Thinking about the growing foetus deep in her womb.
She hadn’t been able to put off seeing a doctor any longer; she had finally realized that yesterday. She had to know, one way or the other. She had made an appointment with a physician in San Jose whom she had once seen for a virus infection. Embarrassed and ashamed by the absence of a wedding band on her left hand, she had refused to meet the doctor’s eyes during the consultation and the subsequent examination; but he had been very nice, and very kind, and very understanding. He wasn’t there to make moral judgments, he had told her; that wasn’t his profession—or his inclination. He would know the results tomorrow, he had told her. Call him at three.
She had called him at two-thirty, holding her breath as his nurse put the call through to him, telling herself the tests would prove negative, they simply had to prove negative . . .
And then he had come on the line and said quietly, “I’m sorry, Miss Varner, the Achheim-Zondek was positive. You are pregnant.”
She had taken it very well, considering.
She had telephoned El Peyote immediately after promising the doctor she would come in for regular check- ups, and told Juano, who was managing things while Larry was away, that she wouldn’t be in tonight—she had some kind of bug. Then she had gone home and thought it all through, weighing the alternatives.
How much did she love Larry Drexel? More than life itself, that was how much. But suppose he wouldn’t marry her when she told him of the child? Suppose, as she had feared all along, he refused flatly? Did she want this baby—her baby, their baby—more than she wanted Larry?
No, she wanted nothing, no one, that much.
Then her recourses were clear.
Adoption.
Or abortion.
The latter was totally unthinkable. In spite of everything, she was incapable of committing a sin of that magnitude; if she had been unable to prevent the
But adoption—yes, she would do that. It wouldn’t be easy, especially if she saw the baby after it was born, if she held him (her?) in her arms, so warm and soft and defenseless; it wouldn’t be easy, but she would do that if it meant keeping Larry. She would find a good foundling home where they screened the applicants very carefully, where only those who desperately wanted a baby and would give it love and a good home and all the requisite material benefits, too, were allowed to adopt, and if necessary she would do it out of her money. Of course that wouldn’t be necessary, because Larry wasn’t a cruel man—strange and cold at times, but never cruel; he wasn’t like those men you read about in books who got a girl in trouble and then denied all responsibility and abandoned her completely. Not Larry, not her Larry.
Why, she might even be wrong about his refusal of marriage.
He might
There really was a good chance of that.
There really was.
She had to see him, she had to tell him about the child in just the right way. And she had to do it soon, very soon.
She called El Peyote again, but Juano didn’t know where he had gone—“back east somewhere, I think, he didn’t say exactly”—and he didn’t know when Mr. Drexel would be back. Yes, he would have Mr. Drexel call her as soon as he showed up there, yes, no matter what time it was, yes, he would tell him it was urgent.
Fran had begun calling his home then, just before six, and it was ten-fifty now. No answer yet, and her phone had not rung. She continued to stare at the instrument, and she imagined she could feel the child move inside her. She closed her eyes and put one hand against her abdomen, pressing it there; then she opened her eyes again and with her other hand lifted the receiver out of its cradle, put it down on the breakfast bar, dialed Larry’s number again, and then picked it up and put it to her ear. She listened to it ring five times, six, seven, eight...
Then: “Yeah, hello?” a little breathlessly.
Her hand tightened around the receiver, and she leaned forward, her heart singing violently in her chest. “Larry? Oh, thank God!”
“Fran?”
“Yes, darling,” she said. “Oh, Larry, I ...” The words constricted in her throat, and she swallowed and tried again. “Larry, I have to see you.”
“Sure, baby,” he said. His voice was distant, abstracted. “Tomorrow, at El Peyote.”
“No, no, tonight.”
There was a brief silence. Then he said, “Look, Fran, I just got in from Chicago. It’s late, and I’m tired...”
“Larry, I have to see you!”
“Not.”
“Please, please, I have to!”
“Goddamn it, I told you no.”
“Darling, please, it’s . . . it’s very important.”
“I don’t give a crap how important it is,” he snapped. “Not tonight. Do you understand? Not tonight!”
He hung up.
Fran replaced the receiver very carefully. Her eyes were like polished amber pebbles glistening in a thin rain. She felt warm moisture begin to flow high along her cheekbones, and she put up her hands with the palms turned outwards to wipe it away—the gesture of a pigtailed little girl scolded for mud-pie batter on a pink organdy dress.
But she wasn’t a little girl any more, oh no, not now, especially not now; what she was, was a consummated woman, carrying the illegitimate child of her lover in her womb, and the sooner she faced that, the better it was going to be for her, and for Larry, and for her unborn daughter or son. It was certainly time for her to assume the responsibility of her situation, to take some initiative in seeing it through this primary crisis, instead of merely lying back all dewy-eyed and trembling and innocently passive. She took her hands down and drew in several deep breaths, and her mouth firmed into a tight, resolute line. Yes. Yes, it was certainly time.
She thought: You’re the father of my baby, Larry, and you have to know that, for better or for worse, and you have to know it now, tonight. It’s the wrong time, perhaps—you’re tired and you’re in a poor humor and I’m more afraid now than ever of what you’ll say when I tell you—but I can’t wait, I just can’t wait, not until tomorrow, not this night through. I have to tell you, I’m going to tell you. I am.
She went into the bedroom and put on her plastic, belted raincoat and a matching, softly wide-brimmed rain hat. Then she left the apartment and went down the wood-and-fieldstone outer stairs to the parking area in the rear courtyard, running a little through the gentle rain to where her car was parked. She fumbled with her keys and got the door unlocked and slipped inside. She had a glimpse of the dashboard clock in the pale light from the ceiling dome just before she closed the door after her.
The time was 11:02.
Andrea Kilduff held the telephone receiver pressed tightly with both her small hands, listening to the distant, empty circuit noises humming through the earpiece. No answer.
On the fifteenth ring, she put the receiver back on its hook and shivered tremulously inside her heavy wool jacket. She hugged herself, and the wind moaned across the wet, puddled blacktop outside the glass walls of the public booth, fanning clumps of darkly painted autumn leaves toward the bright fluorescent lights of the Shell station at the opposite end of the rectangle. And there was the mournfully constant hissing of cars passing along the rain- slick expanse of Highway 101, near the first of the three Petaluma exits less than a thousand yards away.
Why didn’t he answer? she asked herself silently. It’s after eleven now; he should be home. He really should be home. Where would he be at this hour on a Wednesday night? He never goes to bars or anything like that, and seldom to the movies, and he certainly wouldn’t go walking in Golden Gate Park this late. Maybe he’s... out with someone. Well, no, I don’t think so. No, he wouldn’t be, but he isn’t home and he should be home.
Andrea retrieved her dime and dialed the apartment number again, carefully. She let it ring another fifteen times. Again, no answer.
