Superior Women

by Alice Adams

  Megan’s response to all this strangeness on Peg’s part is a sort of sympathetic curiosity, and a revival of the guilt that she has always felt over her own negative reactions to Peg. Very possibly she has misjudged her all along? Peg, inwardly, could be as delicate, as vulnerable as anyone, or possibly more so?

  Coming back with their coffee, setting it on the table and then lowering herself heavily into her chair, Peg looks even worse. She smiles faintly at Megan, to whom a wild thought has just come: Megan thinks, Peg is pregnant. And then she thinks, Oh no, that’s impossible. How could she be? Peg wouldn’t.

  Just then in a violent way Peg belches, which seems to cause her real physical pain, so that Megan asks, “Peg, honestly, are you all right?”

  Clearly not all right, Peg blinks back tears; in a strangled voice she says, “Well, not exactly. I seem to be—Megan, I think I’m pregnant.”

  They stare at each other, as large tears roll slowly down Peg’s large face.

  “Oh Peg. Jesus, do you really think so?”

  “I’m next to sure,” Peg miserably gets out. “And Megan, I wanted to ask you, if you possibly know anyone, uh, anywhere—?”

  It is a minute before Megan understands what is being asked of her, and another minute before her mind forms the word “abortion.” The next thing she thinks is, Why me? Why are you asking this of me? But in a heart-sinking way she knows; she knows just why Peg would choose her, why Peg has engineered this time together.

  As though she had asked, Peg explains, “You’re the only one I could—and I thought maybe you might know. You might have heard of some, uh, doctor.” She reaches into her bag for Kleenex, and sniffles into it loudly. “Lavinia would never speak to me again, and Cathy, well, you know, a Catholic.”

  “I honestly don’t know anyone,” says Megan, honestly. “But maybe I could ask.” Ask who? she wonders. Simon, whom she has been more or less refusing to see? Innocent Stanley Green, whom she is not seeing either? (It is hard for Megan to “see” anyone these days, Jackson Clay being so much on her mind.)

  Anxiously Peg insists, “And you won’t tell? I just couldn’t stand—”

  “No, of course. I won’t tell anyone.”

  But why me? Alone, Megan in her mind renews this question; again she asks of Peg, But why me? Because you think, or assume, that I’m not a virgin either? That I’ve made love with two different people by now, and sometimes have worried that I was pregnant? And if you know all this about me, all of which is true, then how do you know it? And does everyone else know too?

  Or is it just that I come from California, and you think all Californians have sexy lives, and lots of abortions?

  Still, Megan feels herself burdened with Peg’s problem, her unimaginable pregnancy.

  And the father must be that guy from Yale, son of parents’ friends.

  • • •

  “Why do you come to me with this?” asks Janet Cohen. “Because I’m a Jew?”

  “Oh, Janet, of course not. I just thought—well, I don’t honestly know why. Maybe because you’re from New York.”

  “If you mean Brooklyn why don’t you say so.”

  “I didn’t especially mean Brooklyn.”

  Janet sniffs; she has said that Cambridge in the summer is bad for her allergies. She asks, “Are you trying to tell me that they don’t have abortionists in Washington, D.C., or wherever your other friends come from?”

  “Janet, please, forget it. Please. I’m really sorry I asked you.”

  They are sitting out on the stairwell, at the top of the long flight down. Smoking, late at night. As they begin fresh cigarettes Megan can see that Janet is somewhat pacified, although she says nothing to indicate a change of mood, nor does Janet smile.

  A few minutes later, though, in a kindly way, Janet asks, “But Megan, honestly, why do you have to tell me this ‘friend’ story?”

  In the harsh overhead light Megan feels herself blush; small-voiced, she says, “Janet, please, it’s not me. I’m not pregnant. If I were I’d tell you, or I think I would.” She considers this. “Yes, I would tell you. But this is someone else. And I can’t tell you who.”

  For a moment they look at each other. Janet then says, “Well, I’m glad it isn’t you.”

  Megan is thinking how pretty Janet is, with her fine dark coloring. And how nice she is, really. Janet simply has to be repeatedly reassured that everyone she meets is not a threat. Everyone is not Adam Marr’s mother.

  Loudly and surprisingly, Janet laughs. “Well, I know it can’t be any of your closest buddies, here in Barnard. Can it? Lavinia the ice queen would never do it without a twenty-carat engagement ring, and Cathy would have to get a dispensation from the pope. And Peg, well, good luck finding anyone who’d do it to her.”

  Although Janet has never spoken quite so harshly of Megan’s other friends, her “group,” Megan is not surprised; the four of them as a group pay no attention at all to Janet, so small and shy that she is easy to overlook. Lavinia is the only one who mentions Janet at all, and she only says, “Little Megan seems to have this thing about Jews.”

  At this intimate moment with Janet, Megan would be inclined to go along with Janet’s own views of the others, of her own group of friends. And what fun it would be if just now she could say to Janet, Well, actually it is one of those three, see if you can guess. And Megan imagines the joy of her final revelation: Well, you won’t believe this, but it’s Peg, she actually got herself knocked up.

  Megan manages to resist this strong temptation, however.

  And Janet says, “Well, I’ll ask Adam. He’s coming up on Saturday.”

  Adam Marr announces to Megan, “Well, actually I don’t believe in abortions. Although not for any of those asshole Catholic reasons.”

  Sunday morning. Adam and Megan have been pointedly left alone by Janet, who is upstairs washing her hair. They are perched together on the brick railing of Barnard’s wide terrace. Small groups of WAVES, in their trim dark uniforms and spanking white gloves and hats, pass by at intervals, returning to Briggs from church. Across the terrace from Megan and Adam is a cluster of dressed-up Barnard girls, who eye them (a couple?) from time to time. Megan is wishing that Adam would speak less loudly, especially since he uses those words, so often.

  “A woman is there to receive a man’s seed,” he is now saying loudly. “That’s what she’s for. That’s what fucking is for. Otherwise it’s incomplete. Abortions are a form of castration, they kill the male seed. His life force.” Adam seems to be enjoying this conversation tremendously. His voice rises in pleasure. “I start where the Church leaves off,” he proclaims to Megan, and in effect to the terrace at large. “I left those jack-offs a long time ago.”

  It is his eyes that make Adam Marr seem attractive: intensely blue and hot (Megan has never seen such a heated, brilliant blue), his eyes dominate an otherwise undistinguished face: too curly brown hair, a medium-large nose, small mouth, flat chin. He is medium tall, medium thin—a perfectly okay build, Megan decides, but nothing special (Simon is much better built, and Jackson Clay a hundred times better). Only Adam’s eyes are compelling, and the force of his voice.

  “But it’s your choice,” he now says to Megan. “Maybe you’re not ready for true, complete great sex.”

  Megan feels a blush as she whispers, “Adam, I keep telling you, it’s not for me.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll have to talk to a buddy of mine. I’ll call him and call you tomorrow.”

  You could just give Janet the message, Megan starts to say, but then she does not. She understands how fully Adam is enjoying this exchange, and she realizes that in a curious way she is too. She says, “Thanks, Adam. This is really good of you.”

  “Shit.” He laughs. “My pleasure, as we say around the Yard.”

  Phil-Flash, who graduated in June, has gone back to Cleveland, but he flies in to Boston to see Cathy almost every weekend, or so it seems to Megan; undoubtedly Cathy believes that she sees him less than when he was in Ca
mbridge. And between the weekends there are long phone calls, and boxes of flowers, sometimes a piece of jewelry. It is the most elaborate and expensive courtship that Megan has ever witnessed, by far. She is unable not to say to Cathy, “Why don’t you just elope? Think of all the money you’d save.”

  “Well, I must admit, that’s been considered as a possibility. Usually quite late at night, after quite a lot of brandy. Fortunately.”

  From this, imaginative Megan is able to conclude that Phil and Cathy do not go all the way, which of course she has wondered about. Late at night, fairly drunk and really wanting to do it, instead they consider an elopement. Cathy cannot have sex until she is married.

  “What’s worse, for Catholics?” Megan now asks. “Premarital sex, or abortions?”

  Cathy laughs, presumably at Megan’s extreme seriousness, and her laugh reinforces Megan’s view as to her virtue. “Well,” Cathy says, “we very much frown on both, as you know. They’re both mortal sins. I would guess, maybe just for me, abortions are a bit worse. They’re murder, after all. Killing a soul.”

  “Well, what would you do if you were pregnant and not married?” Megan persists.

  “I would have the child and put it up for adoption. Or keep it. Those are the only possible Catholic solutions,” says Cathy, in her wry, tight voice. But of course she is describing exactly what she herself would (or will) do, should the situation arise, later in her life.

  “I just don’t know,” says Lavinia, with her small inward frown. When Lavinia frowns in that way Megan senses that she is reestablishing connection with her own inner self. Megan has learned too that such frowns are apt to precede some alarming and usually accurate statement, or judgment, as though Lavinia, in the course of her frown, has received a message, like a medium. She now continues, “I don’t know, but I just don’t trust Phil-Flash.”

  “You mean you don’t like him,” Megan argues, but she has felt a premonitory chill of sympathy for Cathy; so often Lavinia’s harsh judgments are correct.

  In a reasonable way, though, Lavinia agrees with Megan. “That’s true, I don’t like him. But no one likes him, Potter says. Everyone makes fun of the way he throws money around, and that car. But that isn’t what I mean. There’s something hysterical about the way he’s gone after Cathy, who, let’s face it, is not some exceptional beauty. I think it could all stop just as suddenly as it started.”

  As always, Lavinia’s logic is impressive; Megan cannot help seeing exactly what she means. Lavinia seems somehow to be in touch with some of the inexorable laws of life that Megan has missed, and will no doubt continue to miss. Megan says, “I hope you’re wrong,” hearing her own small hopeless voice.

  “But it might be the very best thing for Cathy, breaking up with him,” ponders Lavinia. “He’s so—so tacky.” And then she laughs. “As long as she doesn’t run off with some priest.”

  “Oh, Lavinia!”

  One of Lavinia’s special tricks is a look that combines high seriousness with great amusement—her expression now, as she says, “Well, don’t be so sure. I knew this girl from Baltimore, a Catholic, of course, and she fell madly in love with a priest. She was very good-looking, and I guess he loved her too. Anyway, she ended up pregnant, and she had to go away to Arizona, or somewhere.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” To Megan, all Lavinia’s stories of wickedness, those about her friend Kitty or other wild folk, including, now, this poor girl from Baltimore—all such stories are particularly convincing. Megan can see the beautiful girl and the priest, he young and handsome, of course, and the girl weeping, despairing, pregnant, and off to Arizona, never to see her child or the priest again. She asks Lavinia, “If you were pregnant, is that what you would do, would you give up the baby?”

  This time Lavinia’s frown is one of simple displeasure. “No, of course not. In the first place I would never allow that to happen. Never. But if it should, I’d get married. Instantly.”

  “You’re against abortions?”

  Lavinia shudders. “I can’t think of anything more sordid.” She looks hard at Megan, then, and with a tiny smile she asks, “Little Megan, are you trying to tell me something?”

  “Oh no, Lavinia, honestly. In fact I just got the curse. I have cramps.”

  “Please spare me the details. As long as you’re okay. But Megan, you’ve got to be very careful. Those Jewish boys you go out with, they’re all most terrifically oversexed.”

  On Monday afternoon, Megan is summoned to Peg’s room. Armed with an address and a phone number, which Adam has supplied, she is startled to find Lavinia and Cathy already there. And there is Peg, in the process of passing around a giant box of chocolates. Peg is saying, “Well, girls, I want you three to be the first to hear my big news. You’ll never guess. Cameron and I—” And then she bursts into tears, loud and choking, and heaving sobs.

  It is Lavinia who goes over and puts her arms around Peg, and strokes her hair. “Now little Peggy-poo, you mustn’t cry. This is lovely, lovely news! I think it’s wonderful, and oh! I’m so jealous!”

  Lavinia and Peg often address each other in this sort of semibaby talk, but today Megan finds it especially embarrassing. And what can Peg be thinking? Is she really going to marry Cameron Sinclair, whom Megan does not believe she likes? Just because she is pregnant? Or is she pregnant, after all?

  Through tears, between sobs, Peg gets out, “It’s really funny that I should be the first one, huh, girls? Who’d ever have guessed.”

  “Oh, I’m so jealous!” Lavinia cries out, again. “Well, you know what they say about still waters. But we’ll all still be virgins while, while you’re going to be ‘experienced.’ Soon. Now Peglet, you’ve got to promise to tell us all about married love.”

  Cathy, who is obviously meeting Phil-Flash later, has her hair up in pin curls, and some new white cream with which she seems to be experimenting spread over her face. She is smiling in Peg’s direction, saying, Swell, how great. But her round brown eyes, meeting Megan’s, are quite opaque, impossible to read. Is she thinking of herself and Flash, their possible wedding, and if so, thinking what?

  Megan has observed that Peg is assiduously not looking at her, and she wonders if she should stick around after the others have gone and give Peg the information from Adam Marr, anyway. Should she say, Look here, you don’t have to marry him?

  Megan feels as though she is in fact at their wedding, Peg’s to Cameron, and that the minister has come to the part about obstacles to the union, anyone knowing why it should not take place. And Megan, like that almost always silent presence, decides also to keep silent.

  For all she knows Peg really wants to get married. To Cameron Sinclair.

  11

  Lavinia and Cathy and Megan all three decide to take the winter term off, winter of 1945. Peg was married quietly in Plainfield, in her parents’ house, in September; she and Cameron then took off for Houston (“of all places!” as Lavinia puts it) in September. Cameron, who did not after all get into Harvard Law, is now interested in oil. Only Lavinia, of Peg’s three friends, was in attendance at the wedding. (“Well, our little Peglet actually comes from a great deal more money than I had imagined,” admits Lavinia, reporting back. “Lucky Cameron!” she adds.)

  It is unlikely, though, that either the stern warnings of the dean or the absence of Peg played a part in anyone’s winter plans. More probably they all simply needed a change; in any case that is how they put it to each other. And so they are scattered apart: Lavinia is in Washington, Cathy in Philadelphia, and Megan in calm and sunny Palo Alto (so boring! she often remarks, in her letters).

  And all winter, as though they had nothing else to do, they all write long letters to each other. Especially Megan, who writes at length to both Lavinia and to Cathy; she and Peg do not communicate, and Megan has come to feel that in some way she behaved badly toward Peg, although she could not say just how: was finding an abortionist bad? In any case, Megan writes the most frequent and the longest letters, possibly because sh
e now feels so isolated, out there in California—her own true center having shifted eastward, as it were. And she is lonely: her mother, Florence, works late at her carhop job, down the Bayshore, and then sleeps late; she and Megan find little to say to each other, in their infrequent encounters. Occasionally Megan helps out her father in his WE BUY JUNQUE store. She never mentions either parent in her letters.

  Besides writing letters east, Megan’s only real diversion is a course that she is auditing at Stanford, with an old high school friend. Without paying, of course.

  • • •

  Megan to Cathy:

  You won’t believe this, but this morning in my lit. class the professor, a “famous writer” (he writes very long novels about life among Mormons) actually said that “for his money” Jack London was a much better writer than Henry James. Truly, he said that. I almost choked. Oh Mathiessen, where are you? And there was an article in the local paper about the writers at Stanford, and one of the heads of the “creative writing department” said, he actually said, “Most of us are married. You don’t see much Eastern effeminacy around these parts.” Well, you don’t see many brains or good writing either.

  And the students. Boys in jeans and white T-shirts, girls in pastel cashmere and pearls, all of them, all the time. How I do miss the Yard and those nice coats and ties, and the girls not looking alike.

  How are you? Does Phil come to Philadelphia? Do your parents like him? If you get married behind my back, so to speak, I will never speak to you again.

  Lavinia to Megan: