Other Men's Daughters Read Free Page B

isn’t it?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œAre you feeling ill?”
    â€œNo, sir.”
    Drawer Three, he thought. The Pill.
    â€œBut you want to talk with a doctor.”
    â€œI want a prescription, sir.” A distant speech of soft vowels, southern, a speech restrained by shyness and courtesy, a pleasure for Merriwether whose own speech had almost Bostonian “a’s” and other piquancies of New England, derived perhaps from the tight mouth of skeptic reserve, the residue of generations of legal and theological hair-splitting. Or, perhaps, from the endemic New England constipation, the holding back as long as possible before going out to the icy latrine.
    â€œPlease sit down.” The yellow skirt drew up, just concealing that for which she sought prescription. “As you know, a doctor can’t prescribe before he examines.”
    â€œYes, sir. I want a prescription for the contraceptive pill.”
    â€œHave you had a prescription before?”
    â€œAt school, but I didn’t get it renewed last time. I thought I could get it here in Student Health.”
    â€œHave you had a Pap test recently?”
    â€œIn April.”
    â€œWe make a point of talking a bit about these chemical contraceptives.”
    â€œYes, sir. I’ve had some talks about them.”
    â€œThat’s fine. Have you noticed anything unusual since you’ve taken them?”
    â€œI think my breasts got bigger.” A wonderful smile, slow, the face finely engraved with parentheses outside the lips, a smile of intelligence and humor.
    â€œâ€˜Expel Nature through the door, she’ll come back through the window,’” said Dr. Merriwether. Miss Ryder’s smile flowed into laughter, her face creased beautifully. An intelligent face. “For many girls it’s like simultaneously dieting and feasting. There’s an awful lot of nonsense about The Pill’s side effects. Some are serious, but researchers tend to stuff a mouse with a dose that’s a tenth its body weight, record the ensuing miseries, and then wave red flags. For the Reader’s Digest . You could kill someone with water on such an experimental base. My own view is that the chief side effects have to do with the new orderliness it introduces. As the white pills leave the blue dial, people chart their monthly psychophysical changes.”
    The lecture was directed to the sheared stone pipes of Memorial Hall. He looked back to Miss Ryder. Or, at least, to her yellow dress rising over a fine mesomorphic body, the bra-less breasts, full, finely nippled, whitely isolated by bikinied sun-tan sessions. He had seen many girls’ bodies and was habituated even to their surprises. Beauty would stream from what had appeared sheer adiposity; a slim virgin would simmer in dermal poison; another would unclothe a venereal monument, so munificent and warm that he had to force constraint into his palms on her chest and back.
    â€œI see you don’t have time to waste, Miss Ryder. But I think I won’t bother examining you today. I won’t even ask you the state of your feelings. Don’t report me.” And he turned from the perhaps-offering, perhaps-display and wrote the prescription.
    The dress was on one arm. Now it resumed its place, the golden hair disappeared and, reappearing, was tossed aside. The long, Indian-hued head hoisted, arched, tossed, an athlete’s movement. “Thank you, Doctor. It’s very nice of you.”
    â€œI hope everything works out well, Miss Ryder.”
    â€œIt’ll be ok. Thank you. For everything.”
    Wolf’s book on thirst had an epigraph from Psalms : “My strength was dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; thou hast brought me into the dust of death.”
    After Miss Ryder left, Dr. Merriwether felt a little dust in his own body. “Foolish,” he thought. He found his eyes on themselves; in the small mirror over the