April North (5 page)

He was silent. She sipped some of the scotch, thinking about what he had told her. Despite her earlier feelings, she knew that Craig Jeffers was right. She could not run away. To run was to give up, and to give up was wrong.

But how could she stay in Antrim? If she went on with the life she had been leading, she would only manage to serve as the butt of every off-color joke told in the Antrim High locker rooms until the day she graduated. The boys were absolutists, she knew. Give in to one of them and you were a tramp and nothing more. There were no shades of moralistic gray. Everything was either black or white.

“What can I do, Craig?”

He picked up his glass, swung it in a little circle so that the ice cubes bounced against one another. He took a quick sip of the scotch and put the glass down again. “You’ll go on living at home,” he said. “You’ll continue to go to high school, unless they throw you out or something like that.”

“And?”

“And you’ll have nothing to do with the boys and girls in your classes. You’ll cut them dead. They’re just children, April. You don’t need them.”

It was so easy to say. “What will I do, then?”

“You’ll be with me.”

“With you?”

He stood up and began to walk across the room. He turned suddenly and held his arms out. “There’s a whole wonderful world that you don’t know a thing about,” he said. “Do you think I’m the only person in the state of Ohio who knows how to live? I’m not, April. There are other men and women like me, mature people who’ve managed to grow up without getting stuffy. Fellows who drive fast cars and girls who have come to realize that a bed is more comfortable than the back seat of a car. April, you may not go to the senior prom, but I’ll take you to parties that your friend Danny Duncan would give his left testicle to attend. You may not ride around in hotrods, but you’ll find out what a 300-SL can do on a straight track. You won’t drink warm beer at the beach—instead you’ll get high on good scotch with soft music cooking in the background.”

He took a breath. “I sound like a preacher describing heaven, don’t I? Sometimes I get a bit carried away with myself, April. But I mean what I’ve said. You don’t have to feel deprived because you can’t be a baby any more. Instead you have to learn to be a woman.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“You’re ready.”

She studied the floor. In a low voice she said, “I’m not very smart or sophisticated. I don’t know the right things to say. Your friends would laugh at me.”

“No one will laugh at you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. April, you’re smarter than you think you are. And as far as sophistication goes, it’s not something a person is born with. It’s developed, when you’re ready for it.”

“And you think I’m ready?”

“I know you’re ready.”

She finished her drink. The liquor was working and she could feel its effects, yet she did not feel all. Instead it was as though the liquor mar clearer and more vivid, as though she co now as they really were. Craig was right, was absolutely right

She finished her drink. The liquor was working and she could feel its effects, yet she did not feel drunk at all. Instead it was as though the liquor made everything clearer and more vivid, as though she could, see things now as they really were. Craig was right, she decided. He was absolutely right.

She stood up. Craig had a mustache, she thought. In Antrim only a few old men had mustaches what was the mater with him. But Craig looked good with his, she knew It made him look dashing and exciting. She decided that he was the only really exciting person she had ever met.

“April—”

She looked at him. He was standing straight as a ramrod now, his eyes beckoning to her. She walked over to him like a person in a hypnotic trance. Her whole body tingled with life. She moved closer, wishing he would take hold of her, and when his arms reached for her she threw herself against him, her heart racing.”

He kissed her. His lips were tender at first, incredibly tender, and then he was holding her tightly and his tongue was a flaming sword that burned the inside of her mouth. She felt her breasts drawn hard against his chest, felt desire building up in her loins and spreading through her body like a raging forest fire. Her knees were shaking and she could barely breathe.

Suddenly he released her. She floundered for a moment, then regained her balance and stepped backward slightly. She wondered what he was going to do next

He said, “You’re sweet, April.”

She was silent.

“Very sweet,” he said. “Do you want to go to bed with me, April.”

She nodded.

“And I want to go to bed with you, April. But not now. Tomorrow night, April. When we have all the time that we need.”

He laughed. “Come on,” he said. “I’m going to take you April.”

She went with him.

4

THERE was only one point where she felt foolish. All the way home, her neat buttocks cupped by the bucket seat of the low-slung Mercedes, her suitcase propped again upon her knees, everything seemed perfectly logical, perfectly free and easy. And when Craig leaned over lazily in front of her house to brush her lips with a fleeting kiss, everything was still quite perfect and quite sensible.

But when the Mercedes roared like a lion and headed back for Craig’s home, and when she was left to enter her house alone, suitcase in hand, everything was not quite so perfect or logical or sensible any longer. Alone now, she was a little girl who had been trying to run away from home, and who was now returning with her suitcase in her hand and her tail between her legs. No matter how sensible her actions might be when viewed from a distance, here she was with her silly suitcase and there was her house, looming ominously at her, and there was just no way to get the suitcase into the house without looking like several different kinds of a damn fool. The hour was quarter to eight—she had missed dinner and she was getting home just in time to tell Jim Bregger that he could go to hell for himself because she was not going out with him, after all. Perhaps some people could have felt perfectly calm about coming home under such circumstances but April was not one of them, not by any means.

The front door was ajar. She gave it a shove and walked in, hoping that no one was home. But just as she stepped into the hall her mother materialized, dishcloth in hand and worried look in eyes.

“April—”

“I meant to call,” she said, improvising furiously. “I tried once and the line was busy, and then it was time for dinner. And after dinner I figured it would be just as quick to come home as to call, so I didn’t. Call, that is. I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Where were you?”

“Judy Liverpool’s house,” she said. “I went over there after school and then they asked me to stay for dinner and I figured it would be all right.”

“You should have called, April.”

“I know,” she said. She managed to remember the suitcase before her mother noticed it. “I was going to stay the night,” she lied neatly. “But I changed my mind. Besides, I’ve got a date tonight and he’s coming any minute, so I have to be home to tell him that I won’t go out with him.”

The words came too fast for Mrs. North—the sentences changed direction too chaotically and she was hopelessly lost. “A date,” she said weakly. “And you aren’t going?”

“No, Mom. It’s with Jim Bregger, and he has a terrible reputation with the girls, only I didn’t know about it when I made the date, but Judy Liverpool told me and I know about it now. So I’m not going.”

“A bad reputation?”

April nodded slowly. “They say he tries to get girls to do things,” she said. “You know what I mean, Mom.”

Mrs. North could guess. “You’re absolutely right,” she said. “Don’t you dare go out with him. I know you wouldn’t let him do anything, April—”

“Of course not.”

“—but you have to safeguard your own reputation, you know. When a girl dates a fast boy, even if she’s completely innocent, folks begin to talk. You have to guard against that sort of talk, April. Evil tongues do the devil’s work.”

“Yes, Mom.”

Mrs. North turned and carried her dishcloth back to the sink.

April scampered up the stairs, closed her door and unpacked her suitcase. Nice lying, she thought. Very smooth, although if Craig had heard her he might have revised his opinion of her maturity. Still, she had handled things well. The suitcase gambit had brushed by without parental notice, the missed dinner was forgotten and Jim Bregger no longer had a leg to stand on as far as Mrs. North was concerned.

Now all she had to do was get rid of Bregger and sit on her heels for a day until Craig picked her up. As soon as he did, everything was going to be roses. She knew that as well as she knew her own name.

Because Craig was something special. The difference between a man like Craig and boys like Danny Duncan and Bill Piersall was about the same as the difference between 1949 Beaujolais and the ninth pressing of last year’s California grapes. Craig was a man, not a typical Antrim man who grew stolid and stupid the day he passed twenty-one, but a cosmopolitan type who actually matured and who actually remained young inside. Craig had drive and fire, and Craig appreciated her, and Craig—

She wondered if she was in love with him.

Probably, she decided. Love was a funny word, a tough thing to get hold of. For a stupid while she had imagined herself in love with Danny and as soon as she had shown her love for him he had decided to share her fair white body with the rest of the male half of the senior class. So she was not exactly sure what love was, or whether or not she was ready to think about it.

But she was fairly sure about Craig. She was sure that he knew more than she did, and that he had done more than she had, and that he could make her life worthwhile again. As he had said, she might not go for rides in hotrods any more but Craig’s Mercedes could give Bill’s rod cards and spades and leave it standing at the post. And she had a fair notion that Craig’s parties could do the same for the senior prom.

Well, she was going to have fun now. Of course, Craig expected her to sleep with him, but this did not bother her. You cheapened yourself when you let a high-school boy sleep with you—you only turned yourself into a tramp. But when you slept with a man like Craig Jeffers it was part of being a mature individual in a sophisticated world. She would not feel cheap, not after an affair with Craig. She would feel like a woman.

She finished unpacking her suitcase and went downstairs again. Her father was in the living room, the evening paper in front of his face. He lowered the paper and smiled slightly at her. It was a typical central Ohio smile, she thought. Empty and meaningless and a little silly-looking.

“Hi,” he said. “Ma said you ate over at the Liverpool’s.”

“That’s right.”

“Hungry? There’s some roast left in the fridge.”

“I had plenty to eat, Dad.”

“Well,” he said. “Have a seat, hon.”

She sat down on the flowered couch and he returned to his newspaper. The same thing every night, she thought, with Mom doing dishes and Dad reading the paper. She wondered suddenly if they made love any more. For people that old still to have sex seemed to her somehow indecent. But to think that they might have just given it up seemed even worse.

How horrible to grow too old for it, she thought. Just to sit around and realize that most of life had already passed you by. She wondered just how old you were when you were too old for it. When did you stop wanting and needing it? And when did men stop wanting and needing you?

She tried to imagine her mother, walking alone down a street in another city. Suppose a man saw her, she thought. Would he give her that look? Would he want to have sex with her? Would he think she was still desirable? And what would her mother do if a man made a pass at her? And what would—

I’m being silly, she told herself. She crossed one leg over the other and looked idly at her knee. Did Craig think she had nice legs? Did Craig think she had a nice body?

She sighed. There was some roast beef in the refrigerator, and she was dying of hunger. But she could not go into the kitchen and start gnawing on the roast and still live up to the lie about the wonderful dinner she had just finished packing away at the Liverpool’s. Well, it would not hurt her to miss a meal.

The doorbell rang.

She stood up. Her father had started to fold his newspaper, but she shook her head and walked past him. “It’s for me,” she explained. “A boy.”

“Got a date, Hon?”

“Not exactly,” she said.

When she opened the door, her not-exactly date stood on the stoop with a silly expression on his face. She tried to decide whether he was nervous or excited. It was hard to say. Jim—

“April—”

They had both started talking at once, throwing their names at each other, and now they stopped at once. She looked at him for a second or two, taking him in from his oiled black hair to his scuffed brown loafers. Now, she thought, if she were going to start putting out for the fine young men of Antrim, she could not find a less exciting start than Jim Bregger. Admittedly, the FYM of Antrim were a moldy lot, but Jumping Jim Bregger was the bottom of the barrel.

He was fat. And he had pimples. He was not merely fat—he was jellyfish, with no discernible muscles. And he did not just have pimples—even his pimples had pimples. He was so thoroughly a mass of acne that, when you looked at him, you wanted to squeeze his head.

“April,” he said, “I can’t go out with you tonight.”

That’s right, she thought. You can’t.

But how in the world did he know this fact already? She had not yet opened her mouth, except to spit his name at him.

“I’m sorry,” he went on. “But I can’t go out with you.”

She asked him why he could not. It occurred to her that this was a little like examining the dentures of a gift horse but she just had to know. Maybe his mother would not let him go out with a horny little tramp like her. Maybe—

He said, “Bill Piersall told me.”

Sure, she thought. First Danny Duncan told you, and then Bill Piersall told you. It figures.

“He said you’re—well, his property now. He said he’s dating you steady and everybody better lay off. Stay away, I mean. He said if I kept my date with you tonight he’d scramble my brains for me. That’s what he said, April.”