Read Online I Could Go on Singing by John D. MacDonald - Free Book Online Page A

started to put on her coat, listlessly. “I’ve barged in on you, kept you up, stayed too long. I’m sorry. I’d better go.”
    He helped her with her coat. “Have you a car waiting?”
    “No. I was going to get a taxi. But I think I’d rather walk. And I’ll let myself out. Don’t bother. You’ve been very kind, David. Thank you.”
    She heard him close behind her as she went down the narrow curving staircase. As they reached the reception hall he said, “Jenny?” She turned quickly and expectantly. He held out the prescription slip. “Don’t forget this.”
    She tucked it into her purse. “What will it cure?”
    “Perhaps it will help a little.”
    She wanted to smile at him, and tried valiantly, but the tears clotted her lashes, spilled.
    “It really would mean a great deal to you to see him, wouldn’t it?”
    “Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”
    “And if I should permit this, against my own better judgment, and mark that phrase, Jenny … 
permit
this … do you promise on your word of honor that you will be content with that one meeting, and never try to see him again?”
    “I promise,” she said.
    There were tears in her eyes again as she looked at Jason Brown. “You see, I really didn’t know I was going to ask that of him, Brownie. Maybe I did know, but I hadn’t admitted it to myself. I told myself I was going just to see him. He’s a part of my life, maybe the biggest part. I bore his child. Maybe I love him.”
    “When does this happen?”
    “He’s stopping by for me early this afternoon. He rearranged his schedule. The school isn’t too far, really. Oh,Brownie, I’m so scared and excited! Lift this tray away, will you please?”
    He took it away and put it on the floor near the closed door. She swung her legs out of bed, scuffed her feet into her slippers, paced and smoked, pausing at the mirrors for the quick touch at her hair, the absent-minded examination of her face. She whirled and stared at him, her eyes very wide, “Tell me I’m insane.”
    “What was he like, really?”
    “There was a lot of tension. Undercurrents. Little memories of things past running through his mind as well as mine. And the fraudulent professional visit, with the Plimpton person standing there. But you see, don’t you, that he could have absolutely refused to see me at all? Even if he believed it was an emergency, he could have had another doctor there to see me. That’s what I kept remembering, that with all his reserve, and patronizing me as if I was some sort of idiot child, he still had curiosity about me. And it must have unsettled him, knowing I was coming. Otherwise, he would have hidden Matthew’s picture away before I got there. Brownie, darling, I deal with people under stress all the time, and they can’t hide all the signs. He couldn’t. Matthew. Isn’t that a nifty name? Matthew Donne. But they call him Matt. I wouldn’t permit that. What do you wear to go visit your boy at school? Look at me! Slow death. I couldn’t sleep, not for a minute. I don’t know why we couldn’t send out for good coffee in the morning, or see if Lois could make it here, maybe. Ida makes horrible coffee. And you remember mine.”
    “Essence of battery acid.”
    “Brownie, you sit there and you smile, and you are a dear gangling rumply old pet, but you’re not
saying
anything. How is your little girl?”
    “Frightening. She’s a blonde, like Joyce. All female wiles and devices.”
    “Brownie, bless you, do you remember an utterly impossible day in Mexico City? What a slob I was? The tears and the drinks, and running away from you and nearly getting run down by a taxi?”
    “I remember.”
    “That was Matthew’s sixth birthday. And those days haven’t gotten any better for me. Worse, if anything. Every year I tell myself it’s just another day, after all. Brownie, what if the world took your little girl away and you could neversee her again or write to her or know anything about her. How