Camilla (7 page)

Washington Square has always seemed to me to be a much more grown-up park than Central Park. Perhaps it's because I used to play in Central Park when I was small and I've only really known Washington Square after dark when Luisa and I have walked Oscar Wilde around and around and talked. I felt very grown-up walking with Frank and almost as though I were an NYU student on a date. The park was emptying as we reached it. A few remaining mothers rolled up their knitting or closed their books with cold fingers and started pushing their baby carriages toward home, and a gang of boys was still bouncing a ball against the hard stone of the arch and shouting at each other with harsh, hungry voices.

“You know, Cam,” Frank said, “Luisa monopolizes you. You shouldn't let her do that.”

“She doesn't monopolize me,” I said.

Frank picked a stick up off the sidewalk and threw it across the grass. “I suppose we should have brought Oscar Wilde with us. That dog would never get out if Luisa and I didn't see to him. Of course she monopolizes you. And you do whatever she tells you to do, meek as Oscar when he's chewed up one of Bill's shoes. And the funny thing is, I bet you've really got more guts than Luisa. Listen, Camilla Dickinson, do you believe in God?”

Frank looks very much like Luisa. His hair is a darker shade of red, but he has the same blue eyes and long arms with the naked wristbones always showing below his sweater and making him look younger than he is. And I saw now that he talked like Luisa, too, because that was the kind of question Luisa was apt to ask anybody new who interested her. She asks that sort of question partly because it shocks people and partly because she doesn't believe in God and she really wants to know what other people think. I think perhaps she feels that if she finds enough people who really believe in God, maybe she'll believe in Him again too.

It's the only thing we've ever really fought about—I mean a real fight, not just a spat. Luisa has to have a spat at least once a day. But about this all she'll ever say is “You're just a dope to believe in God, Camilla,” with such scorn that I seem to shrivel and curl all up inside though I am determined to go on being a dope if that makes me a dope.

So now I said “Yes!” to Frank almost as though he had raised a whip over my head.

“That's very refreshing,” Frank said, “very refreshing indeed. Do you know, oddly enough, so do I.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Maybe it's just a reaction because of Mona and Luisa. But I doubt very much if my God is the same kind of God you believe in, Camilla Dickinson.”

“I don't believe in an old man in a night gown and long white whiskers, if that's what you mean,” I said rather sharply.

“Tell me about your God,” Frank demanded. “What kind of a God
do
you believe in?”

We walked around the park and I didn't say anything because I was trying to think the kind of God I believe in into words. God wasn't anything I ever thought about at all before I met Luisa. He was just something that was always there, the way Mother and Father were before Jacques. And when Luisa talked to me about God it didn't make me want to think about Him; it just made me stubborn. But Frank made me want to think.

We paused for a moment to watch two old men wearing wool caps and big woolen scarves sitting on a bench with a chessboard between them. They sat as still as statues, almost as though the chill November air had frozen them. We waited until finally one of them reached out a hand in a gray woolen glove and made a move and then Frank walked me over to a bench and pushed me down on it and we sat there and a brown leaf dropped from the tree behind us and drifted down onto the sidewalk.

“Well,” I said at last, “I don't think it's God's fault when people do anything wrong. And I don't think He plans it when people are good. But I think He makes it possible for people to be ever so much bigger and better than they are. That is, if they want to be. What I mean is, people have to do
it themselves. God isn't going to do it for them.” And at the same time that I was saying this and believing it, I was thinking, But why did God let Jacques come?

Frank said, “I like that, Camilla. I like what you said. Sometime I'd really like to have a good talk with you—if Luisa'll let me tear you away.”

Again, when he talked about Luisa and me like that, it made me mad, and I said, “That's up to me.”

“Well, will you, then, Cam?” Frank asked. “There are so few people in the world anybody can talk to. I mean about things that matter. Most girls your age—well, when you go out with them you know they're always kind of thinking about being kissed. I mean it's all so kind of new to them, that sort of thing, and it makes them kind of one-track-minded. But with you—if anybody notices the way you look in your sweater, it'll be me, not you. And we can talk. Usually a girl you can talk with isn't—doesn't have any—but you do. You sit there and you talk about God and you look just beautiful.”

When Frank said that it was as though something warm and lovely had exploded right in the middle of my stomach and, like the sun, sent rays of happiness all through my body. All my misery about Mother and Father and Jacques disappeared from even the darkest corners of my mind, pushed away by the lovely warmth, and I couldn't keep a smile from starting in my eyes and then spreading all over my face the way the warm feeling had spread all over my body.

When I was little I had often heard people say (when they thought I couldn't hear), “What a pity that Camilla looks so like her father instead of Rose.” And people were always talking about how beautiful Mother was, but they had never called me a beautiful child. I had thought during the
past winter that I must be getting prettier, partly from my own mirror and partly from the way Mother looked at me, pleased, and at the same time wistful and unhappy, as though my changing from the ugly duckling must somehow be taking something from her. But to have Frank say it out loud for me, that I was beautiful, made me dizzy with pleasure.

And then Frank said, “Luisa's ugly as a mud fence, isn't she?”

I stood up furiously and cried, “She is not! She's the most nice-looking person I know!” And I wanted to fly to wherever Luisa was sitting by herself in the movies and put my arms around her and protect her from Frank's words.

“What a little tiger,” Frank said. “I didn't mean any harm to your precious Luisa. After all, she's my sister and I'm fond of her even if half the time I'd like to kill her. You should hear the things she says about you sometimes.”

“What does she say?”

“Oh—she talks.”

“About what?”

“Your mother, for instance.”

“What does she say about Mother?”

“Well, I suppose it's true,” Frank said. “We seem to love our parents no matter what they're like, even when we hate them.”

“But what does Luisa say about Mother?” My voice was fierce.

“I shouldn't have started this,” Frank said. “But I don't like people who start things and then back out. She just said once that your mother seems—well, foolish and childish, and that she thinks she must always have been that way, and not just lately. Of course, Cam, you know Lu wouldn't talk about
anything like this to anybody but me. We fight a lot but we talk too.”

“I guess Mother's always been childish,” I said slowly, still thinking over his first words. “What's that got to do with anything?”

“Well, just that Luisa doesn't understand how you used to adore your mother so.”

“I've told her,” I said to Frank with angry patience. “I've told her again and again. We used to have such fun together. Like two kids. I think it was because Mother
was
childish that we had so much fun. She really liked playing with me, tea parties and make-believe. She was really more fun, she could think of more things to do, than other kids. And we'd tell each other all kinds of things. Now it's different. When we talk to each other it's different. We tell each other different kinds of things. We're not the same people.”

“Luisa says she's very pretty.”

“That's changed too,” I said. “She used to look like a princess in a fairy tale, and now that's gone. I suppose she's still beautiful, but it's different.”

“Listen, I'm hungry,” Frank said suddenly. “Have you eaten?”

“No.” I was grateful to him for changing the subject.

“We could go back to the apartment and dig something out of the icebox, only I'm afraid Mona'll still be there, and Luisa'll come blundering in anytime now, anyhow.” He fished in his pockets. “I've got about a dollar. That'll give us each a hamburger and a milkshake. Wish I hadn't wasted a quarter on that putrid movie.”

“I can pay for mine,” I said.

Frank put the coins back into his pocket and then he took
his hands and put them on my shoulders and said, “Listen, Camilla, you know what this is? This is a date. A dinner date. We'll go to Nedick's and pretend it's the Persian Room at the Plaza. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

We had a lovely time at Nedick's. There was an old woman sitting next to us drinking that awful orange stuff and I think she'd been drinking something else before that because every few sips she would throw back her head and sing, and then she'd give a running commentary on the song and the people in Nedick's; and one of the men kept threatening to throw her out if she didn't keep quiet. Frank and I pretended the old woman was Hilde garde singing in the Persian Room at the Plaza, and the old woman loved it; I think perhaps she'd been an actress once upon a time.

She was so happy because we were laughing and paying attention to her that you couldn't mind about her being drunk, and Frank said, “Sing some Noël Coward for the young lady, Hildegarde,” and she shook with laughter and said, “Noël Coward. Now, there was an interesting man, dearie. I met him one day down at the Battery when he was writing the weather reports. You've never heard weather reports like he wrote. Better than singing commercials,” and then we all laughed and laughed, and then she started singing “Cockles and Mussels,” which seemed to be her favorite song.

We took as long over our hamburgers and hot chocolate as we possibly could, and the old woman had one small orange drink after another; but finally Frank and I had to go, so we left her there, drinking her drink and singing “Cockles and Mussels.”

Frank took me to the subway and I thought he was going to take me home, but he said, “I'm sorry I can't ride back with you, Camilla, but I promised David I'd go see him this evening and it's so late already, I'm afraid he'll think I've forgotten him. David's a veteran. He lost both his legs in the war.”

“Oh,” I said. We stood there at the mouth of the subway for a moment and then I said, “Thank you for the dinner and everything,” and Frank took my hand in his and held it, and then I turned and ran down the subway stairs.

All the way home I thought about the way he had told me I was beautiful, and the way he had put his hands on my shoulders and told me we were having a date, and the way he had held my hand when we said good-bye; and for the first time growing up seemed something pleasant to me. Luisa can't wait to grow up and go to medical school and everything, but I've kept having the feeling that if I weren't growing up, everything would be all right with Mother and Father, and Jacques would never have happened.

Once Luisa asked me, “Do you think Jacques is the first one?”

“The first what?”

“Now, Camilla,” Luisa said, “don't pretend to be dumber than you are. You know perfectly well what I mean.”

So I said, very firmly, “Yes.”

And Luisa said, “I hope you're right, Camilla. I sincerely hope you're right,” and shook her head in a way that reminded me of Mona. But I knew that I was right. Before Jacques started coming to the apartment everything was all simple and easy; now it is all complicated and difficult.

Before Jacques. After Jacques. I seemed to label everything like that.

But it was a funny thing: while I sat there in the subway on my way home I began to wonder for the first time if Jacques was really the only reason that everything seemed changed, or if he was only, as Luisa would say, the symptom and not the disease. Even before I was really aware of Jacques, things seemed somehow different; sitting there and looking at an ad for corned-beef hash, I had to admit that.

Just the little unimportant things, walking alone down on the beach in Maine on the long summer evenings; tea parties all alone with Mother when we pretended to talk together like two grown-up ladies having tea; sitting very quietly in Father's study while he read his paper and had his cocktail— it was things like these that were beginning to lose their glory before I had even heard of Jacques. And there was the miserable dull aching in my limbs that Mother called growing pains as she gently massaged my legs—but that was also an ache in my heart. Does the heart grow as well as the limbs? Nobody can rub your heart for you to ease the discomfort. That pain had nothing to do with Jacques. It was just easy to blame Jacques, to hate him, for everything.

I wished Frank had not left me at the top of the subway stairs to go see David—though I knew that was selfish and bad of me. Somehow, now, I could not think of the lovely time I had had with Frank but only of the fact that I did not want to be on my way home.

T
HE MOMENT
I
PUT MY KEY
in the latch and opened the door of our apartment I knew that something terrible had happened. All the lamps were on and the place seemed full of a light as sharp and cruel as the light in an operating room. I heard feet running back and forth and then I heard my mother scream and I thought, Father is murdering her, oh God, Father is murdering her; and I went running through the apartment to my mother's room. It was full of people: Father and Dr. Wallace and Carter and the cook, and Mother was flinging herself about on the bed and screaming and Father and Carter were trying to hold her down and there was blood all over the bed.