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

would her birthdays be for you?”
    “Wretched.”
    “Brownie, I’m right! Tell me I’m right!” She came and put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes, bending down toward him.
    “Jenny, if you were sure you’re right, you wouldn’t be asking me.”
    She backed away. “You are too plain damned smart about me. How did you get so smart about me?”
    “By loving you.”
    “My God, you’re slippery as an eel. When I try to get mad at you, you touch my heart. All right. I loved you too. We were good for each other, weren’t we? In all the hideous confusion of my life, Brownie, you were … you were a little island of content, and I cherish the memories. Be good for me now.
Help
me!”
    “No matter what I say, you are going to go see the boy. And it is going to shred you, Jenny. It’s going to stomp your heart raw. And then you are going to have to turn your back on him and walk away. And that act is going to take all the guts and pride and spirit you have. It’s a test of strength.”
    She walked slowly to the bed and sat and stared at him. “Am I strong enough?”
    “You have to be. You have no other choice, Jenny.”
    “It was a mistake to come to England?”
    “Of course.”
    She nodded. Her smile was wan. “But, you see, I had no other choice there, either. Do you know what I mean?”
    “I think so.”
    “I guess you better go now. Thank you, Brownie. I guess I am going to cry for a little while now, and then get dressed.”
    He stopped by the door and said, “Did you tell George where you’re going?”
    “Not even Ida.”
    “I better let them know, don’t you think?”
    “Anything you say. Just be sure to tell George not to try to set up anything for me today.”
    He opened the door, picked up the tray and carried it out. When he looked back, closing the door, he saw that she had turned to lie face down across the bed. He saw the yellow robe and her dark hair and thought she looked small. And lost, somehow.
    Ida was sitting by the windows taking stitches in the bodice of a glittering gown. She looked up, eyebrows raised in query.
    “The doctor is driving her out to see the boy at school today.”
    “The good Lord preserve us all,” she said.
    He put the tray on a table near the corridor door. “Ida, how was it for her, when they were making her give up the baby?”
    She looked startled and then she looked through him into the past. “It was a savage thing,” she said softly. “The money machine was breaking down and they had to fix it or the money would stop. So … they fixed it. Sometimes I wonder …”
    “Wonder what?”
    She sighed. “If we’re any better. George and I. All of us. Saying we love her. All this loyalty. But maybe it’s the life we want. The glamor machine? And we get our part of it and get used to it, then tell ourselves we’re thinking of her good. I don’t know. Eighteen years now. It’s a poor time to have doubts.”
    “It depends on what she really wants, Ida.”
    “Maybe, just for the hell of it, she wants to be a woman. George was in. You better tell him what’s going on. He’s right across the hall, and I think he’s still in there.”
    Jason Brown crossed the corridor and knocked on George’s door. In a moment it opened, Lois Marney looked out at him and opened the door the rest of the way. She smiled openly yet shyly, then greeted him and turned quickly away. She wore a gray-green shirtwaist blouse with long sleeves, a pleated skirt in a darker shade of green. George was on the phone saying, “… please don’t try to tell me that, Harkness. I am not interested in what a triumph of modern color press stuff you got over there. Believe me, I am interested in Jenny Bowman because I am paid to be interested in her, and the proof you sent me, I swear to you my first thought was you got mixed up and sent me a picture of Apple Annie. If it was my job to scare people away, I would say yes, we should use it. I wouldn’t dare show it to