Dr. Horne came out of the room just as Merry arrived. He closed the door behind him, his face grim.
“He’s your case exclusively,” he said. “He asked for you. I hope you won’t mind. He’s dying.”
“I don’t mind,” Merry said. She looked past him to the closed door. “Does he…know?”
Dr. Horne surprised her by nodding. “He wanted the truth,” he said, “and this time I gave it to him. He’s no fool. He’d have known a lie for what it was.” He sighed, and brushed at his thinning hair. “Good luck,” he said.
* * * *
Pierson Webb turned his head on the pillow when she came in. “Surprise, doll,” he said, his voice weak but taunting. “You didn’t expect to see me here this morning, did you?”
Merry laughed, careful to hide her pity. She shook her head. “Can’t say as I did,” she said as she approached his bed.
He moved his head fretfully. “Don’t take my temperature and all of that jazz,” he said. “That’s already been done too many times as it is.
“That friend of yours,” he said, “I gave her good advice.”
Merry nodded. She said, “I know.”
“She won’t take it,” he said. “They never take advice.”
Merry didn’t answer, but she was afraid he was right about Tammy.
Suddenly he said, in a low, tired voice, “A man wastes so damn much of his life.” He drew a deep breath. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t throw your life away like I did mine, so you end up with nothing, and you die with nothing.”
Merry aimed a careful, professional smile on him. “Now you’re feeling sorry for yourself. There’s nothing that wrong with you. We’ll have you out of here in a few days. We need the space for sick people.”
He turned his face to the wall. “Don’t give me that Pollyanna talk,” he said. “I know the score. I’m going to die, and I’m damn scared. I don’t know if there’s a God or not. I used to believe in a God, but that was too long ago to remember. Now I don’t want to know.”
Merry was torn with pity, but she held it in check. The chart indicated a sedative at eight. She looked at her watch and went to prepare the needle.
At one o’clock the call came from Agnes. Mrs. Keyes, on duty at the desk, wasn’t the cold, impatient woman she had been when Natalie Pries had phoned.
She listened openly as Merry talked. The whole hospital knew that Agnes’ daughter was being operated on that morning.
Agnes’ voice was clouded with tears and for a moment, Merry tensed with fear. Then Agnes said distinctly, “Ellen’s going to live; she’s going to be well. The doctor said maybe in a week she can even climb stairs.” She started to cry, and she said, “I’m going to hang up. There’s absolutely no sense in paying toll charges in order to weep over the telephone.”
“Agnes,” Merry said, close to tears herself, “oh, Agnes, I’m so happy for you!”
Mrs. Keyes smiled at Merry. She said, “From the sound of your tears, I’d say the operation was a success.”
Merry nodded, reaching up to wipe at her eyes. “She’s going to live, Agnes said, and she’s going to be well…climb stairs and everything.”
Mrs. Keyes said quietly, “Thank God,” and went back to her work. Merry went to find Tammy.
* * * *
At two o’clock, the door of Pierson Webb’s room opened and a small, stout woman and a tall, blonde young man pushed their way inside.
She got up from her chair and said in her sternest voice, “I’m sorry but Mr. Webb isn’t to have visitors. You must have seen the sign on the door.”
The woman said calmly, “I’m not a visitor; I’m Pete’s wife.”
The man on the bed swung his face from the wall to the woman. “Dorothy!” he said. “You did come.”
She pulled forward a chair and sat down in it, spreading her skirt carefully. “Of course I came,” she said. “I told you once that if you ever needed me, I’d come. Did you think I’d break that promise?”
Merry saw the first tears she’d ever seen Pierson Webb shed appear in his eyes. He clung to the woman’s hand. “Why does it always have to be too late?” he asked. “I’m going to die.”
“Hush,” she said. “Hush that kind of talk.”
He said, “Why didn’t you make me stay?”
Pierson turned to look up at the blonde man still standing beside the bed.
“Hello… Father,” he said, as if the word were unfamiliar on his lips.
Pierson said, “You’ve grown up too fast. Why couldn’t you have waited?”
The woman said softly, “Ted’s twenty-five, Pete. He’s through college and he’s got his own law office. You can be proud of him.”
“Why is it always too late?” Pierson asked again. His eyes sought the woman’s. “Don’t leave me,” he said.
“I won’t leave you, Pete,” Dorothy promised, and Merry tiptoed quietly out of the room, pulled the door closed behind her, and straightened the “No Visitors” sign hung on the knob.
Chapter Eighteen
It was the day Pierson Webb was to leave the hospital, a lush, beautiful day, with a brilliant California sun.
Pierson was going home to die. He’d been in the hospital four days this time. The reporters, after the first morning, had stayed clear.
Merry, walking from his room toward the elevators, was surprised to see Mai Hinge round the corner.
The columnist’s thin face was lined with weariness and she puffed furiously on a cigarette.
Her dark eyes raked Merry. She said, “Well, if it isn’t Miss Sweetness and Light.” Her eyes moved past Merry’s face to Pierson Webb’s door.
She said, “I see I’m still being kept on the outside.”
Merry said softly, “Mr. Webb is not seeing anyone except his immediate family. He’s leaving the hospital this morning. His wife and son are in the room with him.”
Mai laughed bitterly. “His wife,” she said. “Oh, yes, she’d be here. Pierson’s got plenty of money, you know. She’d be on hand for the kill.”
Merry wanted to say, “The money doesn’t matter to her. She’d get that in any event. She cares for him. She really cares.” But she held back the words. Mai would only mock them.
Mai sighed. “Living he had no time for me, and dying he still has no time for me.” She flipped the cigarette across the polished floor. “The story of my life.”
Her lips twisted and she said, suddenly vicious, “Wipe that smug smile off your face, sweetie. You’re not winning in the game of love either. But then maybe you’ll be satisfied with an affair. Has Jeff asked you?” Her lips formed a sneer and she said softly, “He wouldn’t have to ask you, would he? You’re the offering sort, aren’t you, sweetie?”
Merry said slowly, “I feel sorry for you.”
Without warning, Mai’s hand lashed forward into a stinging blow across Merry’s face. “I don’t allow anyone to feel sorry for me. Not anyone!” And she whirled swiftly and went down the hall towards the stairs, disregarding the elevator.
Ted Webb, who had just left his father’s room, asked, “What was that all about?”
Merry said quietly, one hand held to her burning cheek, “That was for heartbreak.”
He lifted one blonde brow but said nothing, and turned his head to watch Tammy approach from the nursing station.
Merry felt a charge in the air, a charge she’d felt from the first moment Tammy and Ted had met, four days before.
She pushed the down button on the elevator, and as she waited, she heard Ted Webb say, “He’s my father and he’s dying and I can’t feel anything.”
And Tammy’s low, comforting voice, “You never knew him.”
“Still I should be able to feel something,” he said. “My mother…”
“He’s her husband,” Tammy said, in a very un-Tammy-lik
e voice.
Merry heard the catch come suddenly in Ted Webb’s throat. “Would you love a man like that, always and forever?”
Tammy said softly, “I think I could…if he were the right man.”
Ted said, “Have coffee with me? Something? Talk to me?”
“Yes,” Tammy said. “Whenever you say, whatever you say.”
The elevator came and Merry stepped into it. She felt strangely lost and alone.
The feeling deepened when she sat alone that night in the apartment. Ted had phoned and Tammy had gone out with him.
She’d looked softer, Merry thought, and more lovely than ever.
She’d looked at Merry, her eyes luminous. “Sometimes,” she’d said, “you wait and wait for something and it never comes to you and then again sometimes…” she smiled dreamily. “I’m going to marry him,” she said.
“He’s asked you?” Merry said.
“No,” Tammy shook her head. “But he will. Maybe it will be a month…six months. He has to get over his father. But he’ll ask me.”
Merry couldn’t resist asking, “What about the big movie star bit?”
“What movie star bit?” Tammy grinned at her.
Merry had become more serious. “What about Arch?”
Tammy had said, “I never said once that I loved him.”
It was true, Tammy thought, running down the steps to meet Ted. “Maybe I should feel sorry for Arch,” she told herself. But she couldn’t feel sorry for anyone. “I’m selfish,” she thought. “I’ll have to change. Maybe I will change. I don’t know.”
She climbed into the car that was waiting for her. She smiled at the man who sat behind the wheel.
He didn’t have to talk to her or flatter her. He didn’t have to do anything, except to be there. She was content just to be with him. And she’d never felt like that with any man before. Always before a man had been there to be used.
* * * *
Merry stared out the window. The apartment was much too silent. She willed the telephone to ring. It didn’t oblige.
“And whom do I want to phone me?” she asked herself jeeringly. “Jeff?” He’d phoned twice in the past four days and both times she’d pleaded another engagement.
“I do not want him to phone me,” she told herself emphatically. “I wouldn’t see him if he did phone. I want more than Jeff Morrow has to offer.”
She turned her back to the window and did not see the white sports car that slowed to a stop in front of the building, or the stocky figure in sunglasses who jumped lightly from the car and ran toward the apartment.
She was startled when the buzzer sounded. “Arch,” the voice said, when she asked who was there.
Walking slowly she unlatched the door and let him in. She said carefully, “Tammy isn’t here.”
“I know she isn’t,” he said calmly. “I came to take you for a ride. I might even buy you an orange juice if you behave.”
Merry was so grateful to him for coming she could have cried. “Wait until I get a sweater.”
Arch drove slowly and they talked little. “It’s a nice night for driving,” he said.
Merry, her head resting against the car seat, nodded. “Swell.”
He half turned toward her and said, “Listen, if you’re worrying about me and Tammy, don’t. There was never anything there. I always knew exactly where I stood with Tammy.” He took the car around a curve. “I hope this guy’s for her,” he said. “I’d hate it if she had her dreams turned inside out.”
Merry thought, “I hope he’s for her, too.”
There was silence again for a few miles and then Arch wheeled the car into, the parking lot of a drive-in. “I feel like a hamburger along with that orange juice,” he said.
Merry grinned. “To heck with the Chamber of Commerce,” she said. “I feel like coffee with that hamburger.”
They ate and drank in companionable silence. Finally Arch said, “I’ve been thinking for a long time that maybe I’d go back to West Virginia for a while. I need to find myself. I’m a hill boy at heart. I guess I’ll always be.” He gazed off into the distance. “I might even find myself a wife and settle down there,” he said slowly. “I don’t intend to live my life the way old Pierson has lived his, with nothing to show for it.”
Merry finished her coffee. A breeze blew in from the ocean as they drove back.
When he pulled up in front of the apartment building, Merry turned to him impulsively. “Find the right one, Arch.”
“I’ll do that,” he said solemnly. “I’ll pick very carefully.”
“I like your singing,” Merry said. “I really do, Arch. It…it makes me want to cry.”
“Well, now,” Arch said lightly, “I’ve made it. I can’t go any higher than that.” He leaned toward her, and his face became serious. “If I were you,” he said softly, “I’d do something about that great big ache you’re carrying around, baby.”
Merry didn’t deny it was there. She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. “Goodnight, Arch.”
“That sure wasn’t a kiss of passion,” he said.
Merry saw that he waited until she was inside the apartment before the car pulled away from the curb.
When she went upstairs, Agnes was back. She was in the kitchen making coffee.
She hugged Agnes, saying, “This can be the loneliest place where you’re the only one in the apartment.”
Agnes said, “Tammy?”
Merry threw off her sweater. “Tammy has found love. His name’s Ted. He’s a lawyer. Pierson Webb’s son.”
“For real love?” Agnes asked, her eyes searching Merry’s face.
Merry said softly, “Seems like.” She looked at the water Agnes had boiling. “Enough for two?”
“I’ll fill it up,” Agnes said. She filled the coffee pot and put it back on the stove.
Merry asked, “Ellen?”
Agnes’ face went soft. She said, “I left her with Mother while I came back to find us a place. I want Ellen with me, and Mother doesn’t seem to mind moving.”
Merry decided that her next question must have been in her eyes, because Agnes said abruptly, “Harvey has nothing to do with it.”
She got down another cup and poured the coffee. She said, “Don’t ask me about Harvey, Merry, because I don’t know. Ellen is quite fond of him, and as they say, a lot of water has gone over the dam. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not ready to think about it yet.”
They drank their coffee in silence.
Agnes, sipping her coffee and staring out of the window at the city spread below her, thought, “What if Harvey asks to come back? What will I say? What do I want to say?”
She gave a sigh. Love once gone, she thought, didn’t come back easily. She supposed that what she did would depend on what she thought best for Ellen.
Merry had her own thoughts. “Maybe,” she thought, “I’ll write Mother in the morning. Tell her I’m coming home for a visit.” She’d been away a long time. Too long. A chill of loneliness went through her.
* * * *
It was one of those days at the hospital when everything runs smoothly and automatically. No crises, no little emergencies. The hours seemed to move as slowly as ants climbing a hill. And by the time five o’clock came, Merry found herself with a headache.
She went hurrying down the steps, in a rush to catch the bus. She didn’t notice the car edging its way slowly along the curb, just keeping up with her.
She turned her head sharply when Jeff Morrow’s voice called out to her, “Get in the car. And don’t argue with me, unless you want to create a scene. I’m not the kind of man who appreciates being given the cold shoulder without knowing the reason for it.”
When Merry hesitated he said firmly, “Either you get in the car willingly, or I get out and see that you get
in, if I have to pick you up and carry you.”
Merry said as she settled herself on the seat next to him, “I believe you really would.”
“I really would.” He swung the car out from the curb.
Merry said coldly, “You’re turning the wrong way. In case you’ve forgotten, my street is in the other direction.”
“I’m not taking you home,” he said. “I’ve got a few things I want to settle with you first.”
He turned the car down a residential street. “Like, for instance, why have you been avoiding me lately?”
Merry forced laughter. “Avoiding you?” she said. “I’ve had other engagements, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said. “And anyway, it’s a lie.” He pulled the car to a stop in front of a driveway.
Merry protested, “You can’t park here. In front of someone’s driveway.”
“I can,” he said, “until they tell me to move. Now as to my question…” He grinned at her suddenly. “Natalie told me she’d given you a big mixed up story about my being her next husband and she was afraid she’d led you to believe it was the truth.”
Merry turned to stare at him. “Natalie told you?”
His grin widened. He said, “I told you Natalie tells me everything. I even know about the milk.”
Merry didn’t say anything for a minute, and he began to shake her. “This Tom guy,” he said, “what was he like?”
“Like?” Merry began to laugh with sudden hysteria. She said, “I can’t… I can’t remember exactly what he looked like!”
Jeff shook her harder. He said grimly, “If you ever forget what I look like!”
Merry went suddenly limp. She said, “I’d never forget…never.” And then realizing, she turned her face away from him. She said tightly, “I told myself I’d never fall in love with anyone again.”
He asked her harshly, “How old were you?”
“Seventeen,” she said, laughing. “I thought it was the great love of my life.”
“And now?” he asked her.
“And now?” she repeated. “And now,” she said, “I know.”
“Know what?” he asked her. “Say it.” He began shaking her again.
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