Whisper Their Love (5 page)

The depot at Henderson had been dusty and almost empty. The one at Ferndell, which hardly anybody used because only one train a day stopped there and bus service was handier, was a single room with three scarred benches and a rusty potbellied stove. This was an arena with ceilings so high they looked unreal. Little stores surrounded it, with gifty-looking stuff in their showcases. There were places to eat. There was even a barber shop and a man being shaved in it.

Out in the middle of the room, if a place that big could be said to have a middle, was a hollow-square counter with candy and oranges pyramided on it, looking bright and healthy. Behind it was a stocky middle-aged woman in a white uniform. And there was the magazine rack where they were supposed to meet, with stacks of pocket books and neat tiers of magazines. But no Mimi.

Joyce stood still, her mouth a little open. Sweat trickled down her back under the dacron blouse, It was as if all the times they'd been ready for Sunday, the cooky crock full of raisin brownies and clean sheets on the spare-room bed, and then the party-line phone rang and it was Mimi to say she couldn't come. Only that was simple disappointment and this was underlaid with panic.

A billowing dark woman, suckling her baby on one of the benches, pushed the little face away from her breast and smiled at Joyce. She smiled back, half grateful for the little gesture and half shocked to see someone so uncovered in a public place. A drop of milk hung on the. nipple, dropped, and rolled down that mountainous front. There was comfort in the sight of the mother and baby, as much at home here as in their own kitchen. Joyce took a deep breath.

And there was Mimi! She should have remembered that Mimi was always late and always in a hurry, unlike Aunt Gen, who made a religion of being on time. Her ankles tipped a little on high heels, her fur neckpiece was slung in the Chicago manner over a dressy suit, she wore a cocky little red hat. Joyce thought, It's too fancy, and she looks old. But that was silly. Because Mimi was only thirty-seven, only nineteen years older than she was, herself.

"Well!" Mimi said and they stood there looking self-conscious. They had never kissed except ritually at parting. There wasn't anything to say.

"You look wonderful," Joyce said. "Is that a new hairdo?" But it was too fussy, too many little blonde curls under the tipped brim.

Mimi smiled. "Thanks, baby. You look pretty nice yourself. Come on, we've got a taxi waiting."

There was a wind with a nip to it blowing off the lake, scuttling dust and paper scraps along the gutters. The El platforms and high buildings cut off the sun and darkened the street. The driver slammed the door shut.

"This is the theater district," Mimi said, and Joyce looked out eagerly. But there was nothing to see in the middle of the afternoon, the marquees were dark, the buildings looked like business offices, and the few people on the street were ordinary. She had thought of it as bright and glamorous, and she was disappointed.

The apartment building, on the near North Side, was made of stone blocks and had empty windowboxes on the front railings. The meter said a little over two dollars, and Mimi gave the man three and waved away the change. She looked a little smug about it: this was not like the old days when she had to figure bus fares against the wear and tear on her shoes, and the expense account had to be padded a little to cover the single room with the part-cotton blanket and the last tenant's cigar smoke still in the air. Irv was paying for this. Would still be paying for it, if she was lucky, when the fine creases in her neck became real wrinkles. She mounted the steps leisurely, and Joyce trailed after her, feeling more and more like someone in a book.

The foyer floor was black-and-white marble in squares. There were carved tables with ugly Chinese vases on them, and small gilt-traced chairs not meant to hold anyone weighing more than ninety pounds, and the elevator swayed and shuddered upwards but had a Balkan general in full-dress uniform, with medals, to run it. Arrived, Mimi unlocked the hall door and snapped on the light so she could see everything at once. Joyce said, "Gosh!"

"Broadloom," Mimi said. "Wall to wall, sixteen bucks a square yard." The room was maybe twelve by eighteen, with two windows at the far end. Two chairs so modern you would probably have to back into them, and a black wire magazine rack but no magazines. There was a plump sofa in beige frieze. "I'm putting you out here, seeing it's only for one night," Mimi said nervously.

Joyce kept on looking at the abstract painting over the sofa, a swirl of bright colors. She, certainly didn't intend to cry— nothing to cry about—but the reds and blues and yellows kept melting and running together. "One night?" she said in a small voice. ,

"I don't want to keep you out of school." Mimi kicked off her shoes the way she. always did when she came in, then bent and lined them up, pinching the tops into shape. "I want you to meet Irv, though,".she added apologetically. Joyce smiled brightly. "Sure." So what if she doesn't want me, what if she hates having me here? I can take it.

She followed Mimi around, admiring the apartment politely but feeling more and more like an unwelcome guest, someone who has to be entertained but who is really in the way. The bedroom was pastel, with twin beds covered in flounced chintz, everything neat, even the rows and rows of make-up jars and bottles on the long narrow glass shelf. That went back to when Mimi had worked in the beauty shop, giving manicures and facials, before she got her break and went on the road.

On the stand next to the farther bed, half an inch of cigar butt lay in the modern ashtray. Joyce walked to the window and looked out, unseeing. Will he be here tonight? Will I hear them, out there on that itchy-looking davenport? She was afraid to turn around and look at Mimi. But when she did, Mimi had put her suit on a padded hanger and was wrapping a flowered housecoat around herself. "This is the kitchen," she said, opening the other door.

The kitchen was too orderly to have been used much, and there wasn't much food in the cupboards. Plenty of liquor—gin, vermouth, rum, anisette, vodka, an assortment of new and partly filled bottles. It looked like an
Esquire
ad, but two things crossed Joyce's mind at the same moment—the price tags in the liquor store windows, and the stubborn expression on Aunt Gen's face when Uncle Will let the cider get hard. Mimi said guiltily, "Irv likes a drink after dinner. We eat out a lot, though." She slammed the door shut and found a jar partly full of instant coffee, and put on water to boil. Joyce would have liked something to eat, but she didn't like to suggest it.

She unpacked her clothes and hung them in Mimi's closet, wondering what was in the other one but not quite daring to look even when Mimi was out of the room. They talked about school mostly. No, she wasn't homesick. (For what?) Sure, it was a beautiful place. She described Mary Jean, censoring the details and dwelling on how pretty and talented she was.

"She designs her own clothes," she bragged, and brought out the aqua net to show off.

Mimi fingered the seams critically. "Nice. We'll make Irv take us out for dinner and have a night on the town. Won't that be fun? You can wear my satin ankle-straps with this; my feet are bigger than yours but it won't hurt if they're loose." She stood up briskly, and it occurred to Joyce that maybe she was embarrassed, too. It was even possible that she had been thinking about how it would be when they met, and whether this marriage was going to change anything between them. "I'll trim your hair," Mimi said. "You'd look nice with a feather cut."

That was more the way it had always been. At the farm, while Aunt Gen darned socks or put a hem in one of Joyce's dresses, Mimi had changed her nail polish or curled Joyce's hair or simply stalked around smoking and fidgeting. She couldn't sit still. It was like Sunday afternoon on the farm—but the thought of the farm suddenly made her feel lonesome and she tried to focus her attention on Mimi's sharp, thin scissors, going snip-snip around her ears.

Later, soaking in a perfumed bath with bubbles popping against her skin, she decided that beautiful described how she felt. Or anyway, good-looking. She hopped out and looked at herself in the long mirror, but it was the same body, young and flexible, narrow at the waist and sweetly sloping to the shoulders, the triangle of pubic hair darker and more curly than the hair on her head. Mimi came in to watch her dress. "Lean forward when you put your bra on," she said, "it gives you a figure," and she was right. The long-line strapless bra was too tight, even though the nylon and lace felt so soft; the little hooks cut into her skin, but it raised her small breasts above the top of Mary Jean's dress and gave her a definite cleavage. Voluptuous, she thought happily.

"You're getting a nice shape," Mimi said. Her voice sounded strained and tired. Joyce wrenched her gaze away from the mirror long enough to really look at her. Smeared with cold cream, her skin looked dull and rough, pitted a little on the cheeks and forehead, and her eyes were set in brown shadows. She made a grimace of smile as the doorbell rang. "Go and let him in, honey. I look like something the cat dragged in."

The fancy latch on the door resisted her first try. Then it opened, and he was there, the man Mimi had telephoned to come and amuse them, the man she was marrying tomorrow. Stepfather. Not exactly an Ezio Pinza or Clifton Webb type, shorter and stockier, with a small mustache and cheerful brown eyes. He looked like a man who would enjoy a good steak or a. bonded whisky, or the feel of a fur. He hugged Joyce and then kissed her on the cheek, and his face smelled of expensive lotion but was already a little bit scratchy. "Some baby," he called to Mimi, and Mimi said something from the bedroom doorway, but Joyce didn't catch it. She was a little disturbed by the kiss; it was not exactly like being kissed by boys.

Mimi came in, trailing white skirts. "Two girls at once," Irv said. "Look, you should have told me. I'd've dressed."

"It's all right," Mimi said, but Joyce felt a pang of disappointment In the movies men wore dinner jackets. Mimi had put on a lot of pancake makeup and looked like herself again.

Irv put an arm around each of them. "Come on, females. Let's go and paint the town."

She got a little confused when she tried to remember, afterwards, the happenings of that evening. It was all kaleidoscoped without regard for time—the taxi ride down to the Loop and the crowds on the sidewalks, crummy neighborhoods squeezed up against glamorous ones. They went to a restaurant where the lights were dim and a man in an embroidered blouse went from table to table, making sad soft music on a violin. It made Joyce feel unhappy, but Irv sat studying the menu card.

"You ought to have a little beard," she told him, surprising herself, and he chuckled.

"I grew one, once, but my first wife made me shave it off." Mimi frowned. "She had something there. How any woman can stand being scratched by whiskers!" Irv winked at Joyce, changing the subject. "The food is good here," he said.

It was, too. She had been hungry all day. She ate shrimps in a biting hot sauce and filet mignon with mushrooms, and a salad with bits of bread in it and plenty of garlic. Aunt Gen wouldn't cook with garlic, she said onion was common enough. Mimi dabbled, breaking little edges off her food with a fork and then not eating anything. "Oh, could I have baked Alaska?" Joyce asked, seeing it on the menu, and Irv said, "You can have anything you want, baby. Do they feed you bread and water at that school?"

"Hominy grits," she told him. He shook his head sadly. The baked Alaska was a letdown. It was only sponge cake from a bakery, not very fresh, with ice cream and browned meringue on it. The. meringue had scorched a little on its peaks and the ice cream tasted starchy. She ate it anyway, feeling bored and worldly, and drank black coffee and leaned back feeling lovely. The air the older girls at school had; it was all she could do not to smile idiotically over having achieved it. She composed her face to beautiful nonchalance.

Afterwards they went to a movie. This was a letdown; color and the wide screen had reached Ferndell and so had air conditioning, and she was sleepy after so much food. Still, the auditorium was bigger than any she had ever been in and there was a sprinkling of glamorous people in evening clothes. But so am I, she thought in some surprise, crossing her knees under the stiff folds of net and swinging one foot in Mimi's sandal, clasped around the ankle with a thin strap of rhinestones. She dozed a little, and jerked awake to look at Irv and Mimi. They were sitting side by side like an old married couple, not even holding hands. They're bored, she thought guiltily, they're doing all this for me and I ought to be grateful. I
am
grateful, she assured herself, sitting up straight and focusing her eyes on the screen.

Pushing out through the lobby, which was gray with cigarette smoke and shrill with voices, she couldn't help yawning. "Sleepy?" Irv asked. "I was going to take you beautiful girls to a nightclub."

"Oh, all my life I've wanted to go to one," she told him, widening her eyes the way Holly Mae Robertson did. So he hailed another cab.

This was more like it. The room was pink and fuchsia, with black and silver zigzags across the walls, and the Negro musicians sat on a little silver platform. The drums were fuchsia and the leader was in white, with a pink cummerbund. Some of the men at the little tables were in evening clothes, and all the women were beautiful. Or at least glamorous, she amended it—some of them weren't so very young, maybe, but they all had beautiful complicated hairdos and lots of make-up, and the more wrinkled their necks were, the more bosom they showed.

Her eye was caught by two women at the next table, one fluttery in ruffles and the other solid in tweeds and flat heels. They were leaning across the table talking eagerly, letting their drinks get warm. Irv followed her look. "Those are Lesbians. You know, they go for women instead of men."

"Well, sure, I know that." But she looked with fascination at the two until they went out, arm-in-arm. I should think they'd try to keep people from knowing it. And anyway how could they—It must be something I don't know about, she thought, baffled, or else what do they get out of it? None of the biological facts she'd heard or read about seemed to fit in, and she decided to ask Mary Jean about it when she got back to school. Most likely a girl who knew as much about men as Mary Jean did would have the answer to this one, too.