“Well I didn’t think I had to. If I don’t charge him and I’m not ’titled to the abortion, then I must have the child, which I’m willing to do — I hate it, but I’ve resigned myself, Mr. Kirby. I’ll go to the Crittenton Home, have it, and give it in for adoption — God knows, I won’t want to keep it myself. Then I’ll take it from there. It won’t be easy, and I don’t care for the honor of being one of those girls who had to skip a year at school. But—”
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Has it occurred to you that what Burl is supposed to say is that he’ll pay for the Crittenton Home?”
“Yes, Mr. Kirby, it has.”
“Then suppose I offered to pay?”
“Oh, Mr. Kirby, would you?”
“Do you know how much it is?”
“Yes sir, all the girls know. Eleven eleven.”
“Eleven—?”
“Eleven hundred and eleven dollars. What they do with the odd amount I never found out, buy the baby a rattle, perhaps.”
I probably gulped, as it was more than I expected. But I made myself sound cheerful as I yelped: “Fine! Now why don’t I call your father, and go over to see him at once.”
“Oh, you’re sweet!”
She came over and kissed me, a strange, virginal, young girl’s kiss that didn’t square at all with what we’d been talking about, the condition she was in. I asked for her father’s number, and when I called him and said who I was, he was most agreeable, saying: “Oh yes, Mr. Kirby — how are you?” quite as though he knew me, which it turned out later he did. He said he’d look forward to seeing me and gave me the address, which was in University Park, a few blocks away. She was standing by the phone, and her eyes shone when I hung up. I said I was on my way, and that she should stay in the house, “without answering the door or the phone, as I’m known far and wide as a bachelor, and I don’t want you to explain.” I said I had a luncheon engagement I couldn’t break, “but you’re my first order of business, and I’ll get back as soon as I can, I hope with some really good news.”
“All right. I’ll stay put until you come.”
“Raid the icebox when you get hungry, please.”
“It’s the best thing I do, eat.”
And then, grabbing my arm as I turned to go, and spinning me around: “Mr. Kirby, why don’t I say it? We’ve met before. Don’t you remember me?”
“Sonya, I’ve been having a feeling—”
“At Northwestern High, at Christmastime, when you addressed the school assembly, and said how wonderful it would be if the whole year could be filled with the Christmas spirit. And I fell for you. I really fell for you. And—”
“You played the march? The Wooden Soldiers?”
“And then sat down with you—”
“And asked me to sign your program. And—!”
She laughed, and I knew she knew what I suddenly remembered. Her dress had slipped up, while she was sitting beside me, to show those beautiful legs, the same ones I was looking at now. She kissed me again, this time not so virginal. I got out of there, but fast.
Chapter 3
The Langs lived on Van Buren, in a frame house with shaded trees around it, and I had supposed them strangers to me. But it turned out I knew them both. He was a teller in the Farmers’ Trust, and had cashed my checks often, while she worked in a store at the Plaza, and had sold me my upstairs furniture. A plump, middle-aged woman, she let me in, and recalled herself to me. Then she took me into the living room, an airy place with slipcovers on the furniture, where he was waiting. He was a slim, tallish man, with a face not even a mother could be sure of, and one of those quiet, ‘Will-you-have-it-in-tens’ voices, like every voice in a bank. However, I placed him at once, and said: “Oh yes, Mr. Lang — we meet again!” She pushed up a chair, he waved me to it, and we all three sat down. And at once a pause ensued, or whatever a pause does — or at least for a long moment, you could hear the clock on the mantelpiece. Then, pretty nervous, I got at it. I said I’d been talking to Sonya, and he said yes, he thought she’d be calling me up. I said I’d come to see if there wasn’t some way of “straightening this thing out.” He said: “Well that would be up to your brother — actually it was your mother who rang me, asking me to hold off until tonight, but if any straightening is to be done, your brother will have to do it.”
Now that news about Mother threw me off, and for a moment I was annoyed that Sonya hadn’t mentioned it, but then it occurred to me, perhaps she hadn’t known it. Also, his manner, and this news about Burl, that he had to do the straightening if straightening was going to be done, reinforced what I’d smelled, from the way she had acted about it, that something was lurking under cover that I’d had no idea of. So I heard myself tell him, “Well, I’m strictly here on my own. I haven’t talked to my brother in a couple of months, or seen my mother since Sunday. If I represent anyone, it’s Sonya.”
“I represent her, Mr. Kirby.”
His voice had a bit of a rasp.
“Then, Mr. Lang, suppose we get at it. Do you mind my asking, so I have things perfectly clear, what it was you intended to do, that you held off from at my mother’s request?”
“Mr. Kirby, it was you who came to see me.”
“Or in other words, get at it?”
“If you don’t mind.”
My temper was beating a tattoo in my throat, but I swallowed it under control, and told him: “Well, we have two questions, here, as I see it. One is moral, and I don’t condone it, or try to minimize it. What my brother did was unspeakable, I don’t try to pretend it was not. But I know nothing I can do about it.
“The other question is financial, and about that, there is something I can do, and will, if permitted. As Sonya explained it to me, it comes down to this: If no charges are filed, if the whole matter is dropped, a Maryland abortion is out, and Sonya must have the child. That, she tells me, she’s willing to do, and in fact prefers it to what she calls the stink that would surely come if my brother is persecuted. But of course, it will entail a certain expense, especially at the Florence Crittenton Home. So in return for your dropping the charges, I’m willing to bear that expense. I can give you a check right now.”
Money talks, and I always carry a blank check in my wallet. I slipped it out now, like a magician palming a card, and waved it in front of his eyes. He hardly looked at it. Instead, he asked: “Do you know what the charges will be?”
“Sonya told me, yes.”
“And you think the amount you suggest, the Florence Crittenton expense, adequately compensates her?”
“It’s compensation for the actual costs.”
“It’s no compensation at all.”
“It’s not hay, it’s four-figure money.”
“But what does it leave her? What does she get out of it?”
“Well if you put it on that basis—?”
“I do, and you ought to be damned glad! You should be thanking God that I do. Because there’s another basis that I could put it on—”
“Louis!” said Mrs. Lang. “Please!”
“Our family,” he went on, paying no attention to her, “used to farm a place near Waldorf in Charles County, and my grandmother used to sell eggs. She sold eggs that she collected, from women all around, to a storekeeper on the Bryantown Road, who she claimed paid her better than any other. So one Saturday afternoon my grandfather lent her the truck, the little Ford truck that he had, so she could take her eggs in and sell them, and then he walked to Ryon’s store, that was across from the railroad station, to see a show that they had.