The Lonely Lady (2 page)

***

JeriLee was dozing when the nurse came in with her lunch. For a moment she was startled. Yesterday had been so vivid in her thoughts that today seemed an intrusion. Her father had been a very special man, laughing at the world around him, the town of Port Clare and all its hypocrisies. “Nothing makes sense any more, JeriLee,” he had said to her. “Someday they’ll discover the war has really changed the world. Freedom is more than a word for nations, it’s really a very personal thing.”

Then, she had not known what he meant. All she knew was that her mother was angry with him a great deal of the time and often took it out on her. Her brother, born less than a year after her father returned, escaped the brunt of it. But she was growing up and much too much like her father, her mother often said.

The nurse gave her a menu. “The doctor said you can have anything you like as long as you eat lightly.”

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

“You have to eat something,” the nurse insisted. “Doctor’s orders.”

She glanced briefly at the menu. “Hot roast beef sandwich. No gravy. Jell-O and coffee.”

The nurse nodded. “Good. Now roll over and let us give you this shot.”

JeriLee looked at the needle. “What’s that for?”

“Didn’t the doctor tell you? It’s for the Rh factor. In case you get pregnant again you won’t have any trouble with the child.”

JeriLee turned on her side. The nurse was quick and efficient. She scarcely felt the needle. “I don’t intend to get pregnant again,” she said.

The nurse laughed, turning away. “That’s what they all say, honey. But they all come back.”

JeriLee watched her leave the room. Supercilious bitch. White uniforms make them think they know everything. She leaned back against the pillows. She felt tired but not as weak as she had expected. What was it she had heard them say about abortions? Today it was no worse than treating a cold. Maybe they were right.

She looked out the window. The Los Angeles morning smog had lifted and the day was bright and sunny. She wished she had thought of having a telephone in the room. But they had told her she would be there only a few hours. Instead the Rh thing was going to hold her up almost all day.

She wondered how the meeting was going. Her agent should be with the producer right now. She wanted very badly to do the screenplay of her book herself. The first writer they had hired had botched it up completely. Finally they had come to her.

Her agent was high. He was sure the producer was over a barrel and he wanted to sock it to him. He was thinking of asking a hundred thousand dollars. She thought he was crazy. That was more than they had paid for the book, and she would have been willing to write it for nothing.

“Leave it to me,” the old man had said soothingly. “This is my business. I know how to handle it. Besides, we can always come down.”

“Okay,” she had finally agreed reluctantly. “But don’t blow it.”

“I won’t,” he’d promised, then looking at her, asked, “Where will you be tomorrow afternoon in case I should have to get in touch with you?”

“Probably home.”

“And if not?”

“Cedars.”

He’d looked at her in surprise. “What are you going there for?”

“A D and C.”

“You?” he asked with shock in his voice.

“Why not?” she retorted. “After all, I am a woman. Women sometimes get pregnant. Even in this day and age.”

He became very solicitous. “Do you have everything you need? I can drive you—”

“You’re sweet, Mike,” she interrupted. “But it’s all arranged. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Will you call me then? When it’s over?”

“As soon as I get home.”

He got out of his chair and walked her to the door. “You take care now.”

“I will,” she promised.

Freedom was a very personal thing, her father had said. She wondered what he would have thought if he’d known what she had done today.

Probably he would have only wanted to be sure she was doing what she wanted to do, that she was making her own choice. For him that had been what freedom was about.

But the world had not completely caught up with his way of thinking. Her mother was unchanged. She would have been appalled if she’d known. And so would many others. Even among some of her so-called liberated friends abortion was in many ways still a dirty word.

She looked down at the luncheon tray in front of her. The roast beef had a pale anemic hospital look about it. Tentatively she began to cut the rubbery meat, then put down her knife and fork in disgust. She really wasn’t hungry anyway.

She looked out the window at the bright California day. It was not a bit like Port Clare in January. Remembering one snowy day with the freezing cold wind coming off the Sound as she walked down the road to catch the bus to school, she actually shivered. The snow had fallen the night before and felt crisp and clean under her galoshes as she made her way down the sidewalk. The plows had been out all night and the snow was banked neatly on the sides of the road. She climbed over a bank and came down on the road where the snow was turning brown and dirty from the passing cars. In the distance the bus came into view.

It seemed like such a long time ago. Almost another age. And in a way it was.

Chapter 2

“You almost always die,” the man said.

She turned from the bus window and looked at him. For the three months she had been taking this bus to Port Clare Central High the man had been in the seat next to her. This was the first time he had ever spoken. “Yes,” she said, her eyes unexpectedly filling with tears.

He stared past her out the window. “The snow. Why is it always the damn snow?” he asked, speaking to no one.

“I’m going to die,” he went on matter-of-factly.

“My father died,” she said.

For the first time he focused on her. A shade of embarrassment crept into his voice. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t realize I was talking aloud.”

“It’s all right.”

“I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“I’m not crying,” she said defiantly.

“Of course,” he said quickly.

She felt a strange pain in her stomach. She realized with a sense of shame that she hadn’t thought about her father for a long time. In a way it had been almost too easy for her stepfather to push him from her mind.

The man’s face seemed thin and pinched. “Do you go to Central?”

“Yes.”

“What term?”

“Sophomore.”

“You look older,” he said. “I would have thought you were a senior.”

A faint flush came over his pale skin. “I hope I—I mean—I don’t want to offend. I just don’t know too much about young girls.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “People are always taking me for older.”

He smiled, recognizing that he had pleased her. “Forgive me anyway,” he said. “I’m Walter Thornton.”

Her eyes widened. “You’re that—?”

He didn’t allow her to finish. “I’m that Walter Thornton,” he said quickly.

“But”—she hesitated—“you ride the bus every morning.”

He laughed. “You know a better way to get to the station?”

“But you have two plays and a movie on Broadway at the same time.”

“I also don’t drive.” He looked at her. “How do you know so much about me?” he asked curiously.

“Everybody knows about you,” she said.

“Not high school kids. They know about actors, not writers.”

“I’m going to be a writer,” she said.

“Why not an actress?” He was curious. “You’re beautiful enough.”

She blushed. “Why? Is it wrong for me to want to be a writer?”

“No,” he said. “It’s just unusual. Most girls want to go to Hollywood and become a movie star.”

“Maybe I’ll do that too,” she said thoughtfully.

The bus began to slow down. They were at the railroad station. He got to his feet and smiled at her. “I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll talk some more.”

“Okay,” she said. Through the window she watched the tall thin figure in the flapping raincoat disappear into the waiting 8:07 New York express.

Her boyfriend, Bernie Murphy, was waiting for her in front of the school. “Do you know who I met on the bus today?” she asked excitedly. “Walter Thornton! Imagine that? I’ve been sitting next to him every day for three months and I didn’t even know who he was.”

“Who’s Walter Thornton?” Bernie asked.

“Who’s Mickey Mantle?” she retorted with disgust.

***

When JeriLee was ten years old two things happened that were to change her life. The first was that her mother remarried. The second was that she wrote a story which she then produced as a play on the final day of school.

She called it “A Gory Fairy Tale.” And it was. For by the time the curtain fell everyone on stage had died.

As writer, producer and director, she cast herself in the only dual role, that of the cook who had been put to death by the king and then risen from the grave as a witch who came back for revenge.

JeriLee loved the feeling of power. During that brief period she was the most important girl in the fifth grade.

For the first time she could feel the impact she had on other people and instinctively she recognized that the words she had written were the source of the heady sense of power.

Later, clutching her award for creative writing, her face still smudged with the black soot makeup of the witch, she went to her mother and announced her decision.

“I’m going to be a writer, Mommy.”

Her mother, who was sitting with Mr. Randall of the Farmer’s Bank, smiled vaguely. She had scarcely watched the performance. She was too busy thinking about John Randall’s proposal the previous night. “That’s nice, dear,” she said. “But I thought you wanted to be an actress.”

“I did,” JeriLee answered. “But I changed my mind.”

“I thought you looked beautiful on the stage,” her mother said. “Didn’t you, John?”

“She was the most beautiful girl there,” John Randall agreed heartily.

JeriLee stared at them. They had to be blind. The whole point of the makeup was to make her look like an ugly witch. “My makeup was horrible,” she said.

Her mother smiled reassuringly. “Don’t you worry, dear,” she said. “We thought you looked beautiful.”

Later they went to dinner at the Port Clare Inn, a candlelit restaurant which overlooked the Sound.

“We have something very important to tell you, dear,” her mother began over dessert.

JeriLee scarcely looked at her. She was too busy watching the drunken couple who were openly fondling each other at the corner table.

“JeriLee!” her mother said sharply.

JeriLee looked at her mother.

“I said we had something very important to tell you.”

She became the dutiful child. “Yes, Mother.”

Her mother spoke awkwardly. “Ever since your father died… well, you know how difficult it has been for me to take care of you and your brother while going to work in the bank every day.”

JeriLee was silent. She was beginning to understand. But she didn’t know whether she liked what was coming.

Her mother glanced at Mr. Randall for support. He nodded reassuringly. Under the table her hand sought his. “We thought it would be nice if the two of you had a father again,” she said, then added quickly, “Bobby is almost six years old now and a boy should have a father to do things with. You know, ballgames, fishing, things like that.”

JeriLee looked first at her mother, then at Mr. Randall. “You mean you want to marry him?” There was a note of disbelief in her voice. Mr. Randall and her father were nothing alike. Her father had always been laughing and full of fun, while Mr. Randall almost never smiled.

Her mother fell silent.

For the first time Mr. Randall spoke. Soothingly, as if he were talking to a client of the bank who had been questioning an error on his monthly statement. “I’d make a very good father to the two of you. You’re a very lovely girl and I like your brother very much.”

“Don’t you like me too?” she asked with a child’s unerring logic.

“Of course I do,” he answered quickly. “I thought I made that quite clear.”

“You didn’t say it.”

“JeriLee!” Her mother’s voice was sharp again. “You have no right to speak like that to Mr. Randall.”

“It’s all right, Veronica,” he said soothingly. “I like you very much, JeriLee, and I would be proud if you would have me as your father.”

JeriLee looked into his eyes and for the first time saw the hidden warmth and kindness. She responded immediately but didn’t know what to say.

“I know I can never take the place of your real father but I love your mother and will be very good to all of you,” he said earnestly.

JeriLee smiled suddenly. “Can I be the flower girl at the wedding?”

John Randall laughed in relief. “You can be anything you want,” he said, covering her mother’s hand with his. “Except the bride.”

A year after they were married John Randall formally adopted the two children and her name became JeriLee Randall. A curious sadness came over her the first time she wrote her new name. Now there would be almost nothing left to remind her of her father. Bobby, who had never really known him, had already forgotten. And she wondered if, in time, she would too.

Chapter 3

John Randall looked over the top of his
New York Times
as his daughter came to the breakfast table. She came quickly around the table and kissed him on the cheek. He caught a quick scent of perfume as she went to her chair.

Her voice was bright with suppressed excitement. “Good morning, Daddy.”

He smiled, looking at her. He was genuinely fond of her. None of the individual features that made up her face were beautiful. Her nose was perhaps a trifle too long, her mouth a bit too wide, her dark blue eyes over high cheekbones too large for the size of her face, but somehow together they had an incredible effect. Once you looked at her you could never forget her. She was beautiful.

He could see that this morning she had taken extra care with her appearance. Her hair looked even silkier than usual and her skin was shining clean. He was glad that she didn’t use makeup as so many of the girls did nowadays. “Something must be happening,” he said.