Whisper Their Love (25 page)

John pushed his plate back, with half a ham sandwich on it. She had never seen him waste food before. "Mary Jean wanted to die. She could have taken precautions like anybody else—hell, you said she used to, before she got all wound up. Or she could have quit the boy, even if she'd been married to him she could have quit him if she wanted to." Her own argument, but hearing it from him made her angry. "A normal reaction from a girl who'd been through all that pain and worry would be to freeze over for a while, leave men alone. Instead of being extra careful she jumped right back into the mess again."

"An accident. She was terrified of its happening."

"Accident, hell. She's afraid of being run over by a train so she goes out and stands on the track. Look, kid, the need for self-destruction is in all of us. People feel guilty all the time, they punish themselves in all kinds of nutty ways—sure, most folks don't take a razor, they eat too much and drink too much and work too hard." He was sober. "It's in all of us. We have to fight it all the time."

Joyce's mouth trembled. "It's still my fault."

"Sure. Now you gotta learn to live with it."

"I must say you're a big help."

He looked at her. "You want me to lie to you?"

Sure she did. She wanted him to take her in his arms, in a platonic sort of way, and tell her she wasn't to blame for anything. The finality of separation from Edith had begun to penetrate her cortex of not-feeling. "Why does it hurt so much to have her not want me, when I was the one that wanted to end it?" she had asked him in bewilderment, and he'd answered, "It always hurts to be rejected. Hurts your pride, at least." That sounded uncomfortable enough to be true.

"Look," John said, "nobody has a perfect life. I was in Korea. I don't know if I killed anybody or not, but that doesn't really matter. I was part of an organization set up for killing and the guilt's there. Call 'em Communists, they were still human beings." He stopped and thought as he so often did. "I'm no pacifist. I haven't got any plan for ending wars. All I know is, I have blood on my hands and every once in a while I wake up and think about it, when I've had a bad dream or something. I can't change it. All a person can do is go on from where he's at.”

"I can't."

"You have to. You're an adult now."

"Then being adult is for the birds."

"You can't become a child again." He put out his cigarette, not grinding it down in his, coffee cup like most young men, but pulling the lumpy ashtray to him. He had good hands, doctor's hands. She thought again: he'll make a good doctor.

"I don't know what to do," she said in a voice that was one degree short of tears.

He shook his head. "I don't know either. That's what we've got each other for, I guess. Finding out together."

She pushed her plate away. He had ordered milk toast for her, of all things, and it was the first thing she had been able to eat for a couple of days. She was grateful for his knowledge and care. But she certainly wasn't going to marry him. "I am certainly not going to marry you," she told him. Nothing was going to lessen the burden of her guilt. All right, skip it. But she had to get this one thing straightened out before she went away and never saw him again. "I'm not going to marry
anybody.
I don't even want you to touch me."

"Sure about that?"

His hand was light and warm on hers. It felt good. "I don't mean like that. You know perfectly well what I mean. Sure I'd like to have you for a friend; that's not what I'm talking about."

"Well, you poor ignorant little goon," John said admiringly. "If you had the sense God gave jellyfish you'd know being married is being friends. The closest kind of friends there is. Fighting and having kids together and worrying about the house payments and all that stuff. Did you think it was all jumping into bed together?"

"That's what most of them get married for."

"Yeah, and that's why most of them are unhappy, too. Look," he said, "it's like being hungry for a long time. You get so nothing matters but food. But then when you're getting three squares a day, you're free to think about other things. Or like the winter I was overseas, I couldn't think about anything but getting warm again. Frostbit my feet. Now I take being warm for granted. Went around all last summer griping about the goddam hot weather." His smile recognized his own stupidity. "You don't know ABC about anything, Joy. The sex part is a thing you learn, the more you do it the better it gets, and it's vital, but there're other things."

She was very angry with him. Her lips trembled—with anger.

"I don't know why I love you like this," John said. "Looks like I'm stuck with you, though."

She said, "You ought to be real happy, then, because I'm going away tomorrow. For good. This is the last time you'll ever see me."

"Where do you think you're going?"

"I don't know. Anywhere I can get a job."

"Well," John said comfortably, "I'm going away too. I was going to wait till after Christmas, but I guess there's no real reason to put it off that long. We could get married in three days—have to take a blood test—and have a real cheap honeymoon. Go out to the farm and see your folks, maybe?” Later she remembered that she took his assessment of Aunt Gen and Uncle Will as folks quite for granted; that was a switch in viewpoint she hadn't been aware of while it was happening, but he was right, they were her next of kin. She could never tell Uncle Will about these last months; his countryman's knowledge of life held no acceptance of abnormality. She could certainly never tell Aunt Gen, whose unswerving standard of morality had been handed down from Sinai by way of the Reformation. But she was old enough now to know that they were her family, even while her path in life branched away from theirs.

"Maybe if we're real lucky we can get married students' housing on campus next term," John said hopefully. "Nice little barracks room with oil stoves and no plumbing."

"You're making all this up."

"No I'm not. Of course I can't support a wife," he said. "You'll have to work. College and pre-med and then on and on while I build up a practice."

He was serious. She stared at him, beginning to feel trapped. Panic rose in her. The first thing I know, she thought, I'm going to find myself standing up in front of a preacher with this man. "You've got to listen to me. I can't marry you. Or anybody."

John looked around. The drugstore was empty except for the pharmacist, who was making entries in his record book, back in his little glass cage. The girl who had waited on them was in the kitchen behind the fountain. Through the half-open door John could see her leaning against the work counter, drinking a glass of milk. He nodded. "Of course you're still holding out on me. There's something you're scared to tell. Well, I'm not in any hurry—any time'll do, whenever you feel like it."

"All right, I will." She took a deep breath. "I'll tell you. I was—I had an experience with a man. It was horrible."

"Really horrible? You didn't like it at all?"

"Oh!"

His face lit up. The expression of polite attention (bedside manner?) broadened into cheerfulness. "Good. Shows you have all the instincts of a normal female. Curiosity and a desire to be dominated by the male. I'm going to be dominating as all hell. Wait till I get you in bed once." She was making strangling noises. He ignored them. "Tell me honestly, didn't you enjoy it at all?"

She let him have it "I did, if you want to know. While it was happening."

"Sure. After, you were scared silly. I don't suppose he took any precautions either. You dumb clunk, you crazy, did you think you were the first person it ever happened to? Lots of girls react the same way to their wedding night."

"You haven't heard the worst yet. It was my mother's husband."

"So naturally you're going to feel funny about it till you see him again. I bet he isn't looking forward to it with any pleasure either, poor guy. Is he a pretty repulsive type?"

"I liked him at first."

"And of course you didn't encourage him, or anything like that."

If she could have laid her hand on something heavy she'd have thrown it at him. She'd dragged out her darkest and most terrible secret—betrayed herself, she thought furiously—and he acted as if it were a thing that could happen to anybody. As if he'd listened to millions of case histories. She was damned if she was going to be a case history. "If you knew how I hate you!" she said.

He considered that. His thin face fell into tragic lines. He stood up. "I guess you do. But never mind, you won't ever have to see me again. I did think I loved you." With a deep sigh. "I guess it's a good thing, though; marriage would be a mistake for both of us." He stood looking down at her for a moment, ignoring the way her mouth had dropped open. "Good-by, darling," he said sadly. He was into his jacket and out of the store before she even knew he was going.

But this- is
John.

He can't do this to me. Oh God, if he gets away!

She didn't wait for her coat. He was halfway down the block before she could get the door open; her fingers were clumsy with fright and haste and the knob kept slipping. He was walking along like an old man, with his head down and shoulders hunched, not looking back. She ran, shoving aside a startled man who was loaded with grocery packages; stumbling a little, her ankles turning on high heels. One shoe flew off and she didn't have time to stop and put it back on. She flew along limping, not even stopping to kick off the other pump. She yelled, "John Jones!"

"Did I forget something?"

"You damn fool!"

"You forgot something." He pointed. "Your shoe. I bet you forgot to pay the drugstore man too. I don't know why I should go around buying food for women who aren't any relation to me."

"Oh, shut up." His arms were around her, and that was all that mattered. She was being kissed in the middle of Main Street, right in the middle of broad daylight—well, practically broad daylight, it was winter five o'clock. The kiss lasted, stirring up feelings she'd sensed vaguely before, but with something added. A warm glow started in her back, where the scratchy sleeve of his jacket held her, and spread all through her body. "Don't you ever do that to me again," she said when he finally came up for air.

"I thought I did pretty well. Maybe I ought to take up the drama as a side line."

There were cars going by. One beeped at them. John waved gaily.

"This is Thursday," Joyce said. "We can be married Sunday."

"I have news for you," John said. "We can be married tomorrow. At least I think Uncle Doc would make out the certificates for us and date 'em back a couple days."

She hid her face bashfully against his coat. "I'm not sure," she said, "but I think maybe I have news for you too."

"Don't tell me, let me guess."

They began smiling like idiots.

They walked back to the drugstore. At least, he walked. She hopped, glad for an excuse to lean close against him. Her shoe was lying on its side in the gutter but she ignored it. The pharmacist was out in front, locking up the store. "Close at five," he said crossly. John pulled out his billfold. "We forgot to pay you," he said.

"That's all right. Come in tomorrow."

He probably thinks we're both drunk, Joyce thought. She giggled. John said, "We're getting married tomorrow."

"Oh hell, forget it then. Wedding present"

They stood on the corner, a cold wind whistling around them. Bits of rubbish blew along the gutters. John's jacket was almost big enough to go around both of them. "Aren't people good?" she said.

"Sure are."

"We're crazy."

"For better or for worse," John said. "Sink or swim, come hell or high water. I'm betting on us."

She put her foot on top of his, for warmth. A good thing; the kiss lasted quite a while. Finally he shoved her away. "Come on, let's go and get you some clothes. Damned if I'm going to marry any girl in her stocking feet." He grinned. "Beat it while you're still a virgin. All brides are virgins, don't you know that?"

It's true, Joyce thought, we'll be all right. We'll learn. She slipped her hand under the lapel of his jacket and stood still for a moment, feeling his heart beat in rhythm with her own. "I never thought it would end like this," she whispered.

"Stupid," John said, "this isn't the end. This is only the beginning."

~ ~ ~

AFTERWORD

A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America—a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and how people would purchase and read them.

In 1939 a new publishing company—Pocket Books—stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. These books were cheaply produced and, with a price of twenty-five cents on their light cardboard covers, affordable for the average American.

Prior to the introduction of the mass-market paperback, as it would come to be known, the literary landscape in America was quite different than what it is today. Reading was primarily a leisure-time pursuit of the wealthy and educated. Hardcover books were expensive and hard to find, so purchasing books was a luxury only the rich living in major metropolitan areas could afford. There simply weren’t many bookstores across the country, and only gift shops and stationary stores carried a few popular novels at a time.

The Pocket Books were priced to sell, however, and sell is what they did… in numbers never before seen. Availability also had a great effect on sales, in large part due to a bold and innovative distribution model that made Pocket Books available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops. The American public could not get enough of them, and before long the publishing industry began to take notice of Pocket Book’s astonishing success.

Traditional publishers, salivating at the opportunity to cash in on the phenomenal success of the new paperback revolution, soon launched their own paperback ventures. Pocket Books was joined by Avon in 1941, Popular Library in 1942, and Dell in 1943. The popular genres reflected the tastes of Americans during World War II—mysteries, thrillers, and “hardboiled detective” stories were all the rage.