The Tight White Collar

by Grace Metalious

  And then it was as if the words had released her from fear, so that she circled his neck with her arms when he carried her inside, and no matter how or where he touched her she could want more and more.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, darling. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  And Margery strained toward him, raising herself to him, and said, “I’m not afraid, darling. Here I am, darling. I’m not afraid.”

  Margery did well in Cooper Station, or, as the townspeople put it, she seemed to fit right into things. That Margery’s “fitting in” was part of a careful plan on her part, no one ever suspected, not even her husband. Margery moved slowly. She was friendly without being forward and always she waited for Cooper Station to take the first step in her direction. When she decided to redecorate Ferguson Cooper’s house she realized that it was going to take her at least five years if she were to prevent anyone in town from regarding her as an outlander who had come in and couldn’t wait to start ripping down what it had taken Ferguson and his father almost a hundred years to build. The big brick house was understaffed, for Margery allowed herself only one cleaning woman and a part-time cook, and it was not until she was three months pregnant that she sent to Charleston for Virgie Perkins, the colored woman who had been her nurse.

  “You can’t blame Margery for wanting a familiar face around her now,” said Florence Strickland, who was the wife of Cooper Station’s leading attorney. “After all, it’s her first baby.”

  “Well, I’m darned if I’d want a big, black face around me at a time like that,” said Holly Meade, the art supervisor for the Cooper Station schools.

  “Holly, you can’t possibly know what it feels like to be pregnant, now can you? A pregnant woman gets the strangest feelings sometimes,” said Florence sweetly, and Holly, who had never had a child, was properly squelched.

  In spite of her mother’s worries and Nathaniel’s understandable jitters, Margery’s pregnancy was a surprisingly easy one.

  “You’re as healthy as a good Southern horse,” said Dr. Jess Cameron. “Just stop eating so much, Margery, or we’ll deliver you a baby as big as a six-month-old child.”

  Nathaniel rubbed cocoa butter on Margery’s swollen abdomen.

  “I can feel him moving,” he said.

  “Nate, honey?”

  “Yes?”

  “What if he’s a girl?”

  Nathaniel buried his face in her hair. “I can wait,” he said. “Remember, you said you wanted six.”

  She turned slightly and bit his ear. “But just one at a time, selfish,” she laughed.

  Virgie made two sets of everything, one pink and one blue, just to be on the safe side, she said, and her love went into every tiny stitch.

  “There was never no store boughten clothes on you when you was a baby, Miz Marg’ry,” she said, “And there ain’t gonna be none on this little one.”

  She made sure that Margery walked and napped. She brushed Margery’s hair and rubbed her back and looked critically at every mouthful of food that went into Margery’s mouth, and all day long she hummed spirituals under her breath until Jess Cameron said.

  “This isn’t going to be just the birth of another baby. This is going to be the Second Coming. Wait and see.”

  Margery’s mother telephoned almost every day from Charleston, and she wrote lengthy letters in which she explained that it wasn’t as if she didn’t trust Nathaniel or anything like that, it was simply that a mother couldn’t help worrying about her daughter’s first baby and thank God that Virgie was there and was Margery sure that she didn’t want her baby born in Charleston.

  “I’d come up there myself,” said Mrs. Stevenson, “but you know how poor Daddy is. He’s like a lost little boy if I’m away from home for even an hour.”

  “I know, darling,” said Margery. “And truly, I’ve never felt better in my life. Jess says I’m healthy as a Southern horse.”

  “Yes, well,” said Mrs. Stevenson, “I’d feel a lot easier in my mind if you were right here at home with Dr. Wolcott to look after things.”

  “I am at home, dear,” said Margery as gently as she could. “I couldn’t leave Nate now any more than you could leave Daddy. Please don’t worry. Everything is fine.”

  Mrs. Stevenson began to sniffle. “Yes, dear, I’m sure it is. But please have Nate or that doctor of yours call me the minute anything happens, won’t you?”

  “Yes, dear. Of course, I will. Don’t cry, dear. Call me tomorrow.”

  Margery hung up and leaned back in bed for her afternoon nap and then she felt the first twinge. Quickly, she looked at her watch and noted the time.

  If it happens again before fifteen minutes are gone, she thought, I’ll call Nate.

  She propped another pillow up behind her neck and put both hands on her abdomen and waited. She counted forty-six roses in the wallpaper before she looked at her watch again. Three minutes had passed. It was half an hour before she felt anything resembling a cramp.

  “Dammit,” she said aloud and tried to relax.

  But by the time Nathaniel got home from Cooper’s Mills things had progressed to good, solid, sweat-bringing pains that came once every ten minutes, and by six-thirty in the evening, Margery was in the Cooper Memorial Hospital, prepped and properly Johnnyed and doped to the eyeballs.

  “For God’s sake, Nate, go on home,” said Jess Cameron. “Fathers are more trouble than mothers. Everything’s fine and going according to schedule. Beat it.”

  “I’ll wait,” said Nathaniel and hoped that he wouldn’t throw up.

  The baby came at eight thirteen the next morning and it was a girl.

  “It’s a girl,” someone said, and Margery smiled crookedly. She felt drunk.

  “I knew it all the time,” she murmured. “I was saving it for a surprise for Nate. Robin. Her name is Robin,” and Margery slept again.

  They did not let her see the baby. “But Jess,” she said. “I feel wonderful. I want to see my baby.”

  She was sitting up in bed with her hair brushed and fresh lipstick on her mouth.

  “Maybe tomorrow, Margery,” said Jess Cameron. “It’s only been two days. We want you to get your strength back. You bled a little more than we like, and we want you to get strong again.”

  The hospital room was full of flowers and for no reason at all Margery remembered the way the living room of the Cooper house had looked when Ferguson was laid out in his coffin.

  “She’s dead!” cried Margery. “Robin’s dead and you don’t want to tell me!”

  “No, Margery. No. We just want you to get strong again.”

  “Nate,” she said. “It’s been a week now. I want to see the baby. Why don’t they bring her to me?”

  Nathaniel Cooper was not the expert liar that Jess Cameron could be on occasion.

  “The baby is weak, Margery,” he said. “Jess said something about oxygen.”

  “You lie, Nathaniel,” she said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  He did not tell her and at last the day came when Margery could get up by herself. She waited until the nurse had left the room and then she got up and dressed. She walked to the nursery and looked at the diminutive cribs, in rows, behind the large square of glass, and she watched a white-robed, masked nurse hold up one baby after another to show to the foolishly smiling fathers who stood next to Margery outside the nursery window. She saw the nurse’s eyes meet hers; saw the immaculate hand hover for a moment over one of the cribs, and she saw the eyes over the mask fill with tears.

  Margery Cooper waited, sitting on one of the chairs in the hospital waiting room, for Jess Cameron to walk through the front door of the hospital. She did not see, nor hear, the white-capped nurse who picked up a telephone in the office across the hall.

  “Dr. Cameron,” the nurse said softly into the telephone. “Mrs. Cooper is up and dressed and sitting i
n the waiting room. She walked to the nursery. I’m sure I don’t know, Doctor. Pickering said that she was taking a nap, so she left her and went about her other duties. The next thing we knew she was standing in front of the nursery window. No, she hasn’t seen the baby. Yes, Doctor, we’ll be careful.”

  Jess Cameron turned to his father. “Christ,” he said hopelessly. “Christ.” He pounded his fist against the desk.

  Dr. Gordon Cameron looked unhappily at his son.

  “This is one of the disadvantages that I didn’t tell you about that time I lectured you on the glories of small-town doctoring,” he said. “If this had happened in a city, to someone you knew only as a patient, it wouldn’t be so hard on you. You’d feel badly, but you wouldn’t have to watch the hearts of two of your friends breaking.”

  Jess turned and stared out the window.

  I should have done something as soon as I knew, he thought. One little slip, a mistake. It would have been so easy and the child would be dead and I could face Margery and tell her. Your daughter is dead, Margery. But this . . .

  Gordon Cameron went to stand next to his son.

  “I know, Jess,” he said quietly. “But I couldn’t have done it either.”

  “How did you know what I was thinking?” asked Jess.

  “We all think of it at one time or another,” replied Gordon. “Some of us can and some of us can’t and I’ll be damned if I always know which of us is the more fortunate.”

  Jess’s whole body ached with tension. Not Margery. Anybody else in the world, but not Margery.

  “She has to be told, Jess,” said Gordon Cameron.

  “Yes,” said Jess.

  He telephoned to Nathaniel Cooper. “Nate,” he said, “she has to be told. I’ll meet you outside the hospital.”

  A few minutes later the two men walked in together to face Margery.

  “Margery, dear,” said Nathaniel. “How wonderful to see you up and dressed. Here, let me walk you back to your room.”

  Margery did not smile back or even look at him. “Jess?” she said.

  So here you are, Cameron, thought Jess wretchedly. The time is now. Just don’t look into her eyes when you tell her, and don’t beat around the bush.

  They sat in Margery’s room and a student nurse brought steaming cups of coffee. Margery felt a painful fist clench shut in her stomach. She remembered something that Jess had once said, conversationally, as he sat in her living room.

  “There’s nothing a human being can’t bear more easily if he has a good hot cup of coffee in his hands.”

  Margery watched Jess now. He took a long gulp of coffee and lit a cigarette. Margery watched and felt faint with terror.

  “Robin is a Mongolian idiot,” he said bluntly.

  The words seemed to echo in the room. They ricocheted against the walls and the floor and bounced against Margery’s brain.

  Idiot, said the echo. Idiot. Robin is an idiot, idiot, idiot.

  Margery laughed and laughed. She laughed because, of course, Jess was playing a joke on her. It was the same kind of joke he made whenever she was at a party and looking especially well and Jess came up to her and smiled and said, “And you, my dear Margery, look just like a hag!” So Margery laughed.

  Robin is a Mongolian idiot, she thought, and laughed. That is very funny. Jess, let go of my arm. Goodness, I can hardly stand up from laughing so hard.

  She laughed and laughed, which was very bad of her because she thought that from somewhere, very far away now, she could hear Nathaniel sobbing.

  Margery and Nathaniel took Robin home against all of Jess Cameron’s urgings to the contrary. Even years later, Margery could remember fragments of sentences and phrases.

  “What of the future, Jess?”

  “Robin has no future.”

  “You could be wrong, Jess. Everyone makes mistakes.”

  “Please, Margery, please believe me. Don’t torture yourself by going from one doctor to another in search of a miracle. Go to one other doctor, a specialist, and if his opinion is the same as my father’s and mine, stop right there.”

  “He’s right, Margery,” said Nathaniel.

  “Everyone makes mistakes,” she said stubbornly.

  During Robin’s first year, Margery and her mother traveled over most of Europe with her, seeking a way out for the child, while Nathaniel stayed at home and ran the mills and Margery’s father wandered around his big house in Charleston, waiting with quiet desperation for his wife to return. To everyone’s surprise, it was Mrs. Stevenson who bore the shock of Robin far better than her husband. Margery’s mother came to Cooper Station and took careful stock of the situation. She talked frankly with Jess Cameron and although she agreed with what he said, she could also see Margery’s point of view.

  “She’d never rest easy, Doctor,” said Mrs. Stevenson, “if she thought that maybe there was something she could have done and didn’t do.”

  “There is nothing to be done,” argued Jess. “Margery is just hurting herself.”

  “And that is something that Margery is going to have to find out for herself,” said Mrs. Stevenson.

  She put her arms around Nathaniel and said, “Don’t you worry yourself none, Nate, honey. I’ll watch over both of them.”

  Looking at her, small, gentle-voiced and rather fluttery, Jess said he thought he knew now what the women of the South must have been like when they gave their wedding rings to the Confederacy to be made into the weapons of war.

  Mr. Stevenson, on the other hand, could not accept the fact of Robin. He blamed the climate of northern New England, Jess Cameron, the hospital and the whole of Cooper Station.

  “Margery was never cut out to live in the North,” he cried. “We never should have let her go. A delicate girl like Margery, surrounded by strangers. That’s what did it to her.”

  “It happens everywhere, John,” said his wife. “Look at Elsie Cartwright right here in Charleston. Her little girl is the same as Robin.”

  “Trash!” cried John Stevenson. “The Cartwrights have always been trash.”

  He blamed himself for the years that he had not only allowed, but had encouraged, Margery to ride.

  “Horses were made for men,” he said. “I never should have allowed Margery on a horse.”

  “I’ve been riding horses for thirty years, John,” said his wife quietly. “Stop blaming yourself.”

  But worst of all, John Stevenson blamed Nathaniel Cooper.

  “What do we really know about him and his family?” he demanded. “They’ve probably been inbreeding for years and we never took the trouble to find out.”

  “That’s enough, John,” said his wife. “I never want to hear you talk like that again, and if you ever let on to Margery or Nate that you feel like that I’ll turn right around and walk out of this house and never come back.”

  So Margery and her mother and Robin went from one European city to another until Hitler put a stop to their travels. Mrs. Stevenson went home to Charleston and now Margery and Nathaniel began their wandering around the United States in search of the cure that Margery was sure had just barely eluded her in Europe. They traveled thousands of miles and spent thousands of dollars, and they built up hopes, then picked up the broken pieces of these hopes and looked for still another doctor.

  “It is a congenital condition, Mrs. Cooper,” the doctors said.

  “But what can we do?”

  “Nothing,” they said. “There is nothing to be done. Something goes wrong in the uterus during development—”

  “But what?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “It’s a pity, Mrs. Cooper, that this child did not die at birth,” they said. “There are degrees of Mongolism, and in the case of this child the degree is such that she will probably never talk, never walk.”

  It was Nathaniel who gave u
p first.

  “It’s just the way things are,” he said. “Why, I don’t know. We’ll do the best we can for her.”

  Jess Cameron enlarged on the idea and put it into words for Nathaniel.

  “Once you have accepted the fact that Robin is not normal,” he said, “you must next accept the idea of placing her in an institution. You can’t help Robin by keeping her at home, Nate. All that will do is harm you and harm Margery.”

  “An institution!”

  “Stop thinking of it in terms of a prison, Nate.”

  “But, Jess—”

  “A mentally defective child, an idiot, Nate, is absolutely helpless. It takes the patience of a saint to care for a child like Robin. Do you have that kind of patience? Does Margery?”

  “I’ll discuss it with her, Jess.”

  But there was nothing to discuss as far as Margery was concerned. Her first, final and only answer was an unqualified “No.”

  “Darling, will you talk to Jess about it?” asked Nate.

  “No.”

  “Margery, listen to me,” pleaded Jess. “You cannot give Robin the care that she needs at home. Caring for a defective child has to be done not only lovingly—”

  “Are you insinuating that I don’t love Robin, Jess?” she interrupted angrily. “Do you think that just because she is as she is I love her less?”

  “If you love her, Margery, you’ll do what’s best for her and best for you. I know you love her, but love isn’t the only consideration. “

  “Leave me alone!” screamed Margery. “Leave me alone, both of you! I love her. She didn’t ask to be born. I’ll give her as much of myself as she can use, and I never want to hear another word about sending her away, locking her up somewhere, pretending that she’s dead. Leave me alone, do you hear? Leave me alone!”