The Tight White Collar (20 page)

“Then I should have to give up the idea of finishing school,” he said at last. “I'd have to get a job.”

“But what about your father?” asked Lorraine. “Wouldn't he take care of us?”

He turned and looked at her, astonished.

“I'd never ask him to do that,” he said.

“Darling!” Her laughter rang out in the small room. “I
adore
you when you look so tragic.” She stretched slowly, until her body formed an arc of whiteness. “You big silly. I won't have a baby. I was only teasing you.”

“How do you know you won't?” asked Jess.

She stopped stretching and let herself relax with a sigh.

“Jess, darling, for a medical student you're awfully dumb,” she said. “It's the wrong time of the month for me to get that way.”

“Oh,” said Jess stupidly.

He left her just as daylight began to show over the housetops and for some reason he felt rather like a character in a novel as he watched the roofs of Boston turn pink.

“Goodbye, darling,” he said. “I love you. Sleep now, and I'll call you this afternoon.”

He felt strong and powerful enough to walk all the way to Cambridge. He strode down Beacon Street, smiling, thinking of how wonderful it was to have a girl like Lorraine who adored him, who had given herself to him and who would marry him in five years.

Spring came too quickly. Jess was with Lorraine every day now, but he hated the thought of the approaching summer that would take him away from her. His grades began to suffer and he grew thin from lack of sleep.

“I never thought I'd actually live through a cliché,” Harkinson said. “But here I am, watching you, Jess, dig yourself into a sweet little mess. And with a girl like Lorraine Jennings. Why, she's laid half of Harvard and all of B.D. and M.I.T.”

Jess struck him on the mouth but Harkinson only shook his head sorrowfully.

“You poor bastard,” he said.

Jess and Lorraine still sat in movie theaters and restaurants and held hands and once Jess took her to hear the Boston Symphony but she was bored before the program was half over so they left and she took him to a place on Scollay Square where a stripper did tricks with tassels. Occasionally they went to her apartment.

“I
adore
you,” said Lorraine.

“And I love you, darling,” said Jess. “I love you enough to wait until after we're married. That first time was a mistake.”

“Are you crazy?” she demanded, and then her voice softened when she saw his shocked expression. “Darling,” she said, “I love you and I want you. I have to have you touch me, I love you so much. Listen, we'll be careful. It'll be all right.”

Jess held her and kissed her until they were both breathless and he was sure that no one had ever felt as he did when he carried her to the couch and undressed her, when he made her pant and moan and cry out. He never realized how like clockwork were these exciting little tricks of Lorraine's, and he never tired of the things she said, time after time after time.

“I
adore
you,” she said.

And, “Take me, darling. I belong to you.”

And, “Darling, darling, darling.”

“Won't it be wonderful when you're a doctor?” asked Lorraine. “Then you can set up an office in New York and we'll find a gorgeous apartment and go to nightclubs every night.”

Jess laughed and rubbed her neck. “Doctors don't go to nightclubs every night,” he said. “They go to bed early and sleep with one eye and both ears on the telephone. And I'd be out of place in New York. No, no big cities for me. I'm going in with my father.”

“But, darling,” she protested. “What would we
do
in that tiny little town of yours?”

She pouted in a fashion that Jesse found adorable and he reached out a finger and touched her bottom lip.

“Do I have to tell you?” he grinned.

Suddenly it was June, and without warning Jess first, Lorraine quit her job at Jordan's and decided to go to Cape Cod to work at a summer hotel.

“I'll never get through the summer without you,” said Jess.

“Well, you told me yourself that there was always plenty to do in that little old town of yours.”

“Nothing is going to be any good without you,” he said. “Will you write to me? Every single day?”

“Well, as often as I can,” said Lorraine. “Waiting on tables is no picnic, you know.”

“I know, darling,” said Jess. “But it won't be much longer. After we're married you'll never have to work again.”

“Five years,” said Lorraine crossly. “By that time I'll be old and have wrinkles.”

Sick with the prospect of loneliness and with a sense of foreboding, Jess boarded the train at North Station and went home. He looked around Cooper Station and thought, Damn, damn, damn.

The town seemed to have shrunk and everyone he saw seemed narrow and provincial and uninteresting, and worst of all, his father seemed very old and very tired.

Gordon Cameron grunted in earnest now when he sat down and Jess remembered sadly how he had used to be just a short while ago, when Amy Cameron had been alive.

Amy had laughed at Gordon's groaning. “I swear,” she used to say, “you sound like an elephant every time you sit down.”

“It'll be good to have you back when you finish your schooling,” said Gordon to his son. “Not only to take the load off me, but this is one big house for a man alone.”

“I've been meaning to talk to you about that, Dad,” said Jess. “What would you think of my setting up an office of my own when I get through? I mean, an office away from here.”

Gordon Cameron kept his voice carefully casual.

“Got any special place in mind, Jess?” he asked.

“Oh, I don't really know. I thought Boston, maybe. Or New York.”

“Well, son, that's up to you,” said Gordon. “You have a few more years to go before you have to decide. Personally, I can't see practicing in the city. Patients are just sick bodies to a big-city doctor. Up here, they're people. People I know by name and background. People whose fathers I've known and whose kids I know.”

“Besides,” said Jess, arguing with himself. “There's no money in being a general practitioner up around here.”

“Jess,” said Gordon, “this is going to sound hickish as hell to you, but believe me, boy, there's a lot more to doctoring than the money you get.”

“The money you more often don't get,” said Jess. “Why, if everybody who owed you money paid up tomorrow you'd be richer than the Coopers.”

Gordon smiled. “Well, we never starved, you and your mother and I,” he said.

“Oh, it's not just the money,” said Jess. “A man is so limited here. I'll bet there isn't a bigger group of narrow-minded people anywhere in the world than the one we have right here in Cooper Station.”

“What do you mean, ‘narrow minded'?” asked Gordon.

It was a question that always induced a long-winded tirade and now Gordon Cameron only half listened to his son. The boy would not say anything that the doctor had not heard many times before from every townsman who had lived away from Cooper Station for a little while. Gordon worked hard to keep the worry from showing in his face, for he had been watching his son. He had seen him mooning around the house, kicking at the furniture for no reason at all and haunting the area around the mailbox twice a day. Gordon Cameron was afraid.

“. . . and another thing,” Jess was saying. “Of course this is just an example, but just supposing I got friendly with a girl here in Cooper Station—”

Gordon Cameron sat up a little straighter.

“Here in Cooper Station,” said Jess, “if a man dates a girl more than three times it follows that he's sleeping with her and people talk about him over every supper table in town. And when you come right down to it, it's only natural, isn't it? I mean, the natural step after falling in love is for a man to want the girl physically.”

Jess had been speaking very rapidly and now he paused for breath. Gordon made a superhuman effort to keep his face empty of amazement, amusement and pity.

“I think you've got things a little twisted there, Jess,” said Gordon. “Most often what a man feels for a woman is physical first and then later, sometimes, it turns to love.”

“If that's true,” said Jess angrily, “then men are no better than animals.”

“What's the matter, son?” Gordon Cameron asked gently. “You suffering from an attack of conscience?”

“Oh, Dad,” said Jess miserably and began to tell his father.

Gordon listened intently to his son's low voice.

So we failed after all, Amy and I, thought Gordon. We kept him sheltered and happy and close to us and this is the result. We told ourselves that he was the only child we had so it wasn't wrong to keep him so close and to enjoy his growing up. Now Jess is paying for all our years of enjoyment, because I forgot what it was like to be young and away from home and lonely. Oh, Christ.

“She said she'd wait until I was through school and that we'd be married,” Jess was saying.

Gordon Cameron wanted to weep for his son.

I used to be amused, he thought, when Jess listened so intently to our man-to-man talks. With me doing all the talking, I guess. I taught him all about love and consideration and honor, and Jess got the idea that every woman in the world was going to be just like Amy.

“She hates small towns,” said Jess. “She wants to live in the city. She said she'd write as often as she could, but it's been more than two weeks now.”

My son, my son, thought Gordon.

“Perhaps she's ill,” he offered. “Why don't you drive down there and find out?”

But the next day there was a letter for Jess at last and his fingers were numb as he fumbled with the envelope.

“Dear Jess,” he read, “I guess this will come as kind of a surprise to you seeing as how we were so friendly and all while I lived in Boston. Well, Jess, I'm married. I guess it's best to tell you right out straight like that. I met him the very first day I came up here to the Cape. He's a salesman and sells restaurant equipment and he makes very good money at it. Honest, Jess, he just swept me off my feet and I guess I did the same to him. Anyhow, we got married last week and I have quit my job. We are going to live in Boston and have already found an adorable apartment. Well, Jess, I guess that's all I've got to say except that I'm sorry about the way things turned out between us. I guess we were both lonely before and mistook friendship for love. Anyhow, I hope we'll always stay good friends. My married name is Mrs. Walter Paquette and I'm enclosing my new address in case you should want to write to me or stop by the apartment the next time you're in Boston. As always, Lorraine.”

Hopelessly, Jess read the letter over three times, but the words remained the same.
Friendly
. Friendship for love. Friends. He and Lorraine just
friends
.

Jess sat in a wing chair in the living room and waited for the pain to start. It came. It came in great black waves when he thought of his Lorraine in another man's arms, when he thought of her mouth against another man's mouth, saying, “Darling, darling, darling.” He was sure that he would die, and he jumped from his chair and began to pace the floor. Then he went to his father's liquor cabinet and poured himself a large drink of bourbon and he pounded his fist against the doorframe.

How
could
she? Had she forgotten the nights that the two of them had spent in her apartment? Had she forgotten the plans they had made? Had she forgotten how much he loved her?

The answers came to him. Clear, precise and final. She had forgotten, or worse, she had never really cared in the first place. She had never loved him in the first place.

Jess stamped out of the house and began to walk. He walked for miles and came at last to a small hill that looked down on Cooper Station and was isolated and protected all around by a circle of tall pines.

Never again, he vowed silently. I'll never let myself in for anything like this again.

“I'll never touch another woman as long as I live,” Jess shouted to the cloudless sky. And his voice echoed back to him and he sat down and wept.

In the years that followed, Jess laughed at himself many times and to parents who complained to him about the behavior of teenage children he often said, “Don't worry. It passes. I was still an adolescent in my twenties, but I got over it.”

It was almost true. As the years passed he became friendly and slept with and almost loved a great number of women, but something always stopped him at the brink of serious courtship. In the end he always found it easier to leave a woman than to face the possibility of spending a lifetime with her.

“You oughta get married,” said Marie Fennell. “Ain't fittin' a man in your position and all. I remember your sainted mother. This house needs a woman.”

Jess had known Marie all his life. Ever since he could remember she had come to help his mother with the house, and after Amy's death she came every day.

“Why don't you get married yourself, Marie?” he joked. “Fine-looking woman like you shouldn't have any trouble and maybe that'd put an end to your matchmaking tendencies.”

Marie's eyes filled with tears.

“Marie, for God's sake, I was only kidding. What did I say to make you feel like this?”

Marie brushed her hand angrily across her eyes.

“Nothin', Doc,” she said. “You didn't say nothin'. I'm just an old fool.”

Marie was almost fifty now, with a tendency toward stoutness, but once she had been almost beautiful. She had been born Marie Johnson, the daughter of a dairy farmer who owned a farm three miles out of Cooper Station. Sometimes, Marie drank. Not enough to make her drunk. Just enough to blunt the edges of things and make life a little softer and pinker than it really was.