Family Chorus

by Claire Rayner

  ‘That’s why I asked you,’ Lexie said wearily and sat up. The feeling of nausea had gone again. ‘I can’t think straight — I don’t know what to do — I keep going round in circles.’

  Lily pulled her chair round and sat on it back to front so that she could rest her arms across the top. Her exceedingly long legs looked even longer in that posture, and in her skimpy costume she looked frivolous and glittery, but her eyes behind the heavy mascara were friendly and cheerful and Lexie thought — I was right, she will help — and looked at her with a travesty of a grin on her face, trying to be as relaxed and sensible as she could, even though inside she was screaming with panic.

  ‘So listen,’ Lily said. ‘Who’s the guy? Is he in the company? That Pete’s been eyeing you a little more than somewhat —’

  Lexie shook her head. ‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘It’s — he’s in London.’

  ‘Hmm. So tell me, you cable him, say, “I’m knocked up, come at once”, does he come, or does he go running like a scalded cat in the opposite direction?’

  Lexie shook her head. ‘I’m not telling him. No, don’t argue with me. That’s one thing I’m sure about. I don’t tell him —’

  She got to her feet and started to prowl around the dressing room, holding her wrapper firmly round her, not caring about crushing her sequin-dripping costume. ‘It’s not fair, it’s just not fair!’ she burst out. ‘I’ve always been so — I’m not one of those girls who does this sort of thing! Just once, once it was and now — it’s not fair —’ And she felt tears prick her eyes again.

  ‘Anyone told you life was fair was a lousy liar,’ Lily said dispassionately. ‘Don’t go crying your eyes out over somethin’ you can’t do nothin’ about. Men gets away with it, and girls don’t. That’s a fact. Bad girls don’t get knocked up, only good girls do. That’s another fact. Bad girls is too clever to let the bastards lay one on ’em that way. It’s good girls like you, real shlemiels, get themselves in this sorta jam. Okay, you don’t want to tell this guy, you don’t want to tell him! What can I say except I think you’re crazy? It’s his kid an’ all, you know. But okay, okay!’ And she held up both hands to stave off Lexie’s protests. ‘So you got to think it through. Got any money?’

  ‘Only what I make.’

  ‘That’ll be better after tonight,’ Lily said and grinned at her, amiably. ‘If I had your sort of personality, baby, and a big part like this, there’s no way I’d let ’em get away without paying me big, big bucks. Really big bucks on account you’re goin’ to bring ’em in like they was flies. You’re all right, believe me.’

  ‘Am I?’ Lexie said, looking at her uncertainly and then made a face. ‘Damn it, I know, I’ve always known I could do it, given the right chances. And now I’ve got one, and — oh, Lily, what do I do?’

  ‘You go down to Hermann’s,’ Lily said promptly. ‘He’ll take a hundred and fifty off you and there it is. No more problem.’

  Lexie stood very still looking at her. She’d heard about what could be done, of course she had. No one could spend so many long nights backstage in a theatre full of young performers and not know. She’d heard the same story she was telling now so often before, heard other girls crying over this dilemma, heard the names of ‘helpful’ doctors swopped, and she had been scornful of their stupidity. She had looked at them sideways and told herself what fools they were — and now here she was, far from home, alone, frightened and as stupid as any of them. Again the tears threatened.

  ‘No, sweetie, no bawlin’. You’ll ruin your face and screw up your performance. You want Hermann’s address?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lexie said. ‘What else can I do?’

  Lily was right, as right as her own instinct had been. She was an undoubted hit. She knew it before the end of the first act. Even at the height of her Café de Paris success in London she’d never had a welcome like it from an audience. They shouted and whistled and stamped their feet. As she stood there listening to it she caught Pete Capitelli’s approving eyes from the wings and felt the mixture of reactions from the chorus line behind her —jealousy of her success together with gratitude that she was giving the sort of performance that would mean a long run, and therefore regular work for all of them — and all she could feel was anger. All these years she had known she could do this, had been certain that one day she’d be a real star — not just a cabaret performer, but a real star — and it was ruined for her. Ruined by a man she thought she loved and who had sworn he loved her. As she stood there hearing the applause for her first act finale she hated Max, hated him with all the energy she had. He had loved her and thereby ruined everything.

  That thought stayed with her all through the rest of the show, which went even better than the first half if that were possible, all through the excited hubbub which erupted in her dressing room afterwards as the producer and the staff from the office and Pete Capitelli and a whole horde of evening-dressed people she’d never met came rushing to congratulate her and tell her how marvellous, plain incredibly marvellous she was, a real honey of a dancer, the greatest hoofer they’d seen come out of England — and all through the party after the show. She hated Max for what he had done to her. She closed her mind tightly to her own behaviour, not admitting that she had been as eager, if not more eager, for him as he had been for her, and certainly did not admit the fact that, had Max had his way, she would have been safely married to him now, glad and happy to be bearing his child, not hating it, feeling as though her body had been invaded by a parasite that had to be torn out to make her whole and happy again.

  When she burst into sudden noisy tears halfway through the party and had to rush off to the bathroom of the big plush hotel suite that the management had hired for the evening, to throw up noisily and then lean, grey-faced and sweating, against the bathroom wall, the people who saw put it down to exhaustion, to natural excitement, to the rigours of being Broadway’s newest star, and she was grateful to Lily who said as much in a loud voice and offered to take her home. For the first time she wished that she’d asked Barbara to the party. She could have taken her home and they could have kept it in the family.

  The family, she thought, sitting huddled in the corner of the cab into which Lily had put her, after being told firmly by Lexie that she could manage fine on her own now. The family. At least there was Barbara; she had felt so alone when that doctor had told her as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world that she was pregnant. The baby was due in early August by his reckoning, but there was Barbara after all. She was family, wasn’t she? And she climbed slowly up to the apartment to find Barbara still sitting up although it was well after midnight, waiting eagerly for news of how the show had gone, and was glad that she was there.

  ‘I’ll get tickets for you tomorrow night,’ she said abruptly as Barbara, her nose pink with excitement again, leaped to her feet. ‘I suppose I should have got them for you tonight but I —’

  ‘That doesn’t matter!’ Barbara said at once, and hurried to take her coat and fuss around her as she settled her in a chair. ‘I know I’ll get to see it when you’re ready — how did it go, Lexie? Was it great? Did they shout and stand up to clap an’ all that? I bet they did. I bet you’re a real star now, hey? I told Mrs Beekman down at the grocery tonight. I told her my aunt Lexie, who is so much younger’n me, it’s crazy, she’s gonna be a real star, you’ll see, and Mrs Beekman she said she didn’t doubt it, on account you look so cute and talk so nice — I got some broth all ready and —’

  ‘No broth,’ Lexie said, leaning her head back on her chair and closing her eyes. ‘Barbara, I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Oh,’ Barbara said after a moment, and sat down abruptly. ‘Oh,’ and Lexie opened her eyes and looked at her. She hadn’t been sure what sort of reaction she expected. She hadn’t even realized she was going to tell Barbara until the words came out of her mouth, and now she sat looking dumbly, waiting.

  After a moment Barbara said, ‘Oh,’ again and tried a little smile. ‘Usually
people say mazeltov, don’t they? Do you want I should say mazeltov?’

  Lexie looked at her and then suddenly laughed. ‘Oh, Barbara, I do like you! You’re like Bessie, only I think a bit better — no, that’s unkind of me. Bessie’s — well, she’s Bessie. She worries a lot. But you’re —’

  ‘I worry too!’ Barbara said, and now all her face was pink and not just her thin nose. ‘I mean, I want you should be happy. I like you too. You’re a real great aunt to have —’ And she giggled. ‘That sounds stupid but you know what I mean. It’s more like you’re my sister. I always wanted a sister, what with Melvin and Sidney being so — well, anyway, I want to help you any way I can. Are you —’ She chewed her upper lip for a moment. ‘I mean — the guy — is he —’

  ‘No one you know,’ Lexie said crisply. ‘I don’t want to talk about him. Not now nor ever. It’s no one here, anyway.’

  ‘So you won’t be getting married or anythin’ like that?’

  ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘Oh,’ Barbara said again and sat quietly waiting. It’s odd, Lexie thought. She can be so noisy and chattery but so still as well. Lexie began to relax, to feel calmer, and the panic that had been hovering inside her all day and been so close to the surface these past few hours subsided and lay lower in her belly, like a slumbering animal.

  ‘So, what are you goin’ to do?’ Barbara said carefully. ‘I mean, the show an’ all —’

  ‘Of course, the show and all,’ Lexie said and again leaned back: and closed her eyes. ‘I’ve got the name of someone who’ll help — I’m going tomorrow morning to see him. I —’ She opened her eyes then. ‘Will you come with me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Barbara and nodded. But her eyes looked bleak and a little shadowed, and when she smiled reassuringly at Lexie it wasn’t with quite the comfort that had been there before.

  The notices in the papers were lyrical, and she sat up in bed to read them after Barbara had brought them to her with a tray of coffee and a bagel, which she couldn’t eat, much to Barbara’s distress. They should have made her feel marvellous, but all she could think of was the slip of paper in her bag bearing the address of Dr Hermann, way down on the Lower East Side. He was waiting for her like some sort of spider in a web, she felt, and she was being drawn towards him against her will, helplessly. Then she shook herself and got out of bed and went padding off to take her bath. This was ridiculous; no one was forcing her to do anything. She was pregnant, but it was vital that she should stop being so, and Dr Hermann was to help her. He wasn’t bad, but good. If anyone was bad it was Max, who had made this happen to her.

  But that thought wouldn’t work, wouldn’t shape itself fully in her mind. It went skittering away as she soaped herself and tried to think only of what she was doing, of each separate movement of her hands. And she managed to do just that, until she soaped her belly and sat there in the water staring down at it, trying to sec what lay there behind the smooth flesh, tried to visualize its present concavity as a curve, a bulge, a person — and again she shook her head and tried to fix her thinking on the here and now. She had to see Dr Hermann. That was all there was to it — Dr Hermann.

  Dr Hermann’s office was in an ordinary tenement house, one of a long sweeping row in a street filled with market stalls and shouting women and men lounging against walls. She and Barbara stood outside gazing up the broken front steps at the open door and the clutter of children who were playing there, blue-kneed and runny-nosed in the biting December air, and peered again at the piece of paper in her hand. But it was the right address, and after a moment she went up the steps. Barbara followed her, wordlessly, and they made their way past the staring children and up the stairs.

  The building was old and neglected and smelled of years of greasy cooking and cats and incontinent drunks in corners. The staircase was rickety and the balustrade greasy, and Lexie drew back fastidiously from the walls with their streaks of ordure and marks where bugs had been swatted and left to rot. This building couldn’t contain a doctor’s office, surely? There had to be some mistake — or perhaps once inside his set of rooms it would all be different? Despite her doubts she went on, right up to the fourth floor. And there the door was, with a small, dog-eared card pinned to it. ‘Dr D.W. Hermann,’ it read. ‘Knock twice.’

  ‘Let’s go away,’ Barbara said suddenly. ‘I don’t like this place, Lexie. It don’t look the way a doctor’s office should look. Even Dr Levy up on Hundred and Twentieth, he’s only a half-dollar doctor, he’s got a better place than this. It don’t feel right, Lexie —’

  But Lexie shook her head at her and knocked twice on the door. After a long pause there was a shuffling sound and the door opened a crack.

  ‘’Oo’s dat?’ The voice was gruff and thin at the same time and Lexie said loudly, more loudly than she meant, ‘Is this Dr Hermann’s office? I was given his name —’

  ‘So don’t shout, already —’ the voice said, and the door was pulled open a little wider so that she could see the speaker, a tall man but rather bent, with a straggling beard that covered a scrawny throat revealed by an open-necked and far from clean shirt. He was wearing sagging trousers and carpet slippers and he looked at her over the top of smeared spectacles, one side of which had been mended with sticking plaster. After a second he said, ‘So wait a moment already,’ and shut the door again.

  They stood there uncertainly, and again Barbara said urgently, ‘Please let’s go, Lexie. It just ain’t right the way this place feels —’ but then the door opened again and he stood there nodding at them and beckoning them in. He now had his shirt buttoned up and a bow tie clipped into it, though it had been set in place so hurriedly that it lurched sideways, giving him an absurdly rakish look. He had put on an ancient jacket, too, and had combed his beard. He looked a little less unkempt now and certainly seemed more alert, and after a moment Lexie took a deep breath and walked in. There was nothing else she could do, she told herself, trying to force down her fears and her deep doubts about the place she was in. Who else would help in this awful mess? She could hardly go marching into a Fifth Avenue clinic, impeccable with chrome and antiseptic perfection, and demand a doctor who would get rid of her burden, who would break the law for her and —

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said baldly. ‘And I was told —’

  ‘Tush!’ the man said. ‘Such stupid ways to talk you girls got! You got a few period problems, is all. This we can talk about. You got a bit irregularity, you don’t feel good, you need a little something’ll bring on your naturals and shoin fertig — it’s all done. I got the right medicines to make a lady feel good, to make her regular. This is all I got. No talk of nothing else here, you understand? I don’t want no crazy talk.’ And muttering beneath his breath he went across the room towards a high-backed sofa covered with cracking leatherette. Beside the sofa was a table covered, rather ominously, with a dingy piece of unhemmed sheeting which was lumpy with the objects hidden underneath it.

  She looked round the room as Barbara stood hovering at the door, at the sink in the corner with a few dirty dishes stacked untidily on the drainer beside it, and at the curtained off alcove behind which she could see a grimy stove with more dishes piled on it. There was a divan bed in the corner, with a frayed patchwork counterpane pulled roughly over it. Everywhere there were piles of books and papers, and over it all hung a heavy smell of elderly coffee and thick pine disinfectant and cheap alcohol. Brandy, Lexie found herself thinking, he drinks brandy —

  ‘Lexie!’ Barbara hissed at her at the same moment that Hermann turned round to peer at her over his glasses.

  ‘All right, then, miss, you should come over here, get on the couch and bend your knees up and out. You have to take off your panties first, naturally, and then we sort out these little periods of yours. Slippery elm, that’s the medicine you need, just a little slippery elm, put in the right place, an’ by tomorrow, maybe the next day, you got your periods natural —’

  She stared at him, her face feeling s
o tight she could hardly say the words. ‘Tomorrow? I thought — now. I mean, Lily said — the girl who told me about you — she said you’d do it right away —’

  ‘Tssk,’ he said. ‘Such stuff these wimmin say. You think I let it happen here? You think I’m crazy? I tell you what I do is to get the periods behaving natural. It’s all I do. I make periods behave natural. I got this, you see?’ And he fumbled beneath the cover on the table and pulled out a chipped enamel dish and held it out to her. There was a piece of what looked like a rough twig lying there.

  ‘Piece of slippery elm, that’s what it is. It’s a natural thing what grows — natural, not one of your nasty metal instruments. Natural. It likes liquid, you understand? It’s what they call hygroscopic.’

  He grinned suddenly and his teeth were surprising large and yellow. She looked at them, fascinated.

  ‘Yes. Hygroscopic. That’s doctor’s talk. I learned it when I was a medical student. Long time ago. Yes. So, okay, this piece o’ slippery elm gets put in the opening to the womb, sucks up all the liquid it can get so it swells bigger and bigger, makes the womb open — pfft! A period. You understand? A period happens. It makes you regular. But it don’t happen right away, no sir, not right away. At home, tomorrow, your friend should be there to help you, on account it might give you the cramps a bit, and you bleed a bit more than normal with periods — tomorrow, the next day when the elm is all swollen, it happens. But not here. It ain’t right, here.’ And he looked around at his room and then at her and somewhere behind his wet eyes she could see a glimmer of shame.

  ‘You got the money?’ he said then, and the glimmer had gone. ‘That you got to have first. No money, no slippery elm. It comes expensive, this stuff. Normal periods, they come expensive. Your friend, she told you how much? Hundred an’ fifty, that’s what it costs, this bit of elm. You got it?’

  He put down the dish on the table, tucking it under the cloth again, and grinned at her, displaying the big yellow teeth once more. He came towards her and now Barbara moved, almost jumping forwards to seize Lexie’s elbow and pull on it.