I might have thought the Thalidomide would have kept me from looking anxious, but clearly it wasn’t up to the task. “No, Earl. I’m afraid not.”
“What’s the matter?”
He tried to take my hand, to stroke it, but I pulled it away from him. “I want to go back home. Earl … I’m going stir-crazy here.”
“You don’t like the hotel?”
“The hotel’s lovely. The restaurants have been lovely, the country’s lovely—but it’s not home.”
“I thought that’s the point of a honeymoon, to get away from home. I thought you’d like it.”
“Oh, I did, Earl, I did like it, and I appreciate it—you’ve been awfully generous. But enough’s enough. I need to see people driving on the right side of the road again, and eat a proper American meal again, and hear good old American voices again…”
He stared at me curiously. “Is that it? Voices and meals? Or is it that you can’t bear to share a suite with me any longer?”
“No! No. It’s true I’m concerned for you—you run such terrible risks, and you promised me you wouldn’t. But no, I don’t mean we have to go home to Hyattsville, and on with our regular lives right away. We could stay on in New York a while, after we land—at a hotel there.”
“I’ve made no arrangements.”
“But you could! I’m sure there’s one or another of the hotels there that has a pair of rooms going asking.”
“What’s in New York for you to see or do?”
“As much as in London,” I said. “We could see a Broadway show. Or—or that one people are talking about, The Fantasticks, down in Greenwich Village.”
“I didn’t know you had any interest in theater.”
“Two weeks ago, you didn’t know I’d ever flown in a plane. There’s plenty you don’t know about me yet.”
At that he eyed me again, and there was a challenge in his look, but I could also see his resistance weakening. Perhaps he’d had enough of England too; after all, he always had business to do, which I was sure he could do better if he weren’t living five hours later than everyone he worked with. Sure enough, he said: “All right. It’ll give me an excuse to see Bill again—my lawyer. Maybe I can be of help getting this piece of business closed at last.”
“What piece of business?” I asked
He waved away the question. “Just a sale, of a partnership interest in my company—there’s a fellow who’s been after us for a while, and I’ve decided to let him in. It’ll provide some extra liquid assets, which I figured we might have a use for, what with the extra expenses—your son to raise, and all.”
I took his hand again. “Thank you. Thanks for humoring me.”
“All right. All right.”
First chance I got, I called Liz, asking the operator to put me through to her at home, as it was too early there for her to be at the Garden yet.
“… But that’s wonderful, Joan! Isn’t it? Right out of the gate, and you’ve gotten it done. Must be some sort of a record.”
“Some sort, if you count from our wedding night. Less so, if you count from the night I spent with Tom.”
This brought a long silence from Liz, long enough that I became concerned the call might have been dropped. “Oh, Joanie,” she said finally, “I’m sorry.”
“I need your help. Or I may need it, that’s the thing, I don’t know.”
“I can give you a name, of someone to see, but you can only go there once you know you need it.”
“Why? Couldn’t he tell me whether I need it too?”
“You can’t trust him to tell you that—he’ll say yes and scrape you just the same, whether you need it or not, just to be able to charge the full amount. No, you go to a laboratory, a perfectly regular one, and get yourself tested, and if they say it’s yes, then and only then do you make the call to my guy.”
Her ‘guy’ was a Dr. Ernst Fleischer with an office up in Yorkville, or in any event an address there—I didn’t know if abortionists had offices, exactly. I took down his information and thanked her.
“Please, Joanie, let me know what happens. Call anytime, day or night.”
“I promise.”
*
The next day we were on a plane, and at Kennedy, there was Jasper to meet us. Earl had made some calls from London and now, as we climbed into the back seat, he said: “The Waldorf Astoria, Jasper. You know where it is?”
“Yes sir.”
We drove in over Long Island, crossed the river on one of the bridges, I don’t know which, then pulled up in front of the hotel. It was three in the afternoon, and I knew I had things to do—look up a lab, get to it, have blood samples taken, or whichever samples they needed, and get back before Earl got to wondering what I was up to. I let Jasper hand me down, went in the lobby with Earl, and when he had registered, said: “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some things to do—may I join you later?” He stood there startled, about to say something, but I walked away and out the door, but fast.
I had to get to a phone book, the one with yellow pages, or I was nowhere. I started down the avenue the hotel was on, Park as I know now, though I didn’t then know what it was, and at 49th Street happened to look, and there just a block away saw a drugstore. I walked over, found the Yellow Pages in their red cover, turned to Laboratories, didn’t find any, then discovered I had to look under “Medical Laboratories.” I found one only two blocks away, on 50th Street, walked over to the office building it was in, and went up. The lady on the desk was quite friendly, gave me a receptacle and showed me into a room. I produced my specimen of urine, feeling horribly guilty about it, paid her in cash, and asked when I could get my report. “In the morning,” she told me. “We open at nine o’clock.”
I was back at the hotel by 4:30, trying to act casual. Earl greeted me with a small envelope in his hand. “The concierge was able to swing it.” And when I didn’t respond: “I have our tickets. If you still want to go?”
I took the envelope, looked inside, and there found two tickets to that evening’s performance of The Fantasticks.
“Yes, yes, of course. I’m sorry. I do want to see it—or them, whatever you call it.”
“Are you sure? You don’t look well.”
I nodded, and forced a smile onto my face.
So we went, to some box of a theatre on Sullivan Street. But what The Fantasticks were like, or who they were, or what clothes they had on, don’t ask me, as I have no more idea than the man in the moon. I took another of Hilda’s pills at intermission and it got me through the second act intact, as well as the cab ride uptown, during which Earl’s hand never left my thigh.
Next morning, as I’d been doing in London, I sneaked out before he woke up. I wandered east to Lexington Avenue and sat over a cup of coffee at a luncheonette for an hour or more while the cook stood at his counter cutting bologna sandwiches. It was plenty of time for me to imagine what sort of a neighborhood Yorkville might be, as well as the rooms of Dr. Ernst Fleischer, whom I pictured in a white coat, only slightly frayed at the seams from too many washings, with a padded table whose dark leather surface had been worn shiny in places, with a pair of metal stirrups that creaked when adjusted, and a tray of clamps and devices I couldn’t name but could see all too well in my mind’s eye. He handed me up to the table kindly and patiently, did Dr. Fleisher in my imagination, but his hand shook, and when he reached out for the ether bottle, it tumbled to the floor and shattered…
Nine o’clock came, but slowly, slower than it ever had in all my life. The waiter, a heavy-featured Greek whose cheeks already bore a blue shadow even at this early hour, refilled my mug three times, joking the last time that he might have to charge me for another cup. The wall clock had a second hand that took an eternity to make its revolutions, and I found myself staring at it grimly. Once more, I urged it, and once more after that, and then I’ll know, then I’ll know.
I left the price of a second cup and didn’t answer when the waiter called after me with thank
s, just hurried out the door and down the block, the endless block, and rode the elevator to the top floor (of course it was the top, of course it was, and how the elevator crawled!). I was certain when I got there I’d find the door to the laboratory locked, the hallway dark, no sign of life. Or else my sample would have been lost, or contaminated, or the results unclear without further testing, or—
But no: the lights were on, the door unlocked, and the girl had my report in an envelope. My hand trembled as I opened it. It was only one word, in penscript:
Negative.
I must have shown how I felt, as she laughed. “I thought it would please you,” she said.
On the way back to the hotel, I felt relief flood through me. And not just relief. I’d heard great stress could do it, could turn your flow off or on, but this was my first experience of it directly, and I rushed into our suite just in time. I let him see me get out my Kotex, then disappeared into the bathroom.
When I got out, I came over, kissed him on the forehead, and whispered: “Sorry to have been such a pest, but there was a reason— I never seem to remember the effect it has on me, this particular time of month. I hope you’ll make allowance.”
He acted as though shook, and said of course he understood.
25
We left New York at the end of that week, Jasper returning to pick us up. The drive back was smooth and swift and I spent it with my face turned toward the window, staring out at the highway rushing past. Earl let me alone, as he had since my announcement, being like most men mystified by and a little scared of the processes of a woman’s body.
Then at last we arrived, and around five that afternoon, after swirling up the oyster-shell drive, getting out on the brick landing and going in by the front door, which was held open by one of the maids with the cook and the other maid beside her, I entered my new home for the first time.
I wasn’t raised in a stable, and grew up with nice things, but I have to say that this place was five times as luxurious as anything I’d been accustomed to. The hall was wide, with a staircase leading up and curving over the balcony topside, on the second floor. Past the stairway was a door at the rear, which opened on what he called “the patio.” At right and left were doors standing open, one to a big dining room, the other to a living room, or drawing room, I would call it. Beyond drawing room and dining room, through other open doors, I could glimpse what looked like corridors, but with windows in them. Those were the “hyphens,” the passageways that connected the wings of the mansion to its center. Throughout, the furnishings, the glimpse I got of them, were fantastically luxurious: heavy mahogany chairs, tables, and settees, upholstered sofas, and rugs that looked to be Oriental. In the hall were heavy chests with upholstered pads on top, and along one wall a brass rail, “a feature,” he explained to me later, “that I borrowed from Ireland. It’s for drunks to hold on to, they’ll tell you, as they’re taking their leave at night—actually for wraps, much more practical than closets, racks, or the other things people have. Anyone can dump his things on the rail, pop his hat on top, and be ready to join the party.”
That afternoon all I could do was stare. I kept on staring when one of the maids took me up to my room, my suite, actually, as I had a sitting room as well as a bedroom. And then my heart beat up when through the open door I could see the nursery beyond, with a cot that had two guard rails, a horse with electric motor, and walls with pictures of Peter Rabbit. In a minute or two, as soon as I could go tearing downstairs again, I said: “Earl, you’ve got me all excited, with that beautiful nursery you had fixed for Tad—and now I want him. I want him with me tonight. Is it asking too much that we—?”
“I’ve been assuming you’d want to go get him.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
He was very grave. It crossed my mind he was too grave; that he really did not want to go, but was agreeing nevertheless, as his way of going through on a bargain, one that hadn’t been made, for we had never talked of this moment, but one that had been there, just the same, lurking under the surface.
I called Ethel and asked if I could bring my new husband “to call,” and I suppose enjoyed for a moment the stunned way she took it. There was dead silence for some little time, and then: “I’ll be here, of course—I can’t speak for Jack, he isn’t home yet, and it may be late when he comes. But—very well, I’ll expect you.” Then Earl and I were in the car, Jasper driving, on our way over. No one was out front when we pulled up, and we were out of the car when Ethel appeared at the front door, in Levis. They were her way of cutting us down to size, as she’d had plenty of time to go up and put on a dress, and when she hadn’t paid us that courtesy, it showed what she thought of us. When I presented Earl, she nodded and exclaimed “White—so that’s what your name is. In Joan’s wire that she sent from London they spelled it What, which we all thought must be a mistake, but of course we couldn’t be sure. Why don’t we go out back?”
Earl had smiled, but said nothing to her bitchy show of bad manners, and let her lead us past the house, by the walk that ran beside it, to the backyard, where my heart gave a jump, as there by the back fence, with two other children, playing on a slide, was Tad. He didn’t seem to see me, which suited me just as well, as it gave me a chance to tell Ethel why we had come, which I proceeded to do: “Well, he looks fine, Ethel, and I’m eternally grateful to you, the wonderful way you’ve taken care of him—but I’m taking him now, if you don’t mind. At last, I have a wonderful place for him, thanks to my new husband—so you won’t have to bother with him anymore.”
“… I thought I’d made clear by now—he’s no bother, Joan—to me, anyhow.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, he seems to have been quite a bother to you, but if things are different now—”
“He was never a bother to me, as I think you know—”
I would have said more, no doubt, but Earl cut me off by raising his hand, and saying, most soothingly: “I’m sure he’s never been a bother, to you, Mrs. Lucas, or anyone—and he won’t be one to us. Tell me, how much do we owe you?”
It was the very way to cut her down, and I couldn’t have been happier with Earl than in that moment. She protested that nothing was owed, but Earl already had a palmful of money out, carelessly extracted from his pocket, and he picked out bills totaling a hundred-fifty dollars, then added twenty extra for good measure. “Here. Please accept it, it’s nothing to us and I’m sure you can use it.” Oh, the look on her face! But she took the money, of course.
And now I said: “I think it’s time Mr. White made Tad’s acquaintance.”
“… Yes, of course.”
So, while Ethel plopped herself down in a garden chair, I led him back to the swings. When Tad saw me at last he came over, not running or with much show of interest, but at least with a smile, as though he was glad to see me. I stooped down and kissed him, and then made a mistake. Instead of presenting him to Earl, quietly, with no explanation at first, and letting him get acquainted little by little, I was too excited to use good judgment, or quite to know what I was doing. I leaned down, kissed him, held him close, and said: “Yes, it’s Mommy, it really is, and she’s glad, so glad, to see you. Are you glad to see her?”
He nodded, his shyness wearing off, and held his mouth for another kiss. I gave him one, and then at last got to it: “And now for Mommy’s big surprise, the wonderful surprise she has for you. Tad, this is Mr. White, Mommy’s new husband, who’s going to be your father from now on—and we’re all three going now, in his big automobile, to the beautiful new home we’re going to have, where we’ll all live together and—”
With that I picked him up and held him out. But before any more could be said, he took one look at Earl, who was standing there, smiling at him, his hand held out, and let out a scream, not only of fear, but one of utter horror. Then he started to kick and twist and wriggle, so I had to put him down. Without the least hesitation he started for Ethel, where she�
�d got up from her chair. She gathered him in her arms and began kissing and patting and shushing him, until at last he was quiet. I had to stand and watch it, and hadn’t a word to say, as there was nothing else she could do. I don’t take exception, even now, but there’s a limit to what you can take.
Presently I mumbled: “Then, Ethel, if you can keep him a little bit longer—”
Her eyes danced, gloating at me over my son’s head. “Yes, Joan. You needn’t even ask.”
“Just till we get straightened out a bit better, how we’re going to do—”
“Joan, he’s welcome the rest of his life, if that’s how he wants it to be.” She broke off, and then burst out again: “And how he wants it to be is something you might have thought of, when you had this grand inspiration.”
“Ethel, I think we’d better be going.”
“Perhaps you’d better, at that.”
So next, we were walking around the house once more, Earl and I, and then were in the car, driving back.
I have to say he was very decent about it, and very understanding, patting my hand, and telling me: “Don’t be upset—it was just one of those things that happen, we don’t know why. I assure you I did nothing whatever, at least that I know of, to provoke it. I thought him a most attractive child, a wonderful little boy.” I kept saying it wasn’t his fault, but mine, mainly, “for not handling it right,” but my mouth was taken over, so I hardly knew what it said. At the house, when we got out and went inside, I suddenly heard myself tell him: “Earl, I’m going up to my room. I want to be alone. I have to be alone.”
“But of course, Joan. O.K.”
So I went up, took off my things, lay down, and closed my eyes. Then at last I knew the truth: My beautiful dream, that I’d worked and schemed and plotted for, and then at last had made come true, in one ghastly, dreadful moment, had exploded in my face.
For some time, there with myself alone, that was as far as I took it, or could take it. The effect it would have on the future, on Tad’s future, on my future, on my future relations with Earl, I didn’t get to at all— I was too shocked, too numb, even to try. When at last my head began to clear I began wondering what had caused it, this reaction of Tad’s —what I had done, what Earl had done, what Ethel might have done to account for something that seemed to be automatic, completely instinctive. And for a time I blamed myself, for rushing things, introducing a new father and promising a new home all in one breath, as part of a wonderful surprise. If I’d just taken one thing at a time and let that soak in before going on to the next, things might have gone differently. Indeed, for some little time it seemed that I could start over, perhaps put Tad in the car, bring him over here, and then see the surprise Earl had bought him—a new tricycle perhaps, or a little car, or something. But then suddenly I sat up in bed and began staring out the window, as the truth dawned on me, why the child had been terrified of Earl.
The Cocktail Waitress Page 17