The High Cost of Living (27 page)

“Why don't you go on the pill?” the doctor asked, reaching for his prescription pad. “We recommend that over the IUD for most cases.”

“This isn't going to happen again. I don't need the pill.”

“You didn't think it was going to happen this time, did you? We can put you on Enovid.”

“It's not necessary. I don't intend to have it happen again. I haven't needed contraception in … two years,” she said, unable to be more truthful, with him peering at her in that paternalistic way.

“If you're afraid of the pill, we can fit you for a diaphragm. But we can't have you coming in every week for a morning-after pill. The receptionist will make an appointment for you to come back in two weeks for an IUD or a diaphragm. Have you ever been pregnant?”

“No,” she said, seeing the miscarriage. Don't let them put it on your record.

“The doctor who examines you will decide. See the receptionist. Take one of these every morning for four more mornings. If your menses are delayed past two weeks, make an appointment. Every morning for four more mornings.”

She did not make the appointment. As she hurried in the rain across a campus crisscrossed by commuters, she felt nauseated, although whether from the shot or depression she could not tell. The rain pelted her hair flat to her skull and tried to creep into the neck of her jacket. She felt extraordinarily sorry for herself.

Chilled, she bent over old real estate records in the anteroom of George's office. Hot coffee alone kept her moving. Around four, George called her in. “Shut the door.” He frowned. “You look under the weather. Are you coming down with something?”

“I got soaked.… Is everything all right at the house?”

George had returned with sunburn and he was still bright red, lit up. “Good job. Except that you could have given the lawn a soak. Not cool to let it dry out The rain will help now.”

“Sorry. I didn't think of the lawn.”

“Keep an eye on it next time. Sometimes you have to touch the ground between the roots to be sure.” George stretched, running his hand gingerly over his arm. “Still tender. I hope my tan doesn't peel off and wash away. How was your vacation?”

“Fine.”

“You went to Grand Rapids?”

He would not let her off the hook. She nodded. “But that's over now.”

“Too bad.… Is Cam living with Mark Hennessy?”

“Cam? I don't think so. They're seeing each other.”

“She changed her phone number this morning.” He pointed to a card in the Rolodex on his desk. Silently they compared the numbers.

She scratched her head. “I know she wanted to leave home. I can find out from her sister Honor. You don't mind, do you?”

“Why should I?” He flexed his arms behind his head, gingerly, and stuck his feet up. “I like to keep on top. Actually, I'm not sure I love having my secretary shacked up with one of my assistants. We'll see. I could imagine situations where it might be sticky.” He peered into her face. “You look awful today. Are you coming down with the flu?”

“No. I just didn't get much sleep.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No. My personal life is not exactly wonderful at the moment, but I'm okay.”

“You don't look okay.… Mark came to me this morning by the way and told me in all confidence that you are a l-e-s-b-i-a-n. I was a mite annoyed. I said, ‘Fine, I imagine some other ambitious grad student will come to me privately next week and tell me you fuck ducks. It will mean as much.' But I was annoyed.”

In her slough of misery one more bit of trouble hardly mattered. “I had the feeling he was chewing on that.”

“Hope it doesn't spread. I'm behind you, but we have enough campaigns under way.”

“I'm not looking for a fight either. Maybe he'll let it drop.”

“Why does he have it in for you?”

“I don't know.” She tried to rise to an analysis, but she felt bogged in self-pity. “He was interested in me at first, I can't imagine why.”

“You're attractive and he's on the slow side.”

There goes Mark's assistantship, she thought, and felt a stab of remorse. She disliked him but felt unworthy of judgment today.

“I think he's more likely professionally jealous,” George said, stroking his mustache with that look almost of feeling himself up. “I think it's more likely my attention he craves. He's becoming a nuisance. There are at least ten brighter, harder-working students in this department who don't have assistantships.… My neighbors, the nosy ones, told me you had a young man with you this weekend. Are you branching out? Or was it just someone awfully butch? They're not too bright either.”

The neighbors really do talk; she had not thought of neighbors since childhood. The woman next door calling her over: “I haven't seen your daddy around lately, little girl. What happened to your daddy?” Even at eight she knew enough to lie. “Oh, him.” Her mind hardened to frozen slush. She could think of nothing to say.

“Who is he? What were you doing with him?” George was watching her with slightly malicious and slightly possessive curiosity. “Are you latently hetero after all?”

“He's gay! And I can't stand him.” To her humiliation her eyes began to burn and two tears trembled in the corners. She sat stark still hoping that if she did not move they would be reabsorbed and she could pretend nothing had happened.

He patted her shoulder. “This is all fascinating. What have you got into?”

“Nothing I haven't got right back out of, believe me. I had a rotten vacation! I want to work like hell and forget it.”

“A gay young man. What were you
doing
with him?”

“Just fucking up things, George! Please.”

“If it's work your broken heart requires, we've got plenty. That's a new one. Those in the straight world who used to ponder what lesbians do together can put that in the hopper and bounce it around. I don't mean to be facetious, Red, but beyond the novelty, I wouldn't think it a profitable direction.”

“I'm just going to work.”

“Fine. Let's see what you had time to do with those correlations while I was broiling myself like a piece of prime steak.” He put down his feet to signal he was ready for business, but he was still smiling, his eyes crinkled at the corners.

Leslie was sitting crosslegged. Her thighs were stiff from exercising after a whole week off. She had several bruises on her forearms she had not squeezed out. Usually she took the time to deal with bruises so that they were neither painful nor visible, but she had cut short the treatment, impatiently hating her body too much to tend it carefully. It was Tuesday afternoon and she was studying the history of the cotton industry from 1812 to the Civil War, the slight pain of her body a counterbalance to the unceasing pain in her head.

The phone rang. She reached to pick it up without moving from her crosslegged position. “Leslie here.”

“Yes. Honor here. ‘Here' is a dirty drugstore on your dirty corner. I can't figure out how to get your attention otherwise. You don't seem to have a normal doorbell.”

“It's broken. Come back and I'll let you in.” Carefully she put away her book and notecards and glanced at the room. It was neat. There was hardly enough in it to create clutter. Had she known Honor was visiting, she would have got some flowers to soften it. She liked flowers against her stark backdrop. A vase of daffodils decorated an entire room for her. One big yellow rose was furniture. But she had not known and she felt ashamed, as if her room was not good enough for Honor.

She ran down two steps at a time, waiting so that Honor would not risk being hassled. She watched the girl swinging languidly along in a trench coat, a shiny black bag over her shoulder and a chiffon scarf wrapped artfully around her hair. Her eager stare in all directions contradicted the studied languor of her gait. She looked in her twenties except for her expression, the open, eager, pink curiosity. But she pulled her face into a mask when she saw Leslie, and Leslie felt rebuked.

“You finally came to visit me,” Leslie said as they climbed. “I hope you didn't get too wet?”

“That's what raincoats are for, even though Mama pretends to think I'll die of pneumonia if the dew touches me.” Honor stopped so abruptly inside the door Leslie almost ran into her back. “Bernar' certainly wasn't exaggerating. It's a nun's cell. Every time I think dear Bernar' is stretching the truth, he surprises me by his accuracy.… Does one stand?”

“You could sit on my bed, if you wouldn't mind.”

“I don't see a bed.”

“My mattress.”

“Hmmm.” Honor carefully removed her raincoat, turned several times until Leslie took it from her and hung it in the shower. Then with haughty dignity she lowered herself to the mattress and took up a position sitting with her legs to one side in a neat Z. She was wearing a calf-length dark shirtdress in a small figured print, nylons and built-up shoes that looked clumsy to Leslie.

“I came,” Honor said with distinct utterance, spitting out the words, “because I gathered I would not see you otherwise. Yesterday was Monday. I waited, of course, expecting you. You neither came nor called.”

Leslie clapped her hand to her mouth. She had simply forgotten. The week of vacation that had felt months long had thrown her schedule completely off. “I wasn't feeling well so I had to go to Health Service in the morning. They kept me waiting till noon. I'm sorry I didn't call. There's no way I could have come yesterday, but I should have called. I missed my morning seminar, and when I got to our office, George was waiting for me with a lot of work.”

“I find it interesting. I found it equally interesting on Saturday.”

“Honorée, do you have a serious heart condition?” God, it seemed weeks since she had sat in the livingroom staring at Honor's mother.

“No, do you? Bernar' said you told him some fairy tale about my mother warning you off because of my heart. Really! That's a bad Victorian novel. Do I lie on a chaise lounge and cough delicately into a lace hanky?”

“When I arrived to pick you up Saturday, your mother told me you were at the doctor. She warned me against … She said you were in danger from too much stimulation because of a heart condition.”

“I did have to go to the doctor, but only because of my stupid gym class. I have a note letting me out, but they said the note was too old. The doctor's a friend of Mama's and he doesn't see why I have to prance around shooting baskets to survive adolescence. He says I'm mature for my age and it's not surprising I loathe group games. He hated them himself.… I think it's unfair and rather mean of you to blame Mama for your not waiting. She told you where I was. You could easily have waited. Is it so dreadful to sit in my livingroom talking with Mama? She said you seemed terribly jumpy.”

“Did you have rheumatic fever?”

“As a child, yes. But it's not a major illness nowadays, Leslie! I was anemic for a little while. Mama makes a fuss, but that's no excuse for you.”

“Honorée, she said you were at the doctor's and she implied you'd be there quite a while.”

“Why didn't you wait? Why didn't you come back if you were too nervous to sit in the livingroom waiting? Why didn't you call? Really, Leslie, you think I'm a child, don't you? You took my absence as an excuse for going off alone with Bernar'.”

“But Honorée, you're the one insisted I pick you up first because you didn't want your mother to know you were going to spend Saturday with him.”

“It's the way you went off with him. You were the driver. It was your car—I mean, George's—but you were the driver. What could Bernie do? You arrived and told him that fantastic story about my having a heart attack and then you took him off for the day in the country without me. I think it's mean. Absolutely mean.”

“Your mother said you couldn't go. Bernie was anxious. He'd arranged to get the day off from work.”

“He would have waited till Sunday, he told me so. He was willing. We would have had to leave early to get him to work by four, but we could have all gone. No, Leslie, it was your choice. And I repeat it, it was traitorous and disloyal.” Honor shifted her feet so she was sitting bolt upright on the mattress. “If you believed your own story, why didn't you call me the moment you got back in town? But did you call Saturday night? No. Sunday morning? No. Sunday afternoon? Sunday evening? Monday? Did you appear when you always appear Monday? Well, did you?”

“I've been feeling rotten. Ill,” she said, improving on it. “I spent yesterday morning at Student Health Service.”

“Ill—like my magical heart condition? Really, Leslie, I'm ashamed of you. And deeply disappointed. Why didn't you simply admit you were romantically interested in Bernar'? It isn't necessary to connive to get me out of the way. After all, I live at home and it's easy enough for you to meet. That is, if Bernar' had proved interested. Oh, Leslie, I am disappointed in you. You go on how you care about women, but you're just like the girls at school, who'll do anything for a boyfriend, really!”

She felt as if she were sinking in mud. She could not rouse herself to indignation, for she felt guilty. She had acted badly. It was hard for her to think how to defend herself, because she felt indefensible. “Is that what Bernie told you?”

“He
came to see me Sunday.
He
came over yesterday. I didn't have to confront him in his lair like a wounded animal. Really, Leslie, you must think I'm a complete fool! Did you have any friendship for me at all?”

“You're being foolish now. I feel a lot closer to you than I do to Bernie, believe me.” That at least was true and her voice sounded convincing for the first time. “Bernie and I had a fight, did he tell you that?”

“What about?”