“You didn’t ask me here to help you study,” I snapped.
“Of course I did.” He sat up. “I just thought while we were at it—”
“You would seduce me,” I finished.
“Oh, come on. Don’t get melodramatic. I merely saw that you have a problem.”
“I don’t have any problem.” I backed farther away from him.
He pulled himself onto the settee and sat there smiling at me. “I think you do.”
“How many other girls have you tempted up here using the same phony excuse?” I accused. “You’re the one with the problem.”
“Are you sure? Really sure? You wanted it for a few moments there, and then your frigidity took control. If you’ll only give me a chance,” he continued, reaching toward me.
I stepped back again. “Don’t touch me!” I cried and grappled for the doorknob.
He pulled his hand back and smiled. “Okay, okay. You don’t have to leave. I won’t try to help you, if you don’t want my help. A patient has to want the doctor’s help.”
“I’m not a patient and you’re … you’re no doctor!” I screamed and pulled open the door.
“If you change your mind, I’ll be here,” he cried after me.
I slammed the door behind me and flew down the steps, tears streaming down my cheeks as I charged across the lobby and burst out of the building, nearly knocking an elderly woman over in the process. I apologized and hurried away, nearly running now to catch the next streetcar. Right behind me, Jack Weller’s smile and laughter lingered. It wasn’t until I was almost home that I felt my heartbeat slow to a normal pace. I wiped away the streaks on my cheeks, took a deep breath, and stepped off the streetcar.
When I entered the house, I paused and leaned back against the front door, hoping to regain all of my composure; but something inside me, something that felt as dainty as china, was shattered and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t mend it. A doctor, as young as he was, had tried to deceive me. A member of the profession I idolized had filled me with disappointment and disgust. How could anyone study and work to be a doctor and then do what Jack Weller had done? How could he care about other people, their feelings, their pain, their suffering?
Mommy stepped out of the sitting room and stopped, surprised to see me standing there so quietly.
“Pearl? I didn’t hear the door open and close. Where’s Aubrey?” she asked gazing around.
“I let myself in quickly, Mommy.” I flashed a smile.
“I thought you would be coming home much later,” she said stepping toward me.
“No, it didn’t work out.”
“So you didn’t have any supper?” she asked. Her eyes, those Cajun searchlights, as Daddy sometimes called them, examined my face, gathering clues. I had to look away.
“I’m not that hungry yet. I’ll eat something later,” I said and flashed another quick smile before heading for the stairway.
“Pearl?”
“Yes, Mommy?”
She looked back toward the doorway of the sitting room. I realized Daddy was there, but hadn’t heard our conversation; otherwise he would have surely come out to see me.
“Something’s wrong. What is it, honey?”
My lips trembled. Tears burned behind my eyelids, then trickled down my cheeks. I shook my head and ran up the stairway. I hurried to my bedroom and fell face down on my bed, gulping back my sobs.
Moments later Mommy was there. She closed the door softly behind her, and I turned around. “What happened?” she asked firmly.
“Oh, Mommy. It wasn’t something special.”
“He didn’t invite you up to his apartment to study as he had said,” she remarked, nodding.
“No. We started to study, but he had chosen the topic as part of his elaborate plan to …”
“To what? What did he do?”
“I didn’t let him do it, Mommy.”
“Mon Dieu,” she said, pressing her hand to her heart. “If your father finds out, he’ll tear that man limb from limb.”
“We better not tell him, Mommy. It was nothing. I can take care of it. In fact I did. He won’t bother me anymore.”
“What did he do?” Mommy asked, coming to sit on my bed.
I sat up and traced the threads in my skirt for a moment. “He said he had a young woman patient who had a problem making love. He called it the honeymoon injury and said he found out her problem was psychological. Then he started asking me personal questions, pretending he was just trying to learn about the problem.”
“Go on,” Mommy coaxed.
“He said I was frigid because I was too smart and I couldn’t enjoy sex. He said he wanted to help me be sure I didn’t have the honeymoon injury.”
“Mon Dieu. This man should be brought up before the board of inquiry.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to have to tell this story to anyone else, Mommy. Please.”
“All right, honey. Don’t worry. Of course,” she said nodding, “you should have nothing more to do with him. If he so much as speaks to you—”
“He won’t bother me,” I said.
“I’m sorry you had such a terrible experience, Pearl.”
“It won’t be my last time, Mommy,” I declared confidently.
Mommy stared at me a moment. “No, it probably won’t. You’re very wise to know that, Pearl.”
“Did such a thing happen to you?”
“Yes. Worse,” she added. “My grandfather tried to sell me to a man. He even chained me to a bed so I would be there when the man came.”
“How horrible. How could your grandfather do such a thing?”
“He was an alcoholic. He would have sold his soul for money to buy whiskey. Grandmere Catherine believed he did.”
“What happened to you?”
“I managed to escape, and that was when I came to New Orleans and met your father. So you see, every dark cloud does have a silver lining,” she added, smiling. I smiled and nodded and then tightened my lips and looked down again. “What else happened, Pearl?”
“It’s not that anything else happened. It’s …”
“What honey?”
“It’s what he said. I wonder if there is any truth to it. My school friends think so, and so do all my ex-boyfriends. Oh, Mommy, what if it’s true? What if I can never relax with any boy? No one will ever fall in love with me,” I moaned.
“I don’t think it’s true, and I know you don’t have to sleep with the first man who propositions you, just to prove you’re not frigid. I don’t suppose there’s an approach that hasn’t been tried on some unsuspecting young woman, but for him to use his authority as a doctor … deplorable. There’s nothing wrong with you, honey,” she said, putting her arm around me. “I didn’t sleep with every boy who wanted me to sleep with him.”
“How many did you sleep with, Mommy?” I asked and then bit my tongue. Even though we were like sisters, I hated prying into such a personal part of her life.
She stared for a moment and then smiled. “I slept only with your father. No one else mattered,” she replied. “Maybe that sounds stupid to today’s young people, sounds boring, but—”
“It doesn’t sound stupid or boring to me, Mommy.”
“When you find the right person, something precious and good will happen, and that will make you feel safe with him. When you feel safe, you won’t hesitate to be a complete lover. I’m not one of these love experts who write columns in the newspapers, but I know what was true for me, and I feel sure it will be true for you as well. You think too much of yourself and you value your emotions too much to give anything away cheaply. That’s good, and it doesn’t make you a prude or frigid. It makes you wise.” She smiled and laughed to herself.
“What?”
“I remember when I was a little girl, I was watching two larks flitting about madly, and I asked Grandmere Catherine what was wrong with them. She said they were doing a mating dance. The female was pretending not to be i
nterested, which, Grandmere Catherine explained, made the male even more interested and guaranteed the female she wouldn’t be disappointed. ‘She just wants him to know she ain’t no easy date,’ Grandmere said.”
We both laughed.
“You were so lucky to grow up in the bayou. I wish I had,” I said.
“Oh, it was no picnic. We worked hard to have what we needed just for day-to-day living, but the mornings and the nights …”
“You still miss it, don’t you, Mommy?”
“I do. Some.”
“Why don’t we go back? Why don’t we all visit Cypress Woods?” I said excitedly.
“No, I don’t think so, honey. Not just yet,” she said getting up, obviously uncomfortable with the idea. “Feeling better?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“Hungry?”
“A little.”
“Then let’s go downstairs. We’ll pretend you just came in and we’ll go get you something to eat. Daddy will want to hear every detail about your day at the hospital.”
“I know. It’s sad he never became a doctor.”
“Life holds a surprise around every bend. Some good, some disappointment. The trick is to keep poling your canoe,” she said.
“I’ve never even been in a pirogue. Why can’t we go to the bayou?” I pleaded.
“We will. Someday,” she said, but it was the same someday I had heard hundreds of times before. This one had no more ring of truth to it. But it did have a darker, deeper, and hollower resonance. It left me feeling uncertain, like someone grappling with the darkness, pressing her face into the night, waiting hopefully for the first star.
The past, our past, resembled the maze of canals that were woven through the bayou, some leading out, some leading farther and farther into the unknown. It would take courage to risk the trip, but I was confident that someday I would embark. Someday I would go back and discover the answers to the questions that lingered.
I only hoped, how I hoped, that I would have someone precious and loving alongside me when I pushed away from the shore and began the journey.
5
Is Love for Me?
Although I had assured Mommy I would have no trouble working in the hospital near Jack Weller, I couldn’t help feeling as if my heart was wound in tight rubber bands when I stepped off the cable car and walked to the hospital the following day. The sky was heavily overcast and gray with rain only minutes away. In fact, the air was so humid I thought I saw drops forming right before my eyes. Sophie had already arrived. She had come early because she had a ride that brought her within a half dozen blocks and she could save the cable fare. Fortunately, Jack Weller wasn’t coming on duty until midway through my shift, so for the first few hours at least I wouldn’t have to confront him.
But when Sophie and I returned from lunch, Jack was standing in the hallway talking to one of the nurses. He gazed our way and smiled as if nothing at all had happened between us. I hadn’t said a word about it to Sophie, so she thought Jack was just being his usual funny and flirtatious self. I went directly to the linen room. Sheila Delacrois, the young woman who I had thought had trouble with her gallbladder, did have a problem and had been taken upstairs for an operation. Afterward she would go to recovery and she wouldn’t return to our floor, so I had to change her bed and prepare it for a new patient.
I was busy stacking the pillowcases and sheets when I heard the door of the linen closet close softly behind me. I spun around to discover Jack standing there, his back against the door, his hands behind him on the knob.
“Open the door,” I demanded.
“I just want to talk to you privately for a moment,” he replied.
“We have nothing to discuss. Just open the door,” I insisted.
“Look, I want to apologize. Maybe I stepped over the line, went too far too quickly. Because of how intelligent you are, I thought you were more sophisticated. It was my mistake. I admit it. I just want to say it won’t do either of us any good to talk about this to others.”
“You don’t have to worry. I won’t say anything to anyone. However, I did tell my mother,” I added.
“Your mother?” His eyebrows looked as if they might lift right off his face.
“Yes. I don’t hide things from my mother. We’re very close.”
“What did she say?”
“She didn’t want my father to know. She thought he would come here and break your neck,” I said dryly. Jack Weller swallowed hard and nodded. “I don’t know what sort of a doctor you’re going to be,” I added, hot tears in my eyes.
“Hey, one thing has nothing to do with another. When I’m on duty, I’m a true professional.”
“If you’re not sensitive to people’s feelings, it doesn’t matter how much you know or how professional you appear,” I retorted.
He smirked and shook his head. “I’ve seen girls like you before. Actually, I ran into your type throughout college and med school. You’re too smart for your own good, know-it-alls who won’t admit to their own feelings. You could have had a good time yesterday if you had let down your hair.”
“I can live with the disappointment,” I remarked dryly. My hot tears evaporated, and the trembling left my body. It was quickly replaced by cold anger, my fury showing in my eyes, eyes that glared down Jack Weller’s arrogant smirk.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Suit yourself.” He opened the door. My heart was pounding and my hands were clenched into small fists. He paused in the open doorway, checking first to be sure no one was close enough to overhear his remarks. “I feel sorry for the poor jerk who makes love to you the first time. He’ll probably feel as if he’s just had a medical exam,” Jack added and closed the door behind him.
The tears that had been kept in check under my eyelids poured free. How many men would accuse me of the same thing? I wondered. When would I find someone with whom I truly wanted to be affectionate and warm? Was I too cold, too impersonal, too analytical for my own good? Every boyfriend I’d had eventually deserted me, and now someone I thought was sophisticated and knowledgeable had accused me of the same crime, if it was a crime.
No matter how reassuring Mommy had been and would be, no matter how many books I read on the subject or how many other girls I questioned, I would always have these doubts about myself, I thought. Was I someone for whom the magic of love, the mystery of passion, would remain unattainable? Was it a curse or a blessing that I had what Claude had called X-ray eyes?
“Why is it,” he had asked one time when he had tried to get me to make love with him and I retreated, “that I feel like you’re looking at me and seeing spleens and kidneys and lungs and not me?”
Of course I told him he was wrong, but as we kissed and he pressed himself against me, I was thinking about his quickened breathing, his quick hardness, and the moist feel of his skin and wondering how the nervous system was triggered by sexual arousal and how different organs were affected. I guess I was some sort of brain monster.
The twins used to try to frighten me by bringing in worms and bugs, and they were always disappointed by my calmness. To satisfy them, I even tried to pretend to be as shocked as most girls my age would be if they found thick night crawlers in their sink or a daddy long legs in their face cream jar, but I had no problem picking them up and putting them outside.
Pierre and Jean actually complained to Mommy about it. “Pearl isn’t afraid to pick up a frog or a big black beetle!”
Mommy smiled and told them I had probably inherited my grandmother’s love of animals. Even though she had never known her mother, she told us her grandmere Catherine described her mother as someone who felt comfortable with alligators and whom all creatures trusted. Birds would light on her shoulder and feed out of her palm. “Pearl’s got that in her,” Mommy had explained.
But was it that, or was I so scientific that I lacked feminine qualities? Couldn’t I be interested in science and still be a warm, loving person?
I wiped away the tears and took a deep
breath. Then I returned to my work and kept my mind on the tasks I was assigned. A wall of impersonal professionalism fell between me and Jack Weller. He made no more attempts at small talk, and if I walked into a room where he was, he would merely glance at me and then return to whatever he was doing.
There were other doctors—older, more accomplished professionals—with whom I had some conversations. Once they learned of my ambitions they were eager to speak with me and give me advice. If I went into a patient’s room to replace a water pitcher or to bring juice or toast and tea, and a doctor was speaking to the patient in the other bed, I would linger and listen, learning about the diagnosis and treatment.
In the evenings I would tell Daddy about these things. He would listen, his eyes bright with interest and his lips relaxed in a tiny smile. If Mommy was there, too, she would sit back, her eyes full of pride, and she and Daddy would exchange secret glances.
Pierre and Jean were interested only in gory details. Had I seen another dead person? Did I see a lot of blood and broken bones? Most of my days were quite routine without any real emergencies, and in the twins’ eyes those days were boring. Of course they were enjoying their summer—swimming in our pool, having their friends over, playing Little League baseball, collecting insects in jars. I told them not to take these days for granted, that time would flow by quickly and before they knew it, they would have to bear down and work hard to become successful at something. Jean didn’t want to hear such advice, but Pierre would nod and give me a knowing look.
In early July Mommy’s new exhibition was ready. It was being held at one of the newer galleries in the French Quarter. The impressive guest list for the opening included high government officials, doctors and lawyers, big businessmen, and some entertainers. The twins hated having to dress up and keep themselves spotless on the day of the opening. Mommy insisted that they wear identical dark blue suits with silk ties. She bought them shiny new shoes and Daddy took them for haircuts. They did look handsome, if uncomfortable, confined in their new clothes and forbidden to do anything that would dirty their hands or faces or stain their suits.
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