Whisper Their Love (13 page)

Mary Jean's upper lip was pulled back so that her teeth showed. Her pajamas were soaked through with sweat. In the yellowish light from the lamp the circles under her eyes were black. "I think I'm going to die," she said. She pulled her knees up convulsively.

Joyce turned the lamp up, so that a streamer of soot blacked the chimney. This wasn't something you saw in a movie or read about in a book; this was really happening right here and now. Her hands shook. Men, she thought. I wouldn't let a man touch me, not if I lived a million years. Aloud she said, "Don't be scared, I won't let anything happen to you."

Chapter 12

Mary Jean was being unreasonable. She should have been jumping up and down and yelling with joy because she was out of trouble, not lying in bed like a doll with all the stuffing out of it, bawling, shaking her head and refusing to answer when you asked her what was the matter, refusing to eat after you'd stood over the damn smoky oilstove for an hour trying to fix up something appetizing. "Do you hurt anywhere?"

"I'm all right." Mary Jean lay on her back, crying without sound or change of expression. The tears ran down her cheeks and trickled coldly into her ears and the edge of her hair. "Let me alone," she said in a weak voice.

Joyce sighed. "Look, you couldn't have had it."

"I know it."

They had been over and over this. Joyce looked around the cabin to see what still needed doing. She had already swept the floor, driving clouds of dust ahead of the broom, and washed the breakfast dishes.

It was a fine crisp day; goldenrod mixed with the weeds in the back yard and there was a sprinkling of brown-eyed Susan along the barbwire fence that bounded it. Oak leaves were sailing down silently in the windless air. Joyce threw her shoulders back and took a deep breath. It was quiet out here, like on the farm. The first quiet place she'd been in for quite a while. The solitude rested her, but also made her feel uneasy. She wasn't sure whether she liked it or not. She stood for a moment in the sunshine, planning her day.

Almost eleven. She was hungry already. Be some point to cooking if Mary Jean would eat instead of turning her face away as if the thought of food repelled her. It might be fun to cook if you had somebody to cook
for.
I wish I had a man and a bunch of kids, she thought; they'd come in from work and school all hungry and tired out and I'd have supper on the stove. The wish, primitive and unexpected, rose to the surface of her mind from some place where it had been simmering. She quickened her steps as if she might walk away from it.

For the last two days she hadn't thought about anything much except Mary Jean and her danger; when she stopped working with her hands for a moment the sickening fear of exposure rose in her, so she kept busy. All through the first day, when Mary Jean lay half asleep under the mingled influence of pain and aspirin, moaning now and then, tossing when a cramp struck, she had been obsessed with the dread that something might still go wrong. She stayed by the bedside, not knowing what to do and yet afraid to turn her back. Then, when the pains let up and they were sure the operation had been successful, she was too weak with relief to look farther than the next chore.

It was surprising how much work there was, keeping house in a place like this. Simply fixing meals took a lot of planning, in a place without electricity or running water.

It was the first time she had ever taken the responsibility for running a house. She wondered how Aunt Gen did it, even with electrical appliances. Aunt Gen had time for PTA and church doings too, she reminded herself, pushing back her hair and leaving a sooty smudge on her forehead.

She opened the cans of food and dumped them into sauce pans, lit the round burner of the kerosene range, and stood back as the flame flared orange-and angry almost to the ceiling. There was always this nervous moment before it settled down to a clear, hot blue circle. She burned her finger on the edge of the pan and said, "Oh, damn!" in a heartfelt way. Mary Jean stirred but didn't say anything. She ignored her tray when it was fixed, simply lay there with tears running down her face and making little damp blisters on the pillowcase.

I'm going to call the doctor, Joyce decided. It can't be good for her, all this bawling, and it sure isn't helping me any.

She took her plate out to the front porch, which was just a square of boards measuring about five feet each way, and sat down with her back against the house wall and her legs stretched out in front of her. Food tasted fine out here in the fresh air—delicious canned beans, wonderful vienna sausage. She wiped up the juice with a piece of bread and peeled back the foil from a Hershey.

Chewing, she tried to sort out her thoughts. What was happening back at the college? Was there really such a place? Could you drive a few miles down the road, steer through a shopping center, and actually be there? Open a door without anyone stopping you, walk up stairs that were familiar to the feet, go into your own room and find your stuff there? She doubted it. Maybe it was only a movie she'd seen and remembered, solid brick buildings set among trees and a stone library with ivy growing up around the windowsills and long tables with drop-lamps above them. The gym, floor marked off in black lines and circles for basketball, high, wire-screened windows, skeletal rows of bleachers. At this moment girls she knew were taking notes on the Renaissance, practicing "Panis Angelicus" in the auditorium for next Sunday's chapel. It seemed unlikely.

Edith Bannister seemed unreal too. She had expected the thought of Edith, when she finally got around to it, to be sharp with hurt. She had not, in fact, supposed that she could possibly be away from Edith three days without missing her acutely. She had been too busy and worried to have time for loneliness, up to now, but she hadn't doubted that it was lying in wait for her as soon as she had a chance to pay some attention to it. Now she thought about Edith, and there was no reality in it. All she got was a flat two-dimensional picture.

She shut her eyes and tried to remember Edith's voice, the deepened and roughened timbre of it in their moments of closeness. All she got was the sleepy cawing of crows in the tops of the oak trees, resting through the hot part of the day before they fanned out over the countryside in search of their evening meal. She tried to conjure up the remembered pressure of Edith's body against hers and the soft firmness of her flesh under searching hands. But it wasn't real. It was a story she'd read someplace. What was real was this sunshine on the back of her neck and the splintery roughness of boards under her palm.

But I love her, she thought. She opened her eyes on stalky weeds and almost bare trees. A sparrow hopped up to the edge of the porch and stood looking at her, its head cocked. She threw out the crumbs of her meal, but the gesture alarmed the bird and it flew off. She got up a little stiffly and went into the house, picking up Mary Jean's untouched dishes. Mary Jean was lying with her face to the wall; Joyce couldn't tell whether she was crying or sleeping.

She called the doctor's house number. He wasn't there. A calm, satisfied voice—a wifely voice—said that he was at the hospital and did she care to leave a message? She hadn't counted on this. Half a dozen times in the last two days she had lifted the receiver and listened to the humming, comforted that if things really went badly wrong there was help for her. Now she felt cheated. She left her name, hesitating, tried to frame a message that would mean something to him and nobody else, and gave it up. She felt that he had to come; she couldn't stand any more of this. She could have cried like Mary Jean, she was so tired, but it would have been too silly.

She jerked the sheets straight and said, "We're going back pretty soon, you know. You better straighten up and start thinking up a good story for Abbott."

Mary Jean said, "Oh, to hell with Abbott."

Joyce put the dishes in the pan with a lot of unnecessary rattling and took them out to wash under the pump—sanitary or not, it was easier that way. She couldn't help thinking that she could have gone through Mary Jean's operation, if she had to, with a lot less fuss.

When the doctor did come he wasn't alone, and that surprised her too. A young man was driving the car, a boy really, not much older than she was. At the sight of him she felt self-conscious and somehow ashamed, perhaps because her slacks were wrinkled and her blouse dirty and she hadn't set her hair. He didn't seem to be aware of her embarrassment. He slid out from under the wheel and stood looking around. "My nephew," Dr. Prince said proudly. "He'll have the practice when I'm too old to work, likely. No—" as she moved towards the house—"you young people stay out here and get acquainted. I'll call you if I need you."

So she was alone with a strange boy and the whole outdoors, and nothing to say. She looked at him. He was slim and flat-hipped; naked from the waist up, as if he'd been showering or taking a nap when his uncle called him; the hair on his chest was curly yellowish-red, but his head bristled with bright red that would have curled if the barber hadn't practically scalped him. He had freckles and narrow gray-green eyes. She didn't know whether she liked his looks or not. "My name's John," he said. "You live out here?"

"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.”