The Body in the Ivy (26 page)

He wrenched her hands away.

“You're pregnant!” He stood up, spilling her out onto the floor.

“Yes, I thought you'd be—”

“I'd be what! Thrilled at the idea of a screaming kid to take care of on no money. Thrilled to be trapped by—Wait a minute. We have never done it without protection. This can't be my kid.”

Chris wasn't sure who the person was who was talking to her this way. Sandy had gone someplace, but just for the moment. It was the shock. As soon as whoever this was left and Sandy came back, it would all be okay.

“The doctor said sometimes they can leak. I guess you have very strong guys or maybe I'm extremely fertile.” She liked that thought. Fertile, like the soil at the farm that she enriched with mulch, the black soil that gave life to everything she sowed.

“I shouldn't have sprung it on you like this. You'll be a wonderful dad.” She placed her hand over her abdomen. “This is one very fortunate baby.”

He walked out of the room and she heard the kitchen door close behind him. Should she follow him? She got up and went through the room that served as his study to the kitchen door. He was on the phone, but she couldn't hear what he was saying.

It would be all right. It
had
to be all right. Suddenly she felt very alone—and very frightened.

He came out, and she backed across the room.

“Cher.” He held out his hand. “You were right. It was a shock. We'll talk about it tomorrow. Can you come after your last class? You know I have to leave soon.”

Thursday nights Sandy volunteered as a tutor at a settlement house in Roxbury. He worked there on Tuesday nights, too.

Chris felt the life—literally—come back into her body.
Her
Sandy was back, her beloved, her lover. They would talk tomorrow. She was finished at one o'clock on Fridays.

“Can you pick me up?” He had a vintage MG. She adored his car. They wouldn't need a bigger one for a while. Babies didn't take up much room.

He pulled her to him and held her close. “I wish I could, but it's in the shop.”

Chris thought she'd seen it outside, but that must have been someone else's car.

“It's all right. I can take the T. I should be here by two or two-thirty at the latest.” His arms felt wonderful, and she tucked her head under his chin, enjoying the sense of the two, no three, of them standing together as if they were carved from one block of stone.

“I do have to go.”

“Of course.” She turned her face up for a kiss. Their mouths met.

“I have a little time yet, though,” he said, lifting her into his arms and carrying her to the bed.

 

Senior year was going by too fast, Bobbi Dolan thought as she walked back to the dorm from the libe. Why did it have to close at ten? It was the only place she could really concentrate, and she had a test tomorrow. She'd
tried to get locked in overnight during exams a couple of times by going to the ladies' room and standing on the seat in one of the cubicles, but the custodians knew all the tricks and she was always chased out.

It wasn't that she wanted to stay at Pelham. Hell, she couldn't wait to get out. Prin had stepped up her campaign, after leaving her mostly alone for the year. It was as if she wanted to get her final kicks and hardly a day went by when Bobbi didn't get a clipping under the door or in her mailbox. Less than a month left. Her parents had made reservations for the entire family, including both sets of grandparents, at the Pelham Inn when they'd dropped her off freshman year. They'd watch Bobbi get her diploma, the first to graduate from college, not that they would mention that to anyone. They would dress the right way, just as they did at the country club, but people would still know. The brass buttons on her dad's navy blazer were too bright, her mom's Peck & Peck outfits too perfect, everything matched too well. Prin and Elaine's mother had appeared last fall in a hat that looked like it had been
her
mother's, but it had complemented her designer suit perfectly. You were supposed to look comfortable, not rich, if you were really rich, Bobbi had learned. What else had she learned at Pelham? She was majoring in English, because that seemed the easiest thing to do, although now that her college career was almost over, she wished she had been bolder and majored in political science. She'd mentioned the possibility to her mother early sophomore year and she had been shocked. “That's not something women are supposed to do, don't tell me you're turning into one of those radicals!”

Bobbi wasn't, didn't. But she had a plan. A guy she knew at MIT—she had no problem dating MIT men; they were quirky and grateful, too—was driving to California to start a job. He'd offered her a ride and a place to crash, telling her how great the weather was and how easy it would be to get a job. If she'd majored in electrical engineering, maybe, but still the idea was attractive. No winter—and very, very far away from the East Coast. She planned on telling her parents that she'd been accepted for graduate work at Stanford and was waiting to hear about a scholarship. If she made up a scholarship, too, they were likely to brag at graduation and someone, probably Prin, would correct them. She was waiting until the last minute to tell them anything and, oddly, they hadn't asked. It was enough she was graduating from Pelham. Maybe they thought she would get married right away. Maybe that had been their plan all along. That would explain their lack of interest in anything she wanted to do.

She trudged up the stairs to her floor. If she wasn't careful, she put on weight; so walking up the stairs was part of her regimen, as was the way she counted every calorie. The group in the common room greeted her as she entered, and she walked down the hall to her own room. Even with the door closed, she could hear them and the music someone was playing, despite Quiet Hours. It was the Stones—maybe she'd get some satisfaction in California.

 

Yesterday had been a brilliant, sunny day; today it was raining, but Chris didn't care. If she had a favorite season, it would be spring, with its promise of rebirth, and
she would always remember this spring in particular. They had been reading T. S. Eliot in her poetry class, and try as she might, she couldn't agree that “April is the cruellest month.”

The T had been slow due to the weather and it was past 2:30 by the time she got to the apartment building. The lock on the front door to Sandy's building was broken. As Chris went in she made a mental note to tell him to have the landlord fix it before the baby came. They'd live here for a while, she supposed, and she didn't like the idea of an unsecured door. Upstairs outside Sandy's apartment a familiar figure was opening his door. But it wasn't Sandy. It was Prin, and much to Chris's further surprise, Prin had her own key. It was on the key chain Andrew had given her, one with a gold crown engraved with her initials. “He had it made to order,” she'd told them. She was wearing her buttercup-yellow suede jacket, the one that set off her dark hair so well, and she was carrying a small suitcase. She looked over her shoulder at Chris.

“You idiot! Well, just don't stand there, come in.”

Chris stepped automatically across the threshold and Prin shut the door.

“I should have guessed. You've been mooning around all year and lately you've looked like Mona Lisa.”

Chris was having trouble getting any words out. Finally she said, “Where's Sandy? And why do you have a key to his apartment?” The last question had almost lodged in her throat, like food about to go down the wrong way.

“He's not here.” Prin walked down the short hall and
sat in the big chair by the window. She was obviously very much at home. She lit one of her cigarettes and for the first time Chris felt nauseous.

“Haven't you heard people talking about Sandy? They call him ‘LaFleur the deflowerer'? He's humped more Pelham students than the entire Harvard senior class. Make that Yale, too. He was tutoring you, right?” She laughed. “We had a brief fling freshman year—I didn't fall for the tutoring business, though, and that impressed him. We stayed friends and friends help friends. I've been signing out to his apartment and using it at times ever since. A convenient location, and if anyone checked up, which they haven't, he's my uncle with my highly respectable aunt on my mother's side conveniently at Symphony or shopping when the phone might ring. Yesterday he called in his marker and asked me to take care of this.”

Chris had stopped listening after the word
humped
. That wasn't what they did, what she did. They were in love.

“He wants to marry me. He loves me.”

“Has he asked you?” Prin shoved her ring in Chris's face. It looked sharp and dangerous.

Chris didn't say anything. Her whole body felt numb and heavy. She wanted to go to bed—to sleep, to sleep for a very long time. Yet thoughts like brutal bumper cars kept crashing into her brain. Those Tuesdays and Thursdays—what kind of social work was Sandy doing? The incense yesterday—what was it masking? And yes, it
had
been his car in front of the apartment.

Prin put out her cigarette in an ashtray that Chris
had never seen on the table next to the chair, and stood up.

“Now, we've got to get going or we'll miss the shuttle.”

“Shuttle?”

“As in airplane.” Prin sounded exasperated. “Look.” Her tone softened slightly. “It's early, right? Well, never mind. They'll figure it all out. But we have to get going. I told Mrs. Archer that my parents are taking us to a charity event and that Jackie O. will be at our table. I knew that would do it, Mrs. A. is such a celeb whore. I said I just found out and sent you into town to buy a dress. In the rush, you forgot to sign out. Not to worry, she said. When we get back, I'll tell her there was a bomb threat or something, so the Secret Service of course wouldn't allow Jackie anywhere near the place.”

The part of Chris that was listening was amazed at Prin's inventiveness.

“Come on, I called a cab ages ago and it should be waiting.”

Prin was taking her home, to New York. Chris had absorbed that much. To cheer her up?

In the plane before she settled down with the new issue of
Vogue,
Prin had said, “He gave you that bullshit Southern line, ‘Cher this' and ‘Shug that.' Right? Maybe he is from a Big Easy, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was on the banks of the Hudson, as in Hoboken, rather than the Mississippi.”

Chris closed her eyes and made herself sleep. She crossed her arms low over her belly.

At La Guardia, Prin pushed Chris into another cab. It was rush hour and the drive into the city took forever.
Prin fumed. Chris felt dazed, as if she was still partly asleep and wasn't taking any notice of how much time was passing.

“We'll miss our appointment!”

“What appointment?”

“Don't worry about it. Before you know it your problem will be taken care of and you can go back to your flowerpots.”

Chris was not familiar with New York City. Growing up, she'd made trips with her family for Broadway shows, special exhibits at the museums, and a few, carefully selected sights. Looking out the cab window, she didn't see anything remotely resembling the Empire State Building or Bonwit Teller. And the neighborhood they were in didn't resemble East Seventy-first Street where her mother's college roommate had a town house, the place they always had stayed. Prin told the cab to stop, and when they got out, she said, “Wait here, keep the meter running; we could be a while. There'll be a good tip, I promise.”

This couldn't be where the Princes lived, Chris thought. They were extremely wealthy, and the reason Mrs. Archer had bought Prin's story was because they did travel in the same circles as the former first lady. And why did Prin tell the cab driver to wait?

Prin pressed the button next to the door, and they were buzzed in. Chris immediately turned around. The entry smelled of urine and something else, something worse. She was very, very frightened and grabbed Prin's arm.

“Where are we? What's going on!”

“Don't worry. I'm here. I'm going to make sure
you're all right. I could have just sent you alone. Now come on. It's only one flight up.”

On the next floor, Prin pushed open a door. It was glass, but the kind you couldn't see through. There was no name on it. Inside was what looked like a doctor's waiting room, but a doctor who had picked up his furniture from the curb. Nothing matched and the seats on several of the chairs were split. A woman who appeared to be in her late thirties was sitting at a desk, smoking, and reading a newspaper. Prin walked over to her, holding tightly to Chris's hand, as she'd been doing since they left the cab.

“She's next and I'll be keeping her company,” she said, handing a manila envelope to the woman.

“Take a number and sit down.” She barely looked up.

Chris hadn't been looking at the people in the room, and now she realized they were all women, about ten or more. Some were young, two even younger than she was, others older. One woman seemed to be her mother's age.

“No, now,” Prin said. Her voice was the voice of someone who always got her own way. She put a fifty-dollar bill on the newspaper. The woman looked up.

“Okay, now.” She pointed to one of two doors behind her.

Prin pulled Chris along. Chris's feet felt like lead. She mustn't go through the door. She mustn't! The door closed behind her and from very far away she heard Prin saying, “You're going to have to knock her out.” Chris braced for a blow, but a man lifted her roughly onto an examining table. He was wearing a white coat like a doctor, but it wasn't clean. There were some red
stains on it. She tried to get off the table, but Prin was holding her down on one side and someone else on the other.

“It's for your own good,” Prin said. “Relax.”