Free Lion House,The by Marjorie Lee Page B

Frannie and Brad appeared —Brad all combed and freshened. "How's for Suburban Switchies?" he suggested gayly. "You go back with Jeff, Jo—and I'll cart Frannie."
    "Make sure you just cart her," I said as we got into separate cars.
    "Oh, Jo," Frannie sighed with a laugh. "You ought to have your paranoids removed!"
    On the way back Jeff talked mostly about his job. "What's all the noise about a guy's having to own his own business?" he asked. "I'm doing all right. And when things slack off for a month or two it's not my baby; I can sleep. I don't get it: if you don't run your own show around here you're sick or something. What I earn is more than nine tenths of the nation. Is that bad? To hear Marian talk you'd think we were living in the slums!"
    "We've all got problems," I told him. "But when you get right down to basics, Marian couldn't live without you, and you know it."
    "That's what you think!" he said. "Ever notice her at a party? Marian's a very, very attractive girl. That silver-blonde hair of hers is real, you know. And so are those other two nice things she's got! You'd be surprised how many solid citizens have called her up in the afternoons to make a pitch. You can say what you want about her, but whatever it takes along those lines, she's got it!"
    He was doing the same thing inside of himself that I so often did about Brad: using a thin-skinned, half-baked Pride of Possession to overcome a multitude of sins. She's a bitch all right, he was saying silently; but she's my bitch. And whatever happens on the side —look at me, fellas, look at met I'm the guy who takes her home!
    We got back to the Brownes' sometime after eleven; and I didn't get much chance to wonder where Brad and Frannie were. Almost immediately I was surrounded by parents. There were two couples with kids I'd recently accepted; and a few more who were thinking of starting and wanted to feel me out on policy and attitude.
    When Frannie and Brad did come in I didn't get a chance to talk to her. She simply waved to me on her way to the powder room.
     

CHAPTER NINE
    Some weeks later Frannie caught the German measles. There had been a run of it in Meade's Manor and someone had probably brought it to the party.
    A couple of days after its inception I left my desk with a volunteer assistant and went to visit Frannie. She was sitting up in bed in one of Marc's clean shirts. The stark whiteness of it played up the grim red rash that covered her face and arms.
    "Hi," I said, tossing her the giant Hershey bar I'd picked up on the way as a Get Well present "How are you?"
    "Terrible."
    "It's awful with adults," I said. "How come you weren't immune? Didn't you ever have it as a child?"
    "No. It's one of the few childhood miseries I was spared."
    I sat down on the edge of the bed. "Is there anything I can do?" I asked. She shook her head and began gnawing at her nails. It made me break inside to see her looking that way: she was so sick, so damned beat. She reminded me of kids I'd had to drive home from school because they'd come down with something. It was their eyes that always killed me. They looked out at you with a kind of startledness, as if somebody had given them a slap they didn't deserve.
    "You did call a doctor, didn't you?" I asked.
    "Yes."
    "Who?"
    "Winston."
    "Winston? Isn't he your obstetrician?"
    "Yes."
    I stood up. "Why did you call him? Why not Len Perloff's uncle? He's your G.P., isn't he?"
    "Him too. We had to get the letter saying it was German measles."
    I sat down again. "What's it all about, Frannie?" I asked. "What aren't you telling me?"
    She pulled both knees up and put her head down on her arms across them. I could barely hear her. "Pregnant," she said. "Less than three months. You know what can happen to a baby if you have German measles during the first three months? Three out of eight, Winston says: blind, cleft palates, who knows what all else..."
    She was pregnant. A strange pang of envy went through me. "So he's going to do