Rumors of Peace (30 page)

Sincerely,

Suse

Again it was too polite. I had wanted to use as an example of life's beautiful moments our talk on the sunny terrace and when he leaned from the train waving, but I left them out. Somehow, you couldn't do it in letters; something held you back. You had to wait till you saw each other.

O
H, BY THE WAY
,” Mama said to Dad one night, “I heard downtown today that Mr. Nagai's back.”

“Is that right? Well, good, I'd say it's about time—except I wonder what the man's going to live on.”

I saw him on the street soon after, not on Main Street, where his florist shop was now Modern Miss Apparel, but coming out of a corner store with a bag of groceries. He looked the same, too old to have gotten older: quiet-faced, a dainty man in a neat dark suit and little fedora. I was relieved to know he was no longer withering away behind the barbed wire of a detention camp, and I said hello. He replied in his same rather low, soft voice, with a polite smile, and when I walked on, he was not only out of the camp but out of my storeroom as well, two troubling Mr. Nagais merged into one home-again Mr. Nagai, and I was happy.

I was not so happy about the rest of the Japs returning. Still, I was not thrilled to know what was happening to some. One had been assaulted on a street in Seattle. In San Jose a couple had their house burned down. In Fresno night riders had shot through the window of a recently returned family, just missing two children asleep in their beds. I wanted to feel excited and fulfilled, but I couldn't get the feeling started. It was the thin, flickering sea; it couldn't be whipped into a storm, it
was too big, too broad. I knew I would never like Japs, but I also knew, with an acute sense of loss, that I would never hate them again either, with my black pointed passion, because there was no black pointed passion left in me for anything.

“Why don't you come over to my place after school tomorrow?” Peggy asked me in the hall one day. “We get together and play records and talk.”

I had been expecting it. I was out of dumbbell class. My hair was no longer short. It was no longer green.

“All right,” I said.

Karla had left some sloppy Joe sweaters, and the next morning I put one on. It was salmon and came far down over my skirt, so you saw only a strip of the skirt. That was how you were supposed to look. It was supposed to look good. My hair was getting on toward the shoulders, and the bangs were long enough to comb back. I had a forehead, a good high one without being Benjamin Franklin high like Valerie's, and my eyelashes were dark, which I had not noticed before, with the gray of the eyes set off pale like pewter. And Aunt Dorothy had been correct. My bone structure was first-rate, very clean and smooth with high, mysterious cheekbones, a face with no spongy padding, but full of sheer sweeps and fascinating angles, a kind of hungry face, a perilous face. Perilously I smoothed the sloppy Joe sweater, got into my raincoat, and picked up my books.

After school I went over to Peggy's. She answered the door and took me through the Dungeon, dark and gloomy as ever, with the chesterfield still standing at its pulled-out angle, and Rudy came barking and leaping as always, and then we were in Peggy's room; but that had changed. It was extremely neat now, and there was a blue and gold University of California pennant on the wall. Her phonograph was on the dusky pink rug, and someone was singing “Long Ago and Far Away.” Bottles of Coke also stood on the rug, and piles of records, and there were three girls lying around: the eternal Bev, and two Jeans from my homeroom, all in sloppy Joes and all saying hi pleasantly as I sat down in their midst. The charmed circle.

One of the Jeans was looking into the mirror of a compact and carefully
powdering her face. The other Jean, sitting next to me, was sorting records and copying their titles into a notebook, using green ink and dotting her Is with circles. Bev was sipping a Coke and leafing through a
Calling All Girls
magazine on her lap. From a little manicure set on the rug before her, Peggy picked up an orange stick and began pushing her cuticles back.

“I love your sweater,” Bev smiled at me. “That salmon color is beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“Gorgeous,” said powdering Jean.

“Thank you.”

“I wouldn't dare wear salmon,” said the other Jean, looking up from her notebook, “not with this awful coloring of mine, but it looks terrific on you.”

I couldn't say thank you again, it would sound repetitious. Besides, her color wasn't awful; it was perfectly normal. I was reminded of the time Peggy and I had bombarded poor stupid Eudene with compliments like that. I was offended.

“Maybe it's a nice color, but I'm afraid that my opinion of sloppy Joes is that they're abnormal.”

“Abnormal?” Bev asked politely.

“Yes. They're so huge that they're the only kind of sweater you wear out in the back, from sitting on it. I consider that abnormal.”

“That's interesting,” she said.

“Here, have a Coke,” Peggy interrupted briskly, handing me one.

“There!” Notebook Jean announced, making a final entry in her green ink and passing the notebook to Peggy. “I'm taking three Ginny Simms.”

“And you brought one Dick Haymes and two Mills Brothers,” said Peggy, running her finger down the list. “Here, give me your pen, you got a title wrong.”

They were trading records, apparently an exacting procedure. I reached out and patted Rudy, who was waddling by. He was getting old, there were white hairs on his muzzle. Peggy was getting old too, she would be fifteen in four months. She had a bust now, small but there. So did Bev, who was getting up to change the record. And so did Notebook Jean. In fact, almost everyone in ninth grade had a bust. I was a slow
starter. So was Powder Jean, who had closed her compact and sat up straight, her chest flat. She was looking around at the others, waiting.

“Oh no, it's absolutely no good,” said Bev, sitting down again. “It looks cheap.”

“You used too much,” said Peggy.

Notebook Jean took a sip of her Coke and shook her head. “I think we should vote against it.”

“No, wash it all off,” Bev said. “Then put it on light. I don't think we should vote until we see how it is light. Don't you, Peggy?”

Peggy nodded, queenlike, preoccupied, back with her orange stick.

“What are you voting on?” I asked as Powder Jean went out.

“If we should use powder,” said Bev, “But I think she got the wrong color. It should be kind of pinky, and this is more like white.”

“It looks like that white powder Mother Basketball puts on her feet,” I told Peggy, “She's always taking off her gym shoes and shaking this white stuff on her feet. They're huge.”

“I haven't noticed,” said Peggy.

“I think this is Helena Rubinstein,” Bev told me with a pleasant smile. She was certainly the friendliest of the four, and I felt a little pang that I had ever blown her to bits in a Zero.

“Fine,” she said as Powder Jean returned with her washed face. “Now try it on light. Right, Peggy?”

Peggy nodded. She was definitely the important one, the leader. Bev was her second-in-command. Then came Notebook Jean, who could make suggestions but wasn't listened to. And finally, there was Powder Jean, who did whatever was asked of her. It was interesting, just like a stepladder. The stepladder was in the boys they went around with, too. The two Jeans went around with a couple of ordinary Towks, whereas I had seen Bev eating lunch with the student body president's best friend, and I had seen Peggy holding hands with the student body president himself. And the stepladder was in their looks, too. Peggy was very pretty, I had to admit, with her fiery hair and luminous green eyes. Bev was pretty, too, but not strikingly, soft-eyed and sweet-faced. Notebook Jean was attractive, but her nose was a good deal too long. And Powder Jean just made it over the line with a lot of curly bronze hair, but her eyes were terribly close together.

I wondered if the stepladder was in everything: in their wardrobes, and the size of their houses, and how many people in their families had gone to college. Best Everything, right across the board; then second best, and so on down the line. It didn't seem possible; it would be too well ordered. But they
were
well ordered. The meticulous list in green ink. The way they voted, like a committee.

Powder Jean opened the compact again and dabbed her face with little darts. When she was finished, she lowered the puff.

“Well? What do you think?” asked Bev, looking around.

“You can't even see it,” said Notebook Jean.

“But if she puts more on, there'll be too much. What do you think, Peggy? Should she put more on?”

Peggy gave a shake of the head, working on her nails.

“I agree,” said Bev. “Now the question is, do we want to vote yes for it the way it is, if you can't see it?”

“There doesn't seem much point,” said Notebook Jean.

“I agree,” said Bev. “You want to see some results if you're going to spend money.”

“It would be a waste of money,” said Notebook Jean.

I wondered if the emissaries at the Lisbon conference had gone on like this. They probably had, for days on end, pleasant and polite and pointless, sipping their glasses of water, or maybe they too had Coca-Cola, or more likely champagne.

“What's your verdict, Peggy?” Bev asked.

Peggy gave a brief thumbs-down gesture.

Then they all voted no. I hoped they were finished. I hadn't been so bored since Sunday school. Peggy looked bored, too, and it seemed more than just her queenlike manner. This wasn't much of a pinnacle to arrive at.

Now suddenly there were little squeals as they put on another record and Sinatra's voice oozed forth with “You'll Never Know.” Notebook Jean clutched her sides and shut her eyes tightly. Powder Jean did the same. Even calm Bev threw her head back with rapture. But Peggy was above all this and just kept pushing her cuticles back. I sat listening to the crooning voice and to the jangle of charm bracelets as hands
rose to weave softly in the air. Sometimes there were sighs, once even a moan.

I thought of pictures I'd seen in
Life
of Sinatra in auditoriums packed with thousands of girls who squealed and moaned like this and even tried to tear his clothes off and fainted, so that attendants had to carry them away. There was something very wrong with this, because he had a voice with no oomph; it was a tired voice, and I would think you would be more likely to fall asleep than get excited.

It would be different if you were hearing someone magnificent from olden times, some great pianist crashing the keys in a Parisian concert hall; that would be thrilling, but the audience wouldn't scream and try to tear his clothes off. Frank Sinatra brought out tired taste and bad manners, he was a sign of the times; people were getting lower and more like a herd of sheep, and it wasn't like the olden times, when there was passion and grandeur and glittering manners.

There was another spate of squeals as the hollow, syrupy voice came to an end. Bev got up to turn the phonograph off and smiled over at me. But then she must have noticed my unappreciative face. “Don't you like him?” she asked.

“No. And neither does Peggy.”

“You must be insane,” Peggy said in her quiet, queenlike way. “I've always loved Frankie. I was one of his first fans.”

“How can you not like him?” Powder Jean asked me with wonder.

“He's too tired.”

“He's just the
opp
osite,” she said with a kind of breathlessness. “He's just so full of . . . life and love and everything. He's just Frankie . . . there's nobody else like him.”

“Nobody as boring,” I agreed. “But just because I think he smells, that doesn't mean anything. To each his own.”

I was trying to be nice, but I could see that the word
smell
offended them, and now another displeasing thing was happening because I was remembering something Helen Maria had once said about Franz Liszt, the great composer and pianist who had given dazzling concerts throughout the best drawing rooms of Europe. She said the women in the audience, those women with their lorgnettes and tiaras and lovely gowns,
would run up to him like football players and grab him and pull his hair, which was very long, and tear the buttons from his beautiful frock coat and scream and beat their temples and faint in piles around him.

I should have been used to it by now: never arriving at a fine solid theory but that it was immediately wiped out by a nasty contradiction. But at least, I thought stubbornly, at least it was the magnificent Franz Liszt they had lost their marbles over and not puny little Frank Sinatra.

The others had begun talking about a Valentine's dance Notebook Jean was giving. She was going to send out invitations saying “Hop on over to the Valentine Hop.” She wanted opinions. Powder Jean thought it was cute. Bev said it sounded a little like rabbits. Peggy was consulted. She said it sounded like rabbits, but it was sort of cute anyway. Notebook Jean said she wouldn't send it if it sounded funny. They decided to put it to the vote.

I pulled my shoulder bag against my thigh, so that I could feel the buried light of Egon's letter. It made everything more tolerable—the boredom, the offense I had caused, even the women screaming and pulling Franz Liszt's hair. It was comforting, like a touch of magic. I felt restored, and when they had all voted in favor of the invitation as it stood, I turned to Peggy.

“Have you heard from Helen Maria lately?”

“Not lately, she's very busy,” Peggy replied with coolness; she was not pleased with my behavior.

“Is she still going with that what's-his-name?”

“I don't know.” And she looked around at the others. “He's this very, very handsome guy. Very terrific. A grad student.”

“Why isn't he in the Army?” Powder Jean asked, and then blinked. Peggy was leveling her a disdainful look, as if everyone should realize that no sister of hers would be dating a 4-F; obviously he was doing essential scientific research, or maybe he was a returned hero with the Purple Heart. It was an eloquent look, and in it I could see Helen Maria as she had been presented to this group: popular, busy, dating only the biggest men on campus, dashing around to football games and dances, her room filled with pennants and pressed corsages. The genius had become one of Peggy's great assets. I sat wondering if I should pop this bubble. I decided to—only the truth was moral and just. But
Peggy was giving me a friendly look, as if she were going to pay me a compliment. Pay me to keep my mouth shut, maybe.