Camilla (15 page)

“What about the Dickinson child?” Bill asked in a bored voice. “I thought she was the new one.”

“That spoiled little snit? I'm not sure I don't prefer the Italians. At least they're human.”

Luisa looked up from her pad and said deliberately, “Frank went over to Pompilia Riccioli's for lunch. He'll probably stay for supper too. He usually does.”

Lying there on her bed, I felt, Oh, no! Life is too difficult, too terrible; how can anybody endure it? And I turned my face to the wall.

“I'm sorry,” Luisa said then. “I'm sorry, Camilla. I shouldn't have told you that.”

“I don't care,” I said.

“And don't mind about Mona. She doesn't mean it. Truly.”

“I don't care,” I said again. What difference did it make? What difference did it make what Mona thought, or Bill, or Luisa, or anybody? I lay staring up at the slats and I was filled with a fear of Pompilia Riccioli, of the little Italian girls who were at least human. I was filled with a fear of love because of what it had done to my mother and father, of what it had done to Mona and Bill; and the fear seeped through my entire body until I was waterlogged with it, like a piece of driftwood on the beach after a storm.

In the living room Mona screamed suddenly. “Oh, damn the war! Damn it! It's been over for years, why can't it
be
over! Frank spends half his time with that horrible legless creature over on Perry Street and the only time you act human is when you're telling somebody about what you did in the South Pacific. You're not in the South Pacific now. You're in New York. Why can't you forget it? It's over! Why can't you leave it alone?”

“Why can't you leave me alone?” Bill asked.

Luisa banged her pad down on her desk. “Let's get out of here,” she said. “Let's take Oscar for a walk or go to a movie or something.”

“I can't,” I said.

“Why not?”

I didn't want to answer but I said finally, “I'm supposed to see Frank this afternoon.”

“Oh, you are? You're a dope if you let yourself be at Frank's beck and call, did you know that, Camilla Dickinson? No man wants any girl he can have as easily as all that.”

“I can't help it,” I said.

“Aw, come on, Camilla,” Luisa urged. “Let's go. Keep him waiting for a few minutes. It'll do him good.”

“No, I can't,” I said. “I can't.”

“You make me sick,” Luisa said. “You make me so sick I could vomit.”

Then the front door banged and I heard Frank's footsteps and he walked through the living room without speaking to Mona and Bill and came and stood in the doorway to Luisa's room. “Hi.”

“Hi,” I said.

“What are you doing home?” Luisa asked rudely. “I thought you were out for the day.”

“Nope. Got a date with Camilla.”

“Camilla's busy.”

“No, I'm not,” I said.

Luisa turned on me. “You said you were going to spend the day with me.”

I shook my head. “I said I'd come down first thing this morning and I did. I've spent the whole morning with you.”

“A fat lot I think of anyone who breaks promises,” Luisa said.

“I didn't break any promise. I said I'd come and I did.”

“I don't mean that,” Luisa said scornfully, “and you know it. Don't try playing dumb, Camilla Dickinson. You didn't tell me about Jacques or yesterday afternoon or anything.”

“I never promised I'd tell you,” I said.

Luisa grew white as she always did when she was angry. “Mona said you were a spoiled little snit who wasn't even human, and she's right. Go on out with Frank if you want to. Do anything you like with him, only don't ever expect my help about anything ever again. As for you, Frank Rowan,
I'm surprised to see you rushing about being so social, today of all days.”

Although Frank was standing still, when Luisa spoke these words he seemed to give the effect of suddenly stopping. “What do you mean?”

“Don't you know?” Luisa asked, and there was a really nasty grin on her face.

Frank seemed to grow stiller and stiller. “It would be a good idea if you would shut up,” he said.

“As a psychiatrist I was just curious to see how you'd be,” Luisa said, “but I can't say it's seemed to bother you any.”

Then Frank broke away and grabbed me by the arm. “Come on, Camilla,” he said, “let's get out of here.” He dragged me from the apartment. When we got out on the street we stopped to catch our breaths and Frank said, quite calmly, as though there had not been this enormous Thing between him and Luisa just a few moments before, “I should think Mona and Bill provide enough scenes so Luisa wouldn't want to add to them.” Still holding my arm, he started walking rapidly up the street, and I walked along beside him and we said nothing until he led me into a drugstore.

“I thought we'd have a cup of hot chocolate,” he said, “even if it isn't very cold. I thought it would taste good anyhow. Hot chocolate always goes with November to me. Oh, listen, have you had any lunch?”

“No.”

“You'd better have a sandwich and some soup, then. What kind of a sandwich?”

“Oh, I don't care. Anything. Lettuce, tomato, and bacon, I guess.”

Frank ordered for me and I was worried. Worried about
the things he and Luisa had said and worried because I didn't know whether he got any more allowance than Luisa or not, and I thought he probably didn't. And he'd paid for the movie the night before. I wanted to offer to pay for my food but I was afraid it would make him angry.

But then he said, “I've got a job, Camilla. I'm tutoring the son of one of Mona's friends in Latin at fifty cents an hour. So from now on I'll have a few bits of silver to rub against each other in my pocket. Not much, but we can do a couple of things together. Listen, this astronomy business. How serious is it with you?”

“Completely serious,” I said.

“Well, tell me something, then,” he demanded as my soup and sandwich were put in front of me.

“Tell you what?” I asked blankly.

“What do you do about it? I mean to prepare yourself.”

“I read. I study mathematics. An astronomer has to have a terrific foundation of mathematics.”

Frank nodded. “That's true enough.” And then he took a swallow of his hot chocolate and he seemed to go miles and miles away from me. I put my hands around my cup and my fingers were cold and the warmth was comforting.

Then Frank said, “I hadn't forgotten—what Luisa said. I just didn't want to talk about it. Not even to David. I'd like you to meet David, Cam. He's twenty-seven. Exactly ten years older than I am. He's the best friend I have in the world. Was your father in the war, Cam?”

“He did camouflage.”

“Did he go overseas?”

“He was in France for a while.”

“Bill went to the Pacific. Mona and Bill don't like me going
to see David. They think it's neurotic. It's not neurotic. I don't go to see David because he lost his legs. I go see him because he's just a wonderful person, and the wisest one I know. Has Luisa talked to you any about David?”

“No,” I said, and in spite of my pity I felt a pang of jealousy for this David who took up so much of Frank's time and thought.

“Luisa came with me once to see him but they didn't like each other. Luisa always asks too many questions. The wrong kind of questions. David has a pair of artificial legs he wears when he goes to the park, but he can't ever wear them to walk with because he was wounded in the stomach too. I don't exactly know why, but it would put too much strain on his stomach for him to use artificial legs.” Then Frank stopped and looked at me. “You wouldn't be afraid to see him, Camilla?”

“No,” I said.

“Luisa was. With all her talk about being a doctor, she was afraid. I think that's why they didn't get on, why she said all the wrong things. The thing is, though, when you're with David you don't think of anything but
David
. You don't think about his legs.”

No, for some reason I was not afraid at the prospect of meeting David. I knew that Frank would never take me to see anyone like David in order to frighten me, as Luisa might possibly have done.

“Okay. We'll go there next weekend. Listen, let's walk.”

When we walked we never seemed to talk. We walked in silence to the Square and sat down on one of the benches. Frank began to speak as though suddenly the silence was bothering him and he had to fill it with words. “I used to
want to be a pianist. But you have to be a lot younger than I am really to get anywhere. And sometimes I think I would like to be a scholar. I love curious facts. Do you know how Aeschylus died? An eagle dropped a tortoise on his head. And Alborak was the name of the white mule Mohammed went to heaven on. But now I think I'd better be a doctor.”

“Like Luisa?” I asked.

“No. Not like Luisa. I don't know exactly why Luisa wants to be a doctor, but she talks about it in such an odd way that I know it's not for my reason.”

“What's your reason?”

“A very simple one. To be a doctor is to be on the side of life. I'm against death. I resent it. I want to do everything I can against it.” Then he said, as though everything else he had said since we had left the apartment had been a painful preliminary:

“Camilla, I—I have to go see the Stephanowskis. I—I was being a coward. I didn't want to go today. But I have to.”

“All right,” I said.

“Camilla, maybe one reason I like you so much is that you're so different from Luisa. Luisa would have been all full of questions, but you just wait.” He looked down at a pigeon picking up some Cracker Jacks that had been spilled on the walk.

“It's about Johnny,” he said. “Johnny Stephanowski. He was my best friend. I haven't ever talked to anybody about him. Not to Luisa. Or Mona or Bill. Only David a little but not much because he—somehow he doesn't quite understand the way I feel about Johnny even though he does about everything else.” He stopped talking for a moment; his teeth were clenched and the line of his jaw was tight and strained.

“We've only really known each other since Thursday, me and the Stephanowskis—but time doesn't have anything to do with it.” He stopped, and his silence was louder than words. Then he said, “Johnny and I were real friends. Not kid stuff. Real friends. I knew him since we were kids. His mother and father own the store where Mona buys all her records. I never knew his parents very well. Johnny and I always had too much to do to be bothered with older people. Then last year when Mona and Bill sent me off to school, the Stephanowskis sent Johnny too. It meant a lot to them, sending Johnny away to a prep school. It was—I don't think you could understand how important it was to them, Camilla. It was as though—as though they were opening some kind of door for him. At least they thought about it that way. We had a wonderful time at school. The kids all liked us and we were both good at football and baseball but even when there was a gang of us kidding around or something it was still Johnny and me. We used to sneak off at the end of study hall into the chapel and listen to Mr. Mitchell, the music master, practicing the organ. He knew we did it, but he was a good egg and never reported us. We used to lie stretched out on the wooden pews and listen to him playing
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme
,
O Bone Jesu
, the
St. Matthew Passion
. I think maybe that's why I'm not like Luisa or Mona or Bill. About God, I mean. You know, Cam, you could actually feel the pulse of the music vibrating through your body from the boards of the pew. I listened with my body as well as with my ears, and everything seemed clear and wonderful, God and man and the universe, and I thought everything would be all right because I had books and music and Johnny and when I was at school, away from Mona and Bill and the apartment, I could
forget about how awful they are to each other, and see them in my mind loving each other, the way people who are married ought to. The way the Stephanowskis do. They really do, Cam, in spite of—in spite of everything. Johnny's older brother—the one who knew David—died in the war. Now there're only the two kids, Pete and Wanda. People oughtn't to have to die, Cam. There's something awfully unfair about being born if you're going to have to die. It's like being born knowing you have a fatal illness. Johnny—”

He paused for a long time, staring down at a squirrel busily eating a peanut.

Then at last he said, “One of the kids on our hall got hold of a gun. Of course they weren't allowed and he kept it hidden. Johnny was crazy about guns and he went over to look at this one and it went off.” He paused again, a long moment of black silence. Then he said, so low that I could scarcely hear, so that I almost had to guess at his words, “He didn't die right away. He kept saying ‘Frank, Frank, Frank,' over and over and they let me stay with him. Cam, I don't see how anyone can see someone die and ever be the same again.”

He stopped talking completely and this time the silence had a finished quality to it; it was the complete white silence that comes after a snowfall. We sat there on the bench and the squirrel scurried up a tree and the pigeon picked up a last piece of Cracker Jack and then flew off clumsily over the grass. It was almost as though Frank's words about death had sent them away from us, fleeing to the safety of little girls playing hopscotch and nurses knitting as they sat by sleeping babies in baby carriages.

I don't know how long we sat there, not talking, but when Frank spoke again his voice had lost that frightening
quality of death, and I wanted to call to the squirrel and the pigeon: It's all right now, you can come back.

“I got kicked out of school a few weeks after that,” Frank said. “I'll tell you about it sometime. I'd seen the Stephanowskis when they came up after—after Johnny, but when I got back to New York it was a long time before I went to see them. I didn't want to talk about Johnny to anyone, and I thought they might want me to. Then Mona made me go over to buy some records—and then I just got into the habit of seeing them. I had the—the effrontery to think that I might help them, but they were the ones who helped me. If you don't mind, let's go over there now. Johnny died a year ago today. Snow's late this year. It was snowing this time last year.”