Mary McCarthy
DOTTIE MAKES AN HONEST
WOMAN OF HERSELF*
"Get yourself a pessary." Dick's muttered
envoi,
as he pro–
pelled her firmly to the door the following morning, fell on Dottie's
ears with the effect of a stunning blow. Bewilderedly, she understood
him to be saying, "Get yourself a peccary," and a vision of a coarse,
piglike mammal passed across her dazed consciousness, together with
memories of Kraft-Ebing and the girl who had kept a goat at Vassar.
Her hurt feelings descried a variant of the old-maid joke. Tears
rushed to her eyes; she and Dick had had a dismal breakfast-not
a word, not a look had acknowledged what had taken place between
them in the night. She might have been a stranger or an enemy. Yet
up to this dreadful moment, she had allowed herself wanly to hope.
"This is tragedy," concluded Dottie, with a scholarly start of recog–
nition.
In
his dressing gown, with his hair disordered and his biting
smile, Dick reminded her of someone. Hamlet-she thought-putting
Ophelia away from him: "Get thee to a nunnery." She stared at
him winking back the tears and swallowing, still unable to conceive
that this farewell, this harsh thrusting-off, was happening to
her.
"A
female contraceptive, a plug," Dick threw out impatiently. "You get
it from a lady doctor. Ask your friend Kay."
Understanding dawned. Dottie's heart gave a bound;
in
a per–
son like Dick, her jubilant instincts assured her, this was the language
of love. But she did not dare let him see her surprise, which would
show him that she was not sure of him. "Yes, Dick," she whispered,
her dark eyes beaming with a calm, resolute joy. Their looks met
squarely, for the first time that morning; a frown pinched his brow.
*
A chapter from a novel,
The Group,
which takes place in the '30s.
