Goodbye, Janette

by Harold Robbins

  “Remember me?” The German accent was faint. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes,” Maurice answered. “It’s been a long time.”

  “I called Madame la Marquise but she was not in. They transferred me to you.”

  “Yes. She had a luncheon appointment.”

  “We should arrange a meeting,” Johann said.

  “Of course,” Maurice answered. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Paris.”

  “Let me check with Tanya and I’ll get back to you,” Maurice said.

  “No, I’ll be moving around too much. Let me call you tomorrow morning about eleven o’clock.”

  “That will be fine,” Maurice said. The telephone went dead in his hand. He stared at it for a moment, then slowly returned it to the desk. He took a cigarette and tried to light it. It wasn’t easy. His hands were shaking.

  ***

  The doctor was silent as he helped her remove her legs from the stirrups on the examination table. He stepped back as she swung around sitting up, her white cotton examination gown falling shapelessly around her.

  “Get dressed,” he said as the nurse moved to help her. “I will see you in my private office in ten minutes.”

  He left the room before she could ask him a question. The nurse opened the small closet in which her clothing had been hung and moved around behind her to untie the strings that held the gown fastened behind her back.

  She was seated in the comfortable leather chair in front of his desk as he came into the small office. Carefully he closed the door behind him and sat down behind the desk, facing her.

  “You look very serious, Doctor Pierre,” she said.

  He nodded. “You’re pregnant.”

  She smiled. “That’s all? I was worried for a moment. We can take care of that.”

  He shook his head. “Not this time.”

  Her voice was shocked. “Why not? We’ve done it before.”

  “You’ve waited too long. The fetus is fully developed. It’s about fifteen weeks old.”

  “Damn,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you come earlier? As you did before? Four, five, six weeks, and there’s no problem.”

  “I was busy,” she said. “Besides I didn’t pay any attention. I skipped several periods many times and it came around.”

  “You were wrong,” he said.

  “I’ve heard of abortions when the fetus was this old,” she said.

  “Yes. But it is very dangerous. Besides, you have several factors militating against it. One, you have had three abortions in the last seven years that I have known you and they haven’t done you any good. Two, you’re not a kid anymore. Thirty-eight, and physiologically speaking, your body is not that strong, neither do your womb and ovaries have the elasticity to withstand a violent shock like that. You could very well rupture and bleed to death before we could even find out what it is we have to repair.”

  She took a deep breath. “Could I have a cigarette?”

  He pushed a pack across the desk and lit it for her. He waited a moment. “The marquis should be pleased.”

  She laughed shortly. “You know better than that, Doctor Pierre. The whole world knows better. They all know what he is. It will be the biggest joke in Paris.”

  “You don’t have any choice,” he said. “Unless you prefer dying.”

  She shook her head slowly.

  “You could go away for awhile,” he said. “Have the child and no one would know.”

  “For how long would I be gone?” she asked.

  He looked at her critically. “You’re not showing yet. With diet you can stay small, and with the right clothes no one would know. Maybe only the last three months.”

  She shook her head violently. “Impossible. I have too much to do. I can’t be away from the business that long. There would be too many problems.”

  “Then I suggest that you have a talk with the marquis and see what you can work out. I’m sure that the two of you can get together on a story that would pass public muster.”

  She laughed. “Maybe the public. But not the world in which we live.”

  “Your life is more important than what people think.”

  She nodded. “That’s the truth.”

  “Do you know the father?”

  She looked at him. “Why do you ask?”

  “It would be helpful if we could get a blood type from him. Just for the RH factor. After all it’s been almost seventeen years since your daughter was born and there could have been many changes in your system.”

  She thought for a moment. She had been with two men that month. But logically it had to be the American. She had been with him steadily the last three weeks of the month she had missed her first period. “Yes,” she answered.

  “Would he give you his blood type?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows? He’s back in America now with his wife and children. I couldn’t write him, it might be embarrassing. I would have to call.”

  “It would be worth the call,” Doctor Pierre said.

  She nodded slowly and started to her feet. “I’ll do it.”

  He rose from his chair. “The nurse will give you a printed diet on the way out. Follow it carefully and you will keep your weight down. You will also get a supplementary list of vitamins and minerals to take every day to maintain your strength and energy. I would like to see you again in about a month.”

  She looked at him. “Are you sure we can’t do an abortion?”

  “It can be done but I don’t advise it,” he said. He met her gaze. “And don’t do anything foolish, because there are nine chances out of ten that you might die.”

  “I won’t do anything foolish, Doctor Pierre,” she said. “I promise.”

  “Good.” He smiled. “And send me the blood type if you get it.” He came around the desk and kissed her on the cheek. “And don’t worry, Tanya. We’ve all been through worse things.”

  She nodded. During the war he had been in a concentration camp. He still bore the numbered tattoo on his arms. Only the fact that he had been a doctor saved him from the gas chambers. Impulsively she kissed his cheek. “That’s true, Doctor Pierre,” she said. “Thank you.”

  ***

  Janette folded the blouse carefully and placed it in the valise, then stepped back. That was the last of the packing. She looked around her room carefully. Satisfied that nothing had been forgotten, she closed the valise and locked it, then placed it on the floor next to the other valise. Tomorrow morning at seven thirty she would be on the train to Switzerland and school.

  She walked back to her desk near the window and called her friend Marie-Thérése. The telephone rang a few times before Marie-Thérése picked it up. As usual, she sounded breathless. “Hello.”

  “I’m finished packing,” Janette said.

  “Oh, God,” Marie-Thérése exclaimed. “I haven’t even started yet.”

  “Would you like me to come over and help you?” Janette asked.

  “I sure would.” Marie-Thérése giggled. “But then we’d never get finished. Like last night.”

  Janette remembered. In the afternoon they had gone to an American movie on the Champs-Elysées. Rebel Without a Cause, featuring a new American star, James Dean. It was the fourth time each of them had seen the movie and it was about American kids just like them. Their parents didn’t understand them either. And there was something about James Dean that reached inside them. All either of them had to do was to close her eyes and she was Natalie Wood being held roughly in James Dean’s arms.

  This time on the way out of the theater, Marie-Thérése had bought a poster of James Dean. He was standing there in tight, worn jeans, skinny hips, and legs slightly bent, his face surly and angry, eyes peering defiantly out at them under a shock of brown-blond hair falling over his eyes. She wanted it for the wall over her bed in school.

  When they got home, Marie-Thérése took a valise from her closet and placed it on the bed. She opened it and
placed the poster, still folded inside. “Might as well begin packing,” she had said.

  Janette nodded. “I’ve already started. One bag is finished and I just have one more to do.”

  Marie-Thérése looked at her. “I wish I could be like you. You’re so organized. I always wind up rushing at the last minute.”

  Janette laughed. “But you always manage to get it done.”

  Marie-Thérése giggled. “Yes. But I don’t know how.” She opened a bureau drawer and took out an armful of underwear and dumped it on the bed next to the valise. She began to separate it into stacks—brassieres, panties, slips. She stared down at them with distaste. “Aren’t they ugly?”

  Janette shrugged her shoulders. White and beige cotton. “It’s regulation,” she said. “The school wants it. We don’t have any choice.”

  “I hate them,” Marie-Thérése said. “I don’t think Jimmy Dean would like these, do you?”

  Janette laughed. “I don’t know what he would like.”

  Marie-Thérése giggled suddenly. “Let’s show them to him and see what he thinks.” She took the poster, opened it up and stuck it against the wall with two thumbtacks. He stared down at the two girls with an angry look. Marie-Thérése picked up a brassiere and panties and held them across her over the front of her dress. “Do you like these, Jimmy?” she asked.

  After a moment she turned to Janette. “See? I told you he would not like them. You take a pair, see if it’s any better.”

  Janette picked up a set and did the same thing that Marie-Thérése had done. Marie-Thérése looked at her, then at the poster, and shook her head. “No better.” She threw the garments back onto the bed. “Stupid school.”

  Janette folded her things neatly and placed them back on the stack from which they had come, then turned to take the poster down from the wall.

  “No,” Marie-Thérése said quickly. “Maybe the reason he does not like it is because we have it on outside our clothes.” Quickly she pulled her dress over her head and stood there in brassiere and slip; a moment later the slip joined her dress on the floor. She stood in front of the poster, her full breasts straining against the beige cotton brassiere. “Is this better, Jimmy?”

  She turned to Janette. “Take off your dress.”

  Janette felt the warmth of her body rush into her face. “That’s silly.”

  “No, it’s not,” Marie-Thérése insisted. “How else can he make a fair judgment? Besides I haven’t seen you since school closed. I want to see if you’ve gotten any bigger.”

  Janette looked at her. Marie-Thérése had gotten bigger. Her breasts were at least a full size larger. Staring at her friend she felt the warmth inside her growing more intense. Slowly she took off her dress.

  Marie-Thérése voice was surprised. “Silk! Black silk! You sneaky thing, you never told me! Take off your slip, I want to see your panties.”

  Silently Janette let the slip fall to the floor and stood there facing the poster, not looking at her friend. The warmth inside her was going into her groin and legs now.

  “Black silk panties too!” Marie-Thérése exclaimed. “Where did you ever get those things? They’re so beautiful and sexy.”

  Janette still did not look at her. “My stepfather gave them to me. He said he hated the cotton things I wore.”

  “When did he ever see you?”

  “In the summer it’s so hot I leave my door open for some air. He saw me when he walked by. One day he came in and threw a box of lingerie down on my desk. ‘From now on, you wear these when you’re home. The other things are ugly.’ Then he walked out.”

  “My God!” Marie-Thérése breathed. “Did he ever do anything else?”

  Janette was still looking up at the poster. She felt the warmth turning to wetness inside her. “After that, he would come to my room sometimes when my mother wasn’t home and sit down in the chair and make me walk up and down the room in these things in front of him. Then after a while he would make me take them off and give them to him and he would make me watch him while he took his thing out and jerked off into them. When he was finished he’d give them back to me, slap me hard across the face and say, “Slut! Wash these filthy rags! And walk out of the room.” She turned to Marie-Thérése. Her friend’s mouth was open, her eyes wide and round. One thing she couldn’t tell her. The intensity of the orgasms that swept through her when Maurice slapped her face left her so weak and drained that she would sink to the floor until her legs regained the strength to carry her.

  “That’s all he did?” Marie-Thérése asked. “Nothing else?”

  Janette laughed. “You know better than that. He’s the most famous queer in Paris.”

  “Still?” Marie-Thérése wondered. Her voice was hushed. “Is it true what I heard? About the size of his thing. I mean?”

  Janette nodded. “It’s big all right.”

  “Bigger than Donald the flasher?”

  Donald the flasher was an English boy at the school across the lake in Switzerland whom they met at the weekly dances. He was always getting the girls to go outside with him so that he could show it to them and tell them how big he was. Janette laughed again. “It made his look like a toy.”

  “My God!” Marie-Thérése breathed. She began to rub herself. “I think I’m going to come. Let’s get on the bed and do it to each other.”

  They moved toward the bed and began to masturbate each other to a climax. It wasn’t the first time they had done it. But this time somehow it seemed even more exciting with the poster of James Dean scowling down at them from the wall.

  “Finish packing then,” Janette said into the telephone. “And I’ll come over after dinner and we’ll go to a movie.”

  “No chance,” Marie-Thérése said. “The night before I leave for school I always have to stay home with my parents.”

  “Okay, then,” Janette said. “I’ll meet you at the train seven thirty tomorrow morning.”

  She put down the telephone and turned to find Maurice standing in the open doorway to her room. She glanced at her watch. Five o’clock. He was home early. Usually he never got home before seven.

  “Who were you talking to?” he asked suspiciously, coming into the room.

  Her eyes fell and she looked down at the floor. “Marie-Thérése.”

  “How can you find so much to talk about with such a stupid girl?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer, her eyes still cast downward.

  “Where’s your mother?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  “Hasn’t she come home yet?”

  She shrugged her shoulders.”

  “Why don’t you look at me?” he demanded.

  She raised her eyes, feeling the flush creep into her face.

  “Has she called?”

  “I haven’t spoken to her.”

  His lips tightened in an angry narrow line. “The slut’s probably fucking away the afternoon with one of her gigolo friends,” he snapped. “She’s never around when something important comes up.”

  Her eyes fell again. She didn’t answer.

  “If she calls and you should speak to her, tell her it’s important that I see her.”

  She nodded.

  “Important. You understand. I must speak to her.”

  She nodded again without looking at him.

  Angrily, he slapped her across the face. “Look at me when you answer me!”

  She looked at him, feeling the trembling in her legs.

  He slapped her again. “It’s important. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, her voice tight in her chest. “I understand.”

  He stared at her balefully. “Someday you’ll all have to pay for what that whore has done to me.” He turned and went out of the room, slamming the door angrily behind him.

  She sank trembling into the chair, the beginning shudder of her orgasm sending the wetness down her shivering legs.

  ***

  Jacques Charelle saw her a
s she came through the doors of the Relais Plaza. The room was crowded at cocktail hour, the hum of conversation filling the room as if a swarm of bees were passing. He got to his feet, gesturing.

  Tanya made her way to his table, nodding to several acquaintances as she moved through the room. Jacques kissed her hand politely, held the table so that she could sit on the banquette, her back to the window, facing the room while he sat down opposite her.

  “You look absolutely radiant, my dear,” he said. “You grow more beautiful every day.”

  She smiled inwardly at that. What was it they said, women never looked more beautiful than in the early days of their pregnancy? “Merci, Monsieur,” she said. “It does not get easier as one grows older.”

  He laughed. “Some women never grow old. You’re one of them. And how was your day?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Comme ci comme ça.” She looked up at the waiter. “A martini, please.” She turned back to Jacques. “And what did you find out?”

  He made a subtle gesture at the table next to them. She looked and saw one of the directors of Balmain’s salon seated with three other people. “Not here,” he half whispered.

  She nodded. She could understand his caution. Overtly Jacques was a fashion reporter for one of the news syndicates, but his real money came from his private occupation as a sort of fashion spy. Somehow he managed to know before anyone else what each designer would come up with for the next showing and who would make it that season or not. He had been on her payroll for the last three years and the information he had supplied had been invaluable. “We’ll have a quiet dinner,” she said.

  “Tonight at my apartment,” he said. “I have a beautiful côte d’agneau I can do for you, with herbes de Provence I just received this morning from my mother in the south.”

  She almost agreed, then remembered. Tonight was Janette’s last night before leaving for school. “I can’t tonight,” she said. The waiter placed the martini before her. “How about tomorrow night?”

  “My editor is in town tomorrow,” he said apologetically.

  She took a sip of the martini, then remembered the doctor’s instructions. No alcohol. She put down the glass. “Damn!”

  He was sympathetically silent.