The tenth month, p.2
The Tenth Month, page 2
“But if I stop, I’ll have lost my last chance.”
She had made one appointment but when the day came she could not bear the going, could not stand the continuing of a purpose which now was off in the distance of “when you marry again.” To marry at thirty was not as easy as it had been at twenty-two; her needs had taken on shape and firmness; she could no longer live in a vague happy cloud of girlish responses to a man because he danced well or because he took you to all the smart places. And by thirty-five, by forty—
Suddenly Dr. Jesskin opened his office door behind her. She lay inert; unafraid; simply waiting. Miss Mack reappeared, offered him a small tray with instruments and the examination began. It proceeded in complete silence, as always in the past, and as always, Dr. Jesskin’s expression was one of total absorption. When the examination was over, he asked Dori to sit up at the side of the table, her legs dangling, and Miss Mack quickly rearranged her drapings, over her shoulders, scooped low over her navel, revealing only her breasts. As the doctor began the careful palping and prodding, Dori thought wildly, It’s like the annual check for cancer—he never says anything then either.
“Would you please stand now?”
She slid off the table, with Miss Mack swiftly re-draping her once more, this time leaving her torso bare, but gathering the white folds tightly around her hips into a bunched rosette for Dori to clutch to herself, an elaborate and coiled fig leaf.
It’s so stupid, she thought; why can’t I just be naked? The words were angry, but she could not have said them aloud. Dr. Jesskin was looking at her in profile, below her navel, up to her breasts, below again, and then he moved around to see her full on.
On his face was that familiar expression, absorption, nothing else. “When you are dressed,” he finally said, “I will see you again in the office.” He nodded, almost formally, and she hurried to the alcove and into her clothes. As she knocked and opened his office door a few minutes later, he dropped his pen on the page before him—it was still her folder—and said, “Well, my dear girl,” and before she could interpret the words or the half-permissive tone of them, he added, “there is no way to be sure, as I said, until the tests are complete.” She sat down, silent. “But it does seem, there is some slight evidence of change.” Before she could speak, he raised his index finger an inch or two, a polite, cautionary inch or two, in renewal of what he had asked her to remember. “Some slight change, not only the apparent enlargement which you reported, but also perhaps a change in the cervix. It is out of the question to be certain, so early, but a change suggests itself, I must say.”
“There is at least a possibility that I’m pregnant?”
“I must not answer in any way until the reports are in. I’ll have the Drav Index done, which is faster, but also the A-Z test, totally conclusive.”
“How long do they take? Could you tell them to hurry?”
“They always hurry, on pregnancy tests.” He stood up and she did too. “But the A-Z won’t be in until the day after tomorrow.”
“Two whole days? Till Thursday?”
Suddenly he lost his look of absorption and controlled care; he put his hand on her arm and said, “You must try not to think about it.”
She laughed, at him, at his suggestion, and said, “Oh, thank you, Dr. Jesskin.”
Try not to think about it indeed. She stopped at a drugstore counter for toast and coffee and thought, Thank God for Martha Litton, and glanced at her watch. She was to be at Miss Litton’s at eleven for the interview that had been so difficult to set up, now that Miss Litton’s third comedy, Time and a Half, was a greater smash than her first two, and though she never worked at deadline heat for these special pieces, she could plunge along on this one for the entire day, and into the evening. She often did her best work in the evening.
Don’t think about it. She walked to Miss Litton’s apartment quickly, and was again too early, and walked around the block several times before going up. From Miss Litton’s testy greeting—“I tried to reach you this morning but you were out. It’s turned into the worst sort of time for an interview”—she knew she was in for a difficult session. Thank God for that too.
She rarely took notes beyond particularities of spellings and dates, but today she did, using not a notebook but copy paper folded and propped against her purse. Twice in the first minutes she had to say, “Sorry, could you tell me that again?” and twice Miss Litton repeated what she had said, showing an impatience that it should be necessary.
It was all useless stuff, the official gabble of publicity releases, but Dori hid that estimate of it. At the first chance she said, “Could we go back before your first play? You were born in Philadelphia, I know—”
“Av ovo?” Miss Litton said primly, but began nevertheless to talk of her childhood, and for the first time Dori listened without bothering with her folded copy paper. Here it is, she thought, the only kind of thing that ever explains anybody, if you can ever get at it.
The interview went on for an hour and when Dori left she had the first paragraph of her piece clear in her mind. She would go straight to the typewriter and stay with it and not let herself think, and though she rather thoroughly disliked the current Martha Litton for her self-love and self-praise, she ought to be able to use that dislike judiciously and write something that had insight and some feeling.
“Anything by Dori Gray will have warmth,” her editor at the paper had once said in her presence, “sometimes enough to singe your eyebrows.”
It must be true; enough people had said so by now, enough letters had told her so. It wasn’t a trick; it must come through her effort always to see into, to look for character instead of characteristic. She was never facile and easy with a phrase anyhow; that was what had ruined her the one time she had tried out for a panel show on television, that and the fact that she had gone stiff with self-consciousness, what with the whole production staff and the other panelists, experienced charmers all, waiting hopefully for some clever little mot.
Yet the light turn of phrase came readily when she was with one congenial person. Dick Towson always laughed when they were together, and had even asked why she didn’t try writing light pieces or a humor column in some women’s magazine. He was the one with the light touch, really; perhaps that was why he brought it out in her when they were together. If he were here right now she would probably burst out with her news; she was always apt to tell things to anybody close to her, close in the special closeness that came only with making love over a long period of time. D. H. Lawrence had talked in Lady Chatterley of the deep peace that came from steady love-making, only he had used the word, the lovely thick Anglo-Saxon word which she liked and approved of in theory but could not easily say, despite the uninhibited language of 1967.
But Lawrence was right; there was a peacefulness and closeness from a continuing sexuality, if it was satisfying and solid for both, and she and Dick had known that closeness and knew it still, even though they also knew, each of them and without verbalizing it, that they were coming to the end. Paradox, paradox. She had never ended anything with hatred and blame, except after Tony, and she still felt warm toward Dick and linked with him.
Linked. A surge of feeling surprised her, for his share in what had happened—it has happened, the reports will say yes—a leap of grateful love, the best sort, for it asked nothing. Suddenly he seemed newly appealing; she remembered how exciting it had been, almost a year and a half ago, how flattering, that he should be demanding her time, her emotion, her body, when he could have chosen almost any younger or prettier girl. That first time they were in the apartment alone, she had said something about those possible other girls, and he had suddenly and roughly taken her hand and held it against himself and said, “But you’re the one does this,” and watched her as she felt the bulk of him rising to her palm, arrogant and sure.
They had gone to bed that night and it had been right and good and equal for them both, and there were none of the insufferable little coynesses and uncertainties and she had known she would see him whenever he was in New York and not off on an assignment. “Is it all right, about your family?” she had asked once, and she had shut her off, not brusquely, but with a decisiveness that removed all responsibility from her, and any need for guilt. “I’ve got a damn good marriage in all the usual twenty-five-years-of-it ways, steady, and no surprises, and all the kids know Dad’s a newspaperman who’s away half the time but won’t ever go for good, and nobody’s got any kick coming, so it’s okay all around and you and I don’t ever have to worry about it.”
They had never worried about it. At the beginning he would telephone her late at night when he was covering some story in London or Washington or Tel Aviv, but though he never labored the point, she knew that he also called his wife from those same places and that overseas phone calls were almost matter-of-fact to his four children.
At the beginning he would come straight to her from Kennedy Airport when he returned; for the past few months, though, he often went home instead and came to her the next day or perhaps the day after. It was one of the small signals of the passing of time, the passing of the first heat and press and gluttony of a new affair, and she saw it for what it was with a strange willingness, a wisdom she did not know she possessed but which she welcomed with a faint pleasure as if she were awarding herself the mildest of accolades for avoiding that most dreaded feminine failing, being too demanding.
Yet at this moment, if he were to phone and say he was just in from his assignment, impossible since he was off in that fierce part of the world, if he were by some fluke to phone and say, Towson here, I’m at Kennedy, can I come over?”—
She glanced at the telephone as if it actually had rung and suddenly rose from the typewriter. She hadn’t gone beyond the first paragraph of the piece on Martha Litton; she had let her mind wander, undisciplined and wanton, because the first major problem she would have when all the reports were in would be centered in Dick Towson and his right to know or her decent obligation not to let him know.
Suddenly another one of Dick’s pronouncements popped into her mind, this also spoken with that brusque decisiveness that lifted all responsibility from her. “Either of us can want out and all holds by the other barred—yes?” She had laughed at the adroitness and thought how exactly his mood had suited hers. As for this kind of hold, it was not only barred but unthinkable.
She began to prowl restlessly around the room. Anyway, she thought, I don’t have to decide now. He may be there for months. I’m going to take this just as it happens, one day at a time.
She went back to the typewriter and wrote hard for another paragraph and then once again pushed back from her desk and began to move about. It was a pretty room, her bedroom and study combined, a room she felt easy in when she was alone, and a little proud of when she was not alone.
Suddenly she wished she were not alone. Remembering that first night with Dick had made her remember how marvelous it was to be made love to, how normal and sweet and good she always felt. She wished she were newly in love, newly in bed, for the first time with somebody new, caught in that fresh wild passion of beginnings, where you could never stop to think of any future—
The wrong moment for ruling out futures, she thought wryly. Again she went to her typewriter; another paragraph spurted from the keys and then the telephone rang. It was a shrill loud bell which she had often resolved to ask the phone company to mute or diminish and the sound of it scarred her mood. She lifted the receiver and heard Matthew Poole say “Hello?” and her heart lifted too.
“I thought you were going to Boston,” she greeted him.
“I’m in Boston.”
“Calling me from Boston?”
He laughed. “Long distance—it’s a new invention.”
“I’ve heard.”
“I’m taking the five o’clock shuttle back,” he said, “and I wondered if you’d have dinner with me.”
“Tonight?”
“That’s why I’m using the new invention.”
“I’m not being too bright, am I?” She hesitated. “I was going to finish writing an interview I’m doing.”
“That sounds disciplined and worthwhile. Don’t be. Say you will have dinner with me.”
“I’d love to. I’m in no mood to be disciplined and worthwhile.”
“Good. Can I come by at about six thirty? And you tell me where to take you for dinner?”
“I’ll give you a drink while I decide.”
As she hung up she thought, I oughtn’t to. Until I know for sure, I ought not to see him even once more. Suppose he—but he won’t. He’s not the sudden lover like Dick. And if he is, I’m not. But my God, there I go. If it’s not hindsight-thinking, devious and destructive, it’s forward-projection, equally dangerous.
She moved toward her desk and boredom invaded her. Who cared about Martha Litton and her self-importance and vanity and mannerisms? There were days for working and days for restlessness and God knew this was a restless one. She went to the kitchen to ask Nellie to put out ice cubes and a few things to have with their drinks.
“I could stay on if you want,” Nellie offered in a dubious tone. She always sounded dubious, a rather surly Swedish girl who arrived daily at three and left at five except by special arrangement.
“Never mind, thanks. We’re going out.”
The kitchen window suddenly streaked across with rain and Dori was dismayed. The afternoon sky had gone purple-gray and wind was whistling around the corner of the building. His plane would be stormbound or detoured to Washington or Richmond and the whole thing would be off. The telephone would ring again and he would explain and ask if they could make it another time.
They could but it would be different. Right now was the time, right now when she should be saying no; this mood was the mood, this restlessness the yeast that was rising—all part of the wild impossible present, with those technicians off in an unknown laboratory, starting their tests to find an answer they didn’t care about one way or another.
She went back to her own room and stared out at the storm. The sky darkened further; streetlights came on and people raced along the edges of buildings, tenting sopping newspapers over their heads. She watched them minutely as if they were terribly important to her, as if they were her dearest friends suddenly attacked and hurrying toward her for safety. What made Matthew Poole so important, so suddenly important? Last night’s dinner and concert added little to what she actually knew about him, but he somehow had revealed himself more freely; there had been about him a pleased and contented air that compelled attention, as if he were not often happy. She hadn’t seen it except during the music, but now she realized that it had been there through all of the evening. He had taken her home and come up for a nightcap and talked again about the boy he was going to defend as a conscientious objector; he talked with the calm tone of a man who knew she agreed with him, and an inordinate pride had ballooned in her for the Spock piece that had told him so. And then, with no word of whether they were to see each other even once more, he had said good-night and left, without so much as an extra pressure of her hand.
Now this. She turned abruptly from the window and went to work. This time she wrote without pause, telling herself it was only first draft anyway and better than hanging around waiting for time to get itself spent. When she wrote this way, without pause or question, she slid the spacing lever to position 3, so that she was doing triple-spaced pages, and they flew by. Time enough to improve them tomorrow. Or, if the storm went furiously on, this evening, when there would be nothing else. A fine lonely evening in the home.
Finally she bathed and dressed, and thought the rain and wind had abated, and could not be sure, and then a bell rang and it was not the shrill telephone but the front door.
She opened it and stood aside, letting him pass by her into the square little hallway, each saying hello as if they were constrained.
“Was it a rough flight?”
“Not to speak of.”
“I thought—I always think everything is grounded if it rains. What can I give you for a drink?”
She started for the living room and he followed but he did not answer. At the small chest that served as a bar she turned to him questioningly. He was watching her with what looked like sternness; his mouth was drawn as if in disapproval, his eyebrows drawn as if in anger. Suddenly he put both his hands on her shoulders and said, “I cannot stop thinking of you,” and drew her toward him, his face seeking hers, but his mouth not. “It’s been years since anybody’s mattered this much.”
She heard her breath as it was sharply drawn inward at his words, felt the weaving churning move of passion rolling, and thought, But I mustn’t, not now, not now of all times. He turned his head to kiss her, and her breath sucked inward again and something wavered and fell within her and she was invaded all at once by the lovely helplessness of acquiescence.
Suddenly she pushed hard away from him, wheeling away, saying lightly, “Something to drink,” lightly, falsely, the social tone she hated in others. “Martini? Or Scotch on the?”
“Scotch, please.” He watched her put two cubes into a glass and then pour the Scotch, accepting the drink in silence when she offered it, waiting until she prepared one for herself. Then he said, without emphasis, “Why did you suddenly decide no?”
“I didn’t decide. I just had to not go on.”
“There was one moment when you suddenly stopped. Up to then you were as moved as I was.”
“I was,” she said, “oh, I was.”
He waited but she did not continue. She sat down on the sofa and in a moment he sat down too, well away from her. “Last night you said you were reasonably uninvolved,” he said finally. “Does it turn out you’re not as uninvolved as you thought?”
She shook her head in denial.
“But if that is it, I’ll wait around until you are.”
