thought, “Oh, don’t I?”
Johnny had been handsome and cocky, terribly smart, terribly ambitious. When he had asked her to marry him, she had been quite sure that heaven could offer no more.
Five months afterward, almost to the day, he had asked her to return his ring. “I thought it could work,” he’d told her. “I know now it couldn’t.”
Arleen had been unbelieving. “Why wouldn’t it work, Johnny? I wasn’t going to be only your wife. I was going to be your nurse and your receptionist. I was even going to . . . to keep your books.” Her voice had broken.
He’d shaken his head impatiently. “You’ll make a fine wife for the right man, Arleen. I’m not the right man. I want to climb to the top of my profession, but not by taking one rung of the ladder at a time! I want to leap to the top!”
Arleen had wanted to tell him that she didn’t think it was that way in medicine; that you worked your way to the top. But he hadn’t given her the chance.
“I’ve found a gal who can help me make that leap,” he’d told her.
“You love her?” Arleen had asked him.
“I want to marry her, if that’s what you mean,” he’d answered. “She has the money and the influence to help me.” At Arleen’s shocked look he’d added, “Now, honey, don’t look that way. I’ve never pretended to be a knight in shining armor, have I?”
She’d had to admit that he hadn’t; that he’d never pretended to be anything except what he was. The dreams had been on her side alone. And the love.
Johnny’s love was the surface kind, never going deep enough to bruise. She had made her mind up, after Johnny, that never again would she let herself be hurt.
She liked men; she enjoyed their company. But she determined that never again would she allow herself to fall in love.
It was over a year since she had made that promise, and her heart was still safe inside the invincible, love-resistant shield she had built to protect it.
Sighing, Arleen glanced down at her notebook. One more call to make in the building. “Mrs. Mario Luigui. Eight months pregnant. Missed last two check-ups at clinic.”
The Luigui apartment was on the floor below. Thinking that it was easier walking downstairs than up, Arleen headed for the stairs.
CHAPTER 2
THE LUIGUI apartment was in startling contrast to the Ryan place, where at least an attempt was made to keep it neat, and the window plants had provided brightness and color.
Here there was appalling squalor. Arleen had difficulty repressing her dismay at the filth and ugliness of the three rooms into which were crowded, as a quick glance at her notebook told her, ten human beings.
Anna Luigui was half lying, half sitting on a cot against one wall. Her coarse red face looked puffy and bloated. Incredibly dirty feet stretched out from beneath an equally dirty skirt.
Arleen turned her attention to the thin, undersized boy who had let her into the apartment. His nose was running and there was a patch of scaly skin on one side of his face that looked like ringworm. But it was impossible to tell, under all the dirt.
She started to hand him a tissue from her purse, but the moment she bent toward him he pulled back wildly, dashed to the far side of the room, and huddled against a wall.
A young girl of perhaps fifteen or sixteen, in a sweater a good two sizes too small, and a skirt that hugged her slender body as if she had been poured into it, laughed. “Poor Pietro. He’s so used to getting banged he thought that was what you were going to do.”
Arleen turned her gaze on the girl. She was quite pretty, or would be if she would wash off some of the heavy make-up she wore.
She returned Arleen’s look with mockery.
Arleen shook her head. “I’m sorry your little brother got that impression. I only wanted him to let me look at that patch on his cheek.”
The woman on the cot laid down the comic book she’d been reading. She put a finger to the side of her head and tapped. “Pietro ain’t right in the head,” she said. “That’s what makes him act like that.”
The girl swirled around to glare at the woman. “Pietro isn’t any more crazy than you are!” She flung at her. “If you’d stop banging him around the head every time he comes near you, he wouldn’t be so scared of people!”
The woman glared back. “Two years you go to high school, and you think you’re so smart! You make me sick. And them bad boys you run around with. Don’t think I don’t know about them? You want to get put in jail, huh? Answer me that. Huh? Girls who think they’re so smart, that’s what happens to them. Ain’t that right?” She turned her attention to Arleen.
Arleen ignored the attempt to bring her into the argument. “I’m the visiting nurse, Mrs. Luigui. You are Mrs. Luigui?” The woman nodded sullenly. “You didn’t show up for your last two appointments at the clinic,” Arleen said, speaking slowly and firmly. “These check-ups are for your own protection, and for that of your unborn baby.”
The woman shrugged and spat out the words. “Eight kids. That’s enough. Huh, that’s enough? Them doctors at that clinic, they’re always saying, ‘Now, Mrs. Luigui, you got to be careful you don’t lose your baby. You got to be careful!’ ” Her laughter rasped. “And why I got to be so careful? Huh? One less kid and the others don’t have to shove over in bed to make room for another one. Huh, how do you like that?”
Arleen wet her lips as she stared at Mrs. Luigui. It wasn’t possible for a woman to feel that way. It wasn’t possible! The way she talked it sounded as if she didn’t care if something happened to her baby. No, it wasn’t even that. She talked as if she wanted something to happen to it!
Arleen felt a tug at her skirt. A small grimy hand was gripping a fold of the blue cloth. Wide, dark eyes in a small, dirty face gazed upward. “Pretty,” the child lisped. “Pretty lady.”
Arleen felt her heart jerk as she stared down at the child. Mrs. Luigui hadn’t meant what she’d said. She was a victim of prenatal blues. It happened in young wives afraid they appeared ugly in their husband’s eyes. And in women like Mrs. Luigui, who had quite a few children and were exhausted by the endless demands made upon them. Of course she had not meant what she’d said.
The child’s wide, wistful eyes touched Arleen’s heart. She wondered if she still had the candy bar she’d bought last night. She could not remember having eaten it.
She opened her purse, being very careful to make no sudden movement that would frighten this child, as she had frightened the little boy when she’d first come in.
He still leaned against the wall, solemnly watching her and the little girl, one grimy thumb stuck between his pale lips.
Arleen found the candy bar and handed it to the little girl clinging to her skirts. The child grabbed the candy, her small hand closing around it fiercely. She turned from Arleen, letting go of her skirt, and it was suddenly as if Arleen had set off an explosion.
The child clutching the candy bar was surrounded by
