"I don't know," David said. "I just want her to know I'm sorry for what happened to her."
"Any decent lawyer would advise you against self-incrimination." "I don't care!" David all but shouted.
"By the grace of God, I'm not a lawyer," the priest said. He took the phone book from the bottom drawer of his desk. "Let's start with the nearest hospital to where this misfortune occurred."
Within the half-hour, he had the name and an address for Alice Moss. When she hemorrhaged with the miscarriage, she had taken herself back to St. Vincent's Hospital. It was where she worked, on the custodial staff.
***
"If you didn't hear me scream," the woman said after she'd thought about it, "how were you going to hear if something else happened to me?"
"I don't think I wanted to hear anything," David said.
Mrs. Moss scraped a bit of congealed egg from the table with her thumbnail. They sat in the hospital employees' cafeteria, where midafternoon traffic was light. She did not in any way resemble the face behind the scream. Her salt-and-pepper hair hung in a clamp at the back of her head. Her eyes were tired. She seemed confused, slow, but her question was on the mark. She twisted uncomfortably on the metal chair. "I don't like you coming to me like this," she said. "I'd just as soon never know you."
"I'm sorry," David said.
"You said that already and I believe you're telling the truth. But I think you're sorry over something I'm not real sure I feel the same way about. That lawyer got me all confused, telling me how I feel when I don't feel that way at all." She concentrated on ST. MARYS COLLEGE, the lettering on the breast of his sweater. "David-Mr. Crowley…"
"David's fine," he said.
"I'm not saying what I want to say, and maybe I should keep it to myself." She drew a deep breath and looked at him directly. "I didn't want to have a baby at all, but I'm a church person and I felt I had to go through with it. Mind, I could have been killed myself last night, I know that…"
"I do too," David said.
"And maybe that would have been murder, but I still couldn't call the other thing murder. I was thinking when I came back to work this noon: Wasn't I lucky on both counts?"
Before the next Christian Ethics class David told Father Moran about his meeting in the hospital cafeteria.
"Did she forgive you?"
"I think so."
"You're lucky, my lad," the priest said. They reached the classroom door. "I have a word of advice for you, Crowley. One word…" He waited.
'Yes, Father?"
"Abstinence."
***
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The Scream Page 3