Camilla (6 page)

“Schiaparelli? A famous dress designer, of course. Any dope knows that. Why?”

“Well,” I said, “to me it means Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer—he came from Milan, as a matter of fact—in the nineteenth century.”

“Okay, okay,” Luisa said. “So what did this guy do?”

“Well,” I told her, “for one thing he was the first astronomer to see the canals on Mars. Oh—and he was the first one to discover that Mercury takes eighty-eight days to rotate.”

“Okay, okay,” Luisa said again. “I'm convinced. You're going to be an astronomer.”

“I am.”

Luisa grinned at me. “But you take your Schiaparelli and I'll take mine. Maybe if my clothes came from Schiaparelli instead of bargain basements I wouldn't look so bony.”

I laughed then and said, “I didn't mean to get so excited. But, oh, Luisa, it's so terribly exciting! Did you know that some scientists think that the world and the sun and the planets and lots of the other stars are all part of a great big explosion? A huge enormous star exploded somewhere and we're all just fragments of that explosion getting farther and farther apart as we fly out into space.”

“Don't,” Luisa said. “That's scary.”

“I think it's thrilling,” I said. “You'd think it would be the religious people who'd want to find out about it all, wouldn't you? But most of them don't. What do you want to be, Luisa?”

“A doctor,” Luisa said. “Either a psychiatrist or a surgeon. I'd like to be a psychiatrist because I'd like to know what makes people throw things at each other and hate each other and love each other at the same time; and drink too much; and cry all night long. And I'd like to be a surgeon because it would be a lot of really complicated problems, much harder than algebra or geometry, and I'm not a bit afraid of blood and gore and I think lots of doctors cut up an awful lot more of people than needs to be cut up. And it would be terribly
exciting to be a surgeon, too, don't you think, Camilla?”

“Yes,” I said, “I guess it would,” and in my mind's ear I could hear Luisa being talked about as “that brilliant woman surgeon, Luisa Rowan,” and I could see her walking into the operating room and putting rubber gloves on her long bony fingers with quick decisive gestures and then afterward looking terribly white and exhausted and at the same time terribly pleased . . .

“And it's nice,” Luisa said, “our both wanting to be scientists. Do let's always be friends, Camilla, even when you're a famous astronomer and I'm a famous doctor. Maybe neither of us will ever get married and then we'll need to be friends more than ever. I don't think I'll ever get married. I'm ugly and I'm flat-chested and I'm darned if I'll buy any of those little rubber things you stick in your bra. And I don't like men anyhow. Frank always goes around brooding and Bill is horrible to Mona even if I do like him better. I don't like women, either, I guess. Maybe I'm a misogynist. Is that what I mean? Or is it misanthrope? Anyhow, I don't think I'll ever get married unless I find a doctor who's a misogynist too. And you'll have your career to think of. You'll probably have lots of violent love affairs but a marriage might interfere with your work. Scientists should be single-minded. I really agree with Mona and Bill when they say that marriage is outmoded.”

“Well, I'd like—” I started, but she didn't even hear me.

“So we'll just have to go on being friends more than ever. And if you get ill or have any horrible accidents or anything I'll take care of you and save your life. Or maybe I could psychoanalyze you. Golly, Camilla, maybe it would be good if I psychoanalyzed you right now!”

Fortunately, the bell for the end of recess rang then and
we crammed the rest of our cookies into our mouths and went back to the classroom.

I don't know what I'd have done without Luisa when Jacques started coming to see Mother. But knowing Luisa and having met Mona and Bill had somehow blunted the first edge of shock, though nothing could really prepare me for the fact that something like Jacques could happen to my own parents. It was like accidents in newspapers that always happen to someone else and then all of a sudden someone else is you.

On Thursday—the afternoon of the day after I saw Jacques and my mother kissing and I knew that I could no longer pretend that Jacques really wasn't important—I came straight home from school after all because Luisa was going to the movies with Frank. They asked me to go with them, but it was to a revival of a Boris Karloff horror picture on Forty-second Street and they always terrify me.

When I got home I could tell from the doorman and the elevator boy that Jacques was not there. Upstairs the apartment was very quiet. I could hear Carter and the new cook talking out in the kitchen and I thought that perhaps my mother was out with Jacques. That was bad but it wasn't as bad as having Jacques in the apartment. I went out to the kitchen for a glass of milk, and Carter and the cook stopped suddenly as I appeared. The new cook seems very nice; at any rate I like her better than Carter. Carter is like a fish. I think if you cut her open her blood, like a fish's, would run cold.

“Is Mother out?” I asked, and then wished I hadn't asked it.

But Carter said, “No, Miss Camilla. I think she's in her room.”

If Mother is home and not in the living room with Jacques she usually comes hurrying to meet me when I get back from school, and we have tea together, or cocoa, and talk; so I gulped down my milk and went to her room and knocked on the door.

There wasn't any answer, but just as I raised my hand to knock again, my mother's voice called, “Who is it?” Her voice sounded thick and as though she were talking through a bad cold.

“It's me, Mother,” I said. “Camilla.”

“Oh,” my mother said. “Come in, darling. I think I'm catching a cold.”

But when I went into the room and looked at her I knew she was not catching cold. She lay in a little heap on the bed with all her clothes, even her shoes, still on, and her face was all blurred and blotchy and looked as though she had been crying for hours and hours, the way Luisa says Mona does.

“Camilla darling,” my mother said. “Be a sweet angel and throw my blanket over me, I'm freezing. Winter's really here, isn't it? I hate to see summer over and even autumn—though there were some nice warm days in October. I do hate the cold. How was school? Did you have a nice breakfast with Luisa?”

“Yes, thank you,” I said.

“Camilla, come here, come here quick,” my mother said, holding her arms out to me. I went over to the bed and she put her arms around me and pulled me down beside her and I could feel her tears spilling over onto my cheeks. “Oh,
Camilla, don't hate me. Don't hate me too much,” my mother wept.

“I don't hate you,” I said quickly, and I kissed her with little gentle kisses as though she were the baby and I the mother; but for the first time as she lay there and wept she looked much older than I, really old enough to be my mother.

One thing that always pleases her when we go out someplace together is when people think we are sisters, or say, “And which is the mother and which is the daughter?” But now she had deep blue circles spreading out under her eyes like fans and her face seemed somehow to have puffed and sagged and I wanted to take her into my arms and hold her against me to protect her so that she would not see her face in the mirror.

“Oh, Mother, I love you,” I said over and over. “I love you so much.” And we clung together and rocked back and forth until at last my mother stopped crying and lay back against the pillows again, gasping and hiccuping like an exhausted baby. I went into her bathroom and wrung out her washcloth in cold water and bathed her eyes, and then I took some of her eau de cologne from her dressing table and rubbed it gently over her forehead, and she lay there with her eyes closed, saying, “Oh, that feels so good, Camilla, that feels so wonderful,” and I felt old.

And then she said, “Oh, darling, I know I'm not very mature, but how can you please a person when you seem to be the very opposite of everything he wants? I don't have a brilliant mind the way he— All I have to offer him is my love. And when it seems to me he doesn't want—when he congratulates me because I'm less loving—oh, he doesn't use those
words, of course, he calls it being more mature, but that's what it means—then it's as though he thrusts a knife in my— Once he even congratulated me on being more cold—to
him
. That hurt me more than— But I love him. I—I even tried to be less affectionate—but I couldn't kill the need for warmth that's in me.”

She stopped talking then, with a sort of little gasp, and put her hand up to her mouth in a quick, childish gesture. Then she added in a whisper, “If only I had Mama to talk to—but I have to talk to someone. I can't help it, I've always had to talk. If only one didn't have to grow up, Camilla! If only one could always be a child! I'm not strong enough for—oh, Camilla, God help me, God help me!” And she began to cry again, and through her crying she said, “He'd murder me if he ever really knew—he'd murder me—Rafferty's a violent man, Camilla, you don't know how violent!”

“Why would Father want to murder you, Mother?” I asked, and my voice was suddenly as cold and as hard as a slab of marble.

She stopped crying suddenly then and sat up and held out both her hands to me. “Oh, dear God, Camilla, what have I done to you? What have I said? Of course he wouldn't want to murder—I'm just hysterical. I'm getting the flu and I don't know what I'm talking about. Call for the doctor, Camilla. I want to see Doctor Wallace. Call him for me.”

I called the doctor and he said he would come by later in the evening; and I wanted to ask my mother, “Does everything you've been saying mean you love Jacques now and not Father?” And I wanted to say “How can you love that horrible little slug?” But I just covered her up with the blanket
again and left the room and closed the door quietly behind me.

I went into my room and I did my homework. I forced my mind into a vacuum and then I filled that vacuum with the things I was supposed to learn or prepare for school the next day. I had never done my homework so quickly before. Then I went into the kitchen and told the new cook that I had been invited to have dinner with Luisa and I was sorry I hadn't mentioned it to her before. I am not supposed to go out in the evenings alone and Carter knows this, but she didn't say anything, and I went downstairs and walked to the BMT. I didn't know whether Luisa would have come home from the movies yet or not, but I thought I would go down to Ninth Street and see; and if worse came to worst I could go to a movie myself and then to her apartment afterward.

Someone was home when I rang the bell under the Rowan mailbox because the latch of the red front door clicked almost immediately. I pushed the door open and began to climb the brown carpeted stairs and from above I could hear Mona's English bulldog, Oscar Wilde, barking ferociously. As I started the last flight Mona leaned over the stair rail and called down, “Who is it?” and Oscar stuck his head through the banisters and growled. Oscar always looks as though he intends to eat you up when in reality all he wants is to sit in your lap and have his head scratched.

“It's Camilla Dickinson, Mrs. Rowan,” I said. “Is Luisa home?”

Mona is very small and very thin with red hair cut almost as short as a man's, and she wears glasses with heavy black frames, and black suits and spike heels and hats from Lilly
Daché, and I am always uncomfortable around her. When I go down to Luisa's I'm always glad when Mona isn't home because I feel that she thinks Luisa's friends are a bore and a nuisance, cluttering up her apartment.

“No, Luisa isn't home,” she said. “Why didn't you call before coming all this distance?”

“Oh, I was coming down here anyhow.” I lied for no reason except that, as usual, she rattled me so, I didn't know what I was saying. “Tell Luisa I'll call her later.” Now Oscar began to announce with an even louder voice that he wanted to see me, and he began jumping up and down and yipping with excitement between his barks. “Get inside and shut up, Oscar,” Mona said, and, taking him by the collar, she flung him into the apartment. “I'll tell Luisa,” she said, and slammed the door.

Well, I suppose I'll have to go to a movie, I thought, and I didn't like the idea because I'd never been to a movie alone. I turned around and had started down the stairs again when the door of the Rowan apartment opened and Frank stuck his head out, shouting, “Hey, Camilla Dickinson, is that you?” and came pounding down the stairs after me.

“Oh, hello, I thought you were at the movies with Luisa,” I said. Frank made me feel uncomfortable, though in a different way from Mona, and I didn't know why. Perhaps it was just because he was a boy and I didn't know much about boys except the ones at dancing school, and I didn't like them.

“I got bored, so I came out early. Where are you going now?”

“I don't know. Just for a walk, I guess.” My voice trailed off as I thought of having left my mother there, worn out on
the bed from weeping, waiting for Father and Dr. Wallace to come and make everything all right. I thought that perhaps I should go home and then I thought that it might be better if Father came home and could be alone with Mother.

“Why don't I walk with you for a while?” Frank asked.

“Do you want to?”

“Yes. I'd like to see you once without Luisa.”

As we started to walk, the streetlamps came on suddenly and the early winter night seemed to settle down between the houses.

“Where shall we go?” Frank asked.

“I don't care. Wherever you say,” I said.

We walked over to Washington Square; above the arch we could see the first star pulsing and throbbing against the last cold streaks of light.