Whisper Their Love Page 11

  "Oh no." She was startled; did she look like the kind of a person who would live in a place like this?

  "What's the matter with your sister, or whoever she is?" Not very interested; making conversation.

  She blurted, "She had an operation. You know—an operation."

  He stared at her. Color rose in his face. She backed away. "You got Uncle Doc out here to clean up after some quack?”

  "Well, he did it."

  His jaw dropped. She had often read about jaws dropping, but she hadn't supposed it ever really happened. "You're lying," he said.

  "Why would I lie?"

  "He wouldn't do a thing like that. He's a doctor."

  Anger burned in her. He was all the safe, respectable, moral people from whom she was alienated by this week's happenings; he was on the other side—the enemy, out to hurt her. All right, she would hurt him first. "He does it all the time," she said coldly. "The girl that owns this place, she's had two operations from him. Even the cab drivers know about it. How do you think Mary Jean found out?"

  For a moment there was silence. She gave him a cold, triumphant smile. They stood looking at each other. "Lots of doctors do it," she said in a thin voice. She turned and walked to the porch, leaving him alone.

  Dr. Prince came out, pulling off a rubber glove. "She's all right," he said cheerily. "This depression is perfectly normal. Glands. She'll be all right when she gets up and around."

  "When?"

  "Tomorrow." He lowered his voice. "I don't have to remind you to keep still about this, do I? It wouldn't be so good for any of us if anybody found out." He glanced past her to the boy standing motionless under the trees.

  For a moment she was sorry she had betrayed him. Then she hardened her heart. "I won't tell," she said, looking him in the face. After he went out she pulled down the dusty paper shade that covered the front window.

  That was a crumby thing to do, she scolded herself. She leaned her head against the door frame, feeling tired past words. I hate him. I don't even know what his name is. John what? Who does he think he is? She went into the back room and stood by the bed. "You can stop crying now and get up," she said firmly. "We've had about enough of this foolishness." She sounded like Aunt Gen.

  Mary Jean's eyes widened with surprise. "All right," she said. She pushed back the blanket.

  Chapter 13

  Winter came overnight, not with stinging snow and heaped drifts as in Illinois,, but with heavy fog and a day-after-day drizzle that made everything soggy to the touch. The smart faille raincoat Mimi sent to Joyce was about as effective as tissue paper against this soft, permeating wetness. Joyce tried it on in front of the mirror and was delighted with the lines, but she came back to her room after walking across the campus in it and threw it across a chair in disgust, the lining clammily damp and dark streaks showing along all the seams.

  Her feet were never dry. Mary Jean's suede pumps shoved back under the bed and forgotten, were spotted with mildew when the maid finally swept them out. The countryside was a monotony of gray and tan. Dispositions dragged and drooped, roommates who had been happily wearing each other's clothes all fall almost came to blows over a pair of nylons, and Edith Bannister got five applications for change of residence in one afternoon. Everyone was too bored and dejected to study, except for a few conscientious A pupils like Bitsy, and grades would have gone down like lead sinkers if the teachers hadn't been informed about curve grading and the social promotion.

  "This would be a good place to wear a fur coat if you had one," Joyce said.

  "The sunny South," Mary Jean said. Her voice was dull. Joyce gave her a worried and warning look. She seemed to be all right, said she felt fine, and Dr. Prince had given her a general going-over two weeks after the operation and found her condition good. But the sparkle was gone. She spent a good deal of time in bed, not reading or anything but lying there looking vacant. Joyce felt uneasily that even when she was doing something, like eating, or writing themes, she wasn't quite all there. The oval of her face had sharpened and she looked older.

  As far as anyone could tell, though, they had gotten away with it. Joyce could hardly believe it, even now. Sooner or later, she figured, someone would ask an innocent-sounding question or let some remark slip to show that everyone knew they hadn't spent those three days in North Carolina, that everyone knew what had really happened. She still watched faces sharply and listened for undercurrents of intonation that would betray knowledge. She stayed close to Mary Jean, as much as she was able, ready to cover up for her. Now she was beginning to relax in the hope that they were safe. It was over. She looked at Mary Jean, standing between Ann and Claudia, and rubbed a hand across her forehead in bewildered relief. "Come on, let's go. It isn't going to get any dryer.”

  "I hate this place," Mary Jean said.

  Joyce wondered if she hated it too. There were times when she would have given anything to be somewhere else—anywhere else. Other times, she would have liked to go back to that first hot day in September and start over. Or even be back in high school, back on the farm. A picture of Aunt Gen's kitchen flickered through her mind. You came in from the school bus around this time of day, just dusk, and the house would smell of good cooking. Neighbors might make their cakes and cookies from packaged mixes, but Aunt Gen kept her recipes written down by hand and pasted in old school notebooks. My Best Cookies, Mrs. Sullens' Potato Salad, Grandma Bates Gingerbread. That was how the kitchen smelled.

  There would be a length of dress goods spread out on the dining-room table, and Aunt Gen might be sitting at the roll-top desk in the kitchen, bringing the farm accounts up to date. Uncle Will said you had to be a doggone cross between Burbank and Einstein to make a living farming these days. For just a moment Joyce was violently homesick, so that her arms and legs ached and her vision fogged.

  You can't go home again; Wolfe knew what he was talking about. You can't be a kid jogging over gravel roads in a school bus. She sighed, feeling heavy with age.

  "Matter with you, Smilin' Sam?" Mary Jean said.

  "Tired." Joyce looked at her sharply, now the other two were walking ahead on the narrow path. "You feel all right?"

  "Oh, honestly! I told you a million times, I'm fine."

  "You don't have to bite my head off."

  Mary Jean shut up.

  Joyce scuffed her loafers on the door mat of the dorm, noticing that water actually oozed out of them. A yellow smear of mud. Even the earth down here didn't look like real dirt. It was an ugly yellow hardpan when dry and a churned-up sticky mess when wet. You couldn't imagine planting anything in it, though of course people did. "I hate it too," Joyce said sadly.

  "What else is new?"

  "You sure you're not running any fever?"

  Mary Jean scowled. "Anybody'd think I was married to you, the way you nag."

  "I'm only asking for your own sake," Joyce said stiffly.

  She was tired. Nobody had ever told her that fright and suspense had a physical aftermath—fatigue, this ache in the back and arms, this fuzzy feeling in the head. She was glad to flop down on her own bed, unmade as usual.

  Mary Jean sat down on the desk chair and stared into the middle distance. "Bill called," she said tightly. "I don't think I want any dinner."

  "You going out with him?"

  "I'm scared, I don't think I could stand it," Mary Jean said. "Going through all that again." Two tears rolled down her face. "I think about it all the time; I wake up in the middle of the night and think about it."

  "Well, for heaven's sake! Quit, why don't you?"

  "I'm his girl," Mary Jean said. "He's the first fellow I ever—well, he is. All the way, anyhow." She frowned at Joyce, daring her to contradict that. "I did a lot of dating in high, but I never—Bill was the first one."

  "I don't see what that has to do with it."

  "You can't break up just like that. Not if you've really had anything together."

  "That's crazy."

  "You don't know." The voic
e of experience, full of scorn for the uninitiate. Joyce bit back her answer. "Anyhow," Mary Jean said dully, "that's the kind of a girl I am. Like my mother. If it wasn't Bill it would be somebody else."

  Joyce struggled on, though there didn't seem to be any special point to it. "You're not going to marry the guy, are you? Well then, you'll have to bust up some day."

  "Not till he wants to."

  "Then you'll be the one that gets hurt."

  "I reckon so. Look here," Mary Jean said, pulling at the edge of the dresser scarf, "do you believe in sin? That God punishes people, and so on?"

  "I don't know."

  "Oh, well." She let it go. "You think an operation like that could do something to a person's insides, or something? I always figured I was real normal. Only that's a thing you wouldn't know anything about, come to think of it."

  This was it. She had known Mary Jean knew. Probably a lot of people knew. But knowing was one thing. Hearing her say it out loud was something else. Lesbian. Abnormal. Perverted. Words people didn't say, no matter how aware they may be of them, hung on the air. Joyce stood exposed and shamed, her secrets dragged out of their dark corner and held up to crude daylight. She grabbed at a defense. "That sounds like a dirty crack," she said hoarsely.

  "You're damn right it does. No female fairy can tell me anything about love."

  "You don't know anything about it," Joyce said hotly.

  "Sure I know. I was adolescent once." Mary Jean's voice sounded tired and a little disgusted. "I went through all that when I was about fourteen, for about three weeks. Brother! I thought I was the most romantic thing since Sappho."

  Joyce didn't know who Sappho was, but this had an irritatingly familiar ring to it. The voice of convention Edith was always talking about, the pack baying after those who were different. "You've got a dirty mind," she said.

  "I've got eyes," Mary Jean said. She picked up a pencil and rolled it over and over on the desk, under her flattened palm. "What do you get out of it, for God's sake? That's what I'd like to know. There can't be any real kick to it, no more than you can get for yourself if it comes to that. That stuff is just the preliminary bout, that's to wake you up and get you hot for the main act. The big thing." She grinned unwillingly. "That was real corny, I didn't mean it the way it sounded. It's true though, you don't get the real big thrill till you've had the whole works."

  I've had it, Joyce thought of saying, and believe me it wasn't anything to brag about. She looked at the floor. "It must be wonderful," she said.

  "I'll tell you something else, too, you'll never get from a Lesbian. The more you do it with a man, the better it gets."

  "Yeah," Joyce said, "it must be delightful. As Abbott would say. Counting the days on your fingers and marking the calendar and wondering if you'll get caught this time or maybe not till next month. You don't know how I envy you."

  Mary Jean took a deep breath. Let it out again slowly, like a mother praying for patience with a troublesome child. "You're a mean little bitch," she said evenly. "I've been trying to kid myself maybe you weren't really perverted, maybe you're just going through a phase. Retarded development. Maybe something happened to make you scared of men, I told myself. Maybe you'd outgrow it. Of course," she "said thoughtfully, "I still can't see why you picked Bannister, of all people. I can't feature her getting hot for anybody, male or female or half-and-half. She's so goddam self-centered."

  "You take that back."

  "What for? It's true."

  "I happen to love her."

  "Oh, sweet Jesus." Joyce wasn't sure whether Mary Jean was swearing or praying, or some of both. Or whether she was laughing or getting ready to cry, if it came to that. Her shoulders shook and her voice was blurry. "What gives you the idea that you know anything about love? Why don't you grow up?"

  "I'd rather be that way than go around having abortions," Joyce said. "It may not be normal, but then maybe you think murdering babies is a nice thing to do."

  "I wondered when that was coming. That's the one I've been waiting for."

  "Now you don't have to wonder any more."

  Mary Jean smiled. It was a thin smile rimmed with malice. Joyce refused to see the hurt under it. "You can move out of here any time you feel like it—I had the room first, you know. It'll be kind of a relief, not having you sneak in here in the middle of the night stinking like that woman's perfume."

  "It's no worse than you sneaking in stinking like some college boy's cheap liquor."

  "I never did like queers much."

  "That's gratitude," Joyce said. Her voice was trembling. She stopped and swallowed. "After all I did for you when you were sick. After all the big fat lies I had to tell, covering up for you."

  "I'm sorry I've been so much trouble to you," Mary Jean said formally. She didn't sound sorry. "You can tell on me any time you want. Of course you're pretty involved, yourself." She got up, stretching, walked to the dressing table and switched on the side lights. "I can always tell on you, too." she said, taking a bobby pin out of her hair and running the comb carefully through its feathered edges. "It might be fun to bring some charges against your two-faced friend while I'm at it, too. What have I got to lose?"

  Joyce was cold. "Don't be silly," she said quickly. "Why would I tell on you?"

  Mary Jean crossed to the closet. Even in anger Joyce noticed how graceful she was, what pretty legs she had. Mary Jean took her plaid jacket off the hanger. "You never can tell what perverts are likely to do." She shoved her arms into the sleeves, humming a little.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Out," Mary Jean said. "I'm going to go out and get drunk. A girl has to have some little pleasures in life."

  She didn't slam the door. She shut it quietly.

  Joyce sat there. No noise distracted her; everyone else had gone down to dinner and the halls were mealtime-quiet. I've lost my best friend, she thought. She would have liked to cry, but she had forgotten how.

  Edith, she thought. But it was only a word, no reality in it. In the two weeks since they had been back, she had seen Edith only in public and for brief, unsatisfactory moments. Edith had been away for several days at a convention of college and university deans, and they had exchanged whispers in corners and looks in the dining room—that was all. The secretary fiction had been laid aside for a while through the pressure of events, with no need for any scheming on her part. She had been too worried and tired to care much, but now she turned for reassurance to the thought of remembered tenderness.

  Edith, she whispered. But it didn't mean much, it didn't stir her to desire or bring any consolation.

  Mary Jean's voice echoed in the room. What do you know about love?

  Mimi, she thought. All her childhood long, when Aunt Gen spanked her or Uncle Will scolded, when her report card was poor or she squabbled with a friend, she had consoled herself with the idea that Mimi loved her, anyway. Some day Mimi would send for her and they would never be separated any more. Now it didn't work. The magic was gone. The picture that rose to her mind was of a monstrous and repulsive swelling, a disfigurement of that slender, tense body. I hope I don't have to see her until after the baby's born, she thought, but the baby didn't seem real and it was true, though she hated to admit it even to herself, that she dreaded seeing Mimi ever again. The thought of Mimi brought with it a sense of outrage connected with Irv Kaufman.

  After a while she got up, pulled off her clothes and got into bed. She turned the light off, but in the dark a vague unease overcame her and she turned it on again. It was really raining now, beating against the shut window and streaming down the panes. She wondered where Mary Jean was, if she was warm and dry in the back of Bill's cat or sitting in a tavern or maybe in some rented room somewhere, and if she would get home without catching cold. She was angry at Mary Jean, but worrying about her had become a habit and she couldn't throw it off. She lay awake for a long time with the light on, ready to jump up and fetch dry towels and aspirin if they should be needed, but Mary Jean did
n't come home. Finally she fell asleep, to wake now and then and wish heavily that she didn't have to get up in the morning.

  Chapter 14

  Mary Jean showed up at breakfast the next morning. She wore the same clothes she had had on when she left, so she evidently hadn't got back in time to change. There was a slight stale odor of alcohol hanging around her and a spot near the hem of her skirt, as if a stain had been imperfectly sponged off. But she looked neat, the hems of her stockings were straight and her face freshly, if generously, made up. Only the purple smudges under her eyes and the slight trembling of her hands when she lifted her coffee cup, the small rattling it made against the saucer, betrayed the fact that she had been out all night. Joyce was impressed once more by the fact that it's possible to get away with a great deal as long as you remain calm about it.

  She was ready to be polite if Mary Jean spoke to her. To forgive her, even, and let things go on the way they were before the quarrel. She felt magnanimous. But Mary Jean, sitting down at the far end of the table, didn't look her way or offer any greeting. She sat stiff and straight, breaking up her food with the fork but not eating anything, drinking cup after cup of black coffee as if she were famished with thirst. When the meal was over she got up without a word to anyone and walked out. Joyce had brought her books downstairs, and there was no way she could follow Mary Jean up to the room without seeming to be apologetic. She went off slowly, feeling that everything was a mixed-up mess and she'd like to go back to bed and sleep for a week.