THE GROUP
and the remains of a coffee ring from the bakery; no
( sat there, with his coffee, reading the sports news and
THREE
"Get yourself a pessary." Dick's muttered envoi, as he
propelled her firmly to the door the next morning, fell
on Dottie's ears with the effect of a stunning blow. Be
wildered, she understood him to be saying "Get yourself
a peccary," and a vision of a coarse piglike mammal they
had studied in Zoology passed across her dazed con
sciousness, like a slide on a screen, followed by awful
memories of Krafft-Ebing and the girl who had kept a
goat at Vassar. Was this some variant she ought to know
about, probably, of the old-maid joke? Tears dampened
her eyes, though she tried to wink them back. Evidently,
Dick hated her for what had taken place between them
in the night; some men were like that, Kay said, after
they had yielded to their passions: "an expense of spirit
in a waste of shame." They had had the most dismal
breakfast, which he had fixed, not letting her help him,
on a grill in the clothes closet-scrambled eggs and coffee
58
fruit or fruit juice. While they ate, he had hardly spoken;
he had passed her the first section of the paper and then
the classified ads. When she had tried to give him the
news section, he had impatiently pushed it back to her.
Yet up to this very moment she had been telling herself
that he might have just got up "on the wrong side of the
bed," as Mother said; Daddy was cross too, sometimes,
in the morning. Now she saw, though, that there was
no use pretending any more; she had lost him. In his
dressing gown, with his hair disordered and his cruel
biting smile and bitter taunts, he reminded her of some
one. Hamlet-of course-putting Ophelia away from
him. "Get thee to a nunnery." "I loved you not." But
she could not say, like Ophelia, "I was the more de
ceived" (which was the most pathetic moment in the
whole play, the class had decided); because Dick had
not deceived her; it was she who had been fooling herself.
She stared at him, swallowing hard; a tear slid out of
one eye. "A female contraceptive, a plug," Dick threw
out impatiently. "You get it from a lady doctor. Ask
your friend Kay."
Understanding dawned; her heart did a handspring.
In a person like Dick, her feminine instinct caroled, this
was surely the language of love. But it was a mistake to
show a man that you had been unsure of him even for
a second. "Yes, Dick," she whispered, her hand twisting
the doorknob, while she let her eyes tell him softly what
a deep, reverent moment this was, a sort of pledge be
tween them. Luckily, he could never imagine the thing
she had been thinking about the peccary! The happiness
in her face caused him to raise an eyebrow and frown.
59