Alma Mater (21 page)

felds are very interested in sex, mmm-huh. And I know Bunny put a
stop to that. Damned straight." Georgia raised her forefinger.

R. J., processing this unsavory but ludicrous news, exhaled through her nostrils two streams of blue Lucky Strike smoke. She put her ciga
rette on the ashtray. "Georgia, I think none of us should speak of this."

"Of course, you know she carried on with Boonie Ashley." She
paused while she waited for the name to have an effect, which it did.
Boonie, proprietor of the local convenience store, was married.
"I
told
myself then that they were both white and over twenty-one, if you'll
pardon the expression. I like black people
,
I
do, but I grew up with
these expressions and
I
don't see a thing wrong with them. But a high-
school boy—now that's trouble."

"Yes, it is. I expect, Sissy is seeking Frank's advice." R. J. couldn't get the picture of Sissy sucking off Buzz out of her mind.

"Hojo won't tell." Vic thought she had a bead on Hojo's character,
smart with a wild streak.

"If Buzz has a grain of sense, he won't either." R. J. picked up her
cigarette.

Georgia's hand flew to her bosom. "I'm certainly not going to put
my sister in jail, ruin the family name, but I am deserving of some rec
ompense for my watchful duties over Sissy. Really, you all have no
idea."

"When things have cooled down, perhaps you, Sissy, and Frank
should broach this subject without Edward, initially."
R.
J. reached for
a biscuit.

"Yes." Georgia drained the coffee cup and then reached for the orange juice.
"I
am so thirsty and hungry, the change of seasons."

Frank, Sissy on his arm, walked around the house, Piper behind
them. "Why, hello. Georgia, how good to see you."

Sissy's eyes, red and puffy, attested to her tears. "Don't you hit me."

"I'm not going to hit you.
I
just don't understand how you could do
something like that at eight-thirty in the morning.
I
knew when you
pulled out of the driveway you were up to something. So I followed
you. How could you? In the ladies' rooms"

"Well—" Sissy had no defense.

"Aren't you the lucky duck that everyone who works there is a man
and uses the men's room?" Georgia, now feeling mellow, said to Frank,
"This has got to stop."

"I believe it will. No reason to discuss it." He blushed slightly.
"We'll call on you later in the week." Georgia, with assistance from Vic, stood up.

"We will." Sissy was surprised.

"Yes. I'll talk to you about it later." Then to no one in particular Georgia said, "Heterosexual overdrive. Hotter than forty balled tomcats. That's the trouble."

"I can't believe you said that!" Sissy affected a pose of shock tinged
with moral superiority.

"You just shut your mouth, girlie." Georgia, steady as a rock,
pounded the bricks to her car.

Sissy, after a squeeze on her shoulder from Frank, daintily walked
to her Plymouth.

As they both drove out, Chris said, "Girls just got to have fun.
"
Everybody looked at her and then laughed.

"Dad, could Sissy wind up in jail?" Vic asked once she recovered.
"Only if Nora presses charges, and she doesn't know. I doubt Buzz
is going to enlighten her. It's all so embarrassing."

"But it is funny, Frank, you have to admit." R. J. laughed.

"Well, I guess sex is funny when it happens to someone else." He
blushed again.

_J

uggling two lovers tested Vic's creativity. Charly, blessed with
male myopia when it came to women as lovers, never had a clue.
Chris, far more insightful, suspected Vic was sleeping with Charly,

but she was terrified to ask. She knew Vic would tell her the truth.

Since Charly had a curfew, Vic would invite him over when Chris had classes and Charly didn't. This turned out to be only on Wednes
day afternoons but he didn't complain, he was so thrilled they were
sleeping together. Every night Vic slept at Chris's or vice versa. They
couldn't stay away from one another. Since they were in different de
partments at school, they were rarely seen together on campus. Off campus they were inseparable.

Vic dutifully attended the next few home football games, taking
Jinx and Chris with her. On weekends of away games, she drove
home. She worried about money, and used that worry to keep her
mind off her confusion over Chris and Charly. Mignon, in a growth
spurt, shot up one full inch. She said her bones hurt from growing
pains. As October unfolded with crystal-clear skies and the beginnings of color, Mignon moved into more maturity. The family breathed a
collective sigh of relief. The Wallaces bickered, but no shingles were dropped from the roof, no ratshot was fired. IA* transformed her red hair to brittle blonde. Bunny researched the nursery business with her
usual thoroughness. R. J. told Frank he had to sign everything over to

her. He did so and promptly sank into a genteel depression. The sisters
began staking out where they were going to plant trees and shrubs for
their nursery.

The days stayed toasty, the nights were crisp, and with each pass
ing day the light softened. High color usually occurred in Surry County
the last week of October and the first week of November, and this
early November proved especially brilliant.

Williamsburg, across the James, was jammed with tourists. The
campus of William and Mary glowed in the buttery light, the bricks
warming to a paprika shade, the white window frames and doorjambs
appearing even more white in contrast. Young people tagging along
with parents often fell in love with William and Mary on such visits.
They would return as students in a few years. The current students
trotted across the quad and lawns. Blow-out exams were safely in the
future. Like ships anchored offshore, they wouldn't come to port for
some time. Late October and early November just made people happy,
even giddy with happiness, and many declared it the most beautiful
time of the year. They said the same thing during high spring, too. But fall's tapestry had a few melancholy threads woven alongside the brilliant reds, blazing oranges, and rich cadmium yellows. This knowledge
of the coming winter sweetened the season.

Thoughtful people, or those old enough to remember, have re
flected on how people party with a frenzy, couple with abandon, swim
in champagne on the eve of disaster. Diaries and letters attest to the
fact that the best parties ever in Virginia were held from 1859
to 1863.
Somehow it made sense, like having Mardi Gras before Lent makes
sense. Fall carried that sense of ending, of fleeting beauty.

Vic celebrated not at parties but with every breath. She loved the
scent of fall. She loved the turning leaves. She loved the soft squish of
the grass underfoot when she walked. She loved going home, rowing
on the river, the water shining off her oars. She loved William and
Mary with the fierceness of one who must soon say good-bye. The fact that she was a senior finally hit her. She loved her mother, father, and
sister. She loved Piper. She loved the creamy, majestic cumulus clouds
hovering over the tidy, sensible layout of the oldest part of the cam-

pus. She loved the zinnias in the garden, the late blooming roses. She
loved the rose between Chris's legs. She loved Jinx's laugh. She loved
the soft hair on Charly's chest. She loved her own body, the speed and
strength of it. She loved hearing the screech of a seagull, the sound
of ropes slapping against a mast. Life's fragmented beauty finally re
vealed itself, the pattern of the mosaic becoming clear: celebrate,
dance, laugh, love.

Sex initiated her enlightenment, but it spread far beyond that activity. She understood that her mother loved life in a way Bunny did
not. She thought Charly might surrender to the world's beauty in time.
She wondered if it took men longer or if other men kept them from
this wild, ferocious tide of emotion. Duty hung about their necks, a
heavy wooden yoke much different from the yoke around female
necks and, to her way of thinking, much worse. She began to see men
differently
_;
she began to see their suffering, and her heart opened to
them as never before. Loving Chris made her sensitive to men. Loving
Charly made her sensitive to women.

Life was older than reason. She now knew it, and she was aston
ished at how many people did not. They believed in false prophets
when the smallest butterfly was proof of life's holiness.

She hoped Chris would follow her into this uncharted territory of
feeling, of vision, of sensing. She knew Chris loved her, and she began
to know that Chris, constrained by inner fears, carried more baggage than she herself did. Vic also began to understand that loving Chris
would be a piercing social burden even as it was the springboard to her
own spiritual awakening, to emotional fullness.

She loved Charly and Chris. She loved them differently and curi
ously, she wanted them to love one another. Why choose? Why ac
cept the world's limiting structures? It was easy to love more than one
person at a time. The world made it hard, the heart made it easy.

Thank God for Jinx. Vic could tell her what she felt and Jinx lis
tened intently. Occasionally, she felt a flash of jealousy from Jinx over
the time she spent with Chris, but it quickly subsided. Friendship was
the truest
love.

Charly, bursting with joy, dreamed of a future with Vic, one with a

house and two cars and eventually children. Intelligent as he was, he
didn't look beneath the surface, he didn't ask the difficult questions.
Why? The world was made for Charly. He had a good heart. He would
make it a better world. Loving gave him more compassion, but he didn't
question the unwritten laws.

Chris questioned them silently. She feared the future. Love made
her both happy and wretched, for she feared losing Vic. Why would a
woman like Vic give up the privileges of eventually marrying Charly
for the sake of loving her? It seemed incomprehensible to Chris that
anyone would truly follow their heart, for childhood had taught her
that social position and things were more important than people. She
could see that the Savedges weren't that way, but could she let that old
belief go? And why shouldn't Vic marry Charly? The more Chris was
around him, the more she understood he was a lovable man. She evi
denced little sexual feeling for men, but she could see his particular beauty. The more one loves, the more one has to lose. She tried to govern her love for Vic, but she couldn't. The force of the emotion
blew away all restraint. She experienced moments when the fear
evaporated, when tight in Vic's arms, she felt safe, light, silly even. She
lived for those moments, and for the laughter. She had never laughed
as much as she did around the Savedges, Jinx, and Charly. Even Piper
made her laugh, and she fell in love with golden retrievers.

The laughter reached a crescendo the week before Thanksgiving
vacation. No one could concentrate on their studies, as every student
was thinking about going home or to a friend's for the holiday. Even
professors, valiantly trying to cram facts, theories, and themes into
young heads, struggled to concentrate.

Thursday at seven o'clock, it was already velvety dark. Vic and
Chris picked up Charly from his forced feeding at the training table.
He insisted on taking the women to dinner, where he sipped a Coke,
watching them eat.

"We need to do something to remember this year. Something out
rageous. Something that will become a legend at William and Mary," Vic said.

"What kind of a legend?" Chris munched on a French fry.

"If I were the drum major, the last time I'd take the home field, at