The Finishing School (11 page)

And he scowled so angrily at the houses, as we turned into Lucas Meadows, that I thought he would have gladly sold us all—especially one talkative young girl—down the river for the sake of that German officer. But after I had thanked him for the ride, and he had looked at me as though I hadn’t turned out to be quite as silly as he had expected, and had said, “You come back and ride again,” and I was starting up the front walk of our yellow house with its lamp in the window, I knew he had probably been thinking of one particular neighbor over on Old Clove Road.

IV.

O
n Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend it rained, so Mr. Mott could not cut the grass. He telephoned to say it was supposed to clear up by early afternoon; meanwhile, if it was all right with us, he would spend the morning making some repairs on the houseboat and collect Becky in the afternoon.

This change of plans, along with the rain, upset the household. Becky pouted because her father always took her out to lunch on Saturday. Jem was grumpy because he could not play outside. Aunt Mona worked half-days on Saturdays at the travel agency in Kingston, and after that she always had her hair done, so my mother was pretty much stuck with the job of amusing us. She suggested we all help her go through some boxes from Fredericksburg she hadn’t yet unpacked, and see what we could find.

As the things came out of the boxes, I could remember my mother hastily packing them in, almost vengeful in her grief. Supposedly I had been helping, but even at that zero hour, with our reservations already booked on the train to Aunt Mona’s, I had been trying to talk her out of going. Now, as each thing was withdrawn from the boxes, I could remember arguments I had been making as it had been put in. There was my old paint set,
my father’s shoeshine kit, the Ink Spots album they had loved to dance to, and the little enamel-topped card box in which my grandmother had kept her solitaire deck: that had been when we were packing up things we had used on the sun porch. I had been standing by the open windows (for it was already quite warm) and gazing out on my grandmother’s garden, where, from the middle of March to the middle of October, there was a succession of flowers. I had been advancing my arguments for that small house, somewhere in town, where we could live in cheerful frugality and still have all our old friends and landmarks. Finally, having heard all she could stand, my mother told me I was “too young” to have thought out all the complications of staying in a place when your supports were gone. Rather than being reminded constantly of how much better things used to be, she said, it was far better to start over again where nobody knew you. And just as I was going to protest that there was no reason to go to such extremes, she silenced me with the adult’s ultimate ploy: she had made the decision, she said, and, since I was still a child, I would have to abide by it.

So, when my mother, beginning on another box, to divert Jem and Becky on this rainy Saturday, pulled out a yellow taffeta evening dress that she had worn as a girl, and said she had saved it for me, and asked me to try it on, I was still smarting from our argument on the sun porch back in Fredericksburg. I said I didn’t “feel like it, right now,” even though I had been the one who had begged her to save that dress when she was about to put it in the Salvation Army box with my father’s and grandparents’ clothes.

“I’ll try it. Let me try it on,” said Becky, who had been eyeing the dress with a grudging respect ever since my mother had unfolded it and shaken out its creases. She disappeared into the utility room (now Jem’s bedroom), and we heard the rustling of the taffeta and fast breathing from her exertions. Then she called out to my mother, “Can you come and help me zip this up?” Becky never used anyone’s name when she was addressing them, but she had perfected her omission to such an art that everybody always knew whom she meant. My mother, with her new humble manner, went at once to zip up Becky.

“I’ll never forget the first time I wore that dress,” my mother told Becky, as my cousin stalked back and forth in front of the mirror, holding the dress to her nonexistent bosoms to keep it from falling down. “I was sixteen and my mother had taken me down to South Carolina to visit some of her people. A cousin gave a dance in my honor, and there was this perfectly gorgeous boy at that dance, his name was Craven Ravenel. In those days, we had cards at dances and the boys would come up to you and write their names beside the dances they wanted. I was almost all filled up—I was the guest of honor, after all—and still Craven Ravenel had not asked me for one of the dances. We hadn’t even been introduced yet, and I was getting worried. So you know what I did? When nobody was looking, I wrote his name in for the last dance.”

“But what if he’d asked some other girl for the last dance?” asked Becky, swishing back and forth in front of the mirror with one of her ballerina poses. I knew this story well, but this was Becky’s first time hearing it.

“I’m coming to that,” said my mother, smiling at Becky. “What happened was, when other boys came to ask me for the last dance, I would look down at my card and say, ‘Oh, I believe I’ve already given that dance to someone called Craven Ravenel.’ And the news got back to him, because, when the last dance came, suddenly there he was. ‘Miss Louise Justin,’ he said formally, ‘I hear you have given me the honor of the last dance.’ And so I danced the last dance with Craven Ravenel.”

“But what would you have done if he
had
already asked some other girl for the last dance?” persisted Becky, who had listened intently to the story.

“Oh, I had prepared for that, too,” said my mother. “If he hadn’t shown up before the band started playing, I was going to tell my cousin I had a headache and had to go upstairs and lie down. The dance was being held at her house. And then everybody would have assumed that poor Craven Ravenel had had to find another dance partner at the last minute.”

As Mr. Mott had predicted, the rain stopped. Shortly before lunchtime, the sun came out, and my mother said, “Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, what is your pleasure for lunch?” Telling the old
story had restored some of her former jauntiness. Jem said he’d like a tuna casserole, and after my mother, with just a touch of humor in her solicitation, had ascertained that Becky had nothing against tuna, cream of mushroom soup, potato chips, or a combination of those ingredients, I volunteered to ride down to Terwiliger’s to pick up the needed can of soup. After my refusal to try on the dress, I thought it would become me to make this small peace offering.

Terwiliger’s was a country store, run by an old farmer. It smelled of animal feeds and fertilizers and catered to people who grew things; but it suffered consumers like ourselves when we ran out of eggs or forgot some staple from the big Kingston supermarket.

I had just located the only can of cream of mushroom soup on the depleted shelf and was blowing the dust off it, when Ursula DeVane came sauntering toward me. She was wearing Army fatigue clothes (my father had brought home some like that) and her hair was quite damp and curled all around her face. She balanced a little box of green-leafed plants on the tips of her forefingers, as if she were a waiter about to serve them.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about you.” she began, as if we were simply continuing our conversation from several weeks before. “I’ve been thinking about why you never came back for that swim.” She brandished the little box close to my nose. The leaves emanated a smell like licorice. “Isn’t it a wonderful smell, basil? I planted our vegetable garden this morning. Just put on my slicker and planted everything in the rain. It’s the ideal way, in a soft rain. You don’t have to water afterward. Then I went in and was running my hot bath and was just about to pour the bubbles in, when I remembered I’d forgotten the basil! Do you know what I concluded when you didn’t come back?”

“What?”

“I concluded”—and the smile that was hers alone made its irrepressible way over her features—“that you were afraid of snakes.”

I must have answered something. I had forgotten how compelling her voice could be, with its low, rich timbre that was both intimate and ironic. Then we were walking together to the cash register, where the dour old farmer, Mr. Terwiliger, waited.

“Would you believe it, Twiggy,” said Ursula, going first. “I forgot to plant basil flats.” She took a wallet from her pants pocket and fished out a wrinkled dollar bill.

The old farmer pushed it away. “No charge for the basil,” he said.

“Now, Twiggy.” She pushed the bill forward again. “I insist. Otherwise I’ll have to start shopping all the way over in Kingston, where they’ll be glad to take my money.”

He folded his arms across the bib of his overalls. “An old man can’t give a gift?”

Ursula gave him a look of affectionate exasperation and put the dollar back in the wallet. “Every time Julian and I sprinkle basil on our tomatoes, we will think of you, Twiggy,” she said.

“Did you put your cutworm collars around your tomatoes yet?” he asked gruffly, meanwhile showing no hesitation at accepting
my
money.

“No, but I’ll go and do it,” said Ursula obediently.

“Better not wait,” cautioned the old man.

We went out into the parking lot. The wet green trees sparkled in the sunshine and the birds were singing loudly.

“So tell me,” she asked in that low voice, managing to sound both confidential and amused. “I’m curious. Why did you never come back? Did your aunt warn you off?”

“Oh, it wasn’t that.”

“Well, what was it?” We were the same height, but she seemed to be looking down on me indulgently.

“Well, a lot of times people say to come and see them, but they’re just being polite, they don’t really mean it.”

“I never ask people if I don’t mean it. However, I’m glad it was your Southern scruples that kept you away. I was afraid your aunt might have warned you off. Didn’t you tell her we met?”

“Yes, ma’—I mean, yes. I did.”

She smiled at my truncated “ma’am.” “And did she tell you all about my brother?”

“She told me about … the recital.”

“Ah, yes, that ill-fated recital. I
told
Julie he was making a mistake to give in to the parents and have it there. That Dutch Reformed Church has vivid personal associations for my brother. But nobody knew that, you see. All the parents were clamoring for the church because there was more room, but what they didn’t know was the powerful influence of my brother’s memories. This year we had the recital at our house again, and everything went beautifully: no passionate music or untoward interruptions. The parents got their money’s worth, and no one was inconvenienced by the threat of real Art. Poor Julie didn’t even realize what he’d done to Becky. I had to explain it to him afterward. He had simply been caught up in all those old associations—artists are more sensitive to the atmospheres around them—and then his favorite former student happened to pass by, and he thought he would be doing something charming and spontaneous by inviting him to come in and play. Julie thought it would be an inspiration to the children and the parents: ‘See what can happen if you practice?’—that sort of thing. He had no idea he was doing any harm, or that Becky would take it personally. My brother is so tenderhearted, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. I mean that literally. The other night, during dinner, a gnat fell into his wine, and he went to great trouble to rescue it and let it dry on his fingernail until it could fly off again. That’s how tenderhearted he is.”

“Well,” I said, “Becky has her ballet now, and she’s doing well with that, so I guess no real harm was done.”

“Ah, yes, Imogene Roosa,” said Ursula wryly. “A
much
safer mentor for little girls who want to express themselves and be rewarded for it. I went to school with Imogene. In those days we all went to a one-room schoolhouse, there were that few of us. There were Imogene and Abel Cristiana, and myself and Julie, and a few others. Well, look. If your aunt didn’t go so far as to tell you to
eschew
the DeVanes, why don’t you ride over and have tea with us tomorrow? We always have it at four on Sundays. Just continue on Old Clove past that haywagon road you turned
into before, and you’ll come to our house. It’s the ancient stone job, with black shutters. If it’s as nice as it is now, we’ll have it down on the terrace. Is that specific enough to convince you I’m not just being polite?”

“I’d like to very much.” I had to stop myself from adding, “If you’re sure you really want me.” The invitation, coming so suddenly, had startled me. I had hoped to see her again, hoped she might ask me to come back to the hut, but somehow I had not expected an invitation to tea.

“Good! I want you to meet my brother. We’ll have a nice high tea and amuse one another.” She patted me on the shoulder and strode off to an old green station wagon with wooden sides. The wagon door groaned on its hinges when she opened it, and she laughed and called back, “Neither of us is as young as we used to be!
À tout à l’heure
, then.”

When I got back to Lucas Meadows, they wanted to know what had taken me so long, but I said nothing about meeting anyone. I simply said I hadn’t meant to take so long. I was not a secretive person, and I would have told my mother about the invitation later, when we were alone. The reason I didn’t tell at once—or so I reasoned—was that I didn’t want to bring up the DeVanes in front of Becky. And maybe also I wanted to keep the meeting with Ursula—which had happened, as such things inevitably do, just when I had stopped anticipating it—to myself for a few hours. Perhaps I felt I needed to go over it in my mind, relishing its details, before sharing it with someone else. At any rate, I said nothing, and my silence was to cause difficulties later in the day.