Whisper Their Love Read online

  "You can call it that."

  "I always figured some of you kids knew your way around," Scotty said. "Can't all be lessies in a place like that, the way I got it figgered. Some of 'em's bound to been caught and broke in before they cooped 'urn up. Have any luck?"

  "Nope."

  "Well, hell, you don't have to go outa town for that. Doc Prince right here on Elm Street, he's turned many a one loose in his time. One hundred bucks, and he's as careful as any of 'em. My wife's kid sister, she got fixed up a couple times already."

  "That's the one in the Medical Arts Building?"

  "Sure." Scotty grazed through an amber light. "You tell him Stella Chivari sent you. He'll give you a shot, too, if it gets hurtin' too bad. Some won't. My wife she went there with Stell once and she says it's bad, all right, but no worse than having a kid." Scotty swiveled around to look at them. "I guess the dames figure it's worth it, or they wouldn't have it done. When they get in that kind of a fix they can't be bothered by a little pain, right?"

  "Right."

  "Don't seem fair," Scotty said. "Does it? Us guys get off easy. Hell, I had the clap a couple times when I was in the army, but that ain't nothin'. That's kid stuff. I guess the way it works out for the girls is, they had their fun and now they can take their medicine. Right?"

  "Men have fun, too," Joyce said angrily.

  "Sure, that's so. Doc give my old woman some fixings to keep her from gettin' caught. Cost seven-fifty, but that's better than havin' your insides scraped ever so often."

  "I guess you're right," Mary Jean said.

  "Well, it looks like this is it. That's one buck even for the both of you. Hope you make out all right."

  "Oh sure, I'm not worried."

  And that's a big fat lie, Joyce reflected. She said in a small, angry voice, "He'll tell."

  "I don't think so." Mary Jean's voice shook. "You have to take some chances, don't you? Scotty knows plenty about what goes on in this crumby town."

  "I bet plenty goes on."

  "I bet plenty goes on in this building," Mary Jean said, giving her a sidewise glance.

  The campus looked like a movie setting for a girl's school, ivied brick buildings set among spreading trees, the dryness of the grass and sparseness of the leaves veiled by night. Lights came on in windows. Sweatered girls by twos and threes walked down the paths, talking. A pang struck Joyce. If this could only be the way it looked, without dark things hidden underneath. She felt a sudden affection for the place and her classmates, and a deep sadness, as though this day's doings had set her apart from it. She took Mary Jean's elbow as they went up the dormitory steps.

  "Will you go to the doctor with me, kid?"

  "Sure. Who else were you thinking of asking?"

  Chapter 10

  Joyce learned a lot of things in the next week. One was that you can get away with almost anything as long as you keep cool. She had always supposed that someone would be suspicious if you did anything you weren't supposed to, either God, or somebody acting as God's deputy, like Aunt Gen or the teacher. Or maybe the neighbors, about whom Aunt Gen always worried. Now here she was walking around all loaded down with guilty secrets, her own and Edith Bannister's, and most of all Mary Jean's and nobody seemed to have any inkling that anything was wrong. She began to suspect teachers were not in a special class along with ministers and congressmen, but were merely human beings like everyone else and, like everyone else, primarily interested in themselves. It was disillusioning, but a relief.

  Another surprising thing was the way time kept expanding and contracting. That was partly because she had mixed emotions on the subject. She wanted desperately to get through the next few weeks and come out on the other side, with all the worry and pain behind her and nothing to dread. But on the other hand, as the day of Mary Jean's appointment with Dr. Prince came closer she was more and more timid about actually going through with it. There were endless stretches when the clock hands didn't seem to move at all, and then she was counting days and the week had gone by and the time was now.

  A week can be endless. Five days of going to classes and not hearing a word the teacher said, although she copied blackboard notes docilely with some idea that later she'd do some cramming. Two gym classes, with Miss "Butch" Ryan being sarcastic when she fumbled the ball and then walking down the hall with her afterwards, a bony arm slung across her shoulder and her dark eyes inquisitive and bright beneath that tumbled wad of hair. Any other time that would have bothered her, she would have tormented herself with questions and maybe skipped her gym periods. Now she ignored it.

  A week was twenty-one meals in Commons, one Sunday chapel, to which she wore the little velvet calot Mimi had sent from Marshall Field's, and on which she received compliments. And then the week was gone and she wasn't ready to go ahead with the monstrous thing that had to be done to Mary Jean. But there was no choice.

  Mrs. Abbott, who normally would have been around with aspirin and tender sympathy to hover over Mary Jean's touch of flu, was happily deflected by two freshmen with chicken pox. She moved into the infirmary and set about nursing them with so much zeal that they did their best to get well and out of there quickly. Now Edith Bannister was the chief hazard, not only because she had sharp eyes and a neat mind, but because Joyce wanted so badly to confide in somebody and she seemed to be the logical person. She didn't stop to ask herself why she should not trust Edith with Mary Jean's woes, but she knew it wasn't possible. She tried avoiding her, which worked for two days. Then Edith stopped her in the hall on the way to Spanish class and asked outright, "Is something wrong? Have I done something to offend you?"

  "Gosh, no."

  "I'd appreciate it if yon could get out a few letters this evening. They're piling up." Two students went by, carefully not turning to look back at them, but falling silent as they passed. Joyce took a deep breath. There was no way to get out of it. Besides, now that they were standing side by side on the path she could get a whiff of the light, delicate perfume Edith used, and for her it was evocative of the hours they had spent together. Nostalgia rose in her. She nodded.

  She would have to avoid the subject of Mary Jean; if Edith asked, she would have to lie. She wasn't a very good liar—one look from Aunt Gen had been enough to get her stammering and tongue-tied when she was little—but she could give it a try. She would be braced against questioning.

  * * *

  She was surprised to discover how tired she was. The pencil-scribbled notes blurred before her eyes and her fingers kept hitting the wrong keys, so that after correction the pages looked as if they'd been through a meat grinder. Edith came in at twelve minutes after nine and looked at all the balled-up sheets in the basket. "This isn't important," she said, laying her hands on Joyce's shoulders. "You're too tired for work. For anything. Why don't you go to bed?"

  It was all right, lying there between paper-smooth sheets and feeling capable hands turn back the covers under her chin. Like that first day when she had been so groggy and scared, only better, much better, because everything was all right now. She intended to stay awake and worry, but she was very tired; she slept.

  She woke around one, feeling light and relaxed. This is best of all, she thought. Edith lay against her, unmoving but awake. Waiting, she thought, and felt a momentary irritation. Then need rose in both of them at once. This time the need was deeper and the pleasure more prolonged than it had ever been. Edith's voice was a thread of whispered emotion when she asked, "Was it good?" and Joyce answered, shaken, "Best yet." They lay side by side, their hands on each other's bodies, while the rapture ebbed away. There was no time or space or circumstance, only completion. They slept.

  Once more it was nearly morning when she went back to her own room. Mary Jean was asleep, one hand under her blotched and swollen cheek. She had done so much crying that Joyce wondered where all the tears were coming from. She was sorry for the kid, but she was getting tired of having Mary Jean melt into tears every time she got off into a corner by herself
. It couldn't be good for her, either. She got along all right in public; why couldn't she have a little self-control the rest of the time, too?

  As she dozed off, she realized that Edith hadn't mentioned Mary Jean. That meant she hadn't noticed anything. Or else she knew all about it and wasn't asking, either to stay free of responsibility or out of a feeling of sympathy. It was smarter not to wonder which.

  Mary Jean started out alone, the next afternoon, to keep her appointment with Dr. Prince. She got as far as the railroad arch, then came back and stood at the door of the room, looking like a new first-grader afraid of the other kids. "I can't do it."

  "You have to."

  "I'm afraid."

  Oh, hell. A fine way to spend an afternoon, sitting around in waiting rooms like an expectant father. Joyce jerked on her jacket.

  The nurse called Mary Jean into the inner office and she followed, quietly, looking all right except for the swollen eyelids. Joyce sat and looked at the only other waiting patient, a husky high-school girl with a bandaged ankle. After they had smiled at each other a couple of times she began to feel foolish. She got up and looked out the window. From up here she could see into the shopping district, the Square which would have been Main Street at home. Middle-aged women with paper shopping bags went into the dime store. The windows of the cut-rate drugstore were crowded with pyramids of adhesive tape and aspirin boxes on a One-Cent Sale. Red-edged posters advertised a grocery-store special. It seemed crazy that she was sitting here in a doctor's office, waiting for her best friend who was going to have an abortion.

  Dr. Prince, when he came out, added to the feeling of unreality. He was a stout, middle-aged man in shiny glasses and one of those white tunic jackets, with his name embroidered on the pocket. He looked like the kind of man who drives a pretty good car, goes to church once in a while, and donates his services to the PTA tonsil-and-adenoid checkup. He couldn't do a thing like that, she thought in a panic, he'll notify the college and we'll both be expelled. She looked at Mary Jean, who was expressionless. Mary Jean shook hands with the doctor and picked up her purse from the center table, and they walked out side by side. "He won't do it, will he?"

  "Of course he'll do it. Tonight. I can't eat any dinner," Mary Jean said. "We can't go back to the dorm for a couple days, though."

  "So then what?"

  "Scotty's sister has a cabin out on the lake shore," Mary Jean said wearily. "I don't think it can be much of a place, but anyway, we can be alone there. If you're with me in this."

  Joyce waved an impatient hand.

  "I sent myself a telegram from home yesterday," Mary Jean said a little smugly, "and asked Abbott to send me home for the weekend because Pop isn't feeling well. I'm supposed to bring along a friend."

  "All right," Joyce said, feeling that she was committing herself definitely to something she would rather not do.

  "Scotty's going to pick us up at nine."

  "Well, aren't you the smart one?"

  Two large tears rolled down Mary Jean's cheeks. "I hate myself," she said.

  Joyce stopped to look into the window of the easy-payment jewelry store. Diamond engagement rings and watches against dark-blue velvet, with price tags attached. "How much is it going to cost?"

  "Two hundred."

  "Scotty said one."

  "I guess they go by what they think you can pay. Anyway, Bill will give it to me. He promised he'd have it by tonight" Mary Jean's chin trembled. "He's mad at me."

  "Well, my God!"

  "I know. But this is sort of hard on him, though."

  They stopped at the drugstore because Mary Jean had a list of things to get. Joyce read it, looking over her shoulder. They looked at each other. "I'll be all over it by this time tomorrow," Mary Jean said.

  "Sure. That doctor looks all right, don't you think?"

  "Oh, God Almighty," Mary Jean said prayerfully, "don't talk about it."

  They elbowed their way through the crowds of women shopping for drug bargains. Inside, the walls were plastered with sale signs, and piles of merchandise blocked the aisles: flashlights, panda bears in plush, sacks of gumdrops, family-sized bottles of vitamin tablets. Mary Jean shoved her way to a counter where a salesgirl was wrapping .hot-water bottles, and handed over her list. Joyce thought the salesgirl looked at her oddly. She should have worn the ring, she thought, but anybody would know what it's for anyhow-She moved away, backing into a wire rack where magazines were displayed. It went down with a clatter. She bent, red-faced, and picked up confession and detective magazines.

  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 al
one 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.