Camilla (19 page)

“No,” I said. I was angrier than I have ever been angry with Luisa.

“Would it surprise you if I said I had? Been kissed, I mean?”

“Not particularly.” I was still very angry.

“Well, I have. Even if it seems funny, ugly old Luisa's been kissed.”

“It doesn't seem funny.”

“Believe me, Camilla,” Luisa said, “it's an awful letdown when it happens. It isn't a bit the way it is in the movies. I expected I'd just about swoon but I didn't even particularly like
it. Maybe it's because I wasn't in love. It was this slob who took me out one night during last Easter holidays. His mother works on the magazine with Mona and I guess they thought it would be just too cute to get the kids together. He goes to some swanky boarding school and he thought he was a lot smoother than he was. Anyhow, his hair smelled so of brilliantine it almost made me sick. We went to the theater— a stinking musical when I wanted to see an honest-to-goodness play—and all the time he kept holding my hand and his hand was wet and clammy. The only reason I played along with him was for experimental purposes. I mean, a girl who's going to be a doctor ought to know about everything, and I wanted to know what it was really like, going on a date and necking with a boy, if you can call holding hands in the fifth row orchestra necking. Anyhow, he took me out afterward for a sandwich and ginger ale at Sardi's. Then he took me home in a taxi and I'd got to the point where I was so used to subways and buses I'd forgotten what riding in a taxi was like. He held my hand in the taxi and then he kissed me. It was all slobbery and wet and I wiped my mouth on my handkerchief afterward. I guess it hurt his feelings, because he didn't say anything else all the rest of the way home—it was just as we were going by Macy's that he kissed me. But when we got home he came up the steps with me and kissed me again. I was kind of used to it by the second time so I didn't wipe my mouth till after he'd said good-bye and got back in the taxi. Imagine being able to keep a taxi waiting! His father works for one of the big whiskey companies and they always send Mona and Bill a case at Christmas, so I guess he doesn't need to worry. He wrote me a couple of letters
when he got back to school, and they were certainly dopey letters. Oh, well. Do you think I should marry for money, Camilla? Should I marry some slob like that? Or should I wait for some nice skinny starving doctor with nice dry lips? If a wet kiss is what that slob gave me, I certainly don't see what's in one. I admit I got my information from Alma Potter. You don't like her, do you?”

“No.”

“I think she's kind of a dope too,” Luisa said. “She seems to have an awful lot of information, but I bet it isn't all as firsthand as she'd like us to think it is. She said her father was going to give her a mink coat for Christmas this year. I think that's tacky. Oh, golly, Camilla, I wish I weren't ugly. I wish I could think that slob had kissed me because I was pretty and not just because he kisses every girl he goes out with. I don't believe in marriage, not after what I've seen of it, but I wish I could stay single because I wanted to, and not because I have to.” She sat down on a bench in a room full of early Italian church paintings, all reds and blues and golds.

“I bet you're married before I am,” I said.

Luisa pushed her fingers viciously through her hair. “It's awful to be ugly, Camilla,” she said.

Again I felt sorry for her and fond of her. “Lots of the most famous women in history have been redheads,” I said comfortingly, “and none of them got really famous till they were about thirty anyhow.”

“Well, maybe I'll improve with maturity. If I decide to be a surgeon it won't make so much difference what I look like. After all, when they operate they're just about all covered up except the eyes. Oh, Camilla, life is so funny, isn't it? Either
I'm wildly happy or I'm miserable, and it seems to me most of the time I'm miserable. Never desert me, Camilla. Please, please never desert me.”

“Of course I won't desert you,” I said, but in a way I knew that I already had. Luisa was my friend, but suddenly she had become my responsibility instead of the other way around. And I knew that this was because of Frank.

Saturday, I thought. I will see Frank on Saturday.

S
ATURDAY MORNING
I put on my nicest, newest skirt, a full green wool one, and a clean white blouse and a green cardigan. I didn't dare put on my Sunday coat and hat so I just put on my navy blue school coat and my red beret; but instead of just pulling my beret on my head any old how I stood before my mirror for about five minutes trying to get it on the way Michèle Morgan wore hers in a French movie Luisa and I had seen.

Just as I was getting ready to leave, my mother called me into her room. She wore a dress with long sleeves to cover the marks that still showed on her wrists. “Are you going out, darling?” she asked.

“Yes, Mother.”

“With whom?”

“Frank Rowan.”

“Is Luisa going to be with you?”

“I don't know,” I said, and this was the truth. Frank hadn't told me whether or not Luisa was included in his plans, though I doubted it.

My mother frowned for a moment. “Oh, darling, I can't get used to the idea of your having dates. I know it's terrible, but I can't realize I'm old enough to have a daughter who's almost— Sometimes I think I wasn't ever meant to be a mother—I know I haven't been a proper mother to you—but I do love you, my baby, oh, I do, I do.”

“I have to go,” I said. “I told Frank I'd meet him at ten o'clock.”

“I wish I knew whether it's right or not—of course everything's changed nowadays since—but is it all right for you to go out with Frank alone? Do the other girls go out with boys alone?”

“Of course,” I said. “Of course it's all right, Mother.”

“I ought to talk to Rafferty about it, but I hate to worry him about anything else. When will you be home, darling?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Frank said we might have supper with Mr. and Mrs. Stephanowski.”

“Who are they?”

“Parents of a friend of his.”

“Well—would you telephone me about six o'clock? Then I'll feel easier about you.”

“I'll telephone you,” I said.

“Promise.”

“I promise, Mother.”

“And please don't be late, darling, or you'll upset your father. And me too.” She pulled me to her and kissed me, saying, “Oh, darling, I love you even if I haven't been a very good— You do know that, don't you? No matter what . . . I'll always love you.”

I kissed Mother good-bye and left. Frank was waiting for me on the steps of his house. “Hello, Camilla,” he said. He
looked at me very seriously, not smiling or holding out his hand in greeting. Then he said, “You look nice,” and my heart felt warm and good inside me. He took my arm. “I told David we'd be over this morning. Okay?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I didn't tell his mother. She always makes a fuss when David sees anybody new. Says it tires him. My gosh, he's got to have friends. Now is when he needs friends.”

We walked over to the apartment on Perry Street where David lived. It had an elevator and we went up to the top floor, the seventh. Frank rang the doorbell and a middle-aged woman in a dark red woolen dress answered it. Her hair was gray and her face was sad; she looked nervous and anxious as she answered the door. Her face fell into long droopy lines; I tried to think what it reminded me of and it was a very old basset hound we had had one summer up in Maine.

“Oh, hello, Frank,” she said. “He's not feeling very well today.”

“Would you rather we didn't come in, Mrs. Gauss?” Frank asked.

“I don't know. He's always glad to see you, but—” and she looked doubtfully at me.

A voice from inside the apartment called then, “Who is it, Ma?”

“It's Frank and a friend,” the woman answered.

“Well, send them in. Don't keep them standing out in the hall.”

“Go on in,” the woman said.

We followed the sound of the voice into the apartment. Frank went first and I followed him, and because of the apprehensive manner of David's mother, I began now to be
frightened. I had never before seen anyone who was maimed in body, and I was afraid that my fear might make me, like Luisa, say the wrong things.

David was sitting in a big armchair. Almost all of his legs had been cut off and a blanket was wrapped around the stumps, which did not reach the edge of the seat of the chair. He had a book in his hand, which he threw down on the table next to him as we entered. In the corner was a folding wheelchair. Frank went over to him and shook his hand and I followed.

“David, this is Camilla Dickinson,” Frank said. “She's a friend of mine. I wanted her to meet you. Camilla, this is David Gauss.”

David held out his hand to me and I took it. His hand felt very firm and strong and I stood there with his hand over mine, looking down at his face.

He looked older than twenty-seven. Twenty-seven is certainly grown-up, but it ought not to be old, and David seemed old, in spite of a great deal of dark brown hair that looked as though it needed combing. His face was very thin and his eyes seemed to be set too far back in his head. There were deep grooves around his mouth as though he had often to hold his teeth clenched in order to keep from crying out. His nose was thin and delicate and arched like an eagle's.

“So you're a friend of Frank's?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“How did you become friends with him?”

“His sister and I go to school together.”

“No reason for being friends. Tell me more than that.”

“We talked,” I said.

“Better reason. Luisa your friend too?”

“Yes. She's my best friend. I mean—”

“Mean she
was
your best friend?” David asked me, and smiled an odd smile.

Yes, that was exactly what I meant, although it was not until I told David that Luisa was my best friend that I realized it was no longer true.

“Yes,” I said, and I looked very hard into David's gray eyes. They were the color of water on a sunless day in winter when the clouds are low and the wind sharp and the water is icy cold, about to freeze.

“In other words,” David said, “you like Frank better than Luisa.”

“Yes.”

“Going to be tough on Luisa, but it's life; sooner or later Luisa's going to have to accept life. Frank, go ask Ma to bring us all in some coffee.”

“I'll make it,” Frank said, and went out of the room, leaving me alone with David.

But now I wasn't frightened anymore. I did not want to look at the blanket hiding the terrible remains of what had once been two legs as active as Frank's or mine, but as long as I looked at David's face I was not afraid.

“Sit down,” David said. “Tell me about yourself. Name again? Camilla what?”

“Camilla Dickinson.”

“Call you Miss Dickinson or Camilla?”

“Oh, Camilla,” I said. I sat down on a chair just across from David so that I could continue to watch his face. The room we were in was evidently his bedroom, living room, and study combined. There was a hospital bed in one corner covered by a dark red bedspread. There were a lot of books and
a big reproduction of a white de Chirico horse and a couple of abstract paintings, very geometrical and with a somehow frightening quality. There was an oriental rug on the floor; and at the windows hung dark red curtains matching the bedspread.

“Are you any relation to Karl Friedrich Gauss?” I asked David.

“The mathematician? No. Not that I know of. Like math?”

“Yes,” I said, “and Gauss did the calculations for Piazzi when he discovered the first of the planetoids.”

“Mathematician, hunh?” David said. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen. Almost sixteen.”

“That's a good age,” David said. “First fell in love when I was fifteen. Year behind Stephen Dedalus. Ever read
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
?”

“No.”

“Ought to. Get Frank to lend it to you. Anyhow, Stephen was fourteen and I was fifteen. Mine was my violin teacher. She was twenty-four. Beautiful as a Siamese cat. Look something like a cat yourself, Camilla, with those big green eyes. Been in love yet, Camilla?”

“No.”

“Not in love with Frank?”

When David asked me that it was as though he had taken his clenched fist and hit me with all his power in the stomach. “I hadn't thought about it.”

“Why not think about it?” He looked at me with a friendly sort of grin.

“I—I don't know,” I stammered, and felt myself blushing.
Then I said, “I don't think it's something you have to think about. I think if you're in love you know about it.”

“Wise words from one so young,” David said, and I could not tell whether or not he was laughing at me. “But sometimes thinking about it does no harm. Get you away from mathematics. Going to be a mathematician like Gauss?”

“I'm going to be an astronomer,” I said.

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

“Math's a good foundation for it.” Then, suddenly, David's voice was eager. “Good at cards, by any chance? Like to play cards?”

“Yes. I adore cards.”

“Like to come over and play with me sometimes? Frank tries occasionally, like the good kid he is, but he hasn't any card sense; no fun if you win all the time. Papa Stephanowski plays chess with me, but he won't let me lose, either. You play chess?”

“Yes,” I said. “I used to. I had a governess once who taught me, and I loved it, but I haven't had anyone to play with me since.”

“Oh, good, good,” David cried, a real light coming into his eyes for the first time. “What a find you are, Camilla. Bless Frank for bringing you over. Camilla, tell me something. I don't frighten you?”