The Cocktail Waitress

her new husband-her first and only-at the Charing Cross, on the Strand, which was where I stopped by for her each day. She wouldn’t come to the Savoy because, as she put it, “I wouldn’t have the courage.” I told her it didn’t take courage to walk through those doors, only money, but she laughingly said, “I wouldn’t have enough of that either.”

Her husband was a stay-in-bed type, mornings at least, leaving her free to wander the city a bit, and we took to wandering together. We hit it off with one another, and did a lot of laughing, like at the sentries at Buckingham Palace, trying to make them laugh. We never succeeded, but once, by the way he cut his eyes in our direction, we knew one boy heard us. Then we laughed at the parking lots, which seemed to be everywhere in the most improbable places. We said, “They have more lots than cars,” for by that time we’d both noted how little traffic there was, even in the rush hour-not a tenth of what New York has, or any American city. And then one day, piled alongside a lot, we noted a wall made of loose bricks, and of course started laughing about it, how “a little mortar might help.” But the attendant chimed in, “Temporary, you know-” or “temp’ry,” as he called it. “From the Blitz, that was all that was left from the bombing. Nothing to do with the space but rent it-it brings in a bit, and it helps.”

So the parking lots were explained, and didn’t seem quite so funny.

In the afternoons and evenings I lost Hilda’s companionship and regained my husband’s, and it became a pitched battle, or anticipation of one, until he finally fell asleep-and even so, I was never sure he might not wake in the middle of the night and be taken with the notion to join me in my bed. The bedroom doors did not have locks on them, but I took to placing a chair under the knob. I didn’t know if it would keep him out, or how I would explain it to him if it did, but at least the sound of his trying to get in would wake me, so I’d have some warning.

One morning, coming into the lobby of the Charing Cross, I must have looked tired, or anyway anxious, and perhaps a bit haggard as well, with dark circles beneath my eyes that no amount of makeup could entirely hide, because Hilda pulled me aside before we stepped out and asked if everything was O.K. I said yes, of course, but opened up a little-her husband was older as well, though not as much older as mine, and she’d confessed to me earlier that she’d had some fear leading up to their wedding night. Of course, she had been a virgin; I didn’t have her excuse. But fear was fear and she recognized the signs on me, so I admitted I was feeling some tension, and when pressed conceded, without explaining the actual situation, that the tension was connected to relations with my husband.

Reaching into her purse she pulled out a small pill case, one of those little metal ones with the applique flowers on the top, to make it look more feminine and less pharmaceutical. Inside, on a layer of tissue, were five broad tablets and she urged me to take one. When I took one out, she urged the rest on me as well and wouldn’t hear no, saying she had more upstairs and could give those to me too if I needed. “It’s a sedative my doctor gave me, before the wedding, when I told him how I was feeling about-well, you know. Thalidomide, it’s called. He says it isn’t bad for you, not like Miltown or those others you hear about.”

I swallowed it dry and she insisted again that I take the rest with me, for later, “as I no longer need them, now that things are so good with Tom.” I thanked her, already feeling better.

“You might as well have the whole bottle then, Joan-I’ll bring it tomorrow. I like knowing they’ll get some use. And you look so worn out.”

The timing was fortuitous, as the next day brought a new cause for anxiety that made all the prior incidents seem minor. Earl, writing some sort of bank draft in the sitting room, looked over from our desk and asked what the date was: “It’s on the paper, will you look?” I looked, and it was October 22. He thanked me for it, and kept on writing. This would have counted as one of our less troubled conversations, you might think-but suddenly I was struck by the significance of the date. I felt it in my belly like I’d been punched. The day we caught Lacey, on the way back to my car afterward, I remembered passing the information counter with its giant clock and the date posted on the board beside it, and saying to Tom, “September 30 will be a date to remember the rest of my life.” So, that was three weeks ago- three weeks and a day. And how long before that was my period? It came to me I was due, and that if I had passed the date I was pregnant. And suddenly a trip to London, something I’d always dreamed about, was transformed into a nightmare.

What to do? I was no innocent anymore, I knew how women dealt with these things-but I knew nothing of English laws, where one might go for an abortion, or even who to ask. Back home I could ask Liz, but surely none of the helpful doctors she might refer me to were on this side of the ocean.

There was only one answer: We had to get back to the other side of the ocean, and fast.

I went to Earl’s side and stood over him where he was writing, then put one palm lightly on his shoulder. He started. “… What is it, Joan?” And then, in the same words Hilda had used: “Is everything O.K.?”

I might have thought the Thalidomide would have kept me from looking anxious, but clearly it wasn’t up to the task. “No, Earl. I’m afraid not.”

“What’s the matter?”

He tried to take my hand, to stroke it, but I pulled it away from him. “I want to go back home. Earl … I’m going stir-crazy here.”

“You don’t like the hotel?”

“The hotel’s lovely. The restaurants have been lovely, the country’s lovely-but it’s not home.”

“I thought that’s the point of a honeymoon, to get away from home. I thought you’d like it.”

“Oh, I did, Earl, I did like it, and I appreciate it-you’ve been awfully generous. But enough’s enough. I need to see people driving on the right side of the road again, and eat a proper American meal again, and hear good old American voices again…”

He stared at me curiously. “Is that it? Voices and meals? Or is it that you can’t bear to share a suite with me any longer?”

“No! No. It’s true I’m concerned for you-you run such terrible risks, and you promised me you wouldn’t. But no, I don’t mean we have to go home to Hyattsville, and on with our regular lives right away. We could stay on in New York a while, after we land-at a hotel there.”

“I’ve made no arrangements.”

“But you could! I’m sure there’s one or another of the hotels there that has a pair of rooms going asking.”

“What’s in New York for you to see or do?”

“As much as in London,” I said. “We could see a Broadway show. Or-or that one people are talking about, The Fantasticks, down in Greenwich Village.”

“I didn’t know you had any interest in theater.”

“Two weeks ago, you didn’t know I’d ever flown in a plane. There’s plenty you don’t know about me yet.”

At that he eyed me again, and there was a challenge in his look, but I could also see his resistance weakening. Perhaps he’d had enough of England too; after all, he always had business to do, which I was sure he could do better if he weren’t living five hours later than everyone he worked with. Sure enough, he said: “All right. It’ll give me an excuse to see Bill again-my lawyer. Maybe I can be of help getting this piece of business closed at last.”

“What piece of business?” I asked

He waved away the question. “Just a sale, of a partnership interest in my company-there’s a fellow who’s been after us for a while, and I’ve decided to let him in. It’ll provide some extra liquid assets, which I figured we might have a use for, what with the extra expenses-your son to raise, and all.”

I took his hand again. “Thank you. Thanks for humoring me.”

“All right. All right.”

First chance I got, I called Liz, asking the operator to put me through to her at home, as it was too early there for her to be at the Garden yet.

“… But that’s wonderful, Joan! Isn’t it? Right out of the gate, and you’ve gotten it done. Must be some sort of a record.”

“Some sort, if you count from our wedding night. Less so, if you count from the night I spent with Tom.”

This brought a long silence from Liz, long enough that I became concerned the call might have been dropped. “Oh, Joanie,” she said finally, “I’m sorry.”

“I need your help. Or I may need it, that’s the thing, I don’t know.”

“I can give you a name, of someone to see, but you can only go there once you know you need it.”