t last because of how it started, Paul and Eileen had forged a relationship of companionship and mutual respect. Eileen appreciated how hard Paul worked, and he thought her an excellent, devoted mother. They were both good parents, and loved their kids, whether planned or not. Eileen had had her tubes tied after the twins were born, so it wouldn’t happen again. She and Paul led a stable, predictable life that satisfied both of them.
Paul had stayed at the same ad agency, and was very well paid after rising from senior account executive to management. He provided them with a good life. He tried not to look back at what might have been, although it still irked him not to be an entrepreneur running his own business, and being an employee instead. Eileen still missed her brief career in publishing too, and what it could have turned into if she hadn’t been obliged to quit.
At thirty-nine, Eileen was facing her fortieth birthday with dread, and feeling that she hadn’t accomplished anything, except carpooling and raising three children, with a man who had married her out of duty more than love. There was no spirit of romance between them, and there never had been, but considering how awkwardly their marriage had started, it seemed to be working out surprisingly well. Eileen was grateful that Paul was a good husband and father and provided well for them. She enjoyed their life in Greenwich, and the friends they saw had children the same age. She loved their house. They had made the marriage work but she didn’t want the same fate for her daughter. She wanted much more for Pennie, a career she was passionate about and a man she loved, who loved her. Eileen warned her that she would ruin her life if she ever got pregnant and had to get married. She made it clear that a life like hers was to be avoided at all cost, no matter how comfortable it looked now. She wanted Pennie to venture into the world and follow her dreams when she left for college, and not give them up for anyone. She was relieved that Pennie and Tim had been sensible and decided to break up. Their love affair had been too serious for too long for people so young, and she could tell that Pennie was tired of high school, and eager to grow up. Particularly now, knowing that Tim wouldn’t be around. And once she got to college, and after, new doors would open to her that Pennie couldn’t even imagine yet.
“Who knows, you and Tim might find your way back to each other years from now, after you’ve established your lives,” she said to Pennie to console her the morning after they broke up.
“I don’t think so, Mom,” Pennie said sadly. “That’s a long way off.” Tim had big plans. He wanted to work in London for a year or two after college, or maybe Beijing or Hong Kong. He had been studying Mandarin for two years, which his father had told him might be useful for him in business. Pennie wanted to stay closer to home and live in New York. But she felt ready to be an adult now. She was tired of being treated as a child. Her three-year relationship with Tim had made her more mature than many of her peers. They were hoping to go to party schools, and have fun in college.