The Love of a Good Woman

find a doctor. A doctor who would give me an abortion.
    He did not remind me that I was never supposed to speak that word in his house.
    I told him that you said we could not just go ahead and get married, because anybody who could count would know that I had been pregnant before the wedding. We could not get married until I was definitely not pregnant anymore.
    Otherwise you might lose your job at the Theological College.
    They could bring you up before a committee that might judge you were morally unfit. Morally unfit for the job of teaching young ministers. You could be judged to have a bad character. And even supposing this did not happen, that you did not lose your job but were only reprimanded, or were not even reprimanded, you would never be promoted; there would be a stain on your record. Even if nobody said anything to you, they would
have something
on you, and you could not stand that. The new students coming in would hear about you from the older ones; there’d be jokes passed on, about you. Your colleagues would have a chance to look down on you. Or be understanding, which was just as bad. You would be a man quietly or not so quietly despised, and a failure.
    Surely not, I said.
    Oh yes. Never underestimate the meanness there is in people’s souls. And for me too, it would be devastating. The wives controlled so much, the older professors’ wives. They’d never let me forget. Even when they were being kind—
especially
when they were being kind.
    But we could just pick up and go somewhere else, I said. Somewhere where nobody would know.
    They’d know. There’s always somebody who makes sure that people know.
    Besides, that would mean you’d have to start at the bottom again. You’d have to start at a lower salary, a pitiful salary, and how could we manage with a baby, in that case?
    I was astonished at these arguments which did not seem to be consistent with the ideas of the person I had loved. The books we had read, the movies we had seen, the things we had talked about—I asked if that meant nothing to you. You said yes, but this was life. I asked if you were somebody who could not stand thethought of someone laughing at him, who would cave in before a bunch of professors’ wives.
    You said, That’s not it, that’s not it at all.
    I threw my diamond ring away and it rolled under a parked car. As we argued we were walking along a street near my rooming house. It was winter, like now. January or February. But the battle dragged on after that. I was supposed to find out about an abortion from a friend who had a friend who was rumored to have had one. I gave in; I said I’d do it. You couldn’t even risk making inquiries. But then I lied, I said the doctor had moved away. Then I admitted lying. I can’t do it, I said.
    But was that because of the baby? Never. It was because I believed I was right, in the argument.
    I had contempt. I had contempt when I saw you scrambling to get under the parked car, and the tails of your overcoat were flapping around your buttocks. You were clawing in the snow to find the ring and you were so relieved when you found it. You were ready to hug me and laugh at me, thinking I’d be relieved too and we’d make up on the spot. I told you you would never do anything admirable in your whole life.
    Hypocrite, I said. Sniveller. Philosophy teacher.
    Not that that was the end. For we did make up. But we didn’t forgive each other. And we didn’t take steps. And it got to be too late and we saw that each of us had invested too much in being in the right and we walked away and it was a relief. Yes, at that time I’m sure it was a relief for us both and a kind of victory.
    “So isn’t that ironic?” I said to my father. “Considering?”
    I could hear Mrs. Barrie outside stomping her boots, so I said this in a hurry. My father had sat all the time rigid with embarrassment as I thought, or with profound distaste.
    Mrs. Barrie opened the door saying, “Ought to get a broom outthere—” Then she cried out, “What are you doing sitting there? What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see the man’s dead?”
    He wasn’t dead. He was in fact breathing as noisily as ever and perhaps more so. What she had seen and what I would have seen, even against the light, if I had not been avoiding looking at him whilst I told my tale, was that he had suffered a blinding and paralyzing stroke. He sat slightly tilted forward, the table pressing into the firm curve of his