Эд Макбейн: Mothers and Daughters

“That’s good. How does she look? The baby.”

“Like a baby.”

“And Penny’s all right?”

“Yes. She’s tired, but otherwise—”

“Tired? Was it very hard, Mother?”

“Don’t trouble your head about that, Amanda. You’re too young to be worrying about such things.”

“Well, I...” She fell silent.

“Amanda?”

“Yes, Mother?”

“I thought we’d been cut off again.”

“No, I’m here.”

“It’s time we said goodbye, anyway. This is long distance, you know.”

“Yes. Mother, tell Penny I love her, and tell Dad about the ballets, don’t forget.”

“I won’t forget.”

“I’ll see you on Thanksgiving. Do you think Penny’ll be out of the hospital by then?”

“Yes, I’m sure she will.”

“Good. Okay, Mother, I’ll say goodbye now.”

“God love you, darling.”

There was a click on the line, and then a hum. Amanda put the phone back onto the hook, stood with her hand on the receiver for a moment, silent, and then turned toward the reception room. “Hey!” she yelled. “My sister just had a baby!”

“Well, pish-posh!” the same girl yelled back, and Amanda burst out laughing and ran up the three flights to her room. She threw open the door and went directly to the calendar on the wall over the desk. She picked up a black crayon and circled the date instantly: November 10, 1942.

“There,” she said. “Kate, that’s a nice name,” and she laughed again and threw herself onto the bed. She kicked off her loafers, rolled onto her back, and lay there grinning, looking up at the ceiling.

My sister had a baby, she thought. Well, what do you know? Good old Penny. “A baby is God’s divine gift,” her mother had said once. Well, you did it, Penny. You sure did it, old Penny. I wonder what it was like. It probably hurt like hell.

She sat up suddenly, almost as if she had said the word aloud and wanted to be certain no one had overheard her. But she expected to be alone, and the girl standing in the doorway startled her.

“Oh!” Amanda said.

“Hi,” the girl answered. “Did I scare you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. Is this thirty-five?”

“What?”

“Thirty-five. Is this room thirty-five?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

Amanda sat in the center of the bed, shoeless, watching the girl in the doorframe. The girl was wearing a Navy pea jacket over a gray flannel skirt. The collar of the jacket was pulled high against the back of her neck, a dark backdrop for her reddish-brown hair. The hair, hanging in wild bangs on her forehead, was brushed sleekly back from the bangs to fall in a smooth cascade to the nape of her neck. The girl smiled. Her smile was radiant. It lighted her green eyes and her entire face. She put down her suitcase and her handbag and studied the room, still smiling.

“This is marrr -velous,” she said. “I didn’t expect it to be so grand.” She began unbuttoning the pea jacket. Amanda watched her silently. The girl took off the jacket and tossed it over the suitcase. She was wearing a dark-blue cashmere sweater with tiny pearl buttons. She was slender, with good breasts and wide hips. She could not have been older than seventeen.

“You must be Amanda Something-or-other,” she said.

“Soames.”

“Soames, that’s right. The woman in charge of Female Berthing sent me over. Female Berthing, isn’t that a scream? They make it sound like a maternity ward.” The girl laughed. Her laugh was deep and throaty. Her green eyes never lost their sparkle. They darted about the room, absorbing everything, continuously searching, continuously amused, always aglow. Amanda, startled and somewhat annoyed at first by the intrusion, felt her annoyance dissipating. Oddly, she wanted to laugh. There was something contagious about the liveliness of this girl’s face, the impish grin, the glowing green eyes.

“Well, what... what’s this all about?” Amanda asked.

“Didn’t Female Berthing call you? And I thought she was so efficient. I guess I’m your roommate. If you don’t mind, that is. I’m sorry about getting here so late, but my mother and I had a slight difference of opinion.” She pulled a grimace. “Is it okay?”

“Well, I... I guess so. I mean...”

“Good. I think it’s going to be marrr -velous. Is there a john anywhere? I’ve had to go for hours. The one on the train was a pigsty.”

“Yes,” Amanda said. “Yes, down the hall.”

“Thanks.” The girl paused in the doorframe. “Amanda Soames,” she said, testing the name. “Which way? Right or left?”

“Left. The second door,” Amanda said, her eyes wide.

“I’ll be back.”

The girl vanished into the corridor. A second later, her head appeared around the doorframe, disembodied, cocked to one side, the long red-brown hair dangling limply over one eye, the impish grin on her mouth, the green eyes sparkling.

“My name’s Gillian,” she said, “my first name, isn’t that a scream? Laugh now so you can get it out of your system before I come back.”

The head vanished again. Amanda stared goggle-eyed at the empty doorframe. And suddenly the head reappeared, like Alice’s Cheshire cat, floating again in the doorframe, disembodied, grinning.

“Gillian Burke ,” the girl said.

And the doorway was empty again.

The incident involving Gillian Burke took place in the University Theater shortly after the Thanksgiving vacation.

Amanda was rather surprised by what happened because she’d known Gillian only as a roommate up to that time, and she hadn’t suspected this deeper side of Gillian’s character. And even when it was all over, she never really knew whether the incident was a revelation of character depth, or whether the entire thing had been an exhibition of Gillian’s intuitive showmanship. She could not ignore the persistent knowledge that the incident catapulted Gillian into the role of a campus celebrity within a single week, and she often wondered if Gillian hadn’t promoted the entire thing with just such an end in mind. But hadn’t there also been a measure of humiliation for Gillian, and would she willfully have caused herself such embarrassment? The entire affair was contradictory and puzzling. But then, so was Gillian Burke.

Amanda learned almost instantly that living with Gillian was going to be an experience unlike any she had ever had before: refreshing, exasperating, and, in a way, annihilating.

The first thing was the swearing. Amanda thought she’d better settle that at once. She had been raised in a home where “Hell” was always spelled with a capital letter and was never used except in sermons by her father and then to illustrate the torments of brimstone and fire. “Bitch” was a female dog. “Can” was a container usually made of tin. “Ass” was what you didn’t covet your neighbor’s wife or. “To lay” meant “to place upon” — not necessarily upon a bed. There were other words that Gillian used, which Amanda had truthfully never heard in her home but which she suspected were scrawled upon the back fences and sidewalks of Minneapolis. In any case, they offended her ear, and she decided to put a stop to the flow of profanity immediately.

Gillian had just returned to the room after dinner. She promptly reached under her sweater and unclasped her bra.

“There!” she said. “Loosen the damn harness!”

“Why do you do that?” Amanda asked. She was sitting up in bed, reading an English assignment.

“Why do I do what?” Gillian answered. She went to her own bed, pulled back the quilt, brushed crumbs from the sheet, and sat abruptly.

“Curse so much.”

“What?” Gillian looked up. She had taken off her right loafer and sock and was examining her big toe. She peered at Amanda through a hanging curtain of red-brown hair.