Judge Me Not

Chapter Fifteen

The nurse had a face the color of wet wash and hair like copper wire. She was slat-bodied and smelled of talcum.

She rolled the chair close to the bed and beamed at him. “Today we can spend some time on the sun porch. Isn’t that wonderful?”

He looked at her. “Just too gay.”

The smile slid off her face. “Now turn and get your hands on the arm of the chair. I’ll steady it. Lower yourself into it, please.”

He did as she told him. He came down into the chair with more force than he had expected.

“Would you like to take something along to read?” she asked.

“No.”

She came around the chair and stared at him. Her blue eyes were severe. “Mr. Morrow, a large part of rapid recovery is the patient’s attitude. I think you ought to let those people come and see you. I’m sure it would cheer you up.”

“Would it?”

“See how sour you talk to me?”

He took a deep breath. “Look, Miss Mission. Sooner or later I’ll have visitors. At the moment I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to read the papers. I don’t want to do anything except listen to the world go around and the grass grow.”

“It was bad, wasn’t it? That poor girl and the way...”

“And I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve told you that before.”

“Mr. Seward is very insistent. He comes twice a day, Mr. Morrow.”

“Tell him to kindly go to hell, Miss Mission. Now wheel the wheel chair.”

Her shoulders slumped. Her uniform made a starchy rustle as she shrugged. She pushed the chair out through the room door and down to the elevator. The elevator took them to the top floor. The sun porch was having a busy morning. All conversation stopped as he came in and he saw the avidity of their eyes. The victim of a real honest-to-Gawd gun battle. Sure. He’s the one. Two slugs in him. Come in here with about a pint of blood left. They give him plasma all the way to town in the ambulance. Found him rocking that dead girl and talking to her.

“Over there in the corner,” Teed said.

She left him. “I’ll be back in an hour. If you want anything, that nurse over there will get it for you.”

Her heels made dull sounds on the composition floor as she walked out, distributing her professional smile on all and sundry. The silence lasted for just a few more moments and then the others started talking in low tones. Teed grasped the wheel rails and turned the chair so that his face was in the sun, his back to the room.

He could not stop thinking of his life as a chart on a wall in the back of his mind. The level line had reached placidly to that Sunday, three weeks ago, when he had awakened in the camp, had heard the sound of Felice’s shower. Then the line had begun to waver. It had fallen off for the next week, and then it had stopped. Now there was no line at all. Not depression. Just a nothingness. Somehow life had changed from a pleasant game where you’re all right if you keep your guard up to a mess where your guard didn’t help a bit. And once you knew that, none of the old rules were any good any more.

The only visitors had been Leighton and the police stenographer. It had been impossible to keep them out. Later the stenographer had come back with the stack of copies of his statement, and he had scrawled his name in the indicated places.

“They got Raval,” the stenographer said.

“That’s nice,” Teed said tonelessly.

“Picked him up at Tampa International Airport. He had a ticket to Mexico City. He’ll be inside until he falls over his beard.”

“That’s nice,” Teed said. The stenographer gave him a curious stare and left.

In an hour the redheaded nurse came back. In the elevator going down she said, “A Miss Dennison is waiting to see you, Mr. Morrow.”

“Tell her to... no, I’ll see her.”

Marcia came into the room. She wore black. She sat primly, quietly, on the chair beside the bed. “Teed, I want to know what your plans are.” He nodded.

“Daddy is quitting. He can’t stay here, now. The University wants him back. Everyone is willing for you to take his place. If you don’t want it, he wants to look for another man.”

“I haven’t decided, Marcia.”

“Could you decide right now? It would help him. He... needs help. He’s a defeated man, Teed.”

“Aren’t we all.”

She looked at him with the level eyes, her father’s eyes. “Did you love her so very much, Teed?”

“That’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about. I didn’t love her at all in the way you mean. Not as a woman. I... keep thinking of what I should have done that would have prevented it.”

“You couldn’t do anything.”

“It was my fault that the whole thing started in that way. I gave them the handle to use on Jake.”

“They would have found some other way. Don’t torture yourself by blaming yourself. Jake... wouldn’t want you to.”

He smiled at her. “Powell used to try to get you and me together. I was the son-in-law elect.”

She stood up, pulling her black gloves nervously through her fingers. “That sort of thing is done. I’ll stay with him. I shan’t marry anyone.”

“That’s what you’ve been all along, isn’t it, Marcia? A cool-eyed martyr looking for a stake to be tied to.”

She looked down. “Don’t spoil it, Teed. Please. When they made me, they... left something out. Jake had it all. I used to resent her. Almost hate her at times. That’s my guilt, Teed.”

“Tell Powell I’ll take over just as soon as I can get out of here.”

“Mr. Trim is co-operating. The grand jury will be set to go. Daddy has new information and we ought to get a return of indictments on fourteen men in the city government. Then he’ll leave it in your hands.”

“In a year I’ll have it running the way it should. Then I’ll find somebody who wants to stay in one place and turn it over to them.”

She stood by the bed. “Get well soon, Teed.”

“I’m too tough to kill,” he said. She took his hand, then bent over and kissed him on the forehead. After her footsteps were gone he still felt the cool impression of her lips. Viking woman. She of the sturdy thighs, of pelvic width for the bearing of children, of breasts meant to sweeten and flow. This would be a waste, just as the death of Jake was a waste. The years would dry and harden her, and the juices of youth would parch in the wind of barren years. In a way it was a little death, and he wondered if, in part, it were her penance for Jake’s death.

The lunch tray came. His appetite was getting better. Even the drab hospital food, attractive in color rather than taste, was welcome.

The nurse came to take the tray. “Is Barbara Heddon still in the hospital?”

The nurse started so violently that the empty dishes rattled. “Uh... yes.”

“Why did you jump?”

“I just happened to be thinking about her when you asked me that. That’s all. I was wondering about it. You never asked about her before, and she never asked about you. That’s all. It seemed funny. So I was thinking about it.”

“Has she had visitors?”

“Her people, from Baltimore. That’s all. Nobody local.”

“Was Armando Rogale discharged?”

“After four days. A fat woman came and took him home with her. Mrs. Ferma or something.”

“Can I see Barbara Heddon?”

“I’ll ask the doctor. She’s not supposed to move.”

“Let me know.”

Late in the afternoon Barbara’s doctor came in and pulled up a chair. “You want to talk to the Heddon girl, eh?”

“If it’s all right. How is she?”

“Apathetic. And that’s good. I like that. I don’t want that face wrinkling up with a lot of emotions. Not until healing is further advanced.”

“Will she be... badly scarred?”

“She thinks so. I don’t. The left eye was ticklish. Thought at first it would have to go. But I did a hemstitching job on those eye muscles. Proud of it. Going to write it up. Like sewing a pair of wings back onto a housefly.”

“How about the scars?”

“It was a nice sharp edge. Clean slashes. Right side already O.K. But there was tissue loss on the left side. Her left arm is straight up over her head now. I’m telling you this in a way you can understand it. Cut a flap from the underside of her left arm, gave it a half turn and used it as a patch on the left cheek. Left it fastened to the left arm until the graft is far enough along. Then we’ll cut it free and do some trimming. A face like that, it’s a pleasure to do cosmetic surgery. Damn good bones. Be a pretty woman when she’s sixty. I won’t say you won’t be able to see hairline scars in a bright light when she isn’t wearing make-up. I let her folks see her. Had to chase them out when she started getting a little upset. No smiling and no frowning for that young lady until I’m certain those healing muscles won’t tear under the strain. That’s why you can’t see her. Not for ten days, Morrow.”

“Tell her I’m coming to see her.”

“I told her that a week ago. She said for you to stay away from her.”

The doctor stood up. “Be good,” he said. He trudged out, a big weary man on an endless treadmill.

Teed was discharged at the end of the week. Five days later the doctor phoned him at City Hall. “Morrow? Come see the Heddon girl at two this afternoon.”

“Has she changed her mind about seeing me?”

“No. But now I want her stirred up. I want her to rant and rave and storm around, using all the facial expressions in the book. Got to start getting back muscle tone, or she’ll end up with a dead pan. All slack. She won’t tear now. Healing fine. But apathetic. Don’t like that. Go give her a hard time. Nurse expecting you.”

Teed put the transcript of his grand-jury testimony in the locked file. Miss Anderson gave him a sallow nod as he said he would be gone most of the afternoon.

He checked out with Powell Dennison. The heart was gone out of the man. Now he was merely an old man who worked mirthlessly, doggedly, and without satisfaction at the things he knew best.

Teed parked in the hospital lot at ten of two. The receptionist told him the room number, told him to go right up. A pretty nurse stood waiting in the hall. She held her finger to her lips, opened the door to let him in, closed it soundlessly behind him.

Barbara lay with the bed cranked up to bring her almost to an erect sitting position. Her knees were elevated and she was turning the pages of a magazine. A bandage covered the left side of her face, from hairline to chin. Her nose, right eye, and the right half of her mouth were uncovered. A smaller bandage was taped to her right cheek.

She gave him a startled look and reached for the signal button. He reached it before she did, took it to the length of the cord and put it on the window sill.

She had not spoken. He pulled a chair over, sat down, took her hand. She tried to pull it away, but he held it tightly. She let it go lax. Her hand had the damp coolness of nervousness.

“They’re going to make you beautiful again, Barbara.”

“Is that important?” Her voice was listless.

“It will be nice. I’m going to spend a long time looking at you. But even if they couldn’t, it wouldn’t matter too much.”

She looked at him gravely. “Don’t be a sentimental fool. Run while you can.”

“I’ve spent a lot of years running, Barbara. I’m tired of running. Now I’ve found something that helps me make sense out of living. A... sort of talisman.”

“A good-luck charm,” she said, her voice bitter, distorted by the constriction of the bandage across the left side of her mouth.

“Be rough. Be bitter and nasty and pretend you’re hard as brass hinges, baby. It won’t do you any good.”

“You want to look at a face like this?”

“When I get tired of looking, I’ll turn out the lights.”

A tear spilled over the lower lid of her eye, channeled down by her nose to her lip. She caught it with the tip of her tongue. “All cats are gray in the dark.”

“Suppose I love you, though. Suppose I spend more time thinking than ever before in my life, and I find out I love you. What then?”

“I chase you away, Teed. Because I don’t want you to keep remembering what I was, torturing yourself with it. And you’ll do that. After a while it would come between us and you’d look at me and think of it and hate me. I don’t want that.”

“I’ve given that considerable thought, Barbara. I’ve tried to be logical. It bothers me. It will always bother me. I admit that. I know why it will bother me. Because in the formative years they give you books about virgin princesses. Romantic books. They condition you to a double standard where a man is a man and a woman is not really human. So it is hard to remember, always, that a woman is human, not some kind of a damn sweet-smelling toy on a store shelf. I’ve done too much sleeping around. It isn’t good. It dulls your taste.”

“That isn’t the same.”

“I make a ledger in my mind. On one side I put this business of remembering what you were doing when I met you. On the other side I put all the things you have come to mean to me. And that leaves me right where I started. Needing you.”

She rolled her head restlessly from side to side, as though she were seeking escape. “Don’t, Teed. Please don’t talk like that to me. Please go away.”

“In eight months to a year this job will be over for me, and it will be turned over to local people. I know you’re going back to Baltimore. Here’s all I want. Go back. You’re mending on the outside. Mend on the inside, too. We’ll write letters to each other. When this job is over, I’ll come to you. We’ll talk. That’s all I want. A chance to show you that nothing will change in a year. Or twenty years.”

“Why tie yourself up to a tramp?” she pleaded.

“Tramp? A man is one thing one day and something happens and he is suddenly somebody else. Maybe you have to be honest with yourself. Too honest. You have to say to yourself, ‘I was a tramp.’ O.K. Say that. But don’t say, ‘I am a tramp,’ because you know that would be a lie, and I know it too.”

She looked up at the ceiling. “There is another way I would be unfair to you, Teed, if I didn’t send you away. I... can’t have children.”

“That was a nice try, Barbara, but you talked too much to Anna Fermi. I had dinner there with Armando and Anna last night. We talked about you. Anna happened to mention that you told her that you could have children.”

“Damn you, damn you, damn you!”

“They are my friends. I suddenly discover that maybe I never had better friends. We talked about you. I told them how I feel about you. We talked over whether or not. I could forget that other business. Then Anna did a smart thing. She asked me if I would forgive you. I stared at her and I asked her what the hell for. Then she gave me that grin of hers and said that I had given the right answer and so she thought it would work out for us.”

“Leave me alone.”

“See? I’m pushing you out of a little death you’ve made for yourself back into life. You’re reluctant. I checked with another person too.”

“Maybe a letter to Emily Post would help.”

“I checked with Albert. Albert said that in his work he has to understand pigeons, but he’ll be damned if he can understand women. He told me to tell you that, such as it is, we have his blessing.”

And on her face was the twisted mixture of tears and laughter, bitterness and joy. “Albert was... always dopey.”

“He told me how stubborn you were when you were a little kid. He said I should use force if necessary. I said I didn’t want to use force. I said I would make a dramatic appeal. I told him that I would tell you that if you insisted on having nothing to do with me, life would cease to have any meaning at all to me.”

“Teed, don’t...”

“Albert said that sounded too corny and too dramatic. I told him it was the truth, and I couldn’t help it if it sounded that way. Albert said, O.K., then, for me to try it, but it certainly wasn’t going to work on the Barbara he remembered.”

She turned toward him. Her unbandaged eye was shining, bright, tear-filled. “That shows you how much Albert knows about women.”

His voice was husky. “Albert better stick to his pigeons.”

Her hand tightened in his. “I shouldn’t let you...”

“You’re not agreeing to a thing. Only to letting me come to see you when this job is done and we’re both a year older.”

“Don’t ever let me hate myself for wanting to say yes to you, Teed.”

“When we start tossing crockery, we’ll bring Albert in as referee. Darling, laugh again. I love your love.”

“I’ll laugh for you. I’ll laugh in the night. Not for funny. Joy laughter. Love laughter. Laughter for being alive.”

He kissed the right corner of her mouth. He tasted the salt on his lips as he straightened up.

“Tomorrow we’ll talk some more.”

“Yes, Teed.”

“There’s a lot to say to you, Barbara.”

“I know.”

“Tomorrow we’ll talk about how in that other life, we were two different people, neither of them as sound as you and I. The old life didn’t happen to us.”

She frowned. “That’s odd! I can almost believe you.”

“One day you will.”

He walked down the soundproofed hall, and down the stairs, and out into the fat wet flakes of a late November snow. The flakes melted as they touched his face. He walked to his car, feeling that at last he had stepped from the sidelines into the midst of life. There could be no more detachment. Only involvement. You did the very best you could with everything you could reach. And never stopped reaching, or trying. And this, at last, made life a satisfying thing — a thing at which you were given one chance — and learned to enjoy the knowledge that one chance was all there was.