The Slipper (9 page)

And one night, only a week after that first meeting, it happened, without either of them planning it, it just happened. They were together on the chaise lounge and he was holding her tightly and kissing her and then he was moaning, begging, saying he couldn't go on this way any longer, wanting her, wanting her so, and then he was on top of her, crushing her with his weight, and she was frightened but she loved him and didn't want to stop him and she felt his hands tugging, adjusting clothing and then felt something stiff and rigid and warm and he was parting her legs and plunging inside her and panic swept over her and she struggled and tried to get away from him but he kept right on thrusting inside her, pushing, straining, grunting loudly as he met the barrier within, and Julie felt a terrible pain as the barrier was ripped asunder. She cried out and he slammed a hand over her mouth and continued to grunt and thrust and the pain began to dissolve and melted into a tingling glow that grew and grew, filling her with unbelievable bliss. And later on, when he did it to her a second time, there was no pain at all, only the bliss bursting inside her, and she wept silently with joy.

He didn't come over to swim nearly so often, they didn't want to arouse suspicion, but every night he came to the pool house, sneaking over after it was dark, and her parents never knew, they thought she was watching television. It was an enchanted summer, swollen with passion, filled with delight she had never known possible, and she loved him with all her heart and soul. Doug loved her, too, she was sure he did. He proved it every night there in the pool house with his lips, his hands, his body. Someone cared about her. For the first time in her life someone really cared and she was wonderfully, gloriously happy. She belonged to him now and he belonged to her and somehow they would work things out. She was only fifteen, true, but that didn't matter, they were in love, Doug would figure out some way for them to be together for the rest of their lives.

Doug grew moody and remote as the summer wore on, but that was because of his father and the strain of being with him. They didn't get on well at all. His father was constantly on him, constantly lecturing him and telling him he had no idea what it was like to struggle and sweat and do without, to have neither pot to piss in nor window to throw it out, but he wasn't going to grow up a rich man's spoiled brat, no indeed, he was going to make something of himself. His father expected Doug to be perfect and make the best grades and excel at everything. He wasn't going to be crude and unlettered and vulgar like his old man, he was going to become a lawyer, the best damn lawyer in the country and maybe one day go into politics and, hell, why not, maybe even become President and show the whole goddamned, world what kind of boy old Gus Hammond raised. His father didn't love him at all, Doug said. He loved nothing but his liquor, his whores and his oil wells, but he still expected his boy to become everything he wasn't. Just because he was a rich man's son didn't mean he didn't have to work his ass off. Julie understood, and she tried to comfort him, but that only irritated him, made him more remote. The only thing that soothed him was her body and those brutally passionate sessions in the pool house.

She began to feel puny as summer drew to a close, woke up in the morning with a nauseous sensation and felt dizzy during the day, but that was probably because it was so hot. The fierce Oklahoma heat hadn't abated at all, the sun beating down without mercy. Doug was due to go back to Indiana soon, the following week, in fact, and they still hadn't made any plans and she was beginning to worry. On Friday afternoon on her way to the pool house she fainted and woke up to find herself in bed with a damp cloth on her brow, her mother standing over her with a worried expression. They sent for the doctor despite Julie's protests and he examined her thoroughly and then asked her parents to step out into the hall. The door was slightly ajar. Julie heard the doctor inform them in a flat, emotionless voice that their daughter was pregnant. She remembered then, remembered she hadn't had her period for the last two months. How could she possibly not have noticed? Julie closed her eyes, trembling all over, wishing for death, feeling dead already.

The vegetable beef soup was boiling. Julie quickly took it off the burner. Her hands were shaking. She tried not to think about the terrible aftermath of the doctor's announcement, but as she poured the soup into the chipped blue bowls memories came rushing back in a torrent. Her mother's tight mouth, the disgust in her eyes, her father's wild rage, the slaps across her face until she finally broke down and told them about Doug and their nightly meetings in the pool house, Gus Hammond's outrage when her father dragged her next door and confronted him and demanded Doug be thrown into jail. She would never forget that nightmare scene in Hammond's study as an ashen-faced Doug was summoned to face the consequences of their love.

“She's fifteen years old!” her father yelled. “
Fifteen
years old! He's going to jail! I'm having him arrested immediately!”

“Is it true, son?” his father asked. “You the one who done it? You the one who knocked her up?”

“It's true,” Doug said. “I'm the one.”

Gus Hammond doubled up his fist and slammed it into his son's jaw. Doug went sprawling to the floor. Julie screamed and ran over to him and tried to help him up. He shook her hands away and rose slowly to his feet, his jaw already beginning to swell. Gus Hammond stared at him coldly, and when he spoke his harsh, gravelly voice was full of disgust.

“Couldn't keep it in your pants, could you? Couldn't go to a respectable whore and pay for it, could you? Had to have your nooky. Had to fuck a fifteen-year-old girl, had to rut like a dog in the neighbors' pool house. After all the money I've spent on you, all the advantages you've had, you can't keep your hands off a gardener's daughter. All my plans for you shot to hell, just like that. You've made your bed, you little shit, and now you're gonna lie in it. You're gonna marry the slut, and then you're on your own, fellow. You'll never get another penny from me. You're gonna find out what it's like to face the world without a rich daddy indulgin' your every whim.”

“I—I don't want your filthy money!” Doug's voice was trembling. “I've never wanted it!”

“Fine, fellow, 'cause you sure ain't gonna see no more of it.”

They were married three days later in a dusty, foul-smelling office downtown, her parents and Gus Hammond in grim attendance. Her parents had thrown her out. Suitcases in hand, she and Doug walked to the Greyhound bus station immediately after the ceremony and waited three hours until their bus arrived. Doug didn't say a word during the whole three hours, but as they boarded their bus he curled his arm around her shoulders. During the past year he had saved a couple of hundred dollars, and when they got to Claymore they'd been able to rent the basement flat. Doug began his senior year, and during the first few months he did private tutoring after his classes to make extra money, working with Dick Sanders and several others, and Julie was worried sick and her face broke out in bumps and no amount of lotion would clear them up, and then, two weeks before Christmas, awful pains wracked her body and Doug called a friend and borrowed a car and got her to the hospital, but she lost the baby anyway. Doug couldn't hide the relief on his face when he visited her in the hospital room the next afternoon. It was a blessing, she told herself. They couldn't possibly have made it with another mouth to feed. It … it was a blessing, but her heart was broken nevertheless.

She turned sixteen four days later.

Julie set the soup and the box of crackers on the worn wooden table and stepped to the doorway to call Doug. Immersed in his study, he didn't hear her at first, and then, after she called him a second time, he looked up and scowled and came on into the kitchen, book in hand. He read as he ate, ignoring her completely, but Julie understood. The exam was very important to him. He was determined to make the highest grade. He was determined to become a top-flight lawyer and show his detested father just what kind of man he was. Doug was cold and remote at times, yes, and at times he was sullen and irritable, but … but that was because of the pressure he was under. Julie loved him with all her heart and soul, still, and even though she was often consumed with guilt for having caused their plight, she was making it up to him as best she knew how, working long, hard hours so he could remain in law school. One day, when he had his degree and their financial worries were over, Doug would be glad he had married her.

Julie fervently believed that. Sometimes it was all that kept her going.

She got up from the table and took their empty bowls over to the sink. Doug went back into the front room. She rinsed the dishes and thought about Mr. Compton and how disappointed he was going to be tomorrow night when she didn't show up to read for Laura. She was worried about that, but it couldn't be helped. Doug was right, she should never have started attending classes in the first place. It was a complete waste of time, but … but she enjoyed it so much. Maybe Mr. Compton would forgive her. Maybe he would let her keep on coming to class. Julie finished washing up and realized that it was almost time for her to leave for work. Doug looked up when she went in to put her coat and scarf back on. She smiled at him, the love in her heart so strong she could scarcely contain it. She would never become an actress, true, but Doug was going to become a brilliant lawyer.

Her own dreams didn't matter.

4

The dorm was strangely silent as Carol left her room with the shopping bag full of brightly wrapped presents. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, Christmas Eve, and all but a handful of girls had gone home for the holidays. Carol went down the stairs, her footsteps ringing loudly in the near-empty building. Last Christmas Eve she had been working in her uncle's drugstore. There had been an artificial green tree in the front window, garishly trimmed with tinsel icicles and cardboard gingerbread men and twinkling red lights, and the place had been mobbed with people frantically buying last-minute gifts. That bottle of cheap perfume for Aunt Martha. Those tortoise-shell hairbrushes for Grandfather. The box of chocolate-covered cherries for Sister LuAnne. Carol had been behind the cash register, ringing up sales until the store closed at eight, and she remembered that now and stoically refused to be depressed. I'm alone, yes, she told herself, but I'm a freshman at Claymore University, studying with Julian Compton. I could still be in Kansas, working for Uncle Edgar. Trapped. I will
not
be depressed just because I'm all alone on Christmas Eve.

Carol had dutifully mailed off presents to both Uncle Edgar and Aunt Jessie, but she had received none in return, nor had she received a Christmas card. When she had elected to remain in Wichita and work at Philips' Department Store last summer, her aunt and uncle had made it quite clear that she was on her own now. They had fulfilled their duties. They wanted nothing more to do with her. Carol had written several letters to them during the past few months, all unanswered, and she had sent the Christmas presents as a final token of her willingness to remain on good terms, but she would write no more letters, make no further effort to stay in touch. It was just as well, she thought, moving down the final flight of stairs. They had never really wanted to take her in. They were undoubtedly relieved to have her off their hands. She was indeed on her own now, and her years in Ellsworth seemed like a hazy dream. It was as though her life had truly begun that evening when she had curled her arms around Norman Philips's neck and he had hesitated, nervous, and finally kissed her and gently initiated the innocent girl into the mysteries and wonders of womanhood.

He had been so kind, so tender. He had been so caring, and those few seconds of pain had been quickly eclipsed by the beautiful feelings that followed. In the morning, still wearing the pale blue silk dressing gown and nothing else, she had smiled a smile that expressed all her gratitude and all her newly born feelings for him. She was already fond of him, deeply fond, and she looked forward to letting those feelings grow into something even stronger. That was not to be. That very afternoon he made arrangements for her job and found the room for her at the boardinghouse and told her kindly, firmly, that it would not be wise for them to see each other again. Did he read what was in her heart? Did he suspect that she was already beginning to fall in love with him? Her disappointment was great, but her respect for him grew, for she realized that he was denying himself, thinking of her welfare.

He called frequently to check on her, but he broke his resolve only once, taking her out to dine in Wichita's finest restaurant. He wore a dark suit, a subdued red-and-blue striped tie, and he was the best-looking man in the room. He was kind, considerate, wryly humorous, treating her as he might treat one of his son's college friends. He told her that all arrangements had been made for her to attend Claymore, told her about the generous monthly stipend the foundation was granting. That night at his home might never have happened. She saw the unhappiness in his eyes and heard the loneliness in his voice. She longed to assuage it, and she wished he weren't quite so honorable a man. Later that evening, when he walked her to the door of the boardinghouse, she stood up on tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the lips and he touched her cheek and looked at her for a long, sad moment and then left her there on the porch. She would never forget Norman Philips. She would be grateful to him for the rest of her life.

Mrs. Dillon, the dorm mother, was at the front desk as Carol stepped into the hall. Pattie, as all the girls called her, was plump, bustling, endearing, a widow with graying brown hair and bright black eyes, a pencil invariably behind her ear. She was confidante, counselor, watchdog and warden, as tolerant as the day was long but stern and unyielding if the need arose! A widow, she had her own apartment at the dorm, and her cat Mustard had free run of the entire building. He sat on the desk now, pretending to be a paperweight.