Families and Survivors (3 page)

Adjusting his clothes, John gets up and goes into the bathroom.

Kate smooths her skirt and sits up. Fortunately she is
better able to say what she feels than would a more repressed and emotionally convoluted girl (Louisa).

“You make me feel awful,” she tells John when he comes back. “Like I’d said some terrible thing.”

“No.” In control of himself now, he is still terribly conflicted. Wars rage in his mind, and in his blood. As an escape, he chooses Southern charm, a thing that all his life he has watched men do. “You Yankee girls are just too much for me,” he says.

This is an old joke between them, but it is almost too appropriate for the present occasion, and Kate’s smile is a little wan.

Outside the storm has passed, and John soon goes on home.

Fall. First a long Indian summer of warm deep blue days and gently cool nights, succeeded by a brilliant October: the blue air electrified, and the leaves crimson and gold on oaks and maples and grapevines out in the woods, and blue smoke rising straight up from Negro cabins out in the country.

Louisa has come home from camp with a deep New Hampshire tan and a white-blond streak in her hair, which seem to make her hazel eyes lighter, too; they are pale green against her dark skin.

“Louisa’s got downright pretty,” some of the girls who have known her all her life (Snubby to Betty Sue) now say to each other.

“She has always been very pretty,” says loyal Kate.

The boys tease Louisa. “Hey, blondie—hey, dizzy blonde! Hey, Louisa, what’s your secret formula?”

Louisa laughs and blushes and feigns annoyance. She is confused and exhilarated by so much attention.

…

The Sub-Deb Club meets at Kate’s house, in the game room (where she still sometimes comes with John, but not for long, and they don’t kiss there). The girls play records and drink Cokes and R.C.’s, and giggle and try to decide what to do with themselves.

At last someone says, “This would be a terrific room for a party,” and they all seize on that. It becomes instantly apparent that a party is what they had wanted all along.

After some discussion, rules are established: each girl will invite one and only one boy; therefore there will be no stags and no cutting in. Couples can double-break on each other, if anyone wants to do that. They will all chip in on the punch and cookies.

Louisa stays on after the other girls go; she helps Kate carry bottles and crumby plates upstairs. Often left alone by her servantless and partygoing parents, Kate is very domestic; she made all the brownies for that meeting, and now she cleans up the kitchen until it is shining. (“Kate is going to make some man a marvelous wife,” her mother sometimes sighs.)

They go back downstairs, and Kate puts on a record.

“Deep Purple.”

“The trouble is,” Louisa brings out, “I really don’t know who to ask.”

Passionately thinking of John, who should have called her last night and did not, Kate still ponders her friend’s problem. “How about Richard?”

“Richard Trowbridge? But I’ve known him all my life. He’d think I’d gone crazy.”

“No. I think he likes you.”

“But I’d feel so silly. Calling him up.”

Kate muses. “Give it a while. It might somehow work
out that you don’t have to call. Like sometime at school.” She looks out the back windows, past the terrace to a cluster of scarlet maples, young and very straight. “God, what a fall,” she says. “A real Thomas Wolfe October. ‘The singing and the gold’?”

“Yes.” But Louisa is in one of her least poetic moods. “Wait till Snubby hears about the party.” And she laughs.

Kate is right. One gaudy afternoon in late October, as Louisa is leaving school, walking down the wide front steps, Richard appears from nowhere at her side. “Hey, blondie, you walking home?”

“Yes—”

“Okay if I join you?”

“Okay—sure.”

“I need to stretch my legs before basketball season,” he somewhat unconvincingly explains, as though, since he lives in the opposite direction, his walking home with her required an explanation.

In a rather desultory way they talk about school (how boring), the teachers (how stupid), and he tells her that when he is old enough to drive next year his parents are buying him a car, but he isn’t quite sure what kind he wants. “I was thinking about a little coupe with, you know, a rumble seat?”

“Oh, they’re cute!” Louisa hears this uncharacteristic word (and tone) issue from her own lips, but she doesn’t pay much attention.

Arrived at her house, they do not go inside; instead they walk slowly in a direction away from the house. Neither of them mentions the fact that as children they often played together here, and also at Richard’s house—children of friends, brought unwillingly together for the convenience of parents.

“Do you ride much?” asks Richard as they pass the stable.

“No, not really.”

“Why not? Don’t you like to?”

His tone is kindly, and she tells him the truth, but she tells it with art. “The truth is”—and she looks at him (artfully)—“actually I’m afraid of horses.”

“Oh? I sort of like that.” He chuckles.

“You do?”

“Yes, I think it’s sort of nice, in a girl. I’d hate a really
horsy
girl.” He laughs.

Arrived at the pool, they sit on the edge. Some yellow oak leaves have drifted down to the water; slowly they sail across the dark surface with no ripples.

Offhandedly (very) Louisa says, “Oh, I don’t know if you’d want to come, but some of us have this club—”

A new girl in school. A tiny, mouse-haired girl named Mary Beth Williamson, from South Carolina. She seems shy, she speaks almost inaudibly, in the longest drawl, and her wide gray eyes look scared. She wears flouncy, tight-waisted dresses that have an old-fashioned look.

“God, the poor little thing!” Kate says.

“I don’t know—I think she looks dishonest,” says Louisa quite unreasonably.

“Louisa, you are crazy.”

“There are certain kinds of Southern-girl bitchiness that you still don’t understand,” says Louisa, in her superior way.

“Well, I think she looks pitiful. I think we ought to ask her to join the club. Think what a blow that would be to Snubby,” she cleverly adds.

Kate’s kind intentions and reasoning prevail; even Louisa guiltily votes to let Mary Beth in.

“You all are so
nice
!” says Mary Beth when told about the club and the forthcoming party. “But who-all would I
ask
? I don’t know any of these here boys.” (She drags out “boys” tenderly, adding several vowels.) She says, “Maybe I’ll just ask that little old Burton Knowles. He’s the one closest to my size.” And she giggles softly (and Louisa thinks: Uh-
huh
).

“Burton’s very bright,” Louisa tells Mary Beth.

“I always did like smart boys.”

Mary Beth at the party is something of a surprise. A pink angora sweater, cinched in at the waist with a wide patent belt, and pink lipstick (the other girls don’t wear lipstick yet) combine to make her look a great deal less mousy.

Louisa is getting along well with Richard. On the way to the party, in the back seat of his father’s Buick, he took her hand and held it. That touch mysteriously stirred her, so that she is still excited, and she laughs a lot.

And how nice it is to have no stags at the dance—no extra boys to smile at, hoping that they’ll cut in.

“There’s a French song called ‘
Auprès de ma blonde
,’ ” Richard tells Louisa. “My mother has it on a record. But I won’t tell you the rest of it.” He laughs.

“Why not?” She laughs, too, looking up at him, at his blond head near hers.

“Oh, maybe sometime, My blonde. I like that,” he says. “The way it sounds.”

Of course he isn’t stupid!

Louisa watches John and Kate double-break on Burton Knowles and Mary Beth. (Whose idea was that—kindly
Kate’s or John’s?) She watches as John begins to dance with Mary Beth, spinning her out on the floor. Louisa watches John watching Mary Beth, and she knows when she last saw that look on John’s face, that amused curiosity: at last year’s dance, John watching Kate.

As the dance ends, John’s hands clasp Mary Beth’s small waist, easily spanning it, and Louisa hears him say, “Aren’t you afraid you’ll break off in two pieces?”

(God, and she used to think John was intelligent!)

The wide scared-rabbit eyes. “No, I’m not scared. Not scared of breaking, anyway.”

Because Louisa and Kate live so close to each other, Richard walks Louisa home. Exhilarated, in the crisp and vibrant dark, they hurry along, still talking, still animated from the dance.

“That room is really super,” Richard says. “I’d like to have a house with a room like that sometime, wouldn’t you?”

Is he asking her to marry him? “Oh, yes!”

(And later will he kiss her? Should she let him, or is it too soon? Does it count that she has known him a long time? These are good Sub-Deb questions, for which she has no answers.)

“Who’s that new girl?” Richard asks.

Warily: “Her name’s Mary Beth Williamson. She’s from South Carolina.”

“How come she was there?”

“Oh, Kate felt sorry for her, and thought she ought to be invited.”

“Kate’s nice.”

“Oh, yes, she’s really nice.” (They have both forgotten that last year Richard was madly in pursuit of Kate.)

“But I don’t know about that Mary Beth,” says
Richard. “Seems like she’s—she’s some sort of a
type
, you know?” Richard is a snob; by “a type” he means “common,” which is the word his mother would have used.

“Oh, yes!” Louisa says. How could she ever have thought him stupid?

Lights flood the huge sprawling Calloway house, but there is no one home.

Louisa and Richard go around to the side of the house, and up the stairs to the porch.

Actually the night is quite cold, but they don’t notice that. Stars flicker between the leaves of a giant oak that stands next to the porch.

On the wide cushioned wicker sofa, Louisa and Richard sit several self-conscious inches apart. Still in the spirit of the party (although another mood is now upon them both), Richard laughs and turns to her and says, “You want to make a bet?”

She is curious. “Sure.”

“I’ll bet I can kiss you without touching you.”

Softly, “Oh, really?”

They turn to face each other. Their arms reach and clasp, their mouths meet. For a long time.

“I guess I lost the bet,” says Richard, and they both laugh before kissing again.

The following week, in which November begins, there is an unexpected heavy snow.

Fall is over, and almost that easily everything has changed. Waking on Monday to a thick silent world of snow, and waking in love with Richard (since she loves to kiss him, she must be in love with him, mustn’t she? Of course she is), Louisa anticipates a beautiful, crystal walk to school through the snow. She telephones Kate, who sounds strange.

“I’ve got a cold,” Kate explains. Then, hesitantly, “You might tell John that he could call during study hall if he wants to. I mean, I’m pretty much by myself.”

At school, as though everyone were suddenly ten years younger, the boys lob snowballs at the girls, and the girls squeal and cover their eyes and ears with mittened hands. Louisa watches John throw a couple of snowballs at Mary Beth, whose useless mittens are white Angora (of course), a couple at Snubby, a couple at her—so he distributes his favors. Richard throws snowball after snowball at Louisa. “Hey, blondie, you’ve got snow all over your hair.”

The lazy sound of his voice excites Louisa—she is in love!

During study hall, she covertly starts a poem about Richard, about an autumn night. Stars. A breeze. But popular-song words get in the way. This is the story of a starry night. She crumples the paper and stares out the window at the shining snow, the brilliant icicles.

On the way home that afternoon she stops off at Kate’s house. Kate in her dark blue robe, red hair pulled back, red nose. They go downstairs and put on some records.

“Getting Sentimental Over You.”

“Body and Soul.”

“More Than You Know.”

Kate laughs. “God,” she says, “no one would guess what’s on your mind.” But her voice is harsh (her cold?). “Did you get a chance to talk to John?”

“Oh, God, I forgot.”

“That’s okay. He’ll probably call tonight.”

“Kate, I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Kate looks curiously at her friend. “You really had a good time with Richard?”

“Well, yes. A lot better than I thought.”

“That’s terrific!” Then, instantly, Kate’s enthusiasm fades. “But boys are really funny, aren’t they?”

Tentatively: “How do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

That night Richard telephones Louisa. Some of the boys have decided to have a sort of sledding party on Friday night, he says. They’ll coast all over the golf course which is notorious for its hills. Could she come—with him?

Of course, she’d love to.

A pause, and then his voice, softly, “I wish Friday night was right now, do you?”

“Oh, yes!”

On Wednesday another fall of snow has deepened the roadside banks, and Kate is still not back at school. In the afternoon Louisa stops off at her house. Kate answers the door, and Louisa has a curious sense that she is both cured of her cold and seriously ill (of what?). And Kate says, “I’m okay, I just didn’t feel like going to school.” Then her eyes fill with tears and she says, “Come on, let’s go downstairs.”

But when they sit down to talk, Kate’s tears are gone, and angrily she says, “Well, I really made an ass of myself that time. I called John and said I wanted to see him; would he come over? Was that such a terrible thing to do? Well, I guess it was.”

John, with the furtive look of a man accused by a woman, came to see her. Yesterday afternoon. At first he said he didn’t know what she was talking about. Nothing had changed. He had been busy. The snow. Basketball practice. But then he reversed himself and made a speech that sounded long-prepared. They had been getting too serious
about each other, for people their age, he said. Of course he still liked her, she was a terrific girl, but shouldn’t they both see other people—sometimes?