I’m sure Jeff has done whatever is best. If only it — he — had lived until I could have seen him... How long have I been here? Where is Jeff? Is he being sensible, as I begged him to be? Is he at work, so that he won’t endanger his job, the job that’s so important to him? Oh, I do love him, and I do so want to give him fine children.
“Perhaps, then, Mr. Shaw, it would be better for you to tell her the rest of it than for me to do it. It might be easier for her to believe someone who loves her. Sometimes the patient thinks the doctor doesn’t know as much as she herself does.”
“That part won’t be easy.”
I hope the children will look like Jeff. I’m not ugly, but I’m so — plain. Jeff has the looks for both of us. That’s one of the reasons they all said he was only after my money. But he’s refused to let me help him. He’s independent. He keeps working hard managing the sporting-goods department, when neither of us would ever have to work again, if we didn’t want to. I must get well, for his sake. I will get well.
“Easy or hard, Mr. Shaw, it has to be done. Someone has to tell her. It will come best from you. She must never try to have a child again. Never. It will kill her. Make no mistake about it — having another child will kill her.”
“I’ll take the responsibility. Doctor. You needn’t say a thing to her. I think I can convince her. Perhaps I can even persuade her to move away for a while, so that old associations won’t keep haunting her.”
I’m glad that I made my will in Jeff’s favor before I came to the hospital. He doesn’t know about it, and it wasn’t necessary, as it turned out. But I’m glad. He’s been so good to me that now I’m sure of him...
The door swung inward, silently. She turned her head, slowly, and a tired smile crept across her white face. A tall young man with crinkled blond hair was in the doorway.
“Jeff.”
He was at her bedside, kissing her palm, “Jessie.”
When they both could speak, she gripped his fingers. “Jeff, I’ve been lying here thinking. Everybody has troubles of some kind or other. We can overcome this. I’m going to get strong, fast. Then we’re going to have another baby, just as quickly as we can. Aren’t we?”
He smiled proudly. The truth was exactly the right answer.
“We certainly are, sweetheart. We certainly are.”
88
Never Trust a Woman
Helen Nielsen
A man who is foolish enough to marry a woman named Prudence should know what to expect. A name like that is to a woman what certain names are to a man: she has to live it down. Now a man named Joseph Buckram, Sales Representative, Anderson Electronics, didn’t have to live down a thing except a wife named Prudence, whom he’s been careless enough to acquire on a trip to the coast — that could double as a honeymoon, if the head office never found out.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when they checked into the hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. Joe, who’d made the trip enough times to know his way around, took charge of the registration.
“We have a nice double with twin beds, Mr. Buckram.”
“Are you crazy?” Joe said.
After he got that straightened out, he looked around for Prudence, who was shoulder high, built like a tomboy with a few, to be expected, differences, and had large brown eyes that hadn’t missed a thing since she’d first hoisted herself eye-level with the play-pen about nineteen years earlier.
“The Fandango Room — gathering place of the stars,” she said, quoting the wishful thinking from a sign directing guests to the bar and grill. “Joe, do you suppose—?”
Back in Kingman, Arizona, where Joe had found Prudence on the working side of a counter that served coconut cream pies like mother used to make before she got a television set, girls were apt to make a ta-do about celebrities. Joe was an understanding guy, but this was their wedding night.
“Propaganda,” he said. “Movie stars couldn’t eat in this hotel. It’s too expensive.”
“Is it too expensive for us?”
She gave Joe those big eyes and his hat shrank at the temples.
“Tonight nothing is too expensive for us,” he said with expression, “absolutely nothing!”
Which was the kind of reckless talk that got them joined in holy matrimony, in the first place.
They could have had room service, though Joe wasn’t hungry. They’d already had dinner in a cozy little place on the highway, where nobody tortured jazz out of an organ as it was now being done in the Fandango Room. And the smoke hadn’t been so thick that he had to squint, as he was not doing to make sure it really was Prudence across the table in that upholstered booth. But it had to be Prudence; only the petite ones ate so much. When she tore into her steak, it occurred to him that if he ever married again it would be to some diet-conscious matron who never ate anything more expensive than water-cress. Then he found Prudence’s hand through the smoke — the one that didn’t have a fork in it — and was glad she wasn’t matronly, even if he’d have to ask the boss for a raise.
Prudence peered at the shadowy figures around the bar.
“I wonder if Errol Flynn is bald on top,” she mused.
“It’s getting late,” Joe said. “I’ve got a nine-o’clock appointment with Aero-Dynamics.”
“No, that isn’t him after all. Or is it he? I never remember.”
“It’s a hot night,” Joe said. “Nobody important goes any place on a hot night. They stay home in their swimming pools.”
But Prudence went on peering.
“There’s a woman in that booth across the aisle who looks a little like— No, she’s too old and too fat. Now, that’s strange. Why do you suppose she’s crying?”
“She’s probably wants to go upstairs and turn in for the night,” Joe said.
“Joe, be serious!.. It’s that man with her. He’s making her cry. I don’t like him at all. He’s wearing a flashy suit, and he’s got a sneaky face and a moustache.”
“Men have hung for less,” Joe said.
It was impolite to stare at people, especially at bars, but nothing would do but that he look where Prudence was looking. He finally located what held her attention — a woman, not old and fat, but thirtyish and well developed — and a glutton for punishment to be wearing a fur coat on such a warm night. With her, a man in a flashy suit who had a sneaky face and a moustache. The woman dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief while the man pleaded with her across the table. It was impossible to hear what he was saying, for the organ had just broken into what sounded like a rock and roll arrangement of The Old Rugged Cross.
“Don’t worry about it,” Joe said. “It’s their anniversary and he’s asked the organist to play their song.”
“It’s not that kind of crying,” Prudence argued. “I think she’s afraid of him.”
Joe looked again.
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s not that kind of crying. It’s the ‘one drink too many,’ or ‘I’ve had such a hard life’ kind of crying, and she’s too far gone to be afraid of anything.”
“Maybe that’s his scheme. Maybe that’s why he’s forcing drinks on her.”
It was like forcing taxes on the government. The woman clutched her glass as if it were lifeboat in a stormy sea. For a moment, it required her complete and undivided attention.
“Look,” Prudence cried. “Look at him now!”
The organ struck an exuberant passage that covered her outburst, but not before Joe involuntarily obeyed. What the man was doing was taking a quick, furtive peek at the contents of the purse his thirsty companion had left open on the table.