Seventeenth Summer (15 page)

A slow thought eased itself into my mind and grew and grew until I knew it was the truth. I knew it as certainly as if I had read it printed in the paper. Just thinking made my heart hurt with a throbbing ache till I felt that it would ease it if I could just hold it for a moment, with its pulsing ache, in the warmth of my hands. I knew, and the palms of my hands tingled with desire just to touch him, and thinking of it made my breath feel dry in my throat. I knew then there was no use pretending or trying to cajole my mind into silence or clouding my memory with forced, fluffy thoughts. Sometime, sometime I had to see Jack again and I knew it.

“We’d better go in,” Kitty whispered in a small voice as if she, too, had caught the strange spell of the night, and she took my hand. Yes, I thought, we had better go in, and as I opened the front door a night moth flew in, drawn by the light, and fluttered against the lamp shade.

Later, lying in bed, I thought and thought so long that every thought in my head turned into a prayer, and the longing seemed
to suck all other ideas from my head until the whole bed, the whole darkness of the room was keeping time to the words that beat and beat in my head. Through the window the night breezes came soft with the smell and warmth of summer and my prayers went on and on, ends linked to beginnings in an endless chain, till my thoughts were a steady chant of “Let him call, let him call!” and outside, the moon, almost full, hung heavy and gold just above the trees.

And I kept seeing it, so round and close, even after I shut my eyes.

And the next morning I found out. My mother and Kitty drove to Sheboygan with my father—it was unusual for him to be home in the middle of the week and it made the day a sort of holiday. I waited till I heard the car back out of the driveway and the sound of it fade away down the street. Even though I knew I was alone I made myself walk down the stairs casually, slowly, as if it didn’t matter at all. I stopped in the living room to dial the radio to a music program and took a last, cautiously casual look in the kitchen to make sure everyone was really gone before I picked up the phone. I even looked in the icebox and made myself pretend I was concerned over what I would make for lunch. The dog Kinkee raised her nose from her paws as she lay under the kitchen table and it gave me a guilty feeling even to have her hear but, after all, there was nothing wrong with calling!

Margie’s voice on the other end of the wire was high and a little surprised. I could imagine her thin, red lips as she talked. “Well, gee, Angie, it certainly is a long time since I heard from you!”

“Why, yes. It is,” I said, my mind feeling for the easy, noncommittal words.

“What you been doing?” she went on, and I told her nothing at all except the usual lazy things one does in a summer and what had she been doing?

“Oh—Fitz and I have been going out to Pete’s like always and then a bunch of us had a wiener roast the other night …” Her voice trailed off a little.

Go on. Go on. Did you see him? Was Jack there? Tell me. Tell me. Don’t make me ask. Don’t make me ask, my mind said, but the words from my mouth came with slow unconcern, “That must have been fun, Margie. That must have been loads of fun with the weather so nice and everything.”

The next words I seemed to see rather than hear, as if they came out, black and stark before my eyes on ticker tape. “I suppose,” she said simply, “I suppose you know that Jack has been dating Jane Rady again?” She knew I hadn’t known; she knew, but how else could it be said?

For over a week, she told me. Ever since that time I had gone out with Tony. Almost every night since then. To the wiener roast and to Pete’s and to shows by themselves. Jane Rady had told all the girls she was going with Jack again. Jane Rady had told
everyone. After all, it had been well over a week.

I was glad Margie kept talking for I wasn’t sure of my own voice then. Those minutes on the phone were so long I couldn’t even remember ever having talked before.

“Honestly, Angie,” she went on in a very confidential, sister-to-sister tone, “I can’t see why you had to go out with a boy like Tony when you were dating someone as swell as Jack Duluth.”

“Why? But why, Margie? I had fun with Tony. It was nice. What do you mean ‘a boy like Tony’? He’s a friend of Jack’s. Jack introduced me to him. Don’t the fellows like him or what?”

“Boys
like
him,” she explained with elaborate patience, “and girls like him too—but, well, they don’t
go out
with him … unless they’re
that kind
.”

I had been staring at the rug pattern on the dining-room floor till it rose and blurred before my eyes. I was so surprised that what Margie was saying seemed faraway and unreal, like something that wasn’t meant for me to hear at all. And after she had said it I wanted her to hang up and let me think my own thoughts.

“That’s why everyone was so surprised, and especially Jack, because no one thought you were the kind to go out with a fast boy like that, Angie!”

For the rest of the day the word resounded in my head. But he hadn’t been when he was with me, so how was I to know that Tony was a fast boy!

My mother brought home some newly shelled peas they had
bought up at a vinery on the highway coming from Sheboygan. I picked out the small, round thistleheads that are always mixed with vinery peas and put the peas on to cook.

“We passed Jack in the bakery truck headed for the lake just as we turned into the street,” my mother said conversationally, tying on a clean apron. “He must have been going out to look at his boat.”

Since morning my thoughts were so numbed that now I could look at her and nod in answer without my face showing anything.

Late the next afternoon all the ominous, heavy gloom I felt inside of me seemed to come out in the weather. I had been in the kitchen most of the day ironing Kitty’s dresses and the clothes had the clean, fresh smell of having blown in the sun, but the steam came up hot from the ironing board and the air was damp and muggy. My hair was sticking in fuzzy curls on my neck, and from the radio in the living room I could hear the inarticulate drone of the baseball game. It was the sort of day that made you wish you could go to bed right away and not have to wake up till tomorrow.

The weather was bound to break and finally in the late afternoon a storm rode in from the lake on a low wind that smelled of fish and the dark, troubled water of Winnebago. Over to the north the sky grew heavy and sullen, a dark gray-green, the color of old bruises, and the wind snaked its way through the grass and pushed the bushes flat against the house.
Outside, neighbor women came to their doors calling to the children to come in before the rain came, and in our living room my mother switched off the radio, grumbling with sudden static, and came into the kitchen.

“Angeline,” she suggested, “let’s have a cup of tea and finish those macaroons in the cookie jar.” She set out the cups, but just as the steam began to whistle from the nose of the kettle she said, “Or perhaps it’s too near suppertime,” and put the cups and teapot away again.

The smell of the lake was so strong the waves might well have been licking the back door step and the trees on the lawn tossed fitfully, as if they were worried beyond bearing. Kitty came in with her hair blown about saying, “Got to close the upstairs windows. It’s going to rain.” The sky was so dark that the air was gray-green and birds swooped low from the trees, uneasy about the coming storm. As I went to shut the kitchen window the wind blew the first rain against the pane in spiteful gusts, and out in the north, over the lake, lightning crooked a long, bright finger across the sky. It was a storm that would last the night.

“What shall we have for supper?” my mother asked. “It’s the sort of night the children will be hungry.”

“Pancakes and cocoa with marshmallows?” Kitty suggested hopefully. That is her stock menu for anything from picnics to birthday parties.

“All right,” Mom agreed. “And, Angie, if you’ll melt up
some butter with brown sugar it will save us having to go to the store for syrup in the rain.” Kitty hovered close to the stove with comments and suggestions till the syrup was done and I gave her the sweet, sticky pan to scrape.

Later, at supper, she sat bobbing the marshmallow in her cocoa cup up and down, saying every few moments, “Isn’t this good, children? Isn’t this good?” She always calls my other sisters and me “children” because my mother does and usually I laugh but tonight I didn’t care.

Lorraine’s hair was damp and uncurled from the rain and hung limp around her face. Every few minutes the lights in the chandelier dimmed as outside the lightning crackled, and we all held our conversation poised for a moment, waiting for the thunder to pass. The house had the warm, oppressive stillness in the air that comes from the tension of a storm and not having the windows open. For a moment I thought I couldn’t stand it—all the pleasant, protected smugness that kept making me pretend and pretend.They all sat around the table, enjoying the luxurious taste of syrup and melted butter, with their lips soft and smiling and their faces happy as if they were eating slices of contentment. I had a sudden stifled feeling, as if the house were too small and the cream-colored dining-room walls were crowding in close, so close that it made my very ribs ache.

My mother filled Kitty’s cocoa cup again, smiling to herself. “Isn’t this a good night to be all home, cozy and inside?” she questioned, and her voice was quiet and warm with sheer satisfaction.
Outside, the wind pelted the rain in sheets against the window and went keening through the trees, its sad wail trailing behind.

We spent the whole miserable evening in the living room with the radio off because the air was static-filled with storm. Lorraine had pinned her wet hair into a scraggly knot at the back of her head like a neat washwoman and sat leafing through a pile of old magazines. My mother had picked apart a worn tweed suit of Margaret’s to make over for me for college, and I slipped it on, tacked together, over my slacks while she made rough calculations with pins. “There,” she said with satisfaction, “look, children. If that won’t look smart with a long yellow sweater!” I inched around slowly to give her the whole effect while she said with her head cocked, chewing a bit of thread, “But you must stand straighter, Angie,” and she gave me a motherly poke between the shoulder blades with her thimbled finger. “You’ve been slumping for over a week.”

Margaret sat with a magazine and note paper on her knee writing to Art and smiling to herself, while the pen made a steady scratch-scratch in the quietness of the room.

I took a book from the shelf and lay down on the rug to read. There is nothing like filling your mind with new thoughts to crowd the old ones out, but somehow it didn’t work. It was like taking castor oil with orange juice. When you drink through the sweet juice floating on the top everything seems all right but you inevitably come to the thick, sickening castor oil, heavy at the bottom.

Lorraine was chipping the nail polish off the nails of one hand with the other hand as she read, making a small, insistent noise as irritating as the screak of chalk on the blackboard. Martin had called just before the rain began for the first time this week. I had answered.

“Hi, there, Angeline,” he had said.

And I was so surprised to hear his voice I blurted out, “Hello, Martin! I’m so glad you called!” That was wrong. Martin always laughs at anyone who is glad about anything.

“Yeah?” His voice twisted into a question and I could almost see his face with one eyebrow raised and a half-smile making his mouth sarcastically amused. “Your sister ’round?” he asked.

“Why, no. No, she isn’t home from work yet,” I explained, “but she’ll be here in just a little while—”

“All right,” he answered abruptly. “Thanks, Angie.”

“What shall I tell her?” I insisted. “Was there anything special you wanted?”

“No, just tell her I called.”

“Shall I tell her you’ll call back, Martin?”

“If you want.Yeah, tell her I’ll call back later,” and he hung up.

When Lorraine came home from work I told her and I had watched her waiting as we ate supper, but the phone never rang. She kept looking at the clock every few minutes till the hand ticked its way past seven. Then she didn’t look anymore.

Now, in the living room, it made me feel worse to see her so I turned over and put my head on my arms on the rug. I
know now how a balloon feels when it bursts. The rough scratch of the pile was almost comforting against my face and my head ached with the effort of trying to hold back my thoughts, so I just closed my eyes and let them come. One sharp thought needled into my brain till I felt like squirming. Maybe right now they’re out there, Jack and Jane Rady, listening to the music from the nickel machine at Pete’s and laughing together every time the storm dimmed the lights, while outside the lake is tossing its waves high up on the back lawn. Or maybe they’re at the movie, in the darkness and quiet, not knowing there is a storm at all. Her hair would be shining and hanging soft and straight. Maybe he had even touched her hair.

I wanted so badly to cry. Not with big, loud sobs, but just to sit by myself without making any noise and let the tears trickle slowly and silently without my having to stop them. I tried to force my mind back, back to the time before I knew Jack; but it kept puttering with little memories on the way and I couldn’t get past that first night in the boat. Pictures kept seesawing before my eyes till I was sick with unhappiness and my heart felt sore as a bruise.

The worst of the storm was clearing now and a fork of lightning did one last quick dance across the sky while low thunder applauded in the distance. But the rain was still steady on the window panes and runneled noisily in the eaves trough, and the wind was still worrying the tired trees. My
mother shifted her sewing on her knee and said again with warm contentment, “Isn’t this the best night to be all home, cozy and inside?”

I can’t even tell you quite how it happened. I mean, it was the sort of thing that happens so fast that you can’t even piece it together again afterward. It was late Saturday afternoon and I had walked down to Paine’s drugstore to buy some turpentine to take the paint off Kitty’s new sailor slacks. She had spent the morning in the garage refinishing her bicycle.