Free Next to Love by Ellen Feldman

possibility that he might refuse to give them to her. She has to have those tests. Without them, she cannot marry Claude. Without them, she cannot even see him. That’s what the training films say. If you get one of those diseases, you can never go near a nice girl again. They don’t bother to say what happens if a nice girl gets a disease, because nice girls don’t.
    He crosses the office, opens the door to the examining room, and tells her to go in, take off all her clothes from the waist down, and put on the gown.
    The examination is painful. That might be the result of the night before, or perhaps the doctor wants to punish her. That’s all right. She deserves to be punished. The more he hurts her, the better she feels.
    “There’s one more thing,” she says to the ceiling, and tries not to gasp at the pain. “How can I tell if I’m pregnant?”
    He does not answer.
    “Is there any way to tell if I’m pregnant?” she repeats.
    “I see the intercourse was recent.” The voice comes from between her legs.
    She nods.
    “Was it recent or not?” he shouts.
    “Last night,” she mumbles.
    “I can’t hear you.”
    “Last night.”
    “In that case, there’s no point in giving you a pregnancy test. All you’d get would be a false negative. When was your last period?”
    She calculates. “A week ago. I was finished on Tuesday, just before I left home.”
    He stands and peels off his rubber gloves with a nasty snap.
    “Then you’re safe in that department. Probably.”
    SHE STAYS IN TOWN for four days. That’s how long it takes to get the results of the tests. The hotel is grim. She is too overwrought to read, but she would sell her soul for a radio. She sits in her room, stares at the walls, and thinks that no one in the world knows where she is. She used to dream of escaping from South Downs, but not like this.
    She longs to talk to someone. An arm around her shoulders. Words of solace. Not your fault. She would not believe them, but she still wants to hear them. There is no one she can tell. Grace would be horrified. Millie would listen and somehow manage not to hear. Only Claude would understand. He is the one she confides in and explains to and pleads with as she paces the hotel room. But Claude is the one person she can never tell.
    Marie Bours was the girl’s name. Babe has not thought of her in years. She was a hardworking girl with pasty skin that tended to break out but a sweet smile and pale-blue eyes, and Babe’s cousin Louis was crazy about her. They had posted the banns. That’s how close the wedding was. Maybe that was what gave the son of the family Marie kept house for the idea. Droit du seigneur . One morning when the rest of the family was out, he cornered her in the kitchen. Marie refused to go back to work. Louis naturally wanted to know why. When she told him, he broke the engagement. Slut. Whore. Temptress. Claude is not her cousin Louis, but she cannot take the chance.
    She thinks of going to confession, though she cannot remember the last time she went. Stranded in that bare hotel room, she longs for the painted Madonnas with their gilded crowns and forgiving smiles, and the flickering candles, and the sweet sickly smell of sin expiated and innocence redeemed. She remembers a Saturday when she was about eight or nine. She went into the confessional, terrified. She had so much on her conscience. The ice she and Grace and Millie had put in Mrs. Dawson’s milk bottles. The lies to her father. The way she shook the carriage in the hope that the baby sister she had to mind would tumble out. But she got one of the young fathers with a kind voice, and her penance was just heavy enough to make her feel clean, and when she finished, she ran down the aisle and banged out the front door with—she could not help it—her best Indian war whoop. But this time a clear conscience will not suffice. She needs a clean bill of health.
    On the fourth day, she goes back to the doctor’s office. The