Net of Jewels

by Ellen Gilchrist

“Honey,” my father said. “Just answer his questions.”

  “When was your last period?” The doctor handed me a calendar and I picked out a date and pointed to it. Then the nurse came into the room and handed me a glass of water and two white pills. I swallowed them and looked at my daddy. He was sitting with his hands on his knees. He was with me. He was there. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “Uncle James said we could trust this man.”

  Then the nurse took me into a room and I undressed and she put a robe on me and helped me up onto a table. She put my feet into the stirrups and tied a belt around my waist. “So you won’t fall,” she said. “It won’t take long. It only takes a few minutes.” She held my hand while the pills began to have an effect. The ceiling began to seem very far away and very pretty. The hum of a machine somewhere seemed like music. It seemed like Ravel. It was “Pavanne for a Dead Princess” but I wasn’t going to die. My daddy was in the other room. He wouldn’t let anything happen to me.

  The doctor came into the room. He stood between my parted legs with a mask tied around his face. He spread my legs apart and put something cold inside of me and it hurt a very small bit for a second. The nurse squeezed my hand. “It’s all right,” she said. “You’re doing fine.”

  “It will only take a minute,” the doctor said. “Don’t move if you can help it.”

  “You are doing a great service to mankind,” I repeated. “I think you’re wonderful. I think you are a wonderful man.”

  When I woke up my daddy was with me and he took my arm and led me out into the hallway and down the elevator and we got back into a taxi and drove through the streets of Houston. The sun was brilliant. There was the sound of a million crickets in the taxicab. A million crickets in a million sycamore trees and all of them were singing. “I don’t have to have a baby. I don’t have to have a baby. I don’t have to die.”

  Daddy took me to the hotel and put me into a bed and I slept for hours. Once I woke up in the night and he was sitting on a chair beside my bed. He gave me a drink of water and another pill and I continued to sleep until the sun was high in the sky and it was another day. There was a tray of food on a table beside the bed and Daddy brought it to me and fed it to me bite by bite. I got out of the bed and went into the bathroom to urinate. There was a wad of gauze inside me and I sort of remembered something about it.

  “He said not to take that packing out of your body,” Daddy called out. It was the first time in my life he had ever referred to my body as anything but a tool to use for athletics. He came and stood by the bathroom door and repeated it in a gentle voice. “Sister, he left some packing inside of you and he said to tell you not to take it out.”

  “Okay.” I came back out into the room and he put me back in the bed and sat on a chair beside me while I picked at the food.

  The next morning we got on an airplane and flew back home. We flew to Nashville and got the car and drove the rest of the way. “I want to go by the house on Finley Island on our way into town,” Daddy said, when we were almost to Dunleith. “Uncle James drove up from Mobile. He’s going to stay out there until we’re sure you’re all right. He said you might need some penicillin and he wants to be here to give it to you if you do.”

  “Sure. That’s fine. Let’s go. He’s going to stay out there?”

  “Just act like everything’s normal. Nobody’s going to know anything and nobody needs to. They’re having a picnic out there today for the family so we’ll just slip in and tell them we had a good time driving to the mines. Just keep your mouth shut and say we had a nice trip.”

  “I’m glad he’s here. I’m glad he came. I pulled that wad of gauze out of me, Daddy. When we stopped at that filling station to get some gas. I meant to tell you about it . . .”

  “Well, tell Uncle James about it. He’ll know what to do.” Daddy turned off the highway and onto the asphalt road leading to the old summer house he had bought on the Tennessee River at a place called Finley Island. The yard was full of cars. All my cousins from Aberdeen were there and people from Dunleith. They were having a party. We drove up in the yard and parked the car and got out and started walking toward the house. My father’s younger brother James came down through the crowd and took my arm. “Let’s walk down to the river, Rhoda,” he said. “I haven’t seen you in so long.”

  “I’m fine. I’m perfectly all right.”

  “Well, just come walk with me and tell me about it.” He pulled me along a little path that led down through the woods to the river. He had his hand on my arm. I loved my Uncle James. I loved his hands, which were always unbelievably clean and white.

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  “There’s nothing to tell. They put me up on an examining table and gave me some pills and then they did it. I had a wad of gauze inside me but it came out. I’ve got a Kotex on now. I’m bleeding but not too much, I think.”

  “How much?”

  “Not too much. I’ve had this Kotex on for about an hour and I guess it’s still okay. You want me to go look?”

  “No. That’s all right. You aren’t hemorrhaging?”

  “I don’t think so. Listen, he was a real doctor, Uncle James. There was a nurse there and everything. Do you think I need some penicillin? I’ll take it if you want me to. Maybe I should take some just in case.”

  “No, I think you’re fine for now. I’m going to stay for a week. Tell me this, did the doctor do any tests to see if you were pregnant?”

  “I was pregnant. I was throwing up every morning.”

  “But you didn’t have tests made?”

  “No. How could I? They might have found out and put me in jail. This way they can’t prove it.” I shook my head. I stopped on the path. He was making me mad now. Why couldn’t we just leave it alone?

  “I doubt if you were pregnant, Rhoda. You can’t be sure if you didn’t have a test. Do me a favor, honey.” He put his hand back on my arm. “Let’s tell your daddy you weren’t sure. I think you imagined you were pregnant because you were so frightened of it.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter whether I was or not. I had to save my life. Do you think I need some penicillin? I think I ought to take some. To make sure I don’t get blood poisoning or something.”

  “No. That’s all right. It’s all right, Rhoda.”

  “Well, I’m going to change Kotex and put on my bathing suit. I haven’t had any fun for about a thousand weeks.” I backed away from him. I was sick of all of this. Sick of the abortion and sick of talking about it. I went into the summer house and found my suitcase, which my father had brought up onto the porch. I went into the bathroom and took off the bloody Kotex and put a tampon inside my body instead and found a washcloth and washed all the blood off my legs. Then I put on my new bathing suit and admired myself in the mirror for a while and then I went outside to see if my mother had arrived with my babies.

  Chapter

  32

  I healed in a hurry. I always healed in a hurry. Within a week I had completely stopped bleeding and even went out to the country club one night and started swimming laps. The water was cold and clear and I pretended I was training to swim the English Channel. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, I chanted as I swam. I saw the shores of France. I saw the cheering crowds, heard the bands, saw the banners waving.

  “Rhoda.” It was Charles William, standing by the ladder at the shallow end. “Come out of there. I want to see you.” I heaved myself up over the side and ran to him and stood dripping water on his bare feet. “Charles William, thank God you’re here. I’ve been trying and trying to call you but it didn’t answer. How are you? What’s been going on? Hand me a towel, will you?” He picked up several towels from a stack on a chair and watched as I dried myself.

  “We went to Cincinnati to see a house. I heard there was a sighting. Are you leaving him again? Is this a separation or a visit? I can’t wait to know.” He was laughing, standing with his feet splayed out and his hands on his hips. “You haven�
��t even seen the house we bought in Fairfields. It’s the house the Morgans lived in, Dee. We went crazy in New York buying chandeliers. When can you come out? Can you come tomorrow?”

  “I had an abortion. I went to Houston, Texas, and did it. It was to save my life.” I sat down on a chair still holding the towels.

  “Oh, Dee, I’m so sorry. Does Malcolm know?”

  “Of course not. He’d kill me if he knew. So now I can’t ever go back to him. Thank God. It was great, Charles William. It was the best thing I ever did in my life. I didn’t care if I died as long as I didn’t have to have another baby.”

  “The things that happen to you, Dee. My God. Are you all right?”

  “I saved my life. That’s all that matters to me. Don’t tell anyone though. Mother doesn’t know. She thinks we went to the coal mines.”

  “Have you told anyone else?”

  “No. Why would I?”

  “Because you always tell everything. I’ve never known you to keep a secret.”

  “There is a biological necessity for truth, Charles William. There is. I read that somewhere. But you’re right, I can’t tell this, can I? Unless I want to go to jail.”

  “Let’s go inside and have a drink, Dee. Did you bring any clothes?”

  “I have some in the locker room. I’ll get dressed and meet you in the bar.” I stood up beside him. Then I threw myself into his arms. He held me like a child, very very tenderly. “It was so terrible,” I said finally. “So scary and terrible. I haven’t been happy in so long. Haven’t laughed or had fun. I want the world to change, Charles William. It has to get better for me.”

  “It will, Dee. You’re home now. Stay here with us. We’ll make it good together. You can come out to Fairfields and spend the weekend and we’ll listen to music. I have all the Mahler symphonies now. They sound wonderful in those long halls. Oh, you haven’t even seen the house.”

  “Keep on hugging me. Don’t let go of me for a while.” I leaned into the comfort of his chest. His big soft body was so endearing, so comforting. My friend, my true and beloved friend. “Am I bad?” I asked. “Am I terrible? Am I an evil person?”

  “Of course not, Dee. You’re just in the wrong place somehow. You’re not supposed to be where you are. I worry all the time about having introduced you to Malcolm. I keep thinking it’s my fault.”

  “Where is Davie? Does he still come to see you?”

  “He’s here. He’s in business with me. My partner. You didn’t know?”

  “She doesn’t care?”

  “She doesn’t know, Dee. Or if she knows, she pretends it isn’t true. I think she’s happy. I take care of her. I give her everything she needs.”

  “I love you, Charles William. I don’t care anymore what you do.”

  “That’s what love might be. I keep dreaming it could be that.”

  “What?”

  “Just being happy with someone as they are. Not wanting them to change for you.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever have it.”

  “What?”

  “Love, anything to depend on. Of course, there’s Momma and Daddy and I have the boys and my brothers. That’s a lot, don’t you think? I mean, I’m really lucky to have them, don’t you agree?”

  “If that’s what you want.” He stood back from me, holding my hands, his feet splayed out in that ridiculous flat-footed position which made him look like a tree, a great wide-leafed oak tree, so solid and real and planted, here, in this world that he had inhabited every day of his early life and had come back to. He had been bom in the Dunleith General Hospital on the first day of March, nineteen hundred and thirty-seven, and he would die there fifty-five years later almost to the day. “I’m working on a third of a heart,” he told me when he called. “But don’t worry, Dee. They’re going to do some more tests this afternoon. I’m sure I’ll get a better report tomorrow.”

  “Call me,” I had said. “Call me the minute you find out.”

  “I will,” he answered, but of course he never did. Davie called instead and woke me with the news. “He died trying to bum a cigarette from a nursing student,” Davie said. “Isn’t that divine?”

  “Did she give it to him?” I asked. “Was she going to? Was she even tempted?”

  * * *

  “What do you mean?” I answered him now, pulling my hands away, reaching for another towel to dry my hair. “Of course it’s what I want. What should I want? They’re my babies. They’re my family. They’re all I have.”

  “You need someone to love. Someone to sleep with. You’re a Pisces, Dee. You have to have a lover.”

  “Well, it won’t be Malcolm Martin. I’d rather never do it again than get pregnant. That abortion was so wonderful. I’d like to have one every day. I’d get married again if I could marry Dr. Van Zandt.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to set you off. I know you had a bad time. Well, get dressed and meet me in the bar. Let’s have a drink, for God’s sake. Come on, Dee, it’s over now. Let me see you smile.” He tucked his chin and smiled out at me over the steel-rimmed glasses he had procured in England from the National Health Service. I started getting tickled. Also, I started thinking about gin martinis. As always, in his presence my resolve not to drink melted like snow in July.

  I went down to the dressing room and put on my clothes and combed my wet chlorinated hair and went upstairs and met him in the bar and we ordered martinis on the rocks. We were sitting side by side on the bar stools way down at the end of the bar by the slot machine. “Irise hit the jackpot the first time she ever put a quarter in it,” Charles William said. “She has never played it since. She wouldn’t even put a quarter back in after she won. She wouldn’t put in the obligatory quarter.”

  “My God. That’s perfect. That’s her perfect personality. That’s exactly what she would do.”

  “I put it in for her. Sissy was here and May Garth. Twenty people saw it. She stuck one quarter in. The machine had only been out here about a week and she hit the jackpot. Quarters were rolling out everywhere. There was a golf tournament and the bar was packed and everyone was picking them up and handing them to her.”

  “How much was it?” The bartender had put the martinis down in front of us. I picked up my olive and ate it. I raised my glass. “To us. For living to be here. Thank God you’re here.” Charles William raised his glass and touched mine with it and we began to drink.

  “It was two hundred and seventy-four dollars and fifty cents. She stacked it all up on the bar and left it there for hours. We were having drinks before dinner. She left it there until we got ready to leave. Then she put it in a sack and took it home. I don’t know what she did with it. I never asked her.”

  “She’s perfect. She’s always what she seems to be. Always the same. She’s a perfect little doll.”

  “Well, not perfect, Dee. Sometimes she’s disagreeable.”

  “When? Every time I’ve ever seen her she’s perfect.”

  “She gets mad at me.”

  “Well, it never shows. When Malcolm gets mad at me he makes everyone uncomfortable for miles around. Thank God I never have to live with him again. It wasn’t even his baby, Charles William. I think it belonged to this guy who owns a newspaper. I don’t know whose it was. God, you don’t know what I’ve been through.” I finished my drink and started in on a second one. “Listen.” I lowered my voice. “I had to fuck this old fat doctor to get the name of the abortionist. I did it. I swear I did.” I sat back, let it sink in. “No one’s killing me. That’s that. I did what I had to do.”

  He shook his head. He finished his first martini and drank half his second one. It was hard to shock Charles William but I thought maybe I had finally done it.

  “Where did you fuck him?” he asked. “Where’d you go?”

  “In his office on the examining table. Then we went into another room and did it on a bed. You know what he said? He said I had the strongest legs he’d ever seen on a girl. He said my legs were a miracle of nature
.” I started laughing then. I reached out my hands and put them on Charles William’s knees and we laughed so hard the bartender came and stood by us to get in on the fun. “Get me some goddamn quarters,” I declared. “I’m playing this goddamn slot machine. And get us some more martinis. You don’t know it, but I’m lucky to be alive.”

  * * *

  Six martinis later we got into our cars and drove drunkenly home through the deserted streets of town. The streetlights moved the shadows of the leaves along the streets. I crouched down behind the wheel singing songs to myself. Singing Oklahoma, the entire score, then singing, “How High the Moon.”

  When I got home I went into the den and started calling people to tell them about my abortion. First I called Robert Haverty in Alexandria. “Can Hilton hear me?”

  “No. She’s in the other room.”

  “I have to talk to you. Something terrible happened. I have to tell you about it.”

  “What is it?”

  “I got pregnant. From that night I spent with you. I aborted the baby, Robert. I had to do it. I couldn’t ruin both our lives. I did it in Houston, Texas. My daddy took me.”

  “Oh, God. I’m sorry. Jesus. Look, I’ll call you tomorrow and talk about it. I’m really sorry. In a lot of ways. Are you all right?”

  “No. But I will be. I’m sorry I had to do it. So sorry to have to tell you.”

  “I’m sorry too. Wait a minute. Here’s Hilton. It’s Rhoda Martin, Hilton. She wants to talk to you. We’ll come and visit you sometime, Rhoda. Or you come here. Come to see us. Is Malcolm in town? I heard he was leaving.”

  “He hasn’t called me. He said he was going back to South Carolina. Is he there? Have you seen him?”

  “No, but Hilton has. Here, I’ll put her on.”

  “Rhoda, it’s Hilton. I saw Malcolm last week at the grocery store. He’s still here. Is it all over then? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I guess I am.” I was starting to cry. “Oh, God, he was so cold. He drove me crazy. He didn’t even love me.”

  “I’m so sorry. Is there anything we can do? Do you want to come and see us and talk to him?”