Girls In 3-B, The (16 page)

As far as she knew, he might have been created the day they met.

The wind was cold. The end of October, and she had postponed sending home for her winter clothes. She hadn't even written home for longer than she cared to calculate.

The thought of her mother's searching look made her wince, as though her guilt and uncertainty would be apparent between the lines of a letter. She had tucked the last two or three letters from home into a drawer, unwilling to read them but unable to throw them away unread.

At the thought of all her winter garments, clean and pressed and stored away in mothproof bags, a wave of homesickness swept over her. She felt hollow and alone. For a moment the sidewalk wavered, and she staggered and then righted herself.

After all, she thought sensibly, I haven't had anything to eat. Alan ate at odd hours, sometimes ravenous, wolfing down huge plates of hamburger and French fries, drinking cup after cup of coffee; at other times he went sixteen or eighteen hours without food. Since it made him impatient to have her mention food when he didn't feel like eating, they went out at his suggestion
--
but then
she
wasn't hungry.

In addition, she was dangerously low on money. The stopgap job as file clerk didn't pay much, and she was ashamed to weasel out of her share of the rent; Pat was squandering every cent she could get her hands on and had a whole closet full of new clothes. Alan's attitude was that her money was his. He had been angry because she cashed her paycheck at the currency exchange before meeting him and settled with Barby for the rent.

Of course, she thought, if he had anything he'd share it with me. The disloyal thought blossomed before she could uproot it
--
there's no reason he can't at least earn something.

She had twenty minutes before work time. That was one good thing about a job in the neighborhood; it might not be as glamorous as working in the Loop, but you didn't waste time and money commuting. She hesitated before a little lunchroom and, seeing an empty stool, went in and ordered coffee and a sweet roll. The sudden warmth struck her drowsy, and she yawned.

Someone had left a
Tribune
on the counter; she opened it idly to the society page. A familiar name caught her eye. Mrs. Harrison Aldrich was announcing the forthcoming marriage of her daughter, Mrs. Renee Hahn, to Blake Thomson of Winnetka and Philadelphia. That would be Pat's boss, the one she had talked about so much when she first went to work at Fort Dearborn. It was funny she hadn't mentioned this engagement. A small office was a beehive of gossip; executives would be upset if they knew what the typists and mail boys knew about their private affairs.

Then the dateline caught her eye. November 5. She had been drifting along from day to day, thinking in terms of October. She rubbed her eyes and looked again, unwilling to believe that it could be so late.

Then–-

She had figured wrong, of course. She was due this week, not last week. She tried to count back, marking off the days by those personal landmarks women use for computation. It was the day we went to that French movie, because I had to get up and go to the ladies' room in the middle of the feature and Alan was peeved. That was after we had the party at Lorene's, and Lorene's husband kissed one of the girls in the kitchen and she raised so much hell.

Or was it before the party?

She struggled backward through a confused tangle of days and nights, trying to get her bearings; but all she could actually remember was going to bed with Alan far more often than she had gone to bed in her own apartment.

After a moment's hesitation she opened her billfold and took out a small calendar printed with the advertising of a stationery store. Some of the dates were circled with pencil: one every month, sometimes one at the beginning and one near the end. She traced the lines of figures with a nervous finger. There was no evading it, she had been right the first time. She was nine days overdue.

It's too soon to worry,
she assured herself
. Maybe I'm catching cold, or something.

Her mouth felt dry. She drank the rest of her coffee, paid her twenty-six cents at the cashier's desk and walked out, leaving the roll untouched.

It was too soon to start worrying. That was easy to decide
--
to act on it wasn't so easy. Annice woke in her own be
d
the next morning, next to the familiar blanketed lump that was Barby, and after the first moment of suspended consciousness, she was gripped by pure primitive terror. She was in trouble. Nothing was going to change that. Nothing was going to save her. Her arms and legs tensed with animal fright; for a long moment she was unable to move. Then she was able to get up, weak and shaking, and make her way to the bathroom. She got there before she vomited.

It was a gray foggy day, and the bathroom was cool, not bleak like Alan's rented room, but cold enough to make her shiver. She stood clinging to the rim of the washbowl, looking around the familiar walls as though she had never seen them before. All kinds of cosmetics littered the glass shelf below the mirror, the edges of the bowl, even the shelf of the toilet: tubes squeezed in the middle, jars of cream and lotion, a tin of detergent, bobby pins. On the shower rod hung a pair of nylons and a pair of panties, dry but forgotten.
Slobs,
Annice thought coldly.
Why don't they pick up after themselves? Do I have to do everything around here?

Her anger steadied her.

Maybe Alan would come in for breakfast. He had done that once or twice, and although she realized it was because he lacked money to go out for coffee, she felt that she would be glad to see him on any terms. She hadn't left him any money the day before, partly in a half-conscious attempt to get even with him for being so demanding and unsympathetic and partly because she really was down to her last dollar. If he couldn't find anyone else to borrow from
--
and it wasn't time for Jenni's unemployment compensation check
--
he would surely be in for a meal.

She felt a lightening of the heart as she put on water for coffee and scrabbled through the breadbox in search of a slice good enough to toast. It was simple, after all. If she was right
--
and she felt sure now
--
Alan might very well react like any other young man who had got his girl in trouble. He would be angry and resentful. He would swear at her, or even hit her. But when it came to a showdown he would marry her, reluctantly maybe, and they would go to keeping house somewhere and after a couple of years he would forget that it wasn't his own idea in the first place.

After all, a lot of families started that way. Two of her high school classmates had dropped out of school in the middle of the year to get married, and everyone had smoothed it over and pretended to believe that they were secretly married two months earlier; the girls had showers for them; so far as Annice could tell, they got along as well as most young couples. It wasn't the sort of romance a girl dreamed about, but it happened often enough to be commonplace. She would be brave and cheerful and make a good life with what she had.

It was silly to take his cynicism at its face value. He was young. She realized that she didn't know exactly how old he was. He must have the same needs as anyone else
--
love, a home, children.
This was his obligation,
she thought, pressing her lips firmly together. She would have been startled to know how much like her own mother she looked.

She drank the first cup of coffee before calling Barby and Pat, and when they were out of the house she began briskly to tidy the apartment, feeling quite calm and cheerful. She would shower and put on a becoming dress before he got there. She would be affectionate and good-natured, but firm.

The morning passed.

It crossed her mind that perhaps he had already suspected this. Perhaps he had been trying to provoke a quarrel so she wouldn't make any demands. Of course, it was unlike him to be reticent about any bodily function. He got an impish pleasure out of shocking her, of using short rude words for things she referred to equivocally not at all. On the other hand
--
and she didn't like the idea
--
it would be like him to observe her with cool, impersonal curiosity, waiting to see how long it would before she realized her plight and what she would do about it. She knew him well enough to believe he would be quite capable of this. He had already written up the mescal experience, which filled her with fright and humiliation every time she thought about it, and had submitted it to a national magazine under his own name. She decided at he was perfectly capable of using her as a laboratory animal if he felt like it.

Objective Study of a Girl from the Sticks, in Trouble.
With names, dates and places, and a detailed description of the way she behaved in bed.

Or maybe he meant what he said
--
that pregnancy was a normal condition, and the feminine insistence on a wedding ceremony nothing but a holdover from a primitive rite; that no man was obligated to stand by a woman he had slept with, or support her and her child.
Well,
she thought,
life isn't like that. He'll simply have to grow up.

She whisked through the kitchen, straightening things on the cupboard shelves, while her early-morning terror changed to resentment and then to hot, clean anger.
God damn him,
she thought, he made me do it. I didn't want to. It really seemed to her, from this vantage point, that she dn't.
I
told him it wasn't safe, and he wouldn't use anything or let me go to a doctor for equipment or anything.
It crossed her mind that she could have gone anyway, or, failing that, have broken off with him and begun looking around for a more amenable male. She brushed the thought side. It was too reasonable; it interfered with her good self-justifying rage.

By evening she had convinced herself that the whole thing was very simple. She went to bed early and fell asleep in the midst of planning her campaign. He would have to listen to her; he would have to marry her. Even if it meant taking him into court, or threatening to. She fell asleep, seeing her plans already materializing and wondering what she would wear to be married in.

He didn't come the next day, either. Maybe, she thought, he hasn't got a quarter for bus fare. He could walk, of course. It was barely five blocks, half a mile. But then, he never exerted himself
--
except in bed
--
unless he absolutely had to. This reminded her that he was penniless, and that blood tests, a license, and a ring would cost money.

Never mind, she could work that out. The main thing was to tell him right away, so he could share it with her.

She wondered how long it would be until a doctor could be sure. There was something called a rabbit test
--
but that would cost money, too. She was engulfed in the same feeling that had overcome her the day her purse was stolen
--
the sense of being alone, friendless and penniless in a big unfeeling city.

Around ten o'clock a tap at the door broke into her worry, and she hurried to open it, weak with relief. But it was the janitor, Rocco, who stood there. For a moment she was dumb with surprise, she had been so sure of Alan. Rocco grinned uncertainly. "I just think I'll come up and see if everything is okay up here, huh? You warm enough? Everything all right?"

"We're fine, thanks."

"The pretty young lady, I don't see her for a while. She's not move out, no?"

"Thanks," Annice said dryly. "She's all right." She shut the door gently but definitely, and went back to her cupboards, diverted.

Now that she thought about it, Barby was hardly ever home any more. She had been gone most of the time, herself, and she had assumed that their hours just didn't coincide, but it had been
--
how long
--
a week or ten days?
--
since she had seen Barby except in the early morning. She supposed Barby had left a ring or a handkerchief in the basement when she went down to do the laundry. Nice of him to think about it, but she didn't like the man. He was good-looking enough, but there was something
--

She stood shivering in the fall air, which was a mixture of sunshine and coal smoke and the smell of frying fish from next door. The emptiness and silence of the apartment were getting on her nerves. So far as she could remember, she had never spent two days alone and at home, before. Summer vacations on the farm had been full of housewifely activity in her mother's company
--
canning, cleaning house, processing fruit and vegetables for the freezer, making drapes and slip covers. She slammed the window down and decided that there was really no reason for not going to Alan's place and having it out with him. I’ll get this settled right now, she resolved.

She changed her pedal-pushers for a dress, obscurely wanting to look her best
--see, you're getting a wife you don't have to be ashamed of--
and brushed her hair. She looked all right, and that was reassuring.
Maybe I'm all right,
she thought, tying a ribbon around her head.
Maybe it’s a false alarm, after all.

But she knew it wasn't.

She walked the five blocks quickly, feeling light and free now that her mind was made up. The fog had lifted and the sun was shining; it was one of those clear, crisp late-fall days that make the heart beat faster. She smiled at groups of children playing on the sidewalk.
Poor kids, they shouldn't have to live on concrete walks and vacant lots. I'll raise mine in the country. Or anyway, in a small town with yards and trees.

Alan's door was open
--
it was always open, he hardly ever locked it, even when he was making love. She pushed open and went in. He wasn't there, but that didn't mean anything. He could be at the grocery, or downstairs playing poker with the boys, or at a party, or down at the corner tavern. He could be and probably was out trying to chisel five bucks off one of the characters he knew, He could even be in bed with somebody else, since he hadn't had her for two whole days. She was obscurely comforted by the thought that anyway, he wasn't making love to some other girl in the bed where they had been so happy together.