The Tight White Collar (5 page)

“We'll get married and find a darling little apartment,” said Lisa. “And I'll fix it up so that you'll have the nicest home in Cooper's Mills. And then we'll have the baby and neither one of us will ever have to go home alone to different places again. We'll be married and we'll never have to be separated ever, ever again.”

Lisa went alone to Cooper Station. Chris had to work in the fruit store that afternoon and besides, as Lisa said, people might think it was funny, the two of them walking into the doctor's together and everything. She drove carefully and well, as Chris had taught her to do, on the road to Cooper Station.

I am carrying Chris's child, she thought as she drove. I am carrying Chris's child under my heart. We have mated together and I am fulfilled. He loves me and I love him and this child will be the fruit of our love.

Lisa had read hundreds and hundreds of confession magazines and the words and phrases which filled her mind now were those of not quite forgotten stories.

I am carrying a love child, she thought happily. And everyone knows that love children are the most beautiful children of all, because they were conceived in love.

She hummed to herself as she parked the car in front of the Cameron house.

The brass plate on the front door of the old house said,
Dr. Gordon Cameron
in script and below that, in the same script but with the letters sharper and newer looking,
Dr. Jess Cameron
. A white card over the doorbell said,
Walk In
.

Lisa rang and went through the door into the carpeted hallway. To her left was a waiting room filled with leather-upholstered chairs, potted plants and tables covered with magazines. To her right was the living room. From where she stood, Lisa could see the big, comfortable-looking chairs and the enormous brick fireplace. She noticed that the carpeting in that room covered the entire floor from one wall to another. It was the first time in her life that she had seen a room where the rug was not surrounded on all four sides by a border of bare, painted floor. The Cameron living room was prettier than any picture she had ever seen in any magazine and now she could imagine what her mother meant when she spoke of the beautiful house that had been owned by the Durands.

I'll fix our living room just like this one, thought Lisa, and could hardly wait for the afternoon to be over so that she could get back to Cooper's Mills to tell Chris.

She was still standing there, staring into the living room, when the door at the far end of the hall opened.

“Well, hello there,” said the woman who came toward her. “You're an early one, ain't ya? First one in today.” Then she stopped and eyed Lisa suspiciously. “Say, don't I know you?”

Lisa whirled around. She knew who the woman was, all right. Everybody knew. She was Marie Fennell and everybody in Cooper's Mills knew about Marie. Maybe they even knew about her in Cooper Station. Maybe the whole state knew about Marie.

“I never saw you before in my life,” said Lisa coldly.

Marie Fennell seemed to sag with a sudden weariness. Nobody's ever goin' to forget, she thought tiredly. Never.

“Doctor'll be right with you,” she said. “Young doc that is. Other one's over to the hospital.” She indicated the room to the left. “Go on in and have a seat.”

“Thank you very much,” said Lisa and hoped that she sounded like Irene when she said it.

Imagine, thought Lisa. Two doctors in a nice place like Cooper Station having someone like Marie Fennell in their house. It was awful, that's what it was. Just plain awful.

She was halfway through a magazine when Jess Cameron put his head through the door.

“Hi,” he said. “Come on in.”

Why, he's not
young
at all, thought Lisa, feeling outraged. He must be
thirty
if he's a day! She told herself that she had a good mind to get up and leave right now. But the thought of gossipy Dr. Dorrance in Cooper's Mills stopped her.

“Sit down,” invited Jess after she had stepped into his office. He indicated a chair next to the desk and Lisa sat.

Just wait until I tell Chris, thought Lisa angrily. Why, he's old enough to be my father and probably talks more than any ten old women put together.

Jess Cameron sat behind his desk and unbuttoned his coat. He lit a cigarette and removed the cap from his fountain pen and took a white card from a drawer.

“Now,” he said, and smiled at her. “What's your name?”

“Melissa Anne St. George,” she replied primly.

Jess tossed his fountain pen down and leaned back in his chair.

“Now don't tell me that every time I talk to you I have to say all that,” he laughed.

Suddenly he did not seem old at all, and Lisa laughed too.

“No,” she said, “that was just for the record. You may call me Lisa if you want.”

“I want,” he said, and picked up his pen again. When he had finished writing her name on the card he looked up. “Well, Lisa, what seems to be the trouble?”

“Trouble?” she asked. And then she smiled. “Oh, no trouble, Doctor. I mean, I'm not sick or anything. I'm going to have a baby.”

Jess Cameron looked down at the card in front of him and did not move.

I knew it, he thought. I knew it the minute I saw her. But I'm never going to get used to it. Never. A child herself, and now this.

As soon as he was able, he looked up at her. “Is that so?” he asked conversationally.

“Well, at least I
think
so,” said Lisa and blushed a little. “I haven't come around—I mean, I haven't menstruated for three months.”

“Yes,” said Jess. “Well, that's usually a pretty good indication of something or other. Let's find out.”

While Lisa was undressing in the other room, Jess put out his cigarette.

Christ! he thought. Seventeen years old. I wonder if the boy will marry her quietly or if there'll be a stink. I hope to hell he's no one from around here.

Lisa lay on the narrow table and suffered what she later described to Chris as agonies of embarrassment while the doctor poked and prodded and put his cold stethoscope on her.

He was nice, though, she thought later. He didn't stare at her at all while his hands were on her. Finally he straightened and, keeping his back to her, went to the small sink in the room and pulled off his rubber glove.

“You may get dressed,” he told her.

When she had her clothing on and was seated next to his desk again, he said, “Lisa, you're going to have a baby, all right. In about six more months, I'd say.”

But he sounded so sad, thought Lisa. And all she wanted was for him to be as happy as she was. She began to figure mentally.

“It must have happened practically the first time we were together,” she said at last.

“Lisa, listen to me,” said Jess. “Does he—does the father know?”

“Well, yes. I mean, he's not sure but neither was I until just now.”

“Is he willing to marry you?” asked Jess.

“Of course he's willing to marry me,” cried Lisa angrily. “He
loves
me and I love him. With us, Dr. Cameron, it isn't a question of
having
to get married. Oh, I've heard plenty about girls and boys having to get married, but not Chris and me. We love each other. We
want
to get married.”

“Tell me this boy's name,” said Jess tiredly. “His name, where he works. Everything.”

“His name is Christopher Pappas. He is seventeen years old and he works for his father and mother in the fruit store at Cooper's Mills,” said Lisa as if she were reciting a lesson in a classroom. Then she added, “He lives in the house behind the store with his family and his father and mother hate me and my mother hates Chris.”

Jess shielded his eyes with his hand as he wrote. “Does he get paid for the work he does for his parents?” he asked.

“Of course,” said Lisa proudly. “He gets sixty cents an hour. That's what men get when they first go into the mills, you know. And Chris's folks pay him the same thing because they want to keep him at the store.”

“I see,” said Jess. “Lisa,” he said, “you tell this boy tonight. Tell him that you were here and that we're sure.”

“Well, of course, I'll tell him,” said Lisa, not understanding the man at all. “He's just dying to hear. I promised that I'd stop by the store and let him know as soon as I was sure myself. We even worked out a sort of code in case his mother or father is around. If one of them is there and I am, I'm to ask him for a package of Wrigley's spearmint gum, and if I'm not I'm to go to the fountain and order a small Coke. So now, of course, I'll order the gum. If one of his parents is around, I mean.”

“And Lisa,” said Jess, as if she had not spoken, “if you run into any trouble at all, either with the boy or his family, you are to come back here to me at once. Do you understand? At once.”

“Yes, sir,” said Lisa and all of a sudden she felt like crying. She didn't feel warm or excited any more at all. “Yes, Dr. Cameron,” she said and walked out the door.

Chris reacted as Lisa had known he would.

“I'm glad,” he said. “I love you and you love me and we're going to have a baby. So what?”

He put his arm around her shoulders and said again, defiantly, “So what?” as if daring the world to tell him so anything, and Lisa was overwhelmed with love.

The trouble, when it came, was between Irene and Mrs. Pappas.

“A child!” screamed Irene. “You, Lisa? A child? With this
nobody
? This
shopkeeper
?”

Lisa, Chris and the two mothers sat in Irene's living room. Lisa held Chris's hand and looked around and she could hardly believe that just that morning she had thought that this room was perfectly comfortable and attractive. She supposed that it was still all right, in its way, but it just wasn't the kind of room she liked any more. The wallpaper had a dark tan background with small, lighter tan figures printed on it. Lisa had often wondered what the figures represented. Sometimes they looked like rose arbors in a garden and sometimes like the faces of old men, and sometimes like church windows. The furniture was covered with maroon plush, like the seats in the coaches on the Boston and Maine Railroad, and Lisa, sitting in one of her mother's living room chairs, felt slightly sick and a little scared.

“If she's that way,” said Mrs. Pappas, “it's because she led my Chris on so he didn't know what he was doing. How many times I told him, ‘Chris,' I said, ‘don't play around with no tramps.'”

“Lisa isn't a tramp,” said Chris quietly. “She's a nice girl.”

“Led him on!” yelled Irene so loud that Lisa almost said, “For heaven's sake, Mother, remember who you are!”

“Led him on! Let me tell you something, Mrs. Pappas, my Lisa wasn't brought up like that. She's a good decent girl. A young lady.”

“Brought up! Huh! With you in a beer saloon every chance you get, tell me how good she was brought up?”

“You filthy foreigner,” cried Irene. “You in that cockroach-infested store of yours, raising up a son to violate a young girl.”

“He didn't,” said Lisa and began to cry. “He didn't do that. I love him.”

“She's a little tramp!”

“If he were any good she wouldn't be in this fix!”

“She asked for it. Her kind always does.”

“God only knows how many other girls he's done this to!”

“My Chris never had no girls! He always stayed home or in the store minding his own business until that little hot britches kid of yours started in twitching her tail at him!”

“Enough, you vile-tongued harridan!”

“Ain't you somethin' with them big words, huh? Yeah, yeah, Mrs. High and Mighty herself. Can't even hang on to her man. You drunken bum!”

“It is always the ignorant,” said Irene, calm at last, “who look down upon their better-educated neighbors.”

“Educated your ass! That's a good one. Educated by a pimp like old man Durand. Well all I can say is that you learned good, Mrs. Fancy Pants. Real good. And you taught your kid all the things you learned from that crook.”

Lisa and Chris were married. In church. With double rings and a priest and three organ selections because Mrs. McGovern, the organist, always played three selections at all weddings for which she was paid five dollars. Irene stayed on after the ceremony just long enough to wish the newlyweds luck and then she headed for the Happy Hour Café. People at the Happy Hour knew Irene for the lady she was. At the Happy Hour, no one ever said a mean word to her. They listened to her stories by the hour and they never questioned a word.

The Pappases did not put in an appearance at the wedding at all, and Cooper's Mills wondered and whispered.

“Wonder where Irene kept the shotgun hid all during Mass?”

“It won't last a year. Marriages like that never do.”

“Well, it's too late now. Imagine, a priest and everything. They can never get a divorce now. It's too late.”

“I never thought Lisa was that kind of girl.”

“Well, it don't surprise me none.”

“A regular little hot pants bitch.”

“And Chris Pappas. What a sonofabitch he turned out to be. And him so smart in school and all.”

“It's a wise child knows its own father. I wonder if Lisa's kid'll know.”

“She's beginning to show already.”

“I noticed.”

Chris and Lisa rented a two-room apartment on River Street in Cooper's Mills. The apartment was in a building that had the subtly decayed quality peculiar to buildings in the manufacturing towns of northern New England. There was no real reason why the board of health should have condemned the place, for the building had the required number of exits and the proper number of fire extinguishers in the halls, but there was a feeling of age about the place, a feeling of rottenness that came from the sagging of hidden sills and mildewed clapboards, and over everything, there was the smell of aged wallpaper and faulty drains.