Whisper Their Love by Valerie Taylor Read Free Book Online

pretty and talented she was.
    "She designs her own clothes," she bragged, and brought out the aqua net to show off.
    Mimi fingered the seams critically. "Nice. We'll make Irv take us out for dinner and have a night on the town. Won't that be fun? You can wear my satin ankle-straps with this; my feet are bigger than yours but it won't hurt if they're loose." She stood up briskly, and it occurred to Joyce that maybe she was embarrassed, too. It was even possible that she had been thinking about how it would be when they met, and whether this marriage was going to change anything between them. "I'll trim your hair," Mimi said. "You'd look nice with a feather cut."
    That was more the way it had always been. At the farm, while Aunt Gen darned socks or put a hem in one of Joyce's dresses, Mimi had changed her nail polish or curled Joyce's hair or simply stalked around smoking and fidgeting. She couldn't sit still. It was like Sunday afternoon on the farm—but the thought of the farm suddenly made her feel lonesome and she tried to focus her attention on Mimi's sharp, thin scissors, going snip-snip around her ears.
    Later, soaking in a perfumed bath with bubbles popping against her skin, she decided that beautiful described how she felt. Or anyway, good-looking. She hopped out and looked at herself in the long mirror, but it was the same body, young and flexible, narrow at the waist and sweetly sloping to the shoulders, the triangle of pubic hair darker and more curly than the hair on her head. Mimi came in to watch her dress. "Lean forward when you put your bra on," she said, "it gives you a figure," and she was right. The long-line strapless bra was too tight, even though the nylon and lace felt so soft; the little hooks cut into her skin, but it raised her small breasts above the top of Mary Jean's dress and gave her a definite cleavage. Voluptuous, she thought happily.
    "You're getting a nice shape," Mimi said. Her voice sounded strained and tired. Joyce wrenched her gaze away from the mirror long enough to really look at her. Smeared with cold cream, her skin looked dull and rough, pitted a little on the cheeks and forehead, and her eyes were set in brown shadows. She made a grimace of smile as the doorbell rang. "Go and let him in, honey. I look like something the cat dragged in."
    The fancy latch on the door resisted her first try. Then it opened, and he was there, the man Mimi had telephoned to come and amuse them, the man she was marrying tomorrow. Stepfather. Not exactly an Ezio Pinza or Clifton Webb type, shorter and stockier, with a small mustache and cheerful brown eyes. He looked like a man who would enjoy a good steak or a. bonded whisky, or the feel of a fur. He hugged Joyce and then kissed her on the cheek, and his face smelled of expensive lotion but was already a little bit scratchy. "Some baby," he called to Mimi, and Mimi said something from the bedroom doorway, but Joyce didn't catch it. She was a little disturbed by the kiss; it was not exactly like being kissed by boys.
    Mimi came in, trailing white skirts. "Two girls at once," Irv said. "Look, you should have told me. I'd've dressed."
    "It's all right," Mimi said, but Joyce felt a pang of disappointment In the movies men wore dinner jackets. Mimi had put on a lot of pancake makeup and looked like herself again.
    Irv put an arm around each of them. "Come on, females. Let's go and paint the town."
    She got a little confused when she tried to remember, afterwards, the happenings of that evening. It was all kaleidoscoped without regard for time—the taxi ride down to the Loop and the crowds on the sidewalks, crummy neighborhoods squeezed up against glamorous ones. They went to a restaurant where the lights were dim and a man in an embroidered blouse went from table to table, making sad soft music on a violin. It made Joyce feel unhappy, but Irv sat studying the menu card.
    "You ought to have a little beard," she told him, surprising herself, and he