The Prodigal Son (36 page)
Authors: Colleen McCullough
“Believe me, Millie, you are.
You are!
Your endometrium is virtually solid scar tissue. Think about it — think! When you dislodge a fetus you interfere with a natural process. If the pregnancy is early enough, there are no sequelae. But I’m guessing that the first two or three of your pregnancies were well along before you acted, because the indications are that you suffered post-abortion hemorrhages, infections — you’re lucky to have lived.” He paused, then spoke in a sterner voice. “You’re a sitting duck for a uterine cancer, Millie. I must recommend hysterectomy.”
“I can conceive, and I will conceive,” she said.
“And if you do, it will go the same way as this one. You can’t carry a child to full term or anywhere near that, Millie.”
“I refuse to have a hysterectomy,” she said.
“It’s your choice, my dear. I’ve given you my opinion, and I suggest you get a second opinion, even a third. Don’t make up your mind to anything until then,” Dr. Solomon said.
He sat back on his chair, upset, impotent, unable to sway or to help her. “I know how big a blow this is, my dear, but it isn’t the end of the world. No one is entitled to apportion blame, least of all me. Try to see this as having some purpose you just can’t glimpse yet. And talk it over with your husband. Be open about it, then send him to see me.”
But Millie wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t respond. Half an hour later Dr. Solomon gave up, wondering how he could have
handled it better. Even for a physician of his experience, the Hunter situation was unusual enough to be uncertain how to proceed. A ghetto doctor would have had more insight.
After he had gone Millie lay back, the “No Visitors” sign still on her door, grateful for the privacy that gave her. She didn’t cry, having wept all her tears, it seemed, during those nights worrying and wondering what had happened to kill her baby.
Like Gettysburg after the battle up there … What was wrong with parents, that they closed their eyes to the most enormous drives of adolescence? That the only advice they could give was to “be a good girl”? What if you met a Jim, and you couldn’t be a good girl? Did they tell you how to look after yourself on, say, your thirteenth birthday, as a rite of passage? No. Why? Because virginity rules. Guys can play around, girls have to go to the marriage bed with hymen intact. So either you were a good girl, or a disgraced one.
Her mind wandered, but with purpose: to retrace her history with Jim. We heavy petted through the Holloman years, then we consummated those four terrible years of anguish in such a cataclysm of passion I can still feel it now. But Jim could never get the rubbers on without tearing them, so I kept conceiving. At first I didn’t know what was happening to me, so I left things far too late. We had no idea what to do. A mixed-blood baby then would have brought our careers crashing, that was how we saw it, and I couldn’t be spared to have it and then put it up for adoption. Jim
needed
me. What was the year? 1955. How resourceful Jim was, even then. He consulted the professional whores, asked them where they went, how much it cost. We paid twenty dollars to an old Jamaican woman on the West Side — home of the Catholic Hispanics, plenty of business there. I was four months gone, it was a nightmare … Next time we went elsewhere. No better.
Suddenly Millie felt weary almost to death; the anxiety taking its toll. She dozed, woke minutes later with John Hall’s face in front of her confused eyes. John! How kind he was, how sympathetic, how much on my side. Able to listen to Jim on the subject of long-chain molecules, but also happy to listen to me on the subject of birth control, how impossible it was, how much I dreaded falling pregnant. I was so exactly right for John! His problem wasn’t homosexuality, it was asexuality. A vicarious participant in life, that was John. He adored Jim and me as only a man without sexual urges could. What made Jim his enemy was Jim’s sudden realization that John thought my troubles as fascinating as Jim’s. The famous incident of the pearls … Just Jim’s jealousy and possessiveness. I wonder whose version Carmine believes, mine, or Jim’s? The real one saw us leave for Chicago immediately afterward, exactly as Jim said. I put it back six months to make it appear less significant. Everything for Jim has been the story of my life since I turned fifteen.
Like Gettysburg after the battle up there … Why didn’t it occur to me that there would be scar tissue? That I was ruining the riches of a substrate designed to nurture the fetus?
She dozed again, and when she woke the image of Gettysburg had gone. The book loomed in her mind. When she had the idea, she was convinced it was the answer. If Jim Hunter wrote about his discoveries for the layman, it would be a fascinating trek into the unknown for people who had no concept how exciting that unknown was, how exhilarating, how filled with the mysteries at the very roots of life. Naturally he would never have thought of it for himself, but once she proposed the idea to him, he saw its potential at once. Yes, yes! A popular book! Thank you, Millie, thank you for seeing a way out of our hell.
The frantic act of writing it, hammering away at the old IBM while she kept feeding his ego, chapter after chapter, until the six-hundred-page manuscript was done to fifth draft. Oh, the hilarious sessions as they tossed titles around until he had found the one he liked:
A Helical God
. His own choice.
Was it the book precipitated her downfall, or the horrific consequences of tetrodotoxin? Four murders! Captain Carmine Delmonico, her own close cousin, was certain that Jim was responsible for them — Jim!
Came a light knock on the door; Jim appeared. “Does the sign extend to me?” he asked, smiling, his hands full of white roses almost into full bloom.
Her arms went out in welcome. “Never in a million years.”
“Has Dr. Solomon been yet?”
How much do I tell him? “Yes.”
“What’s the story?”
“Apparently my womb needs a thorough rest, sweetheart. No sex for quite a while, I’m afraid. Can you bear it?”
His eyes were full of love. “What a question to ask! Sure I can bear it, for however long it takes. Are you okay?”
“I’m very well, but womb tissue takes some time to heal — Dr. Solomon explained it simply for the ignoramus I am. Sooner or later you’ll have to see him, but there’s no urgency,” she said lightly. “Be warned! Biochemists know as much about these things as accountants do.”
“I’ll see him whenever he wants.” He looked anxious. “The publicity tour, Millie. Will you be able to go?”
“Definitely,” said Millie comfortably. “I refuse to abandon you to the wiles of Pamela. Dreadful, isn’t she?”
“Like a very sour lemon dipped in chocolate.”
D
avina gazed around her contemporary living room in satisfaction. It looked its best, certain chairs banished, other chairs fetched from different rooms, or newly purchased. The moment that supercilious bitch Pamela Devane set eyes on this room, she would have to admit that Connecticut too was capable of producing innovative interiors and design.
Uda came in, dragging her feet. Vina’s eyes narrowed.
“You’ve been looking in the water bowl and it wasn’t good,” Davina said, not in English. “Tell me!”
“I have seen disaster,” said Uda, not in English.
“
Disaster?
What? Where? When?”
The flat face seemed flatter, as if a veil of Saran wrap had been drawn tightly across it. “I cannot see, Vina.”
“Then look again!”
“It is not our disaster, that is the problem. It touches us, but not malignly. Looking again will not help.”
Davina had relaxed. “As long as it isn’t our disaster, I can rest. It is not the success of the book?”
“No. The success of the book benefits.”
“Alexis?”
“Is a brilliant light in the sky above a field of utter desolation. Untouched, perfect. It is not Max either. I told you, Vina, it is not our disaster.”
“Then I can go ahead with my party tomorrow?”
“Oh, yes. It will be a triumph, even though you have acted stupidly in asking that woman policeman to come,” Uda said.
Davina looked shocked. “
Stupid?
It is you who is stupid! Sergeant Carstairs is a socialite as well as a policeman. No one in Holloman ever has a party without inviting the aristocratic niece of the Silvestris! It was I who was mistaken, Uda, when I first met her and told her how to dress. Delia Carstairs is a famous eccentric.”
“You can’t say that about Captain Delmonico’s giant wife,” said Uda sulkily.
“She is a famous heroine,” said Davina patiently, “and this is not a party for ‘Mayflower’ descendants, though there will be two of them as well.” She looked brisk. “Mine is a delightful preview of the book’s launch on Wednesday, but with better food, better drink, and far more comfortable surroundings. Chubb will hire the same old firm of caterers, whereas I have Uda, the chef supreme. The food?”
“Includes tiny curry buns, choux pastry with a four-cheese custard, miniature crepes rolled on caviar and sour cream, crab
cakes with a sweet dipping sauce, lobster vol-au-vents, big shrimps deep-fried in sponge batter —”
“Excellent!” cried Davina, cutting her off. “How many have accepted, especially the important ones?”
“All the important ones are coming. Nineteen.”
“What about Lily?”
“Lily will be here, but helping me and the barman.”
“Excellent! Tell her to leave her diamonds at home.”
T
hat it was April Fools’ Day was of no moment to the Savoviches, whose superstitions ran more to evil eyes and curses, and the nineteen guests forebore to mention the fact, correctly deducing that Davina’s party was no prank.
Angela M.M. arrived with Betty Howard and Gloria Silvestri; when all twenty women were assembled, everyone agreed that the palm for best-dressed had, as always, to go to Gloria, wearing a plain purple wool dress, the exact color of Chubb’s purple. A seething Pamela Devane, also in purple, had to admit that hers was the wrong shade, the wrong cut, the wrong everything. What did that woman do, to create her magic? It all hinged, Pamela decided resentfully, on a huge brooch of haphazard amethyst crystals artfully positioned on her left hip just to one side of an enviably flat tummy. To rub it in, Gloria had clipped a matching amethyst earring just to one side of the middle of each purple kid shoe.
“The Duchess of Windsor would eat her heart out,” Delia said to Millie, chuckling.
“Who?” asked Millie, no follower of fashion.
“Reputedly the world’s best-dressed woman. My vote goes to Aunt Gloria, who doesn’t even spend a fortune on her clothes. She makes them herself. Just sees something in a fashion paper or magazine, and copies it perfectly.”
“Isn’t that stealing?”
“Not after it’s out in the public arena, dear. You steal designs before they’re shown,” said Delia. “Speaking of clothes, you look wonderful yourself.”
“I went to Fifth Avenue,” Millie confessed, “and spent what I would have deemed a fortune a month ago.” She gazed around, frowning. “Why are we here, exactly?”
“Davina’s way of checking the temperature of the water after the revelations that came out at Uda’s trial. Invite a goodly representation of Holloman and Chubb’s important women to a girls-only shindig, and see how many accept. If they all do — and I see they have! — then her social position is not only safe, but subtly exalted. The town’s women have decided that Davina and Uda are unsung heroines.”
“Even if one of them committed murder?”
“There’s not an atom of proof of that, dear. Not according to twelve good souls and true. They’re safe and they’re
in
.”
“I thought Desdemona was coming.”
“Two boys under the age of three can ruin any mother’s plans. She’s having sitter troubles.”
Lily Tunbull appeared bearing a tray; Millie and Delia
helped themselves to little china plates — no cardboard crap for Davina! Thin, delicate china too.
Matching.
“You should be a guest,” Delia said to Lily.
Who blushed. “No, no, I couldn’t stand that! I like to keep busy, I don’t know anyone here, and I’m learning all Uda’s best recipes. Take the tiny crepes, they’re divine. And the four-cheese puffs. The lobster vol-au-vents are heaven, the pastry is made from scratch — on
butter
!”
Plates loaded, they found two chairs and sat. Hester Grey and Fulvia Friedkin from C.U.P. joined them.
“Davina is a wonder,” Hester said.
Delia was biting into a crepe. “Caviar!” she exclaimed. “Delicious! Millie, eat up. Then we can be unashamed piggies and stack our plates again. And yes,” she said to Hester, “Davina is a wonder. I’m memorizing the food to tell Desdemona.”
“Desdemona?”
“Delmonico. A friend, and a formidable cook.”
“What prompted Davina to give this party?” Fulvia asked.
Hester tittered. “One in the eye for Jim’s publicist, Pamela Devane. That’s her, in the wrong purple dress. Very snooty to us provincials — as if New York City wasn’t a mere commute away. I’m not fond of Davina, but compared to Pamela, she’s heaven. She also has Uda.”
“I guess no one expects to be poisoned today,” said Millie.
“Absolutely not,” mumbled Delia, eating deliriously. She looked at Hester. “Why aren’t you fond of Davina?”
“Too pushy.” Hester sighed. “I did my training in textbook design under Head Scholar Walter Bingham — the one before
Don Carter. His ideas were extremely conservative, and we didn’t publish scientific work then. I’ve kept to his tenets, whereas Davina’s ideas are
modern
. I admit she’s right about things like explanatory illustrations and clearer layout, but I can’t do it!”
“Utter nonsense, my dear!” said Delia bracingly. “You’re by no means an old woman — bite the bullet and go with the times! Just sweep out your mind. Davina has a child, she’ll have less and less to do with her firm in years to come. Prepare to be her replacement, rather than be squashed by another import.”
“Good advice I echo,” said Fulvia. “You’re a mouse Hester — learn to be a rat! University presses are looking at bigger markets because more people are doing degrees, and the need for texts is mushrooming. Delia’s right, change your mind-set.”
