The Best of Everything (30 page)

Caroline laughed. "Do you think doctors have X-ray eyes? My father will take one look at your young fresh face and leave us scrupulously alone so we can giggle together about our boy friends."

"Yes . . ." April said. "So would mine. . . . Thank God. My poor father . . ."

On Friday April was almost imable to do any work. She tried harder than ever to concentrate on her typing, but all the time she was thinking how silly it was to be so careful not to make mistakes because Monday morning Miss Farrow would probably have to ask for a new secretary. These letters, this work she was doing in the oflBce, suddenly took on a great importance, as if she had already died and was looking at them from a poignant, untouchable distance, like Emily in Our Totim after she had died. She wanted to make a mark somewhere, leave something; and on an impulse she took her initialed handkerchief out of her purse and tucked it under the edge of her blotter. They could find it on Monday. But when five o'clock came and it was time to make the mad rush out of the oflBce for the elevators April reached the door of the bullpen and then came back and took the handkerchief out of the blotter and put it back into her purse. She didn't want anything of her own to remain alone and unprotected if she was not there to own it, not even a handkerchief with her name on it.

It was only a short walk from the oflBce to April's apartment, but Caroline insisted on taking her there in a taxi and paying for it. Upstairs April sat on her chair and looked at the furniture in her room, hardly seeing it. Caroline was briskly removing underthings and a nightgown from the bureau drawer and looking for April's suitcase. She had brought a pint bottle of gin.

"You'll never get high enough on Scotch," Caroline said. "Where do you keep the orange juice, or haven't you any?"

"I don't know."

"I'll go downstairs and get some. You stay here. Don't move."

"Where would I go?" April asked hopelessly.

Caroline returned in a few minutes with a paper container of orange juice from the grocery store. "This is the special Harvard Weekend punch," she said cheerfully, mixing it in a pot she had found on the stove. "You don't even taste the gin, and then—booml"

April smiled weakly.

"More innocent girls have been seduced as a result of this punch than you could imagine," Caroline went on. "You won't even want an anesthetic."

"They're not going to give me one!"

"Well, I'm giving you one. Old Caroline is here. Drink this, my dear innocent girl."

April sipped at the drink, forcing the sweetness past the obstruction that seemed to have lodged in her throat. Even at that moment, knowing everything was settled and almost finished, the thought came to her that orange juice was good for pregnant women. She wondered whether someone who was about to be put into the electric chair and was being given his last dinner would refrain from eating dessert because he was on a diet. I would, she thought. But then, I'm a fool.

The doorbell rang and April jumped. Caroline walked to the door and opened it. "Hello, Dexter," she said sweetly, as if he had come to pick up April to take her to the movies.

How proper Dexter was, how poHte. He smiled and asked Caroline how she was feeling. April wondered whether he was resenting the fact that Caroline was there. Caroline was telling him how to get to Port Blair from the Merritt Parkway and he was nodding studiously.

"We may be a litde late," he said. "I know it will be long after dinner."

The cocktail party, April thought bitterly, may last longer than we expect. Her palms were moist and her heart was pounding in terror. Perhaps, she thought, I'll lose the baby right here and save us all that trouble.

He helped April on with her coat and lifted her suitcase. When April started down the stairs it was Caroline, not Dexter, who held her arm. It was the closest April had come in the entire time to bursting into tears.

They came out into the early darkness of a winter evening. The

street was lighted with street lamps and there was a small crowd of neighborhood children gathered around the curb. At the curb, in front of April's apartment house, there was a long black shiny Cadillac limousine, the kind with two rows of seats in the back instead of one, and a closed-oflF front seat compartment for the chauffeur. The chauffeur got out of the car when they aproached and opened the door to the back. He was a small, wiry man dressed in a grayish uniform with leather boots that made him look a little like a Western Union messenger. Dexter handed April's suitcase to him and reached inside the car, bringing out a huge bouquet of pink roses wrapped in green florist's paper.

"For you," he said, laying the bouquet in April's arms.

"^Vhose car is that?" April whispered.

1 rented it. Shall we go?" He held out his hand to Caroline. "Goodbye, Caroline. I'd drop you off at the station but we have an appointment and we mustn't be late. We'll see you later this evening."

"All right," Caroline said. She kissed April on the cheek. "I'll see you soon. You look like a star after opening night with those flowers."

Don't leave me, April wanted to say, but instead she smiled. "Goodbye." She allowed Dexter to help her into the limousine while the chauffeur held the door open. She had never been inside a car like this and despite her nervousness about what was going to happen to her she began to feel almost cheerful again. The gin and orange juice that Caroline had made her drink made her feel rather light-headed and the roses in her arms were cool and silky to the touch and smelled beautiful. Dexter settled beside her and hghted a cigarette.

"All right, Fred," he said.

There was a remote-control panel in the armrest of the back seat that could turn the radio on. Dexter tuned it in to play soft music. As the limousine crept through the traffic April could see people turning around to look at them, and when they stopped for a light the people in the cars waiting next to theirs turned their heads to see who was inside such a distinguished-looking car. Perhaps they thought she really was a star, with those roses, and the chauffein*, and Dexter looking so handsome and sophisticated next to her in his black chesterfield overcoat and the white cigarette in the comer of

his mouth. If she tried she could pretend that they were going to a house party in the country.

"Do you like it?" Dexter asked, grinning.

"I'm overwhelmed."

"I have something else," he said. In the pocket of his overcoat he had a silver flask. He unscrewed the cover, and the cover became a little silver cup. "Bonded bourbon."

"I just had gin."

"That's all right. It's not the combination that makes people sick, it's the quantity. Drink up."

She took the little cup from him and swallowed the contents in one gulp, as if it were medicine, swallowing again to keep it down. She shuddered and felt better. They were on the broad highway now, heading for New Jersey, the car rocking from side to side as they sped along. Through the open windows came the sulphur smell of the factories along the New Jersey flatlands, making April feel like retching. She leaned out of the window and all of a sudden the mile-long limousine with the two of them in it and the hveried chauffeur and the armful of roses and the soft music and the hip flask of bourbon wasn't glamorous any more, it was ridiculous; they were two frantic, stupid people speeding through an ugly-smelling countryside to attend the murder of love. It was limousines like this that people rented to go to weddings and to funerals. Had anyone ever rented one before to go to an abortion? She should by all rights be going to her wedding now, and instead she was possibly going to her funeral. April glanced at Dexter. She wondered whether he had ever really loved her at all.

Dexter was quietly drinking bourbon from his flask, directly from the neck of it. Perhaps he needed it as much as she did to calm his nerves. Perhaps it still wasn't too late after all. "Dexter . . ."

"What?"

"We could get married secretly in New Jersey and then tell people that we were secretly married six weeks ago. They would never know the difference." But at the back of her mind April knew it was a lame excuse, more a chance for Dexter to prove he really did love her. "Dexter?"

"That's crazy," Dexter said. "You know it is. No one would believe it for a minute. They would laugh."

"Not once we were married. When you're really married people don't laugh."

"We're not going to discuss it any more, honey, it's all arranged."

April wrung her hands together, feeling her nails cutting into the skin and really not feeling the pain at all. Everything was falling away, everything, until she could hardly even believe in his promises for the future. He had betrayed her now, so might he not desert her again later? "You said we could have other babies later, when we're married . . ." she said. "Sometimes people who have abortions can't ever have any more children." But that too, she knew, was only an excuse, a feeler to see if there were any promises left that she could believe in, or if marriage, love and security were things that belonged to a past that had somehow eluded her.

"Everything will be all right," Dexter said with a hint of petulance in his voice, "I told you." He screwed the top back on the flask and put the flask into his coat pocket. April watched his hands, hardly knowing them. They were the hands of a stranger. Then he looked at her with his face surprisingly clear and guileless.

"We can get married this spring if you like," he said.

Her heart turned over. Warmth came back slowly, bringing the frozen dead to life. "I'd like that," she said, and then with real feeling, "Oh, I'd like that very much!" She hugged his arm with both her arms and Dexter looked down and kissed her. The lights of the town sped toward them, shimmering, haloed, and not so terrible after all.

The place where Dexter Key took April was not a doctor's office in the conventional sense of the word, but what at first glance seemed to be simply a door set among a row of stores in the commercial section of town. If you were not particularly looking for it you would be sure to miss it. There was a small brass name plate on the wall beside the door, brownish with age and not very legible, reading, Dr. Thomas, Surgeon. Behind the door was a flight of narrow stairs leading almost straight upward like a ladder. The stairs and the walls were painted a light pea green. At the top of the stairs was a corridor leading to a locked door. Dexter rang the bell.

A buzzer rang and clicked from within, and Dexter pushed the door open. He led April inside. There was a small square waiting room with some silent people in it. April had not expected other people, she had thought she and Dexter would be alone, and she

was so startled at the sight of them that she almost turned to flee. There was an elderly woman, very thin and obviously much too old to be here for anything to do with childbirth, sitting quietly with her hands folded on her lap. She had a great growth on the side of her neck. There was a plump and frowzy-looking girl about nineteen years old with reddish nostrils and pink-rimmed eyes, twisting the handle of her plastic pocketbook around her forefinger and sitting next to a boy who looked not much older than she, uncomfortably dressed up in a cheap-looking brown suit. She looked to April exactly like someone who needed an abortion. The three of them looked up when they heard April and Dexter enter, looked at them, and down again. April put her ringless hands into her coat pockets.

The room was filled with overstuffed and shabby-looking furniture, done in colors that reminded April of the words dun and puce. There were lace antimacassars on the arms of the sofa and chairs, although the upholstery was too far gone for them to do much good. But the room seemed to be very clean. On a spindly table next to the sofa was a pile of ragged old magazines. April was afraid to touch them for fear she would catch some disease. She sat down next to Dexter on the sofa and unbuttoned the top button of her coat.

"Do you want to take your coat off?" he murmured politely.

"No thank you."

Directiy in front of her on the wall there was a framed print of a water color depicting a shaggy collie dog being hugged around the neck by a little boy. Underneath the print in small red letters set into a white banner were the words Man's Best Friend. Somehow that struck April as amusing, she smiled and fixed her eyes upon it, reading it over and over again for comfort. If the doctor could put up a picture like that he couldn't be such an ogre.

A nurse came out of the back room wearing a clean, starched white uniform and a hair net. She wore heavy white shoes and had a cold, lined face. April stared at her from head to toe as she crossed the room with a small blue watering can in her hand and sprinkled a plant that was standing on a table in front of the window. The window looked down on the commercial street, but the pane had not been washed for a long time and there was a cross-hatching of what looked like chicken wire set into the glass, so you could hardly make out the view. The niurse finished watering the plant and went back into the rear room. It seemed to April like a callous gesture, when

the patients trembling out here obviously needed the niu-se's attention more than the potted plant did. She looked at her watch. It was six-thirty. She realized with a start of embarrassment, because it seemed so out of place, that she was hungry.

She tried to think of some casual conversation to make with Dexter. He was reading a magazine. He was reading a magazine! She could see his eyes moving from side to side as he read the lines. How could he be so calm? The nurse emerged again and nodded briskly at April. "You can come in now," she said.

April touched Dexter's arm. He looked up from his magazine and smiled at her. "Go ahead," he whispered. "If you want to leave your coat here I'll watch it for you."

She shed her coat and left it lying in a heap on the sofa. The other patients who were waiting glanced up at her for an instant as she walked, terrified, across the room. From the expressions on their faces she could tell that their only feeling was mild jealousy that she, the latest arrival, had been allowed to see the doctor first, while they had to wait and miss their dinners.