Spring Fire (9 page)

Her mother was the stranger
—the name, and the small gold-framed picture on the bureau, and the tiny flashes of information that her father had relayed. Death was a word like mother and the two stood for something that was there but unknown to feeling. Vaguely Mitch wondered what it would have been like if they had been real to her, this dead mother and the father who was alive and whom she wrote to and returned to in between school and growing.

"Do you know what happened to me Saturday night, Father?"

"No, black-eyed Susan. What?"

"I had sexual intercourse. In the cellar."

Even after she had thought of such a scene and played with it in her mind and rejected it as impossible, she felt the danger of the thought. She felt that now she was grown, as her father had always said she would be and as she had thought she would never grow. She was grown and there was no more time to say, "When I grow up," and now she could not say, "When I grew up" and tell what it was like, because it was over. It was over and when it is over you do not talk. You do not say what it was like. Not when it's like this.

The Professor's voice began the poem and she listened attentively.

"I arise from dreams of thee
 In the first sweet sleep of night,
 When the winds are breathing low,
 And the stars are shining bright…"

Leda was not a man, and yet, when she had awakened her, Mitch turned to her and they were not friends then, but lovers. Mitch became separate as a person at last. She was not separate from Leda, but individual and one. She was wanted and she wanted, and it was not a want striped with fear and hurt It was a fragile want to be nurtured and cared for, as Leda had then in bed.

"I never kissed a girl," Leda had said afterward. "I’m sorry I did it to you, kid."

There was something wrong and ill in the two of them then like that, Mitch knew, but what? When she was a child, near the dam where she had gone with her father, on the worn lead pipe there were words written and she had said, "What do they mean?" They were bad words, he explained, and there was that about his explanation that made
her
feel guilty, as though she had taken the white chalk and put the words there. Leda was sorry, so
she
knew what was wrong.

"Oh, lift me from the grass!
 I die! I faint! I fail!
 Let they love in kisses rain
 On my lips and eyelids pale."

The voice droned on and on and Mitch traced the holes in the paper with her pencil and thought more of Leda and still not enough. She thought of the talk at the dinner table in the house on Sunday, the way Leda had reached under the tablecloth and gripped Mitch's hand, as if to give her strength to answer Marsha's "You see, Mitch, it wasn't so bad after all. I guess Bud can be a gentleman when he wants to." And Sunday evening, before Leda ran downstairs to greet Jake and go off with him, she had kissed Mitch's lips and looked at her and told her it would not be the same with Jake.

"I have to go," she said, "but it won't be the same. Not like us, kid. No."

"My heart beats loud and fast.
 Oh! press it to thine own again
 Where it will break at last."

Professor Aimes stopped, leaned forward, resting his elbow on the rostrum, his glasses in his hand. "That," he said dramatically, "is what I mean about Shelley."

* * *

When Mitch entered zoology lab after English class, Robin Maurer was waiting inside the door. She pulled Mitch over to the corner and began talking to her in a plaintive, earnest tone.

Robin had met Tom Edwards in her French class, a separate section from the one Mitch attended. He played the tenor sax and he was an independent and Robin had liked him immediately, the way Mitch had liked Charlie. He was one of the members of the combo that entertained at the housewarming on Saturday. As Marsha had requested, Robin asked a Sig Delt to the dance, an old flame of Kitten Clark's. When Kitten got pinned, Robin's date proceeded to get highly inebriated out on the back steps. During one of the half-dozen intermissions, Robin and Tom went for a ride. There was a flat tire with no spare tire in the back, and they had been stranded until one o'clock in the morning.

"It was innocent, really, Mitch, Tom didn't even put his arm around me. But I got in after hours, and it's the talk of the dance. Did Leda tell you anything about it?"

"No, I don't think she heard that it happened."

"Everyone heard! He didn't get back for the dance
—to play, I mean—and I was missing. Everybody heard about it, and they were whispering all through the house yesterday. Mitch, there's a chapter meeting tonight and I'm going to get it Bet you anything, Mitch. Bet you I get it."

For a bare, awkward minute, Mitch thought of telling Robin about it. She thought of saying, "Look, you don't know what happened to me," but she remembered Leda's words: "Don't trust anyone. Don't tell anyone what happened in the cellar." She let Robin talk, and she listened until the class was called to order and the lab instructor passed the tiny slabs around to the members of the class. Moving along to the third row where her microscope was, Mitch slipped the slide under and peered down at the wiggling amoeba. Then the slide went black.

"You are now looking at the finger of Lucifer. Much more interesting than an amoeba."

"Hello," she said, raising her head and grinning at him. "I was just getting it focused."

"My finger?"

"No. I was getting the amoeba focused."

"Ah," Lucifer said. "So you're not interested in my finger."

Any time but now, Mitch thought. Any day but today I could talk to him and laugh at him because I like him. But not today. She looked down into the microscope again, and Lucifer bent his head and moved it close to hers. "Let me see too," he said. "Don't be so stingy with your amoebas."

She pulled the slide out and began to write in her lab book.

"Have a rip-roaring time with old Step-and-Fetch-It Saturday?"

"Yes," she said.

"Tell me," he leaned on the lab bench, "is it true that tall men are aggressive?"

Mitch didn't answer. She tried to think so that she could write in her book, but he kept chatting away.

"Are they the best lovers?" he said. "Are they the world's very best lovers?"

"I have to get this, Lucifer. Please
—"

"If I were only tall," he said. "If I were only tall and could make you forget amoebas."

The lab instructor shot her a piercing glance.

"Please go, Lucifer."

"You wouldn't say that to an amoeba!" he said.

"He's watching us," she told Lucifer, pointing over toward the instructor, but Lucifer ignored the warning.

A piece of paper landed at Mitch's feet and she reached to get the note that Robin had rolled to her. Lucifer caught it instead and held it up high and said, "Ah, a note! A secret message."

He did not see the angry expression on the lab instructor's face as he came toward them. Lucifer blew at the folded paper the note was written on, and he laughed. "Ha!" he said. "Communists infiltrating into our school system. Cranston Communists delivering their nasty notes of plenty!"

"Give that to me!" the instructor snapped. "Does this look like a high-school room to you?"

Lucifer jumped back and his face flushed. The instructor pointed to the note and tapped on the bench. "Who wrote this?" he said loudly.

In a strained voice, Robin Maurer answered.

"All right, you two, outside. One week's suspension from the course! When you get back in, we'll see if you've grown up any. Bad enough you act like freshmen, without acting like jackasses!"

He gave Lucifer a tap on the arm and pointed toward the door. Robin followed him, her head bent, her ears scarlet. Suspensions were reported to sorority houses. It was a means of checking on the pledges, and freshman instructors had been advised of this ruling by Panhellenic. Suddenly Mitch hated the clownish idiot who had caused Robin's expulsion. She hated him along with all of them.
Men don't care what they do.
Leda was right. A gnawing loneliness seeped into Mitch's veins and she thought of Leda and how Leda touched her. The instructor pushed the amoeba slide in front of her and said, "You'll be next if you don't get busy, Miss Mitchell."

* * *

Charlie was waiting for Mitch at the parking lot that afternoon. She had purposely avoided him when French class was over and the students shuffled out of the room. He stood next to her car and watched her coming.

"I missed you. You didn't wait."

"I'm in a hurry, Charlie. I don't feel good."

"Gee, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. Can I do anything?"

"No, I'd better hurry to the house."

He opened the door for her, his brow wrinkled with concern, his hand helping her.

"Maybe I can ask you this quick," he said. "Go to a show with me Saturday?"

Mitch started the motor and looked back to see how much room there was between her car and the one behind her. He was hanging on the door of the car, looking at her with a sweet but servile expression. She felt sorry for him but she did not want to go out with him.

"Yes," she said for no reason that she could think of, "I'll go with you. Saturday."

When she drove off the dust kicked up in a cloud in the back and he stood in it. "Hope you feel better," he called after her, pushing the thin specks of dirt away from his face.

From the street, along College Avenue, another voice called. Mitch brought the car to an abrupt halt, wheels squeaking and tires scraping against the curb when she pulled in.

"Hello, kid," Leda said, tossing her books on the seat "I thought you wouldn't hear me. Hello," she said again, smiling at Mitch and touching Mitch's skirt with her hand. "I missed you today," she said, and the car started fast on the black pavement.

Leda watched the girl as she drove. She had a mad, fleeting impulse to reach over and push the wheel so that there would be no more. The day had been an agony of guilt and regret, but her need for Mitch was no less strong. Jan's, face had come to hex like a ghost, tormenting her with shame, symbolizing the impossibility of Mitch and Leda and a love that was wrong. It was not even love. It could very possibly not even be love. But where Jake was plastic, Mitch
—this feeling for Mitch was wood. It was wood and it could do everything wood should do—splinter, crack, and burn. Now it burned, deep near her stomach, and there was never that with Jake. There was a compulsion with Jake, a compulsion to be taken and used and discarded. And with Mitch it was not like that. With Mitch it was clean. It was impossibly clean.

"Let's drive out to the farm road, Mitch."

"O.K."

"Drive fast, Mitch. Let's go fast."

For that time before they reached the dirt road and swung off to the side near the pasture where there was space to park, Leda let her hair blow out in the wind and felt the crisp autumn air on her cheeks. Then, sitting there in the car with Mitch, she said, "I think this is peace, Mitch. I think this is what I always wanted."

Leda always talked like that, dramatically, as if each word swelled with significance and was true. Mitch saw her beside her and saw her head resting on the leather seat, sitting loose and relaxed, staring up at the sky and the way it looked after the sudden and short showers that came and went like that in the Midwest

She said, "Leda, did you hear anything about Robin?"

"Something, yes. Something about staying out late and going off from the dance with one of the musicians. She's in for it"

"It's not her fault," Mitch began, but Leda reached for her hand and said, "Don't! Let's not talk about the sorority and school and all that. Mitch, how do you feel about me?"

Mitch stammered. "I
—I told you. I think that I—love you . . ."

"My God, think of the way people would talk if they knew! Leda, the fraternity man's little damn darling, and here she sits wishing all to hell she could reach over and kiss you. But she can't because it's not right. Not here in broad daylight. Not in the open. It's right in the night. Then it's right. Huh, Mitch?"

"Don't get mad, Leda."

"I'm not mad, Mitch, honey, I'm not. I just wonder why I don't lose my goddamn mind. I just wonder what I'm all about and how come you came along and gave me a clue. That's all. And I wonder about Jake and oh, God!"

"Leda, in class today, I thought about Bud Roberts and I thought that if it hadn't been for you
—if you hadn't cared—I guess I would have killed myself almost."

Leda started to lean toward the girl, but drew back when she heard the voices. Through the woods a boy with a lettered sweater came, holding hands with a girl who was looking up at him, and they were smiling and pressing close to one another as they walked down the path and sat on the rock, back there where the road turned. From where they sat, they could see Mitch's car, and Leda felt a swing of shame and guilt ride through her. She snapped the radio on.

"God," she said, "it really is muggy! Out here in the damn country, it really is muggy."

"I thought," Mitch said, "that it was sort of like fate, what happened Sunday morning. I needed someone so badly."

Mitch's confessions seemed ludicrous and unholy to Leda, there with the boy and girl behind them. She wished she would stop. The presence of the couple that had come through the woods inhibited her and made her nervous. She began to hum slowly to the music on the radio.

"Do you feel that way, Leda?"

Mitch leaned close to Leda and Leda pulled back and sat near the door. "Let's drive back to the house," she said. "I've got a pack of mail waiting for me."

"Do you want to go, Leda?"

"Why not?" She could see them through the rear mirror. "Can't stay here all day."

"I thought you liked it out here."

"Well, I want to go. Can't stay in one place all your life, kid."

Mitch said, "O.K.," and she turned the switch on. The rest of the way back to the house, they did not talk. When they drove in, Leda jumped out and ran in and Mitch followed. Together they found their mail, a letter for Leda from Jan's beau, and for Mitch, a letter from her father. When they were on the way to their room, Marsha called to Leda. "Chapter meeting," she said, "at seven tonight, Leda. It's important, so be there."