Strange Women, The (6 page)

"Go? Go where? Why?" Nora asked. "Don't be a fool. It's too late to make new arrangements even if I wanted to—which I don't. I'm counting on you." She added shortly because she had been deeply moved, "If we have to talk about it—but I don't think it's necessary—leave it till tomorrow."

Jill blinked, her mouth still trembling, and Nora stopped, realizing in shock what she had been about to do; she had been about to take Jill in her arms.

She did not touch Jill. By an act of will she did not.

"Go to bed, kid, you look worn out."

Jill climbed obediently under the covers, pulling up the quilt to her chin. Nora switched out the light and lay down beside her, feeling the girl's body warmth in the cold, dampish sheets. Poor kid. So that was behind her strangeness—her odd distrust of Mack, her sudden silences—as if the first men she had trusted and loved had only been trying to entrap her. Nora reached out and touched the thin wrist.

"Don't you worry about anything."

"Thanks." It was the tiniest of whispers. Soon Nora could tell from Jill's quiet breathing that she had fallen into that heavy sleep which comes on so quickly after hysteria.

Nora found herself too strung-up to sleep. Also, she was still fighting the curious impulse she had discovered in herself—to take the girl in her arms. Her whole body ached, simply for a human touch.

Good grief,
she told herself, half amused and half so shocked that she had to cover it up with amusement,
you and Pammy.

After a time she dropped asleep and began to dream. She dreamed she was lying in the wide bunk of the cabin at home, Mack beside her, between herself and the fire. And Mack in her dream turned and bared his man's body, his man's sex to her... she woke with an inexpressible start of guilt and shame to realize that Jill, fast asleep, had flung a snuggling arm around her, cuddling herself into the curve of Nora's body.

Carefully, Nora freed herself
. Oh damn,
she thought desperately.
Grow up, Nora, You've had erotic dreams before this.
But the tension of self-disgust remained.
Mack. Mack,
of
all people. Your brother…

And then the real memory behind the dream came stalking out of the dark corner where she had buried it, at fourteen. The real camping trip and the long ride over the mountain trails, and the flint arrowheads they had found in the bed of the stream.

They had cooked supper over Mack's campfire, and he gave her a few sips of the beer he had brought for himself. They spread their blankets outside, where they could watch the stars. Near dawn a sudden thundershower drenched them both, and they grabbed their blankets and scooted for the cabin. They had stripped down and rubbed each other dry, and Mack had put one of his shirts on her. They drank what was left of the beer and it warmed them; then they snuggled together into the wide bunk, clinging together under the one dry blanket.

Then she had kissed him good night, and, in play, pulled him down over her bare body. For a while he was only teasing and tickling her; then quite suddenly the laughter was gone and Mack leaned down and kissed her, hard and seriously, in a new way.

"Nor," he whispered, "Oh, Nora!" and, scared and excited, she felt the hard rise of his maleness against her bare thighs.

He was hazily drunk. She felt too comfortable, too warm and happy and loving, to care; and besides, she was not quite sure what it meant. But then, with a gasp like pain, he tore loose from her arms.

"Christ! What am I doing? You're my sister!"

Cold and rejected, her heart bumping, she tried to snuggle against him. "What's the matter, Mack? I was just loving you." But he got up, visibly shaken, pulling on his damp trousers.

"I love you, too, pink-top. But you're a lot too big to play that way. Or didn't anybody ever tell you the facts of life?"

Sudden comprehension hit her, like a fist. "But—but you're NOT my brother," she protested, half crying, "we're not related
at all.
We could even get
married!"

He laughed, but shakily. "But you're a lot too young for—for petting parties, pink-top. Heavy necking with my own stepsister is a little too low for me." He bent over her, tenderly. "Come on, Nor, don't cry. I'm not mad at you. Look, you don't—you don't really want to, either. I'd have to hurt you. You wouldn't really like it at all. Come on, now. Give your big brother a nice kiss, and go to sleep like a good girl." He gave her a little peck that was worse than a slap, and Nora cried herself to sleep in the cold bunk alone.

She never cried again. They never spoke of it again. But he had turned cold and strange. He left off kissing her good night or hugging and wrestling with her in the old way she had loved. The memory lay, shaming and cold, at the back of her thoughts, whenever any boy made a move toward her.

Next summer Mack had gone to work on a ranch, and Nora wrapped herself in her books and her studies, blaming herself for his self-imposed exile. Until that summer with Pammy…

The grown-up Nora said angrily to herself,
it's past. You've got work to do tomorrow. Go to sleep.

But she did not close her eyes again.

Fairfax was a rural community, and the county hospital was under-staffed, under-equipped, and managed or mismanaged in a primitive fashion which made Nora's hair stand on end. They were in the grip of an early influenza epidemic, and for the first few days there was more than enough to do.

Nora had had more than enough of camping out in another doctor's living quarters. She and Jill had taken rooms in a boarding house. She spent office hours in Reynolds' consulting rooms, made his rounds at the hospital, and tacked up a card on his door, saying that in emergencies she could be reached at the boarding house—as she all too frequently was.

The weeks slipped by to Christmas Eve. Nora—found the waiting room empty, made rounds at a hospital with empty beds for the first time—every patient who could possibly wheedle his way out had maneuvered to spend Christmas at home—and took Jill to dinner in town. But she grimaced with premonition as they came out into the street.

"What do you bet I get called out tonight?"

"No odds," said Jill. "Is it always like this?"

"Always. But let's walk around the square, anyhow."

The shop windows glowed with lighted trees and holly and red bows and balls. The drug store was jammed with tinsel trinkets and last minute shoppers. For years Nora had ignored Christmas, except as a source of too many highway accidents jamming the emergency clinics; she thought the town looked like a carnival midway, but the sarcasm was gentle and without malice. They separated, drifting around the bright displays, and Nora bought various odds and ends because the atmosphere tempted her to self-indulgence—a silver pencil, a new lipstick, cologne, a box of chocolates.

Outside the lighted square the streets were darker and snowier, and they had to pick their way through deep drifts; the snow and starlight transformed the evergreens on every lawn into silvered Christmas trees. Jill's nose was a little red candle nipped with frost as they climbed the stairs of the boarding house. They tossed their packages on Jill's bed, and sat there, rummaging in the parcels.

"What's in that green box?" Jill asked.

Nora shoved it at her. "Your Christmas present."

The girl unwrapped it, hesitantly, and pulled the glass stopper from the bottle. "Oh, lovely. What is it?"

"Jasmine, I think. I got it because you said you liked the sachet scent in my suitcase."

"I remember." Jill raised herself on her elbow. "I didn't get you a present. I couldn't think what you'd like."

Her smile melted into a deep dimple at the corner of her mouth. She reached up and put her two arms around Nora's neck. Taken off balance, Nora fell across her; and to keep herself from toppling off the bed, laid one elbow on either side of Jill. Jill smiled, and kissed her.

For several seconds Nora felt the girl's lips, warm and full, under hers. Then her senses erupted and she quickly pulled away and sat up. She was breathless, and there was an odd ache in her breasts that seemed to stab upward from her innermost and most sheltered parts.

She calmed her face deliberately. The wisest thing was to take it at exact face value. A harmless, meaningless gesture of affection. A Christmas present.

"Good night, my dear," she said. "Sleep well."

In her room she pulled off her clothes and lay down. She felt her heart pounding and subsiding, and her mind, trained to flat literal honesty, put the thing into words. She had kissed another girl—and found herself sexually aroused and responding.

She heard Jill moving in the other room, the splash of running water in the bath. Lying in her wide and rather hard bed, Nora felt again the slow pounding in her blood. After a long time a crack of light widened in the doorway, and her dazzled eyes saw Jill pressed into the narrow space.

"Asleep, Nor?"

Nora rubbed her eyes and sat up, not sure. "I don't think so. Want something?"

She flicked a light switch, and Jill came across the room barefoot and sat on the edge of the bed.

"No, I just wasn't sleepy. You don't mind?"

"Not at all," said Nora, not truthfully.

The light threw a feathery halo around the tumbled edges of Jill's hair; her creamy skin had a lustre that dulled the silk of the nightgown.

Nor frowned. "You're a walking invitation to the flu bug," she said irritably, tugged one end of the quilt loose, and flung it at Jill. "Put this around you, if you want to sit and talk." After she said it she realized that as a sin of omission it was perfectly transparent. Normally she would have said,
Here, get in under the covers.

"You really don't mind?"

"No, I'm not sleepy either. For years I've taken it for granted that anybody can haul me out of bed at any time of the night; I doubt if I
could
sleep eight hours straight." She took a cigarette, offered the pack to Jill. "I suppose Mack's in Lima by now. Did you give him this address?"

"How could I? I didn't know it. It's a shame you can't be with Kit at Christmas, Nora."

"In the hospital it would be like any other day."

"Nora, how did you come to marry Kit? Was he your patient?"

Nora told herself the question was natural enough; there was no reason to treat it as morbid curiosity—the curiosity she had seen in the faces of some of her friends;
how did she come to marry a cripple?

"No, Kit was never my patient, thank God," she said at last. "I didn't meet him—I mean; we'd known each other at college; he was Mack's room-mate for two years. They were very close. But after we graduated, I didn't see him again until a year after his accident. He's an architect, you know. He designed the new wing at St. Margaret's hospital…"

As she told the story it seemed to flicker past her eyes, small images moving on a screen of memory. The day she and Vic Demorino—they were still going everywhere together, in those days—had gone into the shell of the new building. The workers were all on their lunch hour— otherwise they would never have gotten through the maze of NO TRESPASSING signs.

As Vic pointed out where the new orthopedic wing would be, she tugged his arm in dismay, looking at a thin dark man on crutches, precariously balanced in the angle of a half-finished stairway not yet fully nailed in place. He was drinking coffee from a paper cup, his back turned to them.

Vic, his professional authority roused, left Nora and hurried across the concrete slab, littered still with discarded tools. He snapped, "You! You up there, what in the devil are you doing out here? Patients aren't allowed out of their own wards. Put that thing down and get back where you belong!"

The man set down the paper cup, swung round and began to navigate the dangerous stairwell with insolent authority. Even before he spoke, Nora knew that Vic had made a gross mistake.

"Guess again, doctor," he said with a cocky grin. "I'm no patient here. Find somebody else to boss around."

Vic had flushed a dark, unlovely red.

"In that case," he said coolly, "may I ask what you are doing here? Quite aside from a certain professional concern—it would be regrettable if you broke your neck on those stairs—you are trespassing on hospital property."

"Listen, you stuffed-shirt bastard," the lame man had yelled suddenly,
"I'll
tell you who's trespassing!
You are!
I'm
building
this damn place,
doctor.
Now you just turn around and get the hell back where you belong before I give you one on your goddamn nose!"

Nora had stepped forward hurriedly, anxious to placate them both. "Please forgive us," she said, "I know we shouldn't be here. It was my fault—" she fumbled for a hasty lie. "I have a patient who looks a lot like you, and I asked Vic to get you down. People do silly things sometimes. I'm very sorry."

He had stared at her ungraciously, then, suddenly, his wrath had melted and he smiled. She noticed that he was handsome when he smiled. "Hey, for Pete's sake," he said, "aren't you Nora Rannock? Oklahoma University?"

Startled, she nodded and he held out his hand.

"Kit Ellersen—remember me now? Yeah, I know—I've changed a lot."

Nora, feeling gauche and embarrassed, murmured, "No, I'd have known you anywhere, if I'd been expecting to see anyone I knew."

"May I show you around?"

"I'd love to—" Nora began, but Vic interrupted curtly, "Thanks, but we have to get back. Sorry I intruded, Ellersen," and hustled her away.

Knowing Vic was painfully embarrassed about his mistake Nora had not tried to keep him. But that night when she left the hospital, Kit had been waiting near the entrance.

"I—er—wanted to apologize for my language," he said diffidently, "I'm sure you were only worried—trying to do your duty."

"Oh, that's all right.'

"How's Mack?" he asked.

"He's in Cambodia, I think."

Kit chuckled. "And Rannock? I never knew him very well."

"Neither did I," Nora said quietly, "I divorced him before I went to medical school," and Kit's flashing grin came back.