Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1942)

BEGINNING a As she opened the door, that spring afternoon, how could Joan guess that she was admitting heartache to her honeymoon house? For it was her best friend who was standing outside, waiting. . , Ji. HE small upstairs room was very still. Winter sunshine crept over tiie floor toward the west window and, through the curtains, the sky was lightening before it deepened. Joan lay in the middle of the big bed and listened to the stillness. Even the pain was quiet. She had the feeling it she stayed motionless she would keep it so, and her body would belong to her again instead of to the tortured misery that had possessed it for days. She raised a hand tentatively and pushed back the short tangled curls into the pillow. Yes, it was hers — and it was thrilling to own your body, to control it even for this brief moment, instead of giving it over to pain and fear and tormented darlcness. She sighed contentedly and listened to the hushed movements from the rest of the house. She could identify each one. The nurse, Miss Lewis, was giving the baby his lateafternoon feeding in the room across the hall. A distant clatter froni the kitchen told her Lily was preparing one of her delicious concoctions for "Miz Davis, honey, lyin' so sick." Muted chimes from the clock in the hall meant Harry would be home soon. In a little while this blessed stillness would be broken. Harry would be masking his an.xiety for her under gay and tender raillery. Miss Lewis would be in with the baby for her to look at — not to hold, for she was too weak for that. And Dr. Wiggan would come with his cheerful "How are we today — h'm?" and questions would be asked and gentle hands laid on her, and the pain would start again. For each she must pretend she didn't know they were hiding their fears for her. She had been desperately ill when the baby came. Death had come very close. She wasn't free of it yet. Now, in this respite, slie could face tliat calmly and without panic, just 20 knowing it and accepting it as a fact. It was strange how much you knew when you were ill. Things you'd been too hurried to see before. This was like being in the balcony of a darkened theater, looking down on a lighted stage. She gould see herself and Harry, Phil and Eve and her mother, like actors going through their parts of the last two years. She saw herself clearest of all. "If I ever get well," she murmuied, "if I ever get well, I'll never be like that again." The chimes from the hall struck again. Joan shifted, and then lay still. She must see everything whole and see it clearly, now, while she had time. She must look down on the stage from her balcony seat and try to examine the chain of circumstances that led to here and now, the way each Unk led inevitably to the next. Letting her mind drift back, she knew that all that had happened since need not have happened. If, for instance, she had just not answered the front doorbell when it rang long ago on a spring afternoon . . . gHE and Harry had been married five months then. They" were still in the honeymoon stage of locking the door against the world, bounding their horizons only with each other. The cottage in Fox Meadow Lane shone with newness andexcitement New furniture, new curtains, and a glossy kitchen that housed the wonderfiU adventure of fixmg meals to be shared by the two of them. M°"5,T/'"'^' *>"* ^^'^t °f that? Market lists, carefully selected for bargains, were far more thrilling than any dance program had eve? been in the old days. Making ouTa Uon'than' ' "°" ""«""« -""'Ption than drawmg up the blueprints for a mansion could ever hold "Sure you're not sorry you married a poor man?" Harry asked, half teasing, half serious. Joan flung herself on him. "Oh, darling, you're all I want for ever and ever." And then, fearful that the gossamer moment might break under too much feeling, she added, "Except of course extra shelves iri the kitchen. I'll be miserable till I get those!" And Harry struggled to put them up. He upset the box of nails, he lost the ruler, he hammered his finger. When the shelves were done, one side was half an inch lower than the other so that the kitchen clock slid slowly off into the wastebasket. They laughed until they were weak, holding onto each other for support] as they put it back and watched it slowly slide off again. Those were the singing, halcyon days when God was in His heaven and all was right with their world. Her mother's complaints that she was shutting herself away from old friends on the Ridge by living "over there in that tacky new development where nobody ever lived, my dear," that she would ruin her hands with housework and her looks with making ends meet — they were ridiculously unimportant. So were her memories of the big Field house on the Ridge, playing golf, going to Country Club dances, seeing her name on the society pages as "one of Stanwood's most popular debs." That old life was paltry and empty. Naturally her mother couldn't see it that way. To Mrs. Field, mntcrial possessions and social prestige were the only considerations to any girl in her right mind. Joan just wasn't in her right mind. "Who is Harry Davis?" Mrs. Field had demanded. "A nobody. A poor young laV/ycr with his way to make. A stranger in town, besides. And as for throwing over Phil Stanley, to marry him — "