Family Secrets (37 page)

Penny loafers were the best. Platform shoes with ankle straps and stockings meant you had a date after school and were sophisticated. High heels with angora socks were disgusting. Saddle shoes and white socks were fine; colored socks were totally tasteless. Paris had saddle shoes with autographs from stage stars on them, her own idea and a big hit. Because she was a big girl now and had an allowance of a dollar fifty a week she could go to Saturday matinees every once in a while with a friend and buy standing room. Too timid to go backstage, she and the friend would lurk right outside the stage door in the street and accost the star, requesting an autograph. If the star agreed, up went the foot with the saddle shoe on it, out went the hand with the fountain pen in it, already uncapped and waiting. She usually had success.

From nine o’clock to eleven in the morning the school had what was called lab time, which meant you could contact the teachers on your own and ask for help with problems, or collect their initials on your completed work. No one wanted extra assistance because that meant extra work, so the time was spent either waiting around to get initials or else fooling around in the halls. Paris spent part of her time hanging around in the halls and part of it in the library reading books that were not on her assigned list. She discovered Truman Capote in a magazine, and John O’Hara and F. Scott Fitzgerald in books, and they became her favorites.

Some mornings they had gym. The worst thing about gym was that the high school girls weren’t allowed to use the elevators, and the gym was on the tenth floor, so you had to walk up ten flights and then play basketball. Paris liked basketball, however, now that she was thin and fast. She played guard, which she liked because it seemed more aggressive.

She had already chosen her friends, or rather they had chosen her. They were outsiders like herself. One was a newcomer from California, which was even more remote than Brooklyn although not as disgraceful. Another was too smart, a greasy grind like herself, but without humor, a girl who picked her nose all day. And the third, who had come all the way up from the primary school, was still an outsider because she was strange: she was fourteen and still had a governess, her home clothes looked like uniforms, her parents were rich and famous and she hardly ever saw them, and she had mad crushes on girls. But a friend was someone to hang around on the street with after school, to have adventures with, to explore the museums with and go to the movies with and sit at the drugstore counter with and eat sundaes and tell secrets with, to hang around stage doors with, to talk to on the phone at night.

Classes continued until three o’clock in the afternoon, with a break for the inedible lunch, and then everyone had to stay until four-thirty to do something creative. You could study painting or sculpture or acting, or play a musical instrument. You were only excused from this creative activity if you had to go to the dentist to have your braces adjusted. Paris studied painting. The teacher was a famous artist who had fallen on hard times because of his political beliefs, and there were only three girls in the class including Paris.

She drew cartoons for fun and painted huge oil paintings. Her teacher said she could be an artist. But writing interested her more. It was a shame that there was no decent English teacher. There had been one, briefly, but he had been fired. He was a strange man, who smoked in class and possibly drank too much outside it, but he told her she had great talent and she liked him. Then he was fired in the middle of the term and no one knew why, and replaced by a simpy little woman with pink spots on her face who had only a BA from some college no one had ever heard of and kept telling Paris she was wonderful. Paris knew that a compliment from this simp was not the same as one from that strange, tough man.

She wrote stories at home and showed them to her mother. Her heart pounding, she would stand there and try not to breathe too loudly while her mother lay on the chaise longue in Paris’ bedroom and read the story. Then, the verdict.

“This isn’t up to your usual elegant style.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“This sentence is awkward. That word doesn’t make sense. And I don’t understand this line.”

“How’s this, better?”

“Yes, that’s fine. Now it’s a very good story.”

“You didn’t like it because it had three mistakes?” Paris would say, indignant.

Her mother would look bewildered. Three mistakes was three too many. A story had to be perfect. What else was criticism for?

Near the end of Paris’ first year the school board voted to accept Negro students into the school, starting with the primary school, so they could grow up with the white students and become friends naturally. Paris’ friend who had the governess and the two rich famous parents was yanked right out of school by her mother and registered at boarding school for the next year. There really hadn’t been any hope for Janie anyway, because she had been the one who had asked at the students’ meeting: “Do you mean they’re going to be allowed to use the
swimming pool
?”

“It doesn’t come off, you know,” Paris told her, and Janie looked dubious.

Then her friend from California went back home. There went two friends. The nose-picker was very popular because she had come up from the middle school, so she had other friends besides Paris. The freshmen had already divided themselves into cliques. There were the older girls who went out with boys, and the younger ones who didn’t know any or didn’t like boys yet. There were the loud, vulgar outsiders who had obviously been taken into the school for their money. There were the longtime students, who had known each other since they were four years old. There were the WASP ballet students, whose parents lived in town houses and had dogs. There were the English girls who had been sent to America to escape the bombing. There were the Chinese girls whose parents had come to America to escape the communists. By the end of the freshman year the groups tended to loosen up and overlap.

Then the lifetime New York girls decided Paris really wasn’t as bad as some of the new girls who didn’t even have Brooklyn as an excuse. They started asking her for Saturday lunch dates. That was the big thing; Saturday lunch dates, at your house or hers, and then you went to the movies. You made dates weeks in advance. You even made dates with girls you hardly knew. It made you look and feel popular. It also broke down the barriers and some of the girls actually became friends at last. By the end of the first year Paris had a lot of friends, some of whom she liked more than others, of course, and she began to feel comfortable. She didn’t see her old friends from Brooklyn at all any more. They were busy at their school, and they had all their new friends, and although her mother talked to some of their mothers on the phone they never made any plans for their daughters to meet. It was funny, Paris thought, she really didn’t miss her old friends very much. They seemed so far away now, so remote. She was glad she had chosen to go to an all-girls school because she was too young to like boys. All her friends were going to Viola Wolff’s dancing class. Paris adamantly refused to go.

“If you don’t go, how will you meet nice boys for later?” her mother asked.

“I don’t want to meet nice boys for later. I hate boys.”

“You’ll like them later.”

“Then I’ll meet them later.”

Paris compromised by asking her Aunt Rosemary to teach her how to dance one week when Jack had a leave and they came home to stay at Grandpa’s house. Rosemary taught her the Foxtrot and the Charleston. Now there was absolutely no need to go to Viola Wolff’s class and have to undergo the agony of dancing with boys.

Paris also refused to go to Sunday school and be confirmed. Since she had read the entire Bible herself three times by the time she was eleven years old her parents didn’t protest too much. Being confirmed was another part of social life, the same as going to dancing school. Paris was invited to a group confirmation at Temple Emanu-El, which was very chic, and to the parties afterward, where you had to give a gift. The only moment of regret she had for not being confirmed was when she presented her friends with the little sterling silver pins she had bought all of them, and realized nobody was going to give her anything. Still, what was a silver pin compared to all those years of having been bored?

Paris’ parents’ maid had gone off to a war plant a long time ago, and every night she and her parents ate at Schrafft’s, which was right in their apartment building and very convenient. They had a permanent six o’clock reservation and they always had the same table. The only night they had to eat elsewhere was Sunday, when Schrafft’s was closed. Sunday was Grandpa day, when he was in the North. They either went to his house in Brooklyn, or else he and Etta came to New York and Paris and her parents and Aunt Melissa and Uncle Lazarus all ate together at Longchamps. Grandpa was thinking of selling his house in Brooklyn and moving to New York to the same hotel where Aunt Melissa and Uncle Lazarus lived. After all, he was in Florida all winter, and at Windflower during the summers, so who needed a house for two or three months a year? Then they could all visit him in the hotel on Sundays and eat in the hotel dining room on Sunday nights, which would be more cozy and familylike. Uncle Basil could have an adjoining apartment in the hotel, just an efficiency apartment of course, since he was still a bachelor.

The family always asked Paris how she liked school, and she always lied and said she liked it very much, giving a big hypocritical smile and showing her braces. Her mother had told her to say she liked school. Besides, it was just too boring to have to go into the long story of why she hated school so much.

Once in a while, on a Sunday night, they saw Aunt Cassie and Uncle Andrew. That was a big occasion to Paris because Aunt Cassie was so lively. Uncle Andrew hardly ever said anything and seemed shy. He asked her how school was. They had another baby now, a girl, named Blythe. Blythe Lucy Saffron. Blythe because they liked the name, and Lucy after Paris’ dead grandmother whom she couldn’t remember. The three children would stay at home with the governess, and Aunt Cassie and Uncle Andrew would eat at Longchamps with the rest of the family. Everyone ate at the same restaurant even when Grandpa was in Florida. Both Paris’ father and Uncle Lazarus were very distrustful of new restaurants. They were sure they were going to be poisoned. Sometimes Uncle Andrew managed to drag them off to a Chinese restaurant and that was really an occasion. Uncle Lazarus always had plain broiled chicken. Her father worried about whether or not they were sneaking pork into his food. And Paris stayed up all night drinking water afterward because Chinese food made her so thirsty.

All in all, living in New York and going to high school was a lot more interesting and exciting than living in Brooklyn had been. Sometimes it was hard to imagine herself growing up, like when they had the horrible school dances and the whole high school was there, the awkward funny-looking freshmen and the sleek, sophisticated seniors, and none of the boys would dance with her. She nearly died of embarrassment then. Who would want to dance with her, a twelve-year-old girl, well, nearly thirteen, but with braces and not much figure and nothing at all to say to a boy? If only she had long swinging blonde hair and a black velvet dress! Then she would be sophisticated. But look at her, with her frizzy cold wave and her sheepdog bangs, and that pimple on her nose with about an inch of pancake makeup only making it look bigger, just not so red. Who would want her? They shouldn’t let the seniors come to the dances if they had freshmen there. It was unfair competition. Then she discovered that the girl who was so popular was only a sophomore and she really wanted to kill herself. How could she change that much in one year? She would never look like that. Of course, that girl must be fifteen. Paris was the youngest girl in the high school. When she was fifteen she would be a senior. There was so much to worry about, what with trying to learn to be a writer and hoping to get into college, that having straight blonde hair was at the bottom of her list. Still, it was there. It had to do with a whole other world she didn’t know anything about, but she intended to find out.

TWO

Everett had two lives, his real life and the life he pretended to everyone he was having. He liked Miami because he could ride around in his jalopy with the top down, and he liked the university because it was so big that no one could keep track of him, or so he thought. He went to classes when he felt like it. He lived with Papa (he never called him Grandpa, only Papa, because it seemed more grown up) and Etta in their house and had breakfast and dinner there. He was supposed to have lunch in the school cafeteria, between classes.

Twice, he had tried to have lunch in the cafeteria, but the moment he walked into that huge room full of strangers he knew he was done for. When he walked in some of the faces turned to look at him, blank masks judging him, and he wanted to run away. Most of the students just ignored him, busy with their friends, and perhaps that was worse. Everett knew no one. He forced himself to get on line in front of the steam tables, pushing his metal tray, not wanting any of that foul-smelling food but having to chose something or look like a fool. He pointed at something, took a cup of coffee, and looked around for a table. People were at all the tables as far as he could see, and how could he walk up to a stranger and ask to share? It was impossible. Tray in hand, feeling enormous and ridiculous, he walked across the room, sweating, looking for an empty table.

There was one empty table in the corner. The couple who had been sitting there were just getting up. Should he chance it? Out of the corner of his eye Everett saw two other people heading for it from the other side and he quickly calculated that they would get there at the same time as he would, thus precipitating a confrontation. He couldn’t cope with that. Casually, as if he was finished, he went to the place where they collected the dirty dishes and put his untouched tray down with the garbage and walked out of the cafeteria.

He had a lump in his throat and thought he was going to cry. Why was it always so hard just to speak to people, just to have them look at him? His shyness was like a malignancy. He wanted to disappear, to drop through the floor, to be invisible, like that character in the comic books he had read as a kid. But on the other hand he was suffocating from loneliness. He walked to the parking lot and got into his red jalopy, gunned it up to seventy, and sped away toward the beach.