Next to Love (8 page)

He grins down at her with those huge piano-key teeth. He is not a taxi driver, he is a soldier, an officer, but she is not going anywhere with him.

She tells him the waiting room is too hot. She will wait on the platform. He grabs her suitcase and goes outside with her. It is not much cooler on the platform. When she left home, it was winter. Here the air is swampy with spring. Under her heavy coat, she feels the perspiration running down her sides like insects. She starts to slip out of the coat. He helps her off with it. Mosquitoes buzz around them. She says she thinks she’ll wait inside after all. He picks up her suitcase and follows her.

People mill around. Soldiers grouse. Girls sigh. Babies cry. Perhaps she can find one of the wives she talked to on the train and hang on to her, but he will not let her out of his sight. She sits on her suitcase and leans forward with her arms crossed over her knees and her head resting on them.

He puts a hand on her back. “You okay, kid?”

She shakes off his hand and sits up. She has got to get away from him, but she is afraid of a scene like the one on the train when the sailor and soldier got into a fight about carrying the girl’s suitcase. Everyone blamed the girl.

The waiting room is boiling. Mosquitoes whir in her ears. The floor is littered with candy wrappers, empty cigarette packs, and torn newspapers. The smoke of a couple of hundred cigarettes burns her eyes. Through the blue haze she makes out three doors on the far wall.
LADIES. MEN. COLORED
. The ploy is drastic, but she has no choice. As soon as the train is announced, she will say she has to go to the ladies’ room and hide there until it pulls out. It will mean another night sleeping on a station bench, but she will probably have to do that anyway, given what time the train will get in.

A voice booms through the crowded waiting room and out onto the platform. People begin standing, picking up their luggage, and heading outside.

She gets up and starts to lift her suitcase. He grabs the handle.

“I have to go in there.” She points to the door labeled
LADIES
.

He frowns down at her. “I’ll hold your bag. It’ll be faster.”

She lowers her eyelashes, as she has seen Millie do, in an attempt to suggest an array of feminine mysteries. “I need it,” she whispers.

“Okay, but step on it. We don’t want to miss that train. You got a guy waiting.”

She crosses to the door, pushes it open, and closes it behind her. Then, just to be safe, she goes into one of the stalls and locks it. She knows she is being ridiculous, hiding out in a stall of the ladies’ room from some poor boy who is just trying to be helpful. So he showed off his silly French. So he told bad jokes. That does not make him a criminal. But the new girlfriend with the convenient mother makes him suspect.

Through an open window high up in the wall, she hears the train approaching. As she stands leaning against the locked door, it hisses to a halt. The sound of feet shuffling and conductors calling all aboard floats through the window.

“Hey, Babe.” His words are muffled. No window opens onto the waiting room. And why is he calling her Babe, anyway? Shouldn’t she be Miss Dion to him? She wishes that when he asked her name, she said Bernadette, but she almost never uses Bernadette anymore.

“Babe! We’re going to miss the train.”

She has not thought of this. She assumed he would run to catch the train without her. He really does want to be helpful.

A hand is knocking on the outside door. “Come on, Babe.”

She feels foolish. He has not done anything except buy her a sandwich and accidentally fall asleep on her shoulder. And now he’ll be late getting back to camp. For all she knows, he’ll end up in the guardhouse. And it’s her fault.

She picks up her suitcase. It is not too late. She starts to lift the rusty hook. She drops her hand to her side. She knows she is silly, but something is holding her back.

A second all aboard comes through the open window. She waits. The train begins wheezing and clanking into motion. The sound builds to a deafening racket, then grows more and more distant until finally the world goes quiet. All she hears is her own breathing in the empty bathroom. Now that he is gone, she is ashamed of herself.

She unlocks the stall, carries her suitcase out, and stands at the sink staring into the streaked mirror above it. Has she been sensible or foolish? She will never know.

“Bitch!” The door bangs open, and the word comes hurtling at her. “Cunt!” Then he is behind the words. He pulls her around, pushes her against the sink, and begins hitching up her skirt. She starts to scream. His hand over her mouth is slippery with sweat.

“Scream all you want, bitch. There’s no one out there.”

She tries to bite his hand. He slaps her with his other one, then goes back to fumbling between her legs.

She does not know how long it lasts. It is over in minutes. It goes on for a lifetime. The sweaty face with its bared teeth gasping into hers. The eyes squinched shut in ferocious ecstasy. The brutal thrusts hammering her against the sink. The words he shouts as he pounds. Cunt, bitch, whore, cunt, bitch, whore. Then, in an earthquake of shuddering, he is finished. He pulls out, buttons his pants, and starts to turn away. Suddenly he twists back and lifts his hand. She shrinks from the blow. He lays his palm against her cheek almost tenderly, then pinches it between thumb and forefinger, the way grown-ups do to children.

“That’s what you get for being a tease, Babe.”

He is gone.

SHE SITS ON THE
dirt-streaked floor with the words beating in her head. She tries to silence them. She even puts her hands over her ears. But the filth is inside her. Bitch, cunt, whore. And one more, the mildest but the worst. Tease. She has brought this on herself.

She goes over it again and again. When he apologized for his head slipping onto her shoulder, she should have given him a chilly nod and turned away. The line about it being downright unpatriotic was flirtatious, something Millie would say. But men do not do this to Millie. Men want to protect Millie. In Babe, they sense something else, something easy, loose, dirty.

She puts her hands on the sink and pulls herself up. The sight of her face in the mirror disgusts her.

Tease.

She turns away from the sight, hikes up her skirt, takes off her torn panties, and throws them in the trash can. Then she unhooks her garters, peels down her girdle, and begins washing herself. By the time she finishes, the sliver of acrid-smelling yellow soap is gone. She still feels filthy.

A single soiled towel hangs on a hook. She opens her suitcase, takes out a cotton nightgown, and dries herself. She finds a pair of clean panties. Only after she is completely dressed does she dare to look at her face in the mirror again. She had not noticed the smudge of dried blood on her chin. She bit him, and he left his mark. She bends over the sink and begins washing her face, though there is no soap left. When she straightens to the mirror again, the blood is gone.

She finds her hat under the sink, picks up her coat and suitcase and handbag, and goes out into the waiting room. No trains are due until tomorrow, and her heels echo like gunshots through the empty space. No one was there to hear her scream, but then, no one is there to witness her shame.

Tease.

She sits on one of the wooden benches and arranges her coat and handbag beside her and her suitcase at her feet. She crosses her ankles, folds her hands, and waits for morning. She knows what she has to do.

THE DOCTOR IS SHORT
and round, with soft puppy eyes behind rimless glasses, a faintly absurd toothbrush mustache, and three chins. He looks kind. It’s small comfort, but she will take any comfort she can get. This is not going to be easy. But she has no choice. She remembers Claude’s letters about the training films and lectures.
If you can’t say no, take a pro. Put it on before you put it in
.

The doctor closes the door to the inner office behind them, gestures to a chair on one side of the desk, and takes a high-backed swivel one on the other. A framed photograph of a woman and two children stands on the desk, turned out to face her. The woman is as short and round as the doctor. But she is no tease. Babe bets she never made love with the doctor in a car before they were married, or stood naked in front of a mirror, or touched herself under the bedclothes. She looks from the picture to the doctor.

He picks up a pen and pad and asks what the problem is.

Looking at him is no easier than looking at his wife. She lifts her eyes to the framed diplomas on the wall above his head.

“I need some tests.”

“What sort of tests?”

“For venereal disease.”

He cups his hand behind his ear. “You’ll have to speak up.”

“For venereal disease,” she repeats.

His eyes snap up from the pad. The puppy softness is gone. They are hard pebbles in his fat face.

“What makes you think you might be infected?”

“I’m on my way to see my fiancé.” The word is not familiar below Sixth Street, and she is careful to pronounce it in three syllables rather than two, but she has to use it. She does not want him to think she’s a tramp. “We’re going to be married.” She stops.

“Yes?”

“On the train, or not on the train, but on the way …” She stops again.

This time he does not encourage her with a word. He sits staring at her with those hard little eyes.

“… something happened.”

“You had sexual intercourse?”

She stares at the diplomas and nods.

“Did you have sexual intercourse?” The syllables hit her like hammer blows.

“Yes.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him shake his head. “You army wives take the cake. You say you’re on the road to see your husbands, but from where I sit, you’re just out for a good time. If it was up to me, I’d lock the whole bunch of you up and throw away the key. For endangering your husbands. For endangering every good American boy in uniform. Tramps. Every one of you.”

She is no longer looking at the diplomas. Her head is down, her eyes are on her lap, and she is digging her nails into her palms. She does not try to explain. There is no explanation. She was not out for a good time. But she had been on those nights in the car with Claude. And the officer on the train sensed it.

She hears the swivel chair squeak. She looks up. The doctor is standing. She did not think of this. She steeled herself for the humiliation of asking for the tests but not the possibility that he might refuse to give them to her. She has to have those tests. Without them, she cannot marry Claude. Without them, she cannot even see him. That’s what the training films say. If you get one of those diseases, you can never go near a nice girl again. They don’t bother to say what happens if a nice girl gets a disease, because nice girls don’t.

He crosses the office, opens the door to the examining room, and tells her to go in, take off all her clothes from the waist down, and put on the gown.

The examination is painful. That might be the result of the night before, or perhaps the doctor wants to punish her. That’s all right. She deserves to be punished. The more he hurts her, the better she feels.

“There’s one more thing,” she says to the ceiling, and tries not to gasp at the pain. “How can I tell if I’m pregnant?”

He does not answer.

“Is there any way to tell if I’m pregnant?” she repeats.

“I see the intercourse was recent.” The voice comes from between her legs.

She nods.

“Was it recent or not?” he shouts.

“Last night,” she mumbles.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Last night.”

“In that case, there’s no point in giving you a pregnancy test. All you’d get would be a false negative. When was your last period?”

She calculates. “A week ago. I was finished on Tuesday, just before I left home.”

He stands and peels off his rubber gloves with a nasty snap.

“Then you’re safe in that department. Probably.”

SHE STAYS IN TOWN
for four days. That’s how long it takes to get the results of the tests. The hotel is grim. She is too overwrought to read, but she would sell her soul for a radio. She sits in her room, stares at the walls, and thinks that no one in the world knows where she is. She used to dream of escaping from South Downs, but not like this.

She longs to talk to someone. An arm around her shoulders. Words of solace. Not your fault. She would not believe them, but she still wants to hear them. There is no one she can tell. Grace would be horrified. Millie would listen and somehow manage not to hear. Only Claude would understand. He is the one she confides in and explains to and pleads with as she paces the hotel room. But Claude is the one person she can never tell.

Marie Bours was the girl’s name. Babe has not thought of her in years. She was a hardworking girl with pasty skin that tended to break out but a sweet smile and pale-blue eyes, and Babe’s cousin Louis was crazy about her. They had posted the banns. That’s how close the wedding was. Maybe that was what gave the son of the family Marie kept house for the idea.
Droit du seigneur
. One morning when the rest of the family was out, he cornered her in the kitchen. Marie refused to go back to work. Louis naturally wanted to know why. When she told him, he broke the engagement. Slut. Whore. Temptress. Claude is not her cousin Louis, but she cannot take the chance.

She thinks of going to confession, though she cannot remember the last time she went. Stranded in that bare hotel room, she longs for the painted Madonnas with their gilded crowns and forgiving smiles, and the flickering candles, and the sweet sickly smell of sin expiated and innocence redeemed. She remembers a Saturday when she was about eight or nine. She went into the confessional, terrified. She had so much on her conscience. The ice she and Grace and Millie had put in Mrs. Dawson’s milk bottles. The lies to her father. The way she shook the carriage in the hope that the baby sister she had to mind would tumble out. But she got one of the young fathers with a kind voice, and her penance was just heavy enough to make her feel clean, and when she finished, she ran down the aisle and banged out the front door with—she could not help it—her best Indian war whoop. But this time a clear conscience will not suffice. She needs a clean bill of health.