Robin Talley - Pulp

No—most likely, her parents would confine her to the house. They might find a discreet doctor to make house calls until she was properly cured.

Janet wondered what such a cure entailed. All she knew about psychiatry was that the patients lay on couches and closed their eyes. That didn’t seem so terrible—but could it really change the way she felt about Marie?

Though the real problem was, Janet didn’t want to stop feeling the way she did.

Perhaps resistance to treatment was part of the sickness. Yet she didn’t feel sick. She felt healthier than she ever had before.

As Janet’s squat two-story row house came into view, she squared her shoulders and pulled off her cap. She ought to simply put all these worries aside for the time being. It was going to be a very busy summer.

The house was quiet as she approached. Her parents had gone to dinner at the club again, leaving Janet and Grandma to an evening on their own. On nights like this one, Janet usually warmed up a casserole and chatted with Grandma while they ate. After dinner they might listen to the radio awhile, then read in comfortable silence until bedtime.

The heat indoors was nearly unbearable on summer nights, so Mom and Dad usually slept on the screened porch at the back of the first floor, with Janet and Grandma on the separate porch just above. It had been their pattern ever since Grandma moved in. She’d declared as soon as she’d unpacked that, although she’d consented to live with them, she would not be forced to tolerate Janet’s father’s snores. It had been bad enough when he was a boy, she’d said, but now that he was grown she was no longer obliged to suffer.

Janet climbed the steps to the front porch, taking care to avoid the rickety old railing, and unlocked the front door, slipping off her shoes in the foyer in case Grandma was resting. In the evenings, every sound in the house was magnified.

A bright shape on the entry table caught Janet’s eye as she shrugged off her uniform jacket. A white envelope, solitary and stark against the shining black wood.

Janet snatched up the letter, her jacket falling to the floor. Panic rose in her throat at the sight of the typed letters across the front, spelling out her name in neat black ink. As her eyes flicked to the return address, she half prayed it was merely another letter from Holy Divinity.

Not this time. Bannon Press , the envelope proclaimed, followed by an address in New York City.

It had come.

Janet hugged the letter to her chest, her shoulders trembling under her thin white blouse. The envelope felt warm against her skin.

The seal was still in place. This letter was hers and hers alone.

Janet would take it straight to her room. She wanted to read the letter over and over, the way she’d done with A Love So Strange . She ran up the steps, her heart pounding, and didn’t slow when she reached the second-floor landing. Her hand was on the door to her bedroom when the voice came behind her.

“Why are you in such a hurry there, girl?”

“Grandma.” Janet tried in vain to steady herself before she turned. Her grandmother stood in the bathroom doorway, a fresh smile on her wrinkled face. Janet lowered her hand, wishing she were wearing a skirt so she could hide the letter in its folds. “Did you have a nice day?”

“Oh, your father came home for lunch and it was wretched, as always.” Grandma tsked. “When you’re not here to make it interesting, that is. I don’t know why they need you at that restaurant so much of the time.”

“Oh?” Janet racked her brain for a way to slip into her room without her grandmother following.

“Yes, yes. You know your father, always on about something.” Grandma folded her arms, and Janet steeled herself for a rant. “These days he’ll talk about nothing but that new bill. This ridiculous measure by the people who want to blaspheme the Lord’s holy name.”

“The In God We Trust bill?”

“That’s the one. The fools think if we put that on all our money, it’ll keep the Communists from blowing us into the sky. As if any one of those men down in Congress truly understands the first thing about Scripture. Or about Communists, for that matter.”

“Oh, Grandma.” Janet bent down to turn on the fan so it would cover the sound of their voices. The houses on either side of them were separated by no more than a narrow wall of bricks, and conversations carried so easily Janet sometimes felt she knew the neighbors’ problems as well as her own. Dad never liked it when Grandma talked about Communists, but he especially didn’t like it when the neighbors might hear.

Grandma had been a Socialist as a girl. She’d even been arrested once, for demonstrating against the draft during the first World War. She’d wanted to go on living in New York after Grandpa died, but Dad insisted she move in with them, telling the neighbors he wanted to look after her health. When they were alone, though, he said he’d made her leave because Grandma couldn’t be trusted not to walk into the United Nations one morning and tell Churchill himself to go fly a kite.

“Oh, don’t you worry about me, girl.” Grandma laughed as Janet switched on the fan. “Your father may act as though he’s in charge of what I do and don’t say, but trust me, he knows better! Now, enough political talk. You be a helpful child and tell me a happy story about your day.”

Janet tried to think, but her whole focus was on the letter tucked against her leg.

She hated having secrets from her grandmother. When she was younger, Janet had always gone to Grandma with her problems first. She’d poured her heart out to her time and again, sharing all the worries about school and friends that Mom and Dad never seemed to understand. Janet’s parents believed all problems stemmed from rule breaking, and so any troubles she encountered were of her own creation, but Grandma didn’t hold with that philosophy. She always knew exactly what to say to make Janet feel all right again.

This new problem was altogether different from the sort Janet used to bring her, though.

“My friend Marie starts her new job tomorrow,” Janet finally said. “She’ll be a typist at the State Department. A much better job than delivering cheeseburgers, if you ask me.”

Grandma laughed. “One of these days I need to borrow your father’s car and you can bring me one of those burgers. I’m a good tipper.”

Janet laughed. “You don’t have to tip me, Grandma.”

“Well, what if I want to? I’m sure I have a nickel somewhere in these pockets.” Grandma pretended to search her housedress.

Janet laughed again. “Shall I go ahead and heat up the casserole?”

“No, don’t you worry about that on my account. Don’t tell your mother, but I ate while I was out shopping this afternoon. I couldn’t take another night of casserole.”

“I won’t tell her if you promise not to tell her I ate at work, too. She’s always after me not to eat the Soda Shoppe food. She says it’ll make my skin greasy.”

“She doesn’t need to worry about that.” Grandma patted Janet’s cheek. “No girl for miles around has a complexion as fresh as yours.”

“Thanks, Grandma.” Janet smiled and reached for her doorknob. “I hope you have a good night, then.”

“A good night?” Grandma tilted her head to one side, her shrewd eyes drifting down to the letter in Janet’s hand. “Aren’t you coming downstairs to listen to Dr. Sixgun with me? Don’t make your poor grandma listen to those cowboys shoot up that desert all by my lonesome.”

“Yes, of course I’ll come.” Janet was getting desperate. “I just need to change out of my uniform first. I’m awfully sweaty.”