Beverly thought that was quite a story. Bill assured her it was the truth and nothing but, as best as he could tell it. No exaggeration, no lies, just what it was.
Then he told Beverly—he couldn’t say why—the story of his father and his Uncle Maxwell meeting up stateside after the war, after his father had recovered, before their discharges. His uncle had been an aerial gunner in the Air Force. They met up, went on a three-day bender, went AWOL for three days. The private stripe was because his father was busted down to a PFC for those three days AWOL.
Beverly looked down to her feet before she said anything about herself, then she said, maybe a bit too forced, that he’d gotten her pregnant and they’d decided not to have an abortion.
Abortions back then were illegal and it would have had to have been a back-alley one and they were expensive and dangerous. He’d offered to pay for it and go with her when she went to have it, but as she told it to Bill she just couldn’t do it, she wouldn’t do it, said she didn’t want to have a kid but she didn’t want to have an abortion.
Well, Beverly told Bill, at least he did the right thing and asked her to marry him. She was a dope, she said, because she was dumb enough to do it.
Bill stopped her there and told her about Jenny, all about Jenny, Pam’s cousin, and Jenny’s boyfriend Peter.
He told the story of the party Pam and he had and how that day Pam’s cousin Jenny had a back-alley abortion. There was another cousin, Nina, who came up to him at the party and told him that Jenny was laying in his and Pam’s bed, that she was bleeding pretty badly, that she’d had an abortion that day and had been trying to keep it quiet but that wasn’t gonna work cause the cat was out of the bag and now she needed help.
It was a tough night. The party went on and once when Pam was in the kitchen, doing double duty as it were, kind of putting out snacks to keep the party going and getting wet cloths to soothe Jenny with, he walked into the kitchen to find Peter hitting on Pam. Peter had moved behind the counter and was trying to feel her ass and kiss her at the same time. To her credit, Pam was pushing him away and telling him to go away and leave her alone.
Bill’s walking in was enough to stop Peter from what he was doing but Peter didn’t have any shame or guilt about it. He just kind of shrugged his shoulders and walked out.
Wow! That was Beverly’s reaction. Then she asked if that were all there was, and Bill went on to tell her the rest. First part was him and Peter sitting on the living room sofa together after the party was over. They smoked a joint and drank a beer. Peter never apologized and Bill didn’t say anything, wasn’t any reason to fight about it, especially not then while Jenny lay in the bedroom near-dying.
She did near-die, Bill said. But they finally reached the doctor and he told them how to position her and to best help stop the bleeding. He’d given her antibiotics and pain killers, so he said to get the bleeding under control and put her to sleep.
Peter finally went home alone. Jenny did recover. Jenny and Peter stayed together, but that wasn’t the end of the kitchen episode. When Jenny was alright, Pam told her all about it, about what Peter did, about how could anyone do something like that when his girlfriend was laying in the bedroom in such bad shape.
Jenny said yeah to that. Jenny was a spiteful girl.
