Whisper Their Love (19 page)

"I bet she does," Edith said. "Will it be something you never saw before?"

Anitra ignored that .with dignity. They went out together, pausing at the bar. "Look, Herbie," Bobbie said, "if Francie comes in, tell her I went around the corner for a cup a coffee, will you? Tell her I'll be right back and to wait for me."

"Okay."

Edith looked at her watch. "Well, I'm not like some of you lucky people. I have to work tomorrow. So we better push off. Can I give anybody a lift, or anything?"

"I have to go back to Anitra's place, honey, on account of Linda's still there."

"I don't ever want to go home," Tarzan said. "I feel crumby."

Joyce gave them all a farewell smile, unconsciously living up to Aunt Gen's ruling that there's no excuse for bad manners. It's hard not to observe these little rituals when you've been brought up right. Tarzan waved at her, then put his head down on the table. The others ignored their going.

The air smelled fine, even with exhaust fumes mixed in it. Edith took a good deep breath.

"Well, that was interesting, wasn't it?"

Her schoolteacher voice. Joyce concentrated on getting into the car and closing the door. The giddiness was gone now, but her head still ached. Be careful there, don't make her mad. "It was different," she admitted.

"Anitra's charming, don't you think? Of course she wasn't quite herself tonight; she does drink too much at times. I wouldn't let myself go to pieces the way she does, just for a cheap thrill."

Joyce sighed deeply. To hell with being tactful, to hell with making Edith or anybody else feel good; she was tired. The distaste that had been gathering in her all evening came to a head and broke, like a boil. "I think she's a fake. I think they're all fakes, but him, that doctor. He
knows
he's one. The rest of them make me feel as if I need a good hot bath and my mouth washed out with laundry soap."

"Oh, my dear." The car slid over into the four-lane highway, smooth, night-dark, uncluttered by much traffic.

"Well, I never saw so many crumby people in my life."

"That place was a little too much," Edith admitted. She turned her coat collar up around her neck. "That tawdry little thing at the bar. One felt she was crawling with germs."

She hadn't made herself clear, and it seemed important to explain. "It wasn't those," she said. "I thought they didn't know any better, they never had a chance to be any other way. It was the ones at the party. They didn't even seem to want to grow up." Yet it was the drinkers at Marie's Place, she realized, who had crystallized and shaped her dislike for their more ornate counterparts from The Bluff. "I know I'm not explaining this very well."

"You certainly aren't." Edith's tone was rimmed with frost. "You sound like a women's magazine. Part of the campaign against us. We certainly aren't anything like those poor creatures. We're—"

"Different."

A hurt silence.

In the small dim light from the dash she looked at Edith's profile. For the first time she looked tired and vulnerable, not young any more. Joyce laid a hand on her arm, lightly, not to disturb her driving. "Let's not quarrel with each other. Let's go home and get some sleep."

Edith sighed. "We might as well, if you're determined to be unreasonable."

I wish there were somebody I could talk to about this, Joyce thought. The image of a boy's face flew across her mind, high cheekbones and a mouth set in patient lines. She stirred on the seat, feeling cramped and chilled and lonelier than ever.

Chapter 18

On the afternoon of December first she came out of the Ad. Building into the chilly dusk of five o'clock, to find John Carstairs Jones waiting beside the path as he had waited at the dormitory, a couple of weeks earlier. He stood there smiling a little, although every girl who came down the steps with an armful of books was giving him a good looking-over. She dropped her notebook. He stooped to pick it up. "You said you'd call up," she accused him.

"Well, if you insist I can go back downtown and find a pay booth. You're taking an awful chance, though," John said. "Those drugstore girls are mighty good-looking."

"I'm glad to see you, silly." And she was, unexpectedly; if he had called she'd have looked forward to the meeting with nothing but apprehension, but his sudden appearance gave her a good feeling of warmth.

"It must be true about absence making the heart grow. How about going downtown for dinner?"

"Then wait while I change my clothes."

She wished she had changed to a date dress, when they ended up at the Henderson Hotel instead of a drugstore counter or dog wagon. The hotel was nothing fancy, but it was the best the town had to offer, unless you were old and well-heeled and speedy enough for a membership in the Sportsman's Lodge. John said he wasn't any of those things, thank God, he'd rather be broke and have his own teeth even if hamburger was all they had to work on. He hung her jacket on the old-fashioned coatrack in a corner of the big, empty dining room and pulled out her chair with a flourish. "Onion soup's the thing to have. They make it like the French do and it smells so good."

Words crowded together in her mind. It didn't make sense, there was no reason why she should tell this boy anything, but that was the way it was. The soup came in big plates, with bread crusts in it and grated cheese odorous on top, but she couldn't eat until she got rid of the weight on her chest. She picked up her spoon and turned it over, looking at the silver smith's mark in order not to meet his eyes. "You apologized to me the other day," she §aid in a small high voice. "I have to apologize to you too. I guess you're right; I am a case of arrested development."

"Come on, tell."

"You'll hate me."

John said, "I couldn't hate you, not even if you murdered somebody."

"Edith Bannister. You know, the—"

He made a gesture of cutting off, the hand brought down sharp and level. "You don't have to say it," he said. He sounded weary. "Look, I might as well level with you. Uncle Doc told me." He grinned at her look of shocked surprise. "He'd guessed about her."

Bad as Mary Jean's knowing had been, this was worse. She couldn't look at him. She concentrated on the old-fashioned damask tablecloth, lilies and tulips alternating in the woven pattern. John began eating soup, as if to spare her feelings by looking elsewhere. "What difference does it make?" he asked.

"I don't know why I'm telling you all these horrible things. It's none of your business."

"We belong together," John said. He shook his head. "Lord knows I never planned it this way. I've got two more years of college to work through before I can even think about medical school."

"Love at first sight," she said scornfully. "Fate and all that stuff."

"I knew that first day, out in the woods. It didn't have anything to do with being mad at you. I was sure enough mad at you."

Tears rose to her eyes. "This makes me feel terrible."

John patted her hand. His touch was light but curiously alive. "Because you did it or because somebody knows about it? Look—just play like I'm the old family analyst. Give. You'll feel better."

"I don't know," Joyce said. She was ashamed, and yet it was easier to struggle for honesty with him sitting there. The confused thinking of the last few weeks, the need to be free of a relationship become distasteful, at grips with habit and the dread of loneliness, took on sharper outlines because he was listening. She shot a timid look at him. "It was wonderful at first. I couldn't keep my mind on anything else. Now I don't even like it. Yet I can't give it up." She blinked. "Sometimes I think I'm going crazy," she said.

"That's life," John said. "That's love. Falling in is fun, falling out's pure hell. Happens all the time." He finished his soup, tipping the plate. "It's that empty feeling that gets you."

"This is different."

"It's always different."

The waiter came and took away John's empty plate and, looking disappointed, her full one. He brought steak on thick hot platters and a whole armada of little vegetable dishes which he grouped carefully in front of them. They sat silent, waiting for him to go away. Joyce could feel her accelerated heartbeat and the jerking of the pulse in her throat against the high collar of her wool sweater.

John leaned across the table and laid a hand on her arm. "Be honest with yourself, kid. If you're getting any real satisfaction out of it, then okay. I can wait for you to grow up. But if you're past it, then for God's sake put it behind you and move on. Only don't try to kid yourself."

"It's not just me. I couldn't let her down. Everybody's down on people like that anyway."

"Not half as much as they're down on normal people," John said, "That's a lot of hooey, that propaganda they give you, how persecuted they are. Most people simply feel sorry for queers. They're sort of handicapped, like somebody with an artificial leg." He pondered. "More. An artificial leg doesn't have to handicap a person."

"That's it. You're going to think I'm abnormal or something."

"Look," John said patiently, "you're nothing but a kid. You needed to feel safe and cared-for." He cut into his steak, releasing a little cloud of steam. "Hell, everybody's looking for that. I always figured on ending up with some deep-chested, motherly type myself—make up for not having a mother of my own when I was a little kid. Sure got things screwed up when you came along."

"I'm trying to tell you it was more than that."

"But that too. It's all mixed up together. I don't blame you," he said in an angry voice. "I blame her, though. God, she could have picked somebody her own size."

"She didn't mean to hurt me."

He swallowed hard. "I guess that's right. She's probably lonesome too. Lord, imagine being like that. Getting old like that. Like riding a merry-go-round, all the time getting off at the same place where you got on." He shook his head. "Gosh."

She said almost at random, "Aren't you ever shocked?"

"Only by fakes. You can't go around telling other people everything you know; it would be illegal; But listen, don't you ever let me catch you lying to yourself. Or to me, either."

"I’ll probably never see you again."

He cut a strip of steak and chewed on it absently. 'Don't talk foolishness," he said after he had swallowed.

The meat and the garnishing onions and mushrooms smelled good. She picked up her knife, then put it down.

"What's the matter?" John demanded.

"I'm sorry. You'll have to pay for it just the same."

"They'd be glad to have it in Korea."

"You weren't in Korea!"

He sighed. "Nineteen when I went in, twenty when they brought me out. Froze two toes off—real romantic."

She looked into her water glass. He went on eating, alternating meat and mushrooms with bits of vegetable. He wiped his mouth on the napkin and looked her way. "Feel better now?"

"About—"

"Telling me. It was a bright idea."

"Some." Tears hung on her eyelashes, .but it was true, she did feel better. "Yes, I do. That's funny, isn't it?"

"Cathartic value of confession. Would you eat some dessert if I ordered it?"

"No."

"Suppose you broke it off, would she make any trouble for you?"

"How do you mean, trouble?"

"Have you expelled. Start a dirty rumor. Throw nitric acid in your eyes like that girl in the paper whose boy friend jilted her. You said you did some typing evenings for her—do you need the money?"

She shook her head. "She fixed that up so we could get together. My mother sends me money all the time."

Yes, and that was a silly thing too. When she was a kid, she had supposed it was only money that kept Mimi from sending for her. Now a check came twice a month, with Mimi's married name printed on it, and she deposited it with the bursar and left it there. She didn't need money, except maybe thirty or forty cents for a soda or something. It didn't mean as much as the colored postcards used to. Must be close to a hundred dollars there, she thought, if I ever need it.

"How is your mother, anyhow?" As if he really cared, as if he wasn't just changing the subject to make her feel better.

"Fine. She's going to have a baby."

She couldn't tell if he was counting months or not. That was a woman's trick anyhow; men didn't care about stuff like that. "That'll be nice, a little brother or sister for you."

Her eyes widened. Two tears, forgotten, rolled down her face and melted into the soft fabric of her sweater. Gosh, it will be, won't it? For the first time she thought about the baby as a live human being, soon to be born. Up to now it had been only a bulge, obscene, a reminder of Irv Kaufman and the dark urges of men. Now she visualized a chubby cherub like the one on Aunt Gen's kitchen calendar. I bet he'll be a good father, she thought to her own intense astonishment. The kind who spoils kids. A black dread dissolved and drifted away, leaving her mind clear.

"She'll be okay," John said, misinterpreting her silence. "Having a baby is safer than crossing the street these days."

"She's kind of old."

"You better break off with her," John advised, holding her coat for her. "If you want to. That's for you to decide."

She waited at the door while he paid the cashier. They went out into the chill air together. "I'm sorry for her."

"You're a good girl."

"Good girls don't—"

"Look, Joy." It was Aunt Gen's and Uncle Will's name for her; she was not sure she liked even Edith to use it as she sometimes did. Certainly not this boy. She shut her lips tightly. "This whole thing is part of growing up. Not wicked, not anything that's going to follow you all the rest of your life or make you different from what you are. You'll grow up and marry me yet."

"Never."

"Let me know when you change your mind. Will you?"

"You're the most conceited man I ever knew."

Nice romantic date, she thought, walking down the street soberly and silently beside him. Spilling everything and bawling like a slapped kid. She slanted a look up at him.

He met her eyes. "Look, I'm in the telephone book under Sawyer, Catherine Sawyer, that's my landlady. Call me up any evening after five. I work at the cannery till five."