Маргарет Миллар - Do Evil In Return

The afternoon was still hot but the wind carried a threat of fog to come in the night. It slid in through the open window and with curious, insinuating fingers it pried into the corner of the reception room and lifted the skirt of Miss Schiller’s white uniform and explored the dark hair of the girl sitting by the door. The girl held a magazine on her lap but she wasn’t reading it; she was pleating the corners of the pages one by one.

“I don’t know if Dr. Keating will be able to see you,” Miss Schiller said. “It’s quite late.”

The girl coughed nervously. “I couldn’t get here sooner. I... couldn’t find the office.”

“Oh. You’re a stranger in town?”

“Yes.”

“Were you referred to Dr. Keating by anyone?”

“Referred?”

“Did anyone send you?”

“I... no. I found her name in the phone book.” The girl rose suddenly and the magazine and her cheap brown handbag fell on the floor. “I’ve got to see her. It’s terrible important.”

“If you’ll let me have your name and address I’ll tell doctor you’re here.”

“Violet O’Gorman, 916 Olive Street.”

“Miss?”

“Mrs. Mrs. Violet O’Gorman.”

Miss Schiller gave her a sharp look before she turned and rustled starchily into Charlotte’s office.

Charlotte had already put on her street clothes but she was resigned to the idea of a change in plan. It had been years since she’d spent a day without one.

She was adjusting her hat in front of the wall mirror, a tall, slender woman just past thirty, with an air of calm efficiency.

“Now what?” she said, without turning.

“Someone just came in. She wasn’t referred, said she got your name from the phone book.”

“Oh.”

“She calls herself Mrs. O’Gorman.”

“If that’s what she calls herself that’s probably her name,” Charlotte said crisply. “And by the way, Miss Schiller, when you’re talking on the phone please say what is the name , not what was the name. It sounds as if you’re talking to a corpse.”

“I try to please.” Miss Schiller’s tone and her compressed lips implied that Dr. Keating was beyond pleasing anyway.

Charlotte took off her hat again and ran her hand expertly over her smooth brown hair. Miss Schiller frowned faintly in the direction of the hat. She disapproved of the way Dr. Keating dressed after office hours — in big pictures hats and sheer dresses and high-heeled pumps. A patient meeting her on the street might easily lose confidence in her, thinking she was on her way to a bridge or cocktail party instead of to the hospital to make her rounds. Miss Schiller herself had never had any confidence to lose. She went to a chiropractor for her lumbago and bought Chinese herbs at a little store downtown to build up her hemoglobin.

“Show Mrs. O’Gorman in, will you?”

“Very well, doctor.”

Miss Schiller went out, holding her hand against the small of her back, an indicating of performance of duty while in pain. Charlotte smiled. She knew about the chiropractor and the Chinese herbs, she knew practically all there was to know about Miss Schiller, and so she was tolerant. To know all is to forgive all , she’d quoted to Lewis once, and she believed it sincerely. Lewis had replied that she was a remarkable woman. She had agreed, without conceit. It was amazing in this day and age to be able to survive at all without nervous tensions or insomnia or any of the obscure psychosomatic symptoms that plagued half the people who came into her office.

Charlotte was both healthy and happy. She drove herself, but not to the point of exhaustion. She was competent at her work, which was general practice; she had a shrewd if not profound mind, and a nice sense of humor. Most of her male colleagues called her Charley and spoke of her behind her back in a friendly, rather sexless way. She wasn’t sexless, though. There was Lewis. And eventually — well, eventually something would have to be done about Lewis. They were passing irrevocably beyond the moonlight-and-roses phase. It was sun-and-dandelions now, stronger, earthier stuff. Lewis was becoming urgent, detachment difficult.

She made it a rule not to think about Lewis during office hours. She pushed him out of her mind and fixed all her attention on the girl Miss Schiller brought into the office. Miss Schiller had a firm grip on the girl’s arm like a prison matron escorting a possible runaway.

Her face was red and indignant. “Imagine. She wasn’t going to come in. Off she ran. Imagine, after all the trouble you’ve...”

“That will be all, thanks, Miss Schiller,” Charlotte said.

“I was so coming in,” the girl protested when the door had closed on Miss Schiller. “I only went out in the corridor to find a drink of water. I got this awful thirst.”

“Sit down, Mrs. O’Gorman.”

The girl sat down apprehensively on the edge of a chair. She was about twenty, dark-haired and quite plain except for the radiance of her eyes and the healthy flush in her cheeks. Though it was a humid day she wore a heavy tweed coat which she held tight over her stomach with both hands. Her forehead bore a long zigzagging scar. The scar had welted and Charlotte wondered if the girl had had any x-ray treatments to make it less noticeable.

“I just got an awful thirst. I guess I drink about two gallons of water every day.”

“That’s good for you,” Charlotte said, “in your condition.”

The girl let out a little cry. “Oh God. Oh God, does it show? Does it show?”

“I’m sorry I startled you. I thought naturally...”

“How could it show already ?”

“It doesn’t.”

“It must! You said... you said...” She covered her face with her hands. Tears spilled out between her fingers and dripped off her wrists.

She wore a wedding ring. But then, they all did. They bought them at the dime store. Charlotte thought that for some that must be the worst period of all — even worse than labor — when they went to the dime store to buy their rings. There probably wasn’t one of them who hadn’t dreamed of being a June bride. Charlotte felt depressed.

She said finally, “Where is your home, Mrs. O’Gorman?”

“In Oregon. Ashley, Oregon.”

“Are you married?”

“Yes. Yes. Only I left him. He isn’t the one, he isn’t the — the father.”

“What do you want me to do, Mrs. O’Gorman?... What’s your first name?”

“Violet.”

“Who sent you here, Violet?”

“No one.” The girl widened her eyes in a show of innocence. Charlotte wasn’t fooled. She thought, I hope the word isn’t around that I perform illegal operations.

“No one sent me,” Violet repeated. “Like I told the nurse outside I saw your name in the phone book and I came to you because you was a woman, because I thought you’d understand how it is being in the family way with no husband.”

“You don’t want your baby, is that it?” ell

“How can I want it?” Violet asked simply.

“You’re young and healthy. If you go ahead and have the child you’ll be able to hold your job until the last few days...”

“I don’t have a job.”

“Well, perhaps the man involved will contribute to your support. If you can prove that it’s his child he’ll have to.”

“I can prove it, all right I wasn’t living with Eddie. He said I was making him nervous so I went to stay with my sister for a while. That’s how he knew the baby wasn’t his.” She touched the scar on her forehead with the tip of one finger. “He hit me with a lamp. I stood it for two months after that and then I left him. He said such terrible things to me. I didn’t mean to be bad.”