Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1959)

With a deft flick, Tony tossed the damp towel at her, but she dodged and managed to catch it as it threatened to fall among her array of perfume bottles. Tony retreated to his room, where he began opening and shutting drawers and closet doors busily. As Janet went into her bathroom, she called out, “You’d better make another resolution: to stop throwing things at me, you brute. Remember those shoes?” “I did not throw any shoes at you.” “Oh yes, you did — a pair of tennis shoes. I was so glad they missed me, because they’d really have hurt. They hit the wall and they bounced off and fell onto the floor — pigeon-toed!” Janet suppressed a giggle as she put on her shower cap, but Tony began to laugh almost as hard as they both had when they saw the pigeon-toed shoes. Beautiful, healing laughter! “Don’t insult my pitching arm,” Tony said. “I did not throw those shoes at you — just in your general direction. Anyhow, you deserved it.” “Why were you mad at me?” Before turning on the shower, she waited to enjoy the silence in the next room. Tony’s puzzled answer finally came: “Darned if I can remember.” The water on, Janet smiled — smugly at first, then with genuine happiness. She couldn’t remember the quarrel, either. But wasn’t it fortunate that there had been no witnesses to the throwing of the shoes? After the incident had been passed from gossip to gossip — each one improving on it — the columns would probably have reported that Tony had blacked both her eyes and that she had kicked out all his front teeth. She’d have shown up next day bright-eyed and undamaged, and Tony’s grin would have been as wide as ever, and then what would the gossips have said? But it wasn’t always funny. By the time Janet sat down at her dressing table to brush her hair, her face was serious. She wasn’t much surprised to hear Tony’s next words; their minds, starting from a given point, often would travel the same path. “Good thing nobody heard us hollering just then,” he said. “We’d be reading another item about how we scream at each other at all hours.” “Ouch!” Janet had suddenly brushed with such a vigorous stroke that the bristles had hit her ear. “I got so mad when I saw that story! . . .” Glimpsing Tony in the mirror, she turned to admire the finished product, trim in a dark blue suit, hair neatly combed. "‘I gave you a handicap, and I still won the race,” he said, at ease in the slipper chair again. “What race? I’m claiming a feminine prerogative, that’s all.” Leisurely, she turned back to the mirror. “Tony ... I do have a bit of a temper, don’t I? Do you think I should make a resolution about that?” “No! There are some things you should get mad at!” “I guess I feel the same way about you. Like the time we were in Norway, trying to get the call through to London, and the connection was so terrible. You were fuming! But if you’d stayed calm then — I’d never have forgiven you.” “No chance of that, any time the kids are concerned. Uh ... I think I’ll look in on them again before we leave.” “But Kelly isn’t seven hundred miles away now. They’re both right here. And I haven’t heard a peep out of them.” Janet found herself talking to an empty room. But Tony’s sudden anxiety didn’t seem strange to her, now that she had reminded him of a frightening moment in their life together. Here, in the brightness of her room, it seemed far away and unreal . . . Both the trip to the Norwegian location site and the life there were far too rugged for a child not yet two. So they had left Kelly in London, in a nurse’s care. Without even a town nearby, they did seem to have been transferred back to the Viking era, and it was a double shock when a messenger brought word of a telephone call for Janet, on the night of their arrival. A call from London! Janet and Tony had to retrace the messenger’s journey, for the phone was five-and-a-half -hours away: four hours by car, along unpaved roads, passing only an occasional sleeping farmhouse, darkened for the night; an hour and a half on a motor launch, over black, quiet water, between the steep sides of the fjord. Their clasped hands linked the worried parents, who shared the same terror-filled thoughts — no need to speak them aloud. When they finally reached the town, they had to jangle the bell to wake one innkeeper, who had the only telephone in the area. To Janet, it seemed that her call must be wandering through all the exchanges of Europe, the line crackled with static and clamored with languages she didn’t understand. Tony halted in his angry pacing and tried to take the phone, but she said, “Wait! I think it’s coming through now.” She heard the nurse’s voice, unintelligible at first, then shouting, “You have a sick baby!” The words seemed to freeze in the receiver; they went on echoing in Janet’s ear. At first, when she opened her mouth to answer, no sound came out. Then she managed to say, “Have you called the doctor?” She repeated the question, shouting. Through the noise on the line, it sounded as if the nurse had decided to check with the baby’s mother before call 1 p/icMttvK, -fic/i (jcni/i utodi Uitmatt 'p/ioi&mA 'cfiw. rtAuMed kf u/om&h/ 1. Germicidal protection! Norforms are safer and surer than ever! A highly perfected new formula releases antiseptic and germicidal ingredients right in the vaginal tract. The exclusive new base melts at body temperature, forming a powerful protective film that permits long-lasting action. Will not harm delicate tissues. 2. Deodorant protection! 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