First Papers (9 page)

The thought startled her, but just then Fran turned on the Victrola for the ragtime she played incessantly. Alexandra disliked the record Fran chose—it was so suggestive. Everybody’s doin’ it indeed! The girls, of course, had no idea of it beyond the tinkly little tune. Doing what? The Turkey Trot. As if that purified it.

Garry and Letty began to dance, making their way around the three scatter rugs, woven of strips of colored felt by Canadian Indians, rugs the children hated and which Alexandra loved because Stefan had brought them back from Montreal when he had gone there to lecture last fall. Presents were so rare from Stefan, that the rugs had assumed a symbolic beauty to her. Like the three inkwells he had brought years ago from Wilkes-Barre, the first time he had lectured there to the young union of coal miners. The inkwells were carved out of great chunks of anthracite coal, faceted like diamonds, glistening. The rugs were more important though, more in evidence, seen by everybody, often commented upon by her pupils and by other people who came to the house.

Now, watching Garry and Letty pick their way between them, Fran kicked “the eyesores” aside into a heap. But Alexandra thought only, The child is really interesting in this new role of young lady on the threshold; it is unlike seeing her with that boy Purney and his pimples.

The second time the record was begun, Garry turned to Fran and said, “May I have this dance?”

“Oh, I’d love it.” For the first measure Fran stumbled, and her mother gulped for her, but then smoothness came to the two sets of sliding feet, and a lovely rhythmic pulse of pride began to beat. My pretty daughter, she thought, how delicate and slim she is, how graceful, a man’s arm around her, glancing up and away so quickly. My Francesca now begins to feel what it is to be a lovely young woman, appealing to a desirable young man.

She glanced covertly at Letty, and a guilt invaded her, but she was flooded with an odd vicarious joy, as if
she
were young and slender and fair in color, as if she were knowing for the first time what it was to dance, not with an ungainly stumbling boy, but with a handsome young man.

As the music ended. Garry turned to little Fira and with a distinct air of courtliness said, “And you, Miss Ivarin, would
you
honor me now?”

Fee giggled and clapped her hands and burrowed down into the armchair, hiding her head against the cushions. Everybody laughed, and another hour slipped by with the easy good nature that seemed to follow Alida and Evan wherever they went. As Fran and Fee finally went upstairs to bed, the little one talking, her sister singing, Alexandra thought with relief, The bunting is already forgotten.

“He’ll be a native-born American,” Eli was saying to Joan upstairs, “just as we are. Why should the poor kid go through life with a Russian name?”

“But it would hurt your parents so,” Joan said. “Just as my parents, and grandparents too, would die if we didn’t call him Webster, or Madge if it’s a girl.”

“Webster Ivarin. My God—Webster Martin Ivarin. What a combination—it’s going to drive him crazy, the way Elijah Lovejoy Ivarin did me. Does me.”

Joan nodded. She was remembering the night he had told her about his name, the second or third time they’d gone out together.

“Is Eli short for Elihu?” she had asked.

“No. For Elijah.”

“The prophet in the Bible?”

“Not exactly,” he had said, too lightly. “My parents have made a personal prophet out of this Elijah, the one I’m named for. Elijah Lovejoy of Illinois.”

The chill of sarcasm touched his voice, but he went on as if he wanted to get it over. “My private Elijah was an editor, and an advocate of abolition—this was way before the Civil War. Pro-slavery mobs threatened him all the time. But he went right on advocating.”

“I never even heard of him.”

“The mobs destroyed three of his presses, and told him they’d get him next, but he bought a new press and kept at it. They finally killed him.”

“Elijah Lovejoy,” she said. “I’m glad you told me about him.”

“He had a younger brother, Owen,” Eli went on, mollified by her interest. “Owen saw them kill his brother. Then he took over and became an abolitionist leader too.”

“Elijah Lovejoy,” she repeated. And then suddenly she added, “Your parents must be pretty wonderful, Eli.”

“They are,” he said. “Really they are. But they do things like that, things that drive you crazy.”

He had begun, falteringly, to tell her about his family; it was the first time he had spoken of his parents at all, and she had thought, He admires his father, but he doesn’t love him, not the way I love Daddy. And he still hates the name Ivarin, and the name they gave him to go with it.

Now she lay back on the bed, wondering if their own baby would get to hate his name too.

“Webster Ivarin,” she said. “Web, they’d call him, Web Ivarin.”

Eli looked disgusted. He began to cough, and sat down in a chair near the bed. Even when the spasm came to an end, he did not go on talking; he had learned that it was safer not to start speech too soon.

For how many generations did you have to remain “loyal” to foreign names? For all eternity? It was ridiculous.

Ivarin was hard to shorten. Written down, Ives
looked
close, but the sound of it was unrelated to Ivarin.

Eave—that was better. The first syllable of Ivarin, with an Anglicized spelling. Webster Martin Eave. Eaves would be better yet. Then a little boy would never be teased about being named “Eve.”

Webster Martin Eaves, he said, and only when Joan did not stir, did he realize he had not spoken it aloud, but was merely trying it out in his own mind.

How often he had done the same sort of thing with his own name, as a boy and even as a man. Elijah Ivar, Elijah Vareen, Elijah Ives. He hated doing it, he hated the discussion within himself about names, foreign names
versus
American names; he grew agitated when the subject of names entered his mind, unbidden and yet suddenly there, in charge, not to be dismissed. Ivar would sound changed, and Vareen would make people think he had changed from Levine. He always did when he heard names like Le Verne or La Vine or Cone or Cohann.

Since Joan’s pregnancy, the unwelcome pro-and-con about Ivarin grew more clamorous and tonight’s fight with his father had made a decision seem both easier and more urgent. The arrogant, yelling old fool, red in the face, eyes bulging behind his glasses, that damn foot punching up and down on the floor. What was so wrong about “the idiom of one’s surroundings”?

“Maybe we ought to change Ivarin right now,” he said. “Even if they raise a row. When you think of the rows we have about everything else. I thought of Eaves—E-a-v-e-s.”

Joan sat forward from her pillow; she felt quite well, and she had been enjoying the faint sound of Victrola music floating up through the open windows of the living room downstairs. Being up here with Eli, his rage at his father long since thinned down, was comforting and sweet; alone with her, Eli was so different from what he was in the presence of his parents.

“Eaves,” Eli went on. “You say it.”

“Eaves,” she said. “Webster Eaves.” She cocked her head, smiling a little. “Madge Eaves.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Elijah Eaves,” he added, leaning closer to her. “If we do decide to, we ought to get it changed now, so it will go on the birth certificate the new way.”

She reached her hand out toward his, as if they were making a pact. It meant a lot to him, and it always would mean a lot to him.

“I thought it took a long time,” she said, “if you wanted to change your name by law.”

“We could at least find out.”

“It makes a lot of sense,” she said, “doing it in time for the birth certificate.”

“We don’t have to say anything about it for a while,” he said. “We might just get started and then see.”

Fran couldn’t sleep. Long after she had gone to bed, she kept on reading
The Rosary,
the book she had brought home from the library, a wonderful book, but not wonderful enough to take hold of her whole mind. That time Jack Purney had kissed her was nothing like this, nothing. Garry, she thought.

Her body still felt encircled by his arm; they were still dancing together; she could see the point of his collar like a white triangle before her right eye, and his chin moving when he turned his head. His hand pressed into her back, when he wanted her to turn or change step, with the faintest pressure only, but so firm, so positive, she never once wondered what he meant, the way she did at the gym dances at school. And each time that little signal of pressure came, she closed her eyes and went shivery.

Fran closed
The Rosary
and gave herself up to remembering. Later on, he had asked her to dance again, and it was as if they had learned to dance with each other in the half-hour they weren’t dancing at all. Fee was still digging her head into the cushions and being silly, and the Paiges were starting to talk to Mama about politics, and as Fran rose and moved up close to him, she could hear her heart thump.

Garry, she thought again, Garry Paige. Garrett Paige, and he’s married and he’ll never even think about me again. If he weren’t married, he would. He did like me. It went down his arm when his hand pressed my back—

She glanced over to the other bed where her little sister was sound asleep. Fee would stay sound asleep if you shined a flashlight right against her eyelids; thank heaven for that. She didn’t want to have to talk to her. She didn’t even want to get sleepy and go to sleep herself.

All she wanted was to keep feeling this new wonderful way. She wished she had a diary to write in. She could write about the way she felt, just thinking Garry’s name. She’d put in about wishing he weren’t married, and that she were older, and that they were walking somewhere, all alone in the woods, maybe the wind blowing her hair so he would notice it. He wouldn’t say anything about it, but she would know. And then they would come to a clearing or a stone fence and he’d ask her if she were tired, and she’d say, yes, a little, and he’d put his hand around her arm, high up, above the elbow, to help her. Or if it were a fence, he’d probably put his hands on her waist and half lift her up. She could feel him sitting beside her, not looking at her, not saying anything, just sitting there, close enough so she could feel his nearness. He’d probably talk about the way she followed him so easily when they danced, not like some girls who tried to do the leading, and he might tell her she was beautiful.

Twenty-three wasn’t too old. Nine or ten years older was just right. Everything about him seemed perfect, even if he was married to that stiff-faced Letty. In a few years, maybe he would get a divorce, or Letty might go insane and be put in an institution. Then after a while Garry would meet her again and say “Francesca” in that deep voice of his, and kiss her and kiss her. Not the way Jack Purney did, all slobbery and quick, but long and slowly.

Oh, God, Fran thought. Oh, God. Somebody like Garry, not anybody at school, and not any of those horrible Yipsel boys. She had warned her mother how it would be at the Young People’s Socialist League dance, but Mama wouldn’t listen. Each time there was to be a dance, Mama started in again, and finally she made a new dress for her to go in. “You
might
meet a boy there,” Mama had said, “and if you do, he won’t think you’re peculiar because you’re a socialist.”

“I’m not a socialist. You always say I can decide when I grow up.”

“Of course you can. But in the meantime, you might as well meet some boys from nice socialist families.”

Finally, she had gone, with Mama, all the way to Brooklyn. Mama had a new dress too, a changeable dark green, but hers was navy-blue
crêpe de chine,
and the skirt came almost to her ankles, as if she were grown-up already. She had her first pumps, too, with French heels, and her black lisle stockings were so sheer they looked like silk. At the last minute, she had been excited about going; maybe there would be some nice boys after all.

But the minute they reached the hall, her heart dropped. They were
awful,
shorter than she was, funny-looking, and either Italian or Polish or Jewish or something foreign about every single one of them. There wasn’t one boy that looked like the boys in Barnett. The evening had been just terrible, and even Mama had never tried to get her to go back a second time.

Fran shuddered. Even remembering that Yipsel dance was hateful; it filled her with an ache for something she couldn’t name. To be eighteen, to go and live in a pretty furnished room in New York, and make new friends that never had to meet her mother and father or see this homemade house of theirs.

Suddenly she got out of bed. She couldn’t bear just lying there, wanting things so hard, bursting with
wanting.
Going on fifteen was horrible; everything was a million years off. She went to the bureau and opened the top drawer. Underneath her one sweater was the flat white jar of “Ashes of Roses” rouge she had bought at Gray’s Drug Store for fifty cents; she had to hide it because at the first sight of rouge her mother got going on being cheap and the White Slave Traffic and all the rest. Leaning close to the mirror, Fran rouged her cheeks, high on the cheekbones, the way the woman at Gray’s showed her. Then she patted her lips with a reddened finger and stood looking at herself.

Jack Purney always says I’m beautiful, and he’s never seen me with rouge on. Garry might say she was beautiful too if he saw her this way, instead of the scrubbed-clean look he always saw. He might even realize that she’d be grown-up in two years or so, with her hair up for good, and leaving home for good the minute she became a teacher.

Her longing for that distant time sharpened so much it was pain. Maybe if you had nice parents and a pretty house and no talk about a better world and labor and socialism—maybe then it wasn’t so awful being fifteen. Almost fifteen; fifteen in five months. Maybe if you had a tennis court and lots of boys and girls came trooping over, even the stuck-up ones, why, maybe then it would be fun to be in your teens, the way it was supposed to be. Childhood’s happy time. Youth’s sunny days.