Death Trap by John D. MacDonald Page B

he graduated. The University of Illinois was going to give him a research fellowship thing. I could take my last year of high school there, and then go into the university. He wanted me to do that, and I said I would but I didn’t see why I should.”
    “Did your family know about the plan?”
    “Oh, no!”
    “What do you think they would have thought of it?”
    “My father would have said no. And all that time I was wondering if I had the courage to do it anyway. I think I would have.”
    “Did you think at all about the physical side of marriage?”
    “I don’t want you to talk like that.”
    “Nancy, please. I’m not trying to play games. This all may be important. I don’t know just how, but it may be a factor in this whole thing. I’m a stranger. You probably won’t see me again. I’m not making any kind of a pass. I’m in love with Vicky Landy, and I’ve done enough living to know that any other girl from here on in is of no use to me in any physical sense. I asked you this question. What did you think about the physical side of marriage?”
    “I—I thought about it. A lot, I guess. I didn’t know how it would be. I mean I know what happens, but I couldn’t imagine it being done to me. It scared me. It seems so—so nasty. A terrible thing. Jane Ann kept wanting to do it. I couldn’t understand how she could want that. She said it was fun; but I don’t think it was really for her, because so many times she would be so sour and moody. I—guess I just hoped that Alister would be gentle and not scare me and not want to do it very often, so maybe then I could pretend to him it was all right.”
    “Nancy, I’m not criticizing you, really. But that isn’t a healthy or normal way to think. There are a lot of girls and women who think the way you do. And a few men. Something must have caused that attitude.”
    “You’re not right. The other kind of people are dirty.”
    “They’re normal, honey. How do your parents feel about all this?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”
    “You weren’t found under a cabbage leaf, you know.”
    “Stop it! I don’t let myself think about that.”
    “Because it’s nasty, I suppose. Has your mother lectured you about this nastiness?”
    “No. Never.”
    I studied her closely and decided that she was not lying. This girl would make someone a wonderfully frigid wife. The emotional block was so pronounced that only superhuman patience could ever create a natural relationship. An initial queasiness had perhaps been intensified by the waywardness of the sister, by the severity of the beatings her sister was given, by the aura of innuendo in her social contacts with her contemporaries. Yet this did not seem enough. Had Jane Ann been the elder sister, it would seem more reasonable. Many nuns are the younger sisters of dissolute women. And the children of drunkards are often highly moral. I could not decide what had twisted this girl. And, also, I could not help but think, in the romantic tradition—or perhaps hope is the better word—that the kink in her emotions was something, that could be unknotted by the right word, the right gesture. As in the sexual symbolism of Sleeping Beauty.
    She took advantage of my silence to say, “I don’t see how this has anything to do with whether Alister did it.”
    “Perhaps it doesn’t. Let’s try another approach. It came out at the trial that you and Alister had quarreled on Thursday night. Did you have a date with him for Friday?”
    “Yes, but we broke it after the fight.”
    “Was it a bad fight?”
    “Not very bad. It was mostly silly. He started talking about this town in that funny way of his, saying how it was such an awful, narrow, little place, full of prejudice and jealousies and tribal rites. I said it was my home and I liked it. He said if I couldn’t see it for what it was, I was blind or stupid or both. We—went on from there.”
    “Did your parents approve of your dating him two