Alma Mater (30 page)

Cardinal Newman group on campus would be honored to receive a
lecture from the monsignor on the Scripture mandates concerning re
lationships between men and women. The monsignor felt the college
Catholic group had been avoiding him. He was assured that the cam
pus church groups were all very busy. No slight was intended. The se
mester passes in the blink of an eye.

A mollified monsignor, all smiles, closed the doors to his office.
The three less-than-thrilled university administration members walked
back to the campus. Their compromise was that the school would not
cite this on Vic's record. She would have to leave the college, but there
would be no mention of it in her file.

When Dean Hansen called Vic into his office late Wednesday
morning, he was impressed with her calm. But then, he'd been im
pressed when she'd confessed to the prank in the first place. She
thanked him for keeping her record clean.

She asked if she would lose the work she'd completed to date,
which would mean that wherever she'd transfer she'd have to com
plete one year instead of one semester. He said unfortunately she
would lose the work she had completed to date
_;
there was no other
way since she couldn't take final exams.

Vic asked the dean to wait until Friday to call her parents. She
wanted to go home and talk to them herself.

He agreed.

Vic shook his hand, walked out, and took a deep breath of clear, fall air. A profound sense of resolution filled her. She didn't exactly
know why she felt so good, but she did.

She left a note at the dorm for Charly, promising to call him that
night, telling him she'd be going home to break the news to her Mom
and Dad tomorrow.

Jinx was in class so Vic walked to her house and left her a similar note.

She walked back through campus and noticed how the symmetry
of the elegant brick buildings suggested order. And conformity. Rigid
ity. She felt as if she were seeing William and Mary, her Alma Mater,
in a new way for the first time.

Chris discovered Vic waiting in the hall outside her American poetry seminar. "Hello."

"Hello."

They walked silently down the steps and out onto the grass.
"You look happy, Vic."

"I am. I'm a free woman," Vic said with a quiet smile.

"Oh, no." Chris didn't share Vic's happiness. She was afraid that in
a year or two, Vic would regret this. Even more, she felt guilty that she
didn't confess, too.

"I feel . . . clean."

"I feel kind of bad that I didn't own up to it."

"You need to get your degree and I don't. Anyway, it was my idea."
"I went along with it."

"Oh, you sound just like Charly."

"He's right." Chris always felt a pang of fear when Charly's name
was mentioned.

"I know what I'm doing. Now let's go home and celebrate." She
whispered in her ear. "I'm going to make you so hot you'll beg me
for it."

Chris blushed. "Vic, just seeing you makes me hot."

"Even hotter, then." Vic wanted to kiss her ear. "Let's make love
and make love and make love. Then I've got to go home and get it over
with." She sighed.

"Tonight?"

Vic paused. "Tomorrow morning. But you might have to tie me up to keep me tonight." She winked.

"How do you think of these things?" Chris marveled at Vic's inde
fatigable sexual energy and imagination.

"I don't know. But I never thought of them until I met you."

_W

hitecaps frothed the top of the James due to a stiff wind
blowing up from the southeast, not the usual direction.
Small-craft warning flags flapped in the wind at boathouses

and yacht clubs up and down the river, the metal bits on the ropes
clanging insistently against the flag poles.

Charly borrowed a buddy's car to get to his appointment with
Mr. Savedge. As the Jamestown ferry docked at Scotland Wharf, he
was heartened as always at how agricultural Surry County remained. Southside Virginia existed in a time apart from the rest of the state. He
liked that.

Ever since the night he'd gone to bed with both Vic and Chris,
he'd obsessively thought about them, alternating between heightened
sexual desire, at the idea of the two women making love to one an
other, and terror. Women finding one another sexually desirable
seemed reasonable to him. Women were sex, the center of all desire.
He didn't think that he was sharing Vic with Chris. He thought of
their relationship as a friendship with something extra.

He wondered if he should talk to Vic about her friendship with
Chris.

He liked Chris. She was pleasant and pretty. Making love to her
had been no chore, but he couldn't honestly say he was sexually

attracted to her. Vic was always the center of his attention. He was like a tuning fork. When she came near him, he vibrated.

Surely, she felt that way about him. Her kisses were passionate, her
body turned hot under his touch, she wanted him inside her. They be
longed together.

The town of Surry came into view. He drove down Main Street, turned at the alley behind Frank's office, and parked. He stepped out into the wind, better than brisk, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply.

Just as he reached the front door, Sissy Wallace opened it from the
inside.

"Why, I thought it was you. I haven't seen you for too long." Sissy
beamed. She'd grown fond of Charly over the previous summer.
"Hello, Miss Wallace. Good to see you."

"You come on in here this minute. We're going to get a terrible
blow. Maybe it will do some of my pruning for me. I have to do all the
yard work now that Poppy's old and Georgia might break one of her
precious nails." She closed the door behind him. "I was just leaving,
you see. Frank's our lawyer, and I so enjoy talking to him, but today it
was a business call, not social. Poppy has let Yolanda in the kitchen.
She lives in the kitchen. This just won't do. Georgia indulges him. Says
Yolanda makes him happy. Well, I say she's a cow and Poppy can find
his happiness elsewhere."

"Uh, I'm sorry to hear that, Miss Wallace," Charly replied, sur
prised that Sissy would call another woman a cow. Perhaps a few mar
garitas were behind her.

"If I put up with her, I'll go mad. If I don't, he'll cut me out of the
will again. It's tiresome." Her lower lip, bright red, jutted out petu
lantly. "'Course, Georgia will indulge him morning, noon, and night.
She's banking on my losing my temper somewhere along the way so
he'll tear up the will and me with it. I know how she thinks, the snake."

"I'm sorry you're unhappy, Miss Wallace."

Charly hoped Frank would come out of his office as they stood in the front hall. He didn't know if Frank's secretary had heard him, but he knew how Sissy could talk.

"Well, I'm not wretchedly unhappy, Charly, not throw-myself-on
the-ground-and-eat-dirt kind of unhappy." She brightened. "A Cadil-

lac would restore my spirits considerably, and you know, Bunny says
she will help me get one wholesale. I want a cream-colored Cadillac
with a sea foam interior, I do. I'll wear a scarf to match the interior . . .
brings out the color of my eyes, although you're used to looking into
Vic's eyes. Now aren't they the brightest green you've ever seen? Like a cat. Her mother, too. Maybe they're both cats. Graceful as cats. Land sakes, here I am talking about me and you played that wonderful foot
ball game, why, we are all so proud of you, Charly Harrison. Proud as
punch."

Finally, Frank's secretary, Mildred, appeared. She winked at
Charly. "Mr. Savedge is expecting you."

"Well, let me hurry before this storm breaks. I suppose I'll have
to tolerate Yolanda. I can't turn her out in a hurricane." She laughed.
"Maybe I could turn out Poppy instead." She opened the door, the
wind pulling it closed with a bang.

Frank walked out and shook Charly's hand. "Sorry, I didn't know
Sissy Wallace had given you the benefit of her person."

Frank's office was clean and spare. A threadbare dark blue Chinese
rug covered the floor and two brown leather wing chairs, as worn as
the rug, faced his desk.

Frank sat in one and invited Charly to take the other.

"Would you like a drink?"

"No, sir, thank you."

"I suppose you heard all about Yolanda."

Charly laughed. "Poppy Wallace is really something, keeping a
woman in the kitchen."

"Actually Yolanda is a cow."

Charly burst out laughing. "I thought Sissy was joking when she
called Yolanda a cow."

"No. Yolanda really is a cow. The last of his old Jersey herd and
Edward decided she shouldn't live outside anymore. She can stay in
the kitchen when the weather's bad. He says it's a linoleum floor and
she won't hurt anything."

"Is he . . . you know." Charly touched his temple with his forefinger.
Frank leaned back in the chair, crossing one leg over the other.
"No, I don't think so. I think he's reached that age when anything or

anyone that's still around from his glory days is now very dear to him.
She's the last of that bloodline from his big herd. Each year he'd breed
less and less. In his prime, he ran three successful businesses simultane
ously. The dairy was just one. Had a lot of pride in that." Frank rolled a pencil to his telephone and then stopped it. "Well, I don't reckon
you're here to talk about cattle and the Wallaces."

"No, sir, although the Wallaces are unique."

"Charly, every damned resident of Surry County is unique."

"Yes, sir." Charly smiled, breathed deeply, and said with great con
fidence, "I am here to ask for the hand of your daughter, sir. I love her.
I will provide for her and I will do everything in my power to make her
happy."

This came as no surprise to Frank. "I believe you will."

"I love her, Mr. Savedge. I don't think I could live without her."

"I want her husband to be a gentleman, a man who will cherish
her, support her, respect her. I believe you will do that, and I grant you
permission to ask for her hand."

"Thank you, sir."

"I assume you haven't asked her yet."

"No, sir. I had to speak to you first."

"Have you planned anything?" Frank smiled. "I guess I'm curious,
though perhaps it's none of my business. I took R. J. fishing and waited
for the sun to rise over the James, when I proposed. I put the ring in
her tackle box." He smiled again, remembering how fast his heart had
thumped, how he had almost forgotten to breathe and became light
headed. "Vic loves the river, you know."

He smiled broadly. "Part of me wants to race back to school and
ask her right now and part of me wants to plan it. I'd like to ask her
Christmas Eve. I was thinking I'd tie a red ribbon through the ring and
hang it from a branch of the tree or maybe from the mistletoe. I
haven't made up my mind."

"You'll figure it out splendidly. I have no doubt of that." Frank
stood up to shake Charly's hand.

Charly rose. "Thank you, sir. Thank you so much."

Frank clapped him on the back. "Come on. We'd better go home