Girls In 3-B, The (2 page)

"It's nothing of the sort," Mrs. Morrison said. She turned halfway from the sewing machine, pushing aside the foam of thin material that was one last dress to go. It was her pride that Barby had better clothes, and more of them, than any other girl in her class; had her hair styled at the beauty parlor when her friends were putting theirs up in pin curls; took dancing lessons and went to a high-priced camp in Wisconsin in the summer.
All the advantages I never had,
she said frankly, not bothering to hide or deny her skimpy farm girlhood because, after all, her friends and neighbors, the women she saw at church and Eastern Star and PTA, had known her since she was a barefooted little girl in feedsack petticoats.

She said, "She's old enough to make her own way in the world. That's perfectly natural."

"God damn it, you can't live by magazines and' psychology books."

"There's a good deal of truth in psychology books," Helen Morrison said. A flicker of distaste crossed her round cheerful face. "Even if they do put too much emphasis on certain things. A girl's grown-up by eighteen. Plenty of girls are married then."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you
?
" Damn it, his heart was pounding like a triphammer now. A wonder they couldn't hear it on the other side of the room. He hated feeling flustered. It disturbed his habitual calm to be reminded of the secret he had kept so long. A line of white appeared at each side of his mouth. He took off his rimless glasses and polished them on a clean white handkerchief, narrowing his sharp blue eyes at his wife. "You'd like to get her married and out of the house, wouldn't you? You're jealous of her. All older women are jealous of young girls."

"Don't be ridiculous. Nobody can say I haven't been a good mother."

Barby was going to be sick again.
Oh God,
she prayed,
not now. Not today when it’s almost time to go.
She swallowed hard, conscious of the familiar warning symptoms
--
the hard knot in her stomach, the nausea, giddiness, tension in her arms and legs. Sweat ran down her back, cold under the thin summer dress. Now the rain of black specks and zigzag of dancing lights would come, followed by holes in her vision and the old one-sided, bursting pain. Migraine. Ever since she was thirteen and
--
No. Don't think about that.

I'll have to stay home and go to bed,
she thought in anguish, remembering all the days under sedation and the tired, dragged-out crawling back to health. And then, a straw of hope to grasp at
--but it never happens away from home. If I can just hold it off till train time, it's not so long now--

"Good mother
--
good God Almighty."

Helen shrugged. She turned back to the machine, obeying the feminine impulse to find comfort in something that could be handled, adjusted, manipulated. "There, it's done. I hope you'll have a chance to wear it, some place exciting to go."

"It's beautiful," Barby said politely. She took the dress in both hands and stood holding it as if she didn't know what to do with it. "I'll have more clothes than I can wear."

"Most likely you'll meet some nice boys," Helen said. "You ought to date more."

"She'll have better things to think about," Robert said.

He was shaking inwardly. Why in hell couldn't she understand? Why couldn't she see that Barby was different from most girls, better, prettier, smarter
--
and more in need of protection
?
But of course she couldn't know that; for five years he had schemed to keep her from knowing.

He looked with some distaste at his wife, placid and plump as she cleared away the little clutter of sewing. A good woman, as wholesome as bread pudding. Their marriage was as good as most. He thought virtuously,
I'm a good husband, I support my family, I don't drink or chase other women. Does she have to be so goddam stupid?

Barby bent slowly, focusing her eyes on a figure in the rug to ward off further dizziness, and laid the new dress in her trunk. His eyes followed her movement; he put his glasses back on and watched the nebulous lines of her back and thighs become clear and sharp. A pretty girl, her waist narrow, shoulders and hips softly rounded. That vase-shaped back was wholly womanly. When she turned around the lines of her bosom would be
--
ah!

"Mind you use plenty of face cream," Helen said. "City air is awfully hard on the skin. Have your hair done by a good man
--
don't try to save on it. Don't buy cheap shoes, they'll ruin your feet." She paused, considering what other moral precepts might apply to a daughter about to leave home. "And get plenty of sleep. Nothing puts dark circles under your eyes and spoils your looks like late hours."

Barby nodded. She had heard all this before; her mother had been saying the same things since she was in kindergarten. Think about the trip to Chicago. The train
--
the same one she had taken on so many shopping trips, but different because it was carrying her into the future. The other girls. The job in a big department store, and a chance to earn her own money instead of taking everything from
him.
The apartment, when they could find one and fix it up with cute gadgets from the dime store, fresh paint and drapes. And when she went to bed at night the loneliness and the secret terror wouldn't be there any more
--
the other girls would be there, her best friends all through high school.
I
hate to be alone,
she thought.
It'll be fun to have roommates, almost as much fun as having sisters.

The churning in her stomach stopped. She felt light and warm with reassurance. "I'll go get my suitcase," she said. Her voice sounded all right

Robert's eyes followed her to the stairs. A slow graceful walk, with the curves of her legs outlined under the thin skirt Funny, he thought she looks like me, but she's all girl
--
all the curves are in the right places. He tried to picture the days ahead when she would be gone. They stretched out before him in a long drab line, without color or meaning. The store, the basement workshop where he made fine bits of furniture
--
mostly to get away from Helen evenings
--
the well-cooked meals and comfortable bed. All meaningless. This was her doing. His anger kindled against his wife. "You don't have to talk like that," he said harshly. "You trying to make a whore out of her?"

"It's not necessary to use that kind of language," Helen said. Her face was without expression. "I want her to lead a normal life. Any mother wants that."

"You want her running the streets like some cheap tramp."

"If she doesn't know how to behave by this time, she likely never will."

"All this talk about clothes and looks, cheap beauty-parlor trash. It's demoralizing. She has a good mind, she ought to be making something of her life. She could do anything she wanted."

"It's natural for a girl to think about her appearance. Men don't understand about these things."

"You'd like her to marry some ordinary boy and have a flock of snotnosed brats, I suppose."

"That's not the worst thing that could happen to her."

He raised his head quickly. Her face was turned away from him; she was replacing the little clutter of threads and scissors in a drawer. His mouth went dry.

She didn't know. How could she know? It had happened
--
oh, God, five years ago. I never told her. I'm almost sure Barby never told her. She'd have thrown it up to me in one of those sweet aggrieved I-told-you-so spells. As far as Stewart's concerned, the sanctimonious bastard would burn in hell before he'd let a thing like that get out about himself.

He shut his eyes, feeling again the unbelieving horror of that evening. He had walked home late from the store, eager to see Barby and hear all the details of her childish day, and at the same time turning over in his mind the possibility of the bank's giving him the loan he had applied for. It was snowing a little; the blue Buick in front of the house was flecked with white. Stewart's car. That meant they were going to let him have the five thousand, because the vice-president of the County Trust and Savings wouldn't have come to him otherwise.

The silence of the house brought him to a stop in the front hall, with his hand on the doorknob. Helen
--
always a talker, always chattering
--
should have been entertaining the banker in the living room. He pulled his overcoat off and hung it up, frowning. This was her bridge-club night
--
but Stewart?

A child's muffled sob brought him to the door of the living room, moving quickly and lightly.

Robert Morrison's face, five years later, was pinched and white at the memory.
Damn Helen,
he thought for the millionth time.
Damn her miserable little soul to hell.
If she hadn't let Stewart in and then gone out to her stupid club
--
if she hadn't left him alone in the house with a sleeping girl child of thirteen
--
if Barby hadn't been waked by the door slamming behind her, and come downstairs sleepy in her flimsy little nighty! Morrison clenched his fists.

People don't do such things. Not solid, respectable family men like Stewart. Vice-president of the bank, active in the service clubs. You don't, if you have grown up in a safe middle-class small town, have any qualms about leaving a man like that alone in the lighted living room, knowing your husband will be home any minute to discuss business with him. It was unreasonable to blame Helen. Robert admitted it. But hate filled him every time he relived that evening, like a cold clear poison distilled through his mind and body, drop by drop.

He released his held-in breath and walked into the kitchen, careful not to look at his wife as he passed her. He turned on the cold water. Distracted by the splatter and splash in the immaculate sink, feeling the chill trickle down his constricted throat, listening to the footsteps upstairs, he felt better.

He'd always been a fool about Barby, by Helen's figuring. After all, the only child. But after that night he was conscious of her as a developing woman, and he worried about what life might hold for her. As her leggy angular body took on the curves of adolescence, as she grew into the kind of girl men turn to look after on the street, his pride was tempered by a fearful anxiety. He justified himself by thinking that she was all he had. All that mattered, anyway. And he was the only one who knew what had happened to her.

Stewart had never said anything. Maybe he hoped that Morrison didn't really know, was only guessing
--
that he had arranged his clothing and wiped his perspiring face before eyes accustomed to the outdoor dark could be sure of what they had seen. He had been genial ever since; but then, he was genial to everybody. And the five thousand, long repaid, had pulled the store through its only real crisis. That it was the best department store in the county was due mostly to Stewart's granting that loan.

She needs me,
he thought
. I'm the only one that knows about her. I don't see how she can get along without me.

He stood with the empty glass in his hand, looking into a future without Barby and without light.

They had talked about the trip for weeks, planning the details right down to what they would wear on the train. But after they bought the tickets a quietness settled down that even the determined cheerfulness of the mothers and fathers couldn't crack. The three girls mounted the train steps single-file, as solemnly as if they had been climbing to the scaffold; and when they settled down in facing seats, smoothing their skirts and arranging suitcases, they were embarrassed into speechlessness. They looked out of the window at the dull Midwestern landscape, each shut away in a little capsule of her own thoughts.

Annice was troubled. This was the turning point of her whole life, the biggest thing that had ever happened to her, even more important than her first poem
--
at eight
--
or her first kiss
--
at thirteen
--
and she should have been thrilled to the depths. It was infuriating to feel nothing at a time like this, neither nostalgia for what she was leaving behind nor excitement over what lay ahead. She was tired from packing and from the arguments with her parents. It was their fault she was wordless at a time like this. Annice closed the red leather notebook that held all of her poems, neatly printed in gilt ink. Maybe something would come to her later.

* * *

"Well, this is it."

Pat nodded, wide-eyed. "Jeepers, it's big."

"Naturally." Annice kept her voice matter-of-fact, but her lips felt stiff and silly. She watched the shabby streets slide by. "Why do they always have train tracks in the icky part of town
?
"

"I think the railroads bring down real estate values, or something." Pat pressed her nose against the window, unmindful of dust. Small shabby streets of bungalows with fenced yards had given way to rows of all-alike apartment houses. She saw shabby brick hospitals, schools, and churches; shopping centers with neon-lighted taverns and rundown corner groceries; warehouses. The train came into a widening switchyard with branching tracks and cars waiting on the sidings. Pigeons flew up to settle on the roofs of the freight sheds, warned by the vibration of the oncoming engine. A group of men were standing around a small bonfire
--
why, in August? Burning trash maybe
--
two of them leaned on shovels, laughing. One was eating a sandwich out of waxed paper. Between the tracks, grass was growing thin and sparse. Now the train slid in under a roof dotted with small high lights. That was part of the excitement
--
the yellow lights and the soft gloom beneath, when the sun was shining outdoors. Pat shivered.

"We ought to get our stuff together," Barby said. People were standing up, smoothing their skirts, picking the backs of their skirts away from the seats, lifting their suitcases and bundles down from the overhead rack. Barby sat with her knees crossed; every now and then one dangling foot jumped nervously. She straightened her glasses, noting with relief that her vision was okay again. "We're almost there."