The Best of Everything

by Rona Jaffe

  "All right, Fred," he said.

  There was a remote-control panel in the armrest of the back seat that could turn the radio on. Dexter tuned it in to play soft music. As the limousine crept through the traffic April could see people turning around to look at them, and when they stopped for a light the people in the cars waiting next to theirs turned their heads to see who was inside such a distinguished-looking car. Perhaps they thought she really was a star, with those roses, and the chauffein*, and Dexter looking so handsome and sophisticated next to her in his black chesterfield overcoat and the white cigarette in the comer of

  his mouth. If she tried she could pretend that they were going to a house party in the country.

  "Do you like it?" Dexter asked, grinning.

  "I'm overwhelmed."

  "I have something else," he said. In the pocket of his overcoat he had a silver flask. He unscrewed the cover, and the cover became a little silver cup. "Bonded bourbon."

  "I just had gin."

  "That's all right. It's not the combination that makes people sick, it's the quantity. Drink up."

  She took the little cup from him and swallowed the contents in one gulp, as if it were medicine, swallowing again to keep it down. She shuddered and felt better. They were on the broad highway now, heading for New Jersey, the car rocking from side to side as they sped along. Through the open windows came the sulphur smell of the factories along the New Jersey flatlands, making April feel like retching. She leaned out of the window and all of a sudden the mile-long limousine with the two of them in it and the hveried chauffeur and the armful of roses and the soft music and the hip flask of bourbon wasn't glamorous any more, it was ridiculous; they were two frantic, stupid people speeding through an ugly-smelling countryside to attend the murder of love. It was limousines like this that people rented to go to weddings and to funerals. Had anyone ever rented one before to go to an abortion? She should by all rights be going to her wedding now, and instead she was possibly going to her funeral. April glanced at Dexter. She wondered whether he had ever really loved her at all.

  Dexter was quietly drinking bourbon from his flask, directly from the neck of it. Perhaps he needed it as much as she did to calm his nerves. Perhaps it still wasn't too late after all. "Dexter . . ."

  "What?"

  "We could get married secretly in New Jersey and then tell people that we were secretly married six weeks ago. They would never know the difference." But at the back of her mind April knew it was a lame excuse, more a chance for Dexter to prove he really did love her. "Dexter?"

  "That's crazy," Dexter said. "You know it is. No one would believe it for a minute. They would laugh."

  "Not once we were married. When you're really married people don't laugh."

  "We're not going to discuss it any more, honey, it's all arranged."

  April wrung her hands together, feeling her nails cutting into the skin and really not feeling the pain at all. Everything was falling away, everything, until she could hardly even believe in his promises for the future. He had betrayed her now, so might he not desert her again later? "You said we could have other babies later, when we're married . . ." she said. "Sometimes people who have abortions can't ever have any more children." But that too, she knew, was only an excuse, a feeler to see if there were any promises left that she could believe in, or if marriage, love and security were things that belonged to a past that had somehow eluded her.

  "Everything will be all right," Dexter said with a hint of petulance in his voice, "I told you." He screwed the top back on the flask and put the flask into his coat pocket. April watched his hands, hardly knowing them. They were the hands of a stranger. Then he looked at her with his face surprisingly clear and guileless.

  "We can get married this spring if you like," he said.

  Her heart turned over. Warmth came back slowly, bringing the frozen dead to life. "I'd like that," she said, and then with real feeling, "Oh, I'd like that very much!" She hugged his arm with both her arms and Dexter looked down and kissed her. The lights of the town sped toward them, shimmering, haloed, and not so terrible after all.

  The place where Dexter Key took April was not a doctor's office in the conventional sense of the word, but what at first glance seemed to be simply a door set among a row of stores in the commercial section of town. If you were not particularly looking for it you would be sure to miss it. There was a small brass name plate on the wall beside the door, brownish with age and not very legible, reading, Dr. Thomas, Surgeon. Behind the door was a flight of narrow stairs leading almost straight upward like a ladder. The stairs and the walls were painted a light pea green. At the top of the stairs was a corridor leading to a locked door. Dexter rang the bell.

  A buzzer rang and clicked from within, and Dexter pushed the door open. He led April inside. There was a small square waiting room with some silent people in it. April had not expected other people, she had thought she and Dexter would be alone, and she

  was so startled at the sight of them that she almost turned to flee. There was an elderly woman, very thin and obviously much too old to be here for anything to do with childbirth, sitting quietly with her hands folded on her lap. She had a great growth on the side of her neck. There was a plump and frowzy-looking girl about nineteen years old with reddish nostrils and pink-rimmed eyes, twisting the handle of her plastic pocketbook around her forefinger and sitting next to a boy who looked not much older than she, uncomfortably dressed up in a cheap-looking brown suit. She looked to April exactly like someone who needed an abortion. The three of them looked up when they heard April and Dexter enter, looked at them, and down again. April put her ringless hands into her coat pockets.

  The room was filled with overstuffed and shabby-looking furniture, done in colors that reminded April of the words dun and puce. There were lace antimacassars on the arms of the sofa and chairs, although the upholstery was too far gone for them to do much good. But the room seemed to be very clean. On a spindly table next to the sofa was a pile of ragged old magazines. April was afraid to touch them for fear she would catch some disease. She sat down next to Dexter on the sofa and unbuttoned the top button of her coat.

  "Do you want to take your coat off?" he murmured politely.

  "No thank you."

  Directiy in front of her on the wall there was a framed print of a water color depicting a shaggy collie dog being hugged around the neck by a little boy. Underneath the print in small red letters set into a white banner were the words Man's Best Friend. Somehow that struck April as amusing, she smiled and fixed her eyes upon it, reading it over and over again for comfort. If the doctor could put up a picture like that he couldn't be such an ogre.

  A nurse came out of the back room wearing a clean, starched white uniform and a hair net. She wore heavy white shoes and had a cold, lined face. April stared at her from head to toe as she crossed the room with a small blue watering can in her hand and sprinkled a plant that was standing on a table in front of the window. The window looked down on the commercial street, but the pane had not been washed for a long time and there was a cross-hatching of what looked like chicken wire set into the glass, so you could hardly make out the view. The niurse finished watering the plant and went back into the rear room. It seemed to April like a callous gesture, when

  the patients trembling out here obviously needed the niu-se's attention more than the potted plant did. She looked at her watch. It was six-thirty. She realized with a start of embarrassment, because it seemed so out of place, that she was hungry.

  She tried to think of some casual conversation to make with Dexter. He was reading a magazine. He was reading a magazine! She could see his eyes moving from side to side as he read the lines. How could he be so calm? The nurse emerged again and nodded briskly at April. "You can come in now," she said.

  April touched Dexter's arm. He looked up from his magazine and smiled at her. "Go ahead," he whispered. "If you want to leave your coat here I'll watch it for you."

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nbsp; She shed her coat and left it lying in a heap on the sofa. The other patients who were waiting glanced up at her for an instant as she walked, terrified, across the room. From the expressions on their faces she could tell that their only feeling was mild jealousy that she, the latest arrival, had been allowed to see the doctor first, while they had to wait and miss their dinners.

  It was strange that afterward April could hardly remember what had happened in the doctor's ofiBce. On the way home she wanted to describe it to Dexter, but all she could say was that, yes, it had hurt, but she really couldn't remember about the hurting. It was more a fact than a feeling. The doctor had looked exactly as she had imagined him, except that his fingernails had not been long and dirty at all but clipped and very clean. The nurse had given her a sedative pill and a paper cup of water. With that and tlie bourbon and gin she had drunk, and her numbing fright, and her eyes tightly closed the entire time of the operation, the whole experience seemed like a half-remembered dream. When she was dressed to leave the doctor gave her six different envelopes of colored pills. They were to pep her up and calm her down, stop the bleeding and make her sleep, and as soon as he had explained to her what each was for she immediately forgot it. He had written on the outside of each envelope how many she was to take each day, and that was aU she knew.

  She hardly even noticed the trip in the limousine to Port Blair for her overwhelming sense of relief. She loved the doctor, he was kind, and she wished she had given some of her roses to the nurse. Her tongue felt fuzzy. She couldn't beheve anything had happened, she

  only had the slightest sense of discomfort, and she had to tell herself she didn't have her baby anymore. Perhaps they had made a mistake and not taken the baby at all. She had read about that once in one of her confession magazines. She hoped the doctor had taken the baby. She couldn't bear it if he had only hurt it, and left it to grow up deformed. When she had left the doctor had said, "Everything will be just as it was before." She knew what tliat meant. It meant, forget. All this never happened. Tomorrow you will forget it. Tomorrow you will be well.

  When they drove up to Caroline's driveway the lights were on above the front door. Caroline came out of the house when she heard the car. She peered anxiously at April's face in the darkness and glanced at Dexter questioningly. "She'd better go to bed," Dexter said.

  "I sent my parents to the movies," Caroline said.

  April opened her mouth to say something but no words came out. She felt drugged. How funny it would be, how it would startle them, if she were to ask as if nothing had happened, "Oh, what movie did they see?" But she couldn't speak, she felt too tired. She felt a swinging sensation as Dexter hfted her into his arms. There was a raising and lowering as he climbed the stairs. She closed her eyes and heard footsteps and murmuring voices and felt the coolness of a pillowcase. Oh . . . she tried to say, what movie did they see? But the thought of the words swung around her in a great arc and swallowed her up.

  April slept soundly until eight o'clock in the morning, turned over luxuriously in the guest-room bed, and drifted off into a dream. There was a little boy about three years old, dressed in a light-blue cotton suit, with Dexter's face and eyes and her fair hair. He was half running along the edge of the little lake in Central Park, the one where children sail their toy boats in fine weather. He was following his boat, skipping and running, and April saw herself standing near by next to a park bench. She knew in the dream that he was her child, and she was smiling with love for him. Suddenly something catapulted her forward and she was pushing the child into the lake, feeling the resiliency of his small body against her hands. He did not even protest, he only looked at her with astonishment and the beginning of the reahzation of betrayal. It was she who was protesting, crying and screaming with the tears running down her face, and

  hurling him into the lake regardless, powerless to stop. He sank to the bottom as cleanly as an angel flies. There was no struggle, he was simply dead. She knew from looking at him through the layers of murky blue and black water that he had died. It was she who felt the choking of drowning lungs, it was she who struggled for breath, feeling against her hands even at that moment the outline of the innocent body.

  She woke up crying, and lay there crying for a long time afterward, not quite sure why. I killed him, I killed him, I killed him, I hate Dexter, she murmured to herself, long after she knew it had been only a dream. Was it a kind of mystic dream? Was that what her child would have looked like, had he lived?

  She slept fitfully until after noon, when Caroline came to open the blinds and give her a glass of orange juice. In those few hotu-s dreams came and went, all of them horrible, all of them wakening her with tears and fright. In every dream the child was a boy, and he was always three or four years old, never a tiny baby. April became sure that the dreams contained something of the supernatural, that she was seeing the only glimpse she would ever have of the baby who was vanished forever.

  "Did you sleep well?" Caroline asked.

  "I kept dreaming."

  "I don't wonder," Caroline said. Tou had a hard day yesterday. YouTl rest up this weekend. Which pills do you have to take?" She was pouring out the pills onto April's palm, counting them, arranging for everything like a nurse. "Do you think you can make it downstairs to lunch?"

  "I have to wash my face."

  "I unpacked for you last night. Your clothes are in the closet and your toothbrush and things are on the sink. The white towels are yours."

  April got out of bed and walked gingerly to the mirror. Her face was white, her eyes had dark shadows under them. She looked anemic. Perhaps she had lost a lot of blood. She didn't really care.

  "If you start to feel faint or anything give a yell. I'll be lurking in the hall."

  "Thank you," April said.

  When April had washed and dressed and combed her hair she felt utterly drained. Her movements were automatic. She felt as though

  something very sad and useless and unavoidable had happened to her, but she could not quite figure out what it was. It was as though she had put a great guilt secret out of her mind but its imprint remained, hovering, waiting to grow again into the dreaded original. I won't think about it any more today, she told herself firmly.

  Caroline's mother was standing in the dining room, arranging leaves in a bowl of fruit that stood on the center of the table. She had met April once before, in New York. "Hello, April," she said warmly.

  "Hello, Mrs. Bender. How are you?"

  "Oh, fine."

  There were four at the table, Caroline and April and Caroline's parents. Caroline's younger brother was visiting friends of his. The colored maid brought out cups of bouillon. Dr. Bender ate silently, watching the women with a look of amusement on his face. It was as if he knew he was outnumbered and would have to spend the entire meal listening to gossip, and had determined to make the best of it and even like it. April could hardly meet his eyes. She wondered whether he would think she was pale.

  "I saw Kitty today," Mrs. Bender said to Caroline. "She certainly has her troubles."

  "Why?" asked Caroline, buttering a roll.

  "You know that nice son of hers, the oldest one who was just graduated from Princeton?" Mrs. Bender turned apologetically to April. "Forgive us for talking about people you don't know, but I hardly ever see my daughter any more since she's working and has her own apartment, so when she favors us with a visit I have to catch up."

  "I don't mind at all," April said.

  "Excuse me," said Caroline, and turned to the maid. "April takes milk."

  "I wish you'd drink milk," said Mrs. Bender, "instead of aU those Martinis."

  "Oh, Mother!" Caroline said, laughing.

  "That's why April has such beautiful teeth," Mrs. Bender said.

  I never drink milk, April thought, glancing at Caroline. It's just now when I'm sick. If she only knew.

  "All right," said Caroline, "all right. I'll have some milk too."

  "Good for you," said her mother.
She helped herself to some cold roast beef from a platter the maid was passing around. "Anyway, poor Kitty. You know her son was going to go to medical school. He was accepted in three of them. And diu"ing the summer he got mixed up with a girl—I won't say exactly what kind of girl, but she's the type who won't stop at anything to get what she wants. She's a model in a department store, but she's not pretty. I don't know why she was hired, except she has a well-proportioned figure. Now here's a boy with more money than he can spend, a wonderful future, handsome and popular as can be. You should see the girl, hard as nails. She was obviously after his money, because for her birthday he bought her a mink stole. Can you imagine? Everybody knew something fimny was going on."

  April cut her roast beef into tiny pieces and tried to eat one but it stopped at her throat.

  "Well, Kitty just kept hoping, closing her eyes to what was going on. How can you tell a twenty-one-year-old boy what to do? Believe me, Kitty cried her eyes out in secret. The next thing we knew, that girl got herself pregnant and now he's going to marry her!"

  Dr. Bender looked up with a twinkle in his eye. "If she 'got herself' pregnant all by herself, as you seem to imply, I'd like to meet her. She'd make a fascinating medical history for an article I could write."

  "You know what I mean," Mrs. Bender said. "Those girls know how to hook a man. Don't tell me they don't know how to be careful." She glanced around the table. "April, dear, you aren't eating a thing. Would you like some mustard for your roast beef?"

  "No, thank you," April said.

  "It's very good roast beef. We had it last night. I'm sorry you came too late for dinner."