“Please don’t,” Abigail whispered and made a feeble attempt to move away. Was this how love was supposed to begin? From the moment they met, she had felt a stirring inside of her, a desire to touch, to hold and be held. Now that he was holding her, the closeness made her want to pull back, it was so unfamiliar, frightening in a sense – the way new things always seem frightening. Paul was the kind of man any woman would want, and yet here he was, wanting her. She could drive him away with her Puritan way of thinking, she reasoned, when there was certainly no cause to be afraid. Sophisticated people were simply more open about showing their affection. It was life’s coming of age, and after all, Paul was
French.
He parted his lips, drew her tongue into his mouth, then slid his hands down, cupped his fingers around her behind and yanked her to his groin. Abigail’s feet were dangling inches above the tiled floor. Inexperienced as she might be, she knew love was not supposed to be rough and groping. “Stop,” she insisted, this time much more forcefully.
“You want it as much as I do!” was his answer – the words mean and hard edged as the crack of her father’s hand. Instead of stopping, Paul lowered his head to her bosom and suckled his mouth to her breast.
“How dare you!” she cried out. “Stop! Stop this instant!” She began beating her fists against the bulk of his shoulders. He slammed her head back against the wall, angrily ripped open the front of her dress and sunk his teeth into her tender breast. She screamed and tried to wrench herself free, but it was useless. He was bigger, stronger and driven by arousal. He jammed his right hand up beneath her skirt – to Abigail it felt more like a fist than a hand. For a brief moment the maneuver caused him to loosen his grip on her buttocks and she slid down far enough that her feet touched onto the floor. Quick as a lightning bolt she rammed her knee into his groin.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” he screamed and doubled over.
Abigail ran – she went flying up all three flights of stairs and didn’t slow for a breath until she’d slammed and bolted the apartment door.
Still trembling, she huddled into a corner of the room and cried. Sometime before sunrise, she drifted off to sleep. When she woke in the morning she saw the large purple mass just above her right nipple and the mark of Paul’s teeth edging it.
F
or six days Abigail did not go to work. She walked to the corner store, telephoned Itchy and told him she’d somehow gotten food poisoning. Believing the story to be true, Gloria came to call with a crock of homemade bread pudding, two bananas and a blueberry muffin. It was a full five minutes before Abigail summoned up enough courage to answer the knock.
“Food Poisoning, my ass,” Gloria said when she saw the blackened eye.
“I tripped and fell on the stairs.” To Abigail, a lie seemed far more honorable than the truth of what had happened.
“Yeah, sure. Was it Paul?”
Abigail shook her head side to side.
“It was him,” Gloria grumbled, “I know the type.” She peeled the wax paper back from the muffin and smacked it down on a plate. “You gotta wise up,” she told Abigail, “lounge lizards like him ain’t got no scruples. They think girls like us is dime store trash. Good time weenie-wagglers, that’s what they think!”
“Paul seemed different.”
“Ain’t none of them different,” Gloria answered.
That thought stuck in Abigail’s head but it wasn’t something she wanted to believe. When the bruise on her eye faded to yellow and she could cover it with face cream and a heavy dusting of powder, she returned to Club Lucky.
For a long while she shied away from the good-looking men and migrated to mild-mannered fellows, the ones who were hiding behind themselves, sitting alone and nursing a glass of whisky. She’d sit down alongside them and right away start imagining things like white roses and baby carriages. Thing was, they really weren’t all that different than Paul – each of them wanted something and had nothing to give. Steven Miller ordered a bottle of champagne and then groped her bosom. Frank Something-or-another wanted to sleep at her apartment. Bobby Tollinger, who for three weeks had behaved like a perfect gentleman, eventually got so rough that Itchy had him thrown out of the club.
If it had been other circumstances, Abigail would have walked off – found another job, become something more respectable, a secretary or a governess even – but times were hard and jobs were almost nonexistent, so she stayed at Club Lucky. After a time it got so that Abigail could circulate through the crowd like the sound of a song, she was there and then gone, no trace left behind, no promises, no expectations.
She set aside thoughts of becoming a writer and rationalized that she at least had a job, was no longer hungry and was, in fact, adding money to the coffee can on the top shelf of her closet. But there were days when a sense of shabbiness worked its way into her heart and she’d wonder what her father would say of her now. Likely as not, she thought, he’d grimace. “Daughter?” he’d say, “I have no daughter!” Her mother would think more kindly. Livonia would understand; she’d hold Abigail close and say, “Child, these are hard times. People do what they have to do to survive.” When the emptiness of life took root in Abigail’s heart, she closed her mind to reality and dreamed of Chestnut Ridge back when she and Livonia walked together in the springtime and stopped to smell the wild roses blooming along the high road.
In time, Abigail came to accept that life was a road which traveled in only one direction – forward. There was never any going back. The following April she emptied out the coffee can and moved to the classier side of town. Abigail was making good money at Club Lucky and much as she hated being a
hostess
, the job did make it possible for her to live in a nicer place. She rented a spacious three room apartment in a brick building with azaleas lining the walkway and a uniformed porter standing at the door. The building was only six blocks from Miss Ida Jean Meredith’s house – which, to Abigail’s dismay, had now been transformed into a study center for aspiring poets. A crooked sign was taped to the inside of the living room window, a sign that cried out for someone to straighten it.
Nothing that once was – was anymore.
Middleboro, Virginia
The year 2000
D
estiny Fairchild was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m well aware of a tendency to repeat myself, but the truth about Destiny is a fact that bears repeating. She was the one who saw me through that last year, when things got bad. I’d mention something about my back hurting like the devil and without me even asking, she’d start rubbing those little hands of hers up and down my spine. Most folks would have chalked it up to old age and told me to take an aspirin, but Destiny was a person who believed aches and pains could come from loose worries floating around your head. “Now, close your eyes and relax,” she’d say; then she’d get to talking about how we’d go one place or another just as soon as I felt better. Before you could peel a banana I’d be ready to go shopping! How could you not appreciate a person like that?
That was the year I rounded the corner on eighty-eight, and was feeling it. It got so that I’d turn on television and watch the Today Show just to see Willard Scott put on pictures of folks who were one hundred years old. He always told how spry they were and it was a real encouragement. Let me tell you, when a person gets to be one hundred, they
deserve
to be on television. Destiny used to say when I turned one hundred we were going to NorfolkBeach and swim naked. She claimed she was going to take a picture of me swimming naked and
that’s
the one she was sending to Willard Scott. “He wants spry?” she’d say, “We’ll give him spry!” That was her way; she’d start up about some little thing, maybe even something you didn’t think was all that funny, but once she got to laughing and carrying on, you jumped on the bandwagon. That day she said we’d go over to the Atlantic Ocean and swim naked, I laughed so hard I wet my bloomers.
For Christmas that year, I wanted to get Destiny something really special, so I asked her what she might like to have. As good as she’d been to me, she could have asked for a brand-new Cadillac car and I’d have gotten it, but instead she tells me she’d really like this book published by the Audubon Society of America. “Excuse me?” I said, like I wasn’t hearing her right.
“The Waterbirds of Florida,” Destiny repeated.
“That’s it? A book on waterbirds?”
Destiny nodded. “I saw this TV show about them. The announcer said they’re the most beautiful creatures on earth.”
“Waterbirds?”
“Yes indeed. They’re so long-legged and graceful. Why, just watching them makes a person feel like flying.” Destiny jumped up and twirled around the room flapping her arms. “Imagine,” she sang out, “being a pink flamingo!”
I started chuckling at her antics.
“Try it,” she said. “Just close your eyes and pretend you’re all decked out in pink feathers. Picture yourself standing on one leg alongside a blue lagoon, your long neck stretched out and your head held high.”
I had problems standing with both feet planted on the ground, so of course I couldn’t imagine such a thing, but Destiny sure could.
That Christmas I gave Destiny a cashier’s check for twenty-five thousand dollars and a first-class trip for both of us to go see those waterbirds. She gave me a pink feather boa and a nightgown to match. That day we drank eggnog and laughed ‘till our sides hurt. Then when we run out of laughing, we watched
A Christmas Carol
on television.
E
lliott can say Destiny was out for all she could get, but when I gave her that check she told me she couldn’t accept such a thing and she said it like a person who was adamant about their intent. I pretty much expected she’d react that way, which is why I bought a cashier’s check. “Destiny, it’s money already paid out,” I told her, “and, not a soul in the world but you can cash that check!” Of course, we went back and forth over it a bit, but when I got teary-eyed and started telling her how I was an old lady who had few pleasures in life other than giving a gift to someone I truly did love, Destiny threw up her hands and started laughing.
“Okay!” she said. “I’ll keep the money! Just don’t start torturing me with that old and pitiful routine of yours!” She came over and hugged me so hard I thought my ribs would split open.
We flew off to Florida two days later and when we landed in Palm Beach, Destiny rented a convertible car so we could feel the wind in our hair. We stayed in the Breakers Hotel, one of the finest you could possibly imagine, and on New Year’s Eve we called room service and ordered up a bottle of champagne to celebrate while we watched the carrying on in Times Square on television. If you can believe it, Destiny brought a bottle of
hot hot pink
nail polish and painted my toenails to match my nightgown. I got so tickled watching her brush that bright pink on my toes, I thought I’d explode. As we sat there watching the ball of lights drop down, I told her, “Destiny, I never dreamed I’d live to see a new millennium.”
She said, “Maybe
this
would be the time to take that swimming naked picture!”
Of course, I wasn’t about to do any such thing. So instead, she set the automatic timer on her camera and took a picture of the two of us with our hot pink toenails and a glass of champagne. After we got back home, she had that picture framed and I kept it sitting on my dresser.
Looking back, I wish I
had
gone swimming naked.
T
he following February was when I found out about the cancer. It’s not like you wake up one morning and boom, you’ve got a serious case of cancer. It sneaks up on you. Ever since last summer I’d been having backaches and feeling like my stomach was aggravated. A number of times Destiny suggested that I go see Doctor Birnbaum and have it checked out, but I always pooh-poohed the idea. “A person my age is bound to have certain ailments,” I told her. Then one Tuesday I woke up with my stomach feeling real bitter sour; the night before I hadn’t eaten a thing outside of some chicken soup and I knew my stomach couldn’t be soured over
that
! I called Destiny and told her that maybe she was right about going to the doctor.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes!” she said and hung up the telephone.
Before she made it over to my house, I started throwing up the most God-awful stuff anybody could imagine, black and course, like week-old coffee grinds. When Destiny got there she took one look at that pasty-white face of mine and shuffled me off to Doctor Birnbaum, without even an appointment.
She marched into the doctor’s office with me lolling on her arm and said, “Miss Lannigan needs to see the doctor, right now!” I thought she had a lot of nerve demanding such a thing, especially when there were a half-dozen other people in the waiting room. Cathy, who was Doctor Birnbaum’s nurse, must have realized how sick I was ‘cause right away she took us into the examination room – ahead of everybody else.
“I hate to be such a bother,” I said, when the doctor started checking me over. He just smiled and told me that I was never a bother, then he patted my knee in the most kindly way. I always thought, if you have to be sick, you ought to do it with someone like Allan Birnbaum. He told Destiny I’d have to go into the hospital for a few tests and asked if she could bring me that very afternoon. She said yes without even a flicker of hesitation.
I was in the hospital for three days, and Destiny came to visit every day. She’d get there early in the morning, sometimes before the breakfast cart came around, and she’d stay until the bell rang at night. At nine o’clock visitors had to leave and the chimes rang out so pleasant-like, you’d think it was some kind of wonderful grandfather clock, but they were dead-serious about visitors leaving. One night I was feeling especially blue and Destiny stayed after the bells rang, but the nurse came in right away and told her she’d have to leave so I could get my rest.