Whisper Their Love (12 page)

This is love, she told herself. You think it's going to be wonderful and this is what it turns into, this horrible sordid thing. She set the last copy of
Ranch Romances
in place and pushed her way to the door, where she could at least breathe fresh air. She was ashamed of Mary Jean. And ashamed of herself too, for getting into a spot like this and for being unkind and hardhearted. She took the bulky package, as if that would help make up for lack of charity. "What's in it that's so big?"

"Everything from a rubber sheet to a thermometer," Mary Jean said in a flat voice. "She suggested the thermometer. Joyce, she knew."

"Sure."

"If I get feverish, I reckon that's blood poisoning.”

"You'll be all right. This happens to lots of girls. They get married afterward and have kids and everything."

"Do you think it'll be very bad?"

"I told you, I don't know anything about it."

"I heard about a girl who did it five times. Still, they do die sometimes."

Joyce didn't answer…

Mary Jean went out after they had stowed the big drugstore package in the back of the closet. Joyce didn't bother her with questions. She busied herself packing their suitcases, guessing at what they would need. For the first time she realized that they were actually going to do this crazy thing; there was no getting out of it. They were going off to some shack that belonged to a girl neither of them had ever seen, out in the country away from everybody, and she was going to get Mary Jean through an illegal operation. She had never taken care of a sick person, beyond bringing water and aspirin to Aunt Gen when she was laid up with the grippe. Her own appendectomy had been followed by a sedative-fogged convalescence in the hospital, and Aunt Gen had taken care of her through all the regular childhood diseases. Her hands shook so that she dropped the thermometer and it shattered, the mercury gathering into a little shiny globule that rolled away under the bed.

Mary Jean came in at a little before nine, after she'd started worrying. She had been drinking. At least, Joyce corrected herself, she'd had a drink. You could smell it on her, and she looked more cheerful, or maybe the word was desperate. She sat down on her bed, which Joyce had made up neatly as a farewell gesture, and reached into her pocket. "Ten twenties. Doesn't look like much, does it?"

"Where've you been all this time?"

"Talking to Bill. He feels terrible."

"He ought to."

"If I die, please tell him I don't hold it against him. It might make him feel better. He had tears in his eyes," Mary Jean said sadly.

"Sure, why not? He's afraid of getting blamed for it, if anybody finds out. I suppose you've been out smooching."

"Well, what have I got to lose? I can't get any more pregnant than I am." Mary Jean put her hands over her face, the bravado gone. "It might be the very last time."

Scotty's taxi was at the front door at nine. Edith came to the door with them. She looked closely at Joyce, but Joyce was too preoccupied to worry about the meaning of the look, whether it was reassuring or curious or only affectionate.

They got into the cab and Scotty shut the door, closing them away from the world of safe, normal people. "Here goes nothin'," he said, and Mary Jean laughed, but her fists were clenched. They went quickly through the nighttime streets, not talking or looking at each other.

Chapter 11

The waiting was worst. After Mary Jean went into the inner office, blank-faced, as if she were drugged, Joyce was alone in the doctor's reception room. There was a slight but sickening smell of antiseptic in the air, and the old-fashioned banjo clock on the south wall ticked loudly. She walked all around the room, looking intently at the snapshots of babies the doctor had probably delivered and that lithograph of the old family physician sitting beside a child's bed which must be sold by medical supply houses, since you never see it anywhere else. Her footsteps were hollow on the linoleum and she sat down again, embarrassed.

There wasn't a nurse here; Dr. Prince had assured the girls, before he took Mary Jean away, that nobody else would know about this. She guessed that should have convinced her that it wasn't too serious, but it only underlined the furtiveness of what they were doing.

There was a small radio on the end table. She snicked it on, keeping the volume down in case somebody else might be working late in the building. A song floated out, a mushy one with moon and June and love-above. She turned it off, then jerked the plug out of the wall socket.

There was a handful of bobby pins in her jacket pocket; she had taken them out of her hair on the way to an early class one day. So she set her feather cut, tiptoeing out to the hall to wet her comb in the drinking fountain. She was so nervous the pins kept slipping out of her hand and falling to the floor, where they apparently evaporated. Finally she had a dozen or more little flat curls crisscrossed with wire. Then there wasn't anything else to do, so she took them all out and started over again.

This was like waiting in a hospital while someone died. Maybe she will die, Joyce thought. Mary Jean's fears, which had been merely irritating up to this point, suddenly took on life and substance. They
do
die sometimes, Joyce thought.

There was no sound from the inner room at all. She sat down in the corner beside the window and concentrated on hating men. If a man put his hand on me I'd kill him, she thought with vicious pleasure. She thought about her father, whom she'd never seen and didn't know anything about. Sometimes when she was younger she used to wonder about him—whether he was a neighbor boy or somebody's hired man or maybe a salesman, whether he died or went away, whether he ever even knew he had fathered a child. Then she quit wondering because there didn't seem to be much point in it; Aunt Gen wasn't giving out any information—had told the young-widow story about Mimi so often she almost believed it herself by this time. Now Joyce hated him, that unknown boy, along with the rest of his sex. He had got Mimi into trouble and left her to fight her way alone in a world that was hard on women, a world where men betrayed women's trust and deserted them.

She thought about the skinny black-haired boy on the beach, and his anger and hurt pride when she refused him. He wouldn't have cared if something like this happened to her; he might even have bragged about it. She knew how boys talked about girls when there weren't any older people around. Of course, she admitted, girls talk too, but that's different.

She remembered, against her will, Irv Kaufman. That was one thing she really wanted to forget. What it was like—and then the kindness and regret in his voice. If he had come into the room at that moment she would probably have killed him.

She hated Bill, too, with his freckles and grin and cocky walk. Hating was good. It made her feel strong and warm. She smiled, not pleasantly. They'll never catch me that way.

Wonder how long it takes. They scrape you with a little knife, or something. What happens if she gets an infection or bleeds to death. What do they do then? Dump the body in an alley or out on a country road, so the cops can't find out who did it?

Oh, stop making up detective stories. She picked up a magazine and began to turn the pages.

Someone moaned. There was the current of a voice, low, but no words that she could make out. She sat still, waiting for some indication of what was going on in there, half expecting the doctor to appear at the door. But nothing happened.

It was over an hour before the door opened, and then it was Mary Jean who came out. She was dressed, and her hair was combed and her lips freshly reddened. That surprised Joyce, who somehow expected the suffering to show. Dr. Prince followed her. He had taken off his jacket, his shirt sleeves were rolled to the shoulder, and he looked tired and heavy-eyed.

"She'll be all right," he said to Joyce. "She's had a slug of penicillin to prevent infection. Get her right to bed and keep her there for a couple days. And look, there's a phone at that shack of Stell's. If she starts to hemorrhage, or if her temperature goes above one hundred, call me at home." He sounded conscientious, like a doctor talking to the mother of a child who'd had tonsillectomy. She still found it hard to believe he had done this thing. Still, there was the two hundred dollars. "She's had food poisoning," he added with a small, dry smile.

Wonder how his wife feels about this. Does she know? Do they talk about it, go over the budget together and decide which bills to pay with the money?

"She'll start some time during the night," Dr. Prince finished.

"But I thought it was all over."

He didn't answer that "Mind, call me if you run into any trouble."

She couldn't imagine being in any more trouble than they were in right then. She took Mary Jean's arm as they started downstairs, but Mary Jean pulled away. A small dim light burned in the deserted foyer. Mary Jean shoved the plate-glass door open, leaning against it as if it were heavy, and they came out into the chilly night air. Scotty was waiting at the wheel of his cab, cap pulled down over his eyes. He opened the door for them. "Everything okay?"

"Sure."

"Let's hit the road."

They drove out of town by the back road Bill had taken the night of the blanket party. Memory made Joyce shiver, but if it had any associations for Mary Jean she gave no sign. She sat very still, looking straight ahead. After two or three miles they left the gravel road and turned off on a narrow trail that wasn't really a road at all. just a place where cars had gone, long grass standing up between two wheel tracks. Mary Jean stirred and said, "Gonna be sick," and Scotty stopped the car at once, as though he had expected this, and helped her out. When she was through vomiting she stood for a moment leaning against a tree, wiping her mouth on her coat sleeve. "Hysterical," Scotty said helpfully. "It’s the worry."

"Like to lie down," Mary Jean whispered. "My head feels funny."

The shack, Stella Chivari's shack, was set in a little clearing surrounded by second-growth timber and bushes. It was a little summer cottage, like people at home built along the riverbank for weekend fishing trips. A cane-seat rocker stood on the front stoop. Indoors, the circle of Scotty's flashlight traveled over a couple of wicker chairs with beat-up cretonne cushions, a davenport with one broken spring sticking up through the leatherette seat, a small stand that held a telephone and a kerosene lamp. Scotty scratched a match on the sole of his shoe, lifted the glass chimney, and a ring of soft yellow light sprang forth and widened. Joyce, standing beside him, picked up the phone and was reassured by the hum of the dial tone, promising contact with the outside world in case of any of the emergencies she vaguely pictured and acutely dreaded.

Behind a semi-partition was a sagging double bed freshly made up, an apple-crate cupboard with dishes and canned goods behind a cloth curtain, a three-burner kerosene stove on a small table. Scotty checked the supplies. "Pump out back. Rest of the conveniences, too. Stell, she keeps this place in pretty good shape." He grinned, eyes dark and gleaming under the cracked visor of his leather cap. "You might meet Stell's boss sometime. He helps run that female school of yours. Type his letters daytimes and sleep with him nights, that's what I call earnin' it the hard way."

Mary Jean sat down on the bed and put her head down between her knees. "I'll see you later," she said, muffled.

Scotty nodded. "Sure, that's all right."

"Fifty bucks," Mary Jean said when the door closed behind him. "For that he could say thank you."

Joyce was surprised. She had been taking it for granted that Scotty was helping them out of the goodness of his heart, the way neighbors do when someone's in trouble. Grow up, she told herself severely. Nobody does anything for nothing. Except me—I was born to be the fall guy. She helped Mary Jean pull off her clothes and get into bed. Mary Jean's forehead was cold but her face was beaded with sweat and the back of her blouse, between the shoulders, was soaked through and stuck to her skin. She lay flat in the middle of the swayback bed with her eyes shut. Joyce said, "Was it very bad?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

That was a switch, anyhow. "Is it all right if I go out and look the place over?"

"Go ahead."

She forgot the flashlight, but moon silver lay over the path and the tangle of weeds and bushes in the back yard. There was an old-fashioned backhouse with a crescent cut in the door, such as some of the farmers around home still used. The pump was at the corner of the house, set in a cement slab. From here she couldn't see the lake, but the air felt fresh and cool on her cheeks. Crows stirred in the treetops, cawing sleepily. She thought it would be fun to come out here in the daytime, or with a bunch of girls for a weekend. The time of slumber parties and Scout camp lay a long way behind her, a lost land of innocence. She went back into the house.

Mary Jean was lying still, staring at the ceiling. She said dully, "It'll start some time in the night. He gave me some pills to take if it gets too bad."

"It'll be all right."

"If it gets too bad, you call the doctor. I don't want to die.”

"Look, quit worrying."

Mary Jean's face didn't change, but tears spilled over her eyelids and ran slowly down her cheeks. "I've killed my baby," she whispered.

"It was only a little clump of cells like in the biology book."

"Yeah, I know. Don't pay any attention to me."

Joyce lay on the davenport, her legs pulled up because it was even too short for her five-two, and her body curled around to avoid the broken spring. Her back and legs ached with fatigue and tension, and her eyes hurt. I have to stay awake, she admonished herself, staring at the lamp's flame, which she had turned down to a thread. The chimney was already getting smoky, and the furniture made giant shadows on the walls. I have to keep awake. Suppose it doesn't work? She shut her eyes for a second, to rest them.

It was almost morning when she woke, to the sound of somebody groaning. She sat up, trying to figure out where she was and what was happening. "What's matter?"