Strange Women, The by Miriam Gardner Read Free Book Online Page B

against him. "What's the matter, Mack? I was just loving you." But he got up, visibly shaken, pulling on his damp trousers.
    "I love you, too, pink-top. But you're a lot too big to play that way. Or didn't anybody ever tell you the facts of life?"
    Sudden comprehension hit her, like a fist. "But—but you're NOT my brother," she protested, half crying, "we're not related at all. We could even get married!"
    He laughed, but shakily. "But you're a lot too young for—for petting parties, pink-top. Heavy necking with my own stepsister is a little too low for me." He bent over her, tenderly. "Come on, Nor, don't cry. I'm not mad at you. Look, you don't—you don't really want to, either. I'd have to hurt you. You wouldn't really like it at all. Come on, now. Give your big brother a nice kiss, and go to sleep like a good girl." He gave her a little peck that was worse than a slap, and Nora cried herself to sleep in the cold bunk alone.
    She never cried again. They never spoke of it again. But he had turned cold and strange. He left off kissing her good night or hugging and wrestling with her in the old way she had loved. The memory lay, shaming and cold, at the back of her thoughts, whenever any boy made a move toward her.
    Next summer Mack had gone to work on a ranch, and Nora wrapped herself in her books and her studies, blaming herself for his self-imposed exile. Until that summer with Pammy…
    The grown-up Nora said angrily to herself, it's past. You've got work to do tomorrow. Go to sleep.
    But she did not close her eyes again.

CHAPTER 5
    Fairfax was a rural community, and the county hospital was under-staffed, under-equipped, and managed or mismanaged in a primitive fashion which made Nora's hair stand on end. They were in the grip of an early influenza epidemic, and for the first few days there was more than enough to do.
    Nora had had more than enough of camping out in another doctor's living quarters. She and Jill had taken rooms in a boarding house. She spent office hours in Reynolds' consulting rooms, made his rounds at the hospital, and tacked up a card on his door, saying that in emergencies she could be reached at the boarding house—as she all too frequently was.
    The weeks slipped by to Christmas Eve. Nora—found the waiting room empty, made rounds at a hospital with empty beds for the first time—every patient who could possibly wheedle his way out had maneuvered to spend Christmas at home—and took Jill to dinner in town. But she grimaced with premonition as they came out into the street.
    "What do you bet I get called out tonight?"
    "No odds," said Jill. "Is it always like this?"
    "Always. But let's walk around the square, anyhow."
    The shop windows glowed with lighted trees and holly and red bows and balls. The drug store was jammed with tinsel trinkets and last minute shoppers. For years Nora had ignored Christmas, except as a source of too many highway accidents jamming the emergency clinics; she thought the town looked like a carnival midway, but the sarcasm was gentle and without malice. They separated, drifting around the bright displays, and Nora bought various odds and ends because the atmosphere tempted her to self-indulgence—a silver pencil, a new lipstick, cologne, a box of chocolates.
    Outside the lighted square the streets were darker and snowier, and they had to pick their way through deep drifts; the snow and starlight transformed the evergreens on every lawn into silvered Christmas trees. Jill's nose was a little red candle nipped with frost as they climbed the stairs of the boarding house. They tossed their packages on Jill's bed, and sat there, rummaging in the parcels.
    "What's in that green box?" Jill asked.
    Nora shoved it at her. "Your Christmas present."
    The girl unwrapped it, hesitantly, and pulled the glass stopper from the bottle. "Oh, lovely. What is it?"
    "Jasmine, I think. I got it because you said you liked the sachet scent in my suitcase."
    "I remember." Jill raised herself