Strange Women, The (16 page)

"Jill, I've something to tell you."

"I know. I've seen it coming."

"You know already?"

"I know. You don't want me hanging around here."

Nora, so full of her own news, was at first monstrously shocked; then on the defensive. "Jill, for heaven's sake, that's not funny!"

"Wasn't that what you were going to say?"

"Of course not, idiot! Be reasonable!"

"And I know what you mean by reasonable! Don't worry, I'll try not to bother you any more—" Jill sobbed. Nora held herself, by concentrated will power, from touching the girl; though she was appalled by the words.

"Sweet. Can't you see, now, why I begged you not to tear yourself up like this? I don't want to hurt you, Jill. But you always knew it couldn't go on."

"You wanted it as much as I did."

"I did," said Nora through dry lips, "I'm not trying to deny that, Jill. I thought—"

"I know what you thought," Jill said, trembling, deathly white, "You thought you could—could use me while you had to have somebody, and now that you don't, you could tell me off and send me to hell—"

"Jill—oh, darling, that's not fair. Baby, come here, let me talk to you," Nora pleaded, but Jill pulled fiercely away, and Nora dropped her arm!

"You're just working yourself up, Jill. You want to make a scene."

"I don't! I don't!"

"Then pull yourself together, can't you? Suppose Kit came in and found you like this?"

"You
would
hate that, wouldn't you? Don't touch me!" Jill jerked away, flung herself into a chair and collapsed there, crying convulsively.

Nora bent over Jill, saying angrily, "Stop that bawling, or I'll slap you with a wet towel! Damn it, can't we talk sensibly, do we have to have a scene and hysterics? You make me want to shake you till your teeth rattle!"

"Then go ahead and
do
it," Jill wept.

"Why, you'd almost enjoy that, wouldn't you," Nora took Jill roughly by the shoulder and dragged her to her feet.

"Oh, Nora, don't, you're hurting—what do you want me to do? Go on my knees to you?"

Nora's hands were bruisingly hard on Jill; her fury had crystallized suddenly into dry rage, so that she watched herself almost horrified, from what seemed a spinning distance of miles. She heard her own voice distorted with what she knew was hysteria almost more frightening than Jill's because kept in such terrible control.

"I'll tell you what I want," she said, punctuating the words with a rough shake, "I want you to get out of here! Why do you have to wreck everything? I want you to let me alone!"

She had only meant, until you can behave like a rational adult; but her own guilt and hysteria betrayed her; her voice trembled. "Let me alone, I tell you! Are you trying to break me up with Kit? I won't let you, you can't, I can't take any more!"

Jill pulled free and stumbled away from Nora. Nora, realizing too late what she had done, caught at her. "Jill!"

"Let me go! Don't worry, I won't bother you again!"

"Jill—"

"You told me to get out!" Jill wrenched the hall door open and Nora caught it. "You can't go on the street like this—"

Jill swung the door free, slid through, and slammed it in Nora's face. Nora took one step to follow her and stopped, weak with reaction. She couldn't face another scene in the hall or, worse, in the street. There was a sickish, sour taste in her mouth. Then, suddenly, her paralyzed horror broke.

The stairs, the
stairs!
Jill might fall—those damned heels, of hers—she couldn't walk home in that condition—Nora caught up her car keys and fled down the stairs, in a spasm of violent remorse.

But the side street, in the June afternoon sunlight, was empty. A man in a passing car looked curiously at Nora; shaking, she turned and went wearily into the house. At least, brutal as this was, it was final. And perhaps it was best.

It began to rain that evening, and Nora and Kit drove back from the lake through a violent thunderstorm. They heard the telephone ringing inside the apartment but before Nora could get the door open, it died in a disappointed click.

Nora wondered if it was Jill; resolved, if it was, she would not talk to her. The least price they must pay was the sacrifice of their friendship...

At ten past eleven it rang again. Nora was in the shower; Kit, with a muttered imprecation on telephones in general, went to answer it.

After a minute he shouted "Nora!"

Barefoot, a towel around her middle, Nora came to the door.

"Do we have any way to reach Mack? Telegraph? Cable?"

"We could wire the mission, and it might get him in a day or two—" then it filtered through her consciousness.

"Jill?"

"She's in the hospital—" but Nora already had the phone away from him. "Hello? Is that you, Marg?"

"It's all right," Margaret said thinly, "she's not dead or anything, I've tried to call you four times. I don't know anything, the people here won't tell me. They just said I'd better get in touch with her family."

"But what happened, Marg? The baby?
" It was almost two months too soon...

"I tell you, I don't know. I came in late, about nine-thirty, and she'd been there all afternoon. I couldn't get her to say much, she was in pretty bad shape. I called a cab and took her to the hospital, and they took her right upstairs."

Good God. So Jill had to be thrown into her lap again. Jill, Jill, Jill. "All right," she said, "I'll let her family know. Don't worry, Marg, they can look after premature babies nowadays. Why don't you go home and get some sleep? I'll go over in the morning."

Kit interrupted, "Tell her we'll be there in ten minutes."

"Kit, are you crazy?"

"Tell her. Then get some clothes on. Nora, for God's sake, don't you realize, we're the only people that poor kid
has,
in this town?" Before his blazing eyes, Nora repeated his words meekly, and hung up. Kit looked grim. "Have you and Jill had a row?"

"She made a scene, and for once I told her off. I offered to drive her home, and she walked out."

"And you let her go? Like that?"

"You've never seen Jill except when she was all sweetness and light, Kit. She has a hell of a temper."

"You're not particularly short on it yourself," Kit said coldly. "Get dressed."

Nora dropped the towel, standing naked before the mirror; then suddenly the full impact struck her.

Jill, oh Jill, what did I do to you?

Months ago, one of Jill's tantrums had frightened her into thinking the girl would miscarry.
She had once attempted suicide...

Then "I'm an idiot," she said aloud, and started pulling on her clothes. Vic had foreseen, after all, that Jill might go into premature labor. Margaret? An excitable neurotic; probably Jill, always too stubborn to face facts, had refused to start for the hospital until she was in the last stages of labor. She probably got some morbid thrill out of frightening Margaret into fits.

But Pammy had died... lovely, innocent Pammy...

Buttoning her blouse with one hand, she went out to the telephone and dialed the hospital number. The switchboard girl informed her wearily that there was no Mrs. MacLellan in the maternity ward, and the receiver went
click
with a curt insolence. Nora stared at the black cradle, appalled; then, remembering—damn Jill anyhow—dialed again.

This time she was informed that Mrs. Bristol had delivered a daughter, three pounds, two ounces, at 10:39 p.m. She had to pull her hospital rank, however, before Barbara Quentin, on the maternity floor, took the phone and said, "Dr. Caine? Mrs. Bristol's condition is serious, but not critical; she is still in the delivery room. The baby's condition is extremely critical; they don't expect her to live more than a few minutes."

Nora thanked her, hung up and repeated it to Kit over a curious gap in her breathing. Kit looked shocked.

"I'll wire Mack. Outfits like that carry radio equipment, and ham operators will relay telegrams in emergencies. You'd better call the Bristols."

Nora looked for the Hartford number, which Jill had pencilled in the back of the directory; for the moment the sight of Jill's thin childish handwriting almost overwhelmed her. The mechanical voice said impatiently, "Long distance, long distance please."

She waited through the relays, the buzzing and clicks, and finally "Mrs. Alexander Bristol's residence."

"May I speak to Susan Bristol, please?" Susan had called Jill in the family crisis. Nora vaguely remembered a dark, elfin child of five or six, riding about on her tricycle; she would be in college now.

"Miss Susan is not at home. May I take a message?"

Nora was briefly dismayed. Jackie, the other sister, was married and living in Pittsburgh. Did she dare talk to Jill's mother—an old woman, bitterly prejudiced, and— the doctor remembered—a cardiac case who must not be subjected to sudden shocks?

"This is a friend of her sister Jill—Cassandra—Mrs. MacLellan. Please may I speak to some member of the family? Who is this?"

"This is Allen, Mrs. Bristol's housekeeper. Mrs. Bristol has been very ill, and has gone to bed. Is it important enough to disturb her?"

Nora was tempted to say it was a matter of life and death, but her professional exactness shied away from melodrama. "It is important, yes, but I don't wish to alarm Mrs. Bristol."

A voice said on another extension, "Then you would do better to tell me, rather than leaving me to guess the worst. I'll take it up here, Allen. This is Martha Bristol speaking. Who is this, please?" It was the remembered voice; cool, condescending; poised.

Shrinking from the memory, Nora began to say
"Mrs. Christopher Ellersen"
then, facing down the old memory and fear, set her teeth against them.

"Perhaps you remember me, Mrs. Bristol. Before I married, I was Nora Caine. Jill stayed with me for some months this spring. I have just been notified by the hospital that Jill's baby was born prematurely, about half an hour ago. They don't expect the baby to live."

"Nora Caine," repeated the collected voice. "Yes, I remember you very well, Nora. You were a dear friend of my Pamela. Please tell me about Cassandra—you call her Jill? I can never remember. We—" the cool facade of the voice broke. "We lost our Pamela that way, and I've been so frightened for Cassandra. Please tell me about her, Nora."

As if a sixteen-year-old shock had swept over her, Nora sank beside the phone. Literally she could not speak. Then the sound of a drawn breath over the wires, a sound of terror, brought her back from a shamed adolescent to a mature professional woman; and she forgot herself and began to think about someone else.

"You mustn't be alarmed," she said quickly. "Only, as her husband is so far away, the hospital authorities wanted to notify her closest relatives—"

And suddenly it swept over her again. Her husband is my stepbrother! Jill is my sister-in-law—I
am
her family! I have every right to worry about her! I have a right to—to love her!

Gently, she repeated what the hospital had told her, adding, "She isn't my patient, and I haven't seen her yet but the doctor attending her is a good friend of mine' and she's in excellent hands." After a few more reassuring phrases, she hung up, deathly weary and exhausted. Had Martha Bristol wholly forgotten why Nora Caine had been dropped from their circle? Had Pammy finally made her mother understand how innocent it had been?

Or—after so many tragedies and burdens, had Martha Bristol finally come to see it as a small thing? To remember only that Nora was a dear and close friend of a daughter who had died?

Or had it never mattered at all? Had it been a small minor crisis, merely climaxing a summer of Pammy's escapades, and the words of Pammy's father simply a side issue, part of punishment for Pammy?

* * *

Shortly after two, Vic Demorino came through the door of the doctor's lounge and dropped beside Nora, lighting a cigarette.

"She'll make it. We've got the hemorrhaging stopped—that was the important thing. The baby never had a chance." Vic made a gesture of despair. "Of course, she came in too late. If I'd had her here five hours earlier, we might have been able to stop it. Do you know—had she had a shock?"

"Not that I know," said Nora dully. "She left my house about one-thirty."

"And she was all right then? But of course, she must have been or you'd have known it."

Nora said, feeling Kit's eyes, "She was upset. We had a—a female sort of quarrel. She took offense at something I said, and walked out in a sulk."

"No, no, I wouldn't think—you didn't get into a hair-pulling match, did you? It takes a whale of a shock to the nervous system, to bring on labor. If she'd had a narrow escape from being run down by a truck. Or her husband left her for a blonde. And even then—I've known women who had their husbands or other children killed before their eyes, late in pregnancy, and it didn't bring on labor. Nobody really knows. Anyhow, she's alive, and there'll be other kids. You can look in, Nora, but she's doped to the eyebrows. Won't wake up much before noon. Poor kid can't her husband be here?" He sighed, stood up, and offered Kit his hand.

Nora's self-disgust was complete. She had been more obtuse than any woman, let alone a doctor, had a right to be. She had shouted at Jill—and Jill was sick, not temperamental, she was sick—screamed at her, shaken her, driven her from the house.

If she'd been in the hospital five hours earlier, they could have helped her. If I hadn't quarrelled with her—if she'd stayed all day, I'd have known. I knew she was feeling sick, and I was so full of my own problems, I didn't try to find out why, or I'd have had her in the hospital—oh God, I might as well have thrown her downstairs!

"Darling, don't." Kit bent over her. "Jill's all right. Let me take you home."

But when the lights were out, the false dawn graying the windows, she lay tossing until Kit said huskily, "Come over here to me, sweetheart."

"This hits you hard, Nora, I know, but it could be worse. Jill's young, she and Mack can have a dozen kids yet." His hands stole out to caress the contours of her body. "Damn it, Leonora, don't pull any tricks like that on me, will you? I'd rather never have any kids than live through a night like this, if it was you."